Exmouth Pavilion Thurs March 31st

And so we come to Exmouth. A little background is called for here before we go any further. This show had been selling very slowly, but as they’d had three months run at it we were confident that they’d turn it around and that the show would do OK. Wrong. Three days before the show it had sold a mighty fifty-two tickets, by far the lowest sales we’ve ever had. Apropos of nothing else, On every level it makes sense NOT to do the gig….firstly, we’ll lose a shedload of cash, secondly the VENUE will lose a shedload of cash, and thirdly it’ll be pretty horrible for the band. However, when we suggest this to the management of the venue they not only said they wanted to keep the date in, they also threatened to invoke a cancellation penalty if we didn’t play. This makes it financially impossible for us to cancel or postpone the date, so here we are. The bright young thing at the box office breathlessly tells me that sales have now gone up to a whopping fifty – four, and I have to go and have lie down to deal with the excitement. At east the view’s pretty….we’re right on the beach at the quiet end of town, and it’s all very picturesque and Devonian. Big John tells me that a German submarine once came up the mouth of the River Exe right here, and I wait patiently for the punchline, as John’s ALWAYS got a punchline, but no, that’s it….it’s just a micro-history lesson. .Seeing as I’m the master of largely useless trivia, I file this away for future reference... I’m sure I’ll be able to make someone’s eyes glaze over somewhere. Back inside, Dom and Ali, the two venue staff, couldn’t be friendlier, either, but even they are a tad embarrassed by the “ cabaret style “ seating and how sparse it looks in this fairly big hall. One saving grace is that Chris’s brother Anton is coming tonight, AND it’s his birthday, so he’s bringing twelve guests which will swell the numbers somewhat. We’d actually asked him if he could invite the entire population of the town where he lives, but failing that, twelve extra bodies will help nicely. The other thing that drives us mental about these shows that don’t do well is that invariably when you speak to some of the locals they say things like “ Oh, I’d have bought tickets if I’d known it was on…I didn’t see any adverts ! “. We also hear that the theatre’s foyer and little café has been closed for a while for refurbishment, and this was a popular rendezvous point, so we’ve missed out on people seeing the ads in there too. As we’ve already said, if folks just didn’t want to see this show we’d understand, because we’d be playing to no-one every night, so it HAS to come down to the local promoters. Anyway, I won’t go down that particular ranting route again, as that way lies madness…..The band’s attitude to tonight has been really good…once they realised we were stuck with it they just get ready to deliver the best show they can, and there’s no petulant snits or anyone locking themselves in dressing rooms in floods of artistic angsty tears. This, of course, is just as it should be….when folks have paid good money to buy a ticket to see you, they expect to get the best show possible whether there’s eight or eight thousand out there, but I must admit I have worked with bands who pulled the most amazing strops over things like the toilet paper in the dressing room loo being the wrong colour or the alignment of the stage messing with their feng shui . In such situations one is tempted to find a large, ungreased pole and shove it where it’ll REALLY mess up their feng shui, but fortunately we have no such issues with our chaps, and so, despite the fact that by the time the house lights go down there are open wastes between the isolated knots of audience members, they still lay into Please Please me as if they were at Wembley. There’s that initial wincing moment at the end of the song where you can actually hear individual voices and hands clapping, but Den just goes into his “welcome” link as normal, and from then on it’s all good. In fact, the open spaces work to our advantage, prompting people to get up and dance long before the band normally ask them to. This unscheduled bopfest also yields possibly one of he strangest sights I’ve ever seen. There’s a chap down at the front in an electric wheelchair, and next to him is his wife or partner. She’s holding what appears to be a kind of remote control for the chair, and as she grooves along she’s making this fellow’s chair “ dance “ too. A lot of fun for her I’m sure, but the poor chap’s gripping the arms of his chariot with in white-knuckled terror and hanging on for dear life. Eventually she hears his screams above the racket of the band and wheels him out of the firing line. Weird. There might not be many people here tonight but they’re making a proper row by the end of Daydream Believer, and it’s a genuine encore call that the band respond to. In the end it’s worked out OK ( apart from the nut-scrunching financial loss, of course ) and we’ve scored hundreds of Brownie points with the folks down here, but we could do without many more like this, to be honest. At the end of a night like this there is, of course, only one thing for professional musicians and road crew to do…..PUB FRENZY !!!!