Newport Riverfront Friday April 27th

There’s a lot of excitement and anticipation about tonight’s show. We came to Newport on our first full tour and had an absolute blast of a gig, with a good-sized crowd and a great atmosphere, and we know that the advance sales of this have been strong, so we’re all revved up. Fortified by a very splendid full English breakfast at the hotel in Eastleigh, we set off for Wales. I’ve already made a comment in a previous blog about the weird-arse arrangement that sees you paying to get IN to Wales, but getting out for free., and as we have many Welsh fans, I’ll just discreetly draw a veil over this somewhat bizarre arrangement. The only thing I WILL say is that it costs TWELVE AND A HALF BLOODY QUID to get a Transit into the principality, so I’m seriously considering having a word with some of those nice chaps at the Sangatte refugee camp at Calais and seeing if they can hook me up with some human traffickers who would be prepared to smuggle the vans ashore at Barry Island. …We’re back at The Riverfront today, a fabulous place with a great crew who still hold our nearly three-year old record for the fastest get-out. Stevenage equalled it once, but these folks really are the badger’s bathrobe. It helps that the stage is mahoosive, so everything’s easy to get at. In fact, if we reckon we could fit the entire Concorde Club into the Gordon Craig load dock, then here we could accommodate the club, adjoining hotel, outbuildings, car park and possibly the nine-hole golf course. It’s big. Last night we were crammed onto an 18’ x 12’ platform, tonight we could invite the entire population of the little country town where I live to come and sit on the stage, and we’d still have room to run a sheep-dog trial ( they must be little bastards, those sheep dogs…they’re ALWAYS on trial, aren’t they ? Must be something in the Winalot ) . In fact, so big is the stage that when the set starts it’s almost as though everyone’s TOO far apart, as it feels a bit dislocated up here and takes a couple of songs to kick things into gear. Tomps and I are so far away from the band that we can almost hold a normal conversation while they’re playing ( well, as normal as our conversations ever get ), while at stage left Pug is employing semaphore to communicate with the band across the great swathe of space that divides them. There’s also a really long forestage here ( I said foreSTAGE) which can be lifted up on hydraulics when they need to increase the platform size. Tonight, though, it’s retracted to floor level, meaning that we’ve got a pretty cool area between the front of the stage and the first rows of seats which is just crying out for a bit of unabashed Welsh rug-cutting later on. In some places these gaps are slightly intimidating, but here’s it just looks like a party waiting to happen ( Note to band, crew and self : Do not disappoint ! ). The moment the lads have got their collective mojos doing whatever mojos do when they get together, we know that this one is going to be a corker. It’s the noise that I notice first; even this far from the centre of the stage and the crowd, it’s a deep, full-throated response to each song that literally sends a shiver down my spine. There’s no substitute for sheer numbers when you’re looking for a bit of crowd reaction, let me tell you. I’ve also decided that as the stage is the size of, say, Wiltshire, tonight’s the night when I do a wee bit of experimenting with the pyrotechnics. Now, those of you who have followed the show through all three tours will have witnessed the sparkly whoosh that accompanies the intro to Pinball Wizard, and may even remember the slightly erratic flame effects that used to be in Light My Fire ( see what we did there ?). The latter were gradually phased out after a series of misfires and failures, and though I briefly tried to resurrect them in Buxton on this tour with pathetic, sub-cigarette lighter intensity results, we’re really totally over them now. However, some time ago the nice lady from Le Maitre, the company which makes the whizzbombs, gave me a little box of sample pyros, and they’ve been sitting in my pyro box ever since, waiting for the opportune moment. Well, this is that moment. Some of these things are, quite frankly, terrifying, and they’ll stay RIGHT where they are, thank you. However, I’ve had two of these little fellows, called Mini Gerbs, nudging my brain all day, so tonight I decide I’m going to give them a go. I know what a Gerb does ( roughly ) and I know that this one has a 10’ wide fallout area and a 10’ height. What I DON’T know is how long the burn time is….Gerbs are a little longer-lasting than the instantaneous ignition of my usual Silver Jets…and I make an educated guess, but it IS still a guess. At the appointed time, just as the solos finish in Light My Fire, I hit the red button, and a pleasingly high jet of sparks fills the stage on either side of Steve’s drumkit. The song moves towards it’s conclusion, and still the jets of sparks fountain up. Now they’re coming to the “ big ending” but that’s one thing the Gerbs are showing no sign of doing. Despite the fact that they’re only about four inches long, they pack a bloody wallop alright, and they’re STILL in full effect as the band gather for the big crash ending of the song. For a horrible moment I’ve got visions of Jamie having to go onstage for the acoustic intimacy of Handbags And Gladrags with Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius here still spitting out sparkly mayhem behind him, but with virtually no warning they fizzle out. JUST in time. Only one conclusion to make, of course. These are AWESOME….I need several boxes of them RIGHT NOW. The extra little bit of wow factor that we managed to get from the additional pyros stands us in good stead, and in the final run for home of the second set the house is, as someone once said, a-rockin’. So a-rockin’ is it, in fact, that it’s with something approaching disbelief that we hear Den call for Walk Alone as the encore, but then he’s made a big thing tonight about the Welsh being great singers, so probably it IS the right call. As soon as the beep on the last VT insert has gone, we’re straight on the stage. Reputations are at stake here !! Like a little army of dervishes we rapidly strip the stage and lob the gear into the two vans. We’ve given the house crew a five- minute handicap margin as last time we had a single 7.5 tonner and it was a lot less fiddly,, but they don’t need it….and it’s EXACTLY the same time as last year, one hours and four minutes. Phenomenal…..and just as well, because there’s a lot of piddling about going on tonight ! Nick and one of the other crew are driving after the show to a halfway house and will then carry on the next morning to Wembley, where they’ll pick up a “splitter” minibus from Tiger Tours. This is because the band is going straight to Holland after tomorrow night’s show, so we’ll need to sort out who’s taking what gear as it comes off the stage at Worthing.. At the same time, Rodders and I drive the rented van , staying just ahead of John and the Bogey, and we do the run from Newport all the way down to Worthing.. Very mixed feelings on the drive down….part of me just wants to get back home to start sorting my life out, part of me wants this to carry on forever, and part of me wonders how many sticks of seaside rock it’d take to equal my body weight.….We break the journey at Chieveley services and share a coffee and a stream of inappropriate jokes with John and Pug before heading off on the last stretch. The weather’s not great, which doesn’t augur well for tomorrow, and we know that we can’t get right into the gig and powered up until 7.00am, so we pull up outside the venerable old Assembly Hall at just before 5.30am. Rodders and I get aboard the bus and I work out how much sleep I’m going to get before John or I have to go out and meet the dude with the barrier key. I’m still in the middle of this process ( or so I thought ) when I suddenly wake up with a stiff neck and a face covered by an interesting lattice pattern from the non-slip surface of the table I’ve been lying on. John’s just firing up the engine, which means it must be seven am and time to move. Outside it’s pissing down, freezing cold and blowing a gale. This’ll be Worthing, then. Last show………………..