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E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5
Thursday
3rd February 05
Wimbledon
Theatre, Wimbledon
It's all getting
a bit crowded in the car these days. To relieve
his travel boredom and further his quest for untold
riches, Eddie has taken to completing prize crosswords
from magazines such as "Take A Break",
"TV Quick" and "Dogs Arses".
This has got to be one of the nicest Theatres we have
played, imposing on the outside and bordering on
ostentatious on the inside. Of course we knew that
we had little chance of filling the fourteen hundred or
so seats, but we were here to give it a shot. Arriving early, in spite of several altercations with the
GPS system over the wisdom of her proposed route from
the M25, we got on with some more rehearsals.
We were parked in the Theatre's loading bay in the side
road and were outraged to receive parking tickets,
potentially costing £160....a strong letter will be
written!
Perhaps the most memorable feature of tonight's show was
Rick's second half performance. His brain was
clearly elsewhere and there were several nasty errors,
or "dropping a bollock"....as we call it.
On the way out of the stage door heading to the
Kentucky, we were met by the lady with the red socks,
who had been at the stage door in Croydon last
November. We were amazed, as she had been to both
Croydon shows, but she couldn't remember the first one.
We, on the other hand, would not have forgotten
her. This time she seemed to have her act together
and she got some more pics of us.
Saturday
5th February 05
Wyllyotts
Centre, Potters
Bar.
A question
was asked by Emma in the guest book last week as to the
bands football affiliations, so there was a Q&A
session in the car on the way down to
Hertfordshire. Turns out, that Rick is the only
one with any interest in the beautiful game, and he is
indeed a Liverpool supporter, gets to Anfield a few
times a season and always looks for the results.
Derek has no particular interest in any sport, although
I do recall him risking one eye at the Wimbledon Ladies
final last year! Eddie's weakness is for boxing,
he can tell you anything you want to know about the
sport. Roy only has time for things that have
wheels, these days preferring the two wheeled variety.
His video collection of 1950's Isle of Man TT races is
unrivalled anywhere in West Lancashire.
One thing we do all have in common is our love of
movies, and the in-car conversation is often devoted to
the subject, with much DVD swapping going on at
gigs. The subject of our recent affections has
been "10 Rillington Place", a movie we've all
seen many times in the past, but has just now been
floating round on DVD. How spooky it was when we
switched on Radio 4 and there just happened to be a
documentary on about the Christie murders.
Plan today,
was to crack on with an early sound check at the
Wyllyots, to polish up the 65 show. Derek was
suffering with an eye infection and really didn't feel
like making the early journey, his eye would hardly
open. By the time we hit Potters Bar, it was
nearer to our usual sound check time. Sporting a
pair of Eddie's spare goggles, he was doin' a fair Oasis
impression.
'Twas a good show tonight to a sell out (or near as
dammit) crowd.
 
 
Saturday
19th February 05
Assembly
Rooms, Tamworth.
 The
Beatles played here on Friday 1 February 1963. We
first played here on Saturday 1 February 2003 and it was
that event that kicked off our '40 years ago' theatre adventures.
That night we played a 90 minute set to a sell out crowd
with The Eleanor Rigby Experience. Last year we
returned in our own right, to do the '64 show. And
now....this year....and the grand unveiling of the '65 show!!!!
Well,... that was the original idea!! Let's
just say, that, due to circumstances beyond our control,
our plans went to cock earlier this week and an
emergency strategy had to be put in place.
Derek was
suffering the remains of flu and was worried about being
able to sing. As there were 48 songs in the set tonight,
that was of no little concern. After an extended
sound check, there didn't seem like he was going to have
much problem, but he stuffed himself up with pills
anyway. (not the spacey kind or owt....just, y'know........
beechams and stuff!)
Some performers have strange pre-show routines, little idiosyncrasies
that they go through before a show. At
Tamworth, our routine involves making a visit to the Dominos
pizza shop across the road.
Eddie had perfected a new sketch... a fabulous
recreation of a discussion between Rick and John which
took place outside the Wimbledon Theatre a couple of
weeks ago. Ade & Dave were most amused.
We wanted to keep some sort of chronology about the
show, so we decided to stick bits from 63 and 64
together for the first half and do all the new stuff in
the second half. The whole band enjoyed this, as we hadn't played a lot of the tunes for so
long. Songs like Anna, A Taste of Honey and
Devil In Her Heart were brought back. The
audience seemed to enjoy it too, this was one of the
best responses I think we have had from a first half.
The second act was just as enjoyable, but for different
reasons. A lot of the songs, we hadn't performed
in front of an audience before, and there is always a
bit of a buzz from that.
P.S.
The sods at Merton council refused to quash our parking
tickets after the Wimbledon show.
 
For blog
readers only, here is a Real Player file of Paperback
Writer, recorded at Harrogate last month.
Click the link just once, the file should play within
a few seconds. Audio quality is compromised with
the compression used for these files. You will
need Real Player on your computer to play them.
Download it for free HERE!
Friday
25th February 05
George
Harrison, 25th
February 1943 - 30th November 2001
Sunday
27th February 05
Theatre
Royal, Windsor.
We were last
here with Skeggsy at the end of 2003, a really nice
theatre in the shadows of Windsor Castle. They say
it's haunted! Indeed, Roy has seen it on "Most
Haunted", the TV show that deals with such
phenomena. I can't say that I've had any
experience of the paranormal in here, despite wandering
off on my own to the nooks and crannies of the theatre,
camera in hand, ready to snap any unsuspecting
ghosts. The theatre also boasts a Royal Bog or
"Queens shithoose"...as we like to call it.
There was supposed to be a 5 o'clock press call at a
Gallery next to the theatre who were exhibiting some
John Lennon lithographs. The press never turned up
so we got on with the sound check. We knew in
advance that our show was in the middle of a run of
"Lord Arthur Savile's Crime", and we were
expecting that some of the set for that production would
still be in place. We weren't, however, expecting
the set to be quite so obtrusive. Suspending the
audiences disbelief that they were in a 56,000 capacity
baseball stadium on a hot summer night in August, was
gonna take some doing. Ironically, the dressing
rooms felt like a hot summer night in August.... they
were absolutely roasting. Perhaps there is
something in Russ Abbot's rider that says that the
temperature must not drop below 30 degrees. Ozzy
the dachshund didn't seem to mind though.
Returned to the dressing rooms after the show to find a
burning smell. As the dressing rooms were 3 floors
up, the second set costume change had to be done with a
little more "hurry up" than usual. Rick
discovered that the smell was coming from his pants
which had been hastily tossed on the counter and had
engaged themselves over one of the light
bulbs..... coulda been nasty!
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