Us Lot
a pre-show band and crew photo. more later……
The new plane
We flew in the new plane, a Dornier 328 Jet, for the first time today. Very nice it was too. I think I need to address the set list issue again as I’ve had numerous e-mails concerning the omission of Silvertown Blues. We are about to start running it at sound check and it should be in the set SOON. We didn’t want to run it at the Albert Hall for various reasons, and the Frankfurt venue wasn’t conducive to rehearsing a new song. We have been changing the set less and less lately as we’ve come across what we think is one that works pretty well. There will always be the odd small change now and again. Also, the length of the show seems to be of concern to some people. We are averaging around 15-17 songs per night, a 2 hour 15 minute show. I admit we were playing up to 20 songs each night early on in the tour, but the set was still around 2 hours 20 minutes.
Inside the Festahalle
It was great to be back in Germany after so long an absence. The audience were fabulous especially since it was such a large gig, nearly 6,000. They were really appreciative and applauded long and loud after every number. The Festhalle soundcheck was a bit of a battle as the building is not particularly acoustic-friendly, but as I understand with the addition of the ‘blanket’ of people, the sound of the show itself was great. Well done Robbie. (FOH sound) Glenn Worf had a particularly difficult show. About an hour before we went on stage, he developed a migrane headache. As many of you will know, that’s the last thing you want before you go and perform. 30 minutes before showtime he was in a very bad way, in fact we delayed the show for 15 minutes so he could see the physiotherapist backstage. He battled through the first half of the show with a bucket behind his bass amp (just in case) and thankfully started to recover. I’m pleased to report that today (Friday) he’s back to normal.
Beer
Geraint (demon accordion) Watkins seen here after the show enjoying arranging beer labels on the dressing room drinks table. A most popular post-show pastime.
A couple of other interesting incidents during the show which some of you may have noticed….During the intro to Money for Nothing which involves Chad working out big time on the kit, his snare drum broke. Amazingly I didn’t even notice until I saw Eddie (his drum tech) replacing it whilst Chad was in full swing! Also during Brothers in arms, Mark’s amplifier suffered a major drop in power (hence his worried looks over towards Glenn Saggers (behind me off stage left). I think it was a front-end valve which blew.
