CARABINIERI RESCUE
There cannot be much to report from our show day in Rome as I simply wasn’t a part of it. The whole day was spent in bed with a fever which by now had a hold. The heat outside was extraordinary but the venue and paying punters awaited. I left the hotel later than the rest of the gang and managed to arrive just in time for a very small bite, taste buds seemed at this point to have given up….of all places for this to happen!..the land where culinary delights lurk around every corner. I left the girls in catering and wandered back to the backstage area which was along an underground road of sorts and promptly got lost.
I’ve actually only just recalled this incident…I wondered up and down this underground perimeter/service road which was unfamiliar as we’d driven straight to catering. There were many doors, none of them labelled. I resorted to trying all of them. One opened and I found myself in a hallway with yet more doors, all locked. I couldn’t hear any voices so I knew I was cold. This was getting surreal and I wasn’t hallucinating. Or so I believed. I found my way back out onto the road and saw a large Carabinieri gentleman. I asked him (relying on his grasp of English) “I’m with the band, do you know where the dressing rooms are”. He said “YOU, are with the band?” I showed him my laminate and he laughed. I’m not sure why. He opened a door and I was back in the bubble.
At this point, laced with Paracetamol and with a little food inside me, I didn’t feel that bad, I was just sweating bucketloads. This was to be the ongoing theme.
During the show, something seemed odd with my keyboard balance but I couldn’t decide what so I just put it down to my brain not processing the information as it usually does. When it came time for me to start Speedway at Nazareth, I realised what it was. My mixer had overheated and decided to become disagreeable. It wouldn’t change patches which essentially meant the whole keyboard output was confused and as I generate a fair bit of the general melee during that tune, band eyebrows were raised. Naturally we had to finish the tune so I calculated the best time for Laurence to change over to the spare was during the Telegraph Road playout where I could get by on Hammond. He did so in record time, just in time in fact for the big ‘explosion’ at the end…available this evening courtesy of Laurence Adams. Some people wonder why we carry so many spares. I rest my case.
Great show, great venue, great crowd, a few of whom got excited enough to breach our imaginary, trusting stage barrier. Security to the rescue. It’s not big and it’s not clever!
For me it was straight to bed once more.
Being sick is shit.
Pics courtesy Edinjo Bajraktari
