June 23, 2007

Close your eyes and picture the scene: Lovely, bright summer's day. Clear blue skies. Crowds of people all stood around, drinking cool beers and dressed in string vests and hankerchief hats. And as for the men.......

This was exactly what we hoped for when we played at Furze Platt School fete in Maidenhead. And aside from the weather (and the string vests) it was exactly what we got. There was a typical British Summer's mixture of brilliant sunshine and torrential rain - rarely staying the same for more than around 10 minutes a go.

At one point, we had a virtual river pouring through our well-constructed but less-than-weatherproof marquee, and we had to kill all power and desperately try to raise everything up off the ground so that we would avoid a) electrocuting ourselves, and b) blowing up the local sub-station. We had kind of decided that on safety grounds alone, we wouldn't play. Apart from the lack of people we could see, and the rain, which was still pissistently pouring down.....

Then it happened. The sun broke through. The rain stopped. People emerged from cover. Blue skies appeared overhead. The river stopped flowing. And as we are not a band that likes to disappoint its public, the show started!

We played a slightly shortened set, probably around an hour long, but packed with all our favourites, and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely. Well, everyone except the old lady who phoned the police to complain about the noise. But we didn't care that much. Partly because the police apparently drove past, and told us we were fine, and should, in their words, "go for it". Mainly though, we found out she lived by the river around a mile away, and we took it as a successful field test of the new speaker stacks!