A looming disaster?

The journey down to Brighton was problem free and the weather was pretty good too, a result we thought.
However, it clouded over and as we made our way to the Prince Albert pub where the gig was taking place it began to rain heavily. This made my mood change from relaxed and happy (very unusual for me before a gig) to anxious and quiet.
We loaded the gear on to the stage and started setting it all up and it was at this point that Don said “There’s no bass amp”. Those words made me freeze, we were the only band on that night, the other performers were solo and wouldn’t have a bass amp with them. We travel light whenever we can and rely sometimes on using other peoples equipment. Originally there was meant to be another band on and we thought we could use their equipment. In the end they couldn’t do it but before we could discuss the implications of that, a rather big argument flared up between a couple of people in our party with the end result that we nearly pulled out of the gig altogether.
Some time past with the gig in limbo and then eventually we agreed to do it.
Because of this disruption we hadn’t thought the whole of the logistics through and now we realised that we should have ensured that a bass amp was brought with us.
There then ensued some frantic calling to see if we could get someone who lived nearby to lend us an amp.
By now I was depressed, this was embarrassing and was really unprofessional, it wasn’t like us to forget something like this but we had, and it hit me hard, it was almost unforgivable. I was then on a emotional rollercoaster ride for a while as one person after another was rung who would definitely have an amp only to discover a minute or two later that for one reason or another they didn’t.

In the end we decided to DI the bass (that stands for Direct Input) which means instead of pluging the bass into the amp relying on a microphone in front of the bass cab to push the sound of the guitar out through the main speakers, the bass would be fed straight into the PA. It works fine but the sound is a lot different, much cleaner and less punky and we would not hear so much of it onstage which meant the performance would sound shit to us whilst not sounding too bad for the audience.

Despite the gig being sold out, I was so fed up that I felt I was in the completely wrong mood to play the gig and I didn’t know if the audience would get pissed off at our performance if I were to be affected by this frame of mind.
It is so weird to walk on stage in that mood and then to feel something completely different a couple of minutes afterwards, we played our opening number ‘Wake Up’ really well, the audience went wild, and we then played a blinder. It was fantastic, completely different to the way I thought it would go.

We were cock a hoop afterwards and retired back to Simon’s place to celebrate, and celebrate we did.

A little too hard!

1963

I looked at my nose to see if it had grown, Pinoccio’s nose had grown when ever he lied; his goal was to become a real boy. I was a real boy, or at least that was what I had been led to believe, but I felt I was beginning to lose that as my alibi’s became more wooden.

Where were you at this time then, the other policemen enquired?
I was over the ‘Hill’s all afternoon, I quietly replied.

The ‘Hills’ were a load of dumped earth near Pear Tree Mead swings left over from the construction of the Little Pychons housing Estate. It had become overgrown with thick grass and was a playground for us. We used to play fighting here, mimicking punches and kicking like actors and stunt doubles do when making a film. Because the grass was so thick we could propel ourselves into the air from the top after taking an imaginary punch and land with a thud on to the ground below with out any hurt or injury. We loved it, it was the only fighting we were any good at. When ever any of the big boys turned up we would quickly disappear for fear of getting real punches and kicks.
When ever we went over there to play and we could see in the distance that they were free of any other kids we’d cry “Run for the Hills” as we tore off.

But that afternoon I wasn’t there, I had run past them on the way home but I wasn’t there.

I looked at my nose to see if it had grown.

“You were seen in Bush Fair this afternoon and there were two other boys with you too. Could you tell us the names of these boys?” The first policemen asked

I don’t know any other boys, I continued to lie.

I checked my nose again

We have a witness, a neighbour who says they saw you with two other boys in the car park opposite the doctors at the time the lorry was set alight.

Well, I did go down to Bush Fair for a while but I didn’t go near any lorry.

I could swear my nose was getting longer.

Are you ok Steve? my mum enquired.

Err, yeah, why?

Well, you’re eyes keep going funny, I thought you were going to faint.

No, no, I’m fine, I reply somewhat unconvincingly.

My eyes uncrossed and returned to my lap as I mumbled, “I just want to be a real boy”