Day 39
Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
Every morning I wake up to the sound of someone's change falling out of their pockets onto the floor.
Only two more to go. A kind of end-of-term mania has set in. Wulfrun Hall is pretty massive and a little bit rock - perfect for us.
A problem had developed with Dan's phone. One of the buttons was not working properly and causing him enormous distress. All through Europe we would encounter him tightening into a ball of rage, and we would say to him "get a new phone Dan" (we were saying this to a lot of people. MVB's, for example, will only remain charged for 20 minutes at a time. He has spent much of the tour in phone boxes. It takes me back to 1997 when phones were new, exciting and the size of two litre bottles of milk), and Dan would say "yeah, I'll get one when we get back. I'm due a Free Upgrade." So we got back and did he get one? Well, he did, best beloved, eventually he did, only a couple of days ago, one with a little joystick and a multitude of tiresome games within its tiny brain. Dan, being a musician as well as a pub-goer, wasted no time in programming the opening bars of Good times gonna come into it as a ringtone to the amusement of all. And that is how the gig came to begin tonight with a short pantomime in which Matt arrived onstage, called Dan's phone, which played the opening bars of Good times, whereupon the band came in in all its mighty glory. That kind of set the tone for the evening.
Wolverhampton were up for a stupid time, and so were we. Phil the Manager, who was visiting, was proud to point out afterwards that a band whose album lasts only 42 minutes had managed to play for one hour forty-five. We acheived this feat of longevity by getting into a lengthy set of requests during the first encore. It started innocently enough with an unpleasant synthesis of Stairway to heaven, Somewhere over the rainbow and Sloop John B. After this the audience figured out that we couldn't resist a Beach Boys cover and we ended up doing ragged versions of California girls and Good vibrations, after which Tony rang Matt on his phone to suggest that we get on with it. It was the perfect evening, rendered sublime when we returned to the bus to discover that Matt had left easter eggs on everyone's pillows*.
*I can't prevent myself from saying that this is not a euphemism.
