Day 4
Leadmill, Sheffield
The Leadmill. And with the Leadmill comes the two words that strike fear into any crew: Disco loadout. Immediately after the gig there comes a seedy indie disco for the youngsters to attend, and all of the equipment has to be packed away and wheeled out through the throngs of dancers. Being part-Roadie, I can sense the disquiet in the Roadie coup, but there's nothing much I can do for them short of stroking their beardy faces and speaking nonsense words in a soothing tone.
We're trying out a different set order, because our massive opening set-piece, 7 keys (extended) into Good Times just seems to be confusing people. Set order is very significant in creating the right mood over the course of the gig, especially when we're playing such a range of material. It still hasn't quite clicked. Tonight's experiment is to start with Left behind, which features Matt on the acoustic guitar. He hits the first chord so hard he breaks two strings, and is forced to retreat to the piano. It's hard to gauge how effective this is as an opening.
Here's a modern gig phenomenon: digital cameras. As soon as the lights come on there are twenty outstretched arms clutching little silver cameras. It was never like this back in the days of film developing. Perhaps it's because no one cares about taking rubbish dark and blurry pictures because they can just delete them. Or maybe it's because now it's easy to email pictures and upload them to web galleries and generally go "look where I was!" to an indifferent world. I also notice that the waving of lighters has been replaced by the waving of mobile phones as people call their mates and go "look where I am!". And then there's texting, which is just rude. Especially if you can read what they're writing.
The Duke is performing for the last time until Belfast tonight, and celebrates by making everyone drunken sandwiches before joining DW Price at the disco for some bad dancing. I went to enough bad discos with the Duke on the last tour (two) to know that he was serious in his quest to end up in one of the special dancing cages. But I had better things to do, such as tea, donuts and Futurama on the bus.
I am thirty now.
