Shepherd's Bush Empire, London
Tonight is Aqualung's biggest ever headlining show. We've sold slightly more tickets than last year. Last year was everso slightly anticlimactic, I now remember. At least this is the last date of the tour, so it will technically be the climax whatever happens. The gig is also being filmed for all manner of filthy reasons, and so I have volunteered to record the gig in a complicated multitrack way which means I can spend all day being extremely stressed and then burst into tears.
It doesn't really feel like the end of the tour. Perhaps it would feel more final if Matt and I weren't flying to Texas tomorrow. It would be nice if it was good, though.
Finally we have a stage that is big enough for all three bands to fit on (who could have guessed Timmy X1 had his own drum kit all along?), and Dom has hired the starcloth backdrop that was such a hit last time.
So 9.30 finally crawls round and we go on stage, feeling strangely casual. I'm quickly amazed by how much larger the place looks when it's full of people. And then we begin.
The size of the stage is actually a little bit disconcerting, because we've got used to hearing everything close up, which has its own noisy energy. Today, when I sit at the pedal steel the drums are at a civilised volume rather than actually stuck in my ear like every other night. We all feel far far away from each other. It's a bit like we're already on our way back to our normal lives.
Jim fucks up the awesome segue from the rockin' out ending of 7 keys to the tiny glockenspeil intro to Good times, which I fear is something he'll never forgive himself for. He failed to stop, you see, abruptly, with the rest of us. He grabs the glockespeil hammer like he's been struck by lightening. An hour later when we go off for the first encore, he's still berating himself. Poor old Jim. (I'm just trying to rub it in).
Well, thankyou everyone. It's been lovely, but I must go now and retrieve the recording stuff and find all the things I need to take to Texas. It's your free time but I'm still at work...
It's not a bad job, though.
