Day 1
Shuba's, Chicago, 23 January 2005
Isn't there a film that's set in Chicago? Oh yes, that's it, "Chicago". I haven't seen it. Apparently Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is hardly hefty, "looks like a heifer" next to Renee Zellweger.
The descent into Chicago ("Ladies and Gentlemen, we have begun our descent into madness") was incredible. The frozen lake, the sun glinting from the snow-covered buildings. It was like the world's largest wedding cake.
But once on the ground it's so cold your tears freeze in your eyes.
Did you know that electricity is not the same flavour all over the world? As an Englishman I think nothing of hefting our giant three-pronged plugs around, or running my equipment on 240 volts sterling. But this is not how it is in Foreign (apart from Hong Kong, actually). In Foreign they use all kinds of spindly un-earthed plug ends that go into laughable prong-holes which deliver mysterious voltages that can upset and malnourish an Englishman’s amplifier or pianogram or effects unit.
Did you also know also that travelling by plane with a piano is impractical and expensive? To ameliorate both problems we had arranged to buy a tiny american amplifier and a featherweight keyboard which were to be delivered to the hotel in time for our planned arrival a day ago. Had we arrived a day ago, there would have been time to locate all of the bits we ordered rather than just the amp and the empty keyboard case before rushing madly off to the soundcheck.
Everything seems a lot harder when you're cold, tired and confused. It's like your brain is wearing gloves. By blackmailing the support act with our frozen tears, we obtain some inappropriate keyboard replacements. For a short while we're considering doing the gig using a thunky synth sound which would have made us sound like A-Ha before the hotel calls to say they've found a big white box with "Matt Hales" written on it.
Sadly, although we get it in time and finally everything works, while we're putting it into position we manage to break the sustain pedal which means that the opening song, Nowhere, sounds more like it's being played on a banjo.
On the plus side, there are a lot of people there, which is very gratifying. How could we come to Chicago on a Sunday night and find a hundred people to play to? It doesn't make sense.
Eventually we make one of the replacement keyboards work and struggle through the gig, reliant more on the audience's goodwill than anything else. But sometimes that's all you need.
