GIG REVIEW

16th February 2006 - The Limelight, Crewe

Day two of our first tour. I say tour because we'd done a gig the night before in Truro and stopped over in Saltash for the night. So to say tour is a bit of a joke really, but it did feel good do two gigs on the trot this far away from home and stopping over for the night. Let's hope we get more of this kind of stuff in the future!.

We were up and out around 11ish and, starving, headed for the Little Chef next door to the Travelodge. The night porter had given us some tokens for 20% off breakfast at the Little Chef, hence the choice of establishment for breakfast. But it was just a big effing joke really because when we'd sat down and looked at the tokens more closely it stated that they were only redeemable after 2pm! How stoopid is that? Yes, you can have 20% off your breakfast, but not until after 2pm. Who has there breakfast at 2pm? (besides students and doleys) Not only that, check-out oof the Travelodge was noon! So, we could have 20% off breakfast, two hours after we've checked out! So, we all blasphemed the place and left to find some food.

Saltash is right on the edge of Plymouth, just the other side of the river Tamar so we headed into Plymouth on the lookout for a Supermarket or a cafe. We got all the way into the centre of Plymouth without spotting one so we pulled over and asked a local. She told us it was straight down the road we were on and right at the top. So we pulled away, thanking her, and drove on up the road - only to be diverted by roadworks a few hundred yards away! We ended up sat in a traffic queue get routed through city centre. Shane decided he couldn't be arsed to wait in the queue and turned round to head on up this side street we'd spotted just a corner or two into the diversion. Which turned out to be a bad idea because it was like a two block one way system that brought us back round to the start of the queue! So we went a totally different way, parked up on the marina side and got out the van to look for food on foot. This turned out to be a great idea (I'm sure everyone will claim it was their's) because we were sat down looking through a menu in a Wetherspoons only 10 minutes later. Bangers and chips, veggie burgers etc all round washed down with cups of tea and coffee. Nice one.

We nipped into Plymouth city centre afterwards to buy a few supplies - a B string for Shane's guitar, an in-car charger for my mobile phone and some food and drink for the journey up to Crewe. Gail bought a couple of sausage rolls, which she mothered all the way up the M5, drool on her lips and a numerous utterings of "I can't wait to eat that sausage roll" - well just get it eaten then!!! I bought some Tesco Value batteries from the supermarket because the batteries in my phone were dead. A four pack for 64p. Shame I only managed to get 8 photos out of them!!!

We liked the painting so we took a photo

Had to get a photo of this gin distillery just to go with the Oban distillery photo.

Suitably refuelled we hit the road for Crewe. Not too much to say about the journey up other than we did the entire length of the M5 - all 166 miles of it. The M5 is a unique motorway. Unlike its other single-digit friends M1-M6 it doesn't radiate from London and its purpose is not to connect major industrial areas. For half the year, large parts of it are over-capacity. The reason it exists (besides the everyday, humdrum job of connecting the places along its length) is to carry holiday traffic headed for the south west - Devon and Cornwall. I thought it was the longest motorway in Britain but it's not - turns out the M1, M4 and the M6 are longer, with the M6 being the longest. the only other thing worthy of note about the journey was Gail's mothering of a couple of sausage rolls she'd bought in Plymouth

We'd estimated about 5 hours to Crewe and we were spot on! We got there about 7 o'clock and set about setting up. A nice easy, relaxing set up this one as it's an in-house PA with a sound engineer that knows exactly what he's doing. Spot on. The venue laid on some sarnies and beer for us backstage so we got it all down us whilst watching a bit of the Brits on TV. Congratulations to Coldplay for winning best British album and best British single. We're well pleased with Coldplay winning those two awards - Coldplay are the first band to win the best album award with their first three albums so well done boys from everyone at Coldplace. I'm personally well pleased to see Speed of Sound win the best British single award too as it's my favourite Coldplay song at the moment and has been for months now.

We went on stage about half 9. They've got a large screen which comes down in front of the stage, hiding it, which they project videos onto. It's well smart actually, not only coz it's really good to watch but because when you go on stage, you can't see the venue and the crowd can't see you so it's like a curtain being raised. We also had no idea how many people were out there and when Gail started with her strings for Square One and the curtain came up, it's was fantastic to see so many people and to hear them all whistling and cheering as Shane walked on. The crowd erupted in raucous applause after Square One and before they had chance to quieten down we launched into Politk. We played the same set as we'd played the night before in Truro, only this time Shane managed to keep all six strings on his guitar intact! Which meant we played Warning Sign much better than we had the night before. The crowd were superb, singing along, clapping vigourously and rocking away. We even got a couple on the dance floor for The Scientist. Shane's banter with crowd was particularly excellent tonight also, talking about Coldplay's successes at the Brits, about how it was great to back at the Limelight, them being the best crowd in the world etc etc. He also mentioned that a couple of tickets had been won in a Radio One competition and apologising for them not having won a better prize . He also told the crowd that we were delighted to see so many turn up and that we were only expecting 2 people (the tickets winners). He talks as much shit on stage as what Chris does lol. Someone did once accuse him of copying Chris too much by doing so but he does genuinely talk shit - all of the time! Anyway, we left the stage after The Scientist and the crowd started shouting for more. When they started stomping their feet we risked going back stage for a few moments rather than loitering around just off stage like we tend to do. I've said it before in other gigs reviews, but this definitely was one of the best calls for more that we've ever had. We duly obliged and as we took to the stage people were calling out for certain songs, the main two requests being Talk and Fix You. There was this guy down near the front of the crowd on the right who was particularly vociferous about Talk and when Jimbo played the opening riff he went mad - as did the rest of the crowd. Talk really rocked, probably the best we've played it yet. I think we'll all well on top of the song now. It went down a storm too. In My Place followed with some great singing from the crowd, but we could tell at least half the crowd were gagging to hear Fix You and when Shane sat down at his keyboard and broke into it, an all mighty cheer went up and the crowd joined in with the singing. I reckon everyone must've been singing in there coz they were as loud as Shane. We went off to an almighty applause and a massive adrenaline rush. It really was a gig to remember - a fantastic crowd and an amazing on stage sound.

After the gig we went to get a few drinks from the bar and had a chat with one or two people, all of them positive about our performance. There was this one kid in particular (soz, can't remember your name!) who chatted to us for ages. Very friendly bloke. He said we were, musically, bang on, as good as the real thing (which is a great a compliment to hear, but not true really - no matter how good we are, we'll never be the real thing and therefore, at best, just short of being as good as them). He said his favourite band were Oasis, liked them much more than Coldplay but he'd seen an Oasis tribute not too long ago and thought we were better than them! Which was great to hear, especially with Oasis being his favourite band.

We didn't hang around too long as we were all knackered and had a 3 hour, 150 mile night drive home. We did't grab any food before we hit the road, which is unusual and not like Gail to not badger us into doing so. The trip home was the usual - everyone falling asleep except the driver! Liam hung around for an hour or so, listening to the new Broken Social Scene album - if you like good music, I strongly recommend you check this album out. We rolled back into town around 4 o'clock, Shane and I being the last ones home and duly unloading the van. I hit the sack about 5 o'clock, making the following day at work really hard going!

This was a fantastic gig, right up there with Mathew Street Festival, the Cotswold Bamboo and the last time we were at the Beachy. Definitely a 10/10 gig. Many thanks to the Limelight for running such a fantastic venue (wish we had somewhere like this back home), thanks to the sound engineer whose name we really ought to know - he does a fantastic job and getting such a peachy sound - and many thanks to all the people that spent their money and time to come and see us - we really appreciate it!

• Return journey to Truro and Crewe : 940
• Total miles travelled : 6,800

Wayne, 7th March 2006