GIG REVIEW

30th March 2006 - Gianpula, Rabat, MALTA

We were only in Malta for less than 48 hours (39 to be exact) but we felt like we'd been there for much longer, having done and seen so much: two drinking sessions, an amazing gig, a tour of Valetta and of the Island, a TV interview and more. We had an absolutely amazing time, met many many people, made new friends and the time spent over there was an experience that we will remember for the rest of our lives.

We left Grimsby at around 3 o'clock on Wednesday 29th. Vernon, a friend of Gail's father, happens to be a driver and so we'd arranged for him to take us to the airport. Top bloke with a great sense of humour, as exhibited from the word go - "You best get in the front, long fella" he told Shane . It took us about three hours to get Manchester Airport, Vern took the A-roads rather than the M62 and so we got to see a bit of the Peaks on the way over. Liam Gallagher was waiting at check-in, having arrived only a few minutes before - great timing. Well, it wasn't Liam (obviously) - it was Jez - the main man behind Fake Bands, Fake Faces, and Fake Voices. He was instrumental in arranging the gig and had decided to join us on the trip to Malta. We were delighted he'd chosen to do so as it gave us a great opportunity for an agent to experience our show first hand. We got checked in within an hour, feeling very smug to be doing so with guitars and drums and then killed the remaining hour or so in the bar, dampening our nerves with a couple of pints.

Only an hour in and Gail's stuffing her face

The plane was a little late in leaving, but aren't they always? We got off the ground in the end so no worries. It was the first time I personally had flown in a long time and I'd forgotten what it was like. Manchester and the motorways around it looked well smart - Gail and I both had window seats, which was good - just a shame they were right next to the engine! It made for a noisy trip. Saw some smart sights though - it was clear all the way over France and we saw numerous cities and towns all lit up. The flight took about three and a half hours and we eventually landed in Malta just short of one in the morning. Having discovered we were going to Malta to do a gig at Gianpula, the air hostesses had been chatting to us about it, Natalie saying she was going to see Deep Dish instead at The Eden Arena. They all wished us well and we departed the plane, catching a bus across the runway and into the terminal. Baggage collection didn't take too long and within half an hour we were out in the Maltese air!


Shane with his great-great-great-grandfather's suitcase

We were met by Manuel and Mario with vigorous hand shaking and then ushered to our taxi, a small mini bus type thing. We all packed into the mini bus and were whisked away in the expected mediterranean style. The hotel was about 7km away and we arrived there in about 20 minutes. It was called Bay Street Hotel in a place called St George's Bay which is apparentely part of St. Julian's but also part of Paceville. I'm not too sure how that works out, but I presume it's some sort of area thing as St. George's Bay is smaller than Paceville which is smaller than St Julian's, but Paceville is never mentioned as part of the address, yet other people called the place where we were staying as Paceville. Anyway, we got there about half one and then checked into the hotel. There were a number of posters for the gig at the hotel and we had to sign one for the hotel attendant - only just arrived and we were signing stuff! Great reception.

View from the hotel room

Not trashed enough really is it?

We lobbed our bags into our rooms and then went back out for a quick drink with Manuel and Mario as we were all parched. They took us to a bar just up the road and Manuel got the beers in. They went down in about ten minutes, so parched were we and Manuel already had the next lot lined up on the bar! They were downed in another few minutes and we moved on to another bar. To cut a long story short, we were out drinking til half five. I think Jez may have mentioned the time and that we ought to be hitting the hay after an hour or two, but other than that we were all enjoying being in Malta and conversing with Manuel and Mario so much that we just kept downing the pints that Manuel kept in supply before each glass was even empty. I can't believe no-one realised it was a bad idea staying out that late and getting that drunk. Manuel had even given us the itenary for the following day so we knew we were getting up by 10:00am at the latest! Still, glad we did it coz we were there for such a short space of time that we got the most out of it and the adrenaline carried us through the suffering the following day. James and I missed breakfast though by about 2 minutes - the waitress at the hotel restaurant saying we were too late and could only have a cup of tea. We managed to snaffle a couple of slices of toast to have with our tea though and the rest of the crew said we didn't miss much anyway.

Thursday proved to be a busy day - a hung over busy at that. We were picked up around 11ish by an identical taxi as the night before, the same company (Gejxa - don't ask me how to pronounce it) that was to drive us around for all of our time in Malta, and conveyed to Valletta, the capital city. Our destination in the city was the YMCA headquarters. There we met Jean-Paul Mifsud, a notorious TV presenter and chairman of the YMCA, a soft-spoken and very interesting man. He wore a distinctive hat and sported an excellent beard - one of many that we were to see during the day. His dog, Nick, was a right character too - a scraggy terrier type thing that meandered around us, occasionally needing calling by Jean-Paul. A right sniffer it was - it even stopped to chomp on a couple of bits of dried dog turd at one point . He reminded me loads of Rick Stein's dog Chalky actually. Anyway, Jean-Paul took us to one of the poorer areas of the city and took us into a house the YMCA use for housing homeless people and people in need of help. It was an old building - I seem to recall Jean-Paul telling me it was 400 or 500 hundred years old. It didn't appear to have been updated much in that time at all - a few of the steps to the first floor had been replaced with some nice marble, but the rest were well worn. It was a four storey building and we saw a couple of the common rooms (furnished with little else but old seating, the occasional table and not too much else). The kitchen was fairly barren too, although it did have present the full range of basic requirements such as fridge, cooker etc. A perfectly operable kitchen, courtesy of the hard work that the YMCA do to look after people. We also saw a room were a mother and her three children lived, a room no bigger than your average bedroom over here in England. We had a look out at the streets of Valletta from the roof of the building. It was a bright sunny day, reasonably hot (around 20 degrees c I reckon) and the view was superb, especially to ourselves, being English and having never seen this kind of sight before. It was in stark contrast to what we'd seen on our tour of the house though. Even in somewhere as beautiful, as old, as historic as Valletta, people were struggling. That's a truth I've known for many years now but to experience it at first hand, being in the shoes we were in was very humbling. In a way, I suppose having spent that time with Jean-Paul learning a little about the YMCA's work in Malta set us up for the rest of our time in Malta. After all, one of the major reasons we were in Malta was part of the YMCAs work towards raising money to help raise the standard of help and accommodation for the more unfortunate Maltese. It increased our respect of these people even more. There's much more I could say about this aspect of the event, but the following news article from the Maltese Times says it better than I ever could - Times of Malta news article.

Pictures from the top of the YMCA house

		Nick

After the tour of the house, Jean-Paul took us on a walk around Valletta, down narrow alley ways, through a tiny market crammed along the edge of one street, past an ancient looking biblotheque and into the shopping area. It was a very busy day and a lot of Valletta's buildings are at least four storeys high so it felt much more bustly than most places in England. Very nice. Also, we bumped into one of the air hostesses from our flight over! Small world eh? All those people in Valletta, the capital city, and we bumped into her! Crazy. She briefly said hi though, a massive grin on her face, probably as surprised as us to meet again. She wished us luck with the gig and we said grazzi hafna and urged her a couple of times to come along. She said she might and was on her way again. The even crazier thing is that we were to later meet another of the outward bound air hostesses again.
We stopped off after while at what Jean-Paul described as the closest thing Malta gets to a city park - a small multi-levelled paved area with a fantastic view out over the Grand Harbour. From there we could see the Three Cities, Senglea, Cospicua and Vittoriosa. I wished we could've stayed longer to view more the sights of Valletta but alas, after a drink and a sarnie courtesy of Jean-Paul, we were taxied away by Gejxa to sound-check at Gianpula, Rabat.

Valletta


The park in Valletta

View of the Grand Harbour from the park

We arrived at Gianpula around two o'clock and were there greeted by Steve Muscat, drummer for Ira Losco. He, like Jean-Paul sported a very fine beard and turned out to have musical taste in common with myself. Pain of Salvation, Metallica, System of a Down, Mastodon; he even turned out to have his musical interests started out by Slayer! Great taste Steve! Ten or so minutes later the door opened and we walked into the venue. Very nice. Very very nice. Nothing like it in England. It was great to be in an outdoor venue, a sort of tented top and only partially walled. There were a number of people there already, including the sound guys who'd already done most of the work setting up the sound system leaving us to set up the drum kit and our instruments. Steve turned out to be a left-handed drummer so I set up the kit right handed for our sound check before he reversed it for himself. It took an hour or two to get all set-up for a few songs, during which time Ira and other of her band members turned up. She was, like the rest of the Maltese we met, a fantastic, lovely person, full of life and very very friendly (and even more stunning in the flesh). She made us feel most welcome and even thoughtfully brought along some food. Pastizzi I think it was called, basically they were two different types of pasty - a mushy pea pasty and cottage cheese pasty. Now I like mushy peas but this sounded odd. I tried one anyway and it turned out to be absolutely superb. Especially seeing as food was what my hung over stomach needed. We were all feeling really knackered, some with headaches, courtesy of little sleep, much alchohol and a few hours walking around in the heat. Jez had bought some Anadin back in Valletta and they came in handy as did the numerous bottles of water the crew were generous with. To be honest, sound-check was a real struggle as the sound didn't sound quite right for some reason - Jimbo described it as us all sounding separate from each other and not together. We played five or six tracks including Clocks, Square One and One I Love, none of them sounding quite as good as we knew they could. Probably a combination of no energy and the sound. Still, we got through it alright, feeling a bit more relaxed having got some playing in before the gig. Gail had a busy time of it too as she was using a keyboard supplied over there rather than having taken her own (a Korg Triton). As a result she had to wade through the presets finding 6 or 7 suitable ones for the set. She did a good job too, with the all the presets she found sounding really good and as if we were back at home listening to her Yamaha.
After sound check we were Gejxa-ferried back to our hotel in St George's Bay / Paceville / St Julian's via a back road so pot-holed that the driver had to drive at about 10mph and yet we were still bounced around like a fairground ride. Gail couldn't stop laughing. Back at the hotel, we managed to get an hour or so's kip in. We could have got another hour more though as the Gejxa-man (or woman as it turned out to be) didn't arrive until nearly 8 o'clock rather than the half six we were told!

Next stop was a great little restaurant called Grotto Tavern in Rabat. We descended down these narrow steps and into the restaurant and were greeted by a very animated French chef who appeared to be good friends with Manuel and his family. After much gesticulation and joviality we were ushered through the restaurant and down a couple more flights of stairs and into a natural cave at the bottom of the restaurant. There, in this fantastic place we chatted, drank and nibbled on crostini, tomatoes, olives, capers and other things. When that was all polished off we went back upstairs into one of the restaurants rooms and all sat and ate - pasta, chicken roulade, fillet steak etc, and finally washed down with the strongest cup of cappucino I think I've ever had. Very nice. Suitably filled, sleepy and nervous we set off for Gianpula.

We arrived at the venue at around half nine, the streets leading to the venue lined with cars. That was probably the most nervous moment for me, arriving at the venue seeing so many cars and knowing that in a couple of hours I'd be playing to over a 1,000 Maltese people with big expections. The nerves calmed a bit though once we actually got into the venue and got chatting to the numerous people that were there. Ira and her band were already there and chatting away in the back stage area, as were numerous other people including Jean-Paul and a few other people from his TV crew. We were introduced to numerous people, so many in fact that I can't remember names now! Sorry! Anyway, the time came for Ira and her band to hit the stage, we wished them luck and watched her from back stage. We weren't allowed to go out into the crowd, not too sure why, I think it was a combination of the organisers not wanting the crowd to see us before we played and security reasons. Judging by how Shane got mobbed after the gig, it was probably more the latter. Anyway, it was a shame we didn't get to see Ira from the front of the stage coz we had to make do with watching her through the door from behind the stage. Not only that, we only caught a couple of songs before we had to do an interview for Maltese TV! That turned out to be a bit nervy, especially with none of us having done anything like that before. But it all went well I reckon. It is going to be available on the web on Friday - I've got the URL for it but I'm not giving it out until we've checked it out first . The nerviest bit though fell to Shane as the interviewer asked for the band to sing a few lines of a Coldplay song. I quickly suggested to Shane that he should pick up his acoustic and give them a few bars of Yellow, partly to try and get out of it myself and partly coz I thought it'd be better than just all of us singing. Shane duly obliged thankfully (cheers Shane! ) and proceeded to knock out a couple of verses of Yellow, excellently done, perfectly sung and he even changed one of the lines on the fly! It went down really really well with theTV people - they loved it. We ended the interview with a message to Fabrizio, Malta's entry for this year's Eurovision Song Contest - "Fabrizio awguri hafna from Coldplace!". With the interview over, several other people joined us back stage and we chatted away about all kinds of things. Ira finished her set and came backstage and then I had to jump up on stage to change the drum kit from left-handed to right-handed. Fifteen minutes later with that job done and a line-check completed we were ready to start.

We kicked off the set as usual with Square One, with Shane joining us halfway through the intro to a raptuous applause from the crowd. He bobbed down at the front of the stage a la Chris Martin and the crowd lapped it up. The difference in the sound quality between sound check and the real thing was quite large actually - in sound check it sounded a bit weak and we all sounded separate yet on the night it sounded much much punchier and like we were all together. Suffice to say we were very very happy. Nice job! Politik followed and then God Put A Smile Upon Your Face. We've changed the middle bit at the moment from 7 Nation Army to Shane singing the chrous of Madonna's Hung Up instead, as Coldplay are doing themselves these days. After the first time through the crowd got it and joined in and it went down a storm. Shane then jumped back on the piano and within two or three notes of the Speed of Sound riff an almighty cheer went up from the crowd - Speed of Sound always gets a great reception wherever we play it. They enjoyed it that much that when it got to the chorus, Shane let them sing "All that noise and all that sound, all those places I got found" on their own and I tell yer it was was spine tingling. He let them sing it second time through too. We kicked into One I Love next and followed that with Trouble and, as with Speed of Sound, the opening strains brought a massive cheer from the crowd. They sung along to the entire song, including a superb rendition of "They spun a web for me" in the breakdown, complete with lighters out, courtesy of Jamie (he whipped his lighter out first). Cheesy I know but it looked great. Don't Panic, White Shadows and Everything's Not Lost followed and then we began Clocks, the crowd all clapping and stomping along to the opening. I don't think they realised it was Clocks at first because when Shane started the piano riff they nearly brought the house down and then went totally crazy when everyone else kicked in. The speeded up ending brought similair clapping and stomping. We went straight into Low after Clocks and then followed that up with Yellow which, as usual, proved to be one of the songs of the night. Having said that, The Scientist went down even better with the crowd surpassing all of their singing earlier with a rousing rendition. We left the stage to massive applause, cheers and whistling and were taken backstage. There we were greeted by all and sundry, vigourously shaking our hands and slapping our backs while the crowd outside stomped for more. Of course, we duly obliged, and Gail, Jamie, James and I all rejoined the stage to massive applause. The crowd started stomping and clapping, chanting "Fix. You. Fix. You". Gail said it was that loud it was hurting her ear drums! We had to wait for Shane for a short while as he had been asked to give a speech about the YMCA into two mics - one for the audience and one for TV. Unfortunately the TV mic didn't work so he just had to get on with it. He gave a great a speech about the YMCA and then Ira Losco joined the stage to do the same. She walked up to Shane's microphone and everyone erupted into laughter as the height difference between her and Shane was so big - he even had to reach up to take the mic down for her. Very funny, but I suppose you had to be there. She gave a speech to the crowd, unfortunately it was in Maltese so the only thing we understood was grazzi hafna! After her speech Ira left the stage, Gail started her strings and Jimbo played the opening riff to Talk. As with the other big songs, the crowd went wild, this time clapping in time until the drums and bass hit. Talk proved to be a right stomper with Shane doing a great Chris Martin on stage, crawling about and lying down flat on his back. In My Place followed and then finally the song they'd all been waiting for - Fix You. Once again, as they had done the whole gig, the crowd sang along at the top of their voices and when we got to the end bit (were Jimbo starts his electric guitaring and I go on the ride) they erupted into massive cheers. We left the stage to some of the best applause we've ever heard, it really was deafening.

We don't know who took the following photos but grazzi hafna to whoever did. They were found on the following page: - http://www.basement.com.mt/snapshots.asp?p=121












A few pics taken by Jez

And finally, some pics kindly donated by Cleaven Camilleri

Back stage we were absolutely buzzing our faces off. I shook Jimbo's hand and he was literally shaking he was on that much of a high! We were given praise by everyone, had our hands practically shook off, and had numerous photos taken etc etc. Shane had to go back out on stage to get his jacket as he was worried he might not see it again and when he got back he said he'd been almost mobbed by numerous people, all shaking his hand and there was even one girl in tears! It's good to know people enjoyed themselves that much. Anyway, after a few beers and good chats with numerous people (Jean-Paul, Manuel, Anna, Ira and numerous other people) and the crowd had dispersed, we went back out and packed up our gear. We went out the back of the club to wait for our lift, which took half an hour or more, and enjoyed conversation and jovialities with Ira and her band and Jean-Paul and Kurt (the sound engineer) who had drunk most of a bottle of vodka . I'm sure at one point I heard Ira singing "Badger, badger", I looked round and she appeared to be doing the dance, which made me chuckle. The Internet eh? 'Tis a wonderful thing . Our Gejxa van eventually turned up and we bid farewell to all and were whisked back to Paceville along with Manuel and Mario and a quick stop to pick up his wife Anna and one of his son's, Andrew, which brought the total in the van to twelve .

Once we'd deposited our gear back in the hotel rooms we hit the town again. With it being the eve of a national holiday (Freedom Day), it was much busier than the night before. In fact it was very much like a night out on the town over here in England with the exception that people weren't as paralytically drunk was we binge-drinking English usually are by half two in the morning. There didn't appear to be any aggro either and no police anywhere to be seen!
Our first stop was a pizza takeaway and we all munched on what must be the messiest, sloppiest pizza we've had. Went down a treat though. We bumped into a few people who'd been at the gig, said hi, chatted briefly and then moved onto the last pub we'd stopped in the night before. Half of us went and sat down the end of the bar while Manuel and the rest got the drinks in and while we were waiting we heard the DJ announce "We have very special guests in tonight - Coldplace!" and then he proceeded to play Fix You. So we all had a good sing along. A couple of tracks later he played Trouble and another Coldplay song (I think it was Yellow) to which we also sang along. this inspired Mario to spend most of the rest of the night to sing along to most things that the DJ played - Losing My Religion, By The Way, Patience and so on. He knows his stuff does Mario and has a decent voice too. Great lad actually - the night before he'd not got in until 6 after our drinking sessions and then had got up at 7 and worked at the YMCA until 6 so the poor lad had only had an hours kip and then a full day's work! And we thought we'd had it bad! Anyway, we talked and drank well into the night, enjoying conversation with Anna and Andrew and then finally retired, hitting the hay at about half 5 again.

I got up the next day at just after 11. Gail, Shane, Jamie and James had already been up and been for a cup of tea but Jez and I had only just risen. We weren't going to miss out on a cup of tea though so, along with Jamie, we went for a cuppa. The waitress couldn't stop grinning when we asked for three cups of tea and her grin grew even wider when Shane, Gail and James turned up and ordered another three. Dunno why, maybe she was thinking "You English and tea". Suitably refreshed and a further cup of tea later, we went for a walk down the sea front by the side of the beach. It was a lovely hot day and there were loads of people on the beach and there we were walking along in jeans. Still, we didn't have that much time really as our final Gejxa taxi was picking us up at around 13:00.

St George's Bay, Paceville, St Julian's

Our last couple of hours in Malta were spent being taxied around the island on a site seeing tour. The sun was beaming down as we cruised along the coastal roads, through Bugibba and then on to Wied il-Ghajn (I think!) where Manuel treat us to a last Cisk and some sarnies. Suitably refreshed we headed on over to the airport at Luqa. There we unloaded our bags, took a couple of final snaps and bid farewell to Manuel, Manuel's daughter (I really should've have remembered her name!) and Mario.

It didn't feel like we were hanging about the airport too long, besides, we killed the time in the duty free shop and a quick drink in the bar. Before we knew it we were in the bus heading across the runway to our plane - another Boeing MD-40 - and upon entering we were greeted by Natalie, one of the air hostesses from the flight over! She remembered who we were, took my snare to look after it for me and flashed us a smile.
The flight home proved to be even more enjoyable than the flight out there, although it was still a cramped plane - Shane must've really struggled with the lack of leg room. Jamie, Jez and I were all sat together and we had a right good chin-wag about stuff, a couple of beers and a couple of games of cards. Natalie remembered that we'd been going to Malta to do a gig and stopped for a minute or two to ask us how the gig had gone. We enthused over it and she seemed pleased - shame she went to see Deep Dish instead of coming to see us. She also remembered that I was a vegetarian and had missed out on some food on the flight over and told me she'd put one to the side for me, which she duly did. Even though it was plane food, it turned out to be quite nice actually and I was that hungry that I asked Natalie if she had any more. She turned up a couple of minutes later with another one although she wasn't sure what it was as it was in a 'deeper dish' (very funny Natalie ). Gail also got herself an extra meal - for some reason the attendant just asked her out of the blue whether she wanted another one - he must've been reading our gig reviews
The weather on the flight home was fantastic - until we got to England that is - and yes, true to form, it was raining when we landed in Birmingham. It was a bit of a rough descent down to the runway with the plane being buffeted and rocked a bit but the computers got it touched down safely.

A few snaps from the plane - Malta, Gozo, Sicilly, Corsica and France

So that just left another 3 hours on the road in England to do! Vernon turned up within minutes of us getting outside and then drove us home whilst being his usual chatty, chuckly self. Not that we did that much talking, we were pretty knackered and I don't know about everyone else but my head was still back in Malta. We got home at around 11pm and having been travelling most of the day, in fact most of the last two and a half days, being motionless felt quite weird. Standing still in Shane's hallway felt like the whole hallway was still moving around me! Very strange.

THANKS TO :-

Jean-Paul Mifsud and everyone else that was involved at the YMCA for being instrumental in organising the event. It takes a lot of time, effort and co-ordination not only to organise the event, but to also ensure it goes as smoothly as this one did. Well done Jean-Paul. Also, hats off to you for all the tireless work you do for the less fortunate people of Malta.
Manuel for also being instrumental in organising the event and for being a superb, magnanamous host. You really made us feel welcome and the way you organised our time over in Malta was top notch. Many many thanks.
Mario also for being a superb host. A very entertaining and friendly lad. Fantastic to meet you.
Anna, Andrew, Manuel's other son and Manuel's daughter - apologies that we can't remember your names! A real pleasure to meet you all and we really enjoyed your company at the Grotto Tavern, in the pub after the gig and the rest of our time in Malta. We really enjoyed talking and spending time with you.
Jez for asking us to do the gig and for his help in organising it and making it possible. We were really pleased you came along with us and we had a great crack with you. Really enjoyed your company.
Vodaphone, British Jet and Bay Street Hotel and all the other sponsors for helping finance the event. We're grateful that you helped make the event happen both for ourselves and for the YMCA.
Jamie for joining us at such short notice and doing a fantastic job of learning all the songs in three weeks and then playing them so well on the night. Great to have you on board!
Ira Losco for making us feel welcome, for your friendliness and for introducing us to pastizzi. Also a personal thanks from me for the signed CD you gave me. You are a very talented girl and deserve to make it big - awguri hafna. Really hope we get to play with you again in the future.
Steve 'Cannibal' Muscat for letting me borrow your drum kit. A very nice drum kit too - great for gigging, the sound was superb.
The sound engineer and the rest of his crew for giving us a great sound both on-stage and off-stage. A good on-stage sound is really important to playing well and you came up trumps. Nice one Kurt! Thanks to all the others back stage as well for being so relaxed and helpful in setting the gear up - it was a pleasure to work with you.
The lighting engineer and crew for providing excellent lighting. You don't always need a plethora of different coloured and shaped lights - it's what you do with them that counts and the lighting we had for this gig followed the music a treat and really helped enhance the mood, following the dynamics of the music expertly.
The crowd for making the gig itself so amazing - you were all absolutely superb! For us, it's the crowd that makes the gig - the better the crowd the better the gig, and you lot are up there with the best crowds we've had, if not the best crowd we've had. Thanks for all the singing!
Gejxa Garage and all the drivers that drove us everywhere.
Everyone else involved in organising the event and for attending the event. We met so many people in our all-to-brief time over there that we can't remember everyone's name! Sorry! Everyone one we met and everyone we spoke to was very very friendly and made us feel welcome every moment we were over there. We felt like we got to see the real Malta rather than just being tourists and we loved every moment of it.
And last but not least - Coldplay. I've said it before and I know I'll certainly say it again but without you guys we'd never have the chance to being doing the gigs we're doing, especially not going to Malta to perform. It's you who write the songs that millions of people the world over connect with and this gig proved that. 1,100+ Maltese people all singing your songs in unison. It was a wonderful feeling. Long may you reign! Also, congratulations on having the top selling album of 2005 with X&Y!