GIG REVIEW

1st July 2006 - Riverside Festival, Stamford

Coincidences are great aren't they? For ages we've been doing the M180, M1 route and not been on any A roads for ages, then the last two UK gigs have been down the A46. And the last time we played outdoors was nearly a year ago at the Mathew Street Festival and now we go and play two on the bounce! But then, it is summer and you can't really play outdoors in winter eh. The weather has been good though hasn't it? After being in Malta just a few days before, it was good to have the sun and the heat with us as we went back on the road. After 40°c in Malta, 30°c was a lot more tolerable. Nothing worth mentioning about the journey other than it was a nice drive on the A roads in the sun.

We'd got there early so we could get the gear unloaded in time for kick-off (England vs Portugal). It took us a bit longer to get there than we'd thought though and by the time we'd got the van parked up and had a chat with the necessary people at the stage, we only just managed to get in the pub a few seconds after kick-off. Fortunately we didn't have to unload the gear until half six, but that did mean that if the game was to go to penalties, we'd have to miss 'em. England quarter-final world cup game go to penalties? Nah, never ;-) So we watched the first half of the game in a tiny, well-packed pub. In 30°c. As with England's other World Cup games, it was hard work. Half time came with nothing to show except the usual Lampard efforts gone wide. Lampard shouldn't have even been on the field in the first place though and been replaced with Crouch up front, who'd been doing well for the team, helping Rooney as he struggled with the lone striker role. Sven really should've thought more about a more positive change for the second half. Anyway, we found a chippy, filled up and hit a different pub for the second half. Which proved to more of the same in terms of a threat on Portgal's goal. To be fair though, we did have more control over the game than Portugal, but having your lone striker sent off doesn't help. As with most of England's tournament exits, it inevitably went to penalties. It was half six by this time and at the very least one of us needed to get back to the stage. Had it been Liverpool playing it would definitely not have been me, but it being England and knowing what kind of a shoot-out it'd be, I opted to return. I got txt message updates as each penno was takien and within two having been taken, Shane was back at the stage, face like a spanked arse - he'd left as soon as we missed the first penno. Inevitably, we were knocked out so we just got on with the equipment.

We were due to start our set at around 7:20 and by the time it came we'd got the gear on stage all set up and had a quick line check on gail's keyboard and the three mics. We really wanted a bit more of a sound check so we could get the monitor mix at least half decent. It wasn't to happen though as we were introduced before we knew it and we had to start. We opened the show with Politik which was great as we haven't opened with that song in ages. After that we played pretty much the same set as we'd played in Malta, what with us having only a 40 minute set. Speed of Sound swapped places with Yellow then we slotted The Scientist in in place of The Hardset Part. Shane sang it particularly well and me and Gail kept nodding at each other, big grins in appreciation. Clocks followed, then Talk, which got an excellent reception and finally we finished off with Fix You, by which time the crowd were in fine voice and Shane let them sing the last three lines. (just like the last gig! another coincidence! although you could argue it's a coincidence somewhat contrived). It was a shame that we hadn't had chance to have a better sound-check because the sound on stage wasn't too hot. It started off really poor actually, I could hardly hear my drums, Shane couldn't hear his voice, or anything else for that matter as his keyboard was drowning everything else out. We had to ask for the levels to be altered as we played which is no good when you're trying to get into the music. Still, despite all that all five of us actually played really well, making it an enjoyable gig. We left the stage to an excellent applause and then hurredly got our gear off stage so that Jilted Generation could get their gear on stage.

With the gear loaded back into the van and the van back in the car park, we hunted down on off-license for a pack of cold beers. There were tons of people milling about the town and we even had to queue up for the offy! With a few beers in hand we went back to the festival and watched Jilted Generation. Being a Prodigy fan, I'd been looking forward to seeing how they'd play the stuff and I was well impressed. They're a really good band and they did Prodigy justice. They were followed by the headliners of the night, Viva Santana - as the name implies, a Santana tribute band. I'm a massive fan of Santana, having ten of their albums, so I was well looking forward to seeing them, partly to see just how good they actually were. Santana in their prime were an awesome collection of musicians. Boy did they not disappoint! There were absolutely amazing, all six musicians being of an extremely high standard. They were awesome. I never had the pleasure of seeing the 1970s Santana but Viva Santana gave me pretty much the real thing. The only downside was that they didn't played for a couple more hours and sling lesser well known songs in like Everything's Coming Our Way, Incident at Neshabur , Every Step of the Way, All the Love of the Universe, Mirage ... the list really just goes on and on :-). I'm not one to complain though, it was a total joy to listen and watch those guys. If you like Santana, check their website out, see when they're next playing near to you and go watch them, you will not be disappointed.

We drove out of the car park and then went on the usual hunt for food. After about 20 minutes driving around the town, we parked up again and set out on foot - something we should've done right from the start as the take away we eventually found was only about 5 minutes walk away from the car park we were first in!

We really enjoyed this gig, as much for day out and weather as the gig itself. We enjoyed playing and the crowd were appreciative, but it was only a short set. Still, it was a million times better than our last post-Malta gig (the Danebury in Andover) and we did play really well.

• Return journey to Stamford : 180
• Total miles travelled : 10,470

18th July 2006