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22-Mar-2009

Buenos Aires

This was a big stadium in the centre of the city, and very hot for all the load in. It was so hot on stage as the sun shone directly on it and made it hard to set up all the equipent in one go.
We were set up in time for a longer sound check, it was a big show and being filmed.

It was much harder to hear the show on stage as the sound refelcted around the stadium much more than at the previous shows, they were open and this stauim was closed in.
The set changed here 'Down To Earth' was taken off and 'Big Time' added in it's place. This made the set feel faster.
This audience was amazing, especially due to its size. We had 36,000 people all singing along to 'Solsbury Hill' and singing the guitar melody line.

Peter relaxed more as this show got going and started to smile in reaction to the crowd response. 'San Jacinto' is becoming the centre peice of the show, closely followed by 'Red Rain' at the end of the set, for which the video display is very powerful.

images from production rehearsals)

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20-Mar-2009

Lima

Suddenly we are in a very different country, the feel is happier and the imigration officers wear suits and not uniforms. When you go though imigration they say 'welcome to Peru', I like that.
Lima was a big contast to Caracas because whereas there it had been very green and humid, this was very dry and on the edge of a desert.

The show did not start untill 10:45 pm, so we got quite tired during the evening, but once the show had started it was fine and full of energy as usual.
This show felt much more confident and fun, than before, the crowd was much bigger and sang along a lot - in some cases they felt louder than the P.A.

We also had added CO2 with 'Steam' from the fire extinguishers, though they didn't seem to be that new and died before the end of the song.

This time we got a carpet put all along the front of the stage to stop Peter slipping, which helped a lot, though maybe too much as Peter likes to slide a bit while on stage, just not right off it.

So the show was good but it feels like we need a few more to really get going.

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18-Mar-2009

Caracas

The first show day arrived and we got all our gear in time, but only just.

Venezuela felt like a strange place to be, though we did meet lots of happy people. The area around our hotel was fine during the day but after dark the streets beacme no-go areas. Since we left, news reports about Venezuela have not been good. The show however was in a very beautiful university campus, which is surrounded by big green hills, it's a really great location.

The set was good and going well until 4 songs in, when Peter comes right off stage and said that it's was too wet underfoot, so we needed to get towels to mop up the wet floor. The condensaton from a sudden change in tempreature made everything all wet especially the flooring, so Peter was slipping all over the stage. We trtied to clear it but it got worse so Michele (our bass tech and stage manager) gallantly came to the rescue. Peter came off stage again and shouted that he needed sand on the stage to soak up the water, so off went Michele who returned with a bucket. He then walked all around the stage before 'Games Without Frontiers', looking like he was out in the feilds planting seeds as he threw the sand that he had found all over the front of the stage.

After that the night briefly settled down and for a while it did not feel like the first show. With 'San Jacinto' back in the set, it felt right to go from the new video dispaly part of the show to the moving lights and Peter's ending, using the mirror and a varilight at the front of the stage. Then the condensation got into Peter's main handheld radio and made it get very upset and nosiy in 'Darkness' but Simon, Tom and Dee our sound techs sorted it very quicly and we had a spare working by the next song.

The newest song is 'Down to Earth', which still needs to find its feet, but is starting to work out well.

The audience was seated as I think they will be for most of these dates, but around mid set they stood up and got louder.

We had a few songs ready to go in the encores but Peter ended up choosing 'Red Rain' and 'Biko' to finish, it worked really well - a big finish to the set.

Next stop Peru.

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17-Mar-2009

Here we are in Caracas, Venezuela land.

Richard Chappell's tour diary resumes...

We, the crew, got here yesterday , the band get here tonight.

The problem with coming this far around the world is shipping delays like those we have today. This morning was supposed to have started with the lighting and video crews getting all their gear and setting it up .It's currently 5.30 pm and we do not have any gear, it just left the airport here. So we are waiting,and its really boring now.

Caracas seems a good place as long as you are careful. You should not go out at night alone, the same as a lot of places, but the people are very friendly to us.

During the production run-throughs last week we got quite tired of being in the cold, so its great to be in a hot place again, but it's not that hot up here, the show is in the hills. The venue is by a university and is surrounded by trees and big bushes. Ben Findlay our sound mixer is happy that this will make the show sound better, with no near by buildings or concrete.

It's going to be a great show this one, different to what has been done before and quite a treat for South America I think.

So we wait...

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04-Dec-2007

46664 - show day

After a quite relaxed couple of days run through we arrived in Johannesburg to quite a stressful few days.

We flew in, and then went right to work in the Ellis Park stadium. All our gear had got there the day before so we set about making it work. All was fine until we got into position to play as the band and PG turned up.

We were placed on a huge rotating stage that only let us go into position ten minutes before, so we were just not ready in time. Suddenly Angie and I found that we were missing some important sounds on the keyboards. I set about trying to fix that, this involved calling our main keys tech Jeff Allison in Boston. We also were still missing inputs for the rest of the band' so that was holding us up too. Then Peter's radio that he uses to listen to the band and monitor himself started to drop out... so lots of problems.

We then got the Soweto choir on stage with us and started to run through 'Don't Give Up' and 'Biko'. Angie was now singing the main vocal part and doing it with great power and emotion. The choir, who we worked with last time, were great. All the problems we had just had disappeared as they sang and brought a great feel to the last two songs. We finished that run through, packed up and went back to the hotel for a proper rest.

Next day we went in early to recheck our gear. We checked all the inputs and sorted out the problems from the day before. I had got the keyboards working, thanks to Jeff, the night before back at the hotel. So here we were for 46664 ready to do the show.

It did not go as planned, but it went OK...

The main problem was that PG's radio dropped out all through the show. This caused huge problems for him as you could imagine. It's basically listening to headphones that just go on and off all the time and you lose where you are in the song, so 'Red Rain' was a huge mess. It settled down a bit, but would not stop completely so every song the radio dropped here and there, but he gig over all was OK.

We were there to help promote 46664 and as the whole show was concerned it worked well. We were on time and got off on time. If we had gone on later, thinking about it, it would have given us more atmosphere. The choir again made up for the problems. To finish on Biko was fantastic and you felt all the people in the stadium agree with their response.

The band and PG stayed to hear Nelson Mandela speak about the the 46664 foundation and the tasks ahead. "Its in our hands" was the theme for the day, this the first of December being World AIDS Day. In retrospect we should have played after the speech, in the dark and with the audience more warmed up, but you know what ... it didn't rain !!!!

Red Rain
No Self Control
Solsbury Hill
Signal To Noise
Dont Give Up
Biko

So no more shows till, I guess, next year, when we should definitely have some new songs to try out. Things in the studio have been slow of late, but now it's getting a lot more focused and busy again.

I love being busy.

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