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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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