AllTheseThingsIveDone.com

Yesterday I had the privilege of going on a gig with my friends ‘Delirious?’. Officially I was there to help their back line tech, Lee, out with some of his duties. I should, perhaps, explain this a little more;

Since July I’ve been helping the boys out by driving their van to the airport. See here. As well as this Lee has been training me in the ways of the back line tech. We’ve looked at a few bits and bobs, including the wonderful world of pop riveting. He’s also taught me how exactly Tim’s keyboard rig all goes together.

So, back to Horsham. The main things I had to do were unload the smallest trailer in the world and shunt things onto the stage area of the National Revival Centre and then set up Tim’s keyboard equipment. Once that had been done I set about giving Lee a hand with Stew’s drum kit. After that, well I got to play with a few toys; Mainly Jon’s MIDI Bass pickup that allows him to produce those big phat synth lines. Not for the first time my bottom wobbled (perhaps I should sort that).

After lunch and some sitting around in catering (later to be renamed d:’s dressing room) support band Electralyte arrived and I helped load them in onto stage. After I returned to catering and sat around waiting for the boys to arrive. Slowly they began to appear; First Mart, then Stu, then Jon, then Tim, and then…well I’d like to say that Stew arrived but he took his time. So long that the boys plus FoH engineer Trevor were thinking of forming a new band with Martin playing drums. It was an interesting sight. Once Stew arrived the boys all got on with the business of Sound Checking.

Dinner was next on the agenda complete with playing with new mobile phones, and finding out why Stew was late. It seems the post code that had been published was wrong. If, like me and several others, you followed it you ended up in a housing estate. Not good.

Time passed and all too soon it was time for one legendary Dave, Dave Payne, to pray and with that the boys headed off to do what they do best. Since I’m pretty rubbish at writing gig reviews I’ll leave that to another legendary Dave, Dave Wood, who runs delirious.org.uk. And whom I have to thank for the picture at the top of this post.

After the gig pretty much the reverse of setup happens, except a lot lot faster. I was out of there by 11:15 ready for the short drive home.

Bring on Tuesday. Except that could be a harder day.