Friday 12th November 1999Aldershot - West End CentreWe had a bit of trouble getting through London Friday traffic and managed to arrive about an hour or so late for the soundcheck. I was greeted by a face from the past as I jumped out of the van. One of the bands playing tonight was Serpico, fronted by ex- Mega City Four singer Wiz and it was he who warmly welcomed me to his neck of the woods and to the West End Centre. With the help of all of the wonderful people from the venue we managed to do a fairly quick sound check. The last time that I saw the resident sound engineer, Julia, she was one of the pit security people at the Carter USM gig at Farnham Maltings. I didn't recognise her at first but when she reminded me, it all came back just like it was yesterday. Serpico went ahead and did their sound check and were followed by Eugene Speed. Both bands sounded great. There was a TV crew from NTL filming today's gig and we agreed that they would film three or four songs and do a little interview too. The show goes out on digital, but I don't actually know that much about it at the moment. When I find out I'll let you know. A few friends turned up early so I had a nice chat with them. One of them, Anne-Marie had come all of the way from Rotterdam, which kind of shows up some of the light weights in the UK who haven't managed to catch an Abdou show yet. In fact she has made it to 4 gigs so far, what a star! I also had the time to catch up with the latest from my agent Steve. After a brief discussion, we decided that we would have to cancel next week's Rugeley gig, there hadn't been any interest for the gig and I think that it would have been a waste of everyone's time to do it for the hell of it. Poor Eugene Speed. After their sound check, they only a few minutes to gather their thoughts before having to run back on stage to play to a pleasingly full venue. This was definitely the best crowd for a while and they loved Eugene Speed too. Despite having a bit of trouble with their guitar amp they played a great set, I'm looking forward to seeing them again sometime. Being somewhat local heroes, I expected Serpico to go down well and their melodic, noisy, punk, pop pleased us all no end. Wiz is a great front man and his voice is even better than ever. I missed the end of their set as I went off in search of a beer and couldn't get backstage. This lead me to the bar and to meet lots of friends old and new. Special mentions go to Der and Marc, who operated the t-shirt / CD alcove in a very rock n roll manner. When I usually see Marc he is in a drunken mess so it was nice to see him in gainful employment ;-) Then, it was time for the Abdou boys to climb on stage from behind the glittery curtain. It was a great gig, I had a lovely time and there was lots of dancing and moshing going on, which was great to see. What a cool audience, everyone was there to have a good time and it rebounded back to us on stage. We had changed the set around for this gig and it wasn't quite perfect, but it made a change. We didn't do an encore as we were already way over our allotted time by the time we came offstage. After the gig we did our little TV interview which was drunken and fun, then we just hung around and got drunk until we were gently kicked out of the venue. We had an easy trip home, unloaded the gear and went home to bed respective beds. I was about 4am by the time I got my head down, but I slept with a big smile on my face. Love fruity xxx |