Saturday 4th December 1999

Coventry - Colloseum

After a pleasant day off, driving down the motorway and staying in a Travelodge just outside Rugby, we had plenty of time to travel the short distance to Coventry and arrived at the venue 3 hours early. We loaded the gear into the hall and then went off to the pub for the rest of the afternoon. We didn't get bladdered though as we are far to professional for that. After the third cup of coffee, I had to give in and have a bottle of Becks though, it went down very nicely too.

At 6 o'clock we went back to venue and met sound man Mick, who was still putting the P.A. together. After a short wait, we were ready to soundcheck. It went very well, we only did a couple of songs and everything sounded OK so we handed over the stage to the other bands.

Promoter Richard, showed us upstairs and told us that the cook would arrive shortly to make us some food. A beautiful lady appeared as if by magic and asked us what we wanted. Harry's heart was all aflutter a the sight of this wonder and had a hard time deciding whether he was veggie or non-veggie.

It took some time for the food to be ready, so I took the opportunity to have a go on the Playstations, which were conveniently situated in the bar. Before long, I couldn't see straight and my fingers were sore from the gamepad. Alain, Stevie, Kev and Harry were playing a card game called Grass, which seemed to involve everyone being mean to each other. They seemed to be enjoying it though. After a while we were politely kicked out of the bar to make way for the punters who were starting to file in.

I should explain, that Abdou weren't the only attraction of the night, there was also two floors of disco in the same building and the popele could roam from dancefloor to gig as they fancied.

After eating we went back to the hall where the gig was to be and discovered that we had missed the first band, ???????. That's a shame as I was told afterwards that they were rather good.

I did catch the second band Swarf though and liked them, although I was rather dubious of the lead singer's shades. They played an Oasisish inspired melodic indie guitar pop and had some nice songs.

Next on...Abdoujaparov.

As soon as we got onstage I knew that this was going to be a good one, we were on top form and the crowd were on pretty good form themselves ;-)

I felt very comfortable on-stage and even indulged in some pelvic thrusting, not usually advisable, but I felt that the occasion necessitated it.

It seemed like I knew everyone in the audience, even though there were plenty people in. One of our better attended gigs I would say. It was lovely to see so many people singing along to most of the songs, I haven't really seen the like since the Carter gigs.

After the gig, me and the boys went to the disco for some serious perving (come on, we are boys after all ;-))

At 3am, we put our eyeballs back in their sockets, loaded up the van and headed back to London, Clapton, New Cross and finally Brixton and BED.

Tired, but smiling.

Fruity xxx