Thurs 9th December 1999

Sheffield - Boardwalk

After a comfortable night in Manchester, with Dave, we spent the day pottering about his house until it was time to drive to Sheffield. Thanks to Dave's A-Z it was a piece of piss to find the venue.

When we walked into the venue though, we were caught by surpise. There was already another band soundchecking. I had thought that we were headlining this gig so I ws kind of dumbfounded. After trying to get some help from the band's sound engineer and being met by rudeness, I phoned the promoter Chris, who told me that I should have already known about the situation and that, my agent should have informed me. I couldn't remember being told, but then again when this gig was first booked it was still September.

Anyway, the promoter said that the middle slot was by far the best slot to have at the Boardwalk. Once thing were sorted out, I began to relax a little. Then I was informed that we would have to pay for our beer rider, which was, frankly, BIZARRE.

Anyway, strange things aside, we were the last to soundcheck and just settled down to letting the evening's events take care of themselves.

The first band on tonight were 'Silver Tuner' who sounded great, but a bit too much Radiohead influence for my liking. Still the crowd really liked them and that's what counts, what do I know.

Then it was our turn to play and I thought that we played pretty well and the audience seemed to find it amusing. Not much to report really.

Then Rootjoose came on-stage with a music shop's worth of equipment, special lights and a pop star attitude. They played a set which to me sounded a bit like Simple Minds with Jeff Buckley singing. I'm not putting them down, but I've heard it all before and for all of that special modern equipment we could have been in the 80's. I know that Abdou isn't exactly breaking down the boundaries of modern music, but that's just me having fun. This is a serious attempt at pop stardom and it will probably succeed. Oh well.

We stayed the night at a lovely little student house thanks to the hospitality of Chris (cousin of Dave, last night's host). Had a nice tie talking about optics and astronomy with Chris and his friend Mary. We slept, six in a room, very cosy ;-)