Saturday 20th November 1999

York - Fibbers

After yesterday's panic and a lovely night's rest in the local travelodge, we were keen to get to York in good time. We arrived at Fibbers way too early and had to hang around for a couple of hours before we could load the gear into the venue.

This gave everyone enough time to go exploring. York is a very pretty town, full of tourists from all over Britain and the rest of the world. York Minster is a truly breathtaking Cathedral, we spent ages spotting and giving names to the various gargoyles. My favourite was Geoffrey.

Well, it was soon time to get the stuff out of the van and do those usual soundcheck type things. It all went rather well and after a few songs we were happy and left the other two bands to do the checks.

After last night's gig in Leeds we were pretty psyched up and we hoping for an equally great night. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be, it wasn't a bad night, but could have been a lot better.

By the time that the first band Four Day Hombre came on-stage there was about 40 or 50 people in the venue and that was kinda the way it stayed. The last time I was at Fibbers was on the final Carter tour and the place was heaving and the rocking. Today it was an emptier and a considerably more sedate affair.

Four Day Hombre are actually a great band, with great voices and excellent tunes, in an ideal world they would be on Top Of The Pops and the front of every music magazine. Whether or not that will happen is anyone's guess, but I hope that it does.

The Frames were on next and we also splendid. To be fair, they should have been headlining their own gig, I think they were not right for an Abdou gig. They also ran vastly over time, which meant that we had to cut our set short AGAIN. I thought that was a bit rude.

We had to rush to get everything together, but managed to get everything in shape and bundled on-stage in time to squeeze in a 30 min set. I thought that we were a bit lack lustre, to be honest, but we were a bit down heartened by the turnout. It only helped to reinforce my feeling that the live gig circuit is dying a horrible death.

After the gig, we had time to chat with some of the folk that had been kind enough to attend the intimate gathering and that was rather nice.

After a long drive back to London, I eventually crawled into my bed a 4:30 am.