And so this is Christmas

And so this is Christmas.......well not quite but it approaches fast and so did the end of our touring for this year, our last show being at the Ipswich Corn Exchange on Friday 11th November. Looking back it’s been a mixed year with lots of highs and lows. Speaking to people after the shows is always a plus as we get to listen to feedback and comments in person and we have met some very genuine and friendly people. We still get people assuming that every show we put on will have lasers in it but the sheer cost of using these (£3,000 a show) is just not viable and is something we won’t be repeating unless we win the lotto. We rely on ticket sales to fund the production costs and in this grave economic climate we live in at present we are barely managing to break even. It’s not cheap to stage a Pink Floyd show even at our end of the scale. Maybe if we had a backer things would be different. However, one thing for sure is that we don’t compromise on the music. We don’t claim to be the best of the best etc bla bla bla, but we do put our hearts and souls into it and we hope that comes across. Okay, Les Dawson makes the occasional appearance and sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as you would like them to, but hell, it’s live music....if you want perfection put a CD on.

In general audiences are very kind to us but you do get the occasional nutter that would be more at home in the Star Wars bar. How anyone can turn up regaled in Pink Floyd T – Shirt and not enjoy Echoes ( quote : “Ooh, that last song in the first half was a bit long...I was getting fidgety waiting for it to finish”) is beyond me. We have to start from the basis that we are not going to please everyone and some songs will get left out, otherwise we would be up there all night.

There’s a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes and sometimes it can be a war of attrition just to keep things moving along. Theatres are not blameless in this either as most of them don’t bother promoting the shows, okay they’ll slap a couple of posters up here and there but that’s about it. The amount of print they ask for pre show doesn’t tally with the amount they actually use and you would be surprised at the amount of unused flyers we retrieve on a regular basis from said theatres. Now if they bought your show in....then that would be a totally different thing...they’d promote the arse out of it...why?....because they have to.

We’ve had our problems with personnel this year as well. Pat, our long standing bass player left last November to pursue a career as a Paramedic. We were lucky enough to have Pete Garland stand in with us for a while and that carried us through what was quite a dark period for the band, one which left us feeling uncertain about the future. Following Pete’s departure we were lucky enough to have Alex Tsentides depping for us and more recently we have Mike Taylor depping as well.Getting the personnel issues sorted was a major step forward for us in the latter half of the year and we have now emerged from the dark tunnel we were in and can go forward more positively in 2012

Footnote from the Ipswich show.
Got told off by an irate person after the Ipswich show for playing "that Dirty Woman song" (Young Lust). Due to the Ipswich murders in 2006 he said it was totally insensitive and he parted company from me with a stern "Don’t do it again" leaving me no chance of right of reply. Needless to say I was speechless. The words “Get a grip” sprang to mind.
In our defense we never even thought about any murders and at the end of the day we were just there to perform the songs of Pink Floyd regardless of any connections people might make with the songs. I'm sure Floyd didn't have any such inklings in their minds when they wrote this song.
I did however notice from my vantage point on stage that the audience enjoyed the song.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Pink Floyd tribute shows.
Okay....have a great Christmas and hopefully we’ll see you in January.
Steve.