Cromer, Pier Pavilion Sunday 15th August 2010

Here a break down of the gig

Drove a very long way, 8 hours for most of the band and that was just to get there!

Got to know John Jackson on the way up as he came to help us out today. A very amiable fella, he did rather well on the sing a song by this band game, but then he is a DJ!

Got to Cromer, saw the holiday crowds by the sea, bit like Paignton! Said, 'ooh it really is a theatre on a pier', (thought to myself) how very Jimmy Tarbuck'

Saw a lot of people fishing for crabs off the pier (apparently it's famous for it)

The load in door

Ate some chips and curry sauce on the pier, it was a cold, windy grey day, typical august weather!

Investigated around backstage with camera, here are some the things that were lying around..

under the stage...

Listened to the crashing of the waves around us while in dressing room!

Small stage, surprised we all fitted.

Auditiorium

Did the show to a nearly sell out crowd, bit of a squash on stage but cool all the same.

Met some great people after the show.

Packed up our stuff and left at 12ish am, drove through the night (well Chris, John and Paul did - well done for keeping us alive). I got home at 6.30, 2 hours sleep then up for work!

Rock and Roll baby!

xx

Winter Garden, Eastbourne 4th August

Well how do I begin. I cannot say all I need to say on here but suffice to say you have to take my word for it, it was an interesting show for us. Started firstly by many complications as to whether the show would/could go ahead. A huge change for us with the line up, crew, and people driving many hours to get there at last minute, and many other things to mention so all in all I thought we all did surprisingly well under the difficult circumstances. It's strange when you get into a comfort zone, but it's good to shake things up a bit to remind you of that nervous excited apprehension you used to feel.

Only the band and those connected to it will know the true in and outs with this show and I know a lot of you really enjoyed it, and are coming to see us again in Brighton in january but if it wasn't quite what you were expecting then please please give us another watch...for me go on!!

The things that stood out for me today were, the lovely people from the winter garden - the staff were great, had a good gossip with one of the chaps that was there during the day, we talked all about the 'cage fight' they had had there where people were promised Alex Reid and Katie Price!! (needless to say they didn't show)

I helped out with the merchandising stall which was fun cos you get to see all the people walk in and totally ignore you...

Met a guy who sold a vinyl copy of some pink floyd record collector for 150 pounds!

And one other thing that amused me, not that the audience would have known, but from where I was there was a huge shadow of my head on the wall behind the audience and for some reason the drums cymbal was a shadow right next to my head, so every time Jeff hit the drums in shadow land he was smashing me over the head... I had to smile during a few songs when he was really going for.

There was a power cut too! It has only happened once before and strangely that was on a friday the 13th oooh spooky..

so thanks for Alex Tsentides for stepping in at last minute on bass, he did a sterling job with only one rehearsal. Nice one Alex, and good luck with your own floyd band

Heres todays pictures...

The Merch stall ladies and gentleman

You can buy Pink floyd books for a discounted price of £20.

Written by Glenn Povey our manager

Badges and stickers, thats what I'm talkin' about, come on, yeah!

The new leaflet, hmmm lovely... this is free by the way..

The last one of it's kind, sold today (not sure why this is in blue i didn't ask it to be!)

Here is Glenn (right) (our projectionist for the evening!) and Dave Keyboards (left) from Alex's PF band.. just love the very smart way he's sitting in this! Darn it, it's still blue!

The winter Garden inside!

Sound check with Alex on the right

The view from my dressing room of the Eastbourne Lawn Tennis place, quite well known amongst the tennis players, Chris told me twice this was the one before Wimbledon.. http://www.visiteastbourne.com/tennis.asp

And just cos he wasn't there.... Patch, one for the ladies that follow the blog. ha ha!

Mrs Loar, we missed you muchly too... xxxx

Adios peeps.

Band videos coming

Well hello. There are no gigs for a while and i've been busy trying out imovie on my mac. I have made a few videos for you to have a gander at. All the recordings are taken from live shows and they weren't recorded for this purpose so it's not what you hear out front, but it gives you a flavour I hope. There is a special one made up of fans pics too. (Yes you people featured on the blog!!)

The videos can be found at

http://www.youtube.com/user/inthefleshuk

Basfest 2010

Welcome to Chris' BLOG

Well as Polly wasn’t able to join us for the weekend so she asked me if I would take over the Blog duties. So welcome to Chris’s Blog.

Just to add to our show at High Wycombe I had a little altercation with a traffic Warden after they had ticketed one of our vehicles. Apparently when the Theatre was built the local council bought the surrounding land and left only one space on the Theatre ramp for cars! Bearing in mind that most touring companies turn up with more than one car it seems like a nice little earner for the local council. Suffice to say I won’t be sending them a Christmas card.

Apart from that it was a great night and met lots of nice people including our new Sax player Harriet Baker, great job on her first show.

This brings me to our day off at ‘Povey Towers’. Our Manager had kindly offered to put the remaining band members up for the weekend prior to our show at Basfest on Sunday afternoon. Steve, Jeff, Paul and I were thoroughly entertained by our managers fine hospitality and thought the arranged trip to the Sunday market was a real insight into how the other half live.

Later into the day the BBQ was fired into action, not before Steve and Jeff fell asleep watching the football, and we had a full on meat fest with Jeff’s home made burgers, which were not all that bad!

During the day we felt is was our duty to send photo’s to Patch as we didn’t want him to feel left out.

Paul BBQ Chef

Steve and Jeff watching the football

Glenn and Chris

Good nights sleep and off to Basildon for BASFEST 2010!!!.

Well to be honest I didn’t know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised when we turned up. It was a lot bigger that I was expecting and very sunny. These were Perfect festival conditions. This festival was well organised and all the staff and stewards I met were great so credit to you guys.

The only problem I had was the Hammond. Due to the fact the Hammond organ realise on a 230 volt supply to give the Hammond the correct frequency to run at concert pitch, when the generators 240 volts went in so the pitch went up and I had an organ which was about a semi tone sharp!! Didn’t sound to good I can tell you.Fortunately Patch was on his way, sporting very nice straw trilby, with my digital organ and saved the day. Phew!

We played a new hour1/2 set, which was well received by the crowd of several thousand, oh and the stage sound was loud, real loud. I thought my head was going to implode at one point.

We had a great laugh and Ross joined us on Sax, which was a real pleasure.

Quote of the day, ‘ C’MON, LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS’ priceless.

I conclude that I love the festival atmosphere although I feel this will change the next time we do one in the rain! Lets hope that never happens. More festivals for next summer, may I suggest a facebook group ‘In the Flesh for Glastonbury 2011’.

So I hope I have done this blog justice and that you continue to keep up with the band, All the best.

Chris. x

Crowd before

Crowd during!

Here is a clip I have been sent from onstage at Basfest.

Here's one for the blog. This is Glenn and Janes dog Buzz getting over friendly with my leg.....all part of the Povey hospitality package.....ha ha

from Steve

High Wycombe Friday 2nd July 2010

Well the first thing of note was that the minibus van wouldn't start. So I was ready at 9.30 and then checked my phone to see that they were still in Brixham. 2 hours later and a lot of faffing and time wasting on my part I met the vans. The indicators were on strike so there was some good old fashioned arm signalling on the motorway. Chris and Jeff worked well as a team on the left arm signal!

Oh the hilarity with the wig. Please note the placing of Chris' hand in this pic, you are not imagining things, there was a cheeky squeeze!

Disappointing amount of pics taken today. Oh well, I just wasn't feeling snap happy. Here is Harriet Baker, our dep for Ross, (and a previous student of his) She was fab and it was nice to have another girl with me in my dressing room.

Here is a little feature on young Zac, Alan his Dad is obviously a big floyd fan and has seen us before but brought Zac along this time. This young man had a huge grin and when I asked him what he thought of the show he just beamed and said 'amazing'!

Zac and Me

Here is Zac with Chris (think he looks more impressed being next to Chris!)

Zac with Dad Alan

Here's three friendly fellas, who I asked to be on the blog.

This brother and sister combo were helping sell the merchandising.

I didn't write down their names, I shall find out from Wendy and update!!

The Princess Theatre, Torquay 19th June 2010

Back on home turf, way hay! It was strange to think we had played in the pub just down the road from the theatre only 18 months ago. I arrived later than usual as had been rehearsing with my theatre group, I had my mum and sister with me, (my entourage as I called them) we made tea and coffee and then we waited for the choir to arrive for sound check, During the usual faffing about I got asked to take the following pictures (posers!)!

The 'not very long' adventures of Jeffy And Patchy

HA HA HA!!

THE END!

After a long winded sound check, I got quite excited at the prospect of having our family and friends watching.

Show started and I wasn't even nervous, I just felt totally at home on the stage tonight. Here is me and Fredi in a moody blue, I like this pic!

My fav moment

General shot from the audience

Thanks to my friend Alan Miller for sneakily taking the show photos above! Good job or I'd have had no record of the TAF choir who sang brick in the wall..... here comes the SHAMELSS PLUG (which were from my Theatre school Torbay Acting Factory!)(6-18yrs after school group for Singing, Dancing and Acting!!) (www.torbayactingfactory.com)

Here they are in all their attitudey finery!

Special mention to Dan the only lad (the other 3 dropped out on the day!)

Here is Anna, wearing Garys home made T shirt, these guys travelled a long way to see us, and stayed in the travel lodge in Torquay, It meant a lot to see you guys, I was looking out for you, finally spotted you in the balcony.

This guy seemed rather taken with Fredi, who wouldn't be huh?

'Miss Torbay 2010' I'll have you know...

My family and friends, thanks so much for coming!!! (the young guy with his eyes closed behind is not part of my lot btw!)

Fredi's family and friends (Tom her boyf with the big grin behind!)

Thats all from Torquay, we've got a couple weeks off now, so will be back blogging again after High Wycombe 2nd July.

Mirupafshim (goodbye in Albanian!)

The Alban Arena, St Albans 17th June 2010

Hello everyone!

Having had a 3 weeks off, it was nice to be back on the road although I was supremely bored on the journey up.. There were only 3 of us in our van, Jeff, Chris and Me. Fredi was coming up after her exam with Paul our sound man.

It was about 5 miles away from the venue that it started to feel familiar and then I asked if we had played here before to be told YES! I had really forgotten, isn't that bad? about a year ago apparently.. When i got there it all came back to me. the green room space etc.. the stage door. The very echoey stairs up to the stage - good for practising with some natural reverb!!

I didn't take many pictures actually, how very lazy of me!

The Alban Arena

The most exciting part of the show was that we were to have Ross on saxophones for the first time, well not the first time actually....... This leads me to me trip down memory lane!! ........... (cue wobbly music like they do in rubbish programmes when it's a flash back scene!!)

Now for those who don't know, back in the day in Torbay there was a band called Dr Frank, made up of a group of school boys from the different local schools. The line up was

Vocals - Chris Thomas (Whats he doing again? lol)

Guitar -Barney Dine (Now fronting a band who is supporting Will Young this summer in The Devon Festival)

Saxophone - Ross Purves

Bass Guitar - Jan Tribble (now an architect)

Trumpet and Keyboards - Mikey Taylor (now touring with Joseph)

Drums - Jeff Glover (hands as he's now known!)

Now I remember doing a few pink floyd songs even back then, can't remember which ones

There were a few band changes over the years, I even did a stint as a backing singer but I was pretty unconfident at this point. I remember doing a few pink floyd songs even back then, can't remember which ones. They were extremely popular with all the young people in the area and looking back they really were good! I will try to dig out an old picture!!

After a stint in London they went there separate ways, Jeff and Chris stayed together and eventually formed a new band with.....

Guitar - Steve Loar

Bass -Patrick Forbear.

(sounding familiar?)

These guys were called 'Starskey' and played the circuit for many many years. Functions Weddings and pubs.

Steve went to Spain for a while to live where i'm told he would still play the old set to himself on his guitar just to keep the memory alive! He couldn't stand it and thankfully he came back again and took up where they left off.

A mere 10 years or so on! A few floyd songs came into the set and were going down well. The band then got asked to headline the Brixham Happenin festival in 2007 (?). Feeling they needed some backing vocals, Chris turned to me and asked if I was up for it and did I know anyone else, I called Audra and we did a show in the at the Happenin, with the Brixham people dancing around in the field in the rain, jut like glastonbury! ha cough! I gathered together a choir of kids from my youth theatre to be the brick in the wall kids. We played a mix of songs, originals, covers and finished with a few floyd numbers including comfortably numb!

I disappeared to Egypt for the summer and when I returned the band had decided to go full time with the floyd stuff, Audra was on backing vocals and when the theatres started coming in I joined up again as second BV!... 2 years on and we're going strong, the family atmosphere has got stronger and even though there have been a few changes we've made it through the other side. Which brings me back to Ross paying on saxophones again after oooh about 15 years or so.

He was really genuinely pleased to be playing us, and he did a brilliant job after 1 run through with the band in sound check!!

Here's Ross

Ok so back to the show. It was being filmed this evening by ESL (event sound and light) who also do our lights for the shows. The purpose of the filming is to have some clips for you tube and promote the show so when it's out I will let you know (if you don't find out some other way) and then you can all share it with your friends and get them to come watch us too!!!!

Steve - Restringing his guitar summer shorts style!!

After the show we met two lovely people 'Jayne and Richard', I believe they have written on the website guest book too! They are big floyd fans and we had a good gossip about the show they went to in Welwyn Garden City recently. Jayne told me she reads my blog and said it was a bit like reality television, really good to see what goes on behind the scenes and that she feels like she knows the band from all the stories. My counter said that not many people have visited the blog lately so I was a bit disheartened, I think maybe it is wrong cos a lot of people say they read it. If you do, come and let me know after a show as it keeps me going!! Hence this super long entry!

Au revoir! xx