Viva Las Palmas! - June 09
View from hotel
Steve with moon sculpture
Las Palmas in Gran Canaria lies off the West coast of Africa, just across the sea from the Sahara - an unusually exotic location for a gig, but like I’ve always said, "have guitar, will travel!" Plus I'll get a chance to practise my long lost schoolboy Spanish. I seem to remember learning fascinating stuff such as "Hay muchos burros aqui?"(Are there many donkeys here?) and other such useful phrases!
We were no sooner off the second flight when I was already doing several interviews at the hotel. It's a great life if you don't weaken as they say but there was just enough time to catch sight of an azure sky, the occasional seagull and an unbelievably blue sea just like it's supposed to be on the postcards. In short I thoroughly recommend it for a holiday.
Volcanic sea-facing black rocks characterise the Canaries. Having visited Tenerife a while back it seemed to share many of the same features, but we were only here to glimpse and to play. The rest I'll leave to all the honeymooners who might do worse than book into this picture book isle in the sun.
It's difficult to describe a gig properly, but I felt it was one of the best the band had ever done. Luckily Dik Cadbury was free to join up with the team again on bass and vocals. It had been a long time since we had played together but once again I was struck by what a great player and singer he is. Spectral Mornings remains one of my favourite musical memories, especially the opening tracks. Of course Gary O'Toole has a fab voice too, which made our unified British school of vocals all the stronger - a great band does great harmonies in my book.
The gig - Roger, Gary, Steve, Dik, Rob
Roger stood up during clocks, Gary beat his skins mercilessly (I thought they were going to blow) - and no casualties, except one... I decided to go for it on this gig with just one little sad event - I split a favourite pair of Armani stretch jeans which evidently didn't stretch enough - Now where did Nureyev get his trousers?
The gig - Steve and Rob
A walk on the beach, a beautiful moon sculpture courtesy Jack from Finland, a sell-out gig, a ringing in my ears afterwards, as the volume level was definitely not for the faint hearted!
Bye bye for now, until the famous five invade Lugano, with all their elderberries and stomp boxes...
