The Highlights can be summed up with: a pigeon in the wipers on the M6, a shopping spree in Huddersfield on Little Essex Street, a white smoking jacket, the Catcher in the Rye, 6 burritos, 7Up for Dave, cardboard breakfasts in Little Chef, and Manchester on fire - although we take no responsibility for that one...
The Pigeon carried no note but as we are all packed into the van on the road anything unusual becomes the topic of the day. In this case it was the Pigeon and if it was carrying a note then who would have written it and why? We all agreed it would probably be Sting and the note would read ''I'm still Brilliant'. No offence to Sting but that's the way the conversation went...anyway Gerry's a massive Sting fan. Massive...
New music we listened to in the van was by Lord Huron Americana type of band but good tunes, mostly everything else we listened to was on a personal level but Gerry was flat out on the Sting. Flat out...
With an hour or 2 to kill before the gig in Huddersfield we did what all bands do and went shopping by accident, some of us went for noodles and some of us went for a massage, but one of us went shopping.
In the end, we had a white smoking jacket, 3 books and one Sting t-shirt (Gerry). Met up with Echo Tape (good band). Was some good bands playing on the night and the venue had a good atmosphere, well worth calling in there if your in Huddersfield; great menu, home to Indiana Jone's favourite burger, that's a fact. Says it on the menu, so it must be true!
Next morning…after we found Dave, headed for Manchester, this was exciting for us as we've not played there before and it's home to a good few legends and Erasure. A lot of Mancunian music got played in the van on the way to and from the gig. A massive fire broke out on Oldham Street and this was the second omen. All pigeons and fires what next? Piano’s falling off skyscrapers? Pigeons on fire playing pianos as they fall of skyscrapers; well that's what happened in Dave's head. But the reality was the band did a sound check.
The Roadhouse is a cool venue, down stairs and cavernous, Manchester was full of music. We headed out for a stroll after the sound check, went to Night and Day there was a good band playing and seemed like bands were playing every bar we passed, musicians running around the streets in the rain pushing amps - had a great music vibe to it and the people were great.
All n’ all had a great night and Tim (keys player) only managed to get himself into 1 fight; we have that on film, good times...good times.
Mad For it indeed.