Supporting Hawkwind on tour, 2006. Part Four; Cambridge, A good gig plus a good night out.

We didn't see much of the others after the gig except Chris, the tour manager who told us in passing that she was still looking for the promoter and so would have to pay us the next day. Northampton looked dead so we went back to our bedsit, chatted a bit and then had a fairly early night. We already knew we weren't going to be playing the Norwich gig because a local band had already been put in the support slot so we would be driving to Cambridge, doing the gig and then spending the next day driving back to Bristol.

Me in front of the venue in Cambridge.

The drive to Cambridge wasn't too far and the most remarkable feature was driving past the large Weetabix factory out in the middle of this cereal growing region. We wanted to get to the venue quite early so I could re-programme my Fantom for one of the numbers and we could check that Olivier had some ideas about the new number we were going to use as our intro number, an instrumental as yet nameless, to replace the number that really hadn't worked on night one. We passed through the old university district and following our map, found our bed and breakfast in a neighbourhood of terraced Victorian houses with a very pleasant Asian landlady.
It took us a while to find the load in entrance to the venue which was part of a complex just outside the old city, a very modern looking place. We found our small dressing room, took all our gear up there and I settled down to programming while Olivier listened to the CD version I had of the new introductory track which was a piece of psychedelic techno really over which he could play some soaring notes. We then went out for a smoke and then wandered inside to watch Hawkwind doing their sound-check. There were already some fans in the hall, all of them from Europe and I got talking to some Germans who knew me by sight and knew of my earlier connections with the band, Sonic Assassins being the by-word. I even got asked to sign some things by way of my autograph, particularly flyers about the gig.
When it was our turn to sound check, the road crew were noticeably friendlier than the first night, being much more helpful, particularly one guy whose name I couldn't remember but who seemed to know me from back in the day. And the sound engineer also gave us more time and the sound we were hearing was a lot better which obviously helped our confidence. The doors seemed to open quite early so we hung around out front having a couple of drinks and chatting with various people and getting invites to an after-gig party that was to happen in a pub not far from our BnB we were told by a young couple who had chatted to us as we were parked outside it.

The sound desk.

Getting onstage we could see that the hall was pretty packed and our new opening number went down well and, in fact, each number we did got a good deal of applause building up to our final number, Monster Trucks, which again was very well received and again we noticed most of Hawkwind watching us play it. In fact, after the gig, Alan Davy was particularly praising of it saying we should put it out as a single, it would be a monster hit. Also Richard, the drummer asked me if I had programmed the drum track myself, which I had.
We were quite ecstatic at how well the set had gone down and knew we would stay with that set list, which was as follows ; Strung Out, the new instrumental number, called thus because of the string sounds in it, about 3mins long ; Yahtzee, an old song of mine, reworked to give prevalence to the guitar and with lyrics about my time with Hawkwind in the USA, just over 5 mins ; Autoroute, an out and out rocker about getting caught speeding on the motorway in France, around 4mins 30 ; Paris-Marseille, a more psychedelic rocker, also about during in France which I sang in French, also around 4 min 30 ; Slots, a slower song but quite heavy, about gambling and other hedonistic activities and the importance people place on money, 5 and a half mins ; and, finally, Monster Trucks, a real crowd pleaser, again, just over 5 mins. So we were coming in at just over 30 minutes, our revised official time.
Quite happy with our performance, we had a smoke and then went out front to the bar and to watch the main act perform and again I noticed a few people pointing us out; we were getting recognised. Hawkwind played well and I was impressed by their dancers and lights as much as the music although I did enjoy some of the old favourites they played. When the lights came on at the end of the show we got chatting with a group of younger fans, particularly a fine looking Asian lass who seemed in charge of her group and who insisted we follow them to this pub for an after party. Luckily it wasn't far from our BnB so we parked up in this alley behind its back garden and walked round the corner to the pub, being waylaid by some other people who tried to tempt us back to their flat for drinks and smokes.

Once in the pub, we found that Jason, the Hawkwind keyboard player was already there and we soon found ourselves as part of a large and noisy group and began a couple of hours of drinking, surreptitious coke snorting and a lot of flirting which all led to nothing but a very late night. In our rush to get to this party, we had only seen Dave and Chris quickly. Dave moaned that it was the last night he was going to sleep on the bus as he wasn't in fact sleeping hardly at all and never could in a bus these days. Chris paid us for the two nights, told us what time to be in Wolverhampton and asked us if we could play an extra two dates up north after the Derby gig. Unfortunately Olivier already had his flight back to France booked and I quickly worked out that I couldn't afford to lose any more money: I was already going to be down quite a lot after 4 gigs.....it was a good thing I had recently sold our house!!
We got up quite late, enjoyed a full English breakfast and set off for the long drive back down to Bristol. It was a nice autumn day and we enjoyed the slow drive, Olivier nodding off just as we hit the M4. Liz had prepared a chicken wings, rice and peas dinner which we washed down with a couple of bottles of red before retiring, looking forward to a couple of days off.

To be continued > part 5: Up to the Black Country where we meet a favourite band.