Looking out at you!

August 12th 2007 5.30pm

‘When The Oil Runs Out’ follows, dedicated to terrorists, Bush and Blair with the audience screaming out the chorus. I’m now relaxed for the first time in days and I’m really enjoying myself, as is the whole band which is showing in how well they are playing.This is a better executed set than last year and I am well pleased to improve onour performance in 2006 which we all thought would be difficult to do.

I introduce the next song by saying that it is really dispiriting to have so little choice politically these days and recognising that many in our audience have probably given up voting, I point out that apathy does not disturb our politicians, they get in anyway on a smaller share of the vote and carry on doing what ever they want to do. Activism is what scares them so getting involved in grass roots politics is the way to go. Then if there are enough of us doing that, we will arrive at the same destination anyway.

We then play ‘Get Up and Fight’ to further hammer home the point. It’s another number we haven’t performed for years but gets it’s third airing this tour.
I’m really enjoying playing this song, it’s like I have rediscovered it and live tonight it is a revelation! It just soars and takes the audience with it.
The band are so tight that when we end a number the last note rockets to the back of the huge ballroom over everyone’s heads and bounces back to us seconds later like an echo sounding, giving me a mental picture of the audience beyond the stage lights in the same way a bat uses sound to ‘see’.

The audience erupts and I am so relieved that we played that so well because I wanted this number to shine and it did.

We follow this with ‘You Must Be Mad’ yet another we haven’t played for years. The choice of what to play is always a hard one, you leave some favourites out to play others and the audience misses the ones you didn’t play. If we played the same set as last year, people would complain that it was exactly the same. Play a varied set and there are still numbers that have to be left out much to the disappointment of somebody. So we just have to go with our own feelings.

This number also has a new lease of life shown in the excitement the band generates with it by playing it so well.

Finally we come to our last number, the grand finale of ‘Living With Unemployment’ and towards the end the audience sing along with great gusto, so I allow the dub section to go on a little longer than usual because they are singing so loudly.

At this point, little do I know but we are running out of time, I had agreed with the stage manager to have a cue flashed up to us to let us know when there was only ten minutes left to go of our time on stage. However instead of flashing it up to me, he showed it to Simon who had no way of communicating it to me being so far back on the stage and not being within shouting distance. Living With Unemployment finishes in a blaze of glory and we go off with the fans screaming for more.

We had planned to do ‘Kick Out The Tories’ as an encore but we had run out of time and the stage manager wouldn’t allow it.

And so on our final gig, we left the stage with the audience wanting more but not getting it.

But then again they would always want more.

The question is, do I? At the moment I am not feeling emotional at this being the last gig, I am feeling a quiet satisfaction that we had played a good gig.

I just thought, “that wasn’t bad!”

1963

So I gazed out of my bedroom window watching people and the occasional car go by. Across the road I can see the square Billy lives in and Graham lives a little further up the street. If Graham were to call on Billy I would see them both from here, but I don’t, they must be confined to their homes too. A green double decker 804 bus stops a little way up the road and picks some passengers up, it’s a Sunday so there aren’t many. The only thing to do on a boring Sunday is go to church, go to the pub or both, I wasn’t interested in either of those pastimes, I just wanted to play with my friends. The bus passes slowly by, the top deck almost level with my window, bored passengers like mobile jurors gaze back at me, taking in a snapshot of my silent misery, I still feel like I’m in the dock. The feeling passes with the bus and I look around to see if I can spot my friends.

I did have friends at this time, they were my gang, I didn’t mean to have a gang but all the kids would couldn’t make it into the proper gangs, the rejects, ended up with me, and I was leader due to being the oldest.
But I was crap at it because this is not what I wanted. I wanted to be in a proper gang, I didn’t want to lead, I wanted to be lead, I wanted to belong and I needed a father figure in the shape of an older boy to seek praise from.
Not that my gang were a bad bunch, they were good friends and we did have a seriously great time together but I just didn’t feel that grown up with them.

At one point I see one of them, Steven Taylor spot me in the window and he mouths, “are you coming out”? I mouth back “I can’t, I’m not allowed out”. He shrugged with as much sympathy as he could muster and then headed off to the “Hills”. His freedom seems to further agitate me and my lack of it. I dragged some toy cars and a few action figures on to the window sill and use the outside world as a backdrop to an imaginary one, where I had as much freedom as I required and I was in control.