PLAY STOPPED RAIN!:

As the hour approached, Angie’s suitcase arrived with all
her clothes, make-up & two missing banners.
Kester disappeared into the jungle, re-emerging with a fist-full
of fauna to create an improvised shadow-play. The usual frights
surrounding our live equipment ensued, Mal & Gaz wrestling
another Mac into submission, triggering ripples of nervous
laughter as we concealed ourselves to soundcheck behind the
curtain. Foals hit the stage, rewarding the rain drenched crowd
with vibrant rhythms that sent every body gyrating whilst we hid
our tonks & croaks in the volume of their joyous sound. Then, as
everyone looked to one another, thumbs-up & smiling, the shroud
of Mr Hyde slipped off me & I resumed my roll as the amiable
Dr Jeckyle.
Rain continued to beat down on an undaunted audience & as thunder
cracked through the mountain forest I mused on an improvisation
of ‘Dark & Long’ (without telling the rest of the band of course).
Three mugs of throat coat & a fit of sneezing later we hit the
stage bathed in Kester’s beautiful subtleties of light & the rain
suddenly stopped!

Newsh had worked a Master’s Voodoo on our monitoring before
taking control of his out front board & as the opening bars of
‘Out of Darkness’ rolled we looked to one another in amazement –
THIS WAS THE BEST ONSTAGE SOUND ANY OF US HAD EVER HEARD!
The rest was a dream. I forgot all my pedal settings but somehow
made up new ones that sounded better, chords came in too loud
& lifted the crowd with random energy & even the stage crew,
hammering & power-tooling with ferocious indifference through all
our quiet passages could only drive us to smile & bond all the more.

Mal manned the monitor desk, watching with uncustomary eagle eye,
filling us with confidence & smiling back at us.

Rachel had steered the whole production through the rapids & now
the stage was complete & serene.

Toby V, fresh from jamming cameras & screens with U/W at Monegross,
took up position out front, his cameras in place, side-screens
prepped, making the pixels dance with a master painters touch.

Up on stage, Gaz had saved his best strutting for this show, moving
like a King, adding flourishes of bass to make the songs animate
where previously they had apologised.

Angie, bent over her keys as always as if trying to find something
dropped in the dark, tracking every movement my lips made, eyes
shining out through trademark mascara rings.

Tyler sang her harmonies with laser precision, unfazed by the scale
of the show, the enormity of the moment or the size of the audience
which was exceeding 50,000 & growing. I shot her a grin, never once
thinking she would do anything but deliver.

And through all this, Peter sat behind his keys & beamed, controlling
us all with that customary calm which still blows me away, recalling
how, previous to this tour, he’d spent his most recent years as a
master App designer (Trope, Bloom, Scape) & had performed to audiences
no larger than 20. No matter what has been thrown at him this year
(& there have been buckets full of slurry) he has brushed it aside with
the confidence & maturity of a Musical Director with decades more
experience.

The entire crew, Mal, Rachel, Toby V, Kester & Newsh, all clicked
& delivered, laying a table fit for banquet, with nothing more to add
than for me to mess it up. I chuckled to myself, walking onto stage
as Rachel whispered,
“It’s all up to you now…”
Ha ha ha!…if that were true this ship would’ve sunk long ago –
something else has been at work throughout this extraordinary Edgeland
journey, bringing together such an unlikely rabble who have smiled,
laughed, exuded gratitude & put heart-n-soul into everything they do &
last night it showed it’s self again,
manifesting in the smiles on 60,000 faces.

(K)