Trip down.

Missed first possible train from Glasgow due to sat nav taking me round and round glasgow looking for the car park.

Pasta in Glasgow.

Had a while to wait so had brilliant pasta lunch in Glasgow Central station – Pasta Calabrese I think with aubergine. Now I hate muso blogs where they just list what they ate after the gig – and if I go there this blog will never end…..

Shrewsbury.

Started listening to Trio AAB live recording from The Lot on train while working on ABC stuff and missed my stop. After my monday trip to Cheltenham my traveler self esteem was starting to flag.

Chinese.

Very cool chinese takeaway in Llangollen….hold on stop that listing food thing.

Knew nothing.

About the venue, the school kids, nothing. Crapping my pants (as usual before Kidsamonium)

Clare. Building. Large bits of paper.

Get picked by the wonderful human being who is Clare who runs Llangollen International Pavilion. Smart. Experienced. Funny. Positive. Bright.

We clicked immediately and I thought – this is going to be fun. Building is just staggering – massive spaces for Eisteddfodd (possible 4000 seater) and just perfect fro Kidsamonium.

Jim, Jef, Carol,

Got introduced to the rest of the team. Really nice bunch. Had brilliant session where clare and I sat down. I ripped off some  massive pieces of flip chart paper and we plotted out how the show would work in the building. Turns out clare also does that kindof thing on flip chart paper and I was another disciple.

Boys. School.

Go and mee the guys for the chicken gang. Not much time to work with themn. Thinks they have potential….

Van arrives. Dave Powell.

Van arrives from London with Claude Billy and Patrick Charbonnier (M. Parp).

Oren had depped out this gig at the last minute for family reasons and Dave Powell showed up….with a full body silver robot suit. What a great guy and a great player – perfect  fro the show….and he speaks very good french and so can chat to Monsieur Parp. Paul Towndrow showed up in a taxi – anther last minute dep

Rehearsal.

Ran charts sounded cool. Chicken gang arrived. Say them relax and start to have fun. Decided to do something totally new ie Blues scale on a flip chart. Was cool and they seemed to get into it. Had no idea how to put it into the show. Clare’s husband Gwyn joins in on trumpet (although wont have one till tomorrow). Cool.

Indian. Bed.

Awoke at 6.

Crapping myself. How was this going to work. KInd of had some ideas…..

Planning. Set up. Ist Set.

Ran though stuff everyone before hand very quickly. Massive audeince of about 350 kids and teachers. Fantastic first set. Set 2 the real  challenge.

2nd Set.

Split the audience into girls and boys for tour round building 1 group at a time. Had pete wareham and huw warren as guests. Apparently it was great. Back in the main hall Girls sang blues scale improvs. Boys made up a drum groove on the legs. Put them together when everyone was back in. Worked pretty well. Ditvhed streams as running over time.

Set 3 Alan Partridge/ Die Hard – Meet Rob Sculley.

Set 3 was awesome. Percussion Discussion was really mental and all the kids really loved it.

There was this idiot from welsh tv called Rob Sculley who was so Alan Partridge it wasnt true – he even had the jacket. Clare introduced him as from the BBC when he was from ITV (or vice versa) and he did a brilliant partirdge -esque trying to appear casual but actually quite prickly in a “dont you know who I am “ kind of way. He then went on to broadcast live from the stage right through the 3rd set as if he was some kind of vietnam war reporter(kind of shouting loud over the ‘noise’) and apparently did things I feel are totally out of order like ask the sound guys to turn the main PA down so he could get a better sound for his broadcast. What an arrogant git. I asked him to move as I needed to get one of the school kids’ drum kit on stage right where he was talking onto his camera and I kept on going up to him while he was broadcasting shouting “you’ve got to move” and he just ignored me. He was like the reporter asshole in the Die Hard movies with the massive ego and no self awareness. I missed the chance but I should have just thrown hin over my shoulder live on air and dumped him off the stage and pulled his y- fronts over his head.

Anyway gig was great. The amount of energy released by the end was truly awesomne and everyone was totally buzzing afterwards.