If they could tax me for having too much fun then I’d be a broke man after this gig, that’s for sure!! You always have your hopes and expectations about a gig and I think this one ticked all the boxes.
First off, thanks so much to everyone who made the effort to be there. You certainly helped to make our day and from the many grateful messages we’ve received since the gig it’s great to read that we obviously made your day too. It was (some kind of) wonderful to see so many friendly and familiar faces (even though we hadn’t seen some of you in ages).
For the record, we had one fairly short rehearsal before the gig and apart from telling Cedric he wasn’t playing with the Gypsy Kings now but back in Albatross – so he could hit the drums a little harder – we all fell right back into the songs and our familiar roles. In fact, several little accents or breaks we’d added to the songs since the recordings surfaced during the rehearsal, which took us all by surprise every time that happened and we had to stop and laugh and go – “oh yeah, I remember now we added that bit to it”
Funny what all we have in our heads that we are no longer aware of!!
Because we received several mails prior to the gig from people who explained to us what Albatross meant to them back in the day and what their favourite songs from that period are still, we decided to sprinkle the set with people’s favourites as well as the songs we felt like playing ourselves. We decided to start the gig with a few uptempo songs as this also seemed to be a dominant memory for a lot of people – that we played with the combined strength of Samson and Hercules but then multiplied by 10!! I’m not sure if that was so but we thought we’d put our best foot forward in any case for this gig.
We started with “Someone I Used To Know”, followed by ” Feel So Good” and tight on the heels of that one “High-School Queenie”. That seemed to do the trick alright because legs started to twitch in syncopation and there were smiles all around the room.
We slowed things up a bit after that and played “I Don’t Know Your Name” with Tim O’Donoghue’s still poignant lyrics. I know we made a setlist and I’m sure I could dig it up now if needed but I think it suffices to say that a good part of the gig went by in a flash and all too soon we were playing “Some Kind of Wonderful” and saying goodbye after playing a solid two-hour set. I heard later from someone that they’d phoned an old long-time Albatross fan who is now living in London and let her hear the song live as we played it, so I hope she enjoyed that!!
You can watch a clip from the gig here and thanks to Bep for filming and providing the link.