Wolverhampton Chiefs gig
Got to the hotel in Wolverhampton, quickly sorted myself out before heading into town with Maria and Mully. Went to a pub round the corner from the venue and swapped Maria and Mully for Sam and Carla since the other two were going on the balcony, rather than down the front.
We were the first ones in the queue and stood infront of the door that was the first to open for the previous gig. There was no one there for ages apart from Brady and friend and Bob. We heard screaming from round the corner and hoped that it wasn’t Ricky that was being screamed at. Turns out Matt Willis was at the venue next door, if I’d have known I’d have gone to meet him, then I’d only have one Busted member to go! The 1990s street teamers came around and gave us all badges, but we refused to sign up to the mailing list. We then pointed out to them that they should only give people badges if they sign up to the mailing list. The street teamers said it was blackmail, but then a bit later they had taken our advice!
We heard, sorry I mean felt Ripchord rehearsing. Their bass was so loud that the windows above the doors rattled so much that we were scared they were going to smash and fall all over us. We seriously considered going to find an umbrella to protect ourselves. Later on Maria and Mully came and joined us for a natter. Kaisers were due to hit number 1 with Ruby that night so when it was announced on Radio1, due to the power of modern technology we tried to listen to the interview and announcement. However, modern technology would have been better if it wasn’t Hobbo phoning Bob, holding his phone up to the radio and then Bob putting his phone on speakerphone. Nevermind, even though we couldn’t really hear anything, the sentiment was there.
They opened the outer doors so we could see inside so we waved to Helen and Joff who were standing at the merch stall. The time came to freeze to death, i.e. give our coats to Bob and the doors opened and we legged it to the front. We were the first ones in so Sam chose a spot infront of Nick which was quite in the middle of the stage. Inbetween bands we kept on turning round to wave at Mully, Maria and Bob.
On came Ripchord, unfortunately we were right infront of the bass speakers. Big mistake. We vibrated so much from the bass that I felt like I’d morphed into a pneumatic drill. None of us could hear anything but a wall of noise, until Carla hit on the idea that we’d be able to hear better if we could block off some of the sound… i.e. stick our fingers in our ears. So there we were on the front row, the three of us with our fingers in our ears. The lead singer of Ripchord spotted us, gave us a funny look, before pointing us out to his bandmates. He must have thought that we believed they were really rubbish, but actually after one song with her fingers in her ears, Sam turned round and said that they weren’t actually that bad. Found out later that night that the drummer is really rude and obnoxious as she had a go at Helen for missing the ‘H’ out of Ripchord. Henceforth they are renamed Rip-cHord.
1990s were next and I enjoyed them more than the previous time. Then inbetween them and Kaisers, the music that was played, all the songs had ‘one’ in the title to celebrate the fact that Ruby was number 1. However as me, Carla and Sam were busy playing shadow ducks and getting them to dance, we even got the bouncers involved a little bit it took us a while to realise that the songs had a theme. This was after we’d made the ducks dance to ‘One More Time’, ‘One Way or Another’ and ‘One Vision’ We finally realised when U2 ‘One’ was played. Was very disappointed that Foo Fighters - the One wasn’t played. According to Dan, it was one that was suggested. Don’t just suggest it, play it!!!
Instead of the usual Black Sabbath intro, Chiefs came on stage to the tune from the Top 40. They were so pleased to be number1 it showed. Especially in Ricky’s ‘number 1’ dance. They played the same setlist as Manchester. Unfortunately for the three of us at the barrier, we were stood infront of two fat guys who crushed us against the barrier. During Oh My God, I was leaning like this: \ without having to hold onto anything.
Ricky came to the barrier for one song and sort of flopped over Sam onto the crowd. I grabbed his leg quickly before he kicked me in the face, waiting for him to move away but he didn’t go crowd surfing, instead choosing to lay there. Great. When they came back on for the encore, Nick chucked a towel into the crowd and somehow I managed to catch it. It’s a shame he didn’t throw it into the crowd earlier, it made nice padding against the barrier. I would have given it away but then I spotted the Kaiser Chiefs motif in the corner. Sam went crowdsurfing during Oh My God and some crazy woman took her place. Then it was all over.
We left the barrier and went to the merch stall to meet up with the others. We chatted whilst Helen and Joff packed away. Then Carla found some paper that had crowd surfing warnings on it. She started writing a note to Chiefs and we all thought it was such a good idea that we each wrote our own note. We persuaded Joff to give the notes to the band and after reading through them he said he would as non of the notes were asking to have their babies. Helen did rectify that problem though ;-)
Back at the hotel and I’m about to get into bed when Sam says that we’ve got to quickly go to Helen and Mully’s room with our phones. We get there and Helen sends us all a photo to our phones. There are gasps of shock as we see the photo for the first time. It’s a photo that Joff took of Nick, holding our notes. It meant so much to us that we all immediately made it our phone backgrounds. I <3 Nick.
We were the first ones in the queue and stood infront of the door that was the first to open for the previous gig. There was no one there for ages apart from Brady and friend and Bob. We heard screaming from round the corner and hoped that it wasn’t Ricky that was being screamed at. Turns out Matt Willis was at the venue next door, if I’d have known I’d have gone to meet him, then I’d only have one Busted member to go! The 1990s street teamers came around and gave us all badges, but we refused to sign up to the mailing list. We then pointed out to them that they should only give people badges if they sign up to the mailing list. The street teamers said it was blackmail, but then a bit later they had taken our advice!
We heard, sorry I mean felt Ripchord rehearsing. Their bass was so loud that the windows above the doors rattled so much that we were scared they were going to smash and fall all over us. We seriously considered going to find an umbrella to protect ourselves. Later on Maria and Mully came and joined us for a natter. Kaisers were due to hit number 1 with Ruby that night so when it was announced on Radio1, due to the power of modern technology we tried to listen to the interview and announcement. However, modern technology would have been better if it wasn’t Hobbo phoning Bob, holding his phone up to the radio and then Bob putting his phone on speakerphone. Nevermind, even though we couldn’t really hear anything, the sentiment was there.
They opened the outer doors so we could see inside so we waved to Helen and Joff who were standing at the merch stall. The time came to freeze to death, i.e. give our coats to Bob and the doors opened and we legged it to the front. We were the first ones in so Sam chose a spot infront of Nick which was quite in the middle of the stage. Inbetween bands we kept on turning round to wave at Mully, Maria and Bob.
On came Ripchord, unfortunately we were right infront of the bass speakers. Big mistake. We vibrated so much from the bass that I felt like I’d morphed into a pneumatic drill. None of us could hear anything but a wall of noise, until Carla hit on the idea that we’d be able to hear better if we could block off some of the sound… i.e. stick our fingers in our ears. So there we were on the front row, the three of us with our fingers in our ears. The lead singer of Ripchord spotted us, gave us a funny look, before pointing us out to his bandmates. He must have thought that we believed they were really rubbish, but actually after one song with her fingers in her ears, Sam turned round and said that they weren’t actually that bad. Found out later that night that the drummer is really rude and obnoxious as she had a go at Helen for missing the ‘H’ out of Ripchord. Henceforth they are renamed Rip-cHord.
1990s were next and I enjoyed them more than the previous time. Then inbetween them and Kaisers, the music that was played, all the songs had ‘one’ in the title to celebrate the fact that Ruby was number 1. However as me, Carla and Sam were busy playing shadow ducks and getting them to dance, we even got the bouncers involved a little bit it took us a while to realise that the songs had a theme. This was after we’d made the ducks dance to ‘One More Time’, ‘One Way or Another’ and ‘One Vision’ We finally realised when U2 ‘One’ was played. Was very disappointed that Foo Fighters - the One wasn’t played. According to Dan, it was one that was suggested. Don’t just suggest it, play it!!!
Instead of the usual Black Sabbath intro, Chiefs came on stage to the tune from the Top 40. They were so pleased to be number1 it showed. Especially in Ricky’s ‘number 1’ dance. They played the same setlist as Manchester. Unfortunately for the three of us at the barrier, we were stood infront of two fat guys who crushed us against the barrier. During Oh My God, I was leaning like this: \ without having to hold onto anything.
Ricky came to the barrier for one song and sort of flopped over Sam onto the crowd. I grabbed his leg quickly before he kicked me in the face, waiting for him to move away but he didn’t go crowd surfing, instead choosing to lay there. Great. When they came back on for the encore, Nick chucked a towel into the crowd and somehow I managed to catch it. It’s a shame he didn’t throw it into the crowd earlier, it made nice padding against the barrier. I would have given it away but then I spotted the Kaiser Chiefs motif in the corner. Sam went crowdsurfing during Oh My God and some crazy woman took her place. Then it was all over.
We left the barrier and went to the merch stall to meet up with the others. We chatted whilst Helen and Joff packed away. Then Carla found some paper that had crowd surfing warnings on it. She started writing a note to Chiefs and we all thought it was such a good idea that we each wrote our own note. We persuaded Joff to give the notes to the band and after reading through them he said he would as non of the notes were asking to have their babies. Helen did rectify that problem though ;-)
Back at the hotel and I’m about to get into bed when Sam says that we’ve got to quickly go to Helen and Mully’s room with our phones. We get there and Helen sends us all a photo to our phones. There are gasps of shock as we see the photo for the first time. It’s a photo that Joff took of Nick, holding our notes. It meant so much to us that we all immediately made it our phone backgrounds. I <3 Nick.