Tour, Gig #5

After the show in Bristol, Al Baker gave me a lift to Newcastle where we were playing the following night. We got to Newcastle in plenty of time, because also fortuitously playing that afternoon were Premier League squads Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers. Being on tour our budgets were rather tight, but if there's one thing I learned from certain past political (mis)adventures - okay, I learned a lot of things - it's that confident white people can get in to almost anywhere if they really try.

Attempt 1 at sneaking into St. James' Park involved circling the stadium knocking on closed doors, and when they'd open kindly ask to be let in. You know how British people can say almost anything and Americans find it super-charming? Yeah, turns out it doesn't work the other way around.

Attempt 2 at sneaking into St. James' Park consisted of hanging around the gate and trying to organize the local kids to all storm in at the same time. It didn't really get off the ground, but not for lack of the little guys' toughness. After the game, a buzz cut 11-year-old with his track suit tucked into his pulled-up socks came up to my friend Niall. "Give us that cigarette, yeah?" Niall, a good eight years the boy's senior, quickly hands over the half-smoked cigarette, explaining later: "They'll hit you for no reason at all! They're unpredictable the little ones... just like junkies!".

Finally we figure out that we're over-thinking the whole matter, and that the back door to the "Platinum Club" happens to be wide open where people who have paid too much for their seats come out for cigarettes. We chat up the usher guarding the doorway into the lounge proper, buy some chips to look less conspicuous, then pass through the second layer of ushers with the herd during the post-halftime rush back to the stands. Suddenly we find ourselves smack in the middle of the luxury seats inside the stadium! Newcastle definitely outplayed Blackburn, but American Brad Friedel had a couple unconscious saves in goal for the Rovers, who steal three points on a last minute goal by Matt Derbyshire. Afterwards, a kindly looking, well-dressed man comes up to us smiling. "So you blagged us then, did ya?" I'm not sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure we did, and he winks as he walks away.

We play that night in a gazebo in a park right in the shadow of St. James' Park stadium. It's cold as hell, but between sets there're liters of cider and the bedlam of Shoe Game to stay warm.

Afterwards we crash on a floor in Widdrington, a working-class mining town by the sea where the British government recently deposited tens of thousands of cattle carcasses to be cremated during the last foot-and-mouth outbreak. In the morning we head to the beach at Creswell, spending an hour jumping dunes and seeing just how much sand we can take to Scotland with us in our shoes. It was beautiful there, like Rehoboth in the winter, only with more rocks and a castle. Tour is wicked fun.

(All photo credits to Al Baker and his camera phone).