Kingston

Kingston University 1996

What a fiasco. You had to be there to believe it. The sheer disorganisation of Kingston University was amazing. They were making people with tickets wait outside whilst they let the people who didn't have tickets in to buy some! Tony almost didn't get in, until we got Kumar to intervene on his behalf, the rest of us had to wait hours to get in, and then mug "proper" students to sign us in with their S.U and Ents cards, and by the time we'd done all this we'd almost missed Ether, Shame!

Tony, standing to the left of the stage writes:
We almost witnessed the premature demise of Jake Shillingford as the front of the stage (built as it was from a couple of the bar room tables) collapsed and Jake was hurled suddenly towards the crash barrier! Star that he is, he kept singing even as he was falling!!. Attempts to climb into the crowd were interrupted by the bouncers as they attempted to drag him back onto the stage. Jake was not at all pleased by this turn of events and told the venue so in no uncertain terms.

I on the other hand was centre stage, a few rows back, and saw the whole ugly scene. Jake likes to come out and see the crowd during the end of Girl A, Girl B, Boy C. However, as Tony correctly points out the stage at Kingston was not the most stable of s tructures. To aid him in his mid air manoeuvres Jake rather sensibly decided to cling on to the ceiling tiles, which were a black lattice type affair. One of the bouncers, for some reason took exception to this and one by one prised Jake's fingers away from the ceiling. Not surprisingly once all 5 fingers had been removed Jake fell to the floor, still singing but extremely unhappy. He then took every available opportunity to tell the Kingston Students exactly what he thought of their student union building and their staff.

Despite this incident the crowd were getting well into the set and sang along to all the baa baa baas in Motorcade. Tony found himself standing next to Ruth for the closing half of the set which he admitted was a bit strange when we got to 12 Reasons as she used to throw the second half of numbers out

One of the poorer gigs of the tour. The band were far to cramped on the small stage. Jake, not wanting to fall foul of the bouncers twice in one night stuck to his spot in the middle of the stage and hardly moved. He also appeared to be in some pain. The venue was minute, and packed with students who obviously had never heard of My Life Story before, and seemed rather upset that they were making all that noise while they were trying to get on with some serious drinking. And there finish it off there was no Funny Ha Ha, although that was hardly surprising considering the preceding events. Was it not for the fact that 3 members of the band had studied at Kingston I think the venue would be well and truly removed from any further tour list.

Silently Sparkling
Chris

This page http://www.twelvereasonswhy.co.uk/gigs/mlski96.html
was created by Chris and is maintained by Richard Harrison