No 20: Wolverhampton Robin 2, 6th April 2005

I've been a bit lax recently in keeping this blog up to date - lots of stuff going on in the real world as opposed to the virtual one I guess.

Anyway, its Wednesday evening, 6th April - I'm stuck at a client's house on the wrong side of Nottingham so the trip to Wolverhampton / Bilston is a bit of a tricky one, done at some pace down the M1 / M42 / M6. Lizzy is working in Birmingham that day so she's making her own way to the venue, then coming back to Nottingham with me before travelling to London by train the following day.

I finally arrive at about 7.30pm, go into the venue which has been smartened up considerably since my last visit, and immediately run into David (The Castle) Housden and his wife Chrissie. They think I'm Lizzy (common mistake) but have seen the real Lizzy in the bar. I head upstairs to Noddy's Bar (named after local lad made good Mr Holder) - no Lizzy, but the entire band and crew (exc Arthur and Johnny) tucking into a meal. A quick hello and they tell me Lizzy is downstairs - which she is, sitting in Woody's Bar (named after that other local lad made good, Roy Wood). A solitary beer and a plate of chips, and we're ready for the fray. We make our way to the gig room and take up position down at the front by the stage with David and Chrissie. A chap called Ben introduces himself, he knows our faces from the pics on Torben's site.

Primary 5 are very good again - and the lead singer, Paul Quinn, dedicates a song to me!

Then Love are on and its another cracking show. I'm beginning to wish I'd written this earlier as the details are quite vague now after a couple of weeks, but it was a good show for sure. The Robin is one of my all time favourite venues, its just about the perfect size for a Love gig IMHO - probably about 500 capacity. Too big and its very impersonal, too small and the sound isn't as good. This one's just right, as Goldilocks said about baby bear's porridge.

At the end we see North London Hilary - she's driven all the way from - you guessed it - North London - the 60 miles or so I've driven seem paltry in comparison. She tells us that this was the first venue she ever saw Love perform in, so its bit of a sentimental journey for her. Mike comes out for a chat, you really can't fault the man for his PR skills. He always seems to have loads of time to spend with the fans.

Lizzy and I don't hang around because its a 60 mile drive back as well, and its work tomorrow. My petrol light is on and the little computer thingy that tells you how many more miles you can go before you run out completely gets down to about 4 miles before we hit a service station at Tamworth -fortunate really, the M42 at midnight is not an ideal place to run out of petrol. Back home, Keith has left us some cooked pizza in the fridge to assuage the late night after gig munchies.

The next day I'm rung on my mobile phone by my bank's anti-fraud squad - "Your credit card was used to purchase petrol on the M42 after midnight last night, not one of your typical transactions, can you confirm it was you?" - I can and no, it wasn't typical, it was f***ing fantastic!!