tinseltown in the rain

[perlmonger]

ramtops and I are back from seeing The Blue NilePaul Buchanan at Colston Hall and, despite all problems, very fine it was too.

In their stripped down, lean configuration, they’re using a pair of keyboard controllers driving a pair of powerbooks for all keyboard sounds, and therein lied the rub: one of the macs was crashing with distressing regularity. We suspect a hard disk on its way out, but we didn’t venture on stage to do any diagnostics.

So, the set list went out of the window as Paul tried to stick with songs that put least strain on the software but, as far as I can work out, by the end and many reboots later we only lost one song out of the set. The (sadly small) audience was hugely supportive and after, finally, Tinseltown in the Rain was played through without a crash as the encore, delivered a well deserved standing ovation. I fear to think (as I suspect does Paul :) what will happen if things go Horribly Wrong in Glasgow at the weekend, so I hope that whatever the cause is, it’s fixed in the next two days :)

Sadly neither the hassles nor the size of the audience (I gather that none of the non-Glasgow gigs have sold out) is likely to make the next tour happen in the forseeable; I do hope that wasn’t the last time Paul will appear in Bristol. I wonder if the sparseness of the crowd was from not being able to call themselves the Nile, or if it runs deeper.