The Pavillion Theatre Brighton
20/01/01
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Well the 3rd Crunchgig in 7 months cant be wrong,can
it? 3 Times lucky, people say, and for a lot of us it
was a very lucky day!
Graham Caz and I met up in Victoria Station very early
on saturday morning on the 20th January 2001 to catch
an early train to Brighton, and on the way there we
were supposed to meet up with both Swanny and Sophie.
We found out that there would be no train going
straight to Brighton unless we changed at getwick, so
that what we all did; it was a freezin' cold day
though, but that couldnt take the fun away.
We all arrived in Brighton at noon and there were Bex,
Emma, Sarah, Scatty and Amy waiting for us. We had to
get the 7A bus (speciale!!!) to the Pavilion. At the
bus stop Swanny handed us all some Flyers for the
Crunch!gig and we all shared them out between
ourselves. The bus came quite quickly and we all
settled down at the back of the bus. I found a
brilliant place to put the A3 size leaflet: right in
front of the back window, so people who were driving
their cars innocently into Brighton Towncentre would
know that there would be a band called Crunch! who
would be playing at the Pavillion that exact night.
Haha! It looked very good from the outside of the bus
too!
Emma showed us the way to the pub mrs
Fitzburts, where we would all meet up later that
same evening. Someone came up with the idea to go and
have a drink at the pub at the Pier, so we all went
down there. Brighton is very impressive, although I
never saw a lot of it; in fact I only saw the inside
of some pubs and the Pavilion and that was it....Good
reason to go back there sometime!
It was bitterly cold, but finally we all found a place
that we'd agreed on and we had a nice drink there.
Swanny managed to put some of the Crunch! leaflets on
the windows (dont ask me how they stuck on there), but
the Big Boss came over later on and asked us very
friendly to remove all of them. After about an hour or
so, Sophie and I started to get bored, so we came up
with the brilliant idea to do something with the
leaflets....just to make life a bit jollier! So we
took our leaflets to the Ladies' toilet. I put 8 of
them on all the mirrors....it looked great! Then
Sophie had the MASTER idea to put some on the toilets
seats, so when someone had to go, she actually had to
remove the leaflet to sit down! Haha! Now that made
sense! So we did that too. While we waited for someone
to come in and say something about it, we had a nice
chat. It didnt last very long to listen to our first
"victim". We got some nice comments from these closed
doors. Ranging from:"Oh,wow,are there still some
tickets left?" to "who put those bloomin' things on
the seat....?"
Oh, well, it's all for a laugh, isn't it???? It made
us laugh anyway.
Some hours later we made our way to the bar next door
for some karaoke. There were no Crunch! songs on the
list (how dare they?) but Vince C. and Vince
F. made it clear that they didn't come all the way
from Ireland for nothing, so they put their names down
for some M****ss songs. The presenter was really
impressed with Vince F's voice and he made the remark
that he should go to the auditions of the TV program
Stars in their Eyes and immitate Suggsy. I thought
that was a very nice remark. We will see if Vince
picked up on this one and if he will actually do
this....
It was 5.30pm and so we made our way to the Mrs.
Fitzburts pub . Once we arrived there the
admosphere dramaticaly improved as it always does when
the TMML/MIS members go to a gig!
The lady behind the bar even put the CD single on for
us of Magic carpet, which was quite an improvement
from the music they were playing when we came in. It
was very nice to actually see and talk to everyone
again!The whole thing reminded me a bit of June last
year when we all met up for the Ian Dury gig.
Finally it was 7.30 pm, and some of us made our way to
the venue to see what exacly was going on. The word
for it to describe= quiet, so we all left our coats and
bags at the cloakroom, and went back to the pub next
door. Again, we heard the familiar sounds of
Dangerzone, I love that song!
Someone must have asked the bartender to put it on
again...Swanny, Bex Amy and I had a good chat. We had
to sort some things out before the actual gig started,
which hopefully we did.At 8.30pm we finally made our
way to the Pavilion for the last time....the
difference now was that all of us actually went in
there. We put our stuff down right in front of the
stage. The supportband were playing some nice SKA
songs, and even got some people dancing! It lasted for
a while, I went over to the bar
to talk to Bex, and found Thommo standing there having
a chat with her. He dutyfully gave us all the
autographs that we wanted. Suddenly Swanny came over
and asked Thommo to go backstage to the dressing room,
because the band was supposed to go on in 10 minutes.
'So off he went and we went too!
And there they were! At exactly at 10 past 10 they
came on stage and played the first song of the
evening: Here He Comes. I realised the only people who
were dancing were the TMML/MIS members, but once
Crunch! played their second song Magic carpet, they
got the whole room dancing and the atmosphere was
great!
The whole band looked very good & ready to conquer
Brighton.
Steve had his usual smile on his face the whole
evening, Tad was his usual self, jumping up and down
and dancing around the stage, Louis was trying to
concentrate on his keyboards, while being "attacked"
by a handmade shirt that Thommo threw at him, Spider
had a great time behind his drumkit & someone made
Chrissy-boys evening by shouting: "Mr. Sexylegs" at
him (we all know who that was, so I'm not going into
detail here...hahaha).
Right into the show a piano seat was put on stage by
one of their roadies and Thommo sat down on it. What
the heck was happening here???? Louis started to play
the all too familiar sounds of Fur Elise, and when the
band joined him it became obvious what Thommo was up to.......
Or rather what the roadie was up to. He came on stgae
with a pair of clippers in his hands, plugged it in
ansd started shaving Lee's hair!
The reaction of the audience was woth recording:"Oh,
my God!", "What the fxxx" and"awwwwww" were some of
the things I heard....
This was something that not many people had ever seen
before!
Once he finished shaving his hair, Thommo looked
around the audience for a volunteer to do the same....
He looked at me and I thought:oh, what the hell, why
not????
So I climbed on stage and sat down on the chair.I
actually thought that the roadie would shave it,but
Thommo grabbed the clippers of him and started to
shave my hair himself! The faces of my friends were
worth a picture, hahaha!
I told Thommo only to do the sides, so he did.....but
he left it to 1 side and then shaved Stuart Wright's
hair as well. He dared to shave his whole haed and in
the mean time I jumped of the stage to get back into
the audience again. Some one out of the audience came
over to me and asked me whether this bit was a
"rehearsed" bit or whether it was done out of the
blue!??? When I told her that this was just as much of
a surprise for me as for anybody else in the audience
she couldn't believe it!
By now the front of the stage was covered in hair!It
was a very funny sight. And the band just kept playing
on!
Just before they wanted to play the last song, the
message came that they only had 5 min. left, as the
whole building needed to be clear and clean at
midnight.
The lights went on and people started to pack their
stuff when the message came that Crunch! was coming
back for one more song. And so they did....to the
delight of the audience.
Then it was really time to go. Together with bex,
Sarah, Amy, Scatty,Caz, Graham, both Vinces, Chris,
Sophie etc. I went outside.
I started to get a bit nervous by now as I wanted to
get my hands on the clippers to shave to other side of
my hair too, because I had to go to work the next day!
I asked several people but it wasn't until I spoke to
Symond (who was with the band and is a top bloke!) that
I could go back upstairs again and look for Thommo and
the by now-famous clippers....
I felt a bit awkward to ask Thommo to shave my hair,
so I left that to Simon. I told Thommo that I could
understand that he wanted me to do it myself, but he
was OK doing it. So there I was, standing in the
middle of the hall& Thommo was shaving the other side
of myhair as well.Once he'd finished he just had a
wicked smile on his face and he said:" I like this
side better (pointing out to the left side), but hey,
no two sides are the same!" Anything would do for me
really at this moment in time...
There was hair all over the floor now, right in front
of the main entrance. We both had a good giggle when
Thommo said:" They'll be wondering what the hell has
been going on here tonight with all this hair lying
around!" I thinaked him for the free haircut and went
downstairs to my friends, who'd been waitning there
patiently. They were very surprised, (just like me by
the way) when I told them that thommo himself had
shaved the rest of as well.
One by one the band members came to the stagedoor and
sat/ lied down in the van which was waiting for them
to take them home to London.
I got a very sweet hug of Chrissy Boy and Sarah got
hold of Thommo's "It's OK I'm a Policeman" hat.
All together it was a very nice day, with a lot of
surprises, and not only for us fans!
See you all soon, Crunch!
Looking forward to the next gig.
Thanks to all of you, and especially Thommo, Spider,
Chris, Dave,Tad, Louis and Steve.
Love from Jerney