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Monday, May 23, 2011

London to Manchester

Thursday
So after the six shows in London it was time to go “home” and see the two shows in Manchester. “Home” being Huddersfield. Kami and i were driving up and staying in Huddersfield with my dad and driving over to the Manchester shows each night.
Kevin and Jens were due to com up with us in the car however they decided on the train.Ive been living in Surrey for the last couple of years and was planning on moving back to Huddersfield at the end of this month. I’d booked a few viewings for places on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday and would be doing the shows Friday and Saturday and hopefully making it over to do a few sights in Liverpool one day.
We arrived at my dads around 2pm, i had a couple of apartment viewings at 3:30pm which we saw and then went for my haircut at 6 and Kami and i went for a good old Yorkshire curry for dinner at 9pm.
Friday
I drove around to look at a few apartments, after trying to get Kami out of bed up i gave up and went out alone, she woke up around 11 and spent a couple of hours chatting to my dad. I got home around 1pm and we both set off to see a few sights in Liverpool. Thought the poster in the third picture below was kinda cool
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it was raining in Liverpool so we didn't get out and walk about much, drove around and saw Penny Lane and Albert Dock, had a snack in a restaurant there and then headed over to the pre show meet up at Henry beans in Manchester. Was great to see Pauline again after seeing her at a few London shows. Jens and Kevin had made it up earlier in the day as had Elzira and friend from Brazil and my good friend Mike and his kids from Liverpool.
Met up with good friends Justin, Jason and Dave Moran whom id last seen at the Atlanta show  and we all then headed down to the venue for the show. We had front  row tickets tonight right in front of Dave K on the aisle and i was so looking forward to seeing how the crowd were tonight. On the Dark Side tour Roger played the Echo arena in Liverpool and it was THE best show of the tour due to the crowd, however, Liverpool wasn't on the tour schedule this time around so a lot of the Liverpool fans were travelling over for the gigs tonight and tomorrow.
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From the second the pyros went up at the beginning of In The Flesh the we knew the crowd were gonna be great, even the first 30 seconds they were a lot louder than any of the six nights in London!
Roger and the band looked so so happy when they heard how the crowd were, i know for a fact that they love an enthusiastic crowd as much we do!
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For most of the first half Kami and i stood up the whole time, a lot of people behind stood up but id say it was probably 50/50 with standing and seating crowd, one thing WAS evident though, the crowd were into singing the lyrics!
The first half seemed to fly by (always the sign of a good show) In the USA when Roger usually sings the line “ 13 channels of shit on the TV” he held the mic out for the crowd to sing. Tonight was the first time on the whole of the European tour that he had done this, i turned to Kami as soon as this happened and told her this, something that Roger later made reference to at the end of the show.
Run Like Hell was amazing, never seen as many people clapping and having fun at a show since the show in Philly last year.Even GE Smith was smiling!
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The wall came down in two sections tonight and every brick fell forward of the stage! we got a great amount of “wall wind” and the roadies had to work twice as hard to clear the stage in time for the band to come on for Outside The Wall.
After the show we headed over to meet Dave and band for drinks in the bar and stayed a couple of hours, Kami’s face as she came out of the ladies room and bumped into Roger was a picture as was Rorer’s face when he came by the sofa she was sat at to wave goodnight to her around 1am in the morning and she franticly waved night night to him with a huge smile on her face! I had decided the night before to buy my dad a ticket to the 2nd Manchester show. He hadn't been to a gig since The Beatles at the ABC cinema in Huddersfield in 1963! this was something that Dave, Jon, Robbie and the rest of the band were greatly amused at and said they’d come out before the show to meet him, it would be fun for my dad to see what i’d been doing for the last 10 years!

Sorry for the delay in blog entries but the travelling into London each day on the train and meeting up with all the friends i had coming over from Canada and the USA kind of took its toll on me and we had very little time to chill out even let alone write my blog. At this present moment I'm sat in the departure lounge at Gatwick airport, after missing the first flight (and there's a story there!) and the delayed 2nd fight I'm just hoping we make it on time for the show tonight! A couple of friends are there already but as President Obama has just landed in Dublin there's huge security in operation and lots of streets closed for the next 24 hours!

Two albums of Manchester pics from the front row below:

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