Spinaker Reunion Concert 4th July 2003

We thought we'd cooked our goose, but following a false start on booking a venue, we were well into the planning stages when the event was suddenly upon us, which came as a bit of a surprise.

Richard arrived from New Zealand and Scotland and a quiet close on the Ditchling Road. Professor Watson drove in from Cardiff, which was a strange but understandable decision. Andy planned to come in during the third verse, but found himself with a typed-up script of one of the famously forgotten monologues, and so was able to come in right at the start and keep going throughout. Most unlike him. And Rog had booked his back operation for the next morning, so he had to lay off the beer for the evening, which came as a major shock to his system, which was expecting the regular onslaught.

But there we were, standing together in the same room for the first time in 27 years. How would we get on? Would the old magic sparkle, or would the old rivalries and dislikes come to the fore? Where was Charlie the string bass? Where were the Cat Stevens albums (or the Lynryd Skynryd ones)? Rog's legendary foot odour was unabated, and Andy seemed disappointed that everyone else was less than sufficiently thrilled about the administrative skills he had demonstrated.

Reheasing is not the most accurate description for what happened in the afternoon: music with baggage would have more appropriately been a term employed. Much of the baggage was loving or nostalgic, but there were occasional glimpses of a suggestion that various songs or chorus could be 'arranged' or even that individuals might be making more effective use of the opportunity to entertain people if they played some of the right chords at some of the right times. Oh, subtlety! But probably true. So the time came to say 'Let's go with what we've got,' and we started down a road we always promised ouselves never to do; Spinaker went electric. Not really.

But we rigged The FatCharlie PA and made sure all the guitars were the sort we could plug in. Not that we wanted to be loud, but we wanted to be heard, and we couldn't be sure that in a pub environment we would be sufficient to carry over the clink of ice cubes and laughter...

Breath was bated, Penny was present and emotionally charged, Richard ate his preparatory handful of dandruff and the gig was on...

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