Hull

Thursday, December 1 st 2005 – 8:00 p.m.
City Hall – Hull

After a long time of checking flight fares, train and ferry schedules, we’ve finally decided: We’re going to Hull and Gateshead! Both places are close enough to Newcastle International Airport, and wonderfully, both of these shows do take place. Getting to Hull from Peterlee, where we were staying with friends the first night, takes us past a moor – a beautiful scenery, even from the road. We wonder what Hull is going to be like – the place with the lowest living quality in all of England, someone told us. What we connect with Hull is The Housemartins, a band that later spawned Beats International, The Beautiful South and Fatboy Slim. Hull can’t be all that bad after all…

It’s around noon when we reach Hull. The road coming in from the north which we’ve travelled on all the way takes us directly to our internet booked B&B. It’s rather a hotel and it’s situated suitably close to the train station (signposted from all directions!) and the venue, Hull City Hall. These things are so easy in the days of the internet! Needless to say, we’ve also booked our flights and the car online… When we check into the hotel, the reception guy asks us what brings us to Hull. “Bob Geldof, he’s playing tonight” – “Oh is he!” – he has obviously not heard about the gig. We try to convince him to skip his rugby training for a night in the town hall. He refuses, even though we make some impression when we reveal that we’ve come all the way to Hull from Germany especially to see Bob…

Equipped with the card key, we go looking for our room. We find the door with the right number on it – but stop in amazement after we’ve walked through: There are about ten mattresses in this room, without sheets, leaning on the walls and lying on the floor… And it’s freezing cold in here. This must be some kind of mistake - a funny one! Giggling, we make our way back to the reception. Halfway down, we meet someone who brings up the correct card key. Mr Rugby must have been a bit confused with our Geldof stories!

We decide to go looking for the venue and some food. It’s a clear day, but very windy. We can smell the sea, it’s not far. Another plus for Hull, I love towns close to the sea!

We find an Indian Restaurant, just about to close for the afternoon, but they heat up the kitchen for us again. Friendly waiter, lovely food! I’m running a cold but this warms me up. Yummy.

We step outside into the wind again and walk on towards the city hall. It’s an old white building looking out onto a square. As we later find out, it was built as a town hall in 1903 and party destroyed in the war, among it a valuable organ. “…destroyed by enemy action”, a metal sign on the stairway reads. Oh dear – they mean “us”– our grandparents’ generation who waged a terrible war more than half a century ago. For Germans, there’s no hiding from the past. How could anyone want to destroy this beautiful house?

In the City Hall ticket office, we check for tickets. “No problem, still many available”, the friendly woman tells us. Behind her on the wall, I’ve spotted a large Geldof poster and ask if by any chance she would have a spare one..? “Not much point in having this one here after today”, she says and starts talking the poster off the wall for me. I’ve already started to like Hull people!

There’s still plenty of time left, but it’s too cold and uncomfortable to do much walking. Also, it is already getting dark – even earlier than in the north of Germany. We spend some time wondering why that is, as we’re further to the west. Hm. Hull must be on the eastern edge of the time zone, while Hamburg and Berlin are on the opposite end – the western end – of our time zone. As if we hadn’t anything else to wonder about… There’s more wind, coming from all directions. I’m glad we didn’t sail into Hull… I’ve left my blue woolly hat in the hotel, which make me immediately decide against doing any sights (not that we knew what or where they were…) We’re both fine with just looking around the city centre, which is illuminated with Christmas symbols. A shopping centre which seems to be built over the river is a place to warm up, later we have a coffee in a café that looks like it had been a storehouse on the wharf in former times. It’s a beautiful place with a high ceiling, with home roasted coffee and lots of newspapers.

There’s still time to bring the few goodies we’ve bought back to the hotel and have a pint in the hotel bar. The bar woman is from Poland. We have a beer that I don’t like. Oh well, you need to try them all.

Once again, we decide for warm comfortable clothes and against the party outfit for a girl’s night out… At some point, we should probably just don’t bother to even bring them along! We never wear them anyway. “Flat shoes and baggy jumpers”, that’s still our first choice after all those years – something we were once famous, or probably rather notoriously known for…

Once inside the City Hall, we’re led directly into the bar. The main hall itself isn’t open yet and people are expected to have a drink before the doors open. We don’t mind that at all! We even find a table in the pretty crowded bar. On all the tables, there are green pieces of paper – flyers. A reminder to go and check out all the merchandise, tonight or on www.bobgeldof.info . Aha – that must have come from Ian and Tina! A good idea, those flyers. Everybody looks at them.  A good opportunity for us to look at the people in the room! We quickly realize that almost everybody here tonight is older than us. We are, even though we’re well in our thirties, considerably lowering the age average here tonight. We start to understand that shows in England are different from any other countries where we’ve seen Bob before. In Germany, Bob is highly respected for his humanitarian work, but also for his music – Rats and solo work. In Ireland, he’s “one of us who has gone far”. In England, it seems to be a different story. Too many stories in the yellow press, too much politics, only the odd music review here and there… The crowd tonight seems to consist mainly of people who were impressed with Live 8 this year, and of some who were Boomtown Rats fans. We spot some copies of “Is that it?” and Rats’ records people have brought with them to have them signed. Nobody seems to have brought a worn copy of “Vegetarians” or “Happy Club”.

I also look around for some certain very young fan... I know there’s at least one person from the internet forum in the audience – but as I haven’t contacted her, it’s hard to tell who she could be.

We look around the place a bit more. Leading up from the spacious entrance area is a long representative flight of stairs. In the middle of the stairs stands a guy who hands out flyers to everybody coming in – the same green flyers we’ve noticed on the bar tables. He may have something to do with Tina and Ian. “Are you with Ian and Tina”, I ask him. “Yes”, he says, and something clicks in my head. “Are you Ian?” Yes, he grins. We’ve finally met Ian! We introduce ourselves, it’s great to meet him. He directs us to the merchandise stand where we meet Tina. She seems happy to meet us too. A nice welcome!

Both Tina and Ian are busy giving out flyers and selling stuff. The business seems to be going well. But now the doors to the hall are open and we go inside. It is an all-seated venue. Not so nice, for my liking. Our seats are towards the back, middle-ish. Funny enough, we have perfect view, even though there’s only a small decline of the rows of seats before us: Everybody is smaller than us! An experience we had before some years ago in Glasgow. We were standing literally in the last row of the Glasgow venue Barrowlands, but could even see the feet of the band onstage! We just seem to be taller than average here in the north.

There’s no support band. Lights go out, the band walk onstage. They look pretty much unchanged. Except Vince. The violin player once again wears some weird facial hair. This time it reminds me of some time back in the ‘nineties when they all sported funny beards and were called “amigos”. For some reason, Vince, who wasn’t in the band back then, now goes through his amigo phase. Also, he is not wearing the notorious string vest today. Instead, he has a normal t-shirt underneath his jacket.

Pete wears the shirt with the coffee bean pattern in nice colours, Alan has put on a striped shirt in this French fishermen style. Bob wears, as always, a suit. The first thing he does is tell the audience that his “voice is fucked”. He has a cold and will not sing some songs with high vocal parts. Poor man. It gets worse during the show, but he keeps on going.

This is the set list:

Great song of indifference

Love or something

A sex thing

In the pouring rain

My hippie angel

Beat of the night

The harvest moon

When the night comes

Walking back to happiness

Mondays

Mudslide

Birthday Suit

Someone’s looking

Joey

Mary of the fourth form

Rat Trap

Pale white girls

Diamond smiles

Return of indifference

After not having seen Bob live for one and a half years, we really enjoy being here. And like the last time in Ireland, we realize that seeing shows over here is different in another aspect: There’s more talking in between songs. Bob can be sure people understand him 100% and he makes full use of his natural abilities in telling a story. Something puzzles me: Every “fuck” and “crap” is politely laughed and clapped about. Is this what people have come to hear? I’ve never noticed that before. People seem to enjoy the discrepancy in someone who has gained some considerable power and influence, even on the stage of world politics, but who uses the f-word all the time. They downright expect it from him! Weird. An English crowd is so different from a German crowd. 

We get to hear an entirely new story about the background behind some songs. Among them “Beat of the night”, it has something to do with what people did before television was invented... Tell and act out stories, keep oral narrative alive, entertain others. Bob’s father used to do this story when Bob was a kid. Many years later, Bob tried to catch the spirit of those stories and turned it into a song. Fascinatingly, in performing the song and telling us the story behind it, Bob does his fair bit of narrating – tell a story is something he definitely is gifted with! I have my own memories of that song – a friend who always claimed that “Beat of the night” stuck out from the rest of Bob’s songs, and all the times I’ve heard this song years back. Back then, it was a bit different. It immediately followed “Love or something” in the set, in fact the last note of “Love or something” turned into the first of “Beat”. The stage would be bathed in a blue light, or red, when Bob sang “red, red, red…” and Bob would do a performance, sometimes down on his knees on the floor mid-stage. These days it’s different. No knees, no blue light (in fact, there’s hardly any significant light at all), and a different beginning. Not an easy one it seems! They start, then stop – it seems that Pete on the keyboard has made a mistake. “30 years of playing together, and now this”, Bob jeers. Pete keeps a straight face. They start again – this time Bob is off-cue with the vocals. Laughter both onstage and offstage. The audience loves it. The third time, everybody gets it right and they play a perfect version of  “Beat of the night”.

There’s more from the first solo album “Deep in the heart of nowhere”: “In the pouring rain”. While for nearly 20 years I’d thought this song was about the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, in reality this song is about AIDS. Today, December 1st, is international AIDS day, and Bob looks back on what has happened between the mid eighties when the song was written and people only started to realize that HIV and AIDS was more than just about some gays in California, and now. Up till today, some 40 million people are infected with HIV, with about 15.000 new infections every day – tendency rising.

Having a good view from where we’re seated also means that we can see Niall. During “Pouring Rain”, he sings the high backing vocals. I’m deeply impressed with this. On the recording, they were sung by Annie Lennox! Niall does a perfect job – sing Annie Lennox and play drums at the same time. Most people would have a hard time accomplishing either of the two things!

The sound is exceptionally good throughout the set.

After one and a half years, we get to hear a new song – it isn’t a new song really, but one of the bonus tracks from the solo compilation album, “Harvest Moon”. It’s a pleasant song, a bit country, with Alan playing the spinet, an old-fashioned sort of piano, on his keyboard.

Bob has obviously thought about famous people from Hull as well. He tells the audience there are three famous Hull people who have influenced him: Philip Larkin, William Wilberforce and a third person I don’t recall. Only having come across Larkin very briefly and knowing hardly anything about Wilberforce, I’ll stick to my Housemartins reference!

During “Mondays” we sneak out to go to the toilet. Don’t make yourself visible for the man on the stage – a comment or two would be sure as fate! Because everybody is still sitting in their seats at this point, getting through isn’t all that easy. When we come back, we decide to rather stay in the back, standing. I don’t want to sit during the entire show anyway! Concerts are for dancing or at least tapping a foot, as far as I’m concerned!

We’re back for Mudslide and after that, Birthday Suit. For the first time it seems to have lost its lachrymosity, that hard-to-bear pain. I think that’s good – there are more instruments, and it just doesn’t seem to hurt so much anymore for Bob to sing it. When he first performed tracks from “Sex Age and Death”, he would “disappear for a while”. He wouldn’t look at anyone while singing, and personally I always found it hard to listen to “Birthday Suit”. Maybe it has just become a bit easier for him? Tonight is the first time it does not bring tears to my eyes.

The third track from SA&D is Pale White Girls. Is it only me or is there some different beginning too? Or has someone messed up their cue? In any case, that one hasn’t lost its magic for me. I don’t think it ever will. Can we have some new songs like that please Bob?

Of the three encores, the last one is a reprise of “Indifference”. Finally, this gets people out of their seats. Bob gets them to sing as well, in the “my turn”-“your turn” way. At the end of the song, the band line up on the edge of the stage and play to the left, right and front of the house. Everybody loves it. If it hadn’t been for Bob’s cold and his voice that doesn’t get better, there may have been another encore. But so, sadly it’s the end of the show. Thank you Bob for having performed despite your flu! We’re already looking forward to tomorrow night – Gateshead!

To our complete bewilderment, the bar is closed when people come filing out of the hall. Haven’t closing hours been abandoned? Not in the Hull City Hall bar, at least – they’re missing out on a lot of turn-over! Not so bad for Tina and Ian on the other hand, who are quite busy at the merch stand. Why not let people spend their drink money on T-shirts and CDs instead?

Before it’s time to hit the hay, we need to find something to eat. The Indian food was hours ago, and now we’re hungry. Where’s the chipper?

We’re up for a culture clash. We find a “greasy spoon” style fast food place. For us, it’s like an eat-in cinema: Everybody in here is a) extremely drunk; b) overdressed for this place and not dressed half warm enough (it’s December and we see bare shoulders, legs, backs and plenty of belly-buttons and “love-handles”!) and c) constantly on their mobiles. I eat my fatty vinegary chips. No visit to England without that. Not that there was anything else without meat on the menu... We sit quietly in a corner and silently watch this bizarre movie all around us. The only normal person in here is the very friendly woman behind the counter.

Back at our hotel, we manage not to stumble over the step immediately after you come in. No spare matresses in sight. We set the alarm – just in case. We sleep well in Hull, this windy, friendly place where bars close too early. Glad we made it there!