The Final Week… Scotland, Sheffield & Bournemouth.

So I get back behind my computer following some Christmas action and it seems as though the blogs I wrote on the plane for the final dates are nowhere to be found. I could blame the computer or the early flight mixed with alcohol, but I will not… ok, yes I will. Anyways, instead I will give a quick rundown of the last week on tour…

Following Wembley, we headed back to Scotland and finally we’d see what that country was all about. We called it our Scottish Mini-Tour. Four days and three shows in the birthplace of golf… and Scotch I suppose. First stop was Glasgow. Once again the show was situated away from any exciting civilization, so I pretty much kept to the venue all day. It was a Sunday and having heard how wild the Glasgow shows could get, I quickly assumed that this was no coincidence. The best way to ATTEMPT to calm a rowdy crowd is to catch them at their weakest - The Sabbath! ha… Our dressing room was equipped with a TV and couch so I quite enjoyed my day, watching Man U beat rival Liverpool and Arsenal defeat Chelsea on a goal by former Chelsea player Gallas. How good must that have felt…

The SECC felt like playing a festival show, indoors. The seating was spread wide in front of the stage and didn’t go very deep to the back. Picture one of those Japanese fans and thats how it looked. I would question the view some of the people on the sides may have had, but by the time Quo went on, most of them were partying in the isles in typical Quo fashion. During our set, for the first time and for the rest of the tour, people actually said fuck it and stood up front, along the rail for us. That was a good feeling. To tell you the truth, being around the Scottish for the next few days felt a lot like home. Of all the places we’d been, the Scot’s certainly felt the most like Canadians… to me anyway.

Following the show, I retreated back to the dressing room where I took in some American Football until the buses left for Aberdeen. On a sort of funny note, while hanging outside the bus I wrote “B & The North” in the salt stains. Realizing I’d left our name open to insult, I took it upon myself to add “SUCKS” after it. Hours later when the crew boarded, they were all like “Someone wrote some shit about you guys on the bus” finding it quite funny. When I told them it was me, they laughed because they should have known considering the use of the word “SUCKS”; it not being a word someone from the UK would commonly use…

Aberdeen was another blur. Woke up, walked a golf course that neighboured the parking lot, played, partied and then left for Dundee. I will point out that, like Canadians, people were still golfing and it was a week before Christmas. No one in Toronto would be still golfing, but if it were still green and above zero degrees back home, I guarantee they would have. To tell the truth, thinking back now it was here that I wrote that shit on the bus, not Glasgow… ooops.

Dundee started with a day off. I truly loved this town. Our hotel was the classiest we’d been in, and it felt a lot like Ipswich which made me reflect on all the places we’d been and how I’d felt when the tour was just getting under way. We’d come so far in this short time, that Ipswich felt like months ago at this point.

Being the last day off we, along with a few of the crew members, hit up a pub to celebrate. Many of them had been shopping all day, something I hadn’t even started yet. Mainly because A) I have no room to bring anything back with me and B) the UK is expensive as shit!

After a few pints we hit up KFC on the way back to the hotel. I hardly remembered this the next morning, but I’m sure it was good. I also had limited recollection of swimming in the hotel pool in my boxers and then parading around the changeroom naked afterwards. Good times. I do remember that after all of that, T2 and I sat down at the hotel bar and enjoyed some drinks and conversation with two of Quo’s fans. Throughout the tour I never got tired of this so I was happy that on the final night I got a chance to do it one last time…

Dundee was a hall show. A beautiful hall where the fans stood right up against the stage and had me trying not to cruch their fingers for the entire night. The hall was located in the city square, so out front it was a gorgeous night scene, complete with fountains, Christmas lights and decorations.

Being it was our last show in a hall, following our last day off, the reality of the situation was beginning to set in. This was not helped by the fact that every show was now also the last for many of the diehards and they would become emotional during their goodbyes. Awwwwww…

Sheffield may have been our best performance of the tour. I don’t know if it was our most entertaining show but we sounded and played great. There’s not much more to say about that day. It was huge arena (by UK standards). I believe only the O2 has a larger capacity but its all I really saw of the city. I think as the days wound down, I lost my urge to look around because I just wanted to soak in as much of the musical aspect of it all before it ended…

And it all ended the next day in Bournemouth. A great day because I had 2 long-time friends from Canada along for the ride which took my mind away from the fact it was coming to an end. I was pumped for them to see it because I alone would never be able to ever explain just what went on here. Having some outsider observation was perfect.

And the best part of it all? The show was AMAZING! The place was already packed by the time we hit the stage and when the lights dimmed, the crowd may have actually roared for us. The next 40 minutes are truly a blur. I remember more of the crowds performance that night than ours. They said goodbye to us the best way I could imagine. I remember as showtime neared, I got nervous that the last one would be a let down, but in the end it was quite possibly the most fun show of the tour and the fans definitely get all the credit.

As I headed back to Purley, cramped up in a van again, it was perhaps the longest 1 hour drive of my life. For 2 months I had lived out a dream. A dream that would have been amazing no matter the circumstances, but the fact that everything went far, far better than I could have ever imagined, makes it something I will truly never forget. Not in this lifetime at least….