Bands Seen

  Glenn Tilbrook

Date:

Monday, March 21, 1994

Venue:

The Roadmender

Location:

Northampton

Notes:

I've seen Squeeze live several times, as well as seeing Glenn on his solo tours and also once a great acoustic gig by just Glenn & Chris together, around 1995, which was terrific. The first time I saw Glenn solo (early 90's) he did a gig in the bar of Northampton's Roadmender Club (not the main room but in the bar) and played for around 3 hours. Half doing Squeeze songs and half doing covers and taking requests. He even sang Madonna's Like A Virgin after I'd asked him purely as joke, never for one minute thinking he'd really sing it! Lol. He was amazing. I could never tire of Squeeze. Such talent.

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This tour has started to seem like a sequence from The Glenn Miller Story: there’s a shot from a low angle of a train racing by, overlaid with a page-a-day calendar whose pages are flying off, fading to a cheering crowd with hats flying in the air and zooming on to town names that are gone just as quickly as they come – Edinburgh, Glasgow, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Stoke, Leicester, Northampton, Portsmouth. But here in week three, small things are starting to irritate me. Why is the maid cleaning the rooms in my corridor playing Radio 2 at a volume more suited to a rave? Does nobody in Stoke-on-Rent ever want a service wash in the launderette on a Saturday? Am I becoming a grumpy old git?

Sound check is very brief – 15 minutes maximum, easy peasy. The highlight of the day is, of course, the gig itself. I will do any requests within reason, so long as I know at least one verse and chorus. This has led to my doing “Like a Virgin” in Northampton, but refusing “Smoke on the Water” in Portsmouth. There are limits, I’m sure you’d agree.

Pop, Singer-Songwriter, and Solo Wave.

Seen By:

Poppydog