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Sunday
17th August
03
La Cabana Beach
Club, Marbella
It's bloody rubbish
this job sometimes. Getting up at 4am to catch
the 6.30 Easyjet from Liverpool to Malaga, just to
spend the day lounging round 5-star hotels and having
ones every whim attended to!
The pictures say it all....Hotel Los Monteros in
Marbella was superb. Everything was fabulous,
from the rooms to the gardens to the food. It
was a pity that we would only be here for a day.
After lunch, we all decided to spend an hour or two
soaking up the sun in the gardens and drinking Fanta
limón. Well all of us except Roy of
course. He decided to retire to his bedroom and
hang upside down in the wardrobe for the
afternoon. This kind of climate does not suit
our drummer, who would much rather be doing a
corporate in Helsinki in December. Fair play to
him though, he never moans about the heat, just tries
to find some shade where he can read back issues of
"Classic Car" magazine.
Eddie refused to take some advice and very nearly
ended up with sun stroke. Not realising that the
sun down here is just a bit different from a half-hour
session on sun bed, trying to stand up after an hour
flat on his back proved a little taxing. Derek
and Rick were mildly amused at the similarity Eddie
showed to a new born foal, as the dizziness hit him.
At about 5pm, it was off to the beach club to inspect
the equipment for tonight's show. This is always
a bit of a lottery. What will be there? and
perhaps more importantly...what won't? It's a
safe bet that something will be broken or an amplifier
will have a channel not working. In this case,
everything seemed to be OK. the drum kit was a
little more ostentatious than we would have liked, but
at least there were no bits missing from it.
The location was amazing. Perhaps not very rock
n roll, but still, playing outdoors with the stage overlooking
a swimming pool is not something that we do
everyday. The sound check took quite a while, as
they tend to on these fly-outs and we were all glad to
get out of there and go back to the hotel for dinner.
The dinner, when it came, we took outside in the
gardens. I can't remember what we had, but I do
remember we all thoroughly enjoyed it. We were
not on stage till midnight, so there was time to go
back to the rooms for a kip and a shower before we met
back up to go down to the Beach Club. 
 
 
Arriving back at the Club about half past eleven,
we found it teeming with people, beautifully lit and
looking like some sort of Hollywood party. The
dressing room, was presumably a bit of an afterthought
for the organisers. Basically there wasn't
one. "But where shall we change?".....it
was a reasonable request. We were shown to the
Club's First Aid room. This was little more than a
cupboard about 12' x 8', and it was full of chairs and
medically type thingys. Great! Also...it was like
a furnace. There was sweat dripping off us before
we'd even finished getting ready. Tempers were
getting frayed as we knocked into each other.
Eddie particularly, was not having a nice time, the
sunbathing had taken its' toll and he didn't feel too
clever.
It was actually a relief to get out and get on stage,
where at least there was a gentle breeze. We got
through about three songs before the power went
off. Traipsing back to the "dressing
room" we were pissed off and there were
"words" exchanged between us. Finally
getting the call that everything was now ok and we could
go back on, we tried to motivate ourselves for a
performance. I'm not sure whether it was a help of a
hindrance to us, but the appearance of 10 naked girls
with body paint dancing in front of the stage seemed to
liven things up a bit. I think it certainly
distracted the audiences attention away from us and to
be honest, it certainly took our minds off what was not
a particularly pleasant gig. You won't drink the
water again......will you Eddie?
We'd been on about 40 minutes when the unpleasantness
started. Well, I say unpleasantness, but we found
it very amusing. On the far side of the pool, some
sort of altercation was going on between a woman, a
bloke and another bloke. A drink was thrown, there
was shouting and then people started being thrown in the
pool. It was hilarious, just like that Peter Sellers
film, posh frocks 'n' all.
After the show we hung around for a couple of drinks,
but most of the punters were leaving as they were by now
too pissed to stand up properly.....and the girls had
put their clothes back on! Time for bed
lads...10.30 flight in the morning.
PS
Damon Hill
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