Public Service BROADCASTING! (They're A Band)

Yes, Conrad The Aging Hipster Strikes Again
Although, for once, he was possibly not the oldest person in the venue. What was the venue?  Why I thought you'd never ask - The Ritz in Manchester, last visited by your humble scribe about thirty years ago.

The stage, from stage level

      And here is an island with the mixing equipment.  I took this because it has relevance for a character I've created - except if I told you about him, I'd - well, I'd probably bore you*.

Just look at it!  What do all those buttons and dials do?

     Now, seeing space on the balcony stage right, I was up there before it filled up, and I was careful to be early (7:30 p.m.)

Very cluttered indeed!
That's because all the support act gear is there on top of PBS's

"Smoke Fairies", the support, are defined on Wikipedia as a couple of women playing "dream pop".  Not last night!  You can just see their drummer's kit, and the keyboard player's keyboard, and they had a bass player too.  Consequently they were very loud rock music.

Smoke Fairies

     They were hampered by that curse of most support acts, in that I'd not heard anything of theirs.  However, on last night's performance they get my Worthy Of Future Attention rating.
     By the time they finished playing the venue was crammed -

And they were three-deep on the balcony, too

Public Service Broadcasting
First, let me cue you in on this quirky band.  Technically they are two people - Wrigglesworth (splendid name!) who plays drums, and J. Willgoose Esq., who plays everything else.  Tonight JW Esq. introduced "a new friend", J. F. Abraham, who played bass, guitar, drums, keyboard and trumpet to back the others up.  And there is also their visual designer when playing live, Mr. B.  He's a lot more important than someone who flashes lights and plays videos, because PSB don't sing anything and have to sync the words of public service broadcasts to the videos on display.
     Another quirk is that JW Esq. has a bank of presets ready, so instead of speaking he presses a button and we heard "Hello we're glad to be here in -" and a faked pause whilst he consults the rest of the band "Manchester".  Likewise at the end of a song we got "That was an old one, this is a new one" or "that was a new one, this is an older one."
     Inevitably we got a shouty audience member calling out "Say something spontaneous!" to which the preset response was "I'll get back to you on that"

Setting up for PSB.  Note the mass of electronic kit for JW Esq - all on a big trolley

Before they began playing, the band had a hilarious - well - public service broadcast, about being considerate and not overdoing the pictures -

All about Tim and Geoffrey

     Tim was considerate and only took a couple of photos.  Geoffrey took endless videos.  These were of such terrible quality that he lost his friends, his parents, his dog - and then he died.
     So, I have only one further photograph:

Sputnik!

     This was a life-size replica of Sputnik, where the legs contained LED's which flashed in sync with the music.  The hemispherical head was actually an LED screen that also displayed images during songs.  Clever stuff.
     The band actually began with "Sputnik", which came over a lot better than the album version, I have to say.  Then we had the electric "Signal 30", a firm favourite.  Then "PSB", "EVA"**, Night Mail", "ROYGBIV", "Valentina" which featured the Smoke Fairies ladies singing, a commissioned track to a film of Dutch skating on frozen canals, "If War Should Come", "Spitfire" - another one the audience loved.  Then came "The Other Side", about Apollo 8 orbiting the far side of the Moon, when they were out of radio contact; at this point all the stage lighting went off, a simple but very effective motion, until AOS - Acquisition Of Signal "Houston we read you loud and clear, how do you read us?".  Finally we had "Go!", the landing of Apollo 11, and one that the shouty people had been yelling for.

GO!

     Cheating a bit, but here's a couple of screenshots from their website for "Go!"



* Although he's an interesting chap.  Army Logistics Corps, music haulage, record production, and ghost-busting.
** Extra-Vehicular Activity", not the cosmonaut's wife,