12 noon

I arrived at the venue to find a coach load of people, but quickly realised they were football supporters off to see an away match, or something. Did spot two likely looking chaps, however, and established contact. Yep - they were Friends. We waited for a while, before a van arrived with the staging, followed soon after by Chris Cooke - former ATF manager - who was directing the event. Between us, it was little effort to get the staging into the hall and get it assembled. By then the sound equipment had arrived, and was set up in an hour or so. Soon after 2pm, band members began to wander in. It was the first time I'd seen more than two of them at once since Greenbelt '84 - over 15 years ago. I was, I have to admit, getting not a little thrilled with things. The lads from support band The Late Show arrived and set up their equipment, too, then the soundcheck was ready to begin.

3:15pm

Several minutes were spent plugging in guitars, and setting pedals, and so on, before they actually started to rehearse, beginning, as one might expect, with a run through of Joy, followed by Listen To Me without vocals. They were trying to get the instruments to sound right, before the tackling the issue of vocals. But there was no avoiding it, and they did another run through of Listen To Me with vocals.

As the rehearsal prgressed, the lads were enjoying the fact that they couldn't remember anything anymore. They'd all been practising privately, but the set list had only been finalised in the last week, and they'd only met up once before on Friday, 10th for an initial rehearsal at HTB in London. Piercy had particular trouble remembering the lyrics, and had cue sheets on the floor. And they all had to work out how to end the songs in a live setting - the records just faded out.

Following a spontaneous ditty from Piercy towards Banks ("I know my hair is turning grey / I know my bass is blue / It may be your birthday / but I'm not as old as you") they moved on to tackle Dancing In The Shadows, which proved quite tricky to time correctly. As did Der Kommissar, which broke down shortly after it started (AP: "I've lost which song we were doing"). They did it agin, but it was difficult for Piercy to focus on the words when a few spurious Chaah!'s from Russell made Piercy giggle too much.

Next up was Who's Gonna Love You, which naturally, given it's subject resulted in a great amount of humour. Frozen Rivers broke down when Piercy forgot the order of the verses, so they re-did the ending again. A typical example of having to work out a live ending was with the next song they rehearsed, One Rule For You, where the coda gave them difficulty.

I remembered from my early days as a punter, that somebody always shouted out 'Pilgrim' at some point in their gigs, so did so here at an idle moment. Piercy laughed, and sang "Here on my island, it's nice when the sun shines", then stuck his finger in his ear and sang the first verse of Pilgrim. Then they did a decent run through of Life in The City, followed by Laser Love (JR: I miss that sound", refering to Piercy's bass intro).

Martin Neil showed how vulnerable he was in 1980-F when he introduced an unexpected drumming pattern at the beginning (JR: "I don't remember that bit." - AP: "No, leave that bit out.") To my surprise, at the point where the instrumental normally finished, they kept going into a few verses of Piercy's 1994 composition Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow. It had been Banks suggestion, in order to connect ATF with today. The song finished back in 1980-F for the end. It was Starflight next, and Piercy completely lost his way on bass during that. This was followed by Like The Power Of A Jet, for which Banks couldn't remember the opening chords, and that resulted in a couple of false starts. The final song rehearsed was Check It Out, in which Neil exelled himself when he managed a rythm on the snares that seemed impossibly fast (AP: "Pete only used to do it in just 16's."). The song broke down several tims as they tried to recall the arrangement (They even asked me!)

The sound check finished by returning to Der Kommissar as it hadn't been done properly earlier. The woman at the bar, had started wandering in by now, keeping Banks informed of the football results - he had been watching a match on TV through a window throughout the rehearsals. About 5:30pm, his wife Charlotte arrived, and I helped her prepare the tables. The band, unplugged themselves, and went off to relax. Only a couple of hours to go!

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