Dublin National concert hall part 2
Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:16 pm
Hi all, yes of course they made it, they are pro`s but we had no idea how many of them had arrived except for Colin Keyes who was already at the hotel. Matt and I came through to the baggage claim area to find Gus Douglas and half the band standing there, how they got there before us is still a mystery, but are the others here? Anyway the plan was to collect the baggage from the carousel and off we go - that should be simple enough shouldn’t it? Well no not really, three flights had come in at the same time and all the baggage from the three flights were unloaded onto the one carousel. It was like being at Old Trafford on a saturday afternoon, it took an hour to retrieve our luggage.
We were now running seriously late, so taxi to the hotel, drop the bags off and then onto the National Concert Hall for band call and rehearsals. Yes that was the plan and as just about everything else had gone wrong why should it change now. Matt, Gus, Steve the drummer and moi piled into a taxi, luckily it was a small mini bus otherwise we would never have got all our luggage in. Anyway we’re now off, clear roads and no snow so in 10-15 minutes we should be at the hotel. After half an hour we were still not there so it was decided to forget unloading at the hotel and go straight to the Concert Hall with all our baggage. We duly arrived at the stage door 45 minutes after leaving the airport and unloaded all the cases, holdalls and suits into the dressing rooms. The building itself is enormous and is home to the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, everywhere you turn there are musical instruments, for example one whole corridor contained about 20 double basses, another harps, all in their cases. All the dressing rooms had a piano in them, I have seen so much musical equipment, now its 4`oclock and time for rehearsals and time to see if everybody had got there. Well I am happy to report that despite flying from airports all over the country and with all the weather and travel chaos everybody had arrived.
By now the Hello magazine photographer Kip Carroll had arrived to take a few snaps, it was now time for me to disappear and find the merchandise set up area, the next couple of hours flew by and before we knew it, it’s showtime, the doors opened and this wall of people came in. The show was a complete sell out, all 1,200+ seats, the merchandise stand was set up at the front entrance of the concert hall not too far from the auditorium so I was able to keep popping in from time to see how things were going. From the reaction of the crowd they seemed to be loving it, the applause was so loud, this could be down to the fact that it was a bit cold that night and they were trying to keep their hands warm or it might just be that he was very good, in all fairness he was excellent. Matt introduced two new songs into the show that night, the first one being The Beatles number Something and the other one a Sammy Davis jr number titled If they could see me now. The Sammy Davis number is one of my favourite songs of all time and boy oh boy did he sing it well, in fact I would go as far as to say I have never heard it sung better by anyone else, I just hope he doesn’t read this as he will be unbearable.
Anyway with end of the show fast approaching I went back to the merchandise stall and awaited the arrival of the son of the legend for the meet and greet part of the show. As I stood there the manager of the concert hall came up to me and asked me “where would you like the barriers to goâ€, “wherever you think†I said not wanting to look stupid, I mean barriers, why we would we want barriers? Well he obviously knew something that I didn’t because the audience came out from the auditorium, into the foyer and half of them stayed there wishing to meet the son of the legend, I have never ever seen as many people wanting to meet Matt. It was wonderful. A local journalist and D.J. Martina Clark popped in to see Matt and say hello which was nice, the crowds finally subsided after a couple of hours and it was time to pack 3 ton of luggage into the back of another taxi and finally get to the Hotel to unwind. The following morning it was like rewind, back to the airport, on the plane, back to Heathrow, in a cab back to Monro Towers. It was so simple, the only slightly worrying bit was when we walked out of Terminal 1 at Heathrow to get our taxi ,we found that they had sent the same one, yes you’ve guessed it the one that had broken down taking us there, still we got back safetly, a big thanks to Pat Egan the promoter of the show and all the staff at the National Concert Hall in Dublin for looking after us all so well, to the Monro family for letting me do what I do and to my wife Sue for allowing me to keep doing what I love, last but not least to all the members of the website for all your kind words and comments.
Take care all
Paul
We were now running seriously late, so taxi to the hotel, drop the bags off and then onto the National Concert Hall for band call and rehearsals. Yes that was the plan and as just about everything else had gone wrong why should it change now. Matt, Gus, Steve the drummer and moi piled into a taxi, luckily it was a small mini bus otherwise we would never have got all our luggage in. Anyway we’re now off, clear roads and no snow so in 10-15 minutes we should be at the hotel. After half an hour we were still not there so it was decided to forget unloading at the hotel and go straight to the Concert Hall with all our baggage. We duly arrived at the stage door 45 minutes after leaving the airport and unloaded all the cases, holdalls and suits into the dressing rooms. The building itself is enormous and is home to the RTE National Symphony Orchestra, everywhere you turn there are musical instruments, for example one whole corridor contained about 20 double basses, another harps, all in their cases. All the dressing rooms had a piano in them, I have seen so much musical equipment, now its 4`oclock and time for rehearsals and time to see if everybody had got there. Well I am happy to report that despite flying from airports all over the country and with all the weather and travel chaos everybody had arrived.
By now the Hello magazine photographer Kip Carroll had arrived to take a few snaps, it was now time for me to disappear and find the merchandise set up area, the next couple of hours flew by and before we knew it, it’s showtime, the doors opened and this wall of people came in. The show was a complete sell out, all 1,200+ seats, the merchandise stand was set up at the front entrance of the concert hall not too far from the auditorium so I was able to keep popping in from time to see how things were going. From the reaction of the crowd they seemed to be loving it, the applause was so loud, this could be down to the fact that it was a bit cold that night and they were trying to keep their hands warm or it might just be that he was very good, in all fairness he was excellent. Matt introduced two new songs into the show that night, the first one being The Beatles number Something and the other one a Sammy Davis jr number titled If they could see me now. The Sammy Davis number is one of my favourite songs of all time and boy oh boy did he sing it well, in fact I would go as far as to say I have never heard it sung better by anyone else, I just hope he doesn’t read this as he will be unbearable.
Anyway with end of the show fast approaching I went back to the merchandise stall and awaited the arrival of the son of the legend for the meet and greet part of the show. As I stood there the manager of the concert hall came up to me and asked me “where would you like the barriers to goâ€, “wherever you think†I said not wanting to look stupid, I mean barriers, why we would we want barriers? Well he obviously knew something that I didn’t because the audience came out from the auditorium, into the foyer and half of them stayed there wishing to meet the son of the legend, I have never ever seen as many people wanting to meet Matt. It was wonderful. A local journalist and D.J. Martina Clark popped in to see Matt and say hello which was nice, the crowds finally subsided after a couple of hours and it was time to pack 3 ton of luggage into the back of another taxi and finally get to the Hotel to unwind. The following morning it was like rewind, back to the airport, on the plane, back to Heathrow, in a cab back to Monro Towers. It was so simple, the only slightly worrying bit was when we walked out of Terminal 1 at Heathrow to get our taxi ,we found that they had sent the same one, yes you’ve guessed it the one that had broken down taking us there, still we got back safetly, a big thanks to Pat Egan the promoter of the show and all the staff at the National Concert Hall in Dublin for looking after us all so well, to the Monro family for letting me do what I do and to my wife Sue for allowing me to keep doing what I love, last but not least to all the members of the website for all your kind words and comments.
Take care all
Paul
