Henrdix the Coda, A Purple Haze!
So we have now arrived at the last concert of the tour and a great way to end things with the take no prisoners very loud Jimi Hendrix show!The Audience are greeted by a stage full of Marshalls, Vox, and Rivera amps. Clayton Doyle the Hammond specialist from Sydney was back on Hammond Organ and the young violinist Sonya was also back to join us on one of Nk's Electric Violins this time to again play some Bartok pieces that Bassist Adam who plays Electric Bass and Drummer Krzysztof on full drum kit surrounded by a battery of cymbals were invited to contribute some tasty Rhythm section embellishments to. Sonya also sat in on the Hendrix song "Drifting”. I again played the Mallet Kat Express with an extra octave through a Korg Motif ex Rack into a Mooger Fooger on the right side and a Roland Gt10 multi FX pedal board on the left and yet again the biggest Roland Keys amp I have ever seen controlled by a Yamaha stereo Volume pedal.Doug moves from Acoustic Guitar to Electric and a small array of Fx pedals to complete the transformation from the music of Bach/Ellington to arrangements of music by Jimi Hendrix!
We played for over Three and a half hours and as tired as we should have been the band after the night before we were seriously on form and "kicking A**" as they say,really sending out a wall of sound in true Hendrix style. Nigel threw us a curveball for the encore in the shape of the standard "Honeysuckle Rose" and the Hendrix classic "Hey Joe" to finish.
Backstage was again packed with well wishers and musicians, some ended up back at the hotel including the members of the Aston Villa fan club who we had seen at the gigs in Sydney and Brisbane! To think at the same time as we were celebrating the Successful conclusion of the tour back at the suite top of the hotel the Australian Premier and the American Ambassador were also staying there just down the corridor.The night ended for me with an unscheduled trip outside the hotel! This came about because when I left the party I got in the lift put the keycard in pressed the button for my floor and nothing happened! I tried many more times pushing in and pulling out the Keycard followed by pressing the floor button with no result wiping it on my clothes then trying again with no luck,so instead I hit on the bright idea of trying another floor and bingo the lift went down to the 18th one floor lower than I needed to go but I thought if I could then find some stairs I could walk up to my floor. Anyway I ended up walking around the 18th until I found some stairs, I then went through the door into the stairwell and of course once the door shut behind me I realised it was a security lock and of course every floor would be the same, meaning its not going to open at all from the staircase side, so I then ran downstairs desperately trying to open the door onto each floor that I arrived on with no success until I gave up that idea and just kept walking down the stairs praying that there was a way out at the ground floor. When I finally arrived at the bottom luckily the door opened however onto the Street not into the hotel as i thought it would and at these stairs had brought me to the back of the building! I then had to walk around the block to the front of the hotel and into the lobby! The receptionist looked up then straight back down to whatever she was doing as I uttered the embarrassing words "Nigel Kennedy band, I am staying here and the lift didn't work" pointing towards the Lifts to which the Receptionist without looking up just replied "Of course you are" which made me feel even more Foolish! I chose a different lift this time and was relieved when i put the keycard in and this time the floor button lit up and that took me up to my floor with no fuss! I found out in the morning that quite a few of us had done exactly the same thing with the lift and followed up with the same trip downstairs and around the outside of the building into the front again ! They probably have us on CCTV and are watching it right now laughing their heads off each time another musician appears in the reception area.
Well that's the end of Australian tour never boring and as
Now on the way back to
Next stop on the Nigel Kennedy experience goes to Europe starting with St Moritz-Switzerland!...
Comments