We all went up to Rotherham, on the South Yorks / Nottinghamshire border... Oh, sod that! Anyway, Cynthia, Fran and I zoomed on up to sunny Rotherham last Saturday to catch up with them dirty lazy Jadis boys. We met up with our old mucker Jenny at the Fernlea B&B - nice rooms, reasonable cost, call 01709 830884 - and had a chance to take in some site-seeing before pootling along to the Herringthorpe Leisure Centre. Unlike the Jadis gig there last year, this time the CRS thought it would be a nice idea to actually sell beer and other intoxicating alcoholic beverages, which meant that I didn't have to nip back down to the local offy to stock up.

The first thing we saw as we entered the bar was Steve Christey's arse. Not a pretty site, but what do you expect for £15? There were a few local progheads wandering around, touching the cd's and sniffing expectantly, as if someone had bought some new vinyl along. Which they hadn't. Steve Thorne, the world renounced breakfast shuffler and pencil collector was there though - he is in Jadis after all - and he was attempting to foist his brand new Part Two : Emotional Creatures cd upon an unsuspecting public. How come people don't know a) who he is and b) what he sounds like? He's a bloody superstar, sold shed's of cd's, supported them all and paid us lots of money to say that! Surely for £11 it was worth a gamble?

Well I gambled on it - and won!

Gazza Ghandler was also wandering about aimlessly, and managed to convince our Cynth to be his merch girl for the evening, bloody cheek.

Caught a bit of the first band, sounded ok, don't know who they were, had a girl singer, covered some standard classic, but I can't remember what now. Then there was a bit of a surprise. We'd heard that someone's aunt's neighbour's hairdresser had seen Clive Nolan mooching around earlier, with a tall, mysterious looking woman in tow. Surely this couldn't be the fabled Caamora, of which we had heard so much? They were up here last week, weren't they? But sure as eggs is chocolate, it bleeding well was!

The bar emptied as everyone rushed into the hall to catch glimpse of Clive and Agnieszka Swita strutting her stuff, without making eye contact with the sweaty mass, or the crowd. They played a couple of songs that I didn't catch the titles of, though one was an original song but not on the forthcoming She album - so it was probably Closer from the recently released EP - before covering Arena's Salamander and Jeff Buckley's Grace and leaving the stage.

So it was back to the bar for some more cheap beer, and a glimpse of the Caamora clan rubbing shoulder with us normal folk at the bar.

But we hardly had time before Jadis were on. So Cynth packed up her merch stuff, and took her cash box out into the crowd to catch the band. Now, you've probably got this far and think that I'm going to tell you what songs they played, and in what order. Well, in the immortal words of Banzai!! "If you think that, you wrong!!!" I know that they did play ancient classic Follow Me To Salzburg, along with recent tunes such as There's a Light, Make Me Move and Asleep in my Hands from Prontoprint. Wonderful World was also played, though it sounded wierd without Marvin's squeeling backing vocals, with Thorney having popped out for a pint. But the band did us proud anyway. Old New Boy Giulio and New New Boy Andy Marlow did wonderful jobs despite, in Andy's case, a crippling back injury!
Yet again Jadis have shown that they can afford to lose half a band and still come back fighting.

And just to finish the night off in magnificent style, Clive bought a copy of Steve Thornes EC:P2 with actual real, non-returnable cold hard cash. Which meant he paid a quid less than I did. So I got mine signed.

Last laugh is mine, I think!

Charlie O'