Sheena (Is A Punk Rocker)
So, from the sublime... to the cor blimey...!!
Live Aid and its 1986 follow-up, Sport Aid, inspired in the UK the creation of two biennial charity fundraising events: Comic Relief, a telethon founded by screenwriter Richard (
4 Weddings and A Funeral) Curtis and comedian (& now distinguished Shakespearean actor) Lenny Henry, for comics to do what rock stars had done (and comedy is/was the new rock'n'roll); and Sport Relief – basically a weekend of sponsored sports events nationwide, be that running, swimming, cycling, hula-hooping, pogo-sticking... Comic Relief is staged in odd-numbered years, Sport Relief in even-numbered years.
In 2015 the Comic Relief telethon raised just shy of £99.5million; in 2016, Sport Relief, £72.5million (
http://www.sportrelief.com/), so it's a big deal. While sponsored races of course take place in local recreation grounds and sports facilities up and down the land, since 2014, the big showcase events have been held in the Olympic Park. Music is a big part of this, used both for encouraging participants and entertaining spectators while nothing much is going on (which is generally the case in most road races).
The pUKEs were approached by Sport Relief 2016 to participate in the third day of the Olympic Park festivities, Sun Mar 20. Because of the setting we were going to have to do an almost all-acoustic gig, which we don't often do, and we practiced like mad to get it together. We were all really quite excited about the gig, even though it meant getting up at sparrow's fart on a Sunday morning, all proudly wearing our band T's.
It was perhaps the strangest gig we've ever done - and you can imagine, we've set the bar pretty high on strange gigs!
The QE Olympic Park is big, over 560 acres, containing the Olympic Stadium, Pool, and Velodrome. We were asked to do three sets at three different locations to be assigned to us on the day. Our initial assignment was the Velodrome, but instead of playing inside to an audience, we were sent outside to the VeloPark (it was 9:30 am and
freezing, to perform for the cyclists using the road race circuit.
Our first 'gig' was to give the participants in the cycle 'road run' a send-off (so many cyclists turned up to participate, they were sent off at two minute intervals in groups of twenty). But instead of putting us in front of the start line so we could play
to the cyclists, the organisers set us up on a stage parallel to and 20yards
back, so we found ourselves performing to a load of backsides disappearing into the distance at 2-minute intervals!
When that set was over, we went inside into the Velodrome in search of warmth and sustenance, but we only had a few minutes before the organisers arrived to send us to our next spot (we only had 25 minutes between sets, so between striking the first set & collecting all our gear, hauling it on to the next spot and setting up again, there was virtually no time at all). This next 'venue' was even more bonkers than the previous one. They set us down in the middle of the road circuit (you can see it on
this map - we were right in the little quadrilateral between the pink circuit and the yellow loop). This time, we're playing to no-one except...
whoosh! There goes a group of cyclists down the track.... and, two minutes later,
whoosh! Here they come up the back straight , and
whoosh! They've gone again. And of course, we're acoustic, so what sound we do make is travelling nowhere.
That set over, we'd only just made it back to the Velodrome, when we were sought out and sent out again for our final set, this time to just outside the Olympic Stadium - over half-a-mile away - and remember, we've only got 25 minutes between sets! When we get there, we can't find anyone to tell us where exactly we're supposed to set up! We in the end find our spot, but the event we're supposed now to be entertaining - a sponsored run - had started two hours previously, so once again we ended up performing to the breeze; as about the only participants remaining for us to support were the proverbial one man and his dog!
A gig, we all swore after, of which we shall never speak again!
Anyway, we opened with this one, the first track on our album and an opening number in many of our sets. And this is my final number for you this week.