The Slade-gig on February 4th, 2006

The gig in Næstved, February 4th, I just had to attend, as it was my 1-year anniversary with the "new" Slade. One year ago on February 4th in the town of Rødovre I saw my first Slade-concert since 1978 so this just had to be celebrated.
I took off from Odense at 2 p.m. and although I had to take two trains it was a smooth ride of only 90 minutes. When I got off the train in Næstved I accidentally ran into John in the street and he directed me to the hotel. In the reception I then bumped into Dave as well.
I got the key to my hotel room and went up to unpack, get something to eat and change clothes. Don and Hanne had to go straight to the venue for the sound check so instead I met up with Dave, John, Mal and some of the Danish friends in the hotel bar and we drove to the venue at 7.45 p.m. It was freezingly cold, but luckily it wasn't a long drive.
It was good seeing Don backstage and I had to have a couple of hugs and kisses to get warm again. Then I went out front to say hello to Hanne who was in the merchandise booth. You can now buy a lot of Slade-merchandise here in Denmark such as CDs, T-shirts, keyrings, mouse pads and string bags.
I spent the next hour backstage talking to Don about current events, old days and everything 'n between and then it was time for the band to go on stage. I went out front to meet up with Slade-fans Per and Kirsten and the concert started. The set list was the same as last Saturday, but there was no violin on Run Runaway this time. Instead Dave slipped on the floor and almost fell down from the stage, hurting his arm. It looked rather scary, but Dave just joked about it from stage.
When the band got to Gudbuy T'Jane Mal had a new go at girls wanting to be boys and vice versa, and he asked if there were any boys in the audience secretly called Jane. It didn't seem to be the case. Instead a bunch of middle aged women rushed to the stage to touch Dave's shoes. There seems to be a shoe fetishism developing around the band these days. God knows why!!??!!
The stage was very high up, and as I'm not very tall, most of the time I couldn't see much except the shoes anyway! I even had to borrow some of Per's pics of Don for this blog as I couldn't get a decent shot of Don on stage because of it being so high up. Hanne suggested that I went up into the auditorium, which was empty as everybody was down on the floor. What a great idea! I got a really good view of the whole stage from up there. I also went backstage from time to time, only to find the place totally deserted as everybody was out watching Slade.
Well, it was a really great concert with 1,400 tickets sold and afterwards I went to the merchandise booth with Don and Hanne. All during the following Sweet concert we pushed Slade merchandise which Don then signed for the buyers. It was very successful so after a couple of hours we were almost sold out. At one point Hanne went backstage to get our things, and Don and I agreed that we weren't the right pair to leave selling merchandise as none of us liked to attract the attention of the passers-by but I guess we did alright after all.
When the concert venue closed there was a real rush at the booth and afterwards I drove with Don and Hanne back to the hotel.
In the hotel bar we met up with John, Mal, the Danish friends and most of Sweet so we had a delightful time. As usual I ended up next to Don and as usual we had one of our good talks. What a great way to celebrate my anniversary!
The guys had to start their trip to Russia early next morning, so we didn't get much sleep that night. When finally I got up at 9.30 a.m. they were already on their way. Have a safe trip, you guys!
I met up with Per and Kirsten at the railway station at 11 a.m. so we could make the trip back together. I was glad that we could go together because I'm afraid I would have fallen asleep had I been on my own!
As usual it was a nice Slade-experience and a big thank you to you all for making my anniversary a good one. Too bad that it takes another 3 months before the band plays Denmark again!!