© Spearing
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spearing.org.uk
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Althorp Hall - Northamptonshire
Jools Holland Big Band
June 25th 2004
It being the first week of Wimbledon and Glastonbury weekend gives you an idea of
how the weather had been for the previous few days, I think it was Wednesday when
Wimbledon achieved the historic record of no play at all due to the sheer volume
of rain falling across England. Friday itself had been dry but variable so
we packed plenty of warm clothes and I nipped down to the DIY store at lunchtime
and picked up a large plastic dustsheet, if worse came to worse and it poured down
we could just pull the thing right over the lot of us.
Did we need it? Did we heck!
Friday turned out to have the perfect English summers evening, wall to wall sunshine
with no trace of even a slight breeze. Sunset was 21:29 but it was still
light way past that. Set in the posh end of Northamptonshire Althorp Hall
has a fine set of black wrought iron gates and on driving through them the Hall
is approached via a long narrow drive across gently rolling wooded fields with sheep
grazing on either side. We parked up, shouldered our chairs, coolboxes and
woolies and followed the trickle of people heading for the concert field.
Our path led us right acroos the front of Althorp Hall, which I found slightly disappointing,
I had expected something bigger, grander and more impressive. I had assumed
it would have been built out of the local deep orange sandstone rather than brick,
still, it's bigger than my place!
Past the Hall and we were directed through a Tuscan style Stable block, this time
built from the deep orange local sandstone, and although somewhat at odds with the
Hall itself, more in keeping with the materials of the surrounding villages.
Several companies were offering their wares for sale but Green & Black, the organic
chocolate people, had the most lovely young ladies with great wicker baskets full
of free samples which they handed out to all and sundry as we entered the concert
field. The chocolate was very nice although to tell the truth I could quite
happily have eaten one or more of the young women! Towards the end of the
evening as it cooled down somewhat it was the stall selling hot coffee that had
the queue, running quite some way up the field. I hope that the beer tent
franchise hadn't cost much, they didn't have any customers let alone a queue.
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Early evening
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And so! To the Concert. The early evening support slot was taken up
by a fine young singer with some original tunes on a Blues theme. Just a shame
they were so depressing, we had to lock everything sharp in the coolboxes, to my
shame I cannot remember her name, however I feel sure that she must be Leonard Cohen's
daughter.
Then came the Big Band, on to a bit of a shaky start, as I'm not quite sure how
many keys they were playing in but there was definitely more than one. A little
more reheasing might have been a good idea. From then on though things picked
up with Sam Brown doing a fine bit of screeching and Ruby Turner doing a fine bit
of belting. The whole evening went off really well with the audience loving
every minute.
I missed so many good shots of indivdual dancers that I can only apologise for listening
to the music rather than thinking of this webpage. Two encores were to be
expected and were delivered admirably but we hadn't expected the fireworks. A
really good pyrotechnic display rounded the evening off nicely. The only task
left was to get out of the car park, an experience that previous concerts had shown
could be difficult. But where were those Taxi's going? Top tip for
anyone leaving Althorp Hall - FOLLOW THE TAXI'S !
Dedicated to all of those people who presumably got soaked on Saturday at the 'Last
Night of the Proms' concert, I feel for you.
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