DEAR DIARY BY BARRY QUINN

The Wholigans in Michigan Nov 12th & 13th 2003

OK...so the missus n myself set off to fly to Atlanta then onto Flint michigan, we were supposed to meet bake(chris) on the same flight in Atalanta.
Well he missed his connection , so when we got to Flint we had a 3hour drive to the gig.
There was supposed to be a car paid for and ready when we got there, but there was a cock up by HERTZ...oops did I say HERTZ out loud :)
I tried to pay for it but my damn visa wouldn't go through so there we are in flint airport,no guitarist ,no car and meetings to make in 3 hours!
Finally we got a car and took off without bake, he later rented his own car, and Darren & Dave were headed in from Toronto.
We got into town spent 10 minutes in the hotel and headed to the exhibit right next door! as in 30 seconds walk which was good.

We met Tom and others and obviously had a private showing of his work which was phenomonal, you have to see it to describe it.
You can order a catalogue at his site.....

http://www.tomwrightphotography.com/dennos_museum.asp

We wandered through the procedure for the next nights show, and checked out our stage gear, and then on to 'streeters' nightclub which was closed except for the privvy few.
There they were hanging tons of Toms work and had free drinks and food and was basically a schmooze fest.
The only celebrity I saw there that night was frankie vally (4 seasons)..I think it was im anyway, not sure as my brain was clogged.

We chatted with other local musicians, and everybody was honestly thrilled and excited to have us there, which was nice.
Bake showed up laaaaaaaaaaaaater finally.

The drive from Flint to Traverse is hard at night when it’s snowing as there are no cats eyes nor lights on the roads, you have to concentrate big time which is tough for a boy like me and 'the bake' who live in Florida.

BTW it was bloody freezing in Traverse, I’m spoilt down here.

So anyway after a while at streeters I'd had my fair share of “medicine “ and split.

The next day soundcheck was at noon which is waaaaaaay too early for any musician .
At the auditorium we had our gear set up behind a big screen on the stage as nobody coming to the exhibit that night had a clue that we were playing.
Eventually after much running around and nervous tension we were ready.

We had never rehearsed run run run together as a band so I asked everybody to come back to a small room and we did it unplugged and darren tapped his sticks on whatever, then we went out for soundcheck ,keep in mind there are cameras and video footage being taken ALL the time by tons of people.
So after messing around with singing '30 days in the hole' we play substitute a zillion times whilst everybody and his brother were trying to decide how ,what , why , when and where.

Next on the agenda came 'run run run' , and we actually thought it came out not too bad, but as soon as we finished it Tom said ...

wait for it.....

“uhm..could you guys play something you do well !"

Oh shit !......Tom didn't like it , but at that point Tom didn't like anything , he was stressed big time and who can blame him.

We play can't explain and my generation (a few times), and everybody loved it. ....don't know about Tom ;)

All 4 of us kept our traps shut as this was Tom's big day/night ,and that was very hard for me as most of you know ;)

6pm -6.30 was for vips only at the exibit ...god knows why they let us in!

We all went and sipped (yeah right) on the free booze and gourmet food, everybody was dressed like rockstars whether they were or not, except me as I was a slob as to those who saw the pictures will testify, but hey.. I can wear what I want right ?

Keep in mind we were all told to keep mum about the fact we were playing, and as I wandered round I kept hearing whispers as I walked by, it was funny as hell.
Around 8ish we wandered backstage chatted to Ian Mclaglen of the faces and David Teegarden and a couple of others (or was that after I can't remember) anyways....
Come showtime the auditorium is full with about 500 I was told.

We were behind the screen keeping dead quiet as Tom and others were having q & a out front, then came the cue the front stage was quickly cleared,the lights were down the screen started to rise and we launched into ICE ,the crowd went nuts as they probably thought it was The Who, but even when they realised it was not they still went nuts!
After ICE we did SUBS and My Gen and smashed the crap out of a guitar and Darren totally created havoc with flying drums everywhere, then we left the stage without saying a word.
The surprise had worked great.

I'd never seen so many cameras go off at one of our shows before ,and I've been assured that most photos will be sent to me which I'll share on the site asap

Spent a bit of time backstage with a few people ,more pictures and video being shot every step of the way which is supposed to air on pbs and on a vh1 special documentary..when..I couldn't tell you.(don’t quote me here I could be wrong)

We head outside to the biggest stretch hummer (I think) limo you've ever seen, we all pile in like kids in a limo for the first time , crack open the beers and play part time rock stars .
Arriving at the club the limo couldn't get us all the way to the front door as it was too big, but close enough.
We head inside the club which was divided up into 3 rooms with a capacity of 2800 I believe, the concert room was packed but we hung around in another room with Ian and Tom and others.
Once again medicine was a plenty I tried to not take too much advantage of the free booze but you know me..if it's free it's for me
I didn't really catch most of the entertainment except for Darren and Dave playing 'green onions' with Ian on the Hammond B3, and a couple of others.
I'd been told that Pete & Roger were possibly coming and if by some strange reason Pete couldn't make it he would send a video....well neither happened I don’t know why...

Pete ?

Joe walsh who was advertised everywhere as a definite show did not turn up either as apparently the eagles had a re-scheduled date , but he did send a video , someone also told me that he lost his house in the california fires which I don't know if it's true or not.

We hit the stage at 11 or 12 I dunno really what time , we were supposed to only play 45 minutes but that wasn't going to happen they would have to drag us off the stage kicking and screaming.
It was a little rough to start as not everything or everybody was ready

*cough..not mentioning any names here *cough

The crowd were anxious as was I , so instead of the usual ICE we started the biggest bs version of Magic bus you’ve ever heard , but it seemed to go over not too bad.
I completely made the set list up as we went along and about 1/2 way through I tossed a spanner in the works and introduced 'run run run'..what the hell, it came out much better this time and what was funny was that the crowd knew the words and danced their asses off.
I think we are going to start playing more 60's stuff as I like playing that era.
We ended with wgfa and then my generation complete with a 2nd destruction of the night of another guitar and more drums !
Crowd loved it

Milled around for quite a while afterwards, and headed back to the hotel for more beers (everything is somewhat blurry at this point)
The next day we had to leave at 11 am, met up with Tom who gave me a great big hug and thanked us for everything (he'd obviously forgotten about run run run the previous day)
We've ben promised all kinds of signed stuff from Tom + photo,video etc etc which is real cool....thankyou Tom.
Theres a possibility of future shows in 2004 linking up with Tom yet again.

A big thanks goes out to Kosmo the greatest stagemanager/roadie/getstufftogether/keep everybody happy ..guy in the world.

Also to Rick Coates who was The Man who put all this together and continues to work with Toms exhibit, and Larry the moneyman..who still owes me a couple of bucks ya cheap bastard ;)

and Finally Tom Wright who's work was just incredible and a nice guy to boot even though he didn't like our version of run run run ;)

luv ya Tom

All in all stars or no stars it was a great Who day out , and yet another notch in The Wholigans belt

..any Who day is a good day.

Goodnight Irene Goodnight

TURN EVERYTHING LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE

Barry