The Boomtown Rats

Music in the Park was the first live UK gig The Rats had played this year so it was deffo on my list.

I don’t know what it is about me and festivals though - it always seems to rain - and although it’s great that The Rats were headlining, there was one clear drawback, when a soggy day combined with a late appearance on stage – the rain somehow found its way into the electrics!

So, The Rats’ set started with the firm favourite “Eva Braun” but there were no lights – absolutely nada. 

As the band played on, there were techy people running all over the place trying to find the fault, gently encouraged by Bob who between announcing he was “fuickin’ freezin’”, was telling whoever was responsible, to get the “fuckin’ lights fixed”. 

Things were verging on the farsical though when Bob suggested they “flick the switch”. It almost seemed that that was the one thing all those techy folks hadn’t tried!  Straight away the lights came on!!  Good call Bob!

The other issue I had was that there were two TV-studio style cameras beaming video feeds to the screens next to the stage.  In my hurry to get to the front of the growing crowd, I hadn’t realised I was partly stuck behind one of the cameras and its operator.  So for most of the gig, I couldn’t see Simon, Pete or Darren 😒

Anyway, things came good as the music flowed – a similar set list to recent years - and true to form, we had another rain shower.  Got a good photo out of it though….under the newly-fixed lights.  I wanted to caption this “In the Pouring Rain” but realised that’s one of Bob’s solo songs!

As ever, The Rats were awesome – by far the highlight of the day.

Looking forward to catching them on their UK tour later in the year – indoors this time, where at least we can be sure the rain won’t get into the wiring (if that's not tempting fate........)! 

Keep Doin’ the Rat and hope to see ya soon.

Col