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Updated: Friday, February 8, 2008 11:49 AM

JANUARY 2008 - Dave Gee

So, the first gig of 2008 saw us travelling to India to perform at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, West Bengal.

This is my own precis of the trip, some of the other guys have promised to come up with some notes too, however in the meantime:


There was just so much that was concentrated into a very short time and I was so pleased at the reaction and vibe amongst the team - this was my second trip to India; went to Goa (South) with my wife and two girls in 2005 and fell in love with the place. The band has been evolving since 2004 and I love the current line up and wanted to take them somewhere special where they had never been before.

I floated the idea during April 2007 and in foolhardy fashion, all said, "Yeah, go for it", so I started making contacts.

And from that... we went!

Bengal is nothing like Goa which is Sooo rural and laid back.

If anyone else has been to Calcutta? Back me up here! You don't need a license to drive, You NEED medication.

From when we landed to the time we left we were treated like Princes - flowers at the airport... 3 dedicated cars and drivers... straight to a hotel to freshen up... a banquet preceded by a hookah.... from there a 3 hour nutcase drive to IIT Kharagpur, which is one of the top Technical Universities in India.... more garlands, autographs before we even played.... took a look at the Open air theatre (TOAT).... awesome..massive...this is OUR Pompeii....... more banquetting and planning where to use the pyros...back to the guesthouse and..... a few hours sleep.

Picked up and driven for breakfast..... take another look at TOAT - there's now a Line array PA with Subs that you could sail across the Atlantic in... meet the crew..... wait for the backline to arrive whilst organising that a Tabla player joins us to do the intro to "Time" - I notice that my foldback is probably more powerful than the Db Technologies 40line that we run ourselves as FOH in the UK for most of our shows - we all keep staring at each other with an "is this for real?" grin. Drum provider turns up with a Tama 5 shell and loads of stands - he'd even brought pedals and metals but I'd brought my own. He insisted on putting it all together and that was cool TBH because I know my way around my own gear but faced with 2 gear bags full of tubes it was a jigsaw too far for me! But he did insist that I tuned the shells myself..... Soundcheck and my Bassist Buddy reports rather satisfyingly that I may cause a number of myocardial infarctions when I hit play the BD with passion!

All sorted and it's 2 hours before showtime,,,, we leave for ANOTHER "light bite", then it's back to the guesthouse to prepare.....  the three cars go by the entrance to TOAT and there are huge numbers of people waiting to get in ... they see the cars and... it's emotional.... I got an idea how Ringo and crew felt and I'll never forget it. Stunned!

Changed and back to TOAT..... the show starts and TOAT is rammed.... Well the show trundled along fine - very appreciative audience who really knew their Floyd - difficult to comment really coz I haven't heard the scratch recording yet but visually it was pretty grand with an abundance of Mac250's and there were some scanners the size of small sheds, lazers too I think and some pyro blasts....
The set we chose was based around The Wall for first half then Dark Side of the moon for the second - the plan was then to do Emily, Wish You were Here and round off with Comfortably Numb whick is pretty much standard fayre if we're playing anywhere for the first time. Shock of all shocks as we start the penultimate number; it starts to rain!! Couldn't believe it - (adopts one foot in the grave outrage) - it hadn't rained in Bengal of three months!! So the show had to be ended early which was a great shame but the last vision I had was of a frantic crew moving stuff under the stage, a tarpaulin being hastily pulled over the desk and outboard and Pete Thompson our Vocalist right out at the front of the thrust stage illumineted by the one spot that hadn't been extinguished still gamely giving it loads as he is surrounded by sparkling raindrops and pieces of discharged firework - surreal.

There was really no option, this gig hadn't been rigged with a wet weather strategy in mind. We're all a little down for about a nanosecond but when we get to the green room there are hoardes of people who had backstage passes and they just wanted to get an autograph take pictures and generally party.

The flight home departs Kolkatta at 10.00am and it's a 3 hour drive to the airport so we become teenagers for a while and decide that we'll join everyone for one last banquet and grab 4 hours kip before setting off. In the restaurant there are loads of revellers from the festival and we DID get to do Comfortably Numb - the a cappella version - Now THAT was a highlight!

The rain didn't let up and as we woke there was a powercut too which made packing ... erm .... interesting. The drive to the airport in the dark with the added rain complication was pretty hairy and I gotta tell you I did most of it with my eyes tight shut. The rest is pretty much what you'd expect - tearful goodbyes to the guys who had looked after us so well throughout the stay - nine over-tired and emotional people who had too much electricity fizzing in their bruised synapses alternately trying to get comfy in aircraft seats and then gabbling at whoever would listen to their rambling burbles and this journey ends in the UK as we share a bottle of Scotch in the minibus heading to Northampton.

HERE'S AN ARTICLE FROM THE CHRONICLE & ECHO (.pdf)

 

DECEMBER 30th 2007 - Dave Gee

Breathe have performed 33 public access performances in the last 12 months, added around 80 minutes to the repertoire and looking forward there are only a very few available dates for the first half of 2008. At risk of adopting the style of “end of term report”, we can take huge comfort in the undoubted progress that has been made and which, as a knock-on, has contributed to such an increased level of interest for what is, essentially, a part-time covers project.

Each of us has undoubtedly gained in many ways from being part of the Breathe experience but it is also overwhelmingly evident that we have accumulated some dauntingly enormous debts which we cannot realistically satisfy unless it is through the currency of gratitude.

So for those to whom we are deeply indebted:

To partners, family members and work colleagues, for extraordinary patience/flexibility and for being forced to make endless apologies for our frequent absences from normal life with such good grace, thank you;

To venue owners, agents and bookers who have put some serious trust in us when we had no real evidence that we could actually deliver what we said we could, thank you;

To the technicians and road crew who have fearlessly risen to the challenge that our performances present, thank you;

To the guys who keep our, sometimes abused, gear in working order, thank you;

To the hotel staff who have waited up for us, probably suffering visions of televisions exiting through windows en-route to swimming pools before they were confronted with the reality of our demands for comfy chairs, tea and cakes at 3.00 in the morning (even to those who didn’t wait up and left our room-keys tantalisingly out of reach, leaving us to make a nest in the syndicate room with the contents of the linen store – the breakfast was good, we weren’t asked to put everything back and we did end up in bedrooms eventually – see Breathe Chronicles Appendix B: FROME – The Balcony room incident), thank you;

To all the artistes who have shared a stage with us, thank you;

To the individuals who have really gone that extra yard/furlong/mile in spreading the word about Breathe, thank you;

And especially to all the people in all the places who have taken the time and trouble to come out and share the show and sometimes your thoughts with us, thank you very, very much. We sincerely hope that 2008 finds you hale and hearty or, at the very least, COMFORTABLY NUMB!

 

 

SEPTEMBER 21st 2007 - Dave Gee

Worst nightmares realised as on the day of a gig in St. Albans, Jill Palmer is stricken with sinusitis. This is spectacularly bad news. However, there is a generally good-natured bonhomie that exists amongst practitioners in the Floyd Recreation Network; two calls later and into the breach steps Joe O'Halloran.... mmmm.... undoubtedly Joe is a bloke and he's not gonna replace all of what Jill brings to the BREATHE show, particilarly the vocals, but Joe does play his sax with such warmth and passion that he just blew us all away. Joe also plays with Milton Keynes based (and brilliantly named) outfit "Great Pig in the Sky". You saved our bacon Joe - many, many thanks.

 

24 HOURS LATER IN JULY 2007 - Dave Gee

Not all that guff from yesterday is terribly appropriate & I was just gonna delete the irrelevant parts, but now I've started typing this & if I do delete those parts, then THIS will be irrelevant - OMIGOD, No wonder people get into trouble when they start trying to alter history for their own benefit!

The show at Wootton was an excellent local romp - plenty of room to perform, yeah I know that it was an outdoor event & you can't get much more room than playing outside, I mean the earth is pretty big when you get right down to it, I meant the performance area was very, very ample (I reckon that I was in a different time zone to the rest of the act - but they're all getting used to that), there was a team of hugely professional dudes running the stage & sound from SOUND STAGE ONE, who had erected their "Cavern outdoor concert stage", very well managed foldback, even-tempered security bods & altogether a nice vibe & a nice bunch of people who organised it. Hat's off to Wootton Parish Council!!

Also a big wave & hugs to all the other performers on the day. We couldn't get down for the whole event but we heard some really positive stuff about the talent that had turned out for the show. We DID see the whole set from hastily re-formed 3-piece "8 Foot Under" doing a set of Led Zep numbers & you would'a thought that they were doing it every night of the week, we also took in the delights of Beatles Trib "Accrington Stanley" who delivered some very polished ditties....... well, Beatles numbers actually.

AND THE RAIN STAYED AWAY!

I heard that the Live Earth shows were quite well attended too. Xx

JULY 2007 - Dave Gee

Mmm - I'm losing brownie points again for not updating this sector of the website & there's been a whole pile of things happening. New opportunities for the band, new faces in the band, some almost friendly rivalry between the design teams as we offer 2 new styles of Breathe tee-shirts for sale, new tracks added to the repertoire, a dour Scot newly non-elected as our Prime-Minister who will be hard pushed to demonstrate that he offers a new approach as he is indelibly marked as an originator of the old & we now have proof-positive that there is an inherent lunatic edge to this world; not only do we see that it has somehow been possible for one of the main architects of the war that was waged for unsubstantiated reasons on Iraq becoming an envoy to pursue peace in the Middle-East, but recent events now suggest a change of tactics by Al Quaeda in the pursuit of their aims. This new direction (allegedly) sees sometime NHS employees rebelling against their former employers & seemingly try to make a mockery of Patient Waiting Time targets by crashing their vehicles, laden with flammable materials, into various solid structures & thus forcing the unexpected use of valuable resources in the Health Service by setting themselves alight & presenting their previous colleagues with some extra cases of 1st degree burns! You know? You just couldn't dream it all up!

(Please note that these thoughts are solely the opinion of the author & should not be taken as representative of the opinion of the whole band - if you are considering setting yourself on fire at one of our shows, please do take the time to discuss issues such as timing & overall luminescense with our lighting director so that you can achieve the most dramatic effect possible) Oh, good grief, am I in the shit now?

For the rest of this ramble I'll simply stick to what is going down TODAY. It's Saturday 7th July & thankfully it looks like the rain that has been pretty constant in the the UK over recent weeks is taking a day off. There are some pretty big problems in the north of the country - floods on a scale that seemingly have caught the infrastructure totally off-guard have caused huge misery in towns in Yorkshire, particularly in Hull it seems, who are now also suffering a deluge of dignitaries from Church, State & Media & a general drought of much needed cash. We've been relatively unaffected in The Midlands although it has undoubtedly been very wet & it's difficult to imagine what it must be like in the regions that have really suffered & will continue to do so - a low-point & an inherent bad smell that will not go away for quite a while.

There is a worldwide event today which may well be linked to the hassle with the weather. Al Gore's "Live Earth" gigs around the world that will attempt to draw & hold our attention to the reality of the climate crisis started this morning (I'm working on GMT) in Sydney or somewhere in Oz at any rate. The Music Industry's Greatest have been (also allegedly) ably competing with those taking part in today's other event, the British Grand Prix, in seeing how much fossil fuel they can consume in the shortest possible time-scale. There you go again you see? You just won't give it up for one bloody minute - alienating yourself from society & making enemies when you really should be trying to make friends.

Breathe will have to sample these star-studded delights some other time because we've a show to do this evening & it's doubly good to see Mr Sunshine today because it's an open air gig in Wootton (Big THANX to Mr. Dave McClellan for putting us on this roster). This is a bit of a coup for us because we're actually at the same event, although not on the same day, as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, who did their thing last night - looks like we're really starting to rub shoulders with the great & the good & I've just seen a news report on the TV which covered the event - triffic! Wonder if they'll be there tonight, best not take the opportunity for a chat to the camera whilst I've got this particular head on.

We're gonna be performing the whole of the DSOTM, Shine on & Numb - which'll pretty much take us to our allotted time of an hour - I'm gonna see if I can talk the guys into doing Emily as well though - it's fast becoming my personal favourite number of the performance even though it's only about 3 minutes long. It's really a lot of fun to play & we seem to become EXTRA joyful when we do it, loads of energy, loads of big grins, it's just that sort of number, Syd WAS a genius ye'know. Mebbe I'll drop back to this page tomorrow & report how it all went if I haven't been taken out by insurgents/home-security - for the moment I think it best if I sign off to the strains of my mantra for the day....

"Here comes the sun, doo doo doo do, Here Comes the Sun & I say.... It's alright! Do do do, doodl-y doodl-y do do doodly do do do do etc etc."

I wonder if my kids will be singing that when the ozone has depleted even more....?

Many apologies for all that, I blame the weather Xx.

FEBRUARY 2007 - Dave Gee

The new set is being very well received & we're busily plying our trade up & down the UK. We've now completed our demo DVD to showcase what we're all about & more & more venues are succumbing to the BREATHE "PINK FLOYD CELEBRATION". Our next major project is to prepare the WHOLE of "The Wall" to perform as an "entire album" from sometime in early November, I guess that we are about two-thirds there in our current repertoire, there are some tracks that are challenging without a brass band & some that are just plain challenging, but hey, no-one ever suggested that we wanted an easy time!

JANUARY 2007 - Dave Gee

2007 was herald to a flurry of behind the scenes activity. Two additions to the set; Run Like Hell & Echoes which we premiered at The Railway, Ipswich on 27th January, the response was terrific.

So, the lineup for the next set of dates looks like:

Set 1.
In the Flesh! (2)
Young Lust
Happiest Days/Brick in the Wall
Hey You
Run Like Hell
What do you want from me
Learning to Fly
Coming Back to Life
Shine On

Set 2.
Dark Side of the Moon
Echoes
Wish You Were Here
Comfortably Numb

DECEMBER 2006 - by the skin of my teeth - Dave Gee

All previously gained Brownie points have been lost due to demonstrable lack of attantion to the news page & now I'm finding it fairly impossible to catch up on all that has occurred in the void that has become embarrassingly apparent from August - where to begin? This has been a case of "TICKING AWAY, THE MOMENTS THAT MAKE UP A FULL SCHEDULE". I think some cheating is called for & I'll start again soon with a clean sheet at the end of January when we've had our first outing of 2007.

Except to say that work on the DVD that we've been compiling is nearing completion - it's a 10 minute sampler from a live performance - we still have to agree on the printing but as I say; almost done.

AUGUST 2006 - Dave Gee

Some news right at the start of August. The Breathe Guestbook has, in an all too Pythonesque fashion, "Shuffled off it's mortal coil & ceased to Be!" Mebbe we will pen a Floydian Requiem at a later date but for now we need an alternative.
Our web-hosting provider doesn't allow us to change permissions necessary for us to run our own Guestbook & this means we have to use a third-party solution. OK, you're right, we're clueless, but..... Aaah Well; Never mind eh?
!In all honesty we have absolutely no inkling as to the potential longevity of our new solution but there's only one way to find out & that's "Give it a go!" So, drop along to THE BREATHE GUESTBOOK & make your presence felt.

JULY 2006 - Dave Gee

We've been pretty busy over the last few weeks with gigs in Northampton, Ipswich, a Very Hot & Sweaty Kettering & a private party near Uttoxeter - OH YES! We do like parties - especially when there's a Bar-B-Q involved & we get allocated our very own Grill-Chef (Thanx John - you do blinding burgers! & you also catered expertly for the Veggies in the band.) I'm just hoping that the pictures that were taken at around 3.30am which involved the Horse's Bridle don't make it into the Public Domain!
Also a big thanks to Neil Smith, normally seen plying his trade armed with a Bass Guitar playing with Floyd Tribute "Time to Breathe" who stepped in to handle lead vocals for us at Kettering depping for Pete Thompson.

JUNE 2006 - Dave Gee

Breathe vocalist Pete Thompson headed north in early June to lend a hand at Rutherglen Town Hall in Glasgow where Scottish Tribute Act, The Surrogate Pink Floyd Show, were due to play to a packed house. Illness had forced their own singer to pull out of the lead spot. News on the streets is that Pete delivered a "Stirling" performance (especially as there was no time to rehearse) & he has now returned safe & sound.

If Pete bounds on stage at the next gig brandishing a Claymore - we'll know who to blame!

We wish our New Buddies "All the Best" in the future, Pete had a great time.

APRIL 2006 - Dave Gee

Thanks to Ness Askew for the Photography at our recent outing to Nuneaton Click here

Some of Ness's shots were also used on the Video Introduction which you will find on the Homepage as a backdrop to an impromptu recording of Great Gig in the Sky from the same show.

We are due back to Nuneaton in August, I went along to meet the promoter & check out the venue. We are playing at THE QUEEN'S HALL & I was shown around the facilities by Stuart Hall of
DS Promotions

What a FABULOUS set up - This gig is shaping up to be an absolute BLAST. The Queens live venue is superb; terrific sound system complete with on-stage fold-back mix, pro lighting, it's an all standing gig so the atmosphere will be rocking and there's...... A BAR! Can't wait till August 11th - The Gig-Goers of Nuneaton are really lucky to have these guys around, much respect.
Public Gig details are on the Showspage.

Two new numbers that we have added to the repertoire:

"Learning to Fly" from A Momentary Lapse of Reason (Rel Sept 7th, 1987)

"What do you want from me?" from The Division Bell (Rel April 5th, 1994)

We also keep dipping into the seminal "Echoes" - watch this space for further developments, or, make a suggestion - we do this thing for YOU - Let us know what you want to hear Breathe perform.