MORE FOOTBALL AND BIG(GISH) IN GERMANY - 2006
Some strange things happened in 2006...
First, the "official" Hamptons album which was planned got pushed back to 2007 (watch this space!).
Instead, we fell into the trap of yet more attempts at football songs, this time cleverly using the theme tune to "Dad's Army" and the old (written by a German) "Lili Marlene" tune! Both registered at least seven on the Richter scale of the criminally ignored.
A goodly number of recordings for the new album were made. This event was followed by some unsavoury hip hopsters, during their session at the studio, proceeding to invite a few more friends in, tie up the engineer and steal the studio! Now that ranks right up there with Brian Wilson and the "Smile" tapes... well, sort of. Mercifully he's OK and back up and running.
The above was followed by a teutonic diversion in the shape of the ample preparations made for our European tour. This comprised a gig in Munich (playing for an office Christmas party), so there was plenty of room on the t-shirt......
A guy called Randy Singer (sic) from Nashville wanted to do a harmonica version of Helį Helį, though the opus, to the best of our knowledge, remains as unfinished as Schubert's 9th.
A different Cold War ended with the crumbling of the great walls of Tooting, supplanted by the quietude of the rolling river and the crepuscular dance of the Swallows (steady now......).
In any event, we became, as they say "big(gish)" in Germany! As the pictures show, a relatively unusual line up for the Hamptons, featuring, for the first time ever, a female lead vocalist, suiting, as it does, the twenty first century age of diversity.
Anyway, much as the Smile material seems to have survived, so we march forward into '07! (P.S. well done, Bulgaria and Romania, getting into the EU - can't fault the Bulgarian female vocal choir musically!).