All Durutti gigs, and there haven't been that many of them for God's
sake, have trauma and difficulty built into them from the day they are
booked.  Can we get the musicians we want?  Can all the random factors
that cause the hiccups with our ever more complicated midi'd up
backline be eradicated?  Are we going to get enough time to bloody
well set it all up?

Vin won't do a gig without introducing new songs.  'Boring' he says
when it is suggested we play a set of songs that we all know and might
be able to cope with, so rehearsals are arranged and gear is lumbered
into our back room.

As the concert draws closer, and we are contracted to appear (and we
are sue-able if we don't), Vini's health, ever precarious, is the
overriding concern.  I make the arrangements to move him about, I
suppose, in much the same fashion as the mormon guard used to move
Howard Hughes about.  In the back of my mind I'm conscious that I
shouldn't be forcing him along in his sometimes semi-comatose state
but I cheerfully hardface the job along.  I'm into all this
discharging of responsibility crap, you know.

I no longer wonder why I'm going to all this trouble, because the
music performance answers.  That 70 minutes on stage consists of Vini
changing the set list from the rehearsed arrangements, coping with the
tuning, struggling with the machines, laughing at the cock-ups he's
causing, but always playing those pieces with guitar and keyboard
beyond anything I ever hear elsewhere.

On this show, Andy Connell, from some other group whose name escapes
me at the moment, played some neat keyboard -- that's him hammering
away on the first track 'Otis', and him being clever on the other
stuff.  He's a good laugh, Andy.  Probably knows what he's doing.

Liu Sola is an opera singer from Beijing.  Her contribution was to
emote in Chinese on a conductors nod from Vin on 'Otis' and 'Finding
the Sea'.  In Chinese, you note, we wouldn't want to start making it
easy for you listeners, would we?

Vin suggested that I should personalise this product, I think he's
feeling weird after his full cover photo on the current album, and
wants now to spread the flak.  It's not what was wanted from me I
don't think, and it's not enough of a statement, but still, there were
a few things to be said.

There were a few practical things to be said.

Bruce Mitchell