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Blog: Otway Weekend
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Of course, That Guy didn't like it - you know That Guy, most bands have people like him, the one who thinks he's part of the band and IN CHARGE of the audience. All through the interval (aaah! a gig with an extended beer/toilet break, lovely!) he was going round saying "We can't sit down at an Otway gig! When I give the signal, everyone stand up." I was OUTRAGED (quietly)! "I've spent TWENTY THREE YEARS standing up at Otway gig" i said to our party, "I'm going to enjoy sitting down for once." DELIGHTFULLY it turned out that everyone else thought so too, so when That Guy leapt up and signalled, hardly anybody joined in, and when he KEPT turning round and waving we politely ignored him, and RELAXED with the show.
And WHAT a show it was - as I say, I've been going to Otway gigs for 23 years and they haven't exactly CHANGED (e.g. the joke about the b-side to "Really Free" selling "just as many copies as the A-side" has NEVER, i think, been omitted in all that time) but have very much MATURED. I remember when his version of "The House Of The Rising Sun" would OCCASIONALLY feature someone shouting "Where?" after the first line, and ORGANICALLY getting more involved over time, and there were many many similar developments. He's still clambering up step ladders, for instance, but THANKFULLY these days he's at least jumping down and THEN doing a forward roll, rather than doing it all in one go, and there's EXTRA gags about having TWO hits which always get a cheer.
The BIG maturation tho, i reckon, is when he does "Geneve". This used to be one of the Token Nice Songs, but these days it's become incredibly moving - when he talks about how he "sings the same songs" there's a cheer of recognition and LOVE, and you can feel the whole room about to burst into tears when he says "For I am still young, and it's true that I don't forget her, and I don't regret and I'm not going to" (which is basically the HEART of Otway) which leads into HUGE APPLAUSE when he gets to "it is my shoes, that walk across the stage for the applause". Finally it actually IS his shoes, and he bloody deserves it.
It was a beautiful evening of LOVE - there was a lovely moment when we saw Otway, Richard and Murray just LOOK at each other and appreciate how ridiculous,also ACE it all was - but also quite a LATE one, not least because we had to get up on Sunday morning at Normal Weekday Going To Work Time, ready to head BACK in to Leicester Square in time for the PREMIERE itself.
We arrived at the Odeon Leicester Square (the UK's biggest cinema and, of course, booked LONG before the film itself was started) to see a huge crowd waiting outside. Brilliantly, a large part of the crowd were tourists, trying to work out which BIG STAR we were all waiting for. Best of all was a GIGANTIC "Otway The Movie" poster plastered over the front of the building. Otway came out onto the balcony to wave and alter the "ODEON" sign to say "OTWAY" - this was all filmed and ended up being on the Channel 4 News, as well as forming the very last few minutes of the film itself.
We bumped into Ms H Arney (who turned out to have been part of the Aylesbury Youth Orchestra, who played with him at the Albert Hall gig) and Mr P Buckley-Hill, then went in to watch the film. It was GRATE - we knew a lot of the story already, but it was HILARIOUS to see the clips of heroic failure and indeed Ridiculous Success. All the way through I had to keep reminding myself it was REAL - he really WAS on Top Of The Pops, he DID buy a Bentley when he couldn't drive, get a Top 10 hit for his 50th birthday, and so on and on and on. It wasn't quite as "warts and all" as advertised, though maybe that's because the bits that most Rock Stars try to HIDE are the bits that Otway REVELS in, and some of it did feel like Telling The Stories Again. HOWEVER there were two bits of Profound Emotion that really stood out: the first was when Otway talked about Woolworths FIXING the charts by not stocking his single. There was still ANGER (RIGHTEOUS anger!) in his voice, which was echoed shortly after with CHEERS when Rich Cotton pointed out that Woolworths went BUST soon after. The other was when Otway - for the first time in the movie - was shown somewhat lost for words when talking about the failure of Ot-Air, the plan to take his audience on a world tour with him.
A couple of years ago i'd seen him do a LIVE version of the story (bits of which appeared in the film as he delivered a RATHER AMUSING lecture to sixth-formers) which ended there, with disapointment and disaster, so it was a FANTASTIC climax for the movie to end with ... the movie itself! As mentioned earlier, scenes had been filmed outside the cinema which came in as the GRAND FINALE, making a fitting end to the story (so far) with a TRIUMPH. HILARIOUSLY it showed Otway doing his trademark forward roll into the cinema... which made all his pens fall out of his pocket which he stopped, picked up, and carried on. It was Very Otway!
As the film ended the credits rolled with the names of the HUNDREDS of fans who'd helped produce the film - as this was basically THE ENTIRE AUDIENCE we all sat and watched, with CHEERS and FLASHBULBS going off around the auditorium as people spotted themselves. The Names On My Credit Roll and I didn't SHOUT when we saw ourselves... although it WAS very very exciting! Our names on the big screen!
It was a brilliant end to a beautiful weekend celebrating Otway's 60th Birthday. I wonder what he'll do for his 70th?
posted 8/10/2012 by MJ Hibbett
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