backwards sandwiches

Sunday 29th October 2006

3:54 p.m. CET Wednesday night was busy but not as exhilarating as my first couple of nights back on board. Thursday night was quiet so was a welcome breather. Friday night was very busy as usual, and went very well. There was a couple sat nearby throughout the evening whose taste in music was almost identical to mine so I had almost all of the songs that they requested, including several that I had already picked out to play! I played a few songs that I hadn’t played in a while, including Nightswimming by REM and Bed of Roses by Bon Jovi. Had requests from other audience members for some less suitable material such as the Scissor Sisters that needless to say I wasn’t able to fulfil!

Last night was very busy too, and one of the few occasions where I decided to open the lid of the piano in order to gain a bit more volume. I’m glad I did because in doing so I managed to captivate the audience and the evening was a success. There were several attentive groups, including one large group sat right next to me who were also a similar age. They requested several songs, including Speed of Sound by Coldplay (which was a popular choice not least with me as it has sentimental value), Always by Bon Jovi (which I had also not played in quite a while), and I even managed to get their participation as backing singers on Easy by Lionel Richie (on the “Ah’s”) which went down very well. At the end of the night (after a particularly triumphant rendition of Always On My Mind, they wanted an encore and someone piped up suggesting Don’t Cha by the Pussycat Dolls as a joke, so I played a short spoof version of it for the comedy value, before rounding the evening off with the often-requested Angels. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

Had an extremely late night last night, which was partly fuelled by adrenaline from the evening’s playing. I sat in the crew mess until the early hours of the morning with a couple of the other guys from the entertainments team, and ate some ‘backwards’ sandwiches, a delicacy which I have rediscovered of late.