The 2008 Replicas Tour in 10 Riveting Chapters:

One man's mission to see the last 10 shows of the UK Replicas Tour

Chapter 3

Manchester

It was Gary's birthday and I was well rested for the ride from Newcastle to Manchester with Don and his brother.  I woke up in time to catch up on some email before embarking.  I mentioned in Chapter 1 how I met young girls at every Numan show who had never seen him before.  One email was from one I met in Nottingham and her dad:

Hey Jim,

Paul (and Rachel)

Don had traveled extensively throughout Europe to follow Numan.  He proudly showed me an incredible collection of large posters from the gigs.

Before embarking, we got a call from Don's brother to find out he decided not to go.  We were stumped!  This was the hardest ticket on the tour to get.  Tickets were going on eBay for hundreds of pounds.  But Don's brother wanted to stay and spend time with a new girlfriend he was smitten with.  How could we explain to him that tonight would be unforgettable, one of Gary's most important gigs ever?  Well at least I got to ride shotgun for the drive.

As usual I attempted to get into the wrong side of the car much to Don's amusement.  It's a habit I will never break it seems.  We gassed up and I scored some juice for the nearly three hour trip.  With Replicas Redux in the CD player we made a beeline for Manchester by 1 pm.  This would work out perfectly as I wanted to make the NAGNFC preshow party by 4.

Don and I were raving about how pleasant the weather was for the trip, but as we got closer to Manchester the skies darkened then opened up.  The clouds teased us.  It looked as if we would get a reprieve from anymore rain when the next torrent of falling water would pound us. 

Don deftly got us to the train station in Manchester.  It was a long drive back to Newcastle for him and he would steal away for home after the show.  If I was going to hang at aftershow parties, I needed someplace to drop off my baggage at the Left Luggage in the train station.  Don did the best he could but with the rush hour traffic in town, I would be nearly an hour late for my own preshow party at the Kro bar across from the venue.

We found Kro and Don let me off so I could run inside and apologize for my tardiness.  I thanked Don quickly and ran inside.  There was no one inside that fit the description of a Numanoid.  No telltale signs like black clothing or isolated demeanors.  I was an hour late and as I feared, everyone who had been here to party had stolen away for the queue.  The Academy was very near but I didn't know which way it was.  After sprucing up the Machman look in the restroom, I asked a bar patron the locale of the Academy and I walked the 2 blocks to the venue.

I then saw why no one wanted to wait an hour at the preshow party.  At 5:15 pm there was already a sizeable queue of folks who had been waiting for several hours.  A fact that wasn't hard to prove because these hardy Numanoids looked drenched and cold from the earlier bouts of rain.  These poor souls got rained on and now the wind chill factor was taking its toll.  People smiled at me through their shivering. 

I met a few Americans in the queue such as Kristin Harris and her mom from Texas and Jeff Tolva from Illinois.  And I met some natives like Aaron from Manchester, and Teresa from Wolverhampton.  I marveled at the complete turnaround of the social strata from my other trips to the UK.  It was normally the Americans who were outgoing and raving about all things Gary while the Brits were somewhat reserved and insular.  This time the Americans were disconcertingly quiet, staring ahead like victims of fate's worst cases of jet lag.  The Brits came to party.  They came dressed in Replicas gear and several came to me in the queue to shake my hand and get a picture.  Except for one.

Teresa noticed me in the queue and introduced herself.  I vaguely recognized her.  She had sent me a photo of her and Gary to include in the NAGNFC paper fanzine in 1990 and had asked me to return the pic when I was done.  I was normally diligent and expedient about such requests.  I was spending weeks at a time in Canada in those days as well and in the interim I had lost her address.  I knew one day this moment of reckoning would come.

Luckily she laughed it off and we became good friends as we continued to rap about Gary at other shows.  I promised to send her the picture back when I returned home and she promised to email me her address.

There was some hope of getting in the back door of the Academy to see the soundcheck as I had done last time thanks to my contact at Dash Productions who was filming the show for the Hope Bleeds DVD.  My contact wasn't there this time however so I remained in the queue.  Luckily the rain was no more.  Touts walked up and down the queue asking for extra tickets but of course there were no extras tonight.  Tonight was Gary's celebration of 30 years in the business and his 50th year on this planet.

I was looking forward to meeting Joey Lindstrom from Canada tonight, but Kristin told me he couldn't make it after all.  Joey and Martin from Australia traveled together on the 2006 North American Jagged Tour and I hung with them on several nights.

The queue was impressively long.  Even though it had stopped raining, the wind was freezing.  The skinnier of us fared worst.  At least there was no shortage of material to read.  Folks handed out literature full of information about two different aftershow parties.  I met Gordon again who passed out more Replicas Redux and Telekon flyers.

Staff from the venue came out to say there was a separate queue for those picking up tickets and soon the doors opened to let us inside.  To the audible surprise of many it wasn't any warmer inside the Academy.  It took a good long while for the body heat of thousands to warm up the place.  I was flanked by two friendly young lasses that I had met in the queue.  They were fans but had never seen Gary before.  As we waited for the show I showed them pictures on my phone of earlier concerts in Newcastle and Nottingham.  As I extolled the benefits of visiting the NAGNFC, Aaron overheard me and gave me an amusing ribbing for incessantly hawking the website for people.

Someone had blown up several large balloons.  By the time Daggers came out to perform, they were all being pounced around the entire Academy.  As always, everyone enjoyed Daggers.  Then the crowd hummed electric in anticipation of this memorable gig.

watch balloons fly overhead at the Manchester Academy!

Gary and his band appeared to thunderous applause.  Numan was especially animated during the show spinning and moving around. 

watch Gary perform Replicas in Manchester

At about 10:30, Gary stopped the show for a special announcement.  That was the time of his birth and he was now officially 50 years old.  Just at that moment, Ade appeared from the side with a large cake for him with something stuck in the middle (someone said it was a naked Barbie doll?).  The massive crowd organized to sing him Happy Birthday as Gemma appeared to hug and kiss her husband as the Replicas lights went crazy in acknowledgement.

see Gary being showered with congratulations as he turned 50 at 10:30 pm

It was an incredible evening that I am very happy will one day be released on DVD.  As we left the Academy, the same T-shirt bootleggers were outside as in Nottingham.  I got a picture of a couple of Numanoids who were coolly dressed in Gary's outfit he wore on some of his earliest TV appearances on Old Grey Whistle Test.

Don was already driving north to his home in Newcastle and I called him to thank him profusely for the hospitality.  Martin Purvis came up to me to say hello.  He runs the most excellent Outland site in Australia and brought along his wife Jo, a couple more from Australia, and their hand puppet Sooty who had also hoped to get a picture with Gary.  Accompanying them on their trip for the shows was an attractive girl named Bridget.  We all found a tour bus down from the Academy and I sat down on a cement step to wait for Gary to meet the fans.  Martin and his crew left for the aftershow party.  He asked me to take good care of Bridget who stayed behind with me as she was still a bit jet lagged from the trip to the UK.  I told them she was in good hands and that I wouldn't kidnap her.  Bridget said that maybe she would be the one to kidnap me instead.

Bridget and I spoke like strangers with much in common.  Kristin Harris and her posse walked past us and asked if I wanted to join them for the aftershow party.  They had their doubts Gary was coming out to speak with everyone.  I told them that I was being the eternal optimist saying anything is possible.  As Bridget and I got to know each other, people waiting by the bus started to disappear but we thought nothing of it.  Soon a band came out to the bus and told us that it wasn't Gary's bus.  I thanked them for the valuable information and Bridget and I embarked on a mission to find Gary's bus.

After some exploring we saw the bus down an alley flanked on one side by a corralled crowd of a hundred fans hoping to speak with Gary.  As we approached the bus we got the chance to rap with the friendly Dave Brooks of Gary's band.  We weren't there long before Australians Martin and friends joined us.  We weren't by the first bus and they thought we had kidnapped each other after all.

As Martin and I talked and caught up on the last two years, we saw Gary in the second floor window enjoying his cake.  He noticed that we'd spotted him and disappeared from view. 

Gary's security dude Big G came out to tell us that Gary would indeed be meeting with us.  I bemoaned the fact I brought nothing for him on his birthday.  But it turned out that I did.  It was getting so late that a couple of women had to leave the queue early.  They handed me their birthday cards to give Gary.  There were so many to meet Gary it was announced that he could only sign one item per person.  I had nothing for Gary to autograph so I gave my one item allotment to a friend of Martin's who'd brought 2 things to get signed.

I was happy to see The Big G was still working security.  I'd now rapped with him on Gary's US and UK tours for 10 years.  I said hello to Gary and praised his willingness to work on his birthday, something I would be hard pressed to do.  He was surrounded by birthday cards and gifts given to him and thrown to him on stage during the show.  Martin was there to take a picture of us.  It came out blurry but if anyone adept at Photoshop can work their magic on it I will make it well worth your while.  Is it a lost cause?

At the aftershow party at Club Sanctuary, Martin and crew told the bouncers they had made reservations to the aftershow party.  I followed them in as the bouncers let us in (saving me 5 pounds!  Woohoo!).  The party was electric with an amazing vibe.  Gemma and the band were there as were people I'd only known through the internet.  The remixer of the Voidmusic tracks introduced himself to me as well as Julie who said her husband was a fan of my site.  As it turns out, her husband was the man responsible for the excellent recent Fabrik Numan covers.  He was also in the band Space Monkey, whose song "On The Beam" is on one of my old mix tapes.  We talked as Numan cover band Young Things Don't Scream were finishing to be replaced by the band Deviant UK.  I enjoyed finally seeing Young Things Don't Scream.  I have a 1980s cassette of their excellent covers.

Kristin and company were hanging with Daggers, Ade, Gemma and the band.  I got the chance to tell them what a great show they did.  I spoke with Ade Fenton for the first time.  I'm glad I got the chance to tell him how much I enjoyed his album.

Before Deviant UK came on they played some cool 80s songs like You Spin Me Round by Dead or Alive and several of us danced like Numanoids possessed.

I told Kristin that Gary was meeting everyone by his bus and she disappeared quickly.  Deviant UK came out to perform many of their own songs.  They seemed to have a good local following as many in the crowd knew the words.  They finished with their cover of Metal.  There were some problems with a shorted wire knocking out sound to one of the speakers during their performance.  Their menacing personas on stage were belied by their heart's kindness by announcing that their upcoming performance in Manchester would be free as a result.

People started to leave as the rest of us stayed to dance.  I was milking it as the Left Luggage at the train station wouldn't open until 7 am.  At 3 am I had plans to walk the half hour into downtown Manchester and kill time until my train left about 8.  Outside the doors were a couple of taxi cabs.  Not sure of the neighborhoods (and my directional skills) I hopped into one of them on the short ride to town.  It was a local unlicensed cab so the 8 pounds was asked for up front.  On the way he talked to fellow cabbies at red lights and gawked loudly at the short skirts of the passersby. 

I asked him if there were any all night restaurants to read a paper and kill time until morning.  I hadn't eaten all day and could have eaten one of my Numan flyers for the fiber.  He kindly dropped me off at a tiny pizza place and gave me directions to walk to the nearby train station to catch my train. 

I ate almost an entire 12" pizza, read some brochures and watched music videos on their TV above the door.  They closed at 4 am so I walked toward the train station amidst the Saturday night revelers of Manchester.  On the way I found an all night diner but I was already full. 

To my amazement the train station was open although no trains would be running for a couple hours.  It was a surreal scene.  Huddles of girls from dance clubs walked through in scanty clothes and blinking antennas.  Long distance cyclers in sleeping bags slept like contortionists in small metal seats.  Scores of people in their teens and 20s sat in groups amidst the closed metal gates of the several shops in the train station.  A couple fun-loving guys announced to me they were going to start busking outside.  I wished them luck as they asked if I would have the privilege of giving them their first coinage.  I found a quiet metal seat of my own and listened to Howard Stern radio shows I'd brought with me on my cell phone.  I wish I had my PSP but it was in my Left Luggage. 

One guy approached me.  I thought for sure he wanted coins but he wanted to give me money!  He told me to name my price for the remaining two slices of my pizza.  I was stuffed so he walked away with the box for one pound.  He walked to a nearby seat to eat his newly purchased slices and fell asleep.

Night turned to day and I walked to the Left Luggage.  I gasped as I noticed they weren't yet open.  It was Sunday morning and they wouldn't open until 8 am.  Oh well, I'd catch the 9:24 am to Norwich and sleep on the train.  Norwich is considered in the UK to be a quiet unpopulated section of England on the little traveled eastern coast and getting there would be an adventure.

Warp to Chapter 4: Norwich

Back To Main Page