Nick is somewhat peeved to discover that newly-enlisted Feline aide Michael Staley is, in fact, completely insane...
David reveals that he does indeed have a free week in his diary…
Feline Week — an 8-day long blitzkrieg that saw Nick & Dave return to
the stage to play their songs together for the first time in 5 years!
Back in 1995, geographical differences had left Feline at a standstill...however, over the
intervening years, they'd still held a candle for their songs, and early in 1998 they began
actively collaborating together again across the Irish Sea, using a pops by post™ tape-swapping system.
Things moved up a gear in the Summer of 1999-ahine, due to that new-fangled Internet thing: we discovered NornIrond music site Fastfude, and began to infiltrate our way back through the wires into the Belfarce muslei scene.
Soon the wild discourse of their feline1 and feline2 logins was dominating Fastfude's discussion forums like no other. Feline1 soon had more posts on the board than the entirety of Belfast put together! :-)
By 2000, a curious situation had developed: re-entitled as The Feline Dream, Nick and Dave had become virtual celebrities arahnd town in Belfarce. Their song At
A Standstill had appeared on the prestigious BelFEST CD, and they'd released 2 EPs (Beachcomber
& Florian und Magalie) which were selling like hot cakes from Belfarce independent record shop Doktor Robert...however despite all this, David had not spent a single day in the country all this time! It was time to take things off the Internet and present the Feline Dream to the Real World...
Undaunted by the logistical nightmare of the undertaking, feline audaciously booked
themselves an entire week's worth of gigs on consecutive nights in Belfarce,
each one with its own special theme.
Since it wasn't feasible to ship all of David's equipment over from England, a special stripped-down rig had to be devised for the new Feline Dream set - just a minimal two boards of keyness each, and a single drum machine... the live drum kits, ZX Spectrums, anchovies, cuddly toys, bass guitars, bass pedals, fondue sets and massive swelling organs of yesteryear had to be laid aside for the time being... :-(
Rather than leave ourselves at the mercy of the various venue's soundmen, we enlisted wee Michael Staley to mix the keyboards and werk the drum machine for us. Another innovation was our smart headset microphones, which at long last freed us to jump arand on stage and twiddle whatever knobs we wanted with impunity :-)
David jetted in to join Nick and Michael barely one week before the gigs were to start, leaving
us only 4 days to rehearse for our first gigs in 5 years! The Feline Dream never do things the easy way ;-)
GIGARAMA…
