Procol Harum

Beyond
the Pale

PH on stage | PH on record | PH in print | BtP features | What's new | Interact with BtP | For sale | Site search | Home

Gary Brooker / No Stiletto Shoes

The Brookers' Christmas Gig, 20 December 2002


As in past years, Franky Brooker promoted a fantastic evening's music and charity fund-raising – this time for the Abracadabra Appeal based at The Royal Surrey County Hospital – in the Brookers' village, at which local people and a handful of lucky invitees got to hear a cracking evening of rock music from Damon Hill's Con Rods (with Procol's Mark Brzezicki on drums and sometime organist Josh Phillips on piano and organ) followed up by a steaming and inspired set of Rhythm and Blues, and allsorts, from the wonderful No Stiletto Shoes – whom nobody present had ever heard on better form!

There will be more BtP pictures and reports on this gig as time and sleep permit. For now, please enjoy these portraits of Gary's 'Shoes', taken by front-liner Linda Clare.

Andy Fairweather-Low, guitar and vocals; with a suitable tangle of cables, and his amp raised up on a flight-case.

Eric Clapton, guitar, vocals, and brogues; he's not hopping ... he's sitting on his amp, a retiring posture he retained for most of the evening except when fronting the band for his featured numbers.

Gary Brooker, piano, vocals, organ and percussion; with a plug board and power supplies for piano, organ, MIDI module and so on, with the piano's sustain pedal gaffered to the floor, and just a hint of the organ swell pedal, bottom left.

Nick Pentalow, saxes. The stand in front of him reflects the fact that, unlike sometime-Shoe Frank Mead, Nick plays his tenor and alto into a stationary mike, whereas Frank seems to favour a clip-on 'bug' on the bell of his horn.

Procoler Dave Bronze, bass guitar and vocals; and the well-worn boards of a traditional village hall stage

Procoler Henry Spinetti, drums. (Actually these are not the very ambling-blocks that Henry played in ... those were perforce obscured by his instrument... but this is his footgear of choice for taking down the kit and packing it away afterwards)


More Brooker concert pages

 

 


PH on stage | PH on record | PH in print | BtP features | What's new | Interact with BtP | For sale | Site search | Home