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Milan Legend Club
FM / Electric Boys
18 November 2015
FM Tour Diary: Milan Legend Club - 18 November 2015
My brother's 70th birthday. Happy Birthday Steve.
Rich and I get up, shower and go across the road for some coffee. It's another beautiful, sunny day. It's just after 10.30am, we're leaving for Milan at midday. I reunite Ian with his wallet. Two coffees and a croissant later we collect our bags and load the bus. We're hoping to get some money back when we go out of the Swiss border. Our collective breath is not being held. The border is only a few miles from where we stayed and we're soon in the thick of officialdom and much paper-stamping. To our surprise they refund us €234 so we ended up just paying €46, a result… and we're into Italy.
Although we're 
only a few miles from Lake Lugano in Switzerland it's a grey, overcast
day here but at least it's dry. The closer we get to Milan the better the weather
gets, we're into hazy sunshine territory now. We arrive at the venue just before
3pm. The gear gets unloaded and set up on stage., poor Jem is behind a pillar.
Merv tells me there are some fans waiting outside so I go out and meet them, sign some albums and have pictures taken with them. They're lovely people. Soundcheck time and all runs smoothly, we're becoming a well-oiled machine. Legend Club is a good venue but there is one sticking point - the club insists they have to sell your merchandise for you and they take 45% for that privilege. We employ the lovely Sue to sell ours so we'll still be paying her plus losing 45%. It's just not financially viable to sell any merch tonight. How disappointing. Touring in a band at our level is very 'hand-to-mouth' and merch sales can make the difference between making or losing money. Ah well, the venue won't budge on the deal so we just have to get on with things. So for one night only Sue becomes our official photographer.
The doors open a
nd the venue starts to fill. The Electric Boys set about warming
up the crowd and a fine job they do. Right, it's our turn… Wow, the Milan crowd go
absolutely crazy, it's a mass of smiling faces and despite the language barrier they're
singing every word. This is turning out to be up there with the best.
The show comes to an end and we leave the stage to ecstatic cheers. Milan you rock. Backstage we have a couple of celebratory beers. Richard our soundman comes in and he's happy with his night's work. He says "You could feel the love out there tonight". Bless you Milano. Right back at you.
The band are staying in Milan tonight, we're flying out to Barcelona tomorrow afternoon. The crew aren't so lucky, they have a long drive ahead. Safe travels guys, see you in Barcelona.
And so to bed…