Ladies and gents, the time has come. The Strumpettes are ready and set for Sunday night at Glasto! The tent is packed, along with three pairs of red patent heels, three figure-huggin’ frocks, three retro-style microphones and three beautiful ukuleles (a soprano for Bettina, to match her harmonies; a concert deluxe for me, and a tenor for Velma). The Strumpettes sure don’t travel light.
The truth of it is, we're kinda a high-maintenance band. So I tell ya, the best thing about performin’ at Glastonbury is this: we get to use the “artists’ facilities”, which in short means we get showers and a proper, clean powder room, thank the Lord! I mean really, three classy ladies like us having to face the long drop? I don’t think so. So now the only thing we really gotta worry about is all that mud. Here’s hopin’ for blue skies…
Right now we’re feelin’ pretty positive about it all. We had a rare ol’ time at our gig last Saturday night – after a somewhat inauspicious start, I might add. After drivin’ to the other side of this sprawlin’ ol' metropolis, we found ourselves starin’ at the world’s tiniest pub, on the corner of no-man’s land and the least swingin’ neighbourhood in south-west London. Hell, we were this close to turnin’ back.
And it got worse. When we started settin’ up, we hit upon a little snag. Our little ukes - all courtesy of London’s finest ukulele emporium, the Duke of Uke - each have their own pick-up fitted inside so we can plug ’em in to the sound system and give ‘em a bit of oomph. But no sirree, not today; the DI boxes weren’t playin’ ball, which meant no amplification, which meant we had to play unplugged.
But The Strumpettes are resilient young things, we bounced back and sailed through the first set, mostly of safe songs, coped admirably in the second set where we road-tested our new numbers and even managed our solos – Velma’s “I Wanna be Loved by You”, Betty’s “My Funny Valentine”, and my “Oh, Look at me Now” - without a hitch. And by the time we got to the third set, we were really in the swing o' things; the room was jam-packed and we had every man, woman and child in that place in a good ol’ fashioned singalong to a little tune we stole from Bugsy Malone.
Sure, a glass of whisky each helped no end… as did the lovely locals. They were just plain sweet to us, very appreciative. Hell, they even asked for our autographs, the cuties. But then I guess we oughta get used to that, huh?
So we’re feelin’ okay. Excited I might even say. Velma, Betty and I are just about ready to head on outta the big smoke, into the sticks and to march out onto that festival stage on Sunday night, hip flask in hand. Wish us luck, folks…
