Foxwood Steel play Leeds Pride 2017 and nearly march it too

2013

Well, this is our/Foxwood Steel's third gig at Blayd's, and our second time there in blazing sun for Leeds Pride. And what an honour to be asked.

And in honour, I found some rainbow ribbon, and added forever to our banner [originally made by Trish at Foxwood in the late 80s].

I won't go on about what Pride means in general and what Pride means to me. Let's just say that celebrating this event means the world. . . .

2013

2015

2016

Me and Sterling Notting Hill 2004 - just saying

2015

2016

As Leeds Pan Central and Friends we have also marched twice for Leeds Pride, both times for a local business. I myself have marched pan de neck quite a few times - with Nostalgia at Notting Hill [once even alongside Sterling Bettancourt!, the significance of which I did not realise at the time!],

Sparrows marching for Harrogate International Festival. Oh happy days!

with Sparrows at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and for Harrogate International Festival,

Sparrows at Little London Lantern Festival 2008

for the Little London Lantern Festival, and other times I can't quite recall.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park 2010ish

Also six of the Sparrows did put on pan de neck and go into the audience at the Royal Albert Hall. Awesome, until I realised they had stayed down there too long and I had to go down and get them back on stage. Lol!

Leaving the stage, pan de neck Royal Albert Hall

2017 -for a minute there we were six

However just about nobody liked pan de neck, so today, August 6 2017 we are 4: me, Wanda, George and Lola. But we are good, careful in our choice of repertoire and industrious in collecting percussionists form out of the other marchers.








Sadly, as we aren't officially part of the march, we get chucked off it [health and safety, lol!] as we are about join on the end. Just as well really as now we need to leg it down to Blayds.

me and Luke

And if we hadn't been chucked off, we would never have heard the tinkling sounds of another steelband coming from the Courtyard. Yay, it's StClair and Paradise.

Paradise Steel Band

After interfering very publicly with StClair's set we head off back down to Blayds and only just get there before it is
almost too chokka to walk through the crowds with or without a pan round de neck.




Vicky Bex and the rest have set up the static pans at Blayds. Georgia is still sorting out babyminding.

But now the parade is all in and people, including our players, can't get past the stewards. Then with twenty minutes to go here is Natalie, ten minutes to go here are Sheeks and Diz, then woeful cries for help from Georgia on the old social media.












Now Bex climbs the white charger and goes off to rescue the fair maiden. My stress levels . . . . .  And she is here just as Natalie gets a few extra minutes before the start.

Ginger added some percussion

In all we are me, Bex, Katie, Natalie, George, Vicky, Daisy, Georgia, Amy, Varshika, Wanda, Fehmina, and Lola [stealing the show! Hmm!].


I sneaked Wings of  Dove, Swan Lake, Rolling in the Deep, Tragedy and Money Money Money into the set. And got Dancing Queen back where it belongs. Especially after the nervous start, this was enormously pleasurable. But a few drinks were in order afterwards till we were all out of order!

Foxwood Steel Plays Leeds Pride

Last year we were three steel pans, two snare drums and assorted shakers. This year we have more than doubled our pannage and kept the percussion much the same. 

Pannistes were me, Vicky, Katie ("Percussion or pan, Katie?" "If I'm playing Pride  I'm playing pan!" Lol), Sophie' and FoxRisers: Wanda and Chloe, and Foxcub, Lola. On wood block was Daisy ("a pan would spoil my outfit". Lol) and on various shakers, Vic and Katie's friends.

Probably ought to give a man of the match to Geoge who played snare drum properly and throughout. I had spent some hrs  shrinking our 2 and 3 chord Songsheets to a manageable A6 in the middle of our pans, but wrongly decided to link them with a single top hole. Tangled within seconds of moving off.

Wanda came round at 11.30, and helped with sorting songsheets; Sophie at 1.  We all adjusted the harnesses and bumbags for maximum marching comfort, and Sophie recalled the boot camp that was Notting Hill as we marched for hours dressed in sheets like Greeks with two painful guitar straps across our backs.

Time was running, I decided we should take the bus. We came out of the house and I  said let's look and see when the next bus is (from the electronic bus stop info display).  Sophie opined, in a matter of fact way that there was a bus.




A bus!

A bus!

As in waiting to cross Hyde Park Road! Run!

Weighted down by our harnesses and pans we sped across the road, dodging the roadworks.

When we finally connected up with Gareth, we assembled on Thingy Street, then on Cookridge Street  where we finally met Diz and Mole, then back to Thingy Street, where static we played every song we had brought. Marching was another matter as the parade set off at a fair lick and we were almost running, tripping over the two year-old in front of us.

Suffice it say that, apart from aforementioned George (and that really is the end of the shout outs!) musically, well let's say, visually was a lot better than musically. All played in good spirit. Got a few thoughts for next year, one is either to be in time always with the samba band that was following us, or possibly not to be so close to the samba band!

We stopped in the crush that was Boar Lane meets Briggate. Just needed to get out. But in Blayds Yard a lull, and a little space which obviously had our name on it, sadly Chloe had to go, the rest of us stayed for "a drink".

Lola loved the crac, and the "ladies" dancing. One drink became two then we really did go our separate ways. Rick collected me Sophie and Wanda from outside the Art Gallery, and I spent a few hours on the sofa in a state of disrepair.

Foxwood Steel and Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows at Leeds Pride

Marching at Pride. It has to be said that we have more gay players in Foxwood than players prepared to do pan de neck, or if you are gonna start doing the maths, a similar number. . . . .

 

Daisy was a bit nervous about this very public event, but, to her amazement, found us at the beginning of the route, and Joe said afterwards that marching at Pride had been on his bucket list. It's just win-win all round, or maybe just Victoria surviving Another Fine Mess.

 

waiting to start

 

In the end, Foxwood was/were me [Victoria], Fehmina, Daisy, Vicky, Sparrows were Claudia, George, Chloe; friends were Carys, Josie and Joe. Andrew and Louie took photos and I have a great photo of Andrew in a sudden space in the crowd outside the Museum.

 

snapping the snapper

 

 

Joe, surprised to be crossing off something on the bucket list

 

 

 

I played tambourine until Chloe went back to work; Vicky played single second [and a heavy one at that!] throughout; Fehmina went for the purple G pan [called G for obvious reasons and tricky in the following keys - C, F, D, E, A, B, C# etc - I think you get the idea!]; Chloe played my soprano pan till she melted back into the crowd and back to work in town [now with rainbow cheeks and blue hair], George and Claudia played snare drums, Josie, Carys, Daisy and Joe played wood blocks and assorted percussion, as did any members of accompanying troupe as we could rope in. Given the lack of pitch generally we needed some noise.

 

phones out, waiting to start

We were booked by Sami, friend of Fehmina's who worked for a local bank [no advertising here!], and very proud we were to be marching. I come from a time when men were sent to prison . . .  and I spent years of my life at Foxwood School looking after all the gay kids [even got them, well the ones I knew of, put into my tutor group one year!] and giving the homophobes a hard time, especially when Margaret Thatcher gave us Clause 28.

 

 

 

We played two, three and chord songs - Wavin Flag, Jamaica Farewell, Road is Mine, etc with varying degrees of success. and great cheeriness. We also managed Under the Boardwalk. This was quite good [only been playing since was at Foxwood, and that closed in 1996].

 

 

 

 

We met in the Slug and Lettuce with a light prosecco and ended on Briggate with a coupla pints [after the Sparrows had gone, of course. Vicky's pan made a great shelf].

Finally Foxwood Steel plays Leeds Pride

Well Debs, I never really I would get the chance, but I did think about how much I would like to play Leeds Pride.














Years ago, when I was in charge of Personal and Social Education at the late, great Foxwood School, there was no controversial issue that I wouldn't take on, and ask my team to take on.

And, obviously we did homophobia, and believe me, this was controversial. One teacher suggested that I shouldn't tackle this one head-on, but maybe wait until the issue arose naturally.

Then Margaret Thatcher appeared in our lives with the infamous Section 28: teachers should not "promote homosexuality".  I won't debate this one fully now, but I can assure you that where once I would include this prejudice as one amongst several heinous others, I now would promoted it as vigorously as I could.


I even asked the Head of Year to put all the known gay students into my tutor group so that I could look after them properly.

Debs, I digress. Not only did we get asked to play Blayd's; we got asked to play mainstage backing one of the big acts, who was doing a carnival theme tune [which we couldn't do because we were on at Blayd's at that time].

Whatever, it was great. We were me, Bex, Natalie, Tim, Amy, Sophie, Daisy, Georgia, Fehmina, Katie and Lizzie.



Later I asked Noel and Ian why YMCA bombed. Too old hat, apparently. Oh well, can't win them all.