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 Site © 1999-2008 Rothwell Temperance Band and All Rights Reserved. |
30th September 2000 - Swiss Open, LucerneFriday We had been invited to the Swiss Open by the organisers of the contest and, after some initial doubts over the expense involved and band members getting time off work (especially the teachers), the decision was made to go ahead with the trip. We were helped out enormously by the sponsors of the contest putting up some of the money required to pay for flights and accommodation. Besses o’ th’ Barn would also be attending, so we would not be representing England single-handedly. 
There were two contests taking place over the weekend. The first of these on the Saturday was the Swiss Open, and involved playing a March, and then a set test piece which was Le Roi D’Ys. We had chosen to play O.R.B. for the march. The second contest, on the Sunday, was the European Open, and involved playing a hymn, solo and own choice test piece. We chose to play The Day Thou Gaves’t, In Heaven (a flugel solo) and The New Jerusalem. Friday started with a frantic packing of bags, as we had been rehearsing each night of the week previously, and it was difficult to find time to squeeze things in. We met for a last rehearsal in the rugby club where we normally practice at 10am. A few band members were missing for this practice – most of them were teachers that could not get the time off work. While the majority of the band were to travel down to Luton Airport during the day to fly with EasyJet, the teachers had arranged a BA flight from Manchester which allowed them to still do a day’s work. We spent most of the time in the rehearsal on “The New Jerusalem” and “In Heaven”. These were the pieces with the most percussion in, and this would be the last chance we would get to rehearse with percussion equipment, as it was too heavy to take on the plane. We left for Luton at 11.30am, and the journey down was uneventful, despite an early traffic jam that caused a few worried faces. In fact, the journey was so quick that we actually arrived at the airport just before 3pm, earlier than expected, even with a short unplanned service station stop. We were all wearing our new “RTB sponsored by Autocruise” T-shirts. 
We were to be shadowed over the weekend by an LWT film crew, who were filming the band’s trip for use in “Airline”, a fly on the wall documentary about EasyJet. They had phoned us on the bus to say that they wanted to film us getting off the bus and we were to ignore them as best we could. After unloading the bus, we then proceeded into the terminal, again being filmed by the crew. It was perhaps unfortunate that the bags that fell off Rachel’s trolley did so right in front of the cameras… The crew was made up of Gen (Genevieve), the director, Senti, a researcher, Dave the camera man, and Andy, the sound bloke. They were to remain with us all weekend, filming the contest and our free time. Once inside the airport, we had to wait for some other members of the band to meet up with us. These included Dan Loveday, in what would be his last contest with the band. Dan was leaving us after many years to start a new job in Guildford. Whilst waiting for the others, the film crew took the chance to interview some band members about the trip. Perhaps the most poetic response to the questions was “Win or Lose, we’ll have some booze…”, by Paul Argyle. Once the party was all present, we retired to a bar to wait until we were allowed to check in. This would be the first alcohol consumed on the trip, and it would not be the last. 
We were to fly from Luton to Zurich, and then take an hour long coach journey to Lucerne, where the contest took place. At check in, the airline opened up a separate desk for us, and then just as we were about to check in, we were asked to play. A prepared “King Cotton” came out of the cases with the instruments, and was duly played (with no percussion, but with some dodgy sop playing), whilst the camera crew hovered around and filmed us. The end of the piece was greeted with a round of applause from the other waiting passengers, and lots of questions about which band it was, and where we were going. The crew filmed each person checking in, and then it was time to go through to the departure lounge to await the flight, which was due to leave at 6.25pm. The time was spent checking out the duty free shops and getting some food. There seemed to be quite a large number of band members around the woman giving out free samples of whisky, for some reason… When the flight began boarding, Andy Rigby was given a radio microphone to wear, as he had admitted to the director, Gen, that he was not a good flyer. We then went through to yet another waiting area, this one at the gate where the aircraft would be. It wasn’t there yet – it was delayed, and so some band members took to amusing themselves with a quick game of cards. You could tell who’d had the most alcohol by who was making the most noise… 
The plane was finally ready, and we moved out onto the tarmac, and walked to the plane – there are no nice boarding tunnels at Luton – and up the stairs. I was surprised by how small the plane (a 737) was inside, my previous flight experience being on board a transatlantic flight. There were three seats either side, where the plane I had been in before had three seats either side and a row of five down the middle. We were on the plane first, and some of the people getting on after us asked “What is RTB?”, so we had to explain. During take off, Andy Rigby was filmed, and asked how he felt. The flight was quite smooth, apart from having to fly around a (very impressive) thunderstorm, and the pilot made up the time he was delayed by. At one point, Dave “Moose” Fowler was stood in the gangway when the steward wanted to get past. Instead of just quietly asking Dave to move, he just said “Moooooose!”, which seemed to have the desired affect. During the flight, Andy Rigby and Michael Howley had a conversation about the director’s, er, “physical attributes” while she was out of earshot. The sound guy pointed out that she was in fact wearing an earpiece and could hear every word they said because of the radio mic that Andy was wearing. Embarrassed faces all around… Unfortunately, there was only one runway open at Zurich airport – although they did appear to be in the process of building some more – and this led to quite a lot of time spent circling the airport waiting our turn to land. We finally landed at 9.45pm, and as we were preparing to get off, spent quite a bit of time explaining to the Swiss family behind us what we were and why we were going to Switzerland. 
Going through passport control, Chris Rhodes had to explain once again that we were a brass band, this time to the staff on the desk. In fact, passports turned out to be a bit of a problem, as Joanne Brunyee tried to use her husband’s (“This passport is for a man”) and Gemma managed to lose hers completely. After a frantic search it turned out that she had given it to Danny Maines for safe-keeping, and this set up a running joke for the weekend. As we were waiting for our luggage to come through on the carousel, Ian “Desert Head” Bailey was heard to play “Happy Birthday” for a group of waiting Swiss people. “I can’t hit top Cs like that on stage!” he said when he had finished and taken his bow. By now it was about 10.30pm, and we all piled onto a waiting bus outside, ready for the trip of about an hour from Zurich to Lucerne. We were first to go to the hall to drop off the instruments, and then we were to go straight on to the hotel. The film crew hired a car rather than accompany us on the bus, and we found out later that it took them three hours to make the trip, as they got a bit lost… 
We arrived at the hall, and the band members with the bigger instruments took them down to the room and then returned back to the coach. Then they went back into the hall, put them in the right room and then came back. While they were inside the second time, a very English voice from outside the coach said “Rothwell Temperance Band!”. This turned out to be one of the players from Besses o’ th’ Barn and his girlfriend who were lost and couldn’t find their hotel. We were in the same hotel, so we offered to give them a lift. During the journey he made the mistake of saying that “Contest Music”, the test piece they would be playing on the Sunday, was not technically difficult, and the ex-Dyke players on the band took great delight in destroying his confidence by explaining in detail that it, in fact, was very difficult. 
On arrival at the hotel we found our rooms and tried to get some sleep, as it had been a very long day. Some members of the band went out and found a local bar, where there was a local band playing. They managed to take over, and Danny Maines ended up playing guitar and singing for them. He also gained some groupies and was seen autographing various parts of their anatomy… Eventually everyone was in bed (and some of them were snoring, weren’t they Mr Fowler?) getting some sleep ready for the first contest the next day.
Saturday – 11th Swiss Open Contest Adjudicators: James Scott, Maurice Hamers, Fritz Neukomm, Jan van der Roost, Yves Illi Saturday was the first contest day, when we would be competing in the Swiss Open. As the rest of the band had arrived late on Friday night, no-one really knew what time we were meeting. We knew the contest started at 11.00am, and that we had drawn 10th, and so we went down for breakfast at 8.30am. It eventually transpired that we were going to meet at 11.30am and walk down to the hall together. 
Breakfast was cereal, bread and meat, and there were lots of grumbles with the words “fry-up” in them. Caroline came down to breakfast to report that she had someone else’s suitcase, and therefore didn’t have anything to wear on stage. It turned out that her case and Ian Bailey’s girlfriend’s had got mixed up when the came off the bus at the hotel, so the panic was short lived. After a short walk around the town (and an attempt to get some more sleep after the pneumatic drill sound effects coming from our room mate), we all met up in the hotel foyer and walked down to the hall, which was ten minutes down the road. 
The hall was very new, and had lots of empty space. There was lots of glass used in the design, and also lots of pools of water, which was very strange when you’re used to the functional halls that we have in the UK. The same building also housed a museum, and the outside of it was covered in a mesh of wire. Comments were made that if something like that were built in this country, someone would climb up the side of it. After depositing the instruments that hadn’t been left the night before, we went in to listen to a band. By chance, they played the same march as us, so we got to hear a Swiss Band’s version of all the music we were to play later in the day. The band were apparently the best in Switzerland, so we knew that to do well we would have to play better than their performance. 
Once we had heard the band, we found our rehearsal room (which was in the same building, and was reached by crossing more running water!) and sat down to warm up for the contest. The room was like a theatre, with a seated balcony and lots of spotlights. There was no percussion gear provided in this room, and so the practice was held without us drummers being able to join in. All went well, and after a brief pep talk we moved back to the room where our instruments were stored to get changed. The camera crew descended again, and were filming and asking questions about how we all felt. Once the contest organisers were ready we moved into the warm up room, where there was again no percussion equipment (nobody cares about us, sob). After a brief play, David gave the usual pep talk and thanked the borrowed players. He was quite proud of having his old friends from Dyke, Ian Bailey and Dave Giblin, playing on the front row of his band and said that it felt like a mini reunion. 
We then went up to the back stage area, went on to set up the percussion, and then the band joined us on stage for the performance. The TV crew had by this time moved out into the hall to film us playing. We played the march really well, but the test piece was superb. Everything from the practices went in as planned and there were no slips. It really was an excellent performance, and the band came off the stage very pleased with themselves. 
After packing away the instruments we adjourned to the area behind the hall, where there was a bar and food stall, and a small fairground. Gemma, Claire Hale and Jonny Hamel went on a ride called Discovery, which basically threw them around in the air for 10 minutes, covering them with water in the process. They were rather damp when they came off. The band also indulged in the food on offer, which today consisted of kebabs on big sticks. We were asked not to drink until after we had had a rehearsal for the contest on the Sunday. 
After the last band had played at about 3.00pm, we went inside to wait for the results, to find that they were at a set time of 4.30pm. We had just over an hour to kill, so we decided to go do a practice for the Sunday contest then, before the results were announced so that we could get it over and done with. It was quite strange sat listening to a piece like New Jerusalem, which has a heavy percussion content, and not being able to play along, and the piece sounded strange with gaps in where the percussion solos would be. In Heaven was similarly strange, as the flugel soloist and glockenspiel have alternate bars solo in the first six bars of the piece. 
The practice was completed in time for the results, and we went and sat together in the stalls to find out how we had done. After an initial “Here are the contest results”, the rest of the results were given in a combination of French and German. This made working out who had won what something of a challenge, but thankfully my prized GCSE German (grade D!) came into its own and I could just about follow what was going on. It was useful that band names were read out rather than order of play as is the norm in the UK. The first prize to be announced was that of Best March, and we were surprised and happy to hear our band name read out. After this the top six places for the overall contest were read out. In sixth place was Besses o’ th’ Barn, and then for the next few prizes, Swiss bands were named. After hearing all the other prizes (including a joint second place which confused us a bit) and a lot of nail-biting on our part, first prize was announced as going to us. We were extremely happy with this, as previously the highest an English band had ever come in this contest was fifth. The full results were as follows: 1. Rothwell Temperance (170 Points) Besses were not overly impressed with their sixth place. 
This was the first ‘title’ contest that the band had ever won, having previously only won regional contests, or those at a lower level. We received three cups from this competition, one for best march, one for winning the contest that we had to give back next year, and one for winning that we could keep. After invading the stage to congratulate each other, the band congregated outside the back of the hall, for more food and beer. We then began to walk back to the hotel, with the aim of getting changed before going out for a drink to celebrate. We didn’t get there. Just after passing the Hotel Anker, where many of the band had spent the previous night, all plans to get changed first were shelved and we moved into the bar. We filled up the cup with five bottles of champagne (thanks Desert Head!) and it was passed around the band for them all to take a drink. We then began to phone everyone we could think of to tell them the news. 
After a while, we returned to the hotel to get changed and go out for some food, before meeting back at the Hotel Anker Bar later to celebrate. The entire band managed to go Italian for the evening, at various different restaurants, and without any pre-planning. At 9.00pm, we all met back up in the bar and by this time there was a band on, playing all sorts of local and Europop style music. We all had a really good time, with the TV crew filming everything that went on (some people might not be looking forward to seeing this bit on the telly!). Danny Maines, our timp player, got up to sing again and was filmed by the camera crew. This time, he was joined by Michael Howley for a rendition of Wonderwall and My Generation. 
The crew then filmed people leaving the pub and the band went to bed, ready for the contest the next day. I didn’t get any sleep again (thanks Moose, I know you can’t help it) but made the most of the rest.
Sunday – 2nd European Open Contest Adjudicators: James Scott, Maurice Hamers, Fritz Neukomm, Jan van der Roost, Yves Illi Sunday was an early start, as the contest started at 9.00am, rather than 11.00am as yesterday, and the band were playing number three. After another sleepless night (though we did get more sleep than the night before) we got up at about 8.30am, went down for breakfast and then walked to the hall for 9.00am. As we would not be back before checkout time, we cleared out the room and left all luggage (and our trophies) in a room at the hotel. 
At the rehearsal, the film crew were hovering again, filming the practice and pep talk. As this was to be Dan Loveday’s last event with the band, he was presented with a card and leaving present (a book of Yorkshire phrases). During the rehearsal a group of about 12 members of the public entered that hall and sat down on the balcony to listen. After about five minutes of listening, they heard a very ragged end to The New Jerusalem, gave us a big round of applause and left. Dai was playing from the balcony, as The New Jerusalem calls for an off-stage cornet solo. Just as he came down at the end of the practice, the film crew arrived on the balcony to film him, so there were several cries of “Unlucky!”. 
The band then went back downstairs and got changed. As the rest of the players were entering the warm up room, the percussion section went up to the stage and started the arduous task of setting up all the percussion equipment that was required to play the pieces we had chosen. This was quite a long and involved process, and we were glad that there was no time limit. Setting up the stage at this leisurely pace also allowed us to familiarise ourselves with the instruments provided, as we had never played on them before. When we were finally ready, we left the stage and joined the band ready to walk on stage together. We came on to some good applause, settled down and played our hymn tune, “The Day Thou Gaves’t.” The atmosphere was fantastic, and when we finished the piece the audience were so quiet you could hear a pin drop, before they broke into thunderous applause. 
At this point, Dai left the stage ready for his off stage bit in “The New Jerusalem.” He had been fixed up with a “minder”, one of the stewards at the contest, in order that he could get to the places he needed to be in to play the piece. Unlike contests in the UK, the doors to the hall were locked whilst bands were playing so it was realised on the Saturday that he would need help to move about. The plan was that he would start the piece in one position (the off stage cornet has a solo and the band come in later), move somewhere else for the second solo, and then come and stand down on the stage for the end. The flugel solo, “In Heaven”, went well, with some superb playing from Ian Brownbill, and some surprisingly together glockenspiel, before we were ready to play the test piece. We didn’t know where Dai was, and David and the band were looking around the hall trying to find him. He must have got bored because he just started playing the piece. He was located above the stage, behind and to the left of the band. Again, we played well, with Dai moving to the right of the band, and then finally down to the stage. The audience gave us a really good reception, and they kept going whilst David stood up all the soloists (and forgot Steven Haynes!). 
When the front row cornet player, Ian Bailey, stood up and took his bow, he then turned to Paul Argyle, band down and Paul kissed him on his bald head, as happens to Fabien Bartez before the French national team play football. This got a good laugh from the audience. After David had finished getting the most out of the applause, we left the stage and went down to get changed out of our stage uniforms. We were very happy with the performance, and were not that worried about the place we came in the contest as we knew we had played really well. Once changed, the band congregated outside the back of the hall and again indulged in beer and kebabs. Some of the bass players in our band had been talking to some of the local bandsmen and had been told that they really enjoyed our performance and thought we were the best so far. 
At this point, sat outside the back of the hall, Dave Roberts came up to Michael Howley and said “You’re quite good you”, to which Michael replied, “That’s the best compliment you’ve ever given me Dave”. With four hours to wait until the results, we then left the hall and crossed the river to find an “English Pub” that some band members knew about from previous visits to this contest. The band took over an area outside the pub, and proceeded to indulge in beer, chips and burgers. There was also some Darts playing going on, and some watching of football on the television. There was a Manchester United game to be screened in the pub later that day, but (thankfully?) we would be in the hall waiting for the results at the time it was on, before getting the bus to the airport. We even found someone working in the pub who came from Leeds. The band indulged in some people watching and we saw various look-a-likes, including Steve MacDonald from Coronation Street, and Bob Carolgees. Ian Bailey also spent lots of time winding Gemma up, and stating that he would be playing Second Horn at the next contest, because it was really easy. 
After an hour or so, the film crew tracked us down, and were forced into buying us all a round of drinks. Danny Maines, our borrowed drummer, had by this time run out of cash, and so was being subbed at every opportunity by other band members. At about 3.00pm, we left the pub and walked back to the hotel to get the rest of our gear and bring it to the hall. The bus to the airport would go from the hall, and not the hotel. On arrival at the hall, we dumped the luggage with our instruments and went into the hall to wait for the results. This time, instead of being seated in the stalls, our tickets were for the top balcony. Most of the band made it, but the camera crew and a couple of stragglers were stranded on the next level down, unable to get in due to the locked doors. They made it in the end. Again, working hard with my dodgy German, we managed to figure out what was going on, and heard that we came fifth. The rest of the bands in the top six were Swiss, and we eventually found out that Besses were 7th, after having a nightmare with their test piece. The full results were as follows: 1. Brass Band 13 Etoiles (173 points) We were reasonably happy with this result, knowing that we played the piece as well as we did. 
From the hall, we were straight on a bus for the one hour trip to Zurich airport, where the party again split in two, with the teachers who had flown from Manchester flying back there from one terminal, and the rest of us flying EasyJet back to Luton. Dave Roberts would not let go of the trophy we had won for our first place on Saturday, so he carried that one with him on the aeroplane, and us EasyJet people took the other three with us. We arrived at the airport early, as the flight to Manchester was at 6.30pm, whilst ours to Luton was at 9.40pm. We waited around for a bit, and then managed to check in and get rid of most of our luggage and instruments. Nigel’s bass was over the weight limit for the flight, so me and him ended up checking in together, so that the combined weight of our luggage was below the allowed limit for two people. Once checked in, we gathered our trophies again and went through passport control, downstairs to the departure lounge for some food. More burgers and chips later, we sat in the restaurant watching gymnasts contort themselves into strange shapes on the Olympic coverage on television, before going for a walk around the shops. 
At 9.00pm, we were informed that the plane was delayed until 10.00pm. Then, there was a tannoy which said that the plane was delayed due to “congestion in the European airways” (translation: Zurich only has one runway open) and further information would be given at 10.00pm. After briefly showing a departure time of 11.45pm (there were some gasps of despair about that one) it then reverted to 10.45pm. To kill time whilst waiting, half the band were wandering around the airport, playing at getting this site up on the free Internet machines, before sitting down and being harassed by the camera crew, and the other half were in the bar. The film crew recorded a mobile phone conversation from Dave “Moose” Fowler to his home, explaining the delay. They were really happy with this, as it explained what was going on in a non-staged way. The band were all laughing and expecting the phone to ring, while he was talking. When it came time to board, Dave Fowler and Andy Catherall lost their boarding passes. So after Gemma’s passport on Friday, this was another problem to worry about. They turned up, and the two of them were called to the desk to pick them up, someone had obviously found them. 
We finally got on the plane, and after another seven minute delay, set off for Luton. Just after take off, I was having a conversation with Kerry and Chris Rhodes about Chemistry (!), and Gen, the director, came up and asked if she could be a pain and get Chris to sit down (he was talking over the back of the seat in front) and for us to carry on with our conversation. This was quite hard, as Chris was the one with the Chemistry Degree and was the driver for the conversation. After two sleepless nights, two contests and countless hours of travelling I found it quite hard to think of a topic of conversation on spec, sorry Gen! Kerry did amuse us through the rest of the flight calling Dave Fowler “Mr Moose”. 
The flight was faster than when we came, but I didn’t travel as well (might have had something to do with the Worcester sauce in the bloody mary that someone near me was drinking), and we got straight into Luton at about 11.20pm UK time, and were out waiting for our luggage at about 11.45pm. One of the basses fell of the carousel, and had to be rescued by some of the airport staff. Thankfully, it wasn’t far to the floor! After final goodbye’s to the crew, we left the airport at about midnight, and took the coach back up the country to arrive at the rugby club at 3.00am. The band would like to thank the borrowed and temporary players for their time, dedication, and excellent playing. Thanks to: The band had a fantastic weekend (and most of them still haven’t come down to earth a week later!), and would like to thank everyone involved in making the trip a success. Now, about defending our title next year… Tim Sawyer Press Coverage |
