First Show - Part 2

I realized that I never finished my post about the first show. To sum it up, it was terrifying and a near out of body experience. But I survived. And we played decently- or at least, we didn’t embarrass ourselves too much, which is really all one could hope for. We did however play 8 minutes over our allotted time, which we discovered is a very big no-no. The production manager told Bobby to go get us off the stage. So Bobby came out in the middle of “Singularity” and whispered something to Reed. I somehow didn’t notice any of this. Then just after we finished Singularity, and I announced that we had one more song, Reed suddenly walked off the stage. I thought he had just forgotten to play the last song, so I said “Reed, where are you going?” into the mic. But then I realized that I had better follow him out. Later that night, Erasure’s tour manager, Andy, gave Reed a little talking to afterwards. Reed said it was like being in the principal’s office. Reed explained that at the kind of places we usually play, “thirty minutes” is a general guideline that can really mean anywhere from 0 to 50 minutes. Well apparently, that’s not how it works in this operation. A thirty minute timeslot means that they’ll yank you off with a cane at 31. So we learned our lesson. The next night, we played for exactly 28 minutes. And we will continue to play for 28 minutes for the remaining THIRTY FIVE shows.

Reed talked to Vince later that night and apparently Andy has given Vince a couple of talking to's when they went on 2 minutes late, so that made Reed feel a little better about it.