Zombies in Wales, true.

Or Ann And I Enjoy Our Mid Life Crisis Together.




'I'm going to see The Zombies on Wed, wanna come?' bonkers friend Ann tells me, so of course I say yes. Even though it's in Wales and therefore will be raining. I vaguely remember the name so I looked 'em up and, whaddya know, Colin Blunstone! And Rod Argent! Turns out, I even remember some songs, She's Not There, God Gave Rock n Roll To You, Time Of The Season. So I rang the venue - a small converted church in deepest Pontypridd - and asked for a ticket as near as possible to Ann's front row seat A4. And guess what, they had seat B4 empty! Now, bearing in mind, this was the morning of the show, I did wonder if there was actually anybody else going apart from us and the rest of row A.............

The heaving metropolis of PontyPridd

So off we trot to Wales, amid the gloom of a November day, except that it's May. Our trusty Satnav actually got us there without getting lost, and we even found somewhere to park with no trouble. Curiously, there seems to be no people in Pontypridd, so we picked up our tix from a spotty youth, and set out to explore. Took about 5 minutes. We found several shops masquerading as pubs, and even a Wetherspoons, proving that there is civilisation after you've paid to get over the bridge. (Not that we did, we came the long, and free way round).

 But we preferred a nice looking (empty) pizza restaurant, and we were right to, it was yummy. And all the good citizens of PP came in after us, so it was actually quite lively in the end.
After an indepth conversation about how age is all relative, and anyway, we are only 46, and that all the people round us were probably the rest of the front row, and are all much, much older than us, we made are way back to the venue, squeezed in another drink and went to watch the support. Whose name I never did get, even though they said it several times.

And then......Zombies! All looking really old, but actually sounding pretty good, especially Colin Blunstone, what a gorgeous voice he has! And he can still hit the high notes. He said they'd been making music together for 52 years!!!!!!!

They played for about 2 hours, all their hits, Colin's hits Say You Don't Mind, Don't Believe In Miracles, and A N Other which I forget the name of, and also Hold Your Head Up by Argent which was awesome, Rod Argent going completely mad on the keyboards in psychadelic hippy kind of way.  Groovy, man.
About 5 people got up to dance mostly the younger ones, (who I'm convinced were Colin's family, they knew all the words to every single song, FFS), but most of us didn't feel the need. Gotta take every chance to sit down when you're, er, 46. Rest of the audience of course were considerably older.

I wanted to hang out by the stage door, and do some fawning, but Ann wouldn't let me, so we set off to escape Wales and get home, trying to think of other bands we could go and see before they all drop dead.

Deep Purple would be good, 'cept that they're touring Europe and USA this year and not coming here. ZZTop, maybe? Thin Lizzy/Black Star Riders? Meh, we may even go and see the Zombies again in London. Whatever, I know that if I go with Ann, we'll have a Fab and Groovy time, cheers luv xxx

Apologies for the lousy pics, I only had my phone. Edit: Managed to find some proper pix!

Yes, this is Colin. And an old geezer who used to play with the Kinks

Rod Argent. Take my word for it.