MAGNUM Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms 3 March 2002 Setlist: As the previous evening Encore: ditto

Well, what a disaster this show was. I'd planned to be in Bristol watching Deep Purple performing their last but one show this evening. Unfortunately Ian Gillan's voice had suffered due to a bad cold/flu and the final 8 dates had been postponed a week before this Sunday. As second choice this show seemed like a good bet, the previous evening having been fun if not very long. I hoped the set may have changed or been extended. Anyway, with rumours of some dates selling out, I booked tickets in advance (the day before) for the first show of this reunion tour, Newport TJ's, and tried to book for the Portsmouth show as well. I was told tickets had been taken off sale but that there would be some available on the night.

I'd planned to go down in the afternoon to see if the box office was open but Tracy wasn't too happy about spending an afternoon watching me wander around the record shops in "that scuzzy area of Portsmouth" as she put it. (We've been there a few times before to visit the shops but never to the venue.) To maintain domestic harmony I decided to expand on my review from the previous evening before publishing it on the web. Having done this we headed south on the 65 or so mile trip. I always forget how to find the street that the Wedgewood rooms is on so we spent 20 minutes driving round the wrong parts of town before finally stumbling a road I recognised. Parking proved the next problem and we had to drive round a block or two. Parked up and with camera gear stowed inside the jacket we headed off to the venue. Bad news when we got there though - the how had sold out. I was pretty pissed of as i almost didn't bother coming anyway.

We'd spotted Bob in a pub while walking between car and venue so we headed in for a drink and Tracy tried to blag our way in. No hope, the small guest list was already full so a rather despondent pair headed back to the venue to see if we could find someone willing to sell spare tickets. There were already a group of other sin the same boat and we got chatting to a couple of them, one having travelled from Poole, the other from the slightly closer Winchester. I was a little surprised as they seemed much bigger fans than I that they'd not bought tickets in advance but maybe they don't like feeding the ticket agencies fat fees either. After over half an hour standing chatting we decided that being last inline for any tickets that did appear, and any appearing looked extremely slim, we may as well cut our losses and haed home. We did hear the muffled sound of the support act as we stood outside but the thought of listening to Magnum that way didn't really appeal. Instead we had our own concert on the way home with the live track from the 'Road to Paradise' compilation.

I suppose the upside is that we saved £25 on tickets (though wasted £15 in petrol) and, as the set was the same as the previous evening didn't miss anything other than a better sound and venue.
I decided not to risk the same outcome with the London show, even though an extra encore had been added at one of the shows, so stayed at home and completed this tale of woe!