I’m writing at this moment in one of the more bizarre locations I’ve ever, er, blogged from. I’m in Birmingham. That’s not particularly bizarre in itself, but I’m in a box approximately 6ft x 8ft which supposedly passes for a hotel room. There are no windows. The only reason I know that it’s morning is the whoops of delight I’m hearing from people down the corridor as they slowly realise they no longer have to spend any more time locked up suffering from acute claustrophobia.

The reason we’re here is that Steely Dan played in Birmingham last night. Try as I might, I couldn’t get tickets for the London show – I love “Gaucho” as much as the next man, but that love certainly isn’t worth a £400 splurge on eBay. Birmingham tickets, however, were easier to come by. And it’s only 3-4 hours drive to the National Indoor Arena. The show was fantastic; I even had the pleasure of winding down from the drive in the bar beforehand, as chuckdarwin – also in attendance – confidentially revealed that there was a support act. So while everyone rushed out of the room at the tolling of a bell, rather as if a leper was en route, we had the bar to ourselves. A shit bar, of course, serving only pints of Carlsberg in plastic beakers, double pints of Carlsberg in larger plastic beakers, or something called “Carlsberg Edge” – described as, and I quote, “delicious lager with a hint of citrus”. Lager and lime, then. As everyone slowly realised that Walter and Donald weren’t due on stage for another hour, they sheepishly trailed back in the bar to join us and our delicious lager.

Time Out Of Mind / Godwhacker / Bad Sneakers / Two Against Nature / Hey Nineteen / Haitian Divorce / Peg / Babylon Sisters / Green Earrings / Dirty Work / Josie / some bluesy thing I didn’t recognise / Aja / Bodhisattva / FM / Kid Charlemagne

Greatest Hits! The only low point of the set was during “Haitian Divorce”; I guess they include it as it was their only UK top-20 hit, but when it got to the first line, Jenny flung her hands to her head as she realised Walter was going to sing it, instead of Donald. Walter doesn’t generally sing on Steely Dan records, and for good reason. This was like getting Andrew Ridgeley to sing “Last Christmas”, or Vince Clarke to sing “Nobody’s Diary”. (You can tell I’m up with current musical trends, eh.) Walter cranked it out an octave lower, with the backing singers helping him out a bit, sounding for all the world like a confused grandad attempting karaoke. But aside from that, all was well. Better than well. They finished with a storming encore, which I filmed from about 2 miles away:

And then they were gone. Then followed a rush around the city centre at 10.35pm, trying to find somewhere to eat that didn’t shut at 10.30pm, which proved stressful. Then to the hotel. Well, it’s cheap. £20 cheaper than the Premier Travel Inn down the road, but in retrospect I’d rather have forked out the extra and not spent the night dreaming of being imprisoned in a cage by Countess Bathory. Seriously, there isn’t enough room here to swing a gnat. The blurb says that it’s “created to emulate the feel of a cabin aboard a luxury yacht.” The first thing you notice on entering is that one wall is entirely taken up by a disproportionately massive plasma TV, connected to a camera mounted on the roof of the hotel, giving you views of traffic grinding to a halt while approaching Paradise Circus – a roundabout that could only have been named by giggling council officials, hysterically rolling around on the floor of a boardroom overlooking it. Evidently, the hotel are trying to make you feel that the plasma screen is a window. But the thing is, for variety, the view switches to another camera every minute or so, making you horribly disorientated, as if the whole hotel is revolving. Changing the channel to Tennis from Wimbledon at least affords some kind of stability – heavy rain, Sue Barker, nostalgia. Phew. The lights in the room are all operated from a panel which emits a ghostly green glow throughout the night. There are reading lights, overhead lights, bathroom lights, desk lights – but it doesn’t matter which one you choose – because, for chrissakes, you’re in a box that’s only 6ft x 8ft. Put them all on at the same time, however, and it’s like a nuclear explosion in a sub-post office. The final straw is that there’s no mobile reception and the wi-fi costs £3.50 / hour, so it feels like you’re cut off from the world – like you’re stuck in a cabin aboard a luxury yacht, in fact, moored somewhere off Madagascar. Which is, of course, what they were aiming for. Congratulations all round.