Carnival 1999
Notting Hill '99 photo albumReal Steel have returned from the 1999 Notting Hill Carnival having achieved their best result ever! After a phenomenal amount of hard work from the people involved Notting Hill was a huge success. Our main achievement was to come third in the 'Best Steel Band On the Road' contest. We came behind Eclipse and the London All-Stars. Our tune for Carnival this year was Sweet & Sexy arranged, for the first time, by Leroy Clarke as well as by Toussaint. It is a very long and complicated piece and really wore the players out over the long route.
Also for the first time we worked with another organisation on the decoration of the float. Save The Children helped us immensely in the decoration of the float and they worked tirelessly to collect over 3500 signatures for their petition against child soldiers. The float wore 4 foot extensions which increased the area of it by almost 50 percent, this allowed us to fit many more players on and in greater comfort than previously.
Behind the scenes we were also very well looked after, we stayed in the Seventh Feathers Youth Centre which has recently been rebuilt and were catered for by Colin Galloway, Rob and John Ede who set up a well equipped field kitchen with even enough peanut butter for Leanne Elliot. Our thanks go out to these hard workers!
Our thanks also go out to:
- Jane Gregory at Save The Children Fund
- The T-Shirt Printing Company in Plymouth for a great deal on our uniform.
- Our amazing float driver, Andy from Rendrive who drove a good steady and slow carnival!
Notting Hill '99 photo album