Tag Archives: swan

Gig Log

03-10-2017 – Ol’ Sparkly Ears

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‘Sup dudes? – as we young people say…

Another weekend, another round of gigging silliness… Following a rather successful jaunt with my retro-prog-acid-rock chums the All Night Chemists, playing an afternoon set at a lovely little festival in the Forest Of Dean – a fine “proper festival” event, not a normal person in sight – it was down to central Bristol for a jaunt to the rather less unconventional (i.e. lager-swilling) Molloy’s.

When I stop on the way to pick up Emma, I am moved to ask our silver-larynx-ed heroine why she is wearing a pair of sparkly black cat’s ears on her head. She looks puzzled. “I think the question is”, she replies, “Why aren’t YOU wearing a pair of sparkly black cat’s ears on your head?” I have to concede this is a reasonable point. READ MORE

Gig Log

21-08-2017 – Trouserless Combat Vomiting

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Ahoy there shipmates!

So nice to be out playing again, I think we can put last weekend firmly into the “damned good fun” box for safe keeping.

Following a pleasing night at the Rolly in Swindon – where sadly we missed our regular local maniac Mad Freddy, but instead were treated to Mad Dancing Andy Warhol, and a definitely enthusiastic crowd – it was on the following night to the Swan in Thornbury for a jolly family knees-up.

Since Dem and Lil were away, it seemed best to bring my two youngest lads along and play a few songs with them, with a combination of Ben & Emma on vocals, plus young Joe making his public vocal debut on one of his favourite Green Day numbers. Whilst playing bass. So, that’s one of my offspring simultaneously doing two things that I can’t do. Evolution in action. READ MORE

Gig Log

14-08-2017 – The Holy Guitarist

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Hola, mes amigos!

Right, so after a weekend over which I’m pretty sure I didn’t even touch a guitar – being too busy as I was constructing a temple in the back garden, the reasons for which I am sure Dem will be able to explain to me in due course – we have little to report this week (I’m assuming here that a detailed itinerary of my dealings with timber merchants and a catalogue of minor injuries sustained during the building process will be of only minor interest).

However, we do have a nice, normal two-gig weekend coming up to look forward to… READ MORE

Gig Log

05-06-2017 – New Amp Optimism With Added Singer

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Hola homeys…

Apologies that I didn’t get around to sending one of these out last week, I’ve been feeling a bit poorly. Gifts of flowers, cards, sympathy, and particularly cash, will all be welcome.

I’ve not, however, been as poorly as my equipment, which seems to be taking great delight in letting me down at gigs*, whilst nonchalantly behaving itself at practices and during prolonged fault-finding engineering investigations. Nonetheless, having gone through absolutely every item in the signal chain between my guitar strings and the victim’s ear holes, and replaced a whole bunch of components – connectors, leads, jack sockets, etc, I think that actually I may be on top of things again. READ MORE

Gig Log

22-05-2017 – When Nothing Goes To Plan!

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Hey gang

You ever get a week when nothing goes to plan?

Yup, me too.

We didn’t manage to fit a rehearsal in this week, due to a series of unplanned crises, but nonetheless I still managed to bugger up my nice shiny new amp; it’s suddenly started making a noise like a hornet’s nest, and since I’ve already replaced all the valves, this can mean only one thing – an expensive repair bill…

Still, while it’s out of action, we can still gig, because foresighted Alan has not one but two spare amps he can take along; thus equipped, we rolled up on Saturday to a rather nice venue in Dursley, where we are shown into a small bar area, which we immediately just know is going to be acoustically a bit messy. READ MORE

Gig Log

05-09-2016 – The Lamb Files

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Well, we’re back, did you miss us?

After a week’s jolly holidays away in (occasionally) sunny North Wales – during which, due to an unfortunate incident involving lack of foresight and a sinking kayak*, my beloved Dem and I achieved the notable distinction of being the highest people in the land whilst not wearing any pants – it was back to the lovely Swan in Thornbury, to see if we can remember how any of the songs go.

The answer was a resounding “some of them”.

Still, it was an absolute pleasure to get back together and make a raucous racket again, and a delight to see our chums John, Anne & Adam, who’d rolled all the way down from Gloucester to see us. Bless. We were so touched, we got a little carried away and threw in a rather epic AC/DC encore, complete with rubber duck solos. I’d forgotten that we sometimes do that. READ MORE

Gig Log

22-08-2016 – It’s A Bit Like The Archers – BUT ON ACID

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Greetings, my little peccadillos!

Now, that was enough rawk’n’roll fun to last anybody a fortnight… which is just as well, since we’re not playing for a couple of weeks, since I’m running away to Exotic Foreign Parts.

Still, we’ll have plenty of fun to look back on – particularly last Wednesday’s outing to Priddy, hidden way down deep in the Mendips.

So – a midweek gig, in the middle of nowhere – we weren’t expecting a particularly exciting night, to be honest. READ MORE

Gig Log

13-06-2016 – Carry On Football

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Hello playmates!

Well, as it seems that summer is over now (again), but it’s certainly nice to be out and gigging again. Saturday’s jaunt to the Cat & Wheel was interesting; we rolled up around 8:00 to find the place was rammed with people watching the footy – to the extent that they were turning folks away at the door. They let us in though – and thus became a campaign of attrition, as we slowly hauled in the kit, and inch by inch deployed what we could, slowly driving the footy fans back towards the telly screens; by half-time we had got out as much as we could, and then stood outside in the cool air away from the deafening sound of the chimps-in-suits pundits giving their critiques of the previous forty five minutes of blokes running around in circles. READ MORE

Gig Log

11-06-2016 – Briefly

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Hey gang!

Well, what can I say? Summer’s here, and the time is right, for passing out in an unconscious stupor in the streets…

Sorry we didn’t manage to get one of these out to you last week, I was away, and then I came back, but I was busy doing something else, and then I forgot, and then suddenly it was today again.

So there ya go. Actually I’ve been having a rather lovely time lately, lounging around in the sunshine, but all good things must come to an end, and this is the end that they’re coming to… READ MORE

Gig Log

08-03-2016 – The Fluffy Saga Gone Bet Lynch

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Well, good morning, my little shenanigans…

This is starting to get repetitive – another weekend, another pair of gigs – although, to be fair, Friday’s was quite a good turnaround, starting off in appalling fashion – thanks partly to the strange acoustics in the room, but mostly to my general ineptitude (particularly compounded by my seemingly astronomical inability to count to four), we had to throw in the towel on the first number after eight bars, and start it over again – but by the end of the night was huge jolly fun for everyone, due in no small part I suspect to those that enthusiastically joined in Rosa’s Drinking Game. It’s just a little disappointing that Ben and I had our hands full, so we couldn’t actually play along. READ MORE