Wassup homeys!

We hope you’re all good – I must say we just had the most enormous fun weekend of gigging we have had in ages.

Thursday at the Oak in Sodding Chipbury went really well, lots of singing along and good feedback afterwards – it’s nice to have a really appreciative audience who can spot the subtler nuances of the musicians’ art. (“Can you turn that girl’s mic up a bit, she’s bloody brilliant?”).

Which, of course, she certainly is.

I’d been looking forward to Saturday’s trip to the Queen Vic in Stroud all week – we’ve not been there for a couple of years – Would they still remember us? Would it be as lively as it used to be? Have they finally got rid of the crappy resident DJ?*

The place was pretty quiet as we set up – security outnumbering customers – but as zero hour approached, it filled up rapidly, and folks were up and dancing from the first couple of numbers.

It was great to see some old pals again, and a riotously good time was had by all.

However, the outstanding feature of the evening was a very affectionate and rather attractive lady, instantly dubbed by Stuart as “Kissy Girl”. She came to chat with us at half-time and was gushing with praise for our musical talents – indeed, it did seem that quite often her emotions got the better of her**, and, her eyes filling with tears, she was unable to express her admiration verbally and instead grabbed one or other of us for a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Because we’re musos, and hence by definition each has a narcissistic streak a mile wide, this unexpected attention was most welcome, although after a while bassist Steve had to try and calm her down a bit by saying, “We didn’t actually write all those songs, you know…”

Soon it was time to start the second set, so we unpeeled ourselves from Kissy Girl and went back to the serious business of making an unholy racket.

The dance floor filled up with happy gyrating punters, with Kissy Girl insisting on grabbing me for another cuddle in between every song, and occasionally during them, and sometimes screaming away, Beatlemania style, during guitar solos.

I couldn’t decide whether to feel honoured, gratified, nonplussed, or worried. Abby, on the other hand, clearly found this all hilarious…

Finally, we ran out of time, we ran out of songs and were sweaty and knackered out, so after a couple of encores we called a halt. By the time we’d packed up, the crowd was thinning out, and KG was nowhere to be seen – we can only hope that her friend took her safely home.

But, just to be on the safe side, I did double-check the back of the van to make sure she hadn’t snuck in there while we were loading up.***

Right, that’s it for now, we haven’t got any gigs coming up this week; but rest assured, we’ll give you fair warning when we do.

Square on
A

*Yes, they had. My joy is unbounded.

** It is very likely that the fact she’d been drinking since 2pm exacerbated this

*** This did happen once. After a gig in Swindon, a high-spirited young lady was found curled up in the back of the van amongst the amplifiers. “Take me with you”, she shouted, “Take me away with you”.

“You don’t know where we’re going” I pointed out.

“I don’t care”, she yelled back, “As long as it’s not fucking Swindon! I was born in Swindon, went to school in Swindon, grew up in Swindon, work in Swindon… Please, just take me away from fucking Swindon!”

We had to send our singer in to gently talk her down and lead her away so we could finish loading out…