Tag Archives: emma kirby

19-06-2017 – The Twat In A Hat And Other Stories

Greetings, my little summer breezes.

Well, that was a mighty busy weekend – 3 gigs, we haven’t done one of those for ages.

We were most looking forward to Friday’s trip up to a bike rally up near Tewkesbury, a roomy hall, with a nice big stage, and – if Thursday’s rehearsal was anything to go by, we are indeed a talented and capable group of musos. And, as you can see, somewhat the model of sartorial elegance…

Twat in a hat

Well, the hall was indeed roomy – perhaps a little too much so at the beginning, given the somewhat limited size of the audience when it came to be time to start playing. (If you’re reading this – Hi, Paul!). READ MORE

13-06-2017 – Whiteboard Affection

Well hello there, my little inflatables…

And I’m glad to report that we’re now finally up to full strength, and what passes for normality around these parts can be resumed.

As Friday, and Emma’s debut gig with us, loomed large, it was almost inevitable that she’d contract a nasty coldy flu-y chest-infectiony thing, spending most the week poorly off from work, and turning up at rehearsal on Thursday (yes, we do actually rehearse this stuff sometimes, thank you very much) distinctly croaky, and delivering the vocals for some of the more demanding numbers via the medium of interpretive dance… READ MORE

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

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

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

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

15-05-2017 – In Brief, Very Brief

And may I wish a very good day to all our regular readers.

Most of you I’m sure will be delighted (although I cherish the notion that at least a few of you may be somewhat dismayed) to find that this week’s wittering is rather shorter than usual, on the grounds that we have no gigs recently played to tell you about, and that coming up this weekend we have only one – and since it’s a private function, there’s little point trying to encourage folks to come along.

I can tell you that it will be in exotic and cosmopolitan Dursley, and that it’s an annual party for a local amateur dramatic society. READ MORE

08-05-2017 – Twat Parking Blues

Yo homies (as they say here in South Gloucestershire – probably a little bit behind the curve when it comes to cutting-edge urban patois, but better than, say, Somerset, where they probably still say “Hey, man”, and way ahead of Wiltshire, where they merely grunt, or anywhere further North, where they probably just bang their head against the nearest tree).

If there’s anybody else I’ve failed to offend in my opening sentence this week, please do let me know, I’d hate to be accused of favouritism… READ MORE

02-05-2017 – Hippy Prog Sports Sandwich

Hey gang

Well, it’s been a very exciting week in rock, and no mistake. (Well, there have of course been a few mistakes – but these were only of the usual fumble fingered musical nature, which we like to attribute to the naturally exciting and spontaneous creativity associated with live music. Ahem.).

Saturday morning dawned fair and bright, and I shambled out of bed to get everything together for our lunchtime hippy-prog set at the Banshees MC charity day bash, with old chums the All Night Chemists – where in a couple of the songs, there are epic-sounding guitar solos when I get to use all my effects pedals at once! It’s very exciting, and not at all coincidental that I wrote those ones… READ MORE