Tag Archives: fun day

Gig Log

18-12-2018 – Last Blast For This Year With Stairs

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Ho, ho, and, indeed, ho.

And a warm welcome to this festive, and almost certainly last edition this year, of our regular-ish gig blog.

I didn’t manage to put one of these out last week, which I shall blame on time constraints, as “incompetence” is such an ugly word, isn’t it? I can, however, dimly recall a few snippets of the last couple of gigs…

It turns out that the Packhorse in Lawrence Hill is indeed still run by the Angels, and a mighty friendly bunch they were, we all had a jolly fine time, and will be back there again next year. As I write this, it’s only just occurred to me that possibly one reason we were so popular was that – due to driving constraints – we didn’t take too much advantage of their mighty fine   “free beer for musos” policy (one which, as regular readers will know, I have been a staunch supporter of for many years). READ MORE

Gig Log

05-12-2018 – Swanky Vowel Shortage

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Wotcha!

My, that was an interesting evening we had on Saturday. A journey up into the wild and wet hills of Wales, to play a birthday party in the charming little town of Ynysbwl.

No, really, that’s not a typo!

The sad fact is that there is a national shortage of vowels in the area; since the alphabet mines were shut down some years ago, and all the best letters were loaded onto trains and shipped off for swanky Londoners to enjoy, all the locals were left with was a collection of the less popular consonants – mostly “w”s, with a few “b”s and “l”s. READ MORE

Gig Log

26-11-2018 – Chicken Drumkit

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Ahoy there shipmates!

Well, after lord-knows-how-many weeks without us playing, we were all rather relieved at the Blue Lagoon on Friday to find that we can still do this stuff.

Mostly. I think every one of us had a minor memory blackout at some point or another, but happily these didn’t coincide, so every song we played was basically not guilty, based on a majority verdict.

Perhaps this is why they have so many people in the orchestra for classical music – it is, after all, quite complicated, so if they have a lot of people then it doesn’t matter so much if one of them screws up. READ MORE

Gig Log

12-11-2018 – Archery

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Aloha, compadres!

Since we’ve not played a gig for two weeks, we have nothing really to report on. I mean, we could provide you with a run-down of our various domestic lives over the past fortnight, but that would be getting dangerously close to being like The Archers – albeit an everyday tale of rawk’n’roll folk…

Although – actually, speaking of archers has reminded me that Emma still needs to make arrangements with my beloved Dem, they were planning to go and spend an afternoon doing archery together. What could possibly go wrong? READ MORE

Gig Log

29-10-2018 – Beer Yoofs Adventures

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Good morning!

Winter draws on, I see – although frankly, vicar, I don’t see what business it is of yours – and I have to report a very, very messy weekend’s gigging.

Friday night at the Woodland’s Edge, and our poor Emma turns up looking very unwell indeed, having picked up a nasty stomach bug from somewhere. “I’ve not tried singing yet today”, she tells us, “just in case it makes me vomit”.

“Well, if it does”, I tell her, “Drumkit”.

As we start loading in, it is apparent that there is a plague of yoofs upon this house, boisterously ensconced right next to where we need to set up. I’m sure their mummies love them, but they’re a pain in the arse for everybody else. READ MORE

Gig Log

22-10-2018 – New VanOfAlan

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Aloha!

Right folks, this’ll be a short one (as they say)…

Saturday night’s gig at the Hunstman in Downend – which I see from their website has the “style of a modern pub, and the atmosphere of a traditional inn” – was greatly cheered by the presence of a few chums; and almost nobody else.

It often seems to be the way in here – doesn’t really seem to be a music-y pub – nonetheless, they keep asking us back, and they keep paying us, and it actually makes for a nice relaxing night from our point of view. Plus, it means we can run through numbers we haven’t done for a while, to see if we can still remember them, without too much risk of public humiliation – and so, when requested for an old Fleetwood Mac track we haven’t played for many months, after a quick head-scratch as Ben and I tried to remember what the first chord was, we agreed to have a go at it. READ MORE

Gig Log

16-10-2018 – Dick Thunder And The One Way System

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Aye oop

Not too much to report this week; after eventually finding our way to Saturday’s gig at the Albion House club in Cheltenham (it took Em and myself two satnavs and three laps of the one way system to actually find it), we rolled in to see Stuart and Ben already unloading.

Stuart, who used to live in the area, knows the road system, you see, and so was able to get straight there.

Unfortunately, as he discovered after the gig from the doorman, the one way system has recently been changed, and it seems that Stuart drove in on what are now heavily-camera’d bus lanes – meaning he can presumably expect a swingeing fine to arrive in the post over the next few days. READ MORE

Gig Log

11-10-2018 – You Can Coil My Cables Anytime

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Hola amigos!

Welcome back to the never-ending tour diaries of Angel Up Front – to my mind, the finest rawk’n’roll band in this blog. (Although I have to admit, the competition is somewhat limited on that front…)

Nonetheless, I must admit that, talented and lovely as we are, even we are not above the occasional mishap; for example, on Friday at the Giant Goram, one of our number (who shall remain nameless) forgot the words to Alice Cooper*’s classic anthem School’s Out – such that we started the song, we played round the first verse twice waiting for inspiration to strike, then stopped again. READ MORE

Gig Log

02-10-2018 – Plug And Play

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‘Sup, dudes

Right, well after a somewhat trying week, I was looking forward to playing a nice noisy gig on Saturday, in honour of Emma’s mate Jez’s 50th birthday.

Eagerly we loaded the gear in, I set up my rig, plugged into it, and… nothing.

Signal is getting from the guitar as far as the tuner, but no further. I ferret out a spare cable and plug directly into the amp. Still nothing. Five minutes of frenzied panic set in.

I check all the connections – they’re fine. Just as I am debating whether I have time to dash back home and pick up my spare amp head, Stuart helpfully says “Have you checked you’ve plugged all the cables in the right way round?” READ MORE

Gig Log

24-09-2018 – Let’s Go To Beer

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Ahoy there shipmates!

Despite the stormy conditions this weekend, we managed to steer the good ship Angel Up Front safely through another couple of gigs. Poor Cap’n Emma was suffering from a nasty tropical disease (contracted in the equatorial paradise that is Wales), so the rest of the crew had to treat her rather more gently than usual. As a result, Friday’s gig at the Railway Tavern was slightly less raucous than expected – although we did well enough that the pub kindly gave us a crate of potatoes at the end of the night. And some money as well, which was nice. READ MORE