Tag Archives: Guitar

04-12-2017 – The Battery, The Buffet And Other Stories

Ahoy there shipmates!

A mighty fine weekend’s rollicking on the Good Ship Angel Up Front, a three-gig voyage, and a fine haul of rawk’n’roll plunder.

Friday at the Blue Lagoon showed a good turnout of old chums, which was rather lovely – a wonderful surprise for me to see long-lost almost-daughter Sophie there; meanwhile, not-so-long-lost-actual-daughter Lily was drinking elsewhere in Bristol, and missed the reunion; only after being driven past the venue on her way home, and thinking, “That looks like my dad’s van”, did she check to see where we were gigging. I may have to demote her. READ MORE

27-11-2017 – Super Horse

Hello chums!

My, that was an extremely bizarre weekend, even by our standards….

Friday night, and I rolled up slightly early to our gig the Air Balloon in Filton; went up to the bar, announced I was with the band and asked where they’d like us to play.

Barman points in a direction, “They’re over there, setting up”.

I look across. There is indeed a band setting up, but it’s not mine. Oh dear, looks like there’s been a double-booking. I go over and introduce myself. The guy putting up a PA looks, unsurprisingly, puzzled. “But the band that was booked here got cancelled, that’s why we were asked to play”. READ MORE

20-11-2017 – Blessed Are The Bassoon Sayers

Hey gang!

Didja miss us? Didja? Didja?

Well, two whole weekends without any gigs; it’s been a long time, been a long time, been a… Oh, you see? That’s how much we miss it. Everything turns into a rawk cliché.

Although… I think that kind of thing happens all the time… at least, in my world it does.

Anyway – we’re back now, and rather excited to be out gigging again. Even though we’re – somewhat bizarrely playing two gigs – both in Filton – this weekend, Emma is more excited by the prospect of going out gigging again than she is by her new favourite breakfast cereal… READ MORE

30-10-2017 – Crutch Guitar

Hola, amigos,

Another jolly fine weekend; nice and local for a change. Friday night at the Swan in Thornbury was massively improved by the presence of some lovely old friends, who help us carry the kit in and out and buy us drinks. The rest of you take note – this is the kind of behaviour we like to see!

There are a also a couple of videos they kindly posted up on the Facebook page to commemorate the event, including some rather accomplished inflatable guitar action… Well, we like that kind of thing. READ MORE

30-10-2017 – Mostly Stupid

Hello my little ones,

Well, that was a weekend of Halloween fancy dress gigging silliness; earning an honorable mention for Stuart for latex face scars, and excellent cobwebby props for the kit (in particular, for “Wraith Charles” hanging from the PA); motion of censure for Ben for simply wearing two hats at once; obvious first prize to Emma for the truly terrifying “mad flesh-eating woman” look, and thanks to my Lily for making me look like quite a convincing dead person.

Apparently this was “Quite easy, actually – most of the work’s already been done…” READ MORE

23-10-2017 – The Taxi Chronicles

Bienvenue, mes amis

A jolly fine night at the Railway in Fishponds, was lovely to see hosts Mark and Amy again, particularly as my lovely Dem came along, as did a veritable posse of Emma’s self-confessed “groupies”. Poor Emma was STILL suffering from her cold, as she may have mentioned fifteen or sixteen times during the evening. Nonetheless, she put in a cracking performance; but was eventually forced to lie on the floor and pretend to be dead before the audience would let us stop – a good half hour after time was called. READ MORE

16-10-2017 – Agoon

Well, hello there, my little sarsaparillas…

A weekend with no gigs to report on, so you’ll probably be quite pleased to hear that this will be a rather short little missive.

It’s probably just as well that we didn’t have any booked, though, as we would probably have had to cancel them anyway – our poor Emma has been Proper Poorly. She’s been stuck at home feeling sorry for herself for several days, with barely enough strength left to update our social media…

In a spirit of “Well, if I can’t sing this week, maybe I should at least update the band’s profile page on Facebook”, she painstakingly cropped some photos of each of the four of us, and assembled them together into a suitably rawk’n’roll collage, which she duly published on aforementioned social media site. READ MORE

09-10-2017 – The Laughing Chaffinch

Aye oop!

Well, we had a rather spiffing Saturday evening at the Swan up in Thornbury; a chance to give my “official gigging amp head” a rant after several weeks in hospital; it’s like having a new amp, at least in that I can’t quite remember what all the foot switch controls do, which led to one or two rather interesting moments, when I cut into what should have been a screaming rawk solo, but accidentally tried to play it with an gentle acoustic timbre…

Still, I wasn’t the only one struggling a bit; in the very first number, there’s a moment where the whole band stop, and there’s a vocal cue that we all come back in after. Somebody in the crowd was singing along, but massively out of time, and Stuart, momentarily distracted, decided to go with them rather than with Emma. Oopsie. He made up for it later on, though, by simply totally forgetting what to play midway through a song, settling instead for banging a few drums at random, with a delightfully nonplussed expression on his little chops. READ MORE

03-10-2017 – Ol’ Sparkly Ears

‘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

26-09-2017 – Banoffee Absence

Hey gang

Well, if you’re reading this, then it means we survived the gigs at the weekend. Unless your computer is haunted. Just to be on the safe side, right now you should exorcise it, just in case. Just follow the following simple steps. Do not delay – do it now, even if you are in the middle of a busy open plan office. Every second you waste imperils your mortal soul. Do it NOW!

  • Lift up your computer, stand up, turn to face due North, and say in a loud, clear voice. “Begone, foul spirit! Leave this digital device, return to the Pit whence you came, and come back no more to trouble this mortal plane”.
  • Repeat the above for each of the other cardinal points of the compass.
  • Sprinkle 2.5 litres of holy water over the keyboard, whilst reciting the third verse of Stairway To Heaven (backwards) in a drawling monotone in the key of F sharp.
  • Delete this email, before your supervisor sees it.
  • Try your best to explain your actions when the industrial tribunal comes around.

You’re welcome.

Friday’s outing to the Bulldog in Filton was approached with some trepidation, after a quick Google search showed that the place appears on a list of “Bristol’s Roughest Pubs”. READ MORE