Tag Archives: keynsham

Gig Log

07-01-2019 – Ice Say, It’s The End Of The Year

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Well, a Merry New Year to all our readers, and possibly even our reindeers, come to think of it.

Sorry we didn’t manage to get one of these out last week – I nipped away for a few days; in fact, I’ve been to the land of the ice and snow (of the midnight sun where the hot springs flow), and mighty good fun it was, too – and only just got back.

We hope you all had a splendiferous festive season – I think we did, it was all a bit of a blur, really. I do recall that I had some very strange technical issues at the Farmhouse in Yate, in that my rig made a horrendous loud buzzing noise, but only when I stood in front of it – the noise went away completely if I stood to one side facing the wall; and since we could find no other solution, that’s exactly what had to do for most of the gig. So – apologies to anybody that was there, who just assumed I was being aloof and moody all night; I wasn’t (at least, not more than usual) – it was down to technical necessity. READ MORE

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

23-07-2018 – Purple …..

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Good evening; and here is the news….

Friday night, and a trip to the Trout in Keynsham to unveil not one, not two, not three, but four (yes, four, count ‘em!) songs we’d not gigged before. Actually, I failed to count ‘em and mistakenly left one off the setlist; fortunately Em remembered about it and scribbled it back in just before we started playing.

Poor Em. Somehow she managed to bugger up one of her knees last week, but armed with lots of medical strapping and some weapons-grade painkillers, she heroically made it to the gig, and actually managed to get most the way through proceedings still upright. Alas, near the end, she could bear the pain no more and had to have a chair fetched and her leg propped up to finish off the second set. READ MORE

Gig Log

23-07-2018 – The Minimalist Edition

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Greetings, my children of the night…

Well, with no gigs to report on, this will be a nice short one – we’re going back to basics, I’m simply going to tell you where we’re playing this weekend, so’s you’ll know which venues to avoid…

Friday 27th – The Trout, Keynsham
A fine, energetic, boisterous – and, I have to say, a somewhat messy crowd in here means it will be a significantly entertaining evening. We’ve been working on a few new tunes lately, so you might well get to hear us play some of them for the first time. READ MORE

Gig Log

04-06-2018 – Klingon Birthday

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Hola amigos!

I’ll keep this one short again -’cause the sun is shining in the garden, and there’s a beer waiting for me.

I’ll just briefly tell the tale of Saturday’s escapade to the Lamb in Marlborough – being just a couple of days shy of Ben’s 30th birthday, we figured this would be the best time to give him his pressies.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that our Ben is just a teeny tiny tad geeky, so he was immensely pleased when Emma presented him with a special set of many-sided dice, fantasy role-playing games for the use of. He did later admit that he already owns around a dozen sets of said dice, but that nonetheless these ones were absolutely necessary, as they’re especially shiny. READ MORE