Boy howdy!
And welcome to this week’s thrill-packed episode of rambling nonsense.
Friday night’s expedition to the Old Mail House was successful, from my point of view at least, in that I managed to pull off a triumph of rock’n’roll blokiness, by diverting course on the way to the gig to buy an angle grinder.
Impressed, eh?
That’s nearly as blokily impressive as a man with two sheds, wouldn’t you say?
(I don’t actually have two sheds. I’m not weird, or anything).
Well, that’s it, folks. Summer’s end. It’s raining again. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted. At least the giggage continues apace.
Friday at the Swan, and the turnout was a bit on the light side – apparently the good citizens of Thornbury have taken to staying home of a Friday night in recent months – and this one was not very different. In fact, as there were not too many in, and they were quite shy, Emma had to encourage them at the end of each song to applaud.
In fact, for one number – which tails off gracefully with eight bars of acapella vocals, and thus doesn’t have a definite “Clang” ending – in a moment of genius, to avoid any confusion for the punters, at the moment the last note fades away, Emma helpfully announces,“THE END”; which had the rest of us creased up in hysterics. Oh, how we love that woman.
To be fair, there were still quite a few merrymakers in, boosted by some old chums of Stuart’s who were there for one of their number’s retirement party. Retirement? But Stuart claims to be 23…
Not having been at this venue in living memory, it was a pleasant surprise to find a large raised stagey area with positively oodles of room for leaping around like a bunch of twats. So we did. Except for Stuart, who for some reason remained steadfastly sat on his drum stool right through both sets. He’s 23, you know.
Saturday at the Jolly Cobbler was very nicely timed, at least from the point of view of managing to load in and out in between thunderstorms. On the other hand, our successful effort to finish bang on 10:30 (due to noise-complainy neighbours) was rather scuppered when landlord Mike came up to us after our final number to tell us that the finish time was in fact 11:00…
“Oh. Well, that’s all right, then. Let me just turn this back on again…”
So we played on for another half hour, plundering our catalogue of songs-we-haven’t-played-for-ages and aren’t sure we can remember – but it seems that, on the whole, we can. Clearly our collective dementia is not as bad as we feared; particularly Stuart’s. He’s only 23, you know.
Finally, a special mention for youngster Jake, who went over and above the call of duty on air guitar, to the point where at one point I was actually fired from the band to make way for him… only being reinstated when I pointed out that Jake was too young to drive the van.
Coming up this weekend…
Friday 27th – Old Bank, Keynsham
It’s a bit snug in here, but we have fitted in smaller places before now, and they’re a friendly bunch; maybe we’ll even try out a few new songs on them…
Saturday 28th, 1pm – Banshees Charity Bash, Barton Hill RFC
Basically, it’s a village fete for bikers. Whole bunch of bands on (we’re opening proceedings at around 1pm), there’s stalls, food, beer, and a Viking re-enactment society staging a battle. I’m hoping that none of them puts an axe through Ben by mistake…
And that, my friends, for this week at least – is that.
Square on
A
Note – anybody who remembers last week may recall that I was threatening to bring along my bonkers new theremin-simulating effect pedal to a gig this weekend. In the end, I didn’t do so, because it suffered a mysterious and inexplicable complete functional non-operational-episode-scenario, such that I left it at home. Now, following a detailed strip down and technical investigation, including a microscopic examination of all my solder joints to try and trace the fault, I can reveal that the problem was that I had plugged the input and output jacks into the wrong sockets.
I would like to remind you that I possess a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering – which, YOU, my tax-paying friends, paid for…
That is all.
Right, this one’ll be nice and short then, as I’ve done nothing of interest at all this weekend; well, nothing that’ll interest anyone else, anyway – unless they have an unhealthy fascination for tinkering with obscure guitar effects pedals, or…
…No, that’s about it, really, tinkering with obscure guitar effects pedals was pretty much the full story of my weekend. Emma went swanning off to Paris, I sat in my kitchen and tinkered.
On the plus side, I can now make noise like a theremin,though, which I think counts for something.
I’m not entirely sure what, thought.
But, if you’d like to hear it, you could do worse than roll up to one of our gigs this weekend..
Friday 20th – Old Mail House, Staple Hill
I think that once, many years ago, I played a duo gig here. However, I can’t remember anything about it. And that’s all that Forrest has to say about that.
Saturday 21st – Jolly Cobbler, Kingswood
It’s an 8:30 start this one, because we have to finish a bit early, as landlord Mike has a grumpy neighbour. He won’t tell us which one though, just in case. Maybe, though, the grumpy neighbour would enjoy being serenaded by swoopy theremin sounds being driven full-tilt through a 120 watt guitar amp. I’m rather looking forward to finding out.
Right, well I said this would be a quick one…*
Square on
A
*Insert double entendre of choice
