Tag Archives: stroud

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

07-08-2017 – The Holland Splutter

Hello stranger!

Well, with no gigs coming up this weekend, I really have no reason to write this, other than to remind you all (and to some extent myself) that we’re not actually dead yet.

So I’ll probably just keep this as a brief recap of the last few gigs that we played, but I never got around to telling you all about, due to me vacationing in sunny Holland with my dear (in the sense of expensive) family. As a special treat, we also took with us a selection of unpleasant viral infections, so – apart from a rather lovely day visiting windmills followed by the very fine Hieronymus Bosch museum – my main memories of the week consist of days of driving across featureless landscapes and nights of staying awake coughing. 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

05-01-2017 – Another Noo Year

Happy New  Year, folks!

We hope you all had a spanktastic festive season, we certainly did…

Gig reports (as far as I can remember them) are suitably cheery – just before Christmas we played the Farmhouse in Yate, which turned out to be a rather better night than anticipated, thanks to a fairly solid cohort of slightly bonkers locals – including one fine lady, whose name alas I have forgotten, who was something of an urban hairdresser – a “street stylist”, if you will – she spent much of the evening unaccountably weaving plaits into the hair of various other members of the clientèle, and when she spotted Ben’s flowing tresses, her face lit up with an evil grin. READ MORE

23-12-2016 – Lil Deps

Ahoy there shipmates!

Well, Friday at the ‘Cullis was an interesting evening. We arrived to find that the pub has changed hands since we were last here, and they’ve done it up a bit. In fact, there’s even a nice little drum riser, which should nicely enhance our professional rawk’n’roll credibility. And now that I’ve got my new amp back from the doctors, I have an impressive six-foot high stack of backline, which I think also helps to substantially enhance our professional rawk’n’roll credibility. READ MORE

07-11-2016 – Yeah, Stuff

Hey gang

Well, firstly apologies to anybody who fetched up to the Old Neighbourhood in Chalford hoping to catch us – as you’ll have already found out, we weren’t there. This was due to an unfortunate forgot-to-renew-their-music-licence episode from the pub’s head office management – it wasn’t our fault, honest it wasn’t! Still, it could have been worse – my pal Little Ian’s band had had to cancel their gig on Friday – for the second time in a row at the same venue – thanks to their drummer repeatedly falling off things and injuring himself. READ MORE

31-10-2016 – Of Halloween And French Maids

Well, how do you do,

I see you’ve met my faithful handyman…

If that makes no sense to you, folks, Google it for context…

Friday night, and the New Crown Inn in Bath. Earlier in the week, the landlord had called to let us know they were making it a Halloween fancy dress night, if we fancied joining in.

Do bears poo in the woods?

So, an email was duly sent around all band members, explaining the dress code, with a stern reminder that, as per school PE lessons, anybody who forgets their kit has to play in their pants. I cunningly covered both options by plumbing for a Rocky Horror outfit. READ MORE

10-10-2016 – Angel Wings and Stadiums

Hey gang

Another weekend, another silly night of rawk’n’roll…

After a pretty dire Friday night gig, replete with dodgy stage sound, equipment death, and my guitar spontaneously detuning itself, resulting in me trying to play one song without touching three of the strings, we were hoping for better things on Saturday up at the dear ol’ Queen Vic in Stroud…

And better things indeed there were. We brought along my beloved Dem and daughter Lily, and were delighted to find some old pals waiting for us when we arrived, who kindly helped us haul the kit in, while Dem and Lil headed straight for the bar and started emptying it. READ MORE

03-10-2016 – Yeah, Well, Ok Then

Good morning campers!

And a very warm welcome to Sunnyview Rest Camp for the mentally infirm and physically unattractive. We hope to make your stay here as enjoyable as possible, but following an unfortunate incident last night outside the Leisure Lido Amusement Palace, please may we remind all our guests to make sure that you are wearing clothes before leaving your chalet; particularly if you don’t have your keys with you. Also, don’t forget that the Sunnyview Knobbly Knees competition will be held at the Kiddies Splashtime Fun Pool this afternoon at four o’clock sharp; or slightly later if we haven’t quite fished out of all the unfortunate floating items by then.
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> Right, sorry ’bout that folks, I have no idea where that one came from; possibly my brain spontaneously retuned itself and was picking up another channel entirely. READ MORE