Tag Archives: Xmas

Gig Log

23-10-2017 – The Taxi Chronicles

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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

Gig Log

16-10-2017 – Agoon

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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

Gig Log

09-10-2017 – The Laughing Chaffinch

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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

Gig Log

03-10-2017 – Ol’ Sparkly Ears

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‘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

Gig Log

26-09-2017 – Banoffee Absence

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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

Gig Log

21-09-2017 – I Will Survive (I hope) Addendum Special?

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Captain’s Log – Update. Stardate 137 / 24.9

Just a quick update on this weekend’s gigs – if you were planning to trot along to see us in Dursley on Saturday, I suggest you make some new plans. The gig’s cancelled, as we’ve been informed that apparently the landlord “has done a runner”.

I assume that this means he has suddenly relocated, presumably leaving behind a pile of unpaid bills and an empty till.

The other possibility is that the phrase indicates he has suffered a catastrophic bout of intestinal distress, and that the pub has been closed for safety reasons while the bio-hazard clean-up team wrestles with the outfall. READ MORE

Gig Log

19-09-2017 – I Will Survive (I hope)?

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Ahoy there shipmates!

And, after a nice relaxing weekend off, it’s back into the fray for your favourite rock’n’roll heroes; with a rather busy three-gig weekend, of which the most salubrious seems to be in Dursley.

Just think about that, for a minute…

Friday 22nd – The Bulldog, Filton – 8pm start
I don’t think we’ve done this one before. In fact, I’m not sure if they have live music as a regular feature or not; certainly I’ve never met any bands who say they’ve played here, which either means they’ve only just started putting bands on… or nobody has played here and lived to tell the tale. We shall see… READ MORE

Gig Log

11-09-2017 – Loved Up Special

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Yo homeys, as famous farmyard rapper Notorious P.I.G. would say…

Another weekend of giggery goodness, we kicked off with one of our favourites, the lovely Goatfest, just outside Calne. Despite earlier downpours, the rain held off for the night, so we got to thoroughly enjoy the luxury of a big stage and lights, and excellent PA superbly engineered by our pal Brian of Noizboys in Swindon.

It was hard to see too much of the crowd past the lights, but we could tell they were there by the singalong (they almost drowned Emma out during the intro to “Don’t Stop Me Now”), but also by the somewhat ribald heckling… READ MORE

Gig Log

04-09-2017 – Goat Thing Beard

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Howdy pardners

Well, that was a rootin’-tootin’ mighty fine weekend of rawk’n’roll, and…

…oh, bollocks to it, I’m bored with the cowboy voice already.

Suffice to say another spiffing pair of gigs at the weekend, with much jolly singing and dancing from the audiences, and much titting about, moments of sheer musical brilliance interspersed with episodes of titanic incompetence from the band, and a certain amount of dressing up.

Emma and I are still bemused as to why wearing a comedy false beard should make your sunglasses steam up. Although, to be fair, not as bemused as the innocent girl who walked into the pub to be greeted by the following sight (I promise, there IS a logical reason for it!) and let out an involuntary shriek of horror…. READ MORE

Gig Log

30-08-2017 – Rampant Pickle

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Yo homeys!

Well, we hope you enjoyed the long weekend as much as we did – but we bet you didn’t!

We kicked off with a pleasant evening in the Assembly Inn in Bath; the Gods Of Parking smiled on us and we were able park right outside the door, in the last two parking spaces left in Bath. Setting up in the small space was easier than last time we were here, partly as I cunningly left a couple of speaker cabinets at home, but mostly because we knew already which bits of the floor were in fact treacherously unstable and hence not safe for putting anything heavy on. We played, they shouted for more, but we’d hit the neighbour noise curfew so we legged it off home for some beer. The night was also memorable for being the first time Emma realised what Ben and I are actually singing to the chorus of “I Love Rock and Roll”. Lucky she keeps an inhaler handy, really. READ MORE