Friday hurt - slumping on the sofa to eat before heading out to Stourbridge, I could've quite easily entered hibernation there and then...waking up once the springtime finally broke.
I'm bloody glad I didn't though, as after braving the evils of the M5 in rush hour in a fairly tired state, the gig at Katie Fitzgerald's turned out to be (in purely technical terms) an "absolute fucking blast".
Awesomeness point 1 : They projected Buck Rogers onto the rear wall of the stage for the entire night.
Awesomeness point 2 : Fellow Bristol-type Cat Green Bike was both charming, and excellent to listen to (even if there was a sad lack of Dillinger Escape Plan influence on her uke-tastic tunes - sort it out Xen
Awesomeness point 3 : The utter friendliness of everyone there, and the fact that so many people turned out to a regular Friday night gig at their local.
The only negative was all the lovely and interesting looking beer that I couldn't drink because I had to drive home :( had a solitary pint of Guinness though which was the best I'd had in a good while, and left it at that.
Setlist:
Ours
Camera Shy
Sunclouds
Appetite For Distraction
Pros & Cons
Modesty Is Dead
There Can Be Only One
End of 2009 gig week #1 - have a couple next week, and Left Side Brain @ The Louisiana to look forward to on Saturday.
Rock.
Tuesday 27 January 2009
Friday 23 January 2009
2009 # 2 - UWE gig, Kris Roe, and the constant hangover
bloody hell I'm getting behind already - Tuesday was spent in a vaguely sleepy state, my body unhappy with the sudden attack of "staying up late headbanging" after a 4 week break.
Gig #2 of 2009 - Livesoc @ UWE Glenside
Awful weather! Lineup mixup (sorry Jim)! PA semi-failure!
First two acts on were of the, um, easy-listening-blues-rock-persuasion...plus some dude wearing a rugby shirt came on between them and sang a couple of slow mumbly songs about being lonely/sad/bored/a bit peckish...I dunno, I wasn't paying attention.
Little rants about things that annoy me about live music #1
People who say "thank you!" immediately at the end of a song...why not just shout "APPLAUD NOW YOU PEASANTS" and have done with it?
What if people don't want to clap? What about letting the dying notes of your final chord sink into the audience's brainholes for a little while? What about being a little bit sensible and crediting the audience with enough intelligence to be able to tell when a song has ended (and then fuck with their expectations by ending songs in weird and interesting ways, putting little fake end-ettes in sometimes).
Overriding all of these little points of etiquette is the blindingly pedantic fact that saying "Thank you" before having been given something is just wrong on the most fundamental level.
Think about it ; if you said "Thank you" to a cashier at the supermarket before they'd even started serving you...they'd think you were simple.
Despite all that, oh yeah and having a fit of absolute MEGA-NERVE-PANIC for about 25 minutes prior to going on...all was overcome by the pure awesome power of ROCK which resulted in a massively fun set.
Spontaneously getting the room to sing a slightly nervous call and response to my Jim Lockey cover has to be one of my all time favourite gig moments...even if they probably only did it out of my plea to "not make me look like a tit". Gold.
Setlist;
Sunclouds
Modesty Is Dead
Camera Shy
Appetite For Distraction
Pros & Cons
Happy Birthday James Blunt (Jim Lockey cover)
There Can Be Only One
Settling down to get seriously stuck in to my UWE Livesoc donated bar tab, heroically aided by Jim L (only in a student union can two grown men get that wasted on £20) we heartily enjoyed the youthful exhuberance of The Go Pogs' funky punkiness before heading home for a bit more whisky, general chitchat, and to almost fall asleep playing Smash Bros. Brawl.
Nursing an almighty hangover, I somehow made it through a day at the office with enough energy left over to go see Kris Roe (almost wrote "Rock" then) acoustic show @ The Croft...ably supported by the "sorry I got there too late to see you" Following Announcement, the excellent and lovely Attika State (who I quite expertly haggled down the price of a cd to the princely sum of £3.15 and a really nice plectrum), and the "more Green Day than Green Day these days" The Remnants ;)
Pear cider is good. Music is good. Going to gigs is good. Playing gigs is good. Not getting enough sleep...may prove to be less good.
Gig #2 of 2009 - Livesoc @ UWE Glenside
Awful weather! Lineup mixup (sorry Jim)! PA semi-failure!
First two acts on were of the, um, easy-listening-blues-rock-persuasion...plus some dude wearing a rugby shirt came on between them and sang a couple of slow mumbly songs about being lonely/sad/bored/a bit peckish...I dunno, I wasn't paying attention.
Little rants about things that annoy me about live music #1
People who say "thank you!" immediately at the end of a song...why not just shout "APPLAUD NOW YOU PEASANTS" and have done with it?
What if people don't want to clap? What about letting the dying notes of your final chord sink into the audience's brainholes for a little while? What about being a little bit sensible and crediting the audience with enough intelligence to be able to tell when a song has ended (and then fuck with their expectations by ending songs in weird and interesting ways, putting little fake end-ettes in sometimes).
Overriding all of these little points of etiquette is the blindingly pedantic fact that saying "Thank you" before having been given something is just wrong on the most fundamental level.
Think about it ; if you said "Thank you" to a cashier at the supermarket before they'd even started serving you...they'd think you were simple.
Despite all that, oh yeah and having a fit of absolute MEGA-NERVE-PANIC for about 25 minutes prior to going on...all was overcome by the pure awesome power of ROCK which resulted in a massively fun set.
Spontaneously getting the room to sing a slightly nervous call and response to my Jim Lockey cover has to be one of my all time favourite gig moments...even if they probably only did it out of my plea to "not make me look like a tit". Gold.
Setlist;
Sunclouds
Modesty Is Dead
Camera Shy
Appetite For Distraction
Pros & Cons
Happy Birthday James Blunt (Jim Lockey cover)
There Can Be Only One
Settling down to get seriously stuck in to my UWE Livesoc donated bar tab, heroically aided by Jim L (only in a student union can two grown men get that wasted on £20) we heartily enjoyed the youthful exhuberance of The Go Pogs' funky punkiness before heading home for a bit more whisky, general chitchat, and to almost fall asleep playing Smash Bros. Brawl.
Nursing an almighty hangover, I somehow made it through a day at the office with enough energy left over to go see Kris Roe (almost wrote "Rock" then) acoustic show @ The Croft...ably supported by the "sorry I got there too late to see you" Following Announcement, the excellent and lovely Attika State (who I quite expertly haggled down the price of a cd to the princely sum of £3.15 and a really nice plectrum), and the "more Green Day than Green Day these days" The Remnants ;)
Pear cider is good. Music is good. Going to gigs is good. Playing gigs is good. Not getting enough sleep...may prove to be less good.
Tuesday 20 January 2009
Comprehensive 2009 activity blog #1 : Yeah right, like this is ever going to work.
So last year was a fairly epic string of fun and exciting things happening...but you know what it was missing?
I do : a load of random words being spewed out onto the internet at every possible opportunity.
But no longer shall the internet suffer a vague lack of my continuing presence - I'm going to blog everything that ever happens, like...ever! (until I get bored / forget to / told to get lost / a combination of all 3).
First up: gig #1 of 2009 - Freakshow @ Dempsey's, Cardiff.
Note to self : rehearsal is a good thing.
Soundcheck felt ace, confidence riding high & the mistake ratio was almost epically low - tonight was going to be an awesome gig.
Then...for some reason...it just wasn't. I don't know if opening act Sweet Baboo put me off (he was really good, but in a slightly terrifying way)...whether cutting out some of my most played tunes took me just too far out of the old comfort zone... whether being too lazy to restring my main guitar & using my spare instead threw things a bit askew...or maybe I was just rusty after not playing live for over a month & then not really rehearsing enough. Dunno, all of the above?
Fuck it - the "Freakshow" chaps were friendly and full of enthusiasm as always, and headliners The Great Admirers described my set as being "like having an amphetamine enema" which I think is a compliment(?). I also was recommended a comedian on the grounds that he once called someone an Oxygen Thief as part of his show, so hoorah.
Listened to a chunk of the audio book of Christopher Hitchen's "God Is Not Great" (hoorah for atheist literature), some new Ben Marwood demos (ace), and a blast of Botch's "American Nervoso" when I started to get a bit tired behind the wheel on my way home.
Setlist:
Camera Shy
Sunclouds
Appetite For Distraction (formerly known as "The Price Is Right", but renamed due to the emergence of a much better pun)
Too Many Trees
Modesty Is Dead
There Can Be Only One
I do : a load of random words being spewed out onto the internet at every possible opportunity.
But no longer shall the internet suffer a vague lack of my continuing presence - I'm going to blog everything that ever happens, like...ever! (until I get bored / forget to / told to get lost / a combination of all 3).
First up: gig #1 of 2009 - Freakshow @ Dempsey's, Cardiff.
Note to self : rehearsal is a good thing.
Soundcheck felt ace, confidence riding high & the mistake ratio was almost epically low - tonight was going to be an awesome gig.
Then...for some reason...it just wasn't. I don't know if opening act Sweet Baboo put me off (he was really good, but in a slightly terrifying way)...whether cutting out some of my most played tunes took me just too far out of the old comfort zone... whether being too lazy to restring my main guitar & using my spare instead threw things a bit askew...or maybe I was just rusty after not playing live for over a month & then not really rehearsing enough. Dunno, all of the above?
Fuck it - the "Freakshow" chaps were friendly and full of enthusiasm as always, and headliners The Great Admirers described my set as being "like having an amphetamine enema" which I think is a compliment(?). I also was recommended a comedian on the grounds that he once called someone an Oxygen Thief as part of his show, so hoorah.
Listened to a chunk of the audio book of Christopher Hitchen's "God Is Not Great" (hoorah for atheist literature), some new Ben Marwood demos (ace), and a blast of Botch's "American Nervoso" when I started to get a bit tired behind the wheel on my way home.
Setlist:
Camera Shy
Sunclouds
Appetite For Distraction (formerly known as "The Price Is Right", but renamed due to the emergence of a much better pun)
Too Many Trees
Modesty Is Dead
There Can Be Only One
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