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