May 2008: Festival Season Kicks Off With Mighty Squelch
9th May: Live show at The Croft, Bristol. Couple of new tracks in the set being fine-tuned.. Adam Form (http://www.myspace.com/thedjform) kindly put us up for the night and provided plenty of slapstick entertainment, (one second he's there on his chair fairly compos mentis and the next he's managed to fall flat on his back not looking like he knows where or who he is). We're up into the early hours. Sun comes up, probably good idea to catch a bit of sleep.
10th May: Everybody we spoke to yesterday in Bristol treated us like a close relative had died when we told them we would be playing in Swindon on the way back. Riff's Bar proudly announces that it's winner of the Pub Venue of the year for 2007. Pub gigs remind me of being 16 again and our singer being heckled by an old drunk man at Esquires in Bedford. We get fed (the equivalent of being treated like kings). A totally random assortment of people in the crowd. Up front there's a long-haired rocker moshing like there's no tomorrow. Next to him there's a couple in their 50s totally having it. The Swindon Review has turned up to interview us and hail our grand debut here. Love it.
In a lot of pain from yesterday's performance, getting too old for this.
18th May: The Agincourt, Camberley. Another haven for rockers. In Spinal Tap fashion, we accidentally managed to book ourselves for this gig sometime last month and didn't realise til we saw our names headlining some posters last week. Evident administrative errors and complications kick up a few arguments within the band. Nice stage, sound not so great and a handful of people soak up the sound in the this 600-capacity venue. Kimba gets the set down on video and we watch it a few days later to check out what we really look like on stage. Why did nobody tell me that thing I do with my leg looks crap?
24th May: The Boileroom, Guildford. Got to support the amazing Wobbly Squadron. ( http://www.myspace.com/wobblysquadron) What I love about their set most is the crowd literally stomping. It's kinda like psy-barndance (if that isn't a musical genre, it should be). Mental note to hunt them down at festivals and enjoy them properly. I think my neck still hurts from a couple of weeks ago.
25th May: Komedia, Brighton. This had all the hallmarks of being a great show.. organised by some of the top promoters in Brighton, great venue, amazing line-up. We turn up to find our slots been switched from primetime 2am to the 3am graveyard shift. The stage manager seems to have forgotten to add in changeover times. We roll on at about 3:30am.
A good test-run for breaking in Chris Kingskin (http://www.kingskin.com/), the new sound engineer. (Or more affectionately known as Swampy since he looks like he just got pushed out of a tree somewhere off the Newbury Bypass).
29th May: Sunrise Festival. (aka Mudrise/Mudfest/Shitrise) A million rumours fly around at the Solstice Services Little Chef. It's postponed til Friday / Only crew and artists are allowed in and even they're being towed in / The whole site is being rearranged, they're swapping the car park with the main site / It's completely cancelled / There's a secret entrance if you go down by the diesel tankers and tap L, R, L, R then push both shoulder buttons down at the same time.
Seemed there was a certain amount of dissent amongst the Sunrise organisers. Some were saying the flash floods were a blessing in disguise because the vibe just wasn't right this year.
30th May: Basingstoke Canalfest. Well we were all packed up and ready for a party so we headed to Mytchett instead. Three reasons why Basingstoke is better than Sunrise:
1. Car boot sale. (Now strongly believe this should be a major feature of all festivals now. Scrap Lost Vagueness, bring in the mother of all car boot sales to take it's place)
2. Rowboats paddling on water rather than your vehicle sinking in mud
3. Not getting woken up by shit trance
Above: some of the spoils from the car boot sale
10th May: Everybody we spoke to yesterday in Bristol treated us like a close relative had died when we told them we would be playing in Swindon on the way back. Riff's Bar proudly announces that it's winner of the Pub Venue of the year for 2007. Pub gigs remind me of being 16 again and our singer being heckled by an old drunk man at Esquires in Bedford. We get fed (the equivalent of being treated like kings). A totally random assortment of people in the crowd. Up front there's a long-haired rocker moshing like there's no tomorrow. Next to him there's a couple in their 50s totally having it. The Swindon Review has turned up to interview us and hail our grand debut here. Love it.
In a lot of pain from yesterday's performance, getting too old for this.
18th May: The Agincourt, Camberley. Another haven for rockers. In Spinal Tap fashion, we accidentally managed to book ourselves for this gig sometime last month and didn't realise til we saw our names headlining some posters last week. Evident administrative errors and complications kick up a few arguments within the band. Nice stage, sound not so great and a handful of people soak up the sound in the this 600-capacity venue. Kimba gets the set down on video and we watch it a few days later to check out what we really look like on stage. Why did nobody tell me that thing I do with my leg looks crap?
24th May: The Boileroom, Guildford. Got to support the amazing Wobbly Squadron. ( http://www.myspace.com/wobblysquadron) What I love about their set most is the crowd literally stomping. It's kinda like psy-barndance (if that isn't a musical genre, it should be). Mental note to hunt them down at festivals and enjoy them properly. I think my neck still hurts from a couple of weeks ago.
25th May: Komedia, Brighton. This had all the hallmarks of being a great show.. organised by some of the top promoters in Brighton, great venue, amazing line-up. We turn up to find our slots been switched from primetime 2am to the 3am graveyard shift. The stage manager seems to have forgotten to add in changeover times. We roll on at about 3:30am.
A good test-run for breaking in Chris Kingskin (http://www.kingskin.com/), the new sound engineer. (Or more affectionately known as Swampy since he looks like he just got pushed out of a tree somewhere off the Newbury Bypass).
29th May: Sunrise Festival. (aka Mudrise/Mudfest/Shitrise) A million rumours fly around at the Solstice Services Little Chef. It's postponed til Friday / Only crew and artists are allowed in and even they're being towed in / The whole site is being rearranged, they're swapping the car park with the main site / It's completely cancelled / There's a secret entrance if you go down by the diesel tankers and tap L, R, L, R then push both shoulder buttons down at the same time.
Seemed there was a certain amount of dissent amongst the Sunrise organisers. Some were saying the flash floods were a blessing in disguise because the vibe just wasn't right this year.
30th May: Basingstoke Canalfest. Well we were all packed up and ready for a party so we headed to Mytchett instead. Three reasons why Basingstoke is better than Sunrise:
1. Car boot sale. (Now strongly believe this should be a major feature of all festivals now. Scrap Lost Vagueness, bring in the mother of all car boot sales to take it's place)
2. Rowboats paddling on water rather than your vehicle sinking in mud
3. Not getting woken up by shit trance
Above: some of the spoils from the car boot sale
2 Comments:
I quite like trance ..
yeah, but do you like shit trance?
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