"A 12-String Bassist writes.."

THE ADVANTAGES OF FLYING CLUB CLASS WITH BRITISH AIRWAYS

2008-07-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

TAKE A LONG LOOK AT THIS BASS.

It was bought new for $1200 in Boston USA, and Boston Airport was the last place that I saw it during our whole flight and our return, when a lovely lady on the check in desk covered it in fragile stickers and I handed it over to a baggage handler and watched sadly as it went through the curtain into oblivion and towards the British Airways Baggage Incompetence Department at BA Terminal 4, where it would later be subject to an attack of severe idiocy.

Anyway, back to the story:
In the duty free shop at Boston airport, we were told that we could only have ONE bottle with liquid (a rather nice bottle of perfume we got as a present for a friend), but we couldn't buy two bottles of Baileys and another bottle of alcohol - which were recovered from us - due to BA's restrictions on what liquids you can buy and carry and so they put it back on the shelf.

We got on the 747 to London and the cabin staff on the plane said what the duty free shop had told us about the number of bottles we could carry was basically incorrect. We were then sold a bottle of whiskey, duty free on the 747 from Boston to London and they didn't seal the carrier bag up. MORE OF THIS FOLLOWS:

Later on during the flight, we were treated like naughty children and basically told to shut up when talking briefly about what was on the in-flight TV, though various brats were squealing away in economy through a curtain and keeping everyone awake.

We were so hacked off by this that when breakfast was offered, I politely rejected it. "Well, if you don't have it now, that's your last chance", the lady snapped back. The thought of telling them where to put it came to mind, but I have never been that kind of passenger and never will be.

Next thing we know, my wife, my new bass, myself and our two cases have landed at London Heathrow and all made our own separate ways from BA at terminal 4 to BA at terminal 5.

When we went through security at Terminal 5, despite having the bottle unopened, a BA carrier bag and a receipt from the plane's duty free sales - it was argued that the bottle of whiskey was to be taken away from us, as the BA bag was not sealed.

I am not that keen on whiskey, but I do really hate being ripped off. I know exactly how the system they employ works: I was NOT leaving a bottle of whiskey for them to celebrate with at home. I would have dropped it on the floor and let it break first.

I said that if this was not resolved sensibly and quickly, I would kick off in such a big style that Naomi Campbell would want to have my babies from sheer admiration.

This approaching storm got a positive reaction from one of the guys who was dealing with us. We were escorted to another floor to see a guy who may (or may not) have been able to solve our problem.

He wrinkled his brow in a truly impressive demonstration of deep thought and examined the evidence in the precise and thorough manner of a real Sherlock Holmes:

A BA in-flight duty free sales bag.
A receipt.
An unopened product exactly matching the receipt.

He made a lightning deduction and came to the utterly splendid correct conclusion that the bottle and receipt definitely belonged in the bag.

I asked, could HE seal the bag, then we could be on our way?
Nope.

He decided, due to the overwhelming balance of evidence in our favour, to let us keep the bottle, but he had to put everything in yet another sealed carrier bag and it would have to go directly in the hold and we would have to collect it at the end of the flight off the baggage carousel. I had visions of collecting a smashed bottle and having to write off for compensation. More unnecessary hassle.

Ignoring his suggestion to nip over and buy a few newspapers to pad the carrir bag, I added a guitar mag that I had been intending to read, to try to feebly cushion the bottle in the bag. I could then imagine reclaiming the cost of another magazine, too. He put the bottle on the conveyor and it didn't start moving, so he handed it back to us and asked us to take it with us and hand it in at the gate!

I then pulled myself together and thought 'the foolishness stops here'.

Everything went back into the BA bag and we just took it onto the plane, missing out the 'getting BA staff to either lose or steal the bottle' options and the 'probable broken bottle' stage entirely. No-one cared to check the bag with it in.

But wait!!! As promised.... More crap follows:

BA Terminal 5 is deservedly legendary for being the largest screw-up in aviation history. There is a very good and ongoing reason for this. It is the actual new Bermuda Triangle for passenger baggage.

High profile peoples luggage has gone to various mystery locations at regular intervals and your humble correspondent - while not feeling I have been elevated to the peerage or anything - am no exception to the rule that if you pay £3000 for two return air tickets to the USA, there is a good chance that the BA baggage handlers will still lose your damn cases, no problem - especially with the amusement value to them of an expensive musical instrument inside.

My bass - after much chasing and complaining from myself - was found to have got on the next plane to Manchester. I doubt that it did this by itself. I am inclined towards thinking that an illiterate baggage handler misread the label and wanted to put it on a flight to Bahrain or somewhere else suitably exotic.

Whatever... I couldn't wait around to see if the bass was going to arrive on the next flight in, as we had transport booked and our plane was already 30 minutes late in. The idea of sending my wife home in the taxi and making my own way with the bass - IF it arrived - wasn't an option.

Fortunately, it ended up in the hands of a courier firm who have, most helpfully, after a fair number of urgent calls from myself, managed to tell me that the bass that BA mislaid and which finally reached Manchester a good couple of hours after me, would reach me at 6pm the evening of our return. 30+ hours without sleep, due to chasing it up. Which it did. Thank God for the courier firm.

Thanks to the Customer Services Agent from BA who rang us back the next day and was profusely apologetic for 12 minutes about our utterly poor treatment on the return flight and who also promised to look into how duty free is sold on the planes (yes, the cabin staff ARE on commission).

Still... £3000 for round trip tickets and a return flight that was a total nightmare.

I will never EVER fly British Airways ever again.
I would rather walk.

Group news: June 2008:

2008-06-24T10:25:00.001-07:00

June 1st:
Steve did his wedding show with his old band HUNTER. Here's a photo.

June 4th:
Last night was the jam night at The Caledonian. Ian E got up with Tommy and Ian H to do a few things and a fast version of 'I saw her standing there' was forthcoming. The Incredibles were visibly (ie: they left the sheets of paper with the lyrics and chords out where they could be seen) hatching plots to cover more Del Amitri songs in the same stylee as their extraordinary version of 'Always the last to know'. You have to love them for their good taste. Today, Ian happened across a guitar shop in Bury.....

June 10th:
The group is still not all in the same country and so we haven't all seen each other since our last gig. It will be fun when we do our next gig and we find that we can't remember any of the songs!!

Off to The Caledonian again. It's nice to keep the fingers working by getting up at the jam night. Ian got up with Ian H and did some old songs that The Kerbcrawlers don't do anymore, such as 'I knew the bride'. The Incredibles (for it is they) played a nice long set with guests and tried their hand at a few new things. Good fun.

June 14th:
The group have been offered another couple of gigs for this weekend, but Colin will be on his way back from America and we go out as 'all 4 of us' or not at all these days.

June 20th:
The Stocks, Walkden - Three weeks off and it didn't really show. Thanks to our mates Nobby and Jane for coming to watch us - always a pleasure to see you. We have taken a booking at Whittle's Oldham on Sunday July 13th.

June 21st:
An excellent return to Winston's in Wigan. A very good turn out of people who had come especially to see us. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us.

Ian with new bass

June 24th:
After some looking at the group diary for the rest of the year, we have boxed off some more weekends as the group being not available, so that we can actually do other things than continually gigging.

June 27th:
Colin had sent a text round to say his voice was beginning to go and that his chest was tight, so we would probably have to re-jig the set a bit. To complicate matters, Ian's voice was turning nicely into a croak. We played at The Fleece in Ashton in front of a good-sized, enthusiastic crowd, mainly of people we know, who forgave us when certain notes didn't come off. Thank you everyone. The Incredbiles were there in force, looking to see which of us fell over first. We should have invited them to get up and do some of the show for us.

June 28th:
Tonight, Colin's pipes were holding up, but Steve's were now starting to go. Ian's were a shambles. Mike is quite clearly impervious to pain. But we don't let venues down unless there is no alternative.

We struggled gamely through our show at The Coachman's in Hartford: A half-appreciative listening crowd. They listened, but also had obviously decided clapping wasn't cool, so on the whole they didn't. One wag, who had been demonstrating all the way through the show (to a girlfriend who was far too attractive for him, via the means of air guitar) how he could play better than us, decided to ask if we'd do a request. Ian feebly croaked to ask him what he'd like. The idiot asked for 'Sweet child of mine'. Bearing mind that we hate it and that all of our voices were totally shot, Ian struggled to get out a polite reply.

During the last song before the encores, Ian introduced the band and explained the mandatory requirement for 13% of the audience to actually applaud in order for us to do encores. The Clapometer only showed 7% (and I think it was being generous, so we weren't embarrased), so we didn't do the Floyd stuff and we just croaked our way home. The Jalopenos are on there next week. They are brilliant. I hope they get a better audience. A few people came up and told us this was not a typical crowd for the venue and that they had loved our show. Thanks.

June 29th:
Ian answered the phone and nothing came out of his mouth.
Lovely. What a way to start a holiday.
Back onstage and raring to go at Geogia Brown's and Whittles soon.

Group News : May 2008

2008-05-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

May 4th:
The group has been in various states of illness for the last week or so. Only our man Mike remains totally upright on his feet and is not not staggering round in a state of total befuddlement and medicated confusion. Band rehearsals were cancelled last week as Steve was still not well. Colin has had chest problems and Ian is suffering with the hated hay fever and some interesting headaches (fortunately, he's not had a bad migraine for ages).

This weekend we have played at The Queen Anne, Deane, Bolton and also various of us caught The Spidermonkeys (regarded by some as our competition in Wigan - whatever that means in the grand scheme of things, we ignore crap like that and don't see that there's any competition). They are enjoyable enough and they managed to ignore a basically pissed, disinterested and hostile audience at the venue we saw them at and from what we saw, they are ok and delivered a fairly good set.

Tonight we played at The Woodlands Hotel in Blackburn, with the show starting at 8pm. The show went very well and we had a lot more of a crowd in than usual and they were quite appreciative. We had a few requests, some for songs we have never heard of, but we did our best to please - 'Cocaine' got a full outing; we usually just soundcheck with it and we never play it in full. That went ok, though Colin had to find the lyrics for it!

A few more shows, then we take a well-deserved break for various people's holidays, polishing guitars, etc. Time for a good lie down, interrupted only by a few get togethers to work on a couple of songs, watching some other groups and having a few beers.

We are working on something good for New Year's Eve. More news later.........

May 8th:
Two new shows added at The Boulevard, Wigan.

May 10th:
A great night at The Cherry Gardens, with a five song encore. I don't think we plugged and bigged up The Incredibles quite enough, but by God, we tried. Thanks to everyone who came!

May 11th:
Steve went to the guitar show and got a much-treasured new baby. A lovely black 1981 Gibson Les Paul Custom.

May 16th:
The Antelope in Kearsley e-mailed Ian to cancel our September show there. Also, as Ian was loading the truck with his basses, tonight's venue rang to cancel, as the Police (the boys in blue, not Sting and his chums) had just closed the pub. Oooops. Frantic text messages were sent to the usual suspects. Apologies to anyone who turned up to find the venue closed. It was beyond our control.

May 16th:
The Abbey Lakes, Upholland. A great crowd, a great night - an absolute marathon second half. No RentACrowd (the local folks who come out to see us round Wigan), but what the hell... We had Howie and his good lady to cheer us on, plus a busload of Mike's mates. An extremely vocal crowd. A nice way to finish off a long run of gigs. We now have a couple of weeks rest before we carry on with phase two of the year!

Steve's good lady, Chris has loaded a video up from the Cherry Gardens of us doing 'Emerald' which is a good little watch and the photo gallery has some more of her photos added.
Thanks Chris!!!

Emerald

Now we have rehab, etc 'til mid-June!!!.

May 18th:
Steve has booked in a reunion show with his old group, HUNTER at The Boulevard, Wigan. This will take place on Saturday July 19th. They are re-uniting for a private wedding gig and it seemed a shame not to do another gig that other people can attend, bearing in mind how much rehearsal time has been put in.

May 21st:
Video page tarted up, with all videos re-sized to make them smaller, but clearer.
Some nice backgrounds added to the profile and gear pages.
We haven't said hello to Howie for a couple of days. So.... "Hello, Howie."

May 27th:
The jam night at The Caledonian, Ashton. A healthy turn out, including three Kerbcrawlers; Ian E, Mike and Ian H (who is 'ex', but you know what I mean). As well as getting up to do a few, we managed to watch some good spots too. One young man on acoustic (Tim?) did a great little solo spot. Obviously The Incredibles with sore-throated Steve singing and Martin, Cozy, Kerbcrawler Mike (on bass) supported Howie very well. Their regular bassist appeared to have been 'mislaid'.

The Incredibles absolutely symphonic version of Del Amitri's 'Always the last to know' in particular, brought a tear to one lad's glass eye. They were having such a good time, they played it twice through, just about, before working out how to actually stop it. Justin Currie of Del Amitri is a mate of ours on MySpace and he's going to have to be told about this. Video footage must be had.

If anyone can make it, The Incredibles are gigging at the Fleece, Ashton on Wednesday 28th May. Hutch is helping them out on guitar, as Martin is unavailable. A good night WILL be had by all!

Group News: April 2008

2008-05-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

April 5th:
The Railway, Bromley Cross. We turned up, to be met by a request for Ian to ring his cousin, quite urgently. Very sad news. We had set up half the gear and decided to press on with the evening. Steve managed to get his eyes flashed by the stage lights, due to someone else's stupid mistake, while we were changing a bulb, which left him feeling very uncomfortable. Mike's vocal on the 'new' song 'Paper plane' was good, we were pleased to get a new song in.

During 'I predict a riot', we stopped dead sharp-ish, mid-song, when two lads decided to race onto the stage at an alarmingly high speed and crash into Steve's mic stand and guitar and nearly knock him right over. He was far from impressed. With literally thousands of pounds worth of gear (each) on stage with us, we don't need stage invasions. As we stopped playing, it made them look foolish. They were not thrown out. We talked about this later. We have got lazy. We will go back to using a barrier, to keep idiot punters off the stage.

We would probably have stopped there, but a couple of people who see us regularly there had been shouting for the Floyd stuff and it certainly wasn't the venue's fault in any way. Snow... Don't you just love it? We left to find it deep and crisp and even and just a bit slippery. At least no-one went on their backside that night. That would have been the icing on the cake.

April 11th:
New shows booked at The Stocks, Walkden. Another song ready and some work on a few others.

April 12th:
The Woodlands again. A quiet night, but we played well. Another new song in the set and some return dates. Rossi from State Of Quo was there, as Stu, who took some photos. Thanks.

April 18 and 19:
The Railway, Ramsbottom and also we played at The Boulevard, Wigan, where we seemed to be turning into The Who at the end of the show. Very disconcerting. Thanks to everyone who came along.

April 22:
A couple of new venues got in touch today. Good stuff. The problem is fitting them in!

Meanwhile, one of our regular venues, who we were the very first in the diary at for this year, keep ringing up every now and again to try to fiddle about with our booked dates.

Can we move a date in order that another band can play there?

No. We are all booked up round then. WE have the date booked. The other group will have to sort themselves out.

This is twice we have been asked this by them now. Worse still, they have already cancelled a gig we had booked there for around Christmas time. They will lose us altogether if they keep this up. We always try to act professionally and expect others we deal with to do exactly the same.

April 25th:
The Stocks, Walkden. This date replaced a cancellation from up the road at the much-missed New Inn, which was a great gig. A lot of the same faces from The New Inn turned up and it was great to see them, as they gave us a great welcome. Thanks to Ian, Chris, Chris M and our favourite reluctant superstar Howie from The Incredibles, who spent the evening at the side of the stage.

Steve was really badly unwell this evening and just about managed to get through the gig without being sick. We covered some of his songs with Ian singing, but had to drop a fair number of songs. Mike and Steve both played a blinder, though. A very good night (we are going back there another three times this year), though we were very worried about Steve all the way through, especially when he sat down to play. He deservedly got the biggest cheer of the evening, when the group were introduced.

Tomorrow night at the Hulton Arms promises to be a unique evening - If Steve isn't fully fit, Hutch will manfully step into the breach and cover for him. So this could be a one-off line up, playing some old songs that you won't hear again. We'll see what happens.

Get well soon, Steve.

April 26th:
Well, it all nearly didn't happen. Steve was still very unwell and we decided to press on with Ian H with no rehearsal..... and he had never played with Mike in the band. We had also been crossed out in the venue diary and so the (yet another) brand new landlady thought we weren't coming. But we did and she was really happy with us and we put some further bookings in.

Hutch and Mike both played a blinder and we did two very good enjoyable sets with a number of old songs with only the odd tiny glitch and we went down really well. Result. Thanks very much to Ian H for helping us out - it is always a real pleasure to play with him. Hoping Steve is feeling much better soon.

ROCK AND ROLL pt 5: The search for Slade

2008-04-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

I used to go watching Slade everywhere, big halls, small halls, clubs, you name it. I remained a big fan of theirs, even when they were effectively dead and determinedly putting on their best ever shows. One year I saw them 15 times. Unbelievable. Even the group didn't understand it.

After Slade lost their singer and their bassist, they carried on with Dave Hill and Don Powell from the original band and a succession of musicians, going through the 'ever-revolving door' that comprised the rest of the band.

At this point in the game (1995), a guy I knew back then had this quite brilliant idea of staging a Glam Rock Festival with a series of concerts featuring the one-time big stars, including Slade, Suzi Quatro, Les Gray's Mud, The Rubettes and Brian Connolly and whichever version of The Sweet he was dragging round with him.

Because he was a mate and a big Slade fan - and also because he really liked my band, Bad Habits - we got a contract to play at the festival and the support slot with Slade.

He chose to do it in Widnes of all places..... at The Queen's Hall in Widnes, to be precise. What a cracking venue. Widnes is best known because the rather lovely Sporty Spice came from there and also because a road goes through it.

The shows sold almost respectably, due to him getting whatever free press he could and bugging every radio station he could think of to mention the shows. Widnes is a stone's throw from the immense city of Liverpool. Not ONE advert was placed in any Liverpool paper and so the sales could have been a lot better. The venue sportingly took over responsibility for the costs of the shows when it became apparent to my mate that he could make a whacking great loss on the deal.

The day of our show with Slade arrived and we piled into our cars and hit the M62. A bunch of us turned up and set up a stall to sell our CD and stuff and then we found the dressing room at the side of the stage and put our things in there.

Slade's backline was already in place, so we set up our gear in front of their rigs and got our sound together.

The dark, cavernous hall had a real echo problem and snares hit once came back at us in triplicate.

As we soundchecked, the main attraction turned up in dribs and drabs. I had met them all several times and they were definitely quite surprised to see me up on the stage soundchecking.

We clattered meaningfully through 'Smoke on the water' and declared ourselves basically content that we were loud enough for the venue, seeing as all sound was reflected everywhere and from onstage it sounded like a total quagmire.

A thumbs up from the sound engineer either meant that he was fed up with trying to get a decent sound for us and wanted to go to the pub, or that we actually sounded halfway acceptable. The video we got later confirms that he was possibly in the pub while we soundchecked.

We wandered off stage to eat our butties and crisps in our dressing room, to find Diminuitive Wolverhampton Rock Legend David Hill, all 4' 6" of him in his stack heels, trying to slide a partition across the dressing room so we wouldn't see him in his grundies, as he changed into his comedy superstar outfit later on.

"This won't do at all. This just isn't right.." he kept grumbling, puffing and panting, as he inched the heavy partition across the gap. It took him about 5 minutes and no-one lifted a finger to help him. The rest of his group looked at him bemused, as he sweated and chunnered to himself and strained headlong towards a hernia.

The partition in place, he got us to move all of our things quickly out of his tennis court sized area into our three square feet. Obviously he needed the extra room for his ego. we put our equipment cases well out of the way behind their gear onstage, as we would have ended up changing in the street otherwise.

Once we had finished moving our belongings, The Diminutive Rock Legend walked up to me and I thought he was actually going to pass the time of day with me for a minute or two, as he had done so many times before. Nope. We were on a professional footing now and he decided to break the news to me bluntly that we could forget playing any Slade songs. Once he had hammered that point home, he was slightly discombooberated to find that the rest of my band weren't particularly keen on Slade, so we weren't going to trot anything of theirs out.... and that there was slightly more interest in our £200 fee.

The Diminutive Rock Legend then stomped off in a cloud of his own importance, to go for a nice meal down the road with manager Len Tuckey (who we all admred as The man Who Repeatedly Bonked Suzi Quatro), while the rest of his hirelings looked for a MacDonalds. What a glamourous life, eh?

We were sightly disappointed by the attitude of my former hero, but shrugged it off as we had a good gab about gear and such with the rest of the group. Steve Makin, their excellent guitarist, tried to point out that we don't play Smoke on the water like that... I cheerfully recalled a nice comeback line... "You do when you're in THIS band!" and mentally thanked my old mate Gary.

Further disappointment came just before we went on stage. None of us had picked up our copy of the contract stating that we would be paid our £200 fee, so the sound engineer decided to charge us half of it, or we could forget going through the PA. "Bollocks to that," we said, but we were unable to root out the contract and had to stump the cash up. I was going to drive 40 minutes each way for it, but there wasn't time. The guy who booked us lived 20 minutes away and had a copy of the contract there, but he was trying to find Dave Hill to do the soppy fan thing.

Then we got some more rules, in case the sudden charge for going through the PA wasn't enough of an insult.

If you sing any Slade songs (NO WE DON'T) the lights and sound go off.

If you step in front of the monitors (a space reserved for the star) the lights and sound go off.

If you play over 30 minutes, the lights and sound go off.

We were supposed to be doing 45 minutes, but of course it was in the contract. The guy who booked us was by now cuddled up to Dave Hill somewhere, so he was unavailable for comment, or to sort out his show. We were blazing mad.

This anger did us a lot of good, as when we went on stage, we tore the place apart and did a great set. Seeing as we had brought a lot of the crowd with us, we went down very well. Slade support acts used to get bricked off in the days when people cared fanatically about Slade. Status Quo, Alex Harvey, Saxon... they all dodged missiles. We didn't. We did 40 minutes and the sound man didn't bother to turn the sound off. I think he had gone to the pub again.

After we went off, the lesser members of Slade congratulated us and one person travelling with them said that Slade's bassist Trevor was leaving soon; Did I fancy talking to Dave about the job? No, I f---ing DIDN'T.

We watched Slade's set from the side of the stage for a while 'til I went down the front like I always used to, when Jim Lea was still in the group and had a go at enjoying it.

When Slade finished their show, we got our gear out through the back doors of the venue. I had a few albums with me and as I saw The Diminutive Rock Legend stood around, I went up to him. He saw the albums and groaned, "Haven't you got enough of those signed?" When Slade were up a certain creek and we used to see them regularly, it never occurred to me to get records signed. I missed lots of opportunities. Now The Diminutive Rock Legend was being sniffy about signing a few autographs. "Oh, no.. I lent them to my mate and have just got them back," I lied. "I don't want them signed," which at least was now true.

We had achieved one of my life ambitions and had supported (what was left of) Slade. We hadn't died. We had been ripped off by a sound engineer, who had warned us about everything short of breathing. I had been let down terribly by Dave Hill's stinky attitude. but.. we had done a great show and gone down really well. Result. I, for one, was quite happy when I got home.

12-strings to rule them all...

2008-04-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

Just bought one of these....

Gibson SG Supreme Bass

2008-04-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

This is my new Gibson SG Supreme bass on its first outing.

ROCK & ROLL PART FOUR: If it’s too loud, you’re too old…”

2008-04-09T09:40:00.000-07:00

(A further past adventure)

Once upon a time, I joined a very good band (which I still choose not to name) that worked like crazy, with no weekends off and no lives to speak of. We should have – by rights – been a very happy little crew, as we worked solidly, played very well and on the whole, knew what we were doing, when and where we were doing it, and worked solidly as a team to get most things done.

In groups, there is always a fly in the ointment. As soon as one person joins up with another, there is always scope for disagreement. In this particular group, the discontent mainly stemmed from there being an established pecking order. The drummer and guitarist had been together for untold centuries and everyone else was considered to be also-rans in comparison.

The guitarist was used to playing at the sedate volume of a transistor radio in a sandwich shop and a gutless performance which wouldn’t disturb anyone. Rehearsals with a new bassist toughened the group up somewhat and the audience reactions seemed to be very good indeed.

However, the fly was stirring away discontentedly in the ointment with a very big spoon.

One thing about having been in a group for a long time – for me, anyway - is that I know what I am used to. I know what I like and what I am comfortable with and I obviously prefer things to stay that way as much as possible. In this group with me as the newcomer, I was unintentionally instigating change by just being there and having an actual playing style (even though I had toned it down quite significantly to almost the point of catatonic boredom) and there was resistance to that change.

One night at a club in Sale, I was told again that my bass was too ‘boomy’. I was stood right in front of my amplifiers and it just wasn’t set too loud or too deep. The lead guitarist glowered at me and made ugly face gestures which I was supposed to interpret in some way. I just thought he was either having a stroke, desperately wanted a crap mid-show or something, and so I carried on regardless. The rhythm guitarist, who was stood next to me, had obviously had several years of experience of translating this gurning into The Queen’s English. His next move was to start fiddling with my amplifier volumes while I was singing ‘Summer of ‘69’. As I sang, I noticed that my bass volume was dropping alarmingly and I had alarming visions of new speakers, blown fuses and all sorts,as my sound petered right out. I turned round slightly when I got a second and saw the rhythm guitarists hands moving deftly away from a pair of severely turned down amps.

I hissed at him that if he ever did that again, then he would need new fingers.

I then set my amp volumes so I could at least hear a little and resumed singing. This all went on in front of a paying club audience, mid-song.

I glanced over at the lead guitarist and he had a face like thunder. He was REALLY glowering at me. I was just put out by this stupid behaviour. So I switched my amps off and just strummed the bass in an unplugged style. The rest of the band didn’t notice. The audience did, however. At the break, the Tom Jones tribute act that we were on the bill with asked me what had happened to my bass sound? One minute the group had a lovely balance then the bass disappeared, then it went off altogether.

He asked. So I told him.
He thought it was nuts.

There was an uncomfortable interval, where the group all decamped to the lounge bar. I asked if I was too loud. “Yes, because I can hear you,” was the reply. Brilliant. Bass players should be seen but not heard. There’s a quote for you. Use it if you want to. I didn’t say it though.

The second half carried on under a hostile sort of truce and there was a loud argument in the car park, as we loaded to leave, about exactly what was reasonable in this outfit and what wasn’t. When we landed back at my house after the gig, I told the rest of the band that I was sick of being treated like a leper because I actually plugged my bass in and that I was leaving.

The drummer went into his well used and worn out speech about people in groups always letting him down and wore me down into continuing for the time being.

The next week we played at a large hotel, out in the wilds, near Disley, Cheshire. The lead guitarist had more complaints about the bass volume, which was merely set to ‘timid’. I played at the quietest volume imaginable and actually played a couple of songs deliberately out of time and in the wrong key, to see if the group noticed or cared. They didn’t. I even dropped a few naughty words into the backing vocals. I avoided the rest of the group at the intervals.

Our next gig was at a prison on the way to Blackpool. Lovely….. I went on stage with my newly bought black 1958 Flying V bass and the lead guitarist had an apoplectic fit about it not being a 60’s guitar. Wrong. To be factually correct, The Kinks used one, as did a few others, but never mind. That actually gave the temperamental artiste a migraine.

I was told that the next night’s show in Salford was cancelled. I think they actually got their old bass player to do it.

I would not play with them again. The next rehearsal was cancelled, due to illness. I rang another member of the band about something else and of course he was out. A bell rang in my head and I drove to the rehearsal room to catch them rehearsing with a much-revered former 60’s pop star that they knew. The rhythm guitarist was playing bass through one of my amps! Cheeky fucker! I walked up behind him and switched it off. He nearly shat himself.

The rest of the group - and the much-revered former 60’s pop star - retreated cowering to the far end of the room, while I made it clear to the group leader that I had had enough and would collect my gear the next night.

Which I did….

ROCK & ROLL PART THREE: Raining cats and dogs in West Yorkshire....

2008-04-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

Another true story..

One bloody awful wet night we found ourselves over in West Yorkshire. In Heckmondwike, or somewhere grandly-named like that. Certainly the wrong side of Huddersfield. We had driven over, in what was almost certainly the worst downpour ever seen in the entire history of man, with possibly three inch visibility in front of us, to play at..... the local working men's club.

This place held a few fond memories for me, as it was the first venue I had ever played with that group. I had driven over in my own car and the rest of the group had travelled together in one car with a trailer for the rest of the gear. On arriving and parking up, staring from about 20 feet away at the venue, the rain was so coming down hard, we couldn't actually see the building through the downpour.

After a few depressing minutes, I decided that the rain wasn't going to let up, so I grabbed my suit bag and some guitar cases and legged it for dear life, through the rain, up the Z-shaped ramp at the side of the club, which always made the trip three times as long with all our heavy gear. Once I had emptied my car, I made for the group trailer and rescued my bass amps from the back and lugged them both up the ramp. By the time I had finished and was back in the dressing room, I looked something seriously like a drowned rat.

I got a towel out of my suit bag and dried my hair off a bit. Then I damply went on stage and set my gear up, plugged everything in, tuned up, bought a drink at the bar. Great. All working. In the Dry at last. Nice pint. But what is wrong with this picture?

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the rest of the mighty troupe again yet at this point.

They had not actually ventured out into the wet to come into the venue. I put my coat over my head and braved the storm outside again. Back down the Z-shape ramp I went, to find the remining three artistes sat in the dry, on the gear in the trailer, moaning about the bloody awful weather. Not without reason, I must concede.

The drummer looked balefully at the driving rain and proposed quite seriously that we just cancelled the show and drove home. The lead guitarist (1) nodded in the glummest possible form of agreement, just like he always did, no matter what it was that the drummer said. Lesser Guitarist (2) looked at the weather and probably thought it was great weather for going out on the wiley windswept moors shooting at animals and that, but not quite up to it for carrying gear around. He was sat firmly on the fence about what to do, really, but given time, he would side with the others, just as he always did. They sort of looked like they were really going to get back in the car and turn round and drive another 75 miles home, without even bothering to do the show.

That was the point where I realised what professionalism was (and wasn't).

They were worried about getting their hair wet, while I had unquestioningly got on with the job and moved all my own gear by myself, got sodden doing it and had set up on stage in front of a rapidly growing audience (who were also rapidly getting older while they waited for these temperamental artistes to get their collective finger out). They sat there like a bunch of jellies, worrying about getting their f**ing hair wet!

I HAD MORE HAIR THAN THE REST OF THEM PUT TOGETHER AT THAT POINT.

I look back now with a degree of embarrassment at how I nearly lost it and went berserk at them. I was furious. It could have gone very badly. I kept as calm as I could and told them flatly that if I had to go back in there and dismantle my gear, I would first of all explain to the concert secretary and audience exactly why I was doing it. Their agent would simply love that, as I am sure he would have heard about it before I had got all of my gear back in the car. I also would expect to be paid in full for the job and it would definitely be the last one I ever did with them. If I ended up putting my gear back in the car, unused, after a 60 plus mile round trip, it would be the very LAST time they ever saw me or my gear.

The gloomy troupe had a conflab as I stomped off back into the venue to give them a minute or two to confer. They must have wreaked a total miracle of self-hypnosis to motivate themseves to get off their backsides and somehow they assembled themselves into the well drilled fighting machine that they probably were about 40 years earlier and carried PA columns the size of classic red telephone boxes, guitar amps, drums and a partidge in a pear tree up the impractical Z-shaped ramp.

We did a good, but damp, show, but it was certainly the point where I decided that it was the beginning of the end for me.

The final show of that part of my music career came a little while later. That's a good story. I'll bring that one up for you in a while.

ROCK & ROLL PART TWO: Murder on the dance floor

2008-04-04T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've had quite a bit of feedback about my earlier tale of The Pub At World's End. If you thought that was interesting, I may be able to pull a couple of similar things out of the old diary.

Here's another story, from way back in the day...

I used to be in this rather good band and we did proper 60's stuff and we worked very hard, a few nights a week, playing all sorts of venues in Lancashire and Yorkshire, from working men's clubs through Masonic lodges and hotels and small theatres and civic centres, right up to the rather prestigious Preston Guild Hall.

One night we went to play in a gorgeous function room in a hotel somewhere up Lancaster way and played at a Licensed Victualers (pronounced 'vittlers') party. As you can probably guess, Pub landlords, when they get a chance to get together, work nice and hard on eating themselves stupid, getting as pissed as rats, shagging each others wives and getting up to whatever evil mischief they can manage.

The venue we were playing that night was a fairly regular function gig for us and we had a full dance floor and the evening was going very well... until we noticed a small crowd gathering at one corner of the dance floor, where they shouldn't exactly be.

Guys in groups tend to watch our audiences, as they are our entertainment, especially some of the extremely lovely women dancing in front of us. The group exchanged a few looks as things unfolded before us. There was one woman who looked especially distressed and some people were comforting her and a lot more people were stood in a circle round a couple of people crouching down, over what turned out to be some poor bloke on the floor, who was not really doing very much of anything.

Someone at the back of the room waved frantically for us to stop playing, which seemed like a good idea to us, as we had been playing for a while since all this had first kicked off. And we getting less and less comfortable with it all, as we noticed the woman at the back of the room was getting more and more hysterical.

We ground to a halt mid-song in a fairly professional stylee and you wouldn't have spotted the join. Our guitarist popped off the stage and sauntered over to the scene of the commotion to take a quick but very subtle peek at the source of the halt.

Our guitarist came back to the stage and said that "There's nowt down for him.... Brown bread". Ooops. Meanwhile, the organisers searched high and low for the DJ. We knew him fairly well from doing a fair number of gigs with him. Quite a likeable lad. That night his girlfriend wasn't sat next to him handing him discs, so while we played, he was making the most of the opportunity to have wild bestial sex, swinging from the chandeliers, with one of the party goers.

The guests bemoaned the total lack of any music of any sort and, in the absence of the hapless DJ who was probably experiencing a 'little death' of his own at the time, the finger was pointed at us to get back up on stage and play some guitars - or something - quietly, while the new widow totally failed to get used to the idea and cried her heart out, while people danced on a couple of feet from her rather uncomplaining husband.

Under the odd circumstances, we competely resisted the temptation to belt out 'Heartbeat' as it may have just been slightly inappropriate. After about ten more minutes, in rolled a posse of Ambulencemen, who waved at us frantically to stop playing. Experienced musicians recognise all the hand signals after a few years.

We cut the song short - in our rather accomplished stylee - skirted round the opposite way to the gatering of ambulancemen and wandered off aimlessly to the bar in the next room. People were still standing a few feet away from the commotion, as if waiting for a bus, gabbing away, oblivious to the drama around them.

Still.... no music......

We had sat down in the nearby lounge bar and had downed a pint each and were looking at the prospect of another drink when we finally heard some Herb Alpert mood music drifting through the closed louvre doors. An odd night and not much to laugh about, really...... until in walked a hapless DJ, looking a bit shocked at it all.

"Isn't this dreadful?" he said. Then he made up some story about why he was out of the function room for so long. Something to do with his car. It was really filthy weather and simply throwing it down outside and he was bone dry, but never mind. He made a move to get up to go and change the CD.

"Your flies are still open," quipped one of our party. A red-faced young man, totally caught out, did up his zip and sidled off into the main room.

Group News: March 2008

2008-04-01T11:46:00.000-07:00

March 2nd:
A quiet time at the moment, as part of the group is away on holiday. Now that Mike has done such a good job of settling in that we are looking at getting four brand new songs into the set shortly. This of course all depends, as usual, about us all being in agreement with what is put forward. It is often the case that one of us may not have any enthusiasm at all for any of the songs put forward, which knocks us back to square one. But we are very democratic and patient, so we keep trying to find 4 good songs that we all like.

March 6th:
Ian went to watch Hare Of The Dog at The Moses Gate (a venue we are back at later this year). They put in an excellent performance, with a number of the songs that we cover in their set (which is fair enough, seeing as we didn't write them to start with)! More reason to get some new songs together, as we do a number of songs that 'everyone' does. Ian was very impressed by them indeed.

8th March:
The Antelope, Kearsley - The landlord seemed to be quite pleased with our performance. We are back there in September, anyway. We will be rehearsing a few new songs over the next few weeks. We have a few songs that we have done some work on already, so there is scope for a good amount of change to the show. Probably about 7 new songs. Change is good for you.

13th March:
A rehearsal at Colin's country mansion. We worked on a few new ideas and tightened up one or two things that have been missing from the set for a little while. It was decided that a couple of songs that we do are dropping out of the setlist, as we have played them more than enough now.

14th March:
The Fleece, Ashton. This is probably what you would call our 'home gig' as three of the group live within spitting distance of the venue. Thanks to our supporters for turning up - great to see Mr and Mrs H, Howie and various of our favourite group The Incredibles, a Lazzy or so. What a nice big noisy crowd!

We have been trying to get more video footage together for the site but Colin's video camera doesn't like how loud we are, even when we are supposedly 'quiet'.

18th March:
The Incredibles hosted the usual Tuesday jam night at The Caledonian, Ashton. Mike got up and did an acoustic set (we must convince him to do one of the tunes from that with us) and Ian got to play with The Incredibles, after they had a bass mishap of sorts. A really great jam night run by Howie's crew and Tommy. Everyone should go to it.

Easter weekend:
Mike is in Scotland, disturbing the peace of all the Haggis growing community, while running nekkid through the heather. Steve is busy teaching Wigan's guitarists to be excellent inbetween visiting pubs and emptying the pumps. Ian is doing some gardening and going to watch Justin Currie in Manchester again on Easter Sunday. Colin is preparing his defence for his upcoming Kerbcrawling trial (only joking). In between all this feverish activity, we are listening to a bunch of new songs and we reckon they will be quite good to go shortly.

The Cherry Gardens rang on Easter Sunday, telling us that we now won't be playing there on Boxing Day as they aren't putting a band on that night. Not overly impressed, but what can you do?

28th March:
The Windmill, Westhoughton. Lots of Ian's friends popped in to watch us - thanks very much.
We had a good evening, despite one of Steve's two new Strats being interfered with by the PA, which we reckon was down to venue's electrics. The landlady was very happy with us indeed, but has filled the venue diary up til next year (as they only put groups on monthly at the moment),so it remains to be seen whether we will be back there or not.

29th March:
The Woodlands, Blackburn. Again, we seem to have a regular local following up there who come out to see us. Great. We appreciate it. Not a bad show, Mike had rearranged the setlist a bit for us.

March 31st:
A very positive evening's rehearsal - some songs have now been completely banished from the setlist for all eternity and we won't miss them at all. Everything lasts for a certain time and then you move on. We ran through six new songs, which are in various states of repair and have agreed the next 8 new songs we are working on (one of which should be in the show next week), plus we came up with a few new ideas out of the blue, which we all readily agreed on.

Back again in early April!!!

Group News: February 2008

2008-03-06T10:12:00.001-08:00

February 2nd:
Tonight's show was at The Abbey Lakes, Upholland. The group hopefully played an excellent show and our new guitarist Mike has now got a new feature guitar piece that he has chosen (and that you have to hear to believe) in the set. Steve also debuted his new 7-string Ibanez guitar, so it was an interesting evening. We are back there another three times this year, so if you didn't see us this time - don't worry, we'll be back! Thanks very much to RentACrowd, our great mate Howie and Mr and Mrs Hutch for coming to watch us - much appreciated.

February 3rd:
The Kerbcrawlers intend to put quite a few new songs in the set shortly. Ian's dream is to have the first set rating as rockin' as the second set.

Ian was booked to play with the tribute band Flamin' Slade at the Sladefest on Easter Sunday. As the group had put together a 40-song setlist and about 3/4 of it was in radically altered keys, Ian has asked that FS' own bass player does the whole show, as Ian just doesn't have the marginal time to devote to this as a one- off project. The Kerbcrawlers have to come first.

February 9th:
Colin's birthday.... and what was he doing? He was out gigging with us. We played our first gig at The Queen Anne, Deane, Bolton. What a great crowd! Especially the helpful chap who brought a combo amp in for Mike to use whe his super duper Marshall head failed to start at ten to nine. What a hero. You saved us. Despite a number of issues Mike had with his rig earlier that evening, he thought the gig was the best he'd done with us so far. We look forward to going back soon, as we have dates there throughout the year.

We will also be back at The Railway, Ramsbottom another 4 times this year, as we have secured further bookings there.

February 15th:
The Woodlands, Blackburn. Nice to see some people there who keep turning up to see us when we are in the area, especially Stu. Colin's voice was a bit rough on the night as he has been full of a cold, so we dropped a few of his songs. Thanks to State Of Quo for the loan of a combo amp for Mike to use at the gig.

February 16th:
WE arrived at Winston's to find Koodoo setting up. So, off home we went for an early bath. We have now confirmed all of our remaining dates there. Thanks for the landlord for sorting out our remaining dates there and apologies to anyone who came to see us - it was beyond our control.

24th February:
This last weekend saw us play two stonking gigs at two of our very favourite venues in Wigan. A shame if you missed them. First was The Boulevard and second was the Cherry Gardens, where we just about took the roof off, to a packed house. Steve and Mike both debuted new guitars (Steve's is a very top of the range Fender Strat and Mike's, a John Petrucci signature MusicMan). Both sound excellent. But where was Howie?

We have a bit of a rest coming up next weekend as sunny Spain beckons for some of us.

26th February:
Howie has been in touch with his apologies for the last weekend. I think everyone should spend the rest of the month's beer money on going to see The Incredibles at The Fleece this Wednesday. Be there or be very square indeed.

27th February:
Two shows booked at Whittles, Oldham, for later in the year! Ian has ordered a new bass cab to make his rig a bit more stupendous.

More of that bass rig type stuff...

2008-02-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

I originally bought a full Hartke rig, brand new a couple of years ago.

It consisted of a HA3500 head (350w) and 2x10 / 1x15 Transporter cabs. The 1x15 died twice on me in quick succession while it was under warranty, so it was returned, as I simply had lost all confidence in it. However the amp head and 2x10 were perfectly functional, so I kept them.

I replaced the 1x15 cab with an Ashdown 4x10, giving me a 6x10 output, but the Ashdown cab was ridiculously, back-breakingly heavy and didn't match the rest of the rig. I have just updated the rig with a Hartke 4x10 which I got a great deal on.

My main bass rig now looks like this:

Picture This II

2008-02-26T10:22:00.000-08:00

More live shots...

Picture This...

2008-02-20T15:05:00.001-08:00

A selection of photos from our recent adventures at live shows...

Group News: January 2008

2008-02-02T04:02:00.000-08:00

January 2008
A new year, a new start....

January 4th:
Group rehearsal last night 'til very late! Lots of songs ready for the shows and a number of good new ideas - a couple of which we are starting work on shortly.

January 6th:
For the people who suggested we play at The Royal Oak, Ramsbottom: Ian goes to the jam night there sometimes and they were impressed enough to want us, so they were in touch late last year trying to get us to cover a cancellation, but we were already out. Ian called in to find that they have filled their diary for 2008 right up.

We ARE, however, playing just down the road at The Railway, Ramsbottom on January 25th and on April 18th with further dates to be confirmed. We are pleased to tell you that it's a great looking venue. Please come and see us at The Railway!

We have also been told that it's time that we went back to Ighten Leigh Social Club in Burnley, where we have always gone down very well. We have tried to make contact with the club secretary by email and text message, to no avail.

We have taken 3 return shows at The Woodlands Hotel, Blackburn. See the gigs page for details. Rehearsals continue over the next two weeks for our upcoming gigs.

January 12th - 19th:
An amount of feverish activity at the moment. We have taken some more gigs. Two we are very pleased with are at The Moses Gate, which is the most important venue in the Bolton area.

Despite us making a point of dumping all the old crap venues we don't want to go back to this year, the group diary is still doing its usual thing of getting nicely full up quickly with decent venues and we are keeping some dates back for return gigs at some new places and our favourite venues. Meanwhile, a couple of places we have recently been in touch with about gigs (after suggestions from our following, who would turn out in force to see us) are being slow in getting back to us and we can't keep on going round to gee them up, so they may miss out on getting us this year (or at all). We have tried - Go and nag them for us! If they ring us... we'll see what we can do.

January 19th:
The new line-up of the group (- Ian H, + Mike) played a show at The Hulton Arms, Bolton and the result was a very good show with such a long setlist that we had to leave a few songs out. Many thanks to Mike for learning the songs so well in double-quick time.

January 21st:
Ian has started work on a radically different cover version of a Led Zeppelin III song, 'Gallows Pole' for the next Black Cat Bone forum CD. The basic backing track of bass, two guitars and drums was completed this evening. More info when the song is completed.

January 22nd:
All of the group went to the jam night at THE CALEDONIAN in Ashton. Ian landed up playing with everyone, as he was the only bassist to appear. Great to see Hutch and play with him. Ian fulfilled an ambition of playing with the Country Gentlemen (video threatened), The Kerbcrawlers and also in the same night, The Incredibles! ... and permutations of all three!

January 23rd:
Just took a booking for later on in the year at THE CROSS AXES, Great Harwood. Nice to move into some new territory! Ian's version of the Led Zeppelin song 'Gallows Pole' is now up on his MySpace page, along with some of his own stuff - please give it a listen.

Jan 25th:
Our first show at The Railway, Ramsbottom went really well and we went down a storm. Steve and Mike played out of their skins and we are going to be taking further bookings for the later half of the year at The Railway shortly.

Jan 26:
The Pub At World's End * (which we are not naming and shaming) and without the aid of Sat Nav, Ian circled hopelessly for quite a while trying to find it. The group played really well, but due to events that took place after the show, we have decided NOT to ever go back there. A shame that we ever found the place, really.

ROCK & ROLL PART ONE: The Pub At World's End

2008-01-29T08:13:00.000-08:00

It took me absolutely ages to find the venue. My God, it was dark. My God, it was cold. And you can probably guess that I was lost. I couldn't see the tiny print on the A-Z. I grumbled at the map and drove on frustratedly. The place was slap bang in the middle of nowhere, alone on a hillside, at the very edge of Lancashire's smelly peat bog region. Owls hooted, the wind blasted at the car and the hounds that roam the hills howled dramatically, as if waiting for Basil Rathbone to come amongst them (in black and white) on the Moors. But despite almost unbeatable odds, we all turned up, especially those cunningly equipped with SatNav systems, who naturally got there first, without incident.

It looked from the outside just like The Local Shop from the League Of Gentlemen. Nice view, though.

We got the mountain of gear that we always use set up and then I bought a much needed drink. The barman said while he was pouring it that the landlord generally likes 3x 30 min spots. I explained we usually do 45 and 1hr+ in the second spot... It works out that we actually play MORE than the 3 x 30 mins. The landlord gains. Is that ok? "Sounds good", says the barman.

Later on the landlord comes over to introduce himself. He says he likes 3 30 min spots. I explain we usually do 45 and 1hr+ in the second spot... It works out that we actually play MORE than the 3 x 30 mins. The landlord gains. Is that ok? He walks off to his usual spot at the end of the bar and glowers darkly at me a little, having said nothing further to us on the subject.

After we had played our gig rather well (and at length with a 50 minute first half and a 70 minute second half) and had just about packed up, he comes over and gives us £50 OVER the agreed fee. I thanked him profusely. What a nice bloke!

But lo. Why does his face darken and his brow knot and a look of utter curmudgeonliness occupy his face?

He then says he is not happy with us at all as we didn't do what he asked.
I say "Well, we did tell you what we usually do and you never said you had a problem with that".....

He then says he is not happy with us at all as we didn't do what he asked.
I say "Well, we did tell you what we usually do and you never said you had a problem with that".....

He then says he is not happy with us at all as we didn't do what he asked.
I say "Well, we did tell you what we usually do and you never said you had a problem with that".....

Oh no, it's Groundhog day... (yawn)

This carries on in a very boring circular motion indeed. You get the picture. It is now well past midnight and we now just want to go home. We are looking at getting to bed at 2am or after.

He is obviously getting fed up with me saying the same thing exactly back to him when he says exactly the same thing to me now and he has been nose to nose with me all the time, not blinking, so I don't either. I have reason to suspect that he may have imbibed 'some' alcohol.

This was confirmed by a friend who came to see us who later said the landlord was plastered, right off his face and effing and blinding because his daughter had cleaned the lines and all the lager tasted of was bleach and cleaning fluid.

BUT... back to this exciting story... He is now getting louder and louder and is stopping me from putting my basses in my car, which is wide open outside with half my gear in it, by grabbing hold of two of the gig bags. I tell him not to do that. Or else.

"I am not a violent man". he says, his face reddening.
"I am and I am very good at it" sez me.
He lets go of the gig bags, but wants to continue the telling off.

After further huffing and puffing and Steve's wife Chris trying to nicely diffuse the situation by saying we would play 3x 30 minute spots next time, I tell the landlord plainly that we are unlikely to ever darken his door ever again. It would be unlikely to be HIS door, if there ever was a next time. He is a real f*ckwit.

He scowls at us quite darkly as we leave, from his chosen scowling point at the pub door and we beat a hasty retreat from The Pub At World's End.

Please note:
The landlord can't do me for libel or slander as:
a) I have a crowd of witnesses,
b) Not a word is untrue,
c) I haven't identified The Pub At World's End,
d) I don't say when the show took place.

Care in The Community... What has it all come down to?

DECEMBER 2007

2007-12-29T09:00:00.001-08:00

1st December:
Winston's (formerly Gems). Thank you so much to everyone who came. Especially Howie.
We'll be back on Christmas Eve.

2nd December:
Mike played his first full show with us in a somewhat low-key venue, The Leigh Arms. Steve Dean came along and so he witnessed Mike's debut, which went quite well - especially considering the lack of rehearsal he's had so far, because of him only being in the group a couple of weeks!

The night was noteable for the world premiere of a track from the third CD, which has never been played live by the group before.. and a very reasonable donkey kebab afterwards.

6th December:
Mike has been doing his homework! We have a full length show's worth of songs now. We are going to look at getting some brand new songs in early next year when Mike has got a few gigs under his belt. We have a couple of definitely good new ideas, which we are very much looking forward to working on. We have taken some more gigs for next year at the Cherry Gardens, Wigan. Probably our very favourite venue. Thank you, Russell.

7th December:
The group played a private function for a bunch of mad teachers in Wigan. Pissheads. We were on with an Elvis act whose wig was stolen by some girls. A fun night. We played a second set (off-the-cuff) of songs we never usually play. Some of these will have been played tonight for the last time, as Ian H leaves us soon and these songs won't surface at our normal gigs.

10th December:
A new year coming up and effectively a slightly different group with our new guitarist Mike joining us. So why not a new-look website? We will be doing mainly the same songs with Mike to start with, but there will be new stuff soon. It's a great pity that Ian H is leaving us to go to Spain. We WILL miss him tremendously. It's been a great couple of years.

17th December:
Thank you to the venues with compus mentus and unfrazzled landlords who have got their act together to book us - despite unsocial licensing hours and the very strange behaviour of the BT phone network - enough to drive us all bonkers!! Much appreciated. Ta.

We are still working hard on the band diary for 2008. We are now only going back to the venues that we really like in 2008, as a couple of places have double-booked us in the last few months and so we have stopped dealing with them. We are also contending with a slowly shrinking venue circuit, due to the smoking ban. Please can you good people let us know where any good venues are - and if you like us, please mention us to the venue's landlords!!

20th December:
It's picking up on the gig front now... We have taken a number of gigs this week around the Bolton area and have a few more venues we are talking to at the moment. The new 2008 gig list is now on the site.

24th December:
Winston's, Wigan - always a good venue. Once we had convinced some of the punters to move to make some room for the group to set up, we got on with the job at hand and had a really good time. Ian H got out the trusty BAH HUMBUG hat during 'Merry Xmas Everybody'.

Boxing day:
The Cherry Gardens, Wigan - A show we always look forward to doing. A really good turn out, lots of fancy dress in Wigan on Boxing day - something to remember when we ae there next year. A very long second half (about 90 minutes long!)

29th December:
Ian H's last Wigan show with the group at The Boulevard, Wigan. We hopefully played quite well and took a bunch of requests mid-set from RentACrowd. We have taken two more dates there for early next year, which will be great. We have also added four dates at Winston's and two at The Railway, Ramsbottom - all of which are in the gigs section. We got a mention on Century FM from someone who came to see us at The Cherry Gardens. They said they thought we were 'ace' when they watched us and they promptly got blitzed afterwards. Thanks for the mention, if you're reading this!

New Year's Eve:
The group played our very last show of the year at The Fleece in Ashton. It was also our very last show with Ian H on guitar and was quite an emotional experience for us. We will miss him tremendously. Good to see a good number of our friends turn up to watch. Howie, Cozy, et al.

Our new guitarist, Mike, got up to do a couple of songs with us and he is absolutely buzzing to get out playing with us. There were a few video cameras around, so hopefully, we will get to put some footage up where it can be seen.

Our thank you list for the last year:

Ian H for being our great mate and a miraculously good guitarist as well.
Howie and the guys at the Eagle jam night in Ashton.
RentACrowd for turning up time and time again and being really good to us.
Mark at Frog Studios.
Chris Mulvaney for photos and being there.
Chris H, Andy, Amy and our chums for being there.
The venue landlords who have really got their act together and who haven't messed us round!
Hamer Guitars and basses.
Rimmers / Harker and Howarth, Wigan.
Sound Control, Salford.
You.

November 2007

2007-12-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

November 2007:

4th:
This month started with a couple of gigs at The Fleece, Ashton-In-Makerfield and The Railway, Bromley Cross, Bolton. The group played well at both shows and have taken 4 return bookings at the Fleece for next year. The Railway are going to get in touch shortly.

9th /10th:
Flu ravages the group. Cough, splutter. We still managed to do two shows and get through them ok. One was at The Cherry Gardens, one of our very favourite venues, where we are arranging shows for next year shortly. A bright spot was Dave from RentACrowd pointing out a video of us that is up on YouTube (see our videos). We didn't know about it. Thanks very much.

11th:
Bad news: Our new guitarist Paul has opted out.
Good news: We are seeing another similarly talented prospective replacement this week.

13th:
LUCKY FOR US. We now have a new lead guitarist named Mike, who will be able to learn the songs in our set at a good old rate. He is very skilled and had a great playing style. An early Christmas present!

Meanwhile, Ian H joins Ian E in not being very well at all. What's Mike doing this Friday??? No pressure.... Oh, yes... and welcome to the new look site.

16th:
A somewhat depleted and croaky group played a show in Blackburn. Thanks to everyone who came. We tried - we really did. We had to wait 'til the football had finished on the big screen, which made for a very late start.

17th:
A weary, depleted and bedraggled group drove over the hills and far away to rainy Newhey..... to find the venue locked and the lights out downstairs and the person upstairs not answering the door. Fantastic? Not really.

22nd:
A very promising rehearsal with our new guitarist - who has put in an incredible amount of effort (Thank you so much, Mike!!!) and learned almost a full show's worth of songs up to peformance standard, so we are slightly in front of our previous progress! Ian E's throat is approaching normal again at last. H is still quite ill, however.

25th:
A mixed bag of a weekend, really. Our Friday night gig was at The Collier's Rest in Leigh. Not many people in at all. Usual apparently, when the bands are on. We did our usual length set and were asked afterwards why we weren't playing 'til half an hour later - something to do with not being told what the show times were meant to be.

Our new guitarist Mike got up and played a bunch of songs with us - so that was his stage debut. Thanks to Howie and Chris for coming along and making the crowd numbers up and for taking some photos.

Saturday night's jaunt was to The Wheatsheaf in Altrincham. A venue we will NEVER EVER be returning to again. For a second time they have double booked us. They are not getting a third go at it. We had got this year's show dates in their diary at this time last year. Thanks very much to Jake for at least giving us some petrol money.

29th:
All gigs (including ours in December) at the Crown, Hyde have just been cancelled as the pub isn't getting the punters in to watch the groups. Another venue gone on a miserably shrinking circuit. We have now confirmed all of our other remaining gigs for December.

1st - Winstons (formerly Gems), Wigan
2nd - Leigh Arms, Leigh
7th - Private function, Springfield, Wigan
14th - New Inn, Walkden
Christmas Eve - Winstons (formerly Gems), Wigan
Boxing Day - Cherry Gardens, Wigan
28th - Boulevard, Wigan
New Year's Eve- Fleece, Ashton In Makerfield

Please note that the previously advertised gig at Sam's Bar was cancelled and the gig at The Railway, Bromley Cross was rescheduled. We have a fair number of 'not available' dates in December.

October 2007

2007-11-04T05:50:00.000-08:00

Oct 1st:
The Southport Cruisers MCC had enjoyed us so much at their Xmas bash in December 2005, that they rang and booked us again for their 2007 Xmas bash in Southport. They tried to get us last year but left it far too late, despite us telling them we get booked up. We had a date at a venue, which has been closed, so we turned it over to them.

Oct 2nd:
The Southport Cruisers MCC rang and cancelled us for their Xmas bash in Southport. Apparently one of their organisers had booked someone else while they were booking us. Fabulous. It seems to be the case that Bike Clubs tend to make a total bollix of bookings for us occasionally.

Oct 4th:
A great rehearsal - giant leaps forward and some really nice work being done. Happy bunnies.

Oct 6th:
A private bash at a venue in Chorley went very well and hopefully has got us some return shows at the same venue for next year.

Oct 7th:
We finished the new album today. It will contain a group original and a song we haven't played live yet, as well as a subtle and heartfelt secret tribute to our favourite band, The Incredibles.

Once again, we are very pleased with the results we got with Mark at Frog studio.

October 13th:
NOT unlucky for us! We played at The Hulton Arms, Bolton and our new guitarist Paul got up and did a few songs with us. It's not easy using unfamiliar gear on stage but Paul did an excellent job.

15th:
Colin has had the very disappointing news tonight that our gig at The White Lion, Upholland on the 20th is now off, as the landlord is leaving the pub. Our other show there in December will also now be cancelled. Sorry for the short notice on this - We have only just found this out ourselves.

20th:
We are pleased to tell you that our December show at The Railway, Bromley Cross has been rescheduled with the new owners for November 3rd. We will hopefully be back there next year - all being well.

Ian's version of the David Bowie song 'John I'm only dancing' (recorded for the BCB 'Bowie vs Bolan' project album) is on his MySpace site now here.

22nd:
The site content has been trimmed a bit, in preparation for the launch of our new look site, soon!

25th:
Ian and Colin went out for a ride round and took a bunch of bookings for next year at new venues and also got a couple in to fill recently-made gaps in December.

27th:
Sam's Bar, Appley Bridge. Our last show there this year, as they have sadly cancelled our December booking to give it to someone else. Rent A Crowd turned out in force - thank you all very much. Tonight marked the stage debut of our new lights. We look to have got some futher bookings at other venues on the strength of tonight's show, which was a good one. 'Whiskey in the jar' got dragged out of us as a request. That's probably one of the very last times it will ever get played.

Video of Roadhouse Blues - Thanks to Steve and Chris !

Sams Bar The Kerbcrawlers

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28th:
Sunday's gig was a private function at a truly astonishing Castle in Cheshire. Wow! What a wonderful venue - photos in the current gallery. The charming couple whose wedding it was have come to see us a number of times and pretty much chose our setlist for the occasion. We really hope that they had a really wonderful day. It was a real pleasure to be part of it.