Back in London

Back in London

- I'm exhausted! Need another holiday.

I did very little in France even though I couldn't relax as much as I would have liked. My mind was on Monday's rehearsal and Tuesday's Manchester Gig.

I ate a lot, drank a lot, went for a bike ride, went for a run, watched a lot of sport on the TV, went to great antiques fair, went out for a 5 course meal at a French Restaurant. French Restaurant in France? Whatever next...

All in all I had a really good time and it was good to see my little bro. He speaks French!! He spends most of the time with a childminder because my Dad and his wife both work. He'll eventually speak English as well I suppose. He'll be spending Christmas in London so It wont be long til I see him again.

On Monday we flew back and landed at 7pm. I had rehearsals at 9:30pm. We did our best to get back in time but I ended up making rehearsals at 10:10pm. There was no one at the reception desk so I didn't know which studio my band were in. So I put my ear to the door of each studio until I got to this room where there was a top funk band with just drums, bass and organ. I stopped and listened for a bit and then peered my head round the door. It was my boys. Funk band? We'll be doing weddings next. We worked on the new song, tightened it up a bit ready to debut at the Manchester gig.

We left for Manchester at 1pm Tuesday in a 15 seater mini bus we hired. Everything was going alright until we saw the sign 'Manchester - 36 Miles'. It took us 3 hours to do those 36 miles! The traffic was murder. Very frustrating. So we arrived late and quickly did our soundcheck then jumped straight back into the minibus to go and check in to our hotel, scrub up and change etc. We then got back to the venue just as the band before us, Serotonin, were finishing their last song. We were on!

I broke a string in the 2nd song. I don't have a spare guitar because I smashed it up at the marquee back in September. So I had to use Giles's Telecaster. This was annoying because a Tele sounds really different to a Les Paul and I'd only rehearsed the new song on the Les. I was thrown off track a bit. Then I broke a string on Giles's guitar! I did this in 'Bullet', which is second to last in our set. I think I could have done the last song, 'Do It For Me' with 5 strings but Giles noticed the broken string and quickly said "That's It! Thank You! Goodnight". Lights went down and DJ started playing. That was it!

The guitars were in a cold environment all day in the back of the van and then in the backstage (kitchen) area. Then up on stage the temperature was very hot with the lights etc. I don't think the strings could cope. They were brand new strings and the guitars have been set up recently. Has anyone invented a heated guitar case? Now there's an idea.

After the gig I finally relaxed. Got on Vodka Sodas and enjoyed myself.

Me, Steve (Bass), Alex (Drums)

Click Here for more Manchester pictures

3am came and we had to take the gear back the hotel. We accidentally stole an acoustic guitar that belonged to another band. We've left it at the hotel in Manchester. Hopefully they'll get it back.

Got to sleep about 4am and then the alarm went off at 7am to get back to London. We had to get the minibus back by 12 otherwise we'd have to pay for another day. We got back at about 1:30pm. Traffic was bad. Traffic is getting worse in Britain. Pointless roadworks everywhere. The M25 will be 50 lanes wide before anyone's happy.

We're playing at The Halfmoon in Putney on Saturday. This is about as local as it gets for us. We love the venue and the promoters and we normally get a good size crowd. We haven't played there since June so hopefully there'll be a good turn out. I'll blog about it on Monday...