Winding Down...

Winding Down...

...Just got back from the gig tonight and like after most gigs I find it hard to go straight to sleep. My head still goes over what happened, the good things, the bad things. I kind of evaluate the gig and then rate it out of ten. Tonight's score was high! 8/10. I broke a f##king string again. The same one. D string. I'm going to take the guitar in and get it set up tomorrow. I don't need it now til the new year.

So, I'm sitting here writing, just cracked open a cold beer. I was driving tonight and had to lug a load of equipment so I didn't have anything to drink. Maybe 1 pint when I came off stage. I'm just writing the first things that come in to my head! I'll make some sense of it some other time.

The gig was at 333, a venue on Old Street, East London. It's a well known club but it's famous for DJ's and club nights rather than housing bands so I was surprised to see when I turned up that there was a stage. It looked pretty cool. Dark, drab, smelly. Just how I like it!

Parking around that area is a fkucing nightmare! On Hoxton Square it's controlled between 7am - 11pm and it's £1 for every 15 mins. £4 and hour! I got there at 6pm. If I'd have parked there it would have been £20!! No Chance. After I unloaded the gear into the venue, I found somewhere that was only controlled until 7pm and that was £2 and hour. Result.

After we soundchecked we went for a bite to eat at a place called Shish. They do Kebabs and stuff like that. Good scran.

We went on stage at 10pm. Played a half hour set. Thought it went really well.

The East London crowd is normally quite difficult. They think they're a bit too cool for school. We've done gigs where we finish a song, expect a clap or a cheer and don't get anything! Not even a "booo". Give us something!!!! Tonight was different. We had people coming up to us after the show telling us it was great, asking where we were playing next etc. Success. Hopefully when we play East London again, we can drag a few converts along.

It's half one in the morning! I don't need to get up early tomorrow though. Winding down for Christmas.

I've done all my shopping. I can sit back and relax (for relax read get drunk and eat loads).

I did all my shopping online this year. eBay is the way. I've had deliveries every day and all parcels have arrived now. I'm really looking forward to the next week or so. Doing the family thing.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

2 Weeks

2 Weeks

...Without a post. What's occurring?

Not a lot really. That's probably why I haven't had anything to write about. I haven't been near a computer much or when I have been near a computer I have other non-computer things to do. What in this world could possibly be non-computer related? There aren't many things these days.

On Saturday 3rd December, I went back up to Manchester with Giles. We didn't do a gig or anything like that, we just went out. The best nights always seem to be the ones when you get out of your town/city, forget about everything and just enjoy yourself. There was a club in Manchester in the 80s that was very popular. It was called the Hacienda and it spawned many well known bands and DJs. It closed down and the venue is now flats. A friend of ours, Oli Wilson decided to give the Hacienda a new lease of life and on that Saturday, 2000 people packed in to a room and danced the night away. It was a good night out. It's not normally my thing. I never went to raves and I don't buy or listen to much dance music. I used to say that if it didn't have a guitar in it, it was sh#t. My views have changed slightly.

I came back on the Sunday with a massive hangover.

We rehearsed on the Monday. We didn't jam any new stuff or anything, we just tightened up our set ready for the next couple of gigs. On Tuesday night, I went to Swansea to watch the football. We won 2-0. We're top of the table!

Wednesday night we (the band) were due to play at Club East in Worthing. Worthing is on the South Coast near Brighton. I woke up on Wednesday morning and looked at my phone to see I had two or three texts, 2 missed calls and a voicemail. All before 8am! I looked at the texts first. They were from our manager, Geoff. The first one said "Gig tonight is cancelled". The second text message said "Gig is back on". Then I listened to the voicemail and it was Geoff saying "Sam, we're not doing the gig tonight". So that was it, we didn't do the gig. The rest of the day the promoter was ringing Geoff begging us to do the gig. Apparently there would have been 200 people there. That night we all went to the Eel Pie club at a pub called The Cabbage Patch in Twickenham. There was this 18 year old kid called Andy Cortes playing with his band. What a talent! Great guitarist and a great voice. He was billed as the new Jimi Hendrix but I felt it wasn't as rock as that. His style was more soul, jazz, funk. Universal have already snapped him up.

Thursday night we played at a venue called The Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green, East London. We turned up to soundcheck at around 6pm. The venue was nice and small, but not too small. The stage just about fitted the 5 of us. There was a big pillar at the front of the stage, right in the middle that got in the way of the view. Mark T and Jill came and saw us again and Gary and his wife Stephanie also came along. Cheers for making the trip! Hope you enjoyed the show. I don't want to see those CDs on eBay, OK?

We enjoyed the gig. It was pretty loud as none of the amps were mic'd up. It was very much 'plug in and go'. I don't have a problem with this. It's how we rehearse and only bad workmen blame their tools. I broke a string (again) on the last song. At the end of the gig, my brother took my guitar from me to put it in its case and showed me that there was blood on it! Then I looked at my hand and noticed I was bleeding. Brilliant! I was hitting the guitar pretty hard on the last song.

Our next gig is back in East London on Wednesday 21st December at a club called 333. It'll be our last gig of 2005.