Group News: April 2008
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. AWe 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.
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