TIME TO GIVE THE WINDMILL ANOTHER WHIRL!!

It's a year and a week since the dirty white Dazed & Confused tour bus first pitched up at The Windmill for a gig that still lives in the memory, so we thought "why not do it again?!" So, tonight sees us return for another bash at their Local Ale Sale 2010, and we're really looking forward to it. Rehearsals have been out of the question for the last couple of weeks, since the weather has conspired to turn the Brewery into a fridge, and we couldn't even huddle round the fire to keep warm because a new bar is being fitted - don't want to give too much away, but you'll be on your knees if you happen to see it! It does mean we have managed to avoid freezing, but also means that we REALLY enjoy it when we can play together - did it at The Ship last week (see below) and tonight should be just as good. The Windmill is a great pub - friendly staff, good food, great beer and a fine atmosphere, so why not treat yourself to some grub and a bop - just don't come too near the band if you've eaten too much! Here's a map of how to get there, if you fancy it.

Last week's gig at the Ship was a cracker; as you may well know, it's always a good laugh when we play there, and as last week was in celebration of Chris Caudwell's journey into retirement-land, it was doubly good. A great crowd (including some new faces), plenty of singing and dancing, 4 encore songs and a couple of potential band bookings - almost perfect! Probably a little too much jumping around on my part, if the stiffness on Sunday is anything to go by but, hey, you're only old once! We're actually back at The Ship on 19 February for their all-weekend bash, so we can do it all over again - reminds me of a song "If I could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You" or something similar!

Anyway, my little Confused-lings, time to go - so don't forget to drag yourselves out in the rain and wind tonight - and give The Windmill a whirl.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - THERE'S SNOW BAND LIKE OUR BAND!!

OK - so 2010 starts, and all hell breaks loose! Drive back from New Year in the Lake District, where it was very picturesque with lying snow on the hills, clear roads, plenty of food and drink - only to turn off the motorway at Knutsford on Saturday afternoon and find it looking like Lapland - since then, it's been snow, snow and more snow!! Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a BIG snow fan, but when you have to drive to work sliding along the road behind people who drive like they have never seen the stuff before (I really hope they pass their driving tests, when they are allowed to take them!), AND (more seriously) it results in the City v United Cup game getting cancelled, things start to get worrying!

Anyway, the purpose of this is not to rant too much, but just to tell you that we will be warming our bodies again (and hopefully other people's) at The Old Ship Inn on Beech Lane this Saturday 9 January. It's a "retirement" party for Chris, who is one of our staunchest fans (teaching has finally got the better of her!), but i'm sure that there will be room for anyone else who wants to come and enjoy the wonderful TWO fires of The Ship (might be one of the few times they are needed!), so why don't you give it a go?!

Might even invite the landlord of The Millstone.........

WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Saturday evening saw us close out our gig list for 2009 at Porter's, and a great night it was too - lots of noise and energy, which was all the more surprising because some of us had been out eating, singing and jumping around until 2 o'clock the morning before, as well! Anyway, on Saturday, the snow was falling hard, Christmas hats abounded, the pub was bursting at the seams, Andy kept playing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer - who could ask for more? It was good to see some old friends - especially Mickey Jones, who was in fine form despite his recent problems.

We played in the space usually occupied by the pool table (because our previous pitch was taken up by the Christmas tree!) and, while it gave us more space, it did make it a little difficult to see more than about 4 of the punters at any one time - apart, that is, from the start of the second set when about 25 people had strayed into the "stage" area because that was the only space for them! It made it very cosy anyway. Some photos here including one of Chrissie trying to get into her house at about 2 in the morning by climbing over the neighbour's wall, because her gate was frozen up!

So, we can all relax into the Christmas festivities now - and a chance to look back over quite an eventful year! Highspots were the new venues we played (e.g. Nag's Head, Windmill), 2 more beer festivals, helping Matt Rose reach the pinnacle of his career before it took a dive when he joined The VirginMarys, becoming radio stars, sharing laughs with old friends, and meeting new friends. Not so high spots were frequently getting rained on when setting up or breaking down the gear, getting stopped by the police for having suspicious cargo (i.e. Chrissie and Matt!) in the back of the van, playing to about 4 people in The Spinner's at Bollington, and not even getting through the door at The Millstone! We sometimes beat ourselves up about not introducing enough new stuff into the set, but I've just done a quick review, and we have added 10 new numbers this year, which is pretty good going considering we've also fitted in 24 gigs (that's about 2 a month you know)! Whatever, it's still been a hell of a lot of fun and, as always, we would like to thank every single person who has supported us through the year and, especially our families, who have borne the brunt of our "hobby" - again!

Just remains to wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - except the landlord of The Millstone, of course!!

PRETTY GOOD CHILD OF MINE!

After a couiple of weeks "rest" we tipped up again at Sandhole Farm last night to help celebrate Tom & Laura's wedding celebrations; second time this year we have played there and, as previously, the organisation was superb and this time the timing was even better, as everything ran according to the schedule we had discussed - for a wedding, unbelievable!

The major difference for us was that we had no Chrissie (boo hoo)! She had either forgotten about the gig, or decided that 4 days in Germany with Pete was a much better option - although it seems utterly unbelievable, the latter was apparently the case! Also, she might have something to tell us when she gets back..........

Anyway, in Chrissie's absence, as trailed previously, we had a "stand in" female vocalist - none other than Paul's daughter, Lucy! Now Lucy has had voice training for several years, and those who have heard her talk for England will probably vouch for that but, since she went off to the debaucherous wilds of Sheffield to get an "education", she has rarely, if ever, used her singing talents! So, for the last few weeks, since the subject of "depping" for Chrissie was broached, she has alternately poo-d her pants and practised like stink for the gig! In fact, yesterday was spent almost entirely in her room going over every song on the set list! Notwithstanding all this, Lucy has only had 1 formal rehearsal with the band before last night, so her nerves were totally understandable.

As it turns out, everything went really well - although things were thin on the dance floor at times, both sets went really well, and Lucy's "piece de resistance" of "Sweet Child of Mine" was met with a rapturous reception! The really nice bit was she got a text from Chrissie this morning asking how it had gone. Needless to say, Lucy has been on Cloud 9 for the last 24 hours - although she did have a prima donna "sleep in" this morning (too much X-Factor methinks!)

We have one more gig left in 2010 - Porter's/Prince of Wales on Roe Street in Macclesfield on Saturday 19 December. This will be a great Christmas Party night - no doubt many people will be celebrating finishing work for the holiday, so why not put it in your diary now, and come down and sweat with us?! We will obviously put some more publicity out in a week or so but, forewarned is forearmed!!

Oh yes - for those who missed it - City beat Chelsea 2-1 yesterday; now it get interesting!

ALL DONE AND DUSTED!!

Well, that was the week that was!

The session at Canalside (got to be careful with the spelling on that!) last Wednesday was excellent fun! It was a little warm with 7 people squashed into a space that was approximately the size of 3 shoeboxes, but that just added to the enjoyment (fortunately, most of us had washed beforehand!). Matt managed to get back from London in good time, and Paul managed to get back from Sheffield - with about 8 minutes to spare!

We had rehearsed 6 songs that we thought might be OK to do "acoustically" - you will all know that that is not something we are too familiar with, so finding songs to do "quietly" was a challenge in itself (Andy was allowed to bring his amp, which helped)! We had no idea what the format would be, and were convinced we'd be done and in the pub by 9 o'clock, leaving little Matt Isaacs to do whatever else he felt like doing! However, we were there for the whole 2 hours, and Matt did a great job of "bigging" us up - he tried to interview us a bit (foolish man expecting us to be serious!), played some requests for us, and spread our tunes out throughout the whole programme. For the record, we did "Brick in the Wall", "The Chain", "Chasing Cars", "Pretty Vegas", "Fire" and "Say You Love Me" which (with the exception of Paul losing his "top end" during Pretty Vegas) all seemed to go down pretty well, and the people who heard it said it was really good! All we are waiting for now is a recording, which Matt has promised, and then maybe we can even post it on here or YouTube or Facebook or wherever. Some photos for you to look at to see how much we enjoyed the space (it may look like it, but nobody was sitting on anyone else's knee!)!

No sooner had we drawn breath after that, than we were down at Macc Town on Saturday for the big Brewery Band Bash - which was another event where no-one seemed too sure of what was going to happen! We turned, as requested, for a sound check around 6:30, to find that the sound men had only just been allowed in after the football match (Macc lost by the way!). The next surprise was finding that what was originally a 4 band gig had morphed into a FIVE band gig - all of whom had to play between 8 and 12pm! However, the Dunkirk spirit really kicked in and, although the sound check was still going on when the first band was supposed to be playing, it all turned out rather well!

The running order was Old Yellow followed by a combined Chinese Marbles/Bleatles set, both of which were excellent, and got the crowd up and dancing really early. We went on at 10pm (about half an hour earlier than planned!), and Fil Hill kindly allowed us to extend our set to an hour (which meant we quickly had to put things that we had taken out back in!), so we rocked the Moss for all of that time, and it was a pretty hot and sweaty set, I can tell you. The Hot Bananas closed the evening with their unique quirky thing - God knows what those guys are on, but you wouldn't want to take too much of it!

Many thanks to Garry the Hat for putting this on, and to the fairly sizeable crowd that turned up - maybe there will be the opportunity to do something similar again sometime?

A couple of weeks rest for us now; next gig is a wedding on 5 December, and then we close our 2009 gig list with the Christmas Party night at Porters/Prince of Wales on Saturday 19 December - which should be a brilliant night (more of that in a week or so). If you check out the info on the right of the page, you will see that gigs are already coming in for 2010 (even had an enquiry about doing one next November!), so it doesn't look like there will be any slowing down any time soon!

ONE DOWN, TWO TO GO!

The first leg of our week's Triathlon took place last night at The Nag's Head and, as ever, it was a steaming night - full pub, baking hot, good set list (courtesy of the Rock God), and a great atmosphere! When we last played at The Nag's in July, some of the punters had drifted away by the end (probably because they had to catch the last boat home in the puring rain!) but last night was packed right to the bitter end!

Highlights were the proper debut of "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance - probably breaking the Trades Descriptions Act by doing it, but Andy insisted we give it a go, and it turned out pretty good in the end! We were also treated to a display of "break dancing/body popping" or something similar on the floor at the front of the audience by Matt's sister and girlfriend - not quite sure what it was all about, but it was certainly entertaining! Matt, of course, pretended that they were nothing to do with him. The other incident of note was the arrival of a "hen party", which was OK, except one of the ladies decided she would join us on stage - normally this is OK, but I got the sense that she didn't want to go, so we had to prise the tambourine from her hand and forcibly eject her (well Dave did!). For about the hundredth time, in my experience, we had someone who reckoned they could be in our band! All in all, a great night - even if it was a late finish - another walk up Buxton Road at 1:45 this morning!

Also in attendance last night was Matt Isaacs who hosts the "Rock Diversity" show on Canalside Community Radio.



As previously mentioned, Matt has asked us to do an acoustic session on this Wednesday's show, and was obviously checking out that he hadn't made an unwise choice, while under the influence, last time he saw us! Fortunately, he was very complimentary, and seems just as keen - we still feel it would be good though if he could provide a bottle of that stuff that Alice in Wonderland drank to shrink herself -that way we are certain to be able to fit in the studio! We've still got our doubts, but Matt reckons we'll be fine, hmmm....... Anyway, a sure way of finding out is to tune into Canalside Community Radio on 102.8FM at 8:00pm on Wednesday evening.

Our week will steam to a climax next Saturday 21 November at Macc Town Football Ground with the Brewery Bands Collective gig; more about that later in the week, but suffice it to say that it is bound to be a great night - brilliant bands and brilliant beer, what more could you want? Check out the poster for details on where to get tickets - a snip at a fiver!

AT THE NAG'S, ON YOUR RADIO, AND ROCKING AT THE MOSS - GOODNESS ME!!

Another 3 weeks have passed since we shared anything with you, so the first thing to do is apologise profusely - Sorry! Good, that's got that out of the way, and now to tell you the the next week is going to be absolutely frantic!!

Since we last spoke, we have wowed Ruthin Castle at Terry and Lenny's wedding (even if we did have to drive through a biblical flood-like rainstorm from Pwllheli to Ruthin!). The band actually arrived within about 5 minutes of each other - from all different points of the compass! Even Andy got there on time - he was already at the wedding but, even so, it was a remarkable achievement for him to be there on time! The funniest thing was when he had to go and find his guitar and stuff - he had been so pissed the night before, he'd forgotten where he'd put them! Also, Ruthin Castle is (allegedly) haunted, and runs "Ghost tours" for gullible Welsh people - Andy likes to think he's hard (he is a Dr Who fan, after all) but the moving suit of armour on the stairs gave him the willies (not literally, obviously!), and when the head disappeared off it on the Saturday night, he was well spooked (actually the staff removed it so no drunken guests could!)!

The gig went off really well - loads of dancing, loads of laughs, even Delilah at the end of the night !! - the real high spot of the night was only taking half an hour to do an hour and a half's return journey - because the clock went back en route!



So this Saturday (14th) sees us back again at The Nag's Head in Macclesfield - 3rd time this year, and the first time since the wet night in July! We are really looking forward to it, and we're hoping that we get the same response as last time - seems like ages since we played live, so everyone is itching to do it again. We will have a little lady doing some extra vocals in preparation for her big debut in a few weeks - more of that in future posts. Andy has done another rocking set list - so get down there around 10 o'clock on Saturday for some real fun! It's only round the corner from The Millstone, but don't bother going in there!



Once Saturday is out of the way, we will turn our attention to another media stream! As previously reported, Matt Isaacs from Canalside Community Radio has asked us to do an acoustic set on his "Rock Diversity" show next Wednesday 18 November; the show runs from 8:00-10:00pm and, while I'm pretty sure we won't fill the whole show, we will fill the whole studio (see below!) - probably a good idea to tune in and listen to see how it goes! Hugh has been down and checked out the studio - he's pretty sure he can't fit his whole drum kit in - so much so, he is planning to take just one bongo, and see what happens! Space is at such a premium that, as Paul will probably be the last there - due to family commitments in Sheffield (go Anna!) - he might have to use a very long mike lead and provide vocals from a local Bollington pub! Should be a great experience, so give it a go - 102.8FM 8-10pm Wednesday 18 November!

The week will surge to a magnificent conclusion at The Moss Rose (Macclesfield Town's ground, for those who live under the proverbial rock!) on Saturday night (21st November) when all 4 bands that have a connection with the brilliant Storm Brewing Company will turn out together on the same stage for the first time!! There is really only ONE Brewery Band (the one that both partners play in!), but we are really looking forward to what should be a fantastic night with the other great bands - Fats, Fil, Roger, Jamie, Joe everyone!! Who knows what will happen - but it will be brilliant, and as there will be lashings of Storm beer as well, what could be better??!

Tickets are only £5 (available from outlets mentioned in the poster above - click on it for a bigger version), and we will have some with us at the Nag's on Saturday.

So, November has gone from a damp squib to a rocket in the space of a week - we look forward to seeing old and new friends at one, two or (surely not!) all three events over the next seven days or so!