Well howdy folks!
The silence on here has been due to the enforced absence of 3 band members over the last couple of weeks - all of whom were taking well deserved holidays! One was Dave (no surprise there!) who took on the European slopes with his usual aplomb, and did not break a single bone; however, he was complaining last week that he twisted his knee, hip and back, so it wasn't all plain sailing (in fact, it wasn't sailing at all, for a change!). Anyway, he seems to be OK and, no doubt, will be fully recovered in time for his next escapade at the beginning of May!
As previously reported, Chrissie and Paul (and respective partners, I hasten to add!) spent part of March lapping up the delights of the South by South West Music Festival in Austin, Texas before departing for different recovery clinics in the East and West USA! For those who haven't heard of SXSW (as it is known by those in the know!), it consists of wall to wall music from 10am to 2am for about 6 days; now, you can buy a pass for about $1000, and go to watch people boring each other about how good their music is, and watch the "showcase" concerts, or you can gird your loins and hit 6th Street (which is literally all bars!) and savour every conceivable genre of music continuously for the above noted 6 days for absolutely nothing (except the price of your drinks - ah, not very free then!). You may think I am exaggerating this, for effect, but let me assure you I'm not - we must have seen getting on for 100 acts in the time we were there, and we didn't even scratch the surface! The fare on offer ranged from the unknown (and pretty poor), who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, to the unknown and bloody good (examples for me being the Gary Lee Cox Band, Shayne Zaid and the Catch, SoandSo, The Golden Dogs etc.) to the relatively well known and bloody good. We saw Eliza Doolittle, The Bangles and Ron Sexsmith (among others), but decided to give Bob Geldof and Yoko Ono a miss! We even heard the dulcet tones of Duran Duran wafting down from a rooftop bar at one stage, but couldn't get in! Of course, as all these bands/acts were in bars, we had to have beer, Bloody Marys, Margaritas, and lots of other liquid (well, it was 80deg+!). We were there on St. Patrick's Day as well, so you can imagine what that was like - the Yanks all seem to think they have Irish heritage, and that means they have to wear green and drink Guinness - 6th Street looked like Wembley's turf for the whole day!
You may be wondering what the title of this post is all about, well......it refers to something we heard from a combo we saw one day, that went by the name of Bonjay. There were 3 of them: a lady called Alanna on vocals (hip hop, urban, that sort of stuff!), some weird guy called Pho (yes, really!) on "beats and effects" (whatever they are!), and a newly recruited drummer (with real drums!). They had enormous trouble setting up - the conventional 5 piece band that had been on before, set up in about 10 minutes, but this lot were at it for about half an hour, and all they had to set up was a computer and a snare drum! The first problem was with dear old Alanna's loop pedal, which she gave up on in the end saying "you'll just have to imagine what it would sound like"! Then came the piece de resistance - after the first number was completed, the newby drummer was heard to say "You''ll have to give me more laptop in my drum monitor"! On the list of things you never expect to hear said at a gig, that must be pretty near the top - who says rock and roll is dead!
Anyway, back to normality; we are currently "rehearsing" new numbers for the Beer Festival - 3 pretty much boxed off last week, and we're hoping there will be at least 3 more before the event itself. Our first opportunity to trial these will be at The Cock & Pheasant in Bollington on Saturday 16 April, so come along, if you dare!
The tickets for the BF are now on sale (from the usual outlets), so get your order in quick, because we all know they go like hot cakes! Details are on the poster below (double click to see a bigger version).
OK - let's get it out of the way! Saturday's gig was made all the sweeter by the magnificent City win a couple of hours earlier - all the Blues were obviously on cloud nine, and I have to say that even the Reds in the room took the wearing of the City t-shirt and blue and white scarf in good heart (except for the guy who threatened to take the wheels off the dirty white tour van!)! So bring on the mighty Potters - fortunately we don't have a gig booked for 14 May, so Wembley here we come!! As for last Saturday's gig, once again it was a great night at the Cock & Pheasant - some familiar faces, and some new ones (even a coachload from Marple!), which was good because we played some familiar tunes, and some new ones! In fact, SIX new (or new-ish) songs received an airing - Gimme Shelter, Ballroom Blitz, Don't Fear the Reaper, 20th Century Boy, Hanging on the Telephone and Walk This Way! Audience feedback suggests that they all worked pretty well although, obviously some polishing is needed (will be especially good if Paul & Chrissie can learn all the words to Walk This Way!). Still, we have 3 more practices to do this (and maybe even learn one or two more) before the Macc Beer Festival on 6 & 7 May. Thanks to Charles & Ann for having us there, and we hope we didn't disturb the neighbours too much! On the subject of the Beer Festival, as we always say around this time, be sure to get your tickets early, because they really do fly out the door, and we already know that sales have been excellent. With the plethora of Bank Holidays that are just about to hit us, it would be easy to leave it too late, and find you have to sit on a freezing grassy knoll on Priory Lane (without beer!) listening to us, rather than being part of the action - so don't delay, get your tickets today. Details are on the attached poster (click to enlarge to a legible size!) 
We will be sharing the bill again with Monkey Harris and, as usual, we will be doing the late second slot on the Friday night (so we can have a couple of snifters ourselves on the Saturday!). Friday is always the more popular night so, even more reason to get your skates on!!
