IT MIGHT AS WELL RAIN UNTIL SEPTEMBER!

As I sit here typing this, the rain is hurtling down, and they are promising a month's worth in one day - welcome to Summer! but are we downhearted? No we are not! Reason being that, after 2 great gigs last weekend, we are doing the same again this weekend - only this time it's private functions, rather than public ones (sorry about that!). This evening sees us returning to Sandhole Farm to pay at Daniel and Holly's wedding (we really hope the rain stops for them); we've not been there for nearly 3 years, but it's a great venue, and we just hope that the sound detection system is not so sensitive that it cuts out every few seconds, otherwise it's going to be a very fragmented performance!

Tomorrow night has us playing a private party in Macclesfield, which promises to be not only good fun, but also a very late night - as I'm off to the Lake District on Sunday (which, let's face it, could be anywhere in the country at the moment!), this is a bit of a worry!

Last weekend's frivolities saw us at The Windmill on Friday night - a really cracking gig, even if there were not quite as many punters as normal - look out for photos on the Facebook wall, once Paparazzi Pete gets them sorted. Saturday was Midnight Walk night, and our hour of "warm up" seemed to go down extremely well - over 600 people champing at the bit to get out onto the streets of Macclesfield, and the rain held off! A fantastic night all round and northwards of £60,000 raised for the Hospice!

Photos of the night Macclesfield turned yellow, and D&C through a fish-eye lens!!

Next gigs after that to be sorted - maybe we will be able to insert a pub date in the next few weeks - we'll keep you posted! Meanwhile this blog is only 13 hits away from 8000 - incredible! We've added visitors from the Isle of Man and China to the list but, as yet, no enquiries to play in either place!

A WINDMILL AND A WALK - ALL IN ONE WEEKEND!

Well holidays are over for the time being - except for Dave(!), so it's back on the road after a few weeks off - with a vengeance!! The next 2 weekends see us gigging on Fridays and Saturdays and, even though some of us will probably be close to expring by the end of it, we're SO looking forward to it! Who would have thought you could get withdrawal symptoms from playing music?!

Tonight (Friday 29th) has us back at The Windmill in Whiteley Green near Adlington; now, this always threatens to be a very sedate affair, because folk are having a very civilised meal in the dining room, and they view our appearance while they are eating with a mixture of astonishment and mild amusement! However, after a short while, and not least because there are normally some D&C diehards among them, feet start tapping and before too long, the mood overtakes them, and riotous behaviour rapidly ensues - let's just hope tonight is not the exception! If you've never been before, why not start the weekend in style - good food, good beer and EXCELLENT music! So good, that we even get celebrated astrophysicists/astronomers throwing some shapes (see below) - we'll withold his name to protect his reputation!

Assuming we survive tonight's festivities, tomorrow night (Saturday 30th) we will be the "warm up" act for the massive Midnight Walk in aid of the East Cheshire Hospice! We did this last year, and it was great fun, even if it was difficult to persuade some people to strut their stuff just before they embarked on a 10km walk in the middle of the night! This is a fantastic cause, as I'm sure many of our readers know - the Hospice needs more than £6000 a day just to keep going, and less than a quarter of this comes from Government funding, so the rest has to be raised through fundraising, donations etc., and the Midnight Walk is the biggest event of the year. If you are one of the 600+ folks that have registered for the walk, come and give us a shout, and don't be afraid to stretch those muscles - you know it's good for you! We'll be on stage around 10:30pm, and will be attempting to whip folks into a frenzy in time for big start at midnight!

Next weekend, we are playing at a wedding on Friday and a Private Party on Saturday, so I guess we'll need to be on our best behaviour - fat chance of that!

SHE'S ELIZABETH THE SECOND AND SHE'S HAVING A JUBILEE - JUBILEEEE, JUBILEEE!!!

It's been pretty quiet on the D&C front for a couple of weeks - ever since Injector Pete's party, in fact! One reason may be that we're still all recovering, but more likelyh is that holidays, Jubilees and other such stuff has just got in the way!

Pete's party was brilliant - a positive festival of good music and bad dress! The theme was "Leather & Lace" and, while some of us went for the subdued "I'll just wear a leather tie" approach, others (notably the Birthday Boy!) went for the whole Village People, lock up your daughters (or more likely, your sons!) approach - see photographic evidence below!








Anyway, back to the music - Pete wanted all his musical influences to be there, so the fantastic Kontaani Djembe Drum Band kicked off proceedings - I'd forgotten how many of them there were, and they don't half make a loud (and good) noise! There then followed one of then high spots of the evening - the "SooperGroop" featuring most of D&C supplemented by musicians fromn Pete's other bands - Bobby Rocket and Dr Mick from the Injectors and Tim from Voodoo Juice. We'd "practised" a number of tunes a couple fo times, and these were unleashed on the ususpecting punters - in no particular order "Running Down a Dream",- "Rock the Casbah", "Never Lookin' Back", "Teenage Kicks" and a suprisingly tight version of "Moves Like Jagger". All seemed to be well received, and I think it will be a race between D&C and the Injectors to see who can put what in their sets permanently! Pete did  a few numbers with the Injectors, and then we applied the coup de grace to the evening's proceedings. A great night was had by all - and there were a few sore heads the following morning!

So, as 2 of our number are off on hols for a couple of weeks, the quiet period continues - however, we are back in harness at the end of June with a double header weekend! Friday 29 June takes us back the The Windmill in Whiteley Green for our 6 monthly dose of aiding the digestion of those that have eaten, and we hope to see our favourite astrophysicist throwing some shapes, as he always seems to do there (more of that in a future blog!). Saturday 30 June will see us at Macclesfield Leisure Centre warming up the participants in the East Cheshire Hospice Midnight Walk, as we did last year. This is a great event for a very worthwhile cause (who could resist a 10km walk round the streets of Macclesfield in the middle of the night?!) so, if you haven't already registered why not do it now - via the ECH webite (just click on the Fundraising tab when you get there, and you'll see the Midnight Walk link)?

Until then - enjoy yourselves, and don't have too many nightmares about Cheryl Cole's performance at the Jubilee bash!!

HOT, HOT, HOT - TO THE POWER OF 2!

What a weekend! For the first time in a long while, we did a "double header" to round off the Grand Pub Spring Tour; Friday night saw our debut at The Wharf while, on Saturday, we returned to The Old Ship Inn. We were hoping for a warm welcome at both venues - and we certainly got that!

The Wharf was taken over by Chris about a year ago, and it has taken us this long to get on stage there because Chris is a little nervous about the noise levels and the neighbours - so we provided a high level of reassurance for him, without having a high level of confidence that we would be able to match that reassurance! The first set started early (8:30), so that we could be done by 11:00 - this obviously fooled some people (despite our pre-publicity), because Pete Banks (Papparazzi Pete, to our regular readers!) arrived at 9:00pm and was bemused to find we were in the middle of "Paint It Black" - our fifth song! We did play a somewhat "mellow" first set, much to the consternation of Andy & Chrissie, who were complaining that they couldn't hear anything; so, we decided to surreptitiously "tweak" the volume for the second set and hope that Chris either a) didn't notice or b) didn't say anything! As it happened, the second set exploded! The pub was full, everyone was up and bouncing around, we finished spot on 11:00pm and nobody complained about the noise - all in all, a brilliant night!!

One thing that is worthy of mention is the great job that Chris has done in having the pub double up as a sauna - the temperature by the end must have been around 40 deg C (and that was without any obvious signs of additional heating)! There are a a set of mirrors on the wall behind where the band plays, and these were all running with rivers of condensation, coats that were hanging up were wetter than if they'd been left outside, and Paul's shirt was the focus of many hurtful and unnecessary comments about its resemblance to a used bath-towel!! However, all the heat and sweatiness actually added to the night, and it felt like a good old Chicago "speakeasy" by the time we were done! Hopefully, we'll be back soon.

Following this warm experience, we approached Saturday evening with some trepidation! The Ship is known for its hospitality, and part of this reputation is based on the 2 welcoming coal fires that blaze in hearths at opposite ends of the bar - whatever the time of year, time of day, or temperature outside! Having been broiled within an inch of our lives the previous night, we weren't sure we could survive the dehydrating effects of 3+ hours in that sort of environment! Sure enough, we pitched up at 8:00pm, to set up, to find that The Ship's version of the twisted Firestarter had indeed been in action! We worked up a fair sweat just assembling the gear and when 9:00pm came around, and the pub had filled up a bit, it was blindingly obvious that some serious fluid replacement therapy would be in order - in the spirit of water conservation (even though it was pi**ing down outside) we decided that pints of Storm Brewing's finest ales would be the best means of achieving this!

We put a few different numbers in the set from Friday night, and they seemed to do the job - there was an additional, unplanned, variation to the set when we had to embark on a Shadows version of "My Generation", as Paul forgot the words! Now, this song only has about 20 words in total (one of which is "Ba" as Matt so helpfully pointed out!), so it really does take some doing to forget about 18 of them - especially when we've only performed it about 200 times! Anyway, nobody died, and I'd like to think the audience appreciate these occasional divergences!

A big thanks to everyone who turned up for the gigs, and a SPECIAL mention to those who came to BOTH gigs! We do appreciate it immensely, and it is quite humbling to see people turn out time and time again - we love what we do, and we hope we give you just a little bit of enjoyment - after all, if you can't have fun, what's the point?!

So, our Spring Tour is complete - next gig is a Private Party for Injector Pete's 50th (oops, said I wouldn't mention that!) and, before that, we shall be enjoying the delights of the Macclesfield Beer Festival - hope to see some of you there!

FRIDAY THE 13th - PART ONE and WHAT, NO BEER FESTIVAL?!

Easter came and went pretty damn quickly - as did the Summer and Winter (if that's what that very hot week, followed by the very cold and snowy week were!). However, the calendar suggests that we are still in April, which means that we are VERY busy!

The 2nd Leg of our Spring Pub Tour hits Porter's on Roe Street in Macclesfield this Friday the 13th!! A quick perusal of my encyclopaedia of gig dates reveals that the last time we played there was March 2011, so we are long overdue to give Michelle & John's patrons another dose! As ever, we'll be kicking off around 9pm, so don't worry about anything bad happening (as if anything could!) - just get there, and start your weekend with a bang! Possibly 3 new numbers in the set as well!

Next Thursday sees us playing at a wedding in Prestbury (yes Thursday!), and then we're back on the Pub Tour the following weekend - consecutive nights at The Wharf on Brook Street on Friday 27th followed by our return to The Old Ship Inn on Beech Lane the following evening. We'll be kicking off a little earlier at The Wharf (so the neighbours can get their beauty sleep!), so be there around 8:30, but Saturday night at the Ship will probabgly see the normal mayhem through to the early hours!

Apart from that, not much to report - Dave's been on holiday, but don't suppose we can class that as news, and we're all getting ready for the Beer Festival in May - about which a little explanation is needed! We're starting to lose count of the number of questions we've had along the lines of "Are you playing the Beer Fest this year? You're not - why not??". I've even had people say "Well if you're not playing, we're not going!" So let me clarify things a bit; as many of you will know, we have been privileged to play the best gig in town for the last 6 years - from the dark days of 2006, when we supported the Glass Onion Band from Ireland,( and Frank had to go to the loo about a minute before we were due to start!), through sharing the bill with the Screaming Beavers in 2008 and 2009 (and remembering to wear dark glasses to protect our eyes from their flashy suits!) to playing with Monkey Harris in 2009/10. When we were asked about playing this year (yes, we were asked!) we felt that 6 years was a good run (nobody else has ever done more than 3 in a row), and we wanted to enjoy the event for itself, and give someone else a chance! Believe me, there are moments when we regret that decision - probably every time we mention it to each other actually, and a return next year has already been mooted so, who knows - but all that is a long way away!

So this year, we will be on the floor of the house (probably literally!), along with the rest of the punters, and would urge as many of you as possible to get along and "drink for charity" cos it's all in a good cause! Monkey Harris are on again, along with our stablemates from the Storm Brewing Company, The Chinese Marbles - so get down and give them a cheer - not too loud, mind, we're very sensitive!

THERE'S NO GOOSE LIKE THE SNOW GOOSE!

Good God - I'm getting rather bad at this - just noticed it's nearly 7 weeks since ANY postings on here - apologies and time to put it right!

Gig news - since the last epistle, we've played 2 gigs, added a ruck of others, and scrubbed at least one, so it's not been exactly quiet! Gigs played have been:

• a welcome return to The Jolly Sailor, after a gap of a couple of years. Great to play at Glyn's gaff, and the small, but perfectly formed audience seemed to enjoy it - including a contingent of GooseFest organisers, who made the trip over from Goostrey to see if Steve's view that we are good enough to play at their festival in October was correct, or whether his judgement had been clouded by his imbibing activities at the party in Congleton in December! Happily, they were impressed enough to ask us to do it - just need to find the right date now!
• last Thursday saw our debut at The Snow Goose, which is rapidly becoming THE place to be seen in Macclesfield! Stuart & Nelly like their bands to start early, so we went on at 7:30, with an audience of about 2 - both of whom manfully supported us for the first few songs! After a while, more folk arrived (no doubt confused, because our posters said we weren't staring till 9 - due to a communication breakdown!), and, once the rest of the cavalry had arrived, the place was really rocking! Eventually, our "early doors" gig finished around 10:45, despite repeated cries of "More!", so maybe next time we'll go for the late start, and see what happens?! Stuart and Nelly both enjoyed it, and we have photos to prove it -

The gig list on the right is fairly up to date, and you will see that there are 3 more pubs for us to visit on our Spring Tour:

• Friday 13 April at Porter's on Roe Street - a welcome return (and a popular one if the reaction of Michelle, the landlady, is anything to go by!)
• Friday 27 April at The Wharf on Brook Street - another first for us, and we're delighted to be playing for Chris at his re-furbished and re-energised hostelry!
• Saturday 28 April, at The Old Ship on Beech Lane; as ever, this will be like coming home, and replaces the wedding gig that we had pencilled in for that date, but which has mysteriously been cancelled!

We hope to see loads of you at one, some or all of these, and we will be spending some time over the next 3 weeks, or so, polishing up some new numbers - so watch out!

Various other party gigs have appeared, but we will try to make sure these don't get in the way of public ones - wouldn't like people to be starved of good music, would we?! It really looks like Spring has sprung, the sap is rising, so what better time to get out of an evening and fill your ears with good sounds?

Finally, just noticed that the "ticker" for this piece of literary magic has gone over 6900 visits, so look out Mr 7000 - we're on our way! Will be interesting to see which country the 7000th person comes from, as we're still getting viewed in all parts of the world - whether that's by accident or design, is anybody's guess!

And, finally, finally: Quote of the day (this one from Stebbo): "Never argue with a fool - he will drag you down to his level, and then beat you with experience"

WE ARE SAILING - OR SLEDGING, MORE LIKE!

Hello again - the last 2 weeks have flown by, it's February already, the snow is about to fall, and it's time again to dust off our sledges and point ourselves in the direction of some music making!

The first holidays of the year are completed (Chrissie at great pains to point out (understandably!) that she and Paul were not away together!) and, before the second phase begins (for Hugh later this month, and Dave in March - au naturelle!), we're going to play a couple of gigs, to get rid of the ring rust and, hopefully, add a couple of numbers to the ever lengthening list!

First gig is a private party, this Saturday, and then next Thursday 9 February, we make a welcome return to The Jolly Sailor on Sunderland Street in Macclesfield. Now, those of you with long memories will know that the Jolly has had a somewhat chequered past; in fact, at one stage, there were more punters leaving the pub through the windows than there were through the door! However, over the last couple of years, Glyn has really turned the place round - great ambience, good beer, jazz music in the background (hopefully, not next Thursday!), and even a smart eaterie ("Muckers"!) upstairs. The re-generation of that part of town with the advent of other gathering places, like The Treacle Tap and The Snow Goose, has also helped to make it a much better place to be, than it was - the next challenge will be to get more than 2 people at a time eating in the Indian restaurant across the road (I suspect that will take a little longer!).

So, come next Thursday evening, we'll be there, and we hope to see the place full and jumping - I'm sure that, when they hear us, the punters in the Tap and the Goose will be hot footing it down the street as well - hopefully, in our direction!

Other gigs are in the pipeline; now that we've got several private parties in place, we're looking to sprinkle a couple more pub gigs around - we've been asked by Porters and the aforementioned Snow Goose to play, and we're looking for mutually convenient dates - so watch this space!

As ever, you can keep up to date (and even leave us comments - gulp!) on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/122280790779/ (how down with the kids are we??!!), so keep in touch.