We are not playing many gigs at the moment, but we were delighted to return to the local park of Annie, our trombone player, and Mark, our drummer for the Picnic in the Park.
It was great to welcome Simon and Barry on saxes who have both played on our recent gigs (including a civil partnership we didn’t write up here).
It was very hot, but we kept our fluid intake up and played two full sets.
We were very happy to be asked back to Croydon’s Grangewood Park for a community festival at the weekend.
Here are some photos of the band playing. And the tweet below has a video where you can hear us playing Ten out of Ten in the background.
Thank you to the Friends of Grangewood Park committee, amazing volunteers and the fantastic support from local businesses providing raffle prizes.
The icing on the cake for me was seeing how packed the new playground was. So pleased we were able to make that happen in 2022 pic.twitter.com/6uEQscNXPC
The second set was shorter than we planned as drawing the raffle prizes took rather longer than enyone planned so we were not able to return and play our last few numbers.
We had a great time yesterday afternoon playing for an end of term party for staff of a west London school.
None of us have ever been asked to such an occasion before but it was a lot of fun, with much dancing and perhaps the best sing-alongs we have ever had.
And Ian, our guest tenor sax player, still had time to get to another two gigs that evening.
Yesterday we got to play for the first time in 18 months at a delightful food and drink festival in Newhaven in Sussex. Here’s a couple of soundcheck photos.
Two years ago we played just up the road at a festival in Seaford. It was good to be back – and really good to be gigging again.
The weather forecast was dodgy, but we played in bright sunshine. We had to drive through a storm on the way but the site was rain free at least until we left. Given the amount of gin on sale and consumed it would perhaps be inaccurate to say that it was a dry day.
This is what we played. We had to cut the second set a bit short as there was a curfew on the gig.
Everyone knows that bank holidays are wet, windy and washed-out. But not so this year as the temperature has climbed to ‘phew, what a scorcher’ levels. It was therefore a good weekend for the Seahaven Beer and Music festival in Seaford, close to Newhaven, along the Sussex coast from Brighton.
We had great fun playing to a lively audience (the photo above was taken from the stage but well before we started playing).
This is what we played in a single set of just under an hour:
Chinatown
Guns Of Navarone
Tide Is High
Mood For Love
Work Song
Enola Gay
London Calling
Monkey Man
One Step Beyond
Simmer Down
Tainted Love
My Boy Lollipop
Night Boat To Cairo
We were told that the festival was meant to launch last year as an annual event, but was rained off. It got off to a flying, if delayed, start this year.
Update: Here’s some lovely feedback from the client:
Thank you all so much for coming all this way. Everyone has been saying how brilliant you all were and loved the music.
Yesterday was the hottest day of the year. It was a perfect day to play a party in a garden deep in the country near Petworth in Sussex – easy to find on some sat navs, challenging for others.
The photo shows the set up – a dance floor on the grass and a platform for the drums and vocals.
It was still warm when we finished playing at 11pm after extending our second set to keep people dancing.
It was isolated enough not to worry about noise and neighbours, and our PA was just right for this kind of gig.
This is more or less what we played as we threw in a few encores to keep the second set going:
It was a blast playing the Maidstone Ska Festival on Sunday.
We played a good long single set to a great crowd who sang along from the first song.
And it’s always a treat to play an event that was so well organised. We started at the right time and came off just a few minutes late after an extended encore. The sound people did a great and a relaxed job – not easy when you are having to get bands on and off a stage all day with no time for thorough sound checks.
There is another festival scheduled for September with a fabulous line up too.
It was a lovely spring evening yesterday, just right for a gig at a tennis club. We had a great time playing for an Aldersbrook Lawn Tennis Club social evening. It was a great success with a big crowd that danced all night.
Thanks to Andy Wilson who came and played tenor sax for us for the first time, depping for Jackie who is away.
And we have some fabulous feedback:
So many people said to me last night that was “the best night ever” at our tennis club.
Even more asked me “when are you coming back”.
I look forward to having that discussion with you soon. Big thanks from everyone at Aldersbrook.
We didn’t take any photos, but this is what we played:
We have never played an outdoor gig in January before. But while we needed our thermals we had a ball playing the Thornton Heath Light Festival yesterday. It combined some of the Lumiere light festival installations with live entertainment.
We only had time for a short set. This is what we played.
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