Some good feedback from our barn gig in Reading
“The band were great, can you thank them all very much please. Hope they enjoyed it too”
We certainly did Charlie.
Thanks for booking us.
Posts in Category » gig
Did we play 15 songs in an hour?
The answer is that I’m not sure as my watch stopped half-way through the set.
As it’s a bettery operated watch that normally stops about once a year this could not be anticipated.
But my guess is that we were just a bit over.
What I do know is that it was a fabulous gig, where we got three encores.
There was a heaving floor of dancers the whole time we were playing, and a good part of that was that we did get through the songs more quickly than we normally do. Slightly fewer solos and a slicker transition between songs mean that we really kept the energy levels up.
I reckon the final tally was 17 songs in 75 minutes. That’s still a record for us.
Can we play 15 songs in an hour?
We’re playing the Last Days of Decadence in Shoreditch tomorrow (that’s Saturday July 24th).
You can read about the gig – complete with a spectacularly out of date photo – here.
I’m not sure about the Oi! reference either. We don’t exactly do skinhead punk.
We’re due to play for an hour, so have set ourselves the challenge of fitting 15 songs in. Normally we play about 12 songs in an hour, but by having slightly shorter solos and moving slickly from one tune to the next, we will be trying for 15.
Come along with stopwatches and counters to find out how we do.
A gig in a barn
We had huge fun at the weekend playing a gig in a barn on a farm outside Reading.
This was no pretend theme-park kind of barn, but a real one with chickens and bales of straw.
The best thing was that we were able to get a great sound. Playing in the open air – or a marquee – can sometimes mean the sound tends to disappear into thin air, while playing a boxy space usually means you get feedback and strange sounds in the bass.
A barn turns out to be a happy medium. There’s enough structure to keep the sound from blowing away, yet we had no feedback or boxy sound issues.
That all worked to make a great two sets gig.
We had a special guest, Joe the Drummer, on drums who provided his usual rock solid groove.
And we at last got the chance to play our new ska’d up version of the Dr Who theme.
So thanks to Charlie for laying on a great gig – and for feeding us so well (something that doesn’t always happen!)
London gig on July 24
We are gearing up for a function gig this weekend near Reading.
It’s a private party so no more details in advance, though I’m sure we’ll do a report here.
But it’s now only a couple of weeks until our next public gig in London.
It’s Saturday July 24 at the Last Days of Decadence, 145 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6JE.
Here’s the Facebook invite – and here’s the venue website
A gig in the woods
We are all just back from a fabulous function gig in the middle of some woods on the Hampshire/Dorset border.
As it was half-way between two villages – one in Dorset and the other in Hampshire we are not exactly sure in which county we actually played the gig.
This was an elaborate affair. It lasted all-night, and the logistics of putting a big event in a clearing genuinely in the middle of some woods accessible only by farm track were colossal.
And did I say it was fancy dress – with a Regency theme. So most of the men were in huge wigs (the audience – not the band.)
Mark ready to play
We got to play one long set starting about 1:15 in the morning in a huge marquee – with an extremely professional sound company doing the PA. It’s not that often we get our own monitor engineer and individual monitor mixes for each band member. Quite often we don’t have any engineers at all.
I’m not sure that ska is very Regency, but that did not stop the audience dancing continuously. We have no idea where they got the energy.
We were looked after very well too – and came off stage to a cooked breakfast at 3am.
our post gig breakfast
And then after a few hours sleep at the village pub, we got up for another fry-up before a somewhat weary return to London.
New gigs
It’s been very quiet for us lately. We’d like to say that being musicians we live the kind of lifestyle when unexplained absences mean that we have all been rushed to rehab, but are now in recovery.
But that wouldn’t be true. We have just not had any gigs for some time.
We have still been rehearsing and that means there will be some new songs in our set soon.
But we now have a couple of public gigs to add to the private function gigs in our book (which are always more common in the summer.)
So here are the diary dates:
- July 24th The Last Days of Decadence
- August 28th Upstairs at the Ritzy
Who’s the best Doctor Who?
Obviously it’s Tom Baker as he’s the only one who is appearing with us at our next gig.
This is February 27th at The Last Days of Decadence, 145 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JE.
I wonder if we could ska up the Doctor Who theme.
Who's the best Doctor Who?
Obviously it’s Tom Baker as he’s the only one who is appearing with us at our next gig.
This is February 27th at The Last Days of Decadence, 145 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JE.
I wonder if we could ska up the Doctor Who theme.
Fantastic gig at the Gypsy Hotel!
The run-up was not promising.
Half the band got stuck in traffic grid-lock on Kingsland High Street. I had to rush home between sound-check and performance, and somehow between tuning and the first number, one of my bass strings went seriously out of tune.
Our set list was not going to work as our time on stage was shorter than expected.
But it was still a triumph.
The short set-list meant that we chose our best numbers. The errant string was quickly tuned after the first number.
And the sound engineer was really good, and had quality kit to work with. Not only did we have great sound on stage, but some intelligent mixing went on during the set. Neither of these is guaranteed.
But best of all it was a great audience. They liked the old ska chestnuts, and our “unexpected covers” Tainted Love and Enola Gay – even if had to drop our mystery new song.
I don’t think that we have had a mass sing-along before, but the instrumental verse of My Boy Lollipop certainly saw some collective karaoke.
Just three weeks til our next gig . Feb 27th at the Last Days of Decadence.