Well, it makes a chage for me to be in front of the camera, rather than my usual prefered place behind it.
So on Thursday, as a warm up, I did a twenty minute stint at the Open Mic at the Dolphin pub in Shrewsbury (top photo).
I was a lot less nervous than I used to be, when I played live regularly. I was worried that this was a bad sign. But the sound was good and I didn't play too shabbily. Which was a relief.
On Saturday (Sept 5th), I did a thirty minute set at the Castle Grounds in Bridgnorth, as part of Bridgnorth music festival.
It was a lovely day, with a decent size crowd. I had a few technical issues, with one of the leads and was attacked during one song, by a fly that tried crawling up my nose, but other than that it seemed to go ok.
I played a few Hair Thieves tunes (Shorewards, 21st CSM, Bad Consumer) and some covers (by Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Stiff Little Fingers, Porcupine Tree).
Some people said some nice things about the performance.
So hopefully, it won't be too long before I play live again and hopefully incorporate some new material.
This post and the subsequent post will be shorter than the last, purely since I have an idea to do a weekly discuss a song a like. But I need to finish this post and an up to date one first.
In my case, it was in my thirties, listening to both music from my youth and listening to non mainstream music.
Two bands helped me achieve this. The first was a support band who blew me away. I can remember the gig, but can't remember who they supported. It is a rare support band, that makes me go and buy their merchandise, let along a copy of all their releases they were selling that day.
The band in question was Oceansize.
Music for a nurse
Women who love me who love drugs.
They quickly became and are still my favourite band, (though they are sadly no more).
The second band, came about due to a change in job in 2002, where I went from coding embedded systems in Gas meters, to a rock no roll job, writing software to control live music mixing desks and PA systems.
It was during this time I was introduced to Porcupine Tree.
Arriving somewhere but not here.
Blackest Eyes
I was lucky enough to spend a day with their sound engineer on the Fear of the Blank Planet tour (when Amplifier supported).
So this decidedly put me musically on a more prog orientated mode. Saying that there are not many more prog bands I actually like other than Marillion (whom I'm liked since '84).
The Mars Volta
Since you've been wrong
and The Pineapple Thief -
All the wars.
The other thing I started when I was thirty was releasing my own music.
Shorewards (from EP2).
So I was spending more time messing with my own music than actually listening to music. Plus I stopped watching MTV as it declined from music television to dull reality TV channel.
So yes my musical tastes veered away from mainstream and more towards.
The final piece of the puzzle, I suppose, we regard to my thirties, was my interest in photography. I was going to lots of local gigs in pubs and clubs (as opposed to big acts). So I was listening to a lot of unsigned music.
Recording my own music, meant I was hanging out a lot on websites like
mp3.com and soundclick. Bands like Red Delicious (whom I was listening
to just the other day) were quite big in the unsigned world back in the
day.
Red Delicious -Untouched
Obviously, there were more mainstream bands I got into like Biffy Clyro and Elliot Smith.
Elliot Smith - Between the bars
Biffy Clyro - Living is a problem because everything dies.
Goldfrapp - Strict Machine.
Goldfrapp supported Duran Duran. Another band I went out the next day and bought their back catalog.
So that is the Naughties. I was still listening to the things I loved in the the '80s and actually, still going to see some of them live.
I will leave you with this tune from 2000, which is one of my favourite tunes of all time.
