We had a bit of a schlepp over to Nottingham yesterday supporting South Africa's finest, The Soap Girls...
It was the first outing for our new guitarist, who rather than humping around some enormously heavy Marshall amp, uses one of those Blackstar Amped pedals as part of his effects board. Sounded great!
And as a whole we were mostly OK - I managed to mess up The Birdy Song (*), but much worse, our drummer managed to play completely the wrong rhythm for our final song which made it impossible to play to. And for some reason we decided to muddle through rather than put our hands up, point at the drummer and say "you've not only let yourself down, you've let the band down and you've let the whole audience down" then restart. Lesson learned! Still, rest of the songs were great - tight, funky and punky - I could hear myself (Parker into Helix/BBE/DBX compressor/Crown Power/Markbass 4x10 and we had folks jumping about in a groovy fashion rather than brandishing sharpened sticks and pitchforks!
The Soap Girls were also excellent - great show despite the gratuitous nudity that was mainly to satisfy a number of slightly seedy-looking middle-aged gentlemen who were far more interested in getting a quick flash than in the music. And their bass player displayed impressive core strength by bending over backwards, unsupported to within an inch of the floor, then standing straight back up! They also expressed jealousy over our 2 bass line-up...
Getting home took 4 hours, exacerbated by the obligatory 2am stop at motorway services to complain about the prices and quality while I smugly reminded them how I'd urged them to come and have one of the fine burgers (vegan and not!) at the adjoining brewery. I'd partaken alone, along with a fine pint of on-site brewed Castle Rock Mild while they'd complained of being full, having spoiled their tea by gorging on junk food on the way. Kids!!!
Anyway, duff Soap Girls pic, none of us available: