I tried to post a blog last week but for some reason it didn't work. I was going to tell you about our gig at The Yardbird on Tuesday 29 October but I don't think I can be bothered to go into as much detail as I did then. Needless to say, we rocked (natch), there was a fair-sized crowd (who seemed to get us) and we're grateful to those who listened and to Jason Pegg who invited us to play.

And I still can't tell you what I'm listening to for some reason. In case you're interested, it's more Beatles!

At long last the recording has restarted. On two days last week we spent time over at Lumbago Studios (prop. Steve from The Valuable Fools). On Tuesday night Paul laid down viola parts for, Magic Sam, What's he Got? & Tell Me Something, while Wednesday's session saw Craig laying down the drums for the aforementioned plus four other songs. A huge thank you to Steve for his time and expert (virtual and actual) knob twiddling.
This time we don't intend to let the grass grow under our feet and we'll have something new for you to listen to very soon.

Last Sunday was our first gig at The Dog on Hagley Road. Opening act was supposed to be 11-year old wunderkind Esther Turner and her mum Jan but unfortunately Esther wasn't well so yet again, at a moment's notice our emergency go-to guy P J Mayne filled in. This time I came prepared, I thought I'd bring my harmonicas and see what happens and sure enough, after Paul had done his guest spot I was invited to play a couple of blues tunes and considering I haven't played the harp in a long time, I felt I acquitted myself ok. P J was fantastic of course. Next up was the ever reliable Ethel Vince in a slightly playful mood it seemed to me. They introduced a couple of new songs which I thought were pretty good.
Then we went on, we played some songs, told some jokes and in the middle Paul went for a wee. After a while we stopped and went home.

It seems I uploaded the same version of What's He Got? twice. This has been rectified and you can now hear the raw, unadulterated "Paul's Dining Room" version without all the studio sheen (?) of the other version.
 

Seeing as our recording seems to be dragging on for longer than expected (I think it's about two years now), I've decided to upload a work in progress. I've added two versions of a very old song which goes back to the days of T's Basement (hence the blues flavour) called What's He Got (That I Ain't Got)?. The first one is the incomplete studio version which features some slide licks played on my tricone resonator but no solo as yet and no viola from Paul. The second is a home demo recorded round at Paul's on a digital eight track with everyone on it. This version goes right back to when we decided to put Anorakula on ice and give Electric Shed another go. We've come a long way baby.
Pete

We were looking forward to playing The Yardbird on Paradise Circus last night which some of you may remember as The Stage, or before that, Bread & Roses, or for those of you with a really long memory (it seems like a long time now anyway) The Grapevine. Tuesday nights at The Yardbird is Acoustic Lounge Lizard which is usually an open mic run by Jason Pegg who runs a few similar nights at other venues around town. As I understand it, these nights are usually open mic but on this occasion there were a couple of booked acts (us and a Conservatoire student called Pete Yelding who we missed). Jason played for about half an hour a mix of originals and covers including a nice version of Bittersweet Symphony, then it was our turn. By this time, the reasonably-sized crowd that had been there when we arrived had thinned out a fair bit. It took us a little while to set up owing to leads not working and a very gloomy stage illuminated (overstating it somewhat) only in red. Onstage sound wasn't great but I think that was more down to lack of assertiveness on my part and the fear of coming across as a primo donno (masculine and very bad Italian, maybe I should stick with 'divo', I'm sure that's a real word) therefore I didn't ask for more top end on my monitor mix like I should have. Also, to save time as he came straight from work, Paul had decided not to bring his amp and instead to go straight into the pa and as he hadn't positioned himself in front of a monitor, he couldn't hear himself (serves him right for playing a solid-bodied instrument I say). As the set progressed, the ripples of applause lessened until it was pretty much just Jason and one other guy. The set was: Global Village Idiots, What's He Got?, Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard Thompson), The Jolly Computer Programmer, Magic Sam, Workmate, The Weight (The Band), Tell Me Something, Blues for the End of the World, How Come? (Ronnie Lane). The applause was a bit stronger after the last tune. After we finished we did get a couple of complimentary comments, including one in appreciation of our 'quirky lyrics'. Qirky lyrics? That's poetry I'll have you know! The open mic followed for people who don't have to sleep.

Happy new year to you all, we hope you had a fantastic Christmas and the new year brings you everything you hope for (except the slow painful death of Electric Shed of course).
No news yet, let's just hope this recording gets finished.

Following our last appearance at One Night Stand at The Island Bar back in September, I thought I should follow up on their offer to let us play again. Within a day or two I got a reply from Becky the ONS organiser offering us Tuesday 9 December to which I replied gratefully accepting the offer. After a week I hadn't received any confirmation or details of playing times etc., so I e-mailed Becky again to check that everything was OK and promptly received a reply from someone called Matt saying that Becky was no longer involved and that Tuesday evenings had been taken over by Acoustic Brew and that I should contact them to make sure that we were still booked. "Eek!" thought I, "Are we still playing?" So I contacted Dale of AB to ask and he said "Yes".

Anyway, it was last Tuesday and we were on last, preceded by Alex Harmon, who also played last time we did the Island Bar. In the face of some rather over-enthusiastic praise from a couple of lads at the front (it started within about 2 beats of the first song in the soundcheck) played a great (if a bit rude) set of his own  witty songs, remaining admirably gracious to his rather distracting new fan club (I think they might have been high on drugs). The best (but probably laziest) analogy I can come up with for Alex's music is if Mike Skinner had listened to Jake Thackray instead of hip hop.

Second up were Bombdog who also played the last time we were there. They had a bass player this time.

Third was a young singer/guitarist called Rob Lane. He did the first couple of songs on electric guitar and threw in a few tasty blues/rock licks. A mostly self-penned set with a cover of The Fabs' Hide Your Love Away.

Number 4 was another young male singer/guitarist called Oh Stockholm. Ian suggested thet perhaps his name was genuinely Oliver Stockholm, we laughed. I countered that perhaps his name was in fact Oliver Stephen Tockholm, I laughed, Ian punched me in the face. Oliver, as he shall forever be known in my mind, began with a song called, spookily Oh Stockholm which was quite funny and reminded me of Monty Python's Finland. The rest of the set didn't live up to the first song but it was still pretty good all the same and he did bring a crowd with him, who did seem more interested in chatting to each other than listening to him but they did cheer him on enthusiastically.

Finally it was our turn. We played our songs, were incredibly witty and urbane between them, didn't break any strings, didn't spend an uncomfortably long time tuning up and one young man took several photos of Paul's Morroccan hat. And... people danced, even to Magic Sam! What's that all about? I don't know if any of this matters to you but The Valuable Fools and Ethel Vince put their setlists on their blogs so here's what we played:

What's He Got
Global Village Idiots
The Jolly Computer Programmer
Magic Sam
Workmate
Tell Me Something
Blues for the End of the World

Anyway, a big thanks to Dale and Sam from Acoustic Brew for a warm welcome and great sound. Hopefully they'll ask us back again or to Katie Fitzgerald's in Stourbridge (Hint, hint!).

Merry Christmas.

Well we tried a new venue on Saturday, the Church Inn on Great Hampton Street in Hockley. It's quite a small but pleasant and friendly place and when we arrived it was pretty busy, so much so that we had to turf a few people out of their seats in order to set up. Unfortunately as it got closer to showtime people started to drift off. There were one or two people who seemed to enjoy what we played in the soundcheck but they clearly had other plans. I think the thing to try in future will be to not wait until the start time we have decided on and strike while the iron's hot, and if there's a crowd already in the venue then start to play there and then. Anyway we went ahead and played to the four people who stayed all night. With us were Ethel Vince who performed a great half-hour set (thanks boys).

Anyway, we haven't given up on the place and we'll try again in the new year, watch this space. Please come down and give it a go. Meanwhile, our next outing is a return to The Island Bar next Tuesday 9 December. Again admission is free, please try to come down.

It's so long since I did a blog I'm not quite sure where to begin. I keep trying to encourage the others to blog as they're much more entertaining than me, I just have a slightly better grasp of when to use apostrophes; colons and semi-colons are still a complete mystery to me however.

Anyway, since last we met we've played at One Night Stand at The Island Bar which was way back on 30 September. It was a very informal occasion hosted by the charming Becky and Carl. The acts consisted in chronological order of young promising singer/songwriter/guitarist Jonny Hands followed by another ssg Alex Harmon who did a nice line in mockney voiced and occasionally obscenely-titled ditties. Next was Bombdog featuring four-piece lineup consisting of two guitars, snare drum and cornet, an interesting experiment. It was our turn next and as we just had a 20 or 30 minute set we decided to stick to originals and without wishing to blow our own trumpet too much (oh go on, what the hell!) we played very well and I think we went down the best. We were followed by another ssg who wasn't mentioned on the original bill and whose name we never caught and unfortunately didn't make much of an impression. Anyway, subsequently Becky contacted us and said that they enjoyed our set and to let them know if we would like to play again to which we replied affirmatively, but so far no news.

Next up was an Anorakula show at our old haunt The Bear Tavern in Bearwood supporting The Valuable Fools. As you may know, Ian and Paul also play in the Fools (on drums in Ian's case). This was on 1 November which in hindsight (and foresight if truth be told) was not a wise move being right between Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night. The result was what one can call without fear of contradiction, a disappointing turnout. Our good friend, the excellent Dan Hartland opened the show and was on fine form (check him out). Unfortunately I missed a good third of his set as I had to go downstairs to get drinks as the small number of punters upstairs didn't justify staffing the bar. Then we played and then the Fools played. There's not a lot to say other than that. Both bands played pretty well, but from our point of view it was just an expensive, time-consuming practice. As the old philosophical conundrum goes "If a band plays in the middle of Bearwood and there's no-one there to hear them, did they play at all?"

Anyway, to the future! The immediate future is this coming Saturday 29 November when we are playing at The Church Inn, Great Hampton Street, Hockley with Ethel Vince. This is a new one for us although Paul played there the other week with Prussian Blue and it seems like a nice relaxed sort of set up so we hope to see you there. There'll probably be a new song in the set called Workmate (not really "new", it was written years ago by me, Ian and Andy from Ethel Vince, but not played until recently), admission is free.