Firstly, I must apologise for how long it has been since the last diary, but I hope to make up for the sabbatical with a bit of a rip roaring piece of writing (at least I haven’t set the bar too high!!!)....
.. ..
Secondly…Hello and how are you? As some of you may know we are trying to change our name but it’s proving a lot more difficult than we anticipated. Unfortunately, nothing has tickled our fancy yet. There have been some close calls but after toying with it and asking peoples opinions we have second thoughts. So we still need your help, so keep those suggestions coming in at mail@halagoogoo.com .....
.. ..
So last Saturday, we went back to our home from home, where it all began, where we became men but still looked like boys!!!! That’s right, we went back to BRISTOL (or Brizzle as it is more commonly known). The day started with glorious sunshine, so Ryan and myself decided to make the most of it by playing Fifa ’09 on the PS3….I know it’s pathetic but I am ginger and therefore sun is almost like my kryptonite so I do have some sort of excuse. Ryan on the other hand will lie in the middle of a building site to top up his tan (that is actually a true story).....
.. ..
Anywho, we then had a quick practice in the flat and proceeded to load up the Green machine that is our tour bus, the barely famous, Halagoogoo Espace, which some nice member of the public decided to supe up for us and add some value too by inscribing C**T onto the bonnet…..I bloody love the general public!!!....
.. ..
After a few twinges of back muscles the gear was loaded and down the M4 we proceeded. We had the usual near death experiences that comes with our travels. I’m getting a bit bored of this whole life flashing before my eyes malarkey, I need to do a some more fun stuff just to update it for the next time if anything! Two and a bit hours later and a lot of band name debating, we arrived in ....Bristol..... We headed to the venue, THE LANES, it comes from the same people responsible for the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes in ....London..... This is what they have to say for themselves “Having lovingly restored an ace art deco building in the city centre, The Lanes brings you retro bowling lanes, an ace soundsystem, big dancefloor and a late licence!” The latter is obviously a big plus.....
.. ..
The gig was for Bristol Design Festival Easter Fundraiser. Bristol Design Festival is a celebration of creativity, design and innovation in Bristol and the South West. A very worthy cause for us to rock out with our cocks out (that last bit definitely did not happen…yes even Ryan kept it under control!), I think Geldof will be on the blower trying to get us to save Africa soon.....
.. ..
The night would consist of Burlesque dancers, bowling, Table football, pool, ourselves and an auction of various items hosted by Jamie Lenman from REUBEN.....
Amongst these various items being auctioned off, was a bin bag of Halagoogoo outfits from Ryans extensive dressing up wardrobe. This consisted of a Superman and Mr. Incredible muscle outfit for 8 year olds, a yellow cape, a clown outfit, a girls dress and Ryans old corduroy jacket (this isn’t any part of his halagoogoo wardrobe, I think he just needed to get rid of it, I think his general wardrobe is a bit corduroy heavy).....
.. ..
The bidding for the binbag of fashion disasters was frantic! £2.37….£3.54….£7.68, Jamie was a master auctioneer and put on a brilliant show squeezing pennys and half-shillings (anything would do!) from people. The bidding finally ended at the princely sum of £20 and no that final bid not come from us, we do actually have some sense between us…only between us though. If we had been on our own we could have been in thousands of pounds of debt, credit crunch or no credit crunch!....
.. ..
After the auction came a bit of burlesque dancing from Lena Mae, www.lenamae.com and Dolly Rose. They put on a good show and got the males and some of the females a bit hot under the collar…warming them up for yours truly.....
.. ..
Whilst changing back stage, Ryan asked the delightful Lena Mae if he could add to his outfit by borrowing a couple of nipple tassles, she kindly obliged and they really tied his outfit together.....
.. ..
So on stage we went and after the first two songs Ryan jumped off his drum kit and made a bee line for the bowling lanes…he made it three quarters of the way down the lane before slipping on the wax and having a bowling ball miss his head by inches. He got back to the drum kit pretty sharpish before one of the bouncers could get a hold of him.....
.. ..
The crowd was pretty up for it, doing a whole lot of jumping and booty shaking then during one of the solos, Simon mounted one of the speakers. The bouncers didn’t take to kindly to this sort of health and safety defying showmanship, and were trying to get him down by pulling on his guitar lead. Simon didn’t appreciate this sort of health and safety adhering action and decided the best way to deal with this situation was to jump onto the guitar lead fondling bouncer and run across the stage and mount the other speaker…this would definitely calm the bouncer down.....
.. ..
This got the crowd really going and a bit of crowd surfing and light hanging from these wonderful people started to get going. During the set the outfits from the aforementioned auction started to appear, that’s right, the winners of the binbag of goodies were rocking a clown outfit with full make-up (god knows where the face paint came from!) and a girl in the Mr. incredible outfit not leaving much too the imagination.....
.. ..
Two songs from the end and Ryan got out from behind the kit and started looking out into the crowd...it was a bit weird, it had a lion stalking its prey vibe about it. He walked up to the guy in the clown outfit and took his drink out of his hand passing it to another innocent bystander.....
.. ..
He jumped on the clown in a reverse piggy back position (I believe the Kama Sutra calls this position “the suspended congress”), whilst Simon played some sporadic fast solos, Ryan started to hump the clown, eventually getting him on the floor. Ryan was on top of the clown still dry humping him until we went into our song “Thrill Seeker”….what did we learn from this? I’ll tell you what we learnt… Ryan has a thing for clowns and I really hope that isn’t part of my life flashing before my eyes experience.....
.. ..
We ended on a massively extended version of miniature men, which resulted in a call for an encore. We decided to do something everyone knows and belted out Mollys Chambers by Kings Of Leon. The time was 12:30 when we left the stage but the night was young and we were going to make the most out of that late licence.....
.. ..
A good few drinks later and we had got ourselves a few free games of bowling which ended up spreading across the other lanes and a general free-for-all ensued. The bouncers (who weren’t exactly our best friends) asked us to call it a night plus it was about 3:30 in the morning.....
.. ..
It was time to load the gear back into the green machine, there was a minor panic about where the keys were…15 minutes of frantic drunken searching later they were found and the gear was being loaded in a highly inefficient way (definitely nothing to do with alcohol consumption).....
.. ..
Its times like this when you dream of having roadies but if that was the case we would not experience wonders such as the Local Bristolians leaving the chav hole that is THE WORKS.....
.. ..
We had parked the car right opposite this less than desirable establishment and began to experience, what seems to be, the standard end of night ritual….”Beat the shit out of that baaaaastard!” (to be said in a broad Bristolian accent).....
.. ..
It was carnage!!! Guys with tattoos on their arms and gold on their fingers decided to have a running brawl with each other, the reasons we do not know. I felt it would not be the best course of action to go up to one of these burberry clad gentleman and ask “Excuse me good sir, but you wouldn’t mind telling me why you are dueling do you? And if you wouldn’t mind just keeping it away from that green car with C**T inscribed on it too, then that would be great!” I think he would have been using my teeth too inscribe a whole lot more into the bonnet of the espace!!!! So we decided to move away from this (which was hard, as it had this car crash effect going on) and make our way to bed.....
.. ..
Would our car still be there in the morning or would the mark of gold sovereigns be left all over it?....
.. ..
Well I’m writing this, so that probably answers that supposed cliff hanger of a question.....
.. ..
Over all, it was a brilliant night and a big thank you must go out to the organisers of the event, especially Neil and Anna who invited us to play… thank you very much. Make sure you check out The Lanes if you live in Bristol, it’s an awesome place to have a night out in.....
.. ..
So its goodbye from me and I’ll try to make sure I’m a bit more regular with these things, if you have read the whole thing (and I don’t mean scanning) then give yourself a congratulatory pat on the back!....
.. ..
We’ve got a headline gig this Friday (24th April 2009) at The Halfmoon, Putney. So come the hell on down!!! ....
Fuse ....
XxxxxxxX....