TOTALLY knackered. Really. :)

That 3 night in a row thing last week left me dazed and confused on Sunday morning, I'll tell ya. All 3 nights were pretty full on, with the third one seeing Jamie pretty much having to sit down at the end. The O'neills gig on Friday night wasn't without incident either - on his second foray into the crowd (I now have to fix the wireless Nady sender for him again!) he got into it a bit in a crowded moshpit zone at the front and had a clash of heads with a female member of the audience. Both were not really hurt, but Jamie was pretty dazed and rested his head against the stack on his side of the stage for a minute or so while he recovered while Steve and I continued!

Drink being what it is, Jamie got some lip later on suggesting he had headbutted the girl (which he definitely didn't!) - Jamie took that kinda personally, which I don't blame him for at all. But students will be students, after a few beers - these were americans too, really up for having a good time. I suspect they must have thought Breeze were more like the Pistols by the end, how wrong can you be? The Breeze work ethic is terrifying to behold... :)

I'm itching to get into my studio and tinker... need a myspace site with some homegrown audio on it!!!

Cheersh

A

Gig gig gig (literally)

3 gigs in a row: one last night in Izi's in Witney (mental night, people falling backwards onto the stage from the "mosh pit"), one tonight in O'Neills and then another one Saturday night at a birthday do somewhere...

and it's a 3-piece... with me singing a bit (gulp!)

Richie is on hols (hopefully having fun!) so it's just me, Jamie and Steve. As it shall hopefully be in Andorra come january... I think it's going to work out pretty well. I'm not used to singing and playing, takes a bit for me to back off and play simply so I can concentrate on singing a bit: a very different style of performing for me. I'm not singing all of particular songs yet, but there's definitely one or two I can do. Just have to guage what my voice is capable of and remember my diaphragm. Stop tittering at the back.

A

Circular Arguments

Not another "should I have a kid" thing? Nah. Had enough of that question. I was listening to the radio this morning and not only did R4 (I'll admit I do listen in the mornings on the way to work, although I'm pretty sure it's bad for my BP) have some twittery stuff about a blogger in Paris, but the local radio berkshite channel has their "blog" in the mornings where locals witter on about the weather and lack of resources.

Which made me wonder if my nonsensical scattergun crap was worth writing (let alone reading!) - just another whiney middle class white boy (if 35 qualifies) railing against stuff he can't do anything about...

Maybe I should just stick to stuff about music.

Getting older...
Hmmm. I've been watching my hands with interest during the last few weeks since I got back from holiday. 2 weeks out, and I thought I'd have a tough time of it when I got back: this is partly true. The breeze gigs have been hard work, but what's odder is the stiffness in my right hand (I'm paranoid about that one - that's the wrist I broke in Canada) which seems to start up if I don't practise really really hard in the evenings for at least 45 minutes. If I do that, I'm strong as an ox: all that billy sheehan/stu hamm/pastorius/flea stuff comes flying out as easily as ever.

I really should be making my own music by now. Some silence in the evenings would help I suspect! No excuses now either, I've dumped every sample and loop CD I have onto the studio PC so I can scan and drag as quickly as I like to try to mash something interesting together. Even found sounds for Halion I haven't installed! Tut tut.

BT and virgin net
Dweeb stuff. Haven't had any ADSL now for getting on for 7 weeks: virgin's policy is to listen politely to you complain to their 25p a minute tech support line, ask BT to do a basic line check even though you've TOLD them repeatedly that ADSL has been disabled on your line (can't hear anything on there with the ADSL filter out - should hear a lot of high pitched noise) and only after the third BT response that "nothing is wrong" do they raise an engineer call. Or rather they don't.

Then the BT line went out completely (no voice either) so now I'm totally stuffed. Called BT on the mobile, got calls diverted, helpful fella name of Andy made all the right noises and told me he'd get an engineer out on monday (this was last saturday). Great, thinks I, what a helpful chap. Text message alerts tell me it's actually going to be a week on monday (OK, I'll let that one go, thinks I), then I get another text on sunday morning saying an engineer will call that day, and nothing happens: no engineer. Called them back last night, and apparently there isn't even a voice fault registered on my line!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This bore out what their online fault tracker service said (http://www.bt.com/faults) which pissed me off even further.

Virgin net AND BT, you're both a bunch of useless organisations. (note: keeping it printable)

Now I've found out some underground cables have been identified as substandard, so they're being replaced.

Hopefully this'll mean we'll get 2MB ADSL for the first time....?

I'm not holding my breath.