Duxford on the buses

Fantastic place, duxford. Not been here since I was a child; it's grown a fair bit and no mistake! There's a hanger containing nothing but american aircraft, including the truly gigantic stratofortress, which is awe inspiring.

But I have always had a thing about the SR71 blackbird, it's a bonkers testament to cold war paranoia when it met scientific insanity. A mach 3 monster, this thing was a spy plane that flew at 80,000 feet with surfaces that could get to 500 degrees and more, they had to wait half an hour before servicing it on the ground to let it cool down!

Awesome ;-)

Face bar: First band on, and the insanity of thursday nights..

Not bad: their vocalist has some presence, a curiously country and western feel. The bassist is a hired hand, he tells me, and he ought to ensure he knows the songs back to front! I hear the odd missed entry note...

Wierd gig, this one-not played this venue before, 5 bands in one night: tony is providing PA and his guitar amp, I'm providing the CCL plus 4x10 cab as bass amp. Apparently tony volunteered his system after having heard the system oin face bar-it is a little older, I guess-and the sound in there is pretty good as a result of Tony's system.

However, the guys here wanted us here at 3pm! Now, I am still a wage slave at the moment, so to speak. So this was def not possible! ;-)

Anyway, it'll be 930pm before we're on. junkyard scientists are on after us: I hear they're great, and I do like their sound. Coolio!

Another gig, but LOUDER

Tonight, it was Milestone Centre, Northbrook rd, Caversham Park. And it was a wicked gig. Tonight was definitely a lesson on two fronts:

Z) spend more time through the full stack and work on the sound through the multitude of signal processing stuff to try to make sure levels are the way you want and the Q-tron is actually going "whah" in the way you intended

€) don't have more than one drink. ;-)

Schloop) while playing, ensure you are shorter than your drummer

12.5) start your gig with the theme from FilmXXXX (tonewheel jackson rules!)

Great gig. Loads of fun.

Jagz: not been to this venue before...

I'm in ascot, at Jagz, a bar and restaurant complex type thing opposite the station. Upstairs they have a long, barrel-ceiling room with a huge stage at the end.

We're on after a couple of acoustic acts: the pic here is of a fella who has really nice songs and a cracking fingerpicking style on guitar: a little like newton falkner, and he's got a great sense of humour. "if i am a biscuit tin, you are a bourbon" :-)

He's even sharing about the perils of carbonated drinks and burping mid-lyric. Love it!

Today I got really hacked off at a lack of summer, lack of 2 week break and, indeed, total lack of a complete break at all: so I booked NEXT year's summer hols, at Metochi Cottage in Crete. This place is magical.

And now I'm suddenly happier: visualising the future pleasure of a familiar 19th century stone built cottage with a nice small pool of your own, tree coverage that seems to be perfect all day long and a local lidl with wicked cool beer.

Good times to come. And italy in a month where I buy my iPhone!

And a good gig tonight. I'm on the stack, and the sound is wicked out front.

Sunday social at the Bang Bar

What an odd wee venue! It's right in the middle of Basingstoke's own "central LA" skyscraper zone, but all the offices look like they're empty and a good portion of them look broken into! A long, deep bar, it's got odd colour schemes and reasonable acoustics.

Not come along to a "sunday social" before, I found out about it through Loz Lozza, champion of inependent music.

Trouble is, they had a big gig around here last night, and apparently the afterparty is still going. Elsewhere. So there aren't many musos here at all, which is a little sad. Not having a solo repertoire, I suspect I might manage a pint and then head back, but we'll see.

With a few people in it could def be interesting though. Bang Bar, it's at. Google for address.