August 2008

I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with this post until Monday.

I have a gig tonight in Leicester with The New Disciples of Soul at the Walkers Stadium. Tomorrow I have a gig in Birmingham at 8AM and then two show calls at The Buxton Opera House starting at 2:30pm. Sunday I have a gig in Liecester that starts at 9AM and then I’m moving down to London later that same day.

I’ve been trying to pack this morning, cleaned and washed my old car (that I’ve just sold) collapsed my desk into little wooden blocks for the move and now I’m going to make sure my Tux is looking it’s best for tonight.

I love being a musician

I managed to get a lift to my calls on Bank Holiday Monday as all the Garages were closed.

I performed in a Gala Performance of Ivor Novello and Nowel Coward in the Buxton Opera House. 2 calls and a Concert later I was on my way home again. There’s not a lot to tell you about the playing itself as Novello and Coward are not overly taxing to play.

On Tuesday morning I took my car into the garage and I’m still awaiting the damage to my wallet. Lets hope it’s less than the £170 that the Vauxhall garage quoted me without even seeing the car!!

I got through 3 gigs before my nice new car broke down. Great news hey?!

Saturday night With CHris Poole and the Shades was a gig good as always. My weddings on Saturday and Sunday went without a problem but when I went to pick up by buddy Paul for another gig on the Sunday night I managed to rip apart the gear linkage in my new car. Perhaps the sheer force that I slipped it into reverse was the problem or perhaps the gods of gigs are testing me.

Either way I had to put in an emergency dep, put Green Flag Rescue to work and then limp my car back to Derby.

the upside is that Paul sent me a text saying that the gig I missed was the worst one the group have ever had to endure - so perhaps the gig gods could be smiling my way after all?

I’ll be posting by mobile for the next few days. Why?
The answer is that I have 15 gigs to play in 9 days. Ah yeah!

It’s good but i’m moving to london after gig 15 so it’ll be a long 9 days and any spare time I have will be spent packing.

So i’m currently in the break of gig 1 and I’ll be playing a private function with Chris Poole and the Shades tonight. I’ll try and chart my fatigue daily.

It’s getting quite crazy when I look at the amount of time I’ve spent editing this documentary. I will say that it’ll be worth it. Like with everything I do I want to do it well and it’d really irritate me to release something to my site that wasn’t 100% perfect (this attitude does not transfer to my spelling and grammer - I often let rip on a post and forget to look up :P).

But don’t worry. It won’t be long now. We’re currently planning out Eurobusk 08 so I’ll have to release 07 soon :).

Well it was inevitable that my little fiesta would burn out eventually. Concidering all the miles I do in the poor thing. I bet some of you would say "it wa bound to happen sooner or later" - Well you’d be wrong. My little car is fine and although it makes me a little sad to sell it I’ve ended up buying my grandads Corsa of him.

Not exactly a trade up to the Audi I wanted but from a car that’s done 73,000 to a newer car that’s done 30,000 just makes sense. I’ve never driven a Vauxhall before and  I’m not  an expert on cars . I’m hoping  that it’ll be as reliable as the golf and fiesta that have proceeded it.

I have 12 gigs in 9 days from this Saturday so it’ll get the Matt Roberts Baptism of fire.

I try not to moan on my blog but is anyone else sick of The X-factor.

I know I enjoyed it for the first time last year, but that was all because I trained at the conservatoire with Rhyd and it was really interesting to see how the TV portrayed someone I knew.

I do admit I like to laugh at the self deluded people who go on the show (it’s kind of Morbid Comedy). So here’s the run down of some of the things that wind me up with this show (in no particular order):

The long pauses before …. …..   . . . .. .. … decision

The false footing answers - "I think … you …. SHOULD … not …  NOT .. .. go home … and pack your bags… to come back….  because I’m afraid ….you… have MADE it Through!!!! (screams - contestant puts hand to face to stop their nose from falling off).

The harrowing back story - "Sophie is poor. She was hit by a tricyle and lost the use of her face and now she’s come to sing to us today on the anniversary of her great great great grandmothers dogs death".

The use of pop to highlight decision (You’re through - Westlife plays). If you have any sort of musical brain you can see if it’s climaxing to major or minor and guess what each one means.

The guys who say "I AM MUSIC", "I LIVE MUSIC" "IT’S MY LIFE" "IT’S MY DESTINY" - Now I’ve spent thousands of hours practicing my craft and make a living from music. But I wouldn’t have the front to say any of those things (but then again I live in the Real World).

Do these people live in a special bubble? I mean back in the day Rhyd always said that he wanted to be in a Westend style job and used this show to get to his spot on Broadway in Phantom 2 (or so I hear from mates who are still in touch).

I could go on … but …. I ….. will … not… make you wait for my answer. So… I… won’t go on. (That terrible Leona Lewis song plays up to the climax)

Okay. So I might be biting my nails a little waiting for my mics and interface to arrive but I have loads of great kit:

Mic stands, pop shields, Sennheiser headphones, KRK monitirs, Cables, Keybord, Mac….

… all I need now are the things that make it all work.

After a few hours of sleep on the Sunday I realized it really wasn’t a good idea for me to get up at 5 for a 3rd morning and drive to Liverpool. I found out that the gig actually started in Manchester and ended in Liverpool so I thought it’d be better to train it up the night before and stay in Liverpool, get an early train to Manchester and meet up with my band there.

The beautiful thing about trains as oppose to cars are that you can sleep on a train with less risk of dyeing.

So that’s what I did. I have some great pictures of the wedding. It was one of the better ones we’ve done in the last few weeks. But again I need to fix the upload issue before I can post them. On the upside you can look forward to loads of pictures in a post very soon.

All in all it was a good weekend. It was hard work but a lot of fun. I spent over 12 hours driving and about 6 hours of playing. It was a really good laugh!!!