Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Salisbury Beerex

To Salisbury on Saturday for the 30th Beerex Beer Festival, which turns out to be in a rather impressive old church converted into an Arts Centre. For the second gig in a row we've got a nice big stage to play with, complete with a massive arched stained-glass backdrop, featuring a bloke with long hair & a beard (clearly pissed, who's lost most of his clothes and fallen into some brambles), draped over a sort of wooden cross thingy while a lot of people look at him disapprovingly. I mean I'm flattered, obviously, but I wish they hadn't gone to so much trouble...
Lots of time for a soundcheck for a change, and for such a huge venue the sound is actually not bad at all - someone who knows something about acoustics has put some effort in here - and our godless heathen racket eventually wins over the sizeable crowd of almost exclusively male beer drinkers, even dragging most of them away from the tantalising array of over 60 real ales on offer.
I only spotted half a dozen women in the whole place; one asks us if we can play some old style Rock'n'Roll (we could, but why on earth would we?), one tells us that she's "acshewully the fire schteward...so it'sh my reshponsibility to, umm, you know, shave everybody's livesh if there'sh a fire...", and one mistakes me for Bill Bailey - a comparison I'm happy to go along with, given that I've recently been compared to Rasputin & Satan...
Many thanks to Salisbury CAMRA for asking us to play, we had a blast, and much appreciated all the lovely beer they gave us to take with us, too... I polished off my Old Growler as soon as I got home. Mmmm...

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