Kings Arms, Stratton on the Fosse

This pub is Nigel's local, and very nice it is too, albeit perhaps a little on the small side!
When I was about 15, the band I was in used to practise in various people's front rooms, which invariably involved sweeping a load of family photos off the mantelpiece with the neck of your guitar, treading on the cat and stopping the drummer from dribbling on the soft furnishings. Occasionally someone's mum would poke their head round the door with a tray of custard creams...
By the time we'd got all our gear set up in the back room of this pub, said room was completely full, which meant we were essentially playing to an open door through which the odd bemused punter would peer as if observing a cage full of badly behaved monkeys.
Convention dictates that playing to a solid wall is acoustically a Bad Thing, so we were pleasantly suprised to find that it didn't actually sound too bad, and the 29 punters (yes, we counted them) seemed to have a good time, as did the incredibly cheerful landlord. At least, he didn't set his Rottweilers on us.

YouTube

As part of my continuing quest to move my entire life online, where it will be cheaper and won't take up so much space, may I present slylittleitv!
You can get to my YouTube channel via the link over there -->
All I need now is a camera. And something to point it at.

This is my lil' brother Gavin's bus, by the way - cheers to Steve for the film.

Prom Wine bar, Bristol

A welcome return to the Prom last week, and not only because it's within a short stagger of my place; we always look forward to this one as it's a real old musos' pub - audiences tend to be older, soberer and generally pay us a bit more attention than we often get. Not necessarily a good thing, but luckily the sound is always top notch there, and when we can hear what we're doing, it sounds better out front too.

Robin pointed out that most of our songs are about being 'broke and grumpy', and a quick mental review of the lyrics would seem to confirm this - perhaps we need to cheer Chris up a bit next time he writes a song - here he is relaxing with a lovely fag while he listens to his 'Positive Thinking - a Whole New You!' self-hypnosis tape again...

The King Arthur, Glastonbury

Yes, the very same pub in which King Arthur burned the cakes he was baking for Joseph of Arimathea. Or something.
...well, this pub was a new one on me, and They said that space was at a premium; suffice to say, if we'd been any closer together last night we would now all be legally betrothed in at least 47 states, and up on charges in four of them.
Despite spatial limitations so severe that Nick had to remove his hi-hat just to reach the bar (yup, every bit as painful as it sounds), we managed to get through the whole first set without serious injury.
The second set saw the appearance of the Pub Nutter.
Now, this particular beast appears in Many Forms, and moves in Mysterious Ways, but some things are always predictable:

He (and it always is a He) works alone - I wonder why?
He sports an unusual haircut (in this instance no hair at all)
He dances like a Kangaroo on Acid.
He will not go away. Ever.This one, bless him, had a twist! Just when you thought you had the Measure of the Man, he vanishes into the car park & reappears with a length of UPVC drainpipe, incorporating several elbow joints. With these unlikely Dark Materials he manages to fashion a range of obscenely contorted shapes, several of which slide dangerously into regions of non-Euclidean Geometry hitherto merely hinted at in the Forbidden Necronomicon of the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred...

Several punters disappeared into realms of unnameable nightmare without even waiting for last orders, but the survivors that retained their sanity pronounced it "a bloody good night out", and who are we to argue?

The Fishes, Highworth, & Stroud Fringe Festival

Another busy weekend for BITL, 2 gigs on the trot...

The Fishes in Highworth was a return visit - last time the place was pretty much dead, although the landlord apparently heard glowing reports. Things didn't look promising as we set up; no-one in the place apart from a dodgy drunk of the type that veers unpredictably between maudlin self-pity & extreme violence...
"'Ere, Lemmy!" he'd occasionally slur, one eye pointing vaguely in my direction. "Lemmy, yeah..?"
How precisely am I supposed to respond to that? Do I point out that I am not in fact Lemmy, and risk him flying into an uncontrollable rage? Or should I gargle with gravel and start wearing a cowboy hat? In the event I settled for pointedly ignoring him, whilst radiating quiet menace (which probably came across more as mild annoyance).
Thankfully our soundcheck proved too much for the cretin, and he staggered off into the night.
Things started fairly quietly, but were soon livened up by a large contingent of US servicemen from the local airbase, evidently intent on having a good time by means of splashing a lot of beer about & dancing with any women who came within range - much whoopin' and hollerin' ensued, and we were generally quite relieved to escape with our lives...

The Stroud Fringe was a new one for us, and turned out to be a nice little do in the Cornhill market in the middle of Stroud - loads of punters there, though a little difficult to actually see them through the 3rd degree burn-inducing lighting rig... onstage sound was awful, with Chris unable to hear what he was singing, and no-one being able to hear the drumkit, but it must have sounded OK out front judging from the applause.
My commiserations to the hapless stagehand who offered to carry my bass rig down the steps when we finished - he missed a step & it fell on him; as anyone who's ever tried to pick up my bass rig on their own knows, this could well have been fatal. Luckily he was relatively unscathed & went off to count his blessings (and possibly his ribs).
There may, or more likely may not, be some pictures of this gig to come - Ruth tried to get a business card from the photographer, but it seems he was in a state of altered consciousness, so they might all be close-ups of Ruth's toenail anyway...
http://www.stroudfringe.co.uk/

Pictures of Gavin

Courtesy of Steve, here's a few pics of my little bruv over there in the Ardeche, and his lovely bus. I'm not jealous though, oh no, not at all...
There's more on Flickr, the link's over there -->

The King William, Glastonbury & the Wheatsheaf, Thornbury

No, it's not one of the missiles that got through the chickenwire last weekend, it's a natural cast of the footprint of a theropod dinosaur, possibly Iguanadon, on the beach at Brook, IOW. It's missing the central toe, so I drew it in the sand. Must have been a big bugger, 'cos the next one's 5 metres away...
More holiday pics at: http://www.byphotos.com/album/1334810

Anyways, what about those gigs? About the Glastonbury one, the least said the better - what with holidays etc. we haven't got together for a few weeks now, and it certainly showed... at one point, we were playing two different songs at the same time. Still, the punters loved it - must be something in the water. Or possibly the beer.
A very strange woman wanted to take a picture of Nige & me with a woolly cardigan. No, I don't know either... I suspect there's a 'specialist' cardigan website somewhere, which now features a snap of us holding said garment & looking baffled - whatever floats your boat.

The Wheatsheaf in Thornbury was a new one for us, and our first e-gig, sorted out entirely on the net on the strength of our website. Didn't look too promising when we arrived, as we were playing in a lean-to out in the garden, but as it turned out we got the best sound I can remember for years, some damn good IPA and a lively crowd as well.
Looking forward to a return match there, especially as the Landlord's missus is related to the near-godlike Dave Pegg of Fairport, a man whose bass-playing left me open mouthed with envy last time I saw him. We were supporting them at the Cheese & Grain in Frome a few years back, and after our set he came and shook my hand and said "Nice amp, mate!"
I didn't wash my hand for 2 weeks.