Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet

In the absence of any BITL gigs to witter about, a quick mention in despatches to Porcupine Tree, who I finally got to see down at the Bristol Academy last week - they played all of their new one, Fear of a Blank Planet, plus a lot more besides, and the sound quality was the best I've ever heard at a gig.
If you've never heard of them, do yourself a favour and follow the link above to their main site, or the banner link to the album microsite, down there on the right -->
(See, I like 'em so much, I'm even advertising them on my own site!)

Fox & Hounds, Coaley

After our last couple of gigs, we were badly in need of a decent audience (well, any audience, to be fair), so it was with high hopes that the van approached the seething metropolis of Coaley, near Dursley, last Saturday.
Word of our imminent arrival had evidently preceded us, however. The village (when we eventually found it) was entirely deserted, save for a one-eyed Irishman who directed us to the pub - yippee! No plasma screens! Decent beer! A friendly landlady! Food! There must be a catch..?
Well... apparently the whole village was in the pub last night, carousing till the early hours, so they probably won't be in tonight. And there's a beer festival on in Dursley. Bugger.
Oh well, we've literally played to one man & his dog before now (we had to buy him drinks to get him to stay, mind), and in the end we had an audience of six - hey, it's one more than the band, so not bad! Sold 2 CDs as well, which is a pretty good percentage out of 6; shame there weren't a few more in, but there was a good atmosphere and we enjoyed our little selves.
We'll be back here later in the year for a rematch, so fingers crossed...

The Railway Inn, Blandford

Football doesn't have an audience, it has a crowd instead - usually comprising a bunch of fat sweaty blokes with no necks and a bottomless appetite for lager. Crowds do not make good audiences on the whole, and the presence of more giant plasma screens than a branch of Dixons rang warning bells straight away as we arrived at the Railway in Blandford.
I'm no fan of football myself, but why on Earth should anybody in a pub in Dorset care whether Man U or Watford win? Plainly they did though, and we waited outside until the match finished, fearful of arousing the ire of the massed hordes if we attempted to barge past them with all our gear...
Still, they'll turn off the screens over our heads when we start playing, won't they?
Well no, as it turned out. We were basically a sort of aural wallpaper, while slack-jawed punters watched Real Madrid v. someone-or-other on one screen & greyhound racing on another.

One of the best things about being in a band that plays original music, as opposed to covers, is the kick you get out of it when an audience likes you - hey look, they clapped! That means they liked the song you just played, and they liked the way you played it! Bring on the coke & the groupies!

If they don't like it, it's because they're a bunch of Philistines. Sod 'em.

However when a pub full of people basically ignore you for 2 hours it can get a bit soul-destroying to say the least. At one point Nige wandered over to the bar, Ruth went for a comfy chair and Chris was apparently mesmerised by the footie - well, if you can't beat 'em...

We finished the second set and packed the gear down in record time - the drumkit was in bits before the last note died away - then got the hell out of there.

Pilton 'awash with craic'

Every year on St Patricks day, the good people at Guinness send out vast quantities of promotional material to every alehouse, whorehouse, outhouse and quite possibly crackhouse on the planet with a Guinness pump installed. Landlords then slash the price of the black stuff for the night, book an Irish band and wait for 'the craic' to materialise - something that they apparently think happens as if by magic if enough people are wearing a funny hat.

In my experience though, the best parties tend to be the ones that haven't been organised.

So, back at the Pilton Working Men's Club again, we found ourselves playing to a crowd far more interested in the cheap stout and funny hats than us, which is always a bit galling, especially if like me you'd driven there, and therefore couldn't partake in Dublin's finest yourself.

Oh, and as someone mentioned at the end of the evening, we're not a Irish band, so calling out for 'A Fairytale of New York' or 'Irish Rover' is a bit of a waste of breath. Especially when half the kit's been dismantled and lugged off the stage...

In the Studio

Some people (step forward, Chris) love the process of recording; personally I regard it as a bit of a necessary evil - that said, it helps a lot if the surroundings are pleasant & the engineer knows what he's doing, and Simon & Jammer at Product23 certainly know their stuff.
Top marks to Simon for turning up at all, as his new baby came home from hospital for the first time on Saturday morning, and he was looking decidedly grey and sleep-deprived! I can honestly say that on the two occasions I've been in that situation myself, the last thing on Earth I would have wanted to do was spend several hours in the company of a bunch of beer-fuelled chainsmoking musicians...
Everything went pretty well on the weekend, and we've got the drum & bass tracks for at least 10 songs in the can. Just got to add the other stuff over the top, and let Simon work his magic removing all the bum notes...

Festival of Colours

Here's my brother Gavin in Hampi, India, getting into the spirit of the Festival of Colours, apparently an India-wide celebration where everyone chucks paint-filled balloons at each other until they've had enough.
At least, that's what they told Gavin; seconds after this picture was taken, he was carried off by the local constabulary after the temptation to empty his bottle of yellow paint over the bemused looking officer became too great...

The Prom, Bristol

One of my favourite venues, this one, and not just because it's down the road!
It's got it's own P.A. & sound engineer and everything always sounds great onstage, which gives us a bit of a lift. Place started out pretty empty (well, it was a Thursday night), but a decent crowd by the end, and very appreciative too, which makes up for the fact that it's not exactly the best-paid gig on the circuit. In fact, once my Guinness bill for the night was settled I was operating at a ruinous loss. Mind you, if we were doing this for the money we'd all have starved to death years ago - and a quick glance at us will confirm that we are all very well nourished, thank you very much...
Good to see some familiar faces there too, especially the trio who rushed their prawn curry to get there in time - I just hope they didn't rush the actual cooking part, or they may still be in A & E.
Oh, and cheers for the tequila, lads!
We're off to the studio to do a spot of recording next weekend, so hopefully there'll be some new CDs for Chris to forget to bring to gigs soon...