Band – Page 8 – Ferocious Blog

A Grand day out..

A relatively early night and a lateish check-out time saw us exit Manchester around lunchtime for a frankly stunning drive through the wilds of Lancashire up to Clitheroe – I wish I’d taken some photos really, but I didn’t. I’ve never ventured beyond the urban areas of the red rose county before – it really is quite pretty, suddenly I don’t think Maelor Hughes is telling fibs when he extolls its virtues in Milltown Boy!

I must admit I didn’t know much about Clitheroe aside from it being up a bit from Manchester – so it was lovely to discover a scenic town. The hotel was duly located, but without parking – so we eventually found somewhere to dump the car over night and got our stuff up to the hotel. The Swan and Royal is a cracking traditional pub and our room was decent – it even had an extra bed, which would come in handy later…

We had something to eat downstairs (delicious it were too) before heading upstairs for a nap in my case (and accompanying inevitable photo on Facebook) before getting ourselves sorted and downstairs to join Matt and Mick for drinks. In the meantime John called as he and Les had decided to stay over rather than travel on the night, the hotel only had one single room going spare – so after a quick conference we booked it and donated our spare bed to one of ’em. Job’s a good ‘un.

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Freeborn Al / 23rd November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

Songs for the deaf..

It was a leisurely drive up to Manchester from Telford with no real incident, news of the extent of Gaz’s throat infection filtered through from Facebook so we were feeling a bit glum – and set about researching a bit about Sammy Battle, drafted in to replace him as the support act. It looked promising, so whilst of course we were both gutted to be missing out on some Gaz action, it’s always good to get a chance to take in a new act too.

Checking in at Ibis in Manchester there was a suspicious package waiting for me at reception – highly dubious it turned out to be from the good folk at Laterooms – I hadn’t used Laterooms since the debacle at Stamford earlier in the year, so I guess this is their way of dealing with customer complaints – and well, I quite like it! Clearly they’d had a look at my Twitter bio and picked a few presents compliant with that. Really nice customer service!

Kind of wish I’d complained via my @FerociousBlog account rather than my personal one now to see what kind of gifts that would’ve inspired! In the hotel we caught up on snoozing, as well as exciting news from The Leylines who’ve launched a crowd funding campaign to pay for their new album next year – take a look at the campaign and see if any of the rewards tickle your fancy. I’m a big fan of these ways of raising capital without resorting to begging for record labels.

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Freeborn Al / 23rd November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos, Videos / 0 Comments

Surfin’ bird in Shropshire..

Once again a weekend is over and I’m kinda regretting not taking my laptop on my travels to write as I go – so here comes part one of a triple-header of gigging with Ferocious Dog again. The day started for us heading off to Telford in Shropshire via Loughborough train station where Ella arrived from down south. A pretty uneventful journey arriving just in time for a strange window of closedness for our hotel.

So with a couple of hours to kill we wandered to find the venue where Dom and Waggy were already engrossed in a skill-ridden game of pool in the main bar area. Wez, Dan and Leanne were hanging around too. Tour tattoos were in progress for some of the others, Waggy was due to go under the needle too – whereas we’d killed enough time to head back to the hotel – timing it perfectly finding Mick driving past so he kindly dropped us off.

By the time we’d got ourselves sorted it was time to wander back again – via a cheeky pasty from the local shop just down from The Haygate, only to find the venue properly locked up, with a few folk already waiting outside. Bumping into John having a smoke was fortuitous as it gained us entry to hang about inside before the place opened up – it was getting a bit chilly outside!

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Freeborn Al / 23rd November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos

And we were bound for Botany Bay* (nearly)..

Morning came with a very achey shoulder thanks to the previous night’s tumble. One of the perennial mysteries of Ferocious Dog folklore was answered for me by sharing a room with Ken – he does indeed sleep with his hair spiked! He’s pretty disciplined in keeping his head on one side, switching sides occasionally – so there ya go! A bit of random telly passed the time before we nipped to the adjoining restaurant to grab some breakfast.

Dan, Waggy and Wez were already getting their morning repast, and once we’d done it was back to get cleaned up in the room. There were some running repairs to Ken’s rearmost two spikes with a bit of hairspray and a hairdryer (which was a bit too hot, oops, sorry Ken) before reconvening with everyone outside to get on the bus and head to Margate. John and Scott surprisingly lively considering another late night.

Since they had missed breakfast though it wasn’t long before we were breaking into the Jersey cheese from Julie and Paul – and very delicious it was too. We were a bit cowardly in the bag to tackle the very ripe looking camembert – but passed it up to the front where Waggy and Wez proceeded to pop it on the heater to get it even more well done. Pair of animals. In the back we were listening to House of Pain interspersed with the meerkat sat nav voice up front.

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Freeborn Al / 18th November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

Triumphant return to an old Haunt..

In Southampton I was lucky enough to wake up in time for breakfast this time, and once everyone had convened and Wez had fetched Cerebus round for the next leg of the journey it was rather a more sombre trip along the coast to Brighton as the full extent of the awful events in Paris became apparent. There was a degree of mood lightening with the scattered remnants of the previous night’s entertainment that John and Scott, both surprisingly chipper considering, could actually remember.

The hotel we were staying in was actually in Newhaven, some miles outside of Brighton, we opted to head there first to get checked in – Waggy’s sat nav amusingly taking us to a Premier convenience store nearby instead – but soon enough we did find our destination. I ended up in with Ken for this night as Les was travelling home after the gig since Margate is just down the road for him relatively speaking – we got our bags dumped, freshened up and it was back on the bus to get to the venue.

Of course we were all at The Haunt earlier in the year – it’s an ace little place, sound checking seemed to go pretty well. Ken had casually announced Jeremy from the Levellers was coming later, and Nick Burbridge too – hopefully getting up to perform with the band. Nick is one of my all time favourite songwriters – so this was unfeasibly exciting for me even more so than normal! Waggy and I also cased out the balcony – not open that evening for the public – as a good potential photography spot – the video below shows the soundcheck from up there.

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Freeborn Al / 17th November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos, Videos / 0 Comments

Talking heads and moshing elephants..

Premier Inn has a good night sleep guarantee (this is definitely something endorsed by Scott – but you’ll have to ask him about that), and they certainly delivered after Camden – both Waggy and I slept in and missed breakfast. By this point the cold I’ve been having an on-off relationship with over the last few weeks seems to have developed into a nocturnal rasping cough, but that didn’t seem to disturb Waggy, unlike the early hours phone calls for the late night revellers looking for directions back to our digs, haha!

Having not really attempted to get my mohawk up for Camden I actually did a reasonable job of it in the hotel room with the hairdryer and some hairspray, we headed down to the eatery which was being cleared up and charmed some tea from the cleaning staff who were very taken with Kenny, discussions centring around the best hair products to use to achieve his liberty spikes (Schwarzkopf got2b glued blasting freeze spray, if anyone was wondering – I’ve got some now since I used all my hairspray up at the weekend!).

As we drove through London heading inexorably south Scott’s observation skills came to the fore “It’s fucking ginormous int it, London?” he opined. There was lots of speculation on house prices as we saw the many facets of the capital, meanwhile no matter how far we got out of Camden John, Ken and Scott were adamant that they’d wandered down passing streets at some point last night whilst out galavanting post-gig. The missed breakfasts on board was causing some widespread hunger issues, so it was time for me to bring out my secret weapon…

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Freeborn Al / 17th November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Music, Other Bands, Photos, Videos / 0 Comments

Lock, stock and three smokin’ artists..

It was only back on Thursday I was preparing to head off to London town – it feels like a month ago! The day started with a phone call from Wez who had ended up in the wrong town due to a satnav mishap, soon enough that was remedied and we were hotfooting it up the M1 to Warsop to convene with Cerebus and the rest of its happy band of travellers. Soon into the journey Scott was sharing his beauty regime secrets meanwhile Ken was absorbed in a book entitled Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class by Owen Jones.

To pass the time John, Scott, Brad and I had a few rounds of rummy – I didn’t have masses of change and was running up a substantial gambling debt (okay, it was four quid..) to John before mercifully I won a game and enough cash to clear my increasing arrears. A trip to the service station saw Brad’s hat end up on the roof of the van, and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves in Camden – and doing a few laps of it to find the spot we needed to unload into Dingwalls. Mercifully it was clear so parking up wasn’t a problem ready to get the gear off the back of the van.

Of course, avoiding the glaze-eyed sauntering dawdlers wandering like a zombie procession down the pavement between the van and the venue was more of a challenge – but we’d soon got the assorted cases and boxes and instruments into Dingwalls enabling Wez to find somewhere to leave the bus until later.

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Freeborn Al / 16th November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Hell Hounds, Lee Bonsall, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

Transatlantic Doozer goodness..

Doozer McDooze fascinates me in general – he and Birdy (The Famous Artist Birdy Rose) eschew much of the trappings we succumb to in life, living like modern-day troubadours in a van working and travelling hard to fill the world with music and art. They’re lovely folk too – Doozer even wrote a song for me dedicated to my as then unborn nephew, Arlo – charting his destiny to reawaken Nottingham’s rebellious past and kick off a new generation of cheese riots. Once he is beyond toddling at least.

His music is raw, fun and generally released for a pay-what-you-think-it-is-worth on his Bandcamp page – the priority clearly being getting his music out there in recorded or gig form above and beyond trying to make a quick buck. Learning more as I do about the lot of independent musicians and artists, it’s really not a very easy industry to make money out of compared to the amount of effort it takes to organise recordings and events, not to mention the time to learn to sing and play, practice, sit and write songs.

In more recent weeks the intrepid duo crossed the Atlantic to take their show stateside – from watching their Facebook posts it looks like they’ve had an absolute blast, and a culmination of that is a live recording of Doozer’s set at Vigilstock which took place in the wonderfully named Knickerbocker Saloon in Lafayette, Indiana at the end of September. Vigilstock has been running since 1996 in memory of musician Shannon Hoon, best-known as singer for Blind Melon who tragically passed away in 1995.

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Freeborn Al / 10th November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Lee Bonsall, Music, Other Bands, Photos / 0 Comments

Cŵn ffyrnig ar daith yng Nghymru..

Online translations are always a risky prospect, I’ve tried a few to double-check the headline – but don’t pretend to be a Welsh speaker (much as I’d love to be!) so apologies if it’s completely nonsensical to any native Welsh speakers out there! Snotty and I had decided to make a weekend out of a trip to Swansea and travelled there on Friday evening and missed the Swindon gig, which according to Mick was an awesome evening’s entertainment.

We checked into an awesome B&B for a couple of nights, I wouldn’t normally write loads about accommodation (and I won’t write loads, don’t worry!), but The Mirador in Swansea is worth bit of a mention for its quirkiness.

A town house run by the incredibly affable Phil and Jeanette, each room there is themed on a different part of the world – there’s a Venetian room and a Parisian room (that’s two blogs on the bounce that have mentioned Parisian – what’s the odds of that?!) or in our case an Egyptian themed room, with pharaohs and Nefertiti looking down on us – it was brilliant. Should you ever find yourself travelling to Swansea then I’d heartily recommend it – breakfast was awesome too. Next job after this is to head to trip advisor and leave a nice review.

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Freeborn Al / 8th November 2015 / Band, Gigs, Music, Other Bands, Photos

Up the wooden hill to Bedford..

The trouble with staying over after a gig and heading to the next one after the hotel boots you out is you end up in the next place ludicrously early – unless you find an awesome falconry place near your destination, which is what we did with our early afternoon. So we had entertainment from an assortment of owls, hawks, falcons and eagles to tide us over until a reasonable time to be heading into Bedford – in the absence of any owls in the Owl Sanctuary the previous night it felt like balance had been restored!

Once we headed into Bedford I followed the Sat Nav to what it thought was Greyfriars car park, but it wasn’t quite right (we discovered after paying) so moved the car to the right car park which didn’t charge after 6pm and wandered to locate the venue before repairing to the nearly Ship Inn for a drink since it was early. Who should we happen upon shortly after arrival but Mick? It’s funny how that always happens! Haha, after drinking up in the absence of serving food we nipped a few doors down for a pizza.

By the time we’d finished that the downstairs bar at the venue was open so we headed there finding a few folk already there – not least Ellis and Dom playing pool, the rest of the band we saw heading out for food as we were heading in. Sue, Paul, Brian, Karen, Claire and assorted other folk soon started joining our merry band – tainted by the sad news coming in from Stevenage that Simon was feeling too poorly to make the trip up – get well soon, Simon!

Much fun was had with balloons from the halloween decorations, and the amazing discovery of what happens when you blow e-cigarette vapour into a glass (which I’m sad I never recorded now), before long it was time to head upstairs into the venue proper.

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Freeborn Al / 31st October 2015 / Band, Gigs, Music, Other Bands, Photos