Christians, Gays, Tunes, Changes and Invisible Friends

Seems ages since I last did a bit of a blog. Well, as it happens I did put a short one up on VOX but it was only a two line job that read something along the lines of "Why can't I upload music to this site again... b*stards!?"  (see below)

You see, they are rather behind the times over here, because you haven't had the joys of hearing The Observatory or Invisible Man yet, or indeed other stuff that I would like to upload and let you all hear. Quite simply, everytime I try to upload a track I get "computer says no!"

Don't know why and yes, I have contacted their support services and they were pretty helpful but couldn't solve it. Hopefully it will mysteriously come back to life like it did the first time. And then VOX and MySpace can once again live together in perfect harmony (to quote McCartney).

So what news? Well, we have finished our current run of gigs. Its almost like finishing a tour. Well, a tour that went no further than Manchester, London, Glossop, Cheltenham and... er... thats it. We started playing out live ages ago in the current format - (thats Joe on Drums, Mark ..s, Dave on Bass, Jake on Guitar and Nigel part-time due to family commitments) - I couldn't tell you the exact gig now, but it was probably sometime around August 2007 because I definately remember Jake playing with us at Pride 2007. Since then, we have supported a band called "Ghosts" at the Hard Rock Cafe (and drunk the bar dry), played Thriller Killer nightclub, played the MAPS festival, enjoyed two storming London shows especially The Troubadour in spring 2008, and last but not least the Greenbelt Festival, which was the Christian rock festival we attended over the August bank holiday. We also enjoyed playing several live shows at the Enchanted Brave, a lovely acoustic night now sadly no longer running, and some rather dodgy shows at the In The City fringe and Jabez Clegg. By far the hottest show, from a temperature perspective I mean, although I'm sure there were a few hotties in the crowd, was upstairs at the Green Room, where I came off stage looking like I'd just stepped out of shower. No joke. You could have rung me out like a sponge.

Well, what a lot of gigs. Some were good, some were great, and some were shite. And time for a rest. Time to write some new music and hunker down for the winter. I like that word, hunker. It puts me in mind of big, Russian landscapes with warm hats and ice cold vodka, roast mutton and great piles of wood for the fire.

It was quite a contrast, actually, because the day after we came back from Greenbelt at Cheltenham Racecourse, it was time for Pride 2008 in Manchester city centre, which wasn't a gig for us, just a piss up. It was rather disconcerting to go from a very conservative environment to a very liberal environment. No swearing at Greenbelt, every other word was a bit blue (or should I say pink) at Pride. No bare flesh at Greenbelt, unlimited bare flesh at Pride. No booze outside of the beer tent at Greenbelt ("The Jesus Arms!" I did like that...), no end to the beer consumption at Pride and that was just the start of it for some. A unexpectedly large number of young teenagers at Greenbelt (brainwashing?), a totally unavoidable multitude of twinks, queens, bears and lesbos at Pride (dirty minds?). I couldn't possibly comment on where I felt the most at home!

I will be trying to post a little bit more regularly actually, as I do feel the blog has been a little bit neglected. So stay tuned folks. I'm going to start work on a new EP right now. If you haven't downloaded the new tunes yet, please do. The next lot will be going back to the electronic roots and beats a little bit more, I think. But no more to say on that subject right now, its time for a brew.

In the meantime, we are getting ready for our show at this years In The City festival in Mcr.

Laters.

Ben