The Dawn Chorus / The Retrospective Soundtrack Players - Blogging all over the World

The Thursday Thing @ Portsmouth Registry
Thursday 16th March 2006

The Deads
The Visitors
The Dawn Chorus

This was a bit of a mad old night. Matt got a haircut before the gig so he was given the nickname haircut. keith's jumper looked like that of the girl from the testcard so he was christened testcard. i am boring so i have the nickname dreary. neil looks somewhat like krang's suit from teenage mutant hero turtles, so neil is now krangsuit. armed with these nicknames we took on the reg. i bloody loved it, i have never got so into a set, which is a bit weird because it didn't sound great onstage. simps was also playing like some sort of wild animal, perhaps due to the beers beforehand. he was like a drumming whirlwind. after the set it all got a bit messy, and keith wound up onstage playing tambourine with the deads! he was like some sort of deranged cross between bez and joel gion from brian jonestown. after that keith's night went a little downhill, but let's not go into that. cheers to all at prettyboy, we had a smashing night.

Thursday 9th March 2006
London Bethnal Grren Pleasure Unit

The Rudimentary Confusion
The Dawn Chorus
Mantis & The Prayer
Fake Ray
Mumble

Tonight's gig in handy bullet point form:

• invented the game of endless bollocks talking and ridiculous insult making. a good way to wile away the hours on a long car journey. choice pickings: cocksocket, scrote flannel, that kebab smells like a greek's armpit/rusty hinge, you're like rice, your face is flat and lifeless, it's like a baseball mit, etc
• driving the wrong way down a one way street seems to be a feature of our london gigs
• Simps had the dubious pleasure of drumming for three bands' soundchecks since nobody's drummer had turned up. The look on his face when he was playing 'purple haze' though - it was like school assembly all over again.
• Mantis and the prayer soundchecked for approximately 3 and a half hours.
• interesting fashion of the night - Mr Fake Ray's impressive hat and Mrs Mantis' fantastic see-through top and red spagly bra combo
• our set was good fun, although the onstage sound was pretty terrible. also there was one of those blinding white lights which meant we couldn't see a thing. but i left the stage a sweaty wreck - which can only ever be a good thing.
• we got eggs thrown at us
• after the gig that is, not during
• we have learnt not to do pay to play gigs in future

Wednesday 8th March 2006
Southampton Joiners

The Dawn Chorus
Rolling Dog
Temple
Adam Boucher

WTF?! So belasco pulled out cos the singer had bronchitis/they hadn't sold any tickets (delete as appropriate), and Rolling Dog hadn't prepared a headline set (?), so we headlined. Temple laid on some superb psychedelic rock, and were also the most stoned people i have ever met. and i know chris mclewee. Rolling dog were their usual hyperactive selves, why they turned down the headline set i dont know.

We varied things up a bit, throwing in act of god second song, which apparently didn't go down too well with Al, but i liked it up there! Having Michael in the middle of the set is great too, for the first time ever i could hear the words coming back from the crowd. certainly something i could get used to! and ridiculously enough we got called back for an encore! since we'd blown our load on the main set all we had left was blood and rally, but then i guess that's the idea of an encore. so a fun night all round. and we found out that simps' favourite part of the night is doing the soundcheck and going for a chinese.

Friday 3rd March 2006
Messclean @ Frog on the Front, Portsmouth

Trinity
The Dawn Chorus
Kurt Cooder
Angelfire

Back in the game! It seemed like an eternity with no gigs, but during the cold and lonely february we made some real progress in rehearsals. New songs 'little pinpricks' and 'the man...' sounding amazing. This gig was so much fun, joel, nikolai and the gang have something really good going on down at the frog, i strongly recommend getting down there. although there did seem to be lemon sherbert all over the cistern in the men's room....

Honorary mention for the man they seem to like to call 'the legend that is' kurt cooder, dirty grimey little songs about the time & envy clientele and putting his willy up someone's bum. i got really into our set, probably because i've never been so hot in my entire life as up on that stage. what a quality night though, keef's buddies went mental. and clewee came all the way from guildford, looking more like a cuban drug lord every day! nice