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

Portsmouth Registry

Tamborines

The Retrospective Soundtrack Players

Very drunk soundman, Long soundcheck, beautiful weather, average burgers, lovely staff, interesting show

x

Liverpool MOJO

Evelyn Burke

The Retrospective Soundtrack Players

Charlie Barnes

Gintis

Today the rain came but we were a bit burnt anyway so we didn't mind. We got to Liverpool around midday and went to the Cavern but it looked shit these days although I liked that the logo to the Hard Day's Night hotel was the chord shape for that unique chord that starts the song. You know, that chord that goes 'DANG!.... It's been a hard day's night..."

We'd been told that The Grapes was a good place for food but it was pretty average actually. Fried Breakfast with chips though, can't really argue with Fried Breakfast and Chips. We had a stroll around town and went to the apple shop like little chavs, then bought actual apples like country gentlemen.

Most of the boys went to Chinatown for a buffet Chinese but me and Joel went to an awesome Irish pub called (brilliantly) Pogue Mahone's, and had fucking awesome burgers.

This was one of those sad gigs when, as me and Kelv walked in at about half 8, the first band were playing to literally 4 people in a quite large room. Heartbreaking. Even worse than that, Charlie Barnes, who is an incredibly talented guy and whose path we've crossed several times, played next to not many more people. Somehow by the time we played some people had turned up, and we dragged them towards the stage by doing Plastic Jesus all up in their grills at the start of the set. Somehow it took me until today's gig to realise that in our matching white shirts and with songs about Jesus, we do look a little bit like fundamentalist-christian-rock. Although if you listen closely (or just listen a bit), you'll find that all RSP songs which mention religion, even the covers, are about religious doubt. We are the doubting thomases of christian rock.

Another great fun show, followed by that inevitable feeling of wanting it all to go on for longer.

x

Preston Mad Ferret

The Retrospective Soundtrack Players

Rae Morris

Roo Walker

We said our farewells to our good host Mr Addis and headed to Preston, once again in the scorching heat. It was our intention to go to the football museum at Preston's football ground, but Neil is physically incapable of going past 1pm without lunch so we had a little Subway break. When we got back to Preston FC it was far to hot to go to a museum, so we watched FC Mahud (an asian-British under 11s football team) slaughter their opponents by a score of about 13-2. The white boys team had a player called Lars whose Dad kept shouting 'Influence the game Lars!' But Lars clearly couldn't influence the game.

Once Real Mahud got into double figures myself and Paul took a stroll back over to Deepdale to finally visit the football museum we've been threatening to visit since we first played Preston with the DC many moons ago (see old blog entries), only to be confronted with a shoddy looking sign saying the football museum had just moved to Manchester. So we'll have to play a show there sometime.

We then took our slightly burnt bodies to Preston Travelodge, where: the car park is a fucking nightmare of endless supporting beams / the tvs make a sound like an out of tune bongo (if that's even possible) / the plugs don't work / the vending machines have no crisps / Neil tries to touch you up in your sleep. Actually that last one happens in all travelodges.

Soundcheck took a little longer than expected meaning we missed out on roast dinners and had to settle for wetherspoons gruel. The show was pretty good, today I played Plastic Jesus stood on a table. The crowd didn't exactly go mental but we got a decent reaction. I think many people were there to see Rae Morris, whose performance was quite stunning and had me feeling very, very inept as a vocalist. Good times, thanks to Ed and Lomax for accommodating us as always. When back at the shitty Travelodge we had to dig into my tour picnic due to the lame options in the vending machine, and I introduced the boys to dried Soya beans (which are amazing). This led to a too-lengthy discussion about Soy-bean based musicians and gleamed the following:

x

Saturday 9th April 2011

Beans on Toast

The Retrospective Soundtrack Players

Mynameisian

Neil Morris

An absolutely sweltering day, and no better day to start the 'Quit or Commit' tour. Is 3 gigs a tour? It is for us working men. Mr James Addis put on the show, and put us up and made us tea and toast and did the sound and generally was generally a top bloke as always.

This was a pretty laid-back, friendly show, although we weren't the tightest we've ever been. Still, we managed to have a decent time and Beans on Toast were ace.

SWAG

x

Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London

Chris T-T & The Hoodrats

Dive Dive

The Retrospective Soundtrack Players

We were dead chuffed to be playing this show with a couple of our favourite bands, and it was good fun. The venue was one of those bar back-rooms and was almost entirely empty when we started so I had to run outside with my acoustic and Plastic Jesus people in the face to draw them in. It actually worked kind of well and we've started doing it whenever we need to drum up interest at quiet gigs (all gigs).

Chris T-T was particularly great tonight, despite some technical hitches and not playing 'Drink Beer' (I didn't really want him to, there was just an awkward silence.) His band are actually pretty damn tight, and he played lots of stuff from Capital which is always good with me.

It took me approximately 9 hours to get home from London, but that's pretty much standard procedure.

Southampton Soul Cellar

King Charles

The Retrospective Soundtrack Players

Find X, Then Party

Yesterday's Notion

This might have been our best show yet, lots of people, including lots of kids who had come to see the 2 bands before us, and we managed to get pretty much everyone on side. We had a bloody good time on stage despite no sound check, due to a fairly hilarious sound man meltdown earlier in the day, and we played 'Standing in the Rain...' for the first time.

King Charles and his band are pretty damn tight, it's quite funny that he sometimes get lumped in with the 'nu-folk' thing when as far as I can see they're a party-funk band with an indie bent. Bloody marvellous, though Charles was perhaps lapping up the adoration of the 16-year olds a little much.

x