Had an excellent weekend, started on Thursday with a visit to The Cube to see Alasdair Roberts. Before the gig we managed to catch up with Gerry Love of Teenage Fanclub fame, who is part of Alasdair's band at the moment. We had exchanged a couple of messages with him about the prospect of him doing a guest DJ spot at Grumpy Man. He was absolutely charming and is indeed keen to join us for a night later in the year. Quite a few other friends were out as well, making it a splendid evening - the band were good as well.
Friday sawn an impromptu Grumpy Man gathering as we all went to a friends wedding reception. This took place in the Ramada Hotel, now when I was kid this place was known as The Dragonara and was known the hot spot of sophisticated middle class dinning because of the restaurant which was housed in the large conical Kiln building. Orynthia and I took the chance to take a quick look inside and the place was certainly buzzing although it has to be said the menu had more than a touch of a retro feel about it.
Saturday was a keep in local day, we made to short walk up to the shops on Henleaze Roadand spent an interesting hour looking at the shops and amazing houses around there before returning to spend some time in the garden. Lot's of time was spent on our burgeoning Vegetable and Herb area we even managed to use a lot of compost from one our compost bins, the amount of excitement that a meal when most of the ingredients have been grown in our own garden is really quite amazing - we must be getting old!
On Saturday evening we went along to the Lansdown in Clifton to see one of the many local bands which I've been in contact with as a result of Grumpy Man. The band in question are "Slow" and very good they are too. From their name and the Grumpy Man connection you can probably guess that they are exactly a speed metal outfit. The band that they are closet to, would be Low and they are able to weave a similarly hypnotic power from a seemingly simple musical format. oh and they do have one absolutely wonderful song, it's called Seeds and you really should give it a listen.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Well it's been a long time.
So much has been going on and most of the time when I've been sitting in front of the computer I've been concentrating on Grumpy Man related stuff, booking holidays or working out all the possible permutations as Bristol City attempt to gain promotion to the championship.
Grumpy Man has been amazing over the last couple of months, I'm sure that everyone who reads this knows that I DJ with a few friends under the Grumpy Man name. I've been doing for about 18 months now and it's been a fun time. In February, we arranged a special guest DJ spot for my friend Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame. Now that was exciting enough as suddenly we started to receive interest from the local media, then on the Tuesday before Sunday night gig, geoff call asking if the band could actually play a couple of songs live? The answer was obviously YES!! The only problem over the next few days was trying not to let the news slip out, Geoff asked that we keep it quiet and somehow we managed to do this. Come the evening people turned up expecting to hear Geoff DJ'ing and were amazed when suddenly Geoff, Ade and Beth launched into a wonderfully atmospheric version of Wandering Star from the first album. Don't take my word for how good it was take at look at the performance here. They then played an equally spellbinding as yet untitled song from the forthcoming album, the crowd went wild. The fun continued until 2 in the morning as the crowd (including Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins fame) hung around for what was an amazing evening.
Since then we had a couple of other really nice "Grumpy" evenings with lot's of interest from local bands and even more amazingly it looks like we are going to be involved in a couple of ATP events this year. Where next for Grumpy Man?
So much has been going on and most of the time when I've been sitting in front of the computer I've been concentrating on Grumpy Man related stuff, booking holidays or working out all the possible permutations as Bristol City attempt to gain promotion to the championship.
Grumpy Man has been amazing over the last couple of months, I'm sure that everyone who reads this knows that I DJ with a few friends under the Grumpy Man name. I've been doing for about 18 months now and it's been a fun time. In February, we arranged a special guest DJ spot for my friend Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame. Now that was exciting enough as suddenly we started to receive interest from the local media, then on the Tuesday before Sunday night gig, geoff call asking if the band could actually play a couple of songs live? The answer was obviously YES!! The only problem over the next few days was trying not to let the news slip out, Geoff asked that we keep it quiet and somehow we managed to do this. Come the evening people turned up expecting to hear Geoff DJ'ing and were amazed when suddenly Geoff, Ade and Beth launched into a wonderfully atmospheric version of Wandering Star from the first album. Don't take my word for how good it was take at look at the performance here. They then played an equally spellbinding as yet untitled song from the forthcoming album, the crowd went wild. The fun continued until 2 in the morning as the crowd (including Liz Fraser of Cocteau Twins fame) hung around for what was an amazing evening.
Since then we had a couple of other really nice "Grumpy" evenings with lot's of interest from local bands and even more amazingly it looks like we are going to be involved in a couple of ATP events this year. Where next for Grumpy Man?