A gig in the woods

We are all just back from a fabulous function gig in the middle of some woods on the Hampshire/Dorset border.

As it was half-way between two villages – one in Dorset and the other in Hampshire we are not exactly sure in which county we actually played the gig.

This was an elaborate affair. It lasted all-night, and the logistics of putting a big event in a clearing genuinely in the middle of some woods accessible only by farm track were colossal.

And did I say it was fancy dress – with a Regency theme. So most of the men were in huge wigs (the audience – not the band.)

Mark ready to play

We got to play one long set starting about 1:15 in the morning in a huge marquee – with an extremely professional sound company doing the PA. It’s not that often we get our own monitor engineer and individual monitor mixes for each band member. Quite often we don’t have any engineers at all.

I’m not sure that ska is very Regency, but that did not stop the audience dancing continuously. We have no idea where they got the energy.

We were looked after very well too – and came off stage to a cooked breakfast at 3am.

our post gig breakfast

And then after a few hours sleep at the village pub, we got up for another fry-up before a somewhat weary return to London.

The new photos are here

We now have a fantastic set of new band photos.

We’ve updated the website with them so the best way to see them is to go to the photo page for the band shots and the members page to see some new moody pix of individual members.

Those who like detective work may like to work out which band member was late for the shoot and who forgot to bring their instrument.

We have have also added a new promoters page to the website where band logos and hi-res versions of six of the photos can be downloaded.

Thanks again to David for some great work.

New band pictures

We’ve just spent Sunday lunchtime have some proper professional band photos done by the very talented David Charlwood.

You can see some of his work here on Flickr.

It’s been many years since we had a band photo session. The superstitious risk is that as soon as you have proper pix the band line-up changes and the photos become out of date.

But we have now had the longest ever stable membership so we expect it can survive some photos.

Rightly we assumed that we could find somewhere quiet in the City, but not so quiet we didn’t get a parking ticket.

I expect we will be able to post some photos in the next few days.

Pix from the Gypsy Hotel

Thanks to Annie for taking these pictures on Saturday.

If you click on an image it will get a bit bigger.

And one mystery image is enormous.

Pictures from the Ritzy gig

Pictures from Upstairs at the Ritzy, Brixton, Janury 8th 2010