The River Rooms, Stoubridge, England

28th Jan 2011

We are busy Green Head's this week and we are here to entertain you (rather like "Some like it hot" but without the camp and casual racism). Anyway, back to back gig here - this time at the River Rooms in Stourbridge, an excellent custom built circuit gig facility as you can see above.

Early load in time again, this is going against the international GMT for load-ins, 19:00 for pubs and 15:30 for touring bands. We had neither of these, 17:30 was our load in. Cold day too, by the time we had finished the sound check and I nipped off for some tea ice had formed on the car.

Load in was nice, and sound check was easy going - I love it when that happens. Craig the sound guy gets from strolling around with cables to getting a good working sound very efficiently making the sound check more enjoyable.

Ron and I turned up first and setup

Ron and I were bang on time, other band members had other commitments but this I think worked to our favour as we were able to stagger the get in and get on the stage allowing Canadian Dave to setup last in a fraction of the usual time as we were on hand to help him.

The bass player arrives!

Sound check went well and before we knew it we had a good sound that we could work with. Blobby lights were all setup too, all by 19:30.

Sound check complete, now we wait!

Except there was more to this picture. After the sound check I put flyer's on all of the tables advertising our gig at the Robin2 (did I tell you....) as well as our return dates at the River Rooms and other gigs. Then it was up into the gallery to talk to the lighting guy Tim (lovely fellow) to discuss some of the images and artwork that Canadian Dave had created and sent to him earlier on in the week, a conversation about our new walk on and walk off music that Canadian Dave had also created for us especially for this gig and thereafter, a discussion about how Ron likes his bass drum to sound and finally to setup microphones and video recording equipment to attempt to catch the band live and in concert (which we did!!)

Then we could rest...

The view from the backstage area

The gig happened. The walk on music was a success (youtube Will help you there) and the band were tight and yet confident enough to be as loose as was required in order to give the audience the unique show that they deserved. May people came and many people danced..

...and a good time was had by all, including a stage invasion by 5 women dancers all dressed in 60's psychedelic clothes which although was deemed a Health and Safety issue (public liability I guess) we really enjoyed it!

Two hours and twenty minutes of music followed and we retired broken into the dressing room. What a really great gig, I cannot thank you all enough for coming and supporting live music.

Slight break in February to gather our thoughts and then an assault of your senses all the way into June!!

See www.greenheadman.com for details of our upcoming events.

See you soon,

Nick

Busy weekend!

The Robin 2, Bilston

27th Jan 2011

Hello hello, how are you today? Good. Its been a busy weekend in Green Head Land having as we have two gigs back to back. An enjoyable one too.

We started off on Thursday with a support slot at the Robin 2 in Bilston. We are not really a support band in as much as we do not do it and haven't done it as a unit since the current line up of Green Head Man was formed. This gig represented a chance to let the owner see and hear us ahead of our headline there in April (did I mention we are playing on the 27th? I did? oh).

This being the case we had forgotten the woes of a hard working support band and arrived dutifully, on time as per contract, for our get in and setup. Par for the course of course the headline band had not even fully arrived as the clocks ticked on 10 minutes after we were supposed to soundcheck.

There *were* doing however an amazing three piece Jazz set that you really had to be there to believe!

Nik Turner Jazz - Nice!

They were great of course - Space Ritual - what a lovely bunch of people. Nik Turner made a concerted effort to get soundchecked and off the stage to let us do our noise check before 7:30 when the doors open. We managed it, in fact we got on stage, setup and soundchecked in 15 minutes which is quite a record! This hit our guitarist the hardest as he has a lot of gear to setup and check on a regular basis (as he also plays his space guitar via a Juno60 synth).

Actually we had brought our cutdown equipment to this venue and I was pleased that we had. We lost the acoustic guitar, didgeridoo and piano for fear of lack of space. It was a real fear!

Soundcheck over, just in time!

The doors opened and the room filled up. By the time we went on stage at around 20:15 there must have been 350 nice people in the room and the atmosphere was great. We had to hit the stage running, a half hour set doesn't give you much time to get into the groove That said I think we pulled it off, there was plenty of positive ad libbing and we ensured that we played the majority of our original songs to a largely appreciative audience who clapped and cheered. Thank you.

Then as soon as it had started we were off again, unpack straight away. Do not pass go, do not leave the stage for a breather and out to the stage door exit.

an enjoyable if rushed experience but hopefully we were able to give Space Ritual's audience a snapshot of what we were able to achieve and that was job done.

Next step was our own headline the day after at the River Rooms in Stourbridge.

Nick

Cracking Gig Grommet!

The Hop Pole Inn, Bromsgrove

15th January 2011

Hello Folks!


How are you this year, feels like a year since we last spoke :-)


We we asked to perform a stealth gig at the wonderful Hope Pole this weekend. It was a short notice affair due to a cancellation and we though it an excellent vehicle for preparing our new live set (thinking of course that mid January would be a very quiet night out). We were wrong - more on that later.


GMT of arrivals still in force we turned up at 19:00 to rig for the gig. Nick Tunes was already in residence and he kindly added an extra 2 Optikinetic Solar250's to my light show to turn the gig into a full on psychedelic event (see above for swirly patters and general craziness).


Setup was good, we were sporting our new chopped down equipment for these smaller gigs; Little Dave without Acoustic or Dij, Big Dave without extra HH Speaker and myself without the Electric piano. Timmy even managed to get by with one amp and just the two 4x10 bass cabs.

Ron there sporting and excellent 60's Paisley design!

So we got setup without the usual GHM technical hitch took my view from the stage banker and sat down for a pint, all of us together - and that's nice when that happens. We are busy guys personally and professionally and we run with clockwork precision (sometimes) so its nice to let the (grey in my case) hair down and chat with mates.

Banker View from the Stage shot

Moving to the set, the band were tight - this is a reflection on the effort that we have been putting into working our new songs through for both the Space Ritual Support on the 27th Jan and the River Rooms gig on the 28th (as well as the other gigs to follow). We have 4 or 5 new songs in the set and judging by their reaction on Saturday they are going to stay there!

We stuck to script, mainly, with regards to the set in that we didn't play many songs that we hadn't planned to. Inside those songs however, it was the usual cosmic free for all and telepathic psychedelia that we are becoming known for and really enjoyable to play.

Notable high points were when we went into an impromptu jam of the phrase greenheadman dot com (something you should all sing to yourselves on a regular bases - go on do it now, I can wait....). We played this to a Chuck Berry (I'm gonna tell you how its going to be) kind of rhythm and we even managed to stop at exactly the same time at the 'end' of the song only to hear little Dave solo (as part of the improv lyrics) "WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE".


Intermission and I took the opportunity to have a look at some of the literature and posters that were on offer instead of heading for the bar:

Space was at a premium and how I didn't hit Timmy's headstock with my head is a mystery but we pulled off another excellent gig - Although this gig was hardly advertised GHM did the trick again of stopping people from moving onto the next pub and by the end of the night the place was rammed - well done all of you !

Second set went like a dream, the first few songs were exactly as the Space Ritual support will be and a good method of trying them side by side in a live environment, they worked. It was nice to see the young bar staff singing the choruses and tapping away to songs that they had never heard before, that was a real confidence boost for us!

The Dance Commanders

Sorry about the quality of the above photo but in my defence I was playing Lucifer Sam by Pink Floyd at the time!

That's it for another week, we will be back coming in your psychedelic ears on Jan 27th Supporting (ex-Hawkwind) Space Ritual and the day after at the River Rooms in Stourbridge will a headline set full of belters.

You see if we won't!

Layters,

Nick