The River Rooms, Stoubridge, England

Saturday 26th June 2010



Morning.

It’s been a few days since the River Rooms gig but honestly its take a while for it all to sink into place and me to blog – so here goes.

Interesting gig this one, on the professional circuit and all that so it is a subtle but significant step up for us and one we were ready and looking forward to. It’s the little differences, example – load in isn’t into the corner of a pub at 19:00 but onto a 4 foot elevated stage at 17:00 before the punters get in. Soundcheck is done to closed doors and then the band disappear until they go on stage, which isn’t 21:00 but 22:15 – damn near bedtime!!

I picked Little Dave up who had been busking in the area went back to mind for a coffee.
















So then we turned up, waited in the carpark for a while (ahem) but loaded in an up. The sound engineer (Craig) was excellent as was the lighting guy (Tim) who had spent the afternoon googling us and downloaded Pyschedelic images for his 2 projector screens either side of the stage – proper commitment to the cause.

Soundcheck included Bass amp explosions, and nice rug, up to 3 bass amps and a generally good onstage sound. Featuring for the 3rd time only my ACS ear defenders which worked a treat I have to say. The only drawback with them is that it can hide dynamics a little, so that when we need to go quiet (on the fly) I am sometimes blasting out at full volume until I receive the Paddington Bear stare and back of the swell.















The band went home for tea (another weird one), I actually had tea, which in itself is a first for me. I returned to the venue first to see what the attendance was like. I booked the gig in the first place so felt a little more pressure on me to ensure that it was going to be a good one. My hopes had been dashed by the owner as he lets us in when he said “ooh this weather (sunny) doesn’t help us much and what with the World Cup and Glastonbury this weekend…”. Great, its going to be empty then. This is doubly a problem as it holds 350 people so even 50 people will get lost in the walls.

So, its was 20:45 and I did a quick headcount whilst drinking my only shandy of what was going to be a very long night. Yup, 30 people. Not bad in itself but the venue was only 9% full. Oh dear. Come 21:00 40 people. Oh dear.

Then, I got carried away with technical issues; arranging Little Dave’s radio pack monitors, discussing the lighting setlist with Tim, attempting to record the gig off the desk + ambient mic’s, trying to stop Timmy playing bass on stage at full volume before the gig started (waaaay before the gig started!) and arranging setlists with the DJ (songs not to play basically!!)

It was 21:45 all of a sudden and you know what, it was busy. Ish. The Stourbridge News was there, Members from DC Fontana and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin too and other musicians (we have a habit of attracting muso’s and I can’t for the life of me think why).

So, at 22:00 we huddle of into our dressing room (I know –Dressing room!) and get changed and in my case do some star jumps and warm up the vocal chords. The message came to us that “after the next song your on” and we let Canadian Dave who had the furthest to walk go on stage on his own and break out the weird noises from his Juno 60 synth for a minute or two before we got onstage ourselves – sets the scene a bit.

Then we pile on – it was busy! You could see the audience. This was good.













We had a setlist and because the lighting guy had a copy we pretty much stuck to the set – people who know us will know that this is a very unlikely event. The first 2 or 3 songs were a little tentative and I made a few howlers but once we got back into the whole concept of the big gig we really rose to the occasion. The two Dave’s grew in stature and the gig was a rip roaring success.

165 people in the end and only a handful of them were friends and family. This means that we actually have fans now and we are delighted by their support – thank you guys and girls. A couple of notable dancers too and next time we will get Amanda Dance Commander™ on stage with us I hope. We played for nearly 2.5 hours, far too long, and even though the voices were broken by then we really enjoyed it.

Then – 2 hours of watching people drink and dance before we could set down! Got in around 02:30 and with no alcohol in the house went to bed at 03:00 and didn’t sleep until the daughter kindly got me out of bed at 08:19.

The venue just called, they are still getting people in saying how good the event was! They were impressed we pulled in so many people under difficult circumstances and want us back there again – January 28th in fact. Put it in your diaries!! The facebook group has slowly expanded all week too and that is pretty impressive considering we didn’t even mention it.

A huge thanks to the venue, so professional with so little attitude, The bar staff were excellent sports, wearing GreenHeadMan badges for the evening and Mark, Craig and Tim were superb. Cant wait to do it again and again and again..

…and maybe even get that recoding to actually work next time..

Nick

The Stagborough Arns, Stourport, England

19th June 2010



A lovely summer's day that threatened to be a quiet one as well. A couple of high profiled gigs around the corner, the world cup on, perfect BBQ weather and a 60’s birthday party on up the road. This place should be empty. And at 21:00 is still was. This was going to be a paid rehearsal! And I got a new shirt for this?

We set-up reasonably professionally, Little dave was terminally short of cables as usual (terminally short as usual!) and I think we used every cable we had (even an XLR to XLR with a XLR to female ¼”” converter and a patch lead hanging out of the back of it but... we got it all working and sound checked for around nine.

Little Dave was also terminally hung over bless him, due to an impromptu and completely free bar party that he found himself at the night before. In contrast the summer detox is in full (lack of( flow for Canadian Dave and Timmy who were more cohesive than ever.

The audience came...if you play they will come right? (if you are any good like...) so they came, bless ‘em all. And although it wasn’t packed it was pretty full, and the venue owner was delighted again, as were the audience.

There was a lot of jamming, at one point we got stuck in a loop and couldn’t get out of the song but some quick thinking got the intro riff out there and we were able to bring it to an end.

The setlist was tight, between songs chatter was down to a minimum and seemed to work well and we ploughed thro two good sets including two original Green Head Man numbers which also went down well. As per we ran out of time and had to cut short a requested Pink Floyd song (Lucifer SAM) down to around 7 minutes! Yes, it was a jammy night!

Steve put on some cobs and a pork pie and Kelly sold a CD so all in all not a bad night.

Got in for 01:00 which was good, beer, then bed for 02:-00 (up at 08:30 with kids bouncing on my had – down to earth with a bump)

See you next time

Nick

The Wishing Well, Bromsgrove, England

21st May 2010



Always an awkward gig this, in that the stage is shallow and the volume always too loud.

Its badly lit too so you can't see which plug goes in where, luckily I have my array of torches!

Once setup its fine of course and the pub is on a local circuit so our job it to entertain 'fans' but also stop people from moving on to the next pub. Not too sure we pulled that off on this occasion as we hadn't seen each other for 3 weeks, Ron had been on holiday and had lactic acid and blisters and we probably chatted too long between songs.

This is due to the fact that we don't really do set lists. We know around 35 songs and the singer and guitarist know 350 together so there is no real telling where we go with the telepathy.

I got to try out my new Solar 250 projector cassette here as well and it was well trippy!

Nick

The Stagborough Arns, Stourport, England

24th April 2010



Gotta love this place. The Manager is well into it. He has his own problems with the noise abatement society so we have to try really hard for him to keep his music license. The bands basically keep him afloat I think and it’s a real shame as he is the real deal.

This gig saw us putting our first original song into the set: Moths to the Flame

We bought a PA cab (mid size) for this gig and tried it for the first time here. Typically we have a very small PA and a MAHOOSSSIVE PA and nothing in the middle. Here we used the small gig PA as monitors.

Also making a first appearance was my Optikinetics Solar 250 Projector and that was Trippy!!! Checkout the Green Head Man group in Facebook or YouTube for a viewing of it.



Finally, I brought along my trusty Zoom 16 track digital studio and recorded the gig and from it have around 10 songs that are of good enough quality to get onto a CD.

If anyone would like a copy then please let me know!

Nick

The Queens Head, Wolverley, England

2nd April 2010



It’s always a cracker here, Kind of spiritual home really. the first band recording was done here and its Ron's local.

We also have a bit of a superstar fan who drinks here too and likes to make sure he is at our gigs, at the front, eyes closed, rocking out to it.

It’s a little disconcerting when you are doing a keyboard solo and you look over at the band and in the corner of your eye you see a multi multi multi millionaire listening next to your speaker, As soon as that happened I was like better get this solo right, oh no I've just messed it up from thinking about it!!

He's a good sport and he loves the era that we are playing if not the band himself. Last time we chatted he ended up singing old Bad Company songs to me (and he's not Paul Rogers) and you really do have to pinch yourself!

Gig was great, really enjoyed it as always. We brought out some new tracks too:

Magic Potion by The Open Mind
I got a line on you by Spirit
Good Love by the Rascals

Not sure that last one will see the light of day again to be honest but it’s on the list anyway!

Nick

Stourbridge Rugby Club, Stourbridge, England

6th March 2010



Big gig this and under stressful circumstances. Forge that the promoter was charging £6 in and that the elevated stage was creating some kind of freaky bass vortex that was killing us but Little Dave the singer had no voice. None at all. He had been ill as you may know and this was the 3rd gig in 8 days that Big Dave was going to have to be the front man whilst Little Dave backed him up on the complicated guitar and vocal bits.

We pulled it off, got around 60 -70 people in there, they all enjoyed it as they did "PIG" our all Vinyl 60's DJ we hired for the evening.



Steve the promoter (they are always called Steve) was very happy and glad we didn't do what every other band would do and pull the gig.

We never cancel gigs, if someone can't make it we improvise and I think venues and promoters respect us for that.

Also notable was the fact that the dressing room was behind the backline, how cool does that look!


















Late night and the last time I say Nick Audio (tm) - Dunno where he has got to....

Nick

The Hop Pole, Bromsgrove

5th March 2010



I like this pub. It’s the place where I made my "comeback (tm)" on Feb 14th 2009 after 10years out of the game and that makes it a little special.















Its run by the same people who run the Wishing Well but a different vibe altogether, its tight on stage but the venue is very deep and the sound gets lost nicely. PA supplied so it’s a relatively easy setup, if a bit squashy. I didn't bring my new piano to this gig either - still not worked it into the set enough I think.

Little Dave is still unable to talk let alone sing and Big Dave stepped in and did an excellent job under difficult circumstances. Little Dave wore a surgical mask on stage with a smiley face drawn on it in lipstick, so that he didn't get drawn into a conversation, we have a gig tomorrow and next week and he needs to get well soon!


















We all worked just that extra bit harder tonight to compensate and give the punters something to chew on. It got busy, as they all seem to do, and we went down really well.

Me and Ron made our usual backline jokes and ripped up the set list as usual (waste of trees that) and Little Dave was extremely tired at the end. A last minute decision was made and I took him home around 11:45 for him to get some rest for the gig tomorrow.