Camp Proposal

Most people wake up on a Monday morning and smack the living daylights out of their alarm clock until the damn thing stops ringing and returns back to a restless slumber realising that the working week was just about to obliterate the weekend just gone......me ?.......no I wake up with a thousand and one things I wish to impart on Blogland.....

Today's issue of "Highs at the Low End" aka "the crap that flows from the mind of a bass player" focusses in on our percussionist....if you remember from the last blog I made mention of his uncanny likeness to my Father Dearest...if you don't remember then go back and read it ...and next time pay attention ......anyway Ol'Dawg at work had read this blog and told me of an incident that happened to him on a train a few years back......must have been a steam train after all he is as old as the steam engine itself.......doesn't smell much better either but neither would you if you had coal shoved up a burning hot rear door but that is entirely another story !!!

Anyway Ol'Dawg used to catch a train to work everyday and he never used to get a seat so he used to stand.....one day he noticed sat reading his paper a man that was an absolute spitting image of his Dad.....Ol'Dawg just kept staring at him as the likeness was so uncanny. Well Ol'Dawg kept seeing this bloke everyday for about 18 months and they would nod to each other but nothing was said just the odd smile etc....Ol'Dawg told me it was really quite strange as he kept looking at him because he was so like his Dad.....One day Ol' Dawg managed to find a seat and he noticed that out of the corner of his eye "his Dad" was sat next to him ........this bloke leaned over into Ol'Dawg's face about an inch away from his nose and in the campist Lily Savage esque voice said to him "Hello .....I'm off to see me moother at weekend would ya like to coome wiv me? " then pouted ......Ol' Dawg needless to say was taken a back ....apparently even close up he was still an absolute double of his Dad.....but a very gay Dad..which Ol'Dawg described as surreal......Ol'Dawg said that this bloke's Mum was very nice by the way and it was the best weekend he ever had...(no not really ...he declined and never saw the bloke again but hey...... my version ends better)

After rehearsals last night as we mused over what went well and what didn't ...it was a good but slightly frustrating session last night as we are making hard progress of Earth Calling and Orion II. I know we will get there in the end and there are some great parts in the songs we didn't have before (I'm even slap popping in earth calling now) so we will get there I'm sure but it was after as we shivered outside the house that our drummer anounced he was going to take his Tomatoes out tomorrow......hmmm that was jolly nice of him I thought ......cinema...theatre or just a meal? ...but then the meal could be awkward......I mean imagine if you were to order a Spaghetti Bolognese if you were with a Tomato......how embarassing!!!...or may be take them out was a ....Take them out as in do them over?!?!?!?! I had to ask the question to delve deep into the mind of our percussionist.....

"Do you talk to your tomatoes ? " I casually asked.

He looked at me and scowled "no!" came the reply with a "stupid boy " look on his face...."They talk to me"

It was at this point Gurning Boy and The Phantom Pinger reached for the doors of their car now packed up and ready to go with a look of ....."nutter!" on their faces....He then added "Especially when I stick a knife in them!" ......with this the Tomato slayer chuckled an evil laugh and drove off into the night looking for more Tomatoes to butcher on his way home.


So the band line up is now complete.....
Wifey....The Incredible Gurning Man.....Dot the Phantom Pinger ...The Tomato Slayer and little old me......can't wait for the next rehearsal!!!!!

Rock

I wanted a standing stone...just like on the cover of Konditions of Change ....a stone ....that stands to go with the stone circle ...we had just purchased from a strange little foreign man at the garden centre.

We 'd already told the rest of the band we were looking to get one ...yes we are a band now complete with percussionist we rehearse in our music room log cabin in our garden....as the Incredible Gurning man asked me.....are we a garage band now? or a shed band? a log cabin band? I reckon a potential kick arse folk rock band????? anyway we asked the little foreign man about prices of stones and he quoted about £350 for one just over a metre tall....just for a stone that stands there ...... Now having just kicked the merry shit out of our flexible friend and payed that for two tickets to see U2 at Wembley in August we just couldn't justify it .......the count down begins by the way.....133 days til we see U2........hoorah!!! So returning home stoneless...........not very rock n roll that is it?....stoneless.....

anyway we decided we'd move the gnome garden over to under the Studio window and I grabbed a bit of plum slate stone stood it on end surrounded it by solar light rocks and hey presto ...the gnomes had their very own standing stone. It's just the rest of the band are going to think we were taking the piss now!!!!!!! but the gnomes like it . We have 13 resident gnomes and a hedgehog and wheel barrow........oh yes a windimill thingy and a bird......ok ok ....no....... don't click off this page now I'll get back to the music...

Progress at times with both Stone Jesters and Hot Machero was painfully slow. Spriggan Mist however is a different kettle of fish and thus far it has been so much fun. Some of the stuff we have in the pipeline is actually quite exciting and Gurning boy's song London Town will go down really well with you Sprigganites.....both of you.. The Gurnster has also introduced us to an old song of his known as The Park (previously Dog sh1t park apparently and the lyric is still in the song if you listen carefully) I reckon will blow your socks off ...even Dark Marge's holey ones .(or Lex Luther or whatever name he goes under these days.

Our percussionist describes himself as a veteran......he certainly can play and we are glad to have him on board he is as solid as a rock (back on the stone theme) and seems to be a very interesting character........looks uncannily like my Father Dearest. Blog name hasn't come to me yet but it will.

Dot the Phantom Pinger has replaced the Glock.....(glockenspiel ...not the gun) with a keyboard and between The Phantom Pinger and the Gurner extraordinaire they have so many pedals ....it's like the the Tour de France..........without the drugs of course....and strange men in berets and hooped blue and white tops on bikes shouting "onions onions"......stereotypical enough?

So Kultural Karma is being re born......here is the list of people who have sung it so far

Wifey wrote it for
Spaceboy (Hot Machero)- sang it once and then left the band...
Posh-(Stone Jesters)- He sang it then ..then .he left the band
Woody-(Stone Jesters)- She sang it...then left the band
Scooby (Stone jesters)- She performed it live twice ...then the band folded
Wifey- (Spriggan mist) - She performed it on the recording currently on myspace
Grace Way- We tried to record her for the track...great voice heart wasn't in it ...equipment played up on the night etc..

The incredible Gurning Man- tried it ....not in his range

now Me.....yes I have handed my bass part over to Gurns! and i'm going to sing it ....Wifey's part is difficult to play and sing and I can't really play and sing ...I know the song so the job is mine.......does that mean I have to leave the band now?!??!?!?

Anyway I'm off till next time

"Put on your shoes and dance to the news....tighten your tie and strangle your views!!!!"

Pig in the Proverbial

I looked round at them on the back seat .....it was Friday 13th ......Red Nose day.! Why couldn't the school just allow the kids to wear .....a red nose! Oh no ...rainbow day! they had to wear as many colours as possible. So there they were odd shoes odd socks (Dark Marge would be proud) loud tops and trousers multi coloured bunches ( mini minx obviously).....i pulled in at a petrol station as obviously they had to pay a pound each for the privilege of looking stupid and I needed a cash machine !!! .......I hurried up to the cash machine..... Damn rats and willies!!!! the machine was out of order...we were running late......I jumped into the car told the kids to hold on and set off like concorde to find a cash machine.....it was then I knew it was red nose day....the amount of clowns driving in our neighbourhood was terrible...it was like Billy Smarts had moved to Bracknell fresh from a recruiting spree at the Royal College of clowning!!!

I was eventually clutching a fist full of cash and had to go back to the garage to get change .......you know it is occassions like this that I'm sure I'm being toyed with by a greater being as then there was a queue at the garage...I scrambled back to the car with a low priced item that I really didn't need, drove off like Lewis Hamilton and got to the procession of children going into school ...(all loooking ridiculous)just in time the only people looking more ridiculous were the teachers......and they weren't in fancy dress!!!!!


I sat in my car took a great big deep breath and reminded myself it was Friday ...and what a week it was......Our half wit big boss at work in his infinite wisdom has come up with a great idea. Take Roadrunner and I out of our offices allow us to have infinite amounts of fun in the field......and get Mr T gets to do all our work......fantastic. Mr T in typical style laughed it off but I am like the proverbial pig in sh1t.... not just wallowing in it but diving into it from the highest spring board performing a triple salco on the way down.

Then this weekend we moved into our music room. It is a studio of sorts but it isn't fully sound proofed by no stretch ...but it's at the end of our garden and is lovely
some internal photos to follow. Anyway off to measure for blinds for it......thats if wifey lets me after the studio base measuring debacle!!!!!!

Dot the Phantom Pinger

So here I am again dear readers.....sat at my keyboard imparting on to you tales of a folk rock band poised to take the world by storm...... (well Bracknell and environs by bit of winter's gale)I do sit here with a very heavy head actually .....well we had a second rehearsal yesterday and a bottle of Red wine was brought round....I only had a bit short of two glasses ...(but as regular readers know)I am an incredible light weight.

Well the second rehearsal in my opinion was again a great success and some good decent music is in the offing from your favourite folk rock band (what do you mean are Jethro Tull going back out on tour?????) So far we have had a go at Lazy Stones which sees the incredible gurning man take over on the acoustic guitar leaving Wifey to do her Leccy lead bit Gurning Man's wife who from hence forth will be known as Dot......s'pose you want to know why?......nothing to do with Eastenders I might add.....ok i'll tell you later.....anyway Dot plays the recorder bits on the flute ,it was a joy to hear Lazy stones being played by other musicians (even though the two original musicians were really rusty)We nearly had real water sounds too as our bathroom is leaking into the kitchen but that is a story for another day

Dragut's Eye sounded good if only I could sing....oh and play the bass at the same time ! but I'm getting there.

Gurning boy produced the screaming banana yesterday too...yes his leccy fiddle is indeed not just Yellow but YELLOW!!!!!!!and Earth Calling is being fathomed out by gurner ,wifey and Dot ....tis indeed peasey on Bass , the Screaming banana will be used on that and i must say it sounds great. Still work to do on Earth calling but we'll be there soon.



Spirals sees Gurns take over on the acoustic while Wifely sings...then Wifey seeing that Dot had nothing to play on the track showed her how to play the glockenspiel bits .......well Dot was beaming from ear to ear as she beat the little glockenspiel at the opportune moments. so with the Phantom Pinger at the ready we embarked on conquering ...Spirals and all it need's is practice really to get it tight and we'll be there.

Gurning Man's London Town is about there and the one cover we have at this time Widdicombe Fair also sounds really good...with me playing on my fretless on both (hurrah!) We meet next week before the drummer joins us so watch this space.

So why Dot? well Gurning boy and Wifey were talking about how n ice it was to work with Dots (as opposed to tab ....they all read score you see) and I looked at gurning man's wife and said "I didn't know your name is Dot?" So dot it is for now....it tickled me but as stated I was slightly .....spriggan missed!!!!!



So as we go back to our day jobs and our homework for Friday's rehearsal I look into the garden and see the humungus trench little rockstar and I have dug down to our Studio this weekend ,so as to enable elec-trickery to be run, then we'll be well on our way to getting Spriggan Mist live......laters

The Incredible Gurning Man

So Monday arrived and now we have a permanent erection in the garden.....Ok ok that was the last erection joke...it's getting hard....(sorry) to think of many more.

The log cabin has been erected and it looks great,two blokes did the work on 14 hours finishing at dark o'clock last night....they kind of would have finished a bit earlier if some pillock hadn't of measured the base wrong although he measured it with his mate a gazillion times. The two blokes had travelled down from Newark and hmmm'd and ahhh'd for what seemed an eternity as they pondered on the fact that it was still going to cost us hundreds of pounds as even though they couldn't do the work ......and that the two rows of slabs that needed to go on the base would set the work back by hours and they had been up since 0230 and blah blah blah.......I flashed some pocket money for them and they set about laying the extra bit of base which took them under an hour.....and they were all packed up at the same time as they were planning to finish.......Good old British workmen ...but they did a cracking job and the studio looks splendid (nobody uses that word any more do they.....today use the word "splendid" in general conversation ...it will make you feel very middle class)

Of course I took pelters from family and friends re the measuring.....and there is the obvious play on words....base and Bass and mucking up of.....Brother dearest the Dark Marge...told me it comes with the territory of being my father's son....he was indeed reknown for his cock ups so it is in the genes I suppose and it is fitting that the Studio will be named after him .......Rommie's Studio........

I took incoming from Mother Dearest .......Whilst on the subject of Mother Dearest ....on Saturday at her resi home ...(scene of the great mobility scooter protest) they had a table top sale....didn't know there was such a market for table tops........(it's actually an upper class word for a jumble sale???!!!) so MD is selling usefull stuff to the other grannies like ski suits and The pop up Karma Sutra , when her selling side kick flies in to a panic.......!!!! She grabbed her Zimmer frame as she said to Mother Dearest who was Bracknell's very own Del Boy for the afternoon "Where's me magnifying glass ? i can't read without it!I put it down on the table " Mother Dearest replied "Oh that went for 20p"

So the two new members of Spriggan Mist are busy learning our songs and we have been learning a new one and a cover . (The drummer decided we weren't for him ........by text no less) but we have another interested but more about him later.

So i ask our new members for some photos to update Myspace and as you know to protect the guilty on these pages of literacy excellance I use blog names for all concerned . So I receive and email with the photo and a message stating that he looked like the world Gurning Champion......I looked at it ready to disagree but I have to say as he is obviously in mid vocal stride he does look like he is gurning ...or at least like someone has just hoofed him in the gonads !!!!
The incredible Gurning man's wife on flute however still hasn't a blog name...it will only be a matter of time before she slips up lets her guard down and the blog name will reveal itself. The gurner boy however as we speak is working out Spirals and will play the acoustic part that wifey plays whilst she sings ......

A drummer has been contacted through Gurning boys contacts...sounds a character....he doesn't use sticks and hasn't played folk since the sixties.....maybe he thinks he uses sticks and the sixties weren't very good to him???? He is indeed a percussionist ..should be interesting