A great gig in Bristol tonight at The Crofters Rights. Plus we got to see Duncan who played flute on the Noctorum records, Ed who played drums on Noctorum, Space Summit, and MOAT albums, and Stuart who played drums on the Wild Swans album – and meet their partners for the first time, Hannah, Zoe, and Amy. Derek came along and filmed the show, Gabe did the sound and it was as intimate and as well a received gig as we’ve ever played. It’s nice to penetrate the hallowed wall of a classic grungy Bristol venue and saturate it with cascading arpeggios, plaintive violin, and evocative sorrow.

It was such a rush today after such a late night returning from Penzance. It seemed like every second was filled with blogs and showers and breakfasts and teeth cleanings and before you knew it we were back in the van heading to the gig for soundcheck. It rained and everything was grey, the sky, the road, the buildings, my hair, and my pants (I’ve gone American again). But once we had loaded in and connected with Gabe all went smoothly. We figured out how to get the tuner to register the guitar that was tuned down to D. We figured out how to get it to register a note and not a number and we also figured out what was wrong with the DI box, a dying battery that we didn’t know was in there. Teething problems that are slowly but surely sorting themselves out.

I guess this is not the best time of year to expect people to get a T-shirt, but we did manage to sell two tonight, including the first Marty & Olivia shirt ever sold. I suppose we might do better if we were selling Marty & Olivia woolly jumpers, umbrellas, or plastic macs. We have to sell about twenty to get back the investment – nineteen to go and by the way, summer is coming.

The venue had another band in a room on the other side but we pretty much managed to zone them out, just a distant rumbling now and again and the occasional forgotten open door that wasn’t exactly conducive to an audience of listeners and musicians playing 12-string acoustics and violins. But we make the place our own, create our own world, as Ed commented, music does that.

There was something I forgot to mention yesterday, as we came out of Wells on the side of the road as the town was turning into the countryside there was a long-bearded man playing the guitar like a busker. The problem was that there were no people, only cars passing by. All I could think of was don’t take the brown acid.

Music today has been Rain Parade – Explosions In The Glass Palace (1984), a five-track mini-album that followed Emergency Third Rail Power Trip (1983).

Music Of The Daze