Wheat vs Chaff

 Now as people who do a bit of music here and there and people who see quite a few acts around the place as we ply our lone furrow a phenomena has become quite apparent. A lot of those who play music are just shit. But here's the rub, idiot audiences lap it up!

 Now I'm not saying we are made of awesome, because we're not ...yet. But we've played original material to bar staff only to watch in astonishment as the room fills up to welcome some ropey singer songwriter strumming for half an hour and coming out with the most banal lyrics that would embarrass a primary school kid. Nobody cares that he/she left you, or that he/she barely notices your existence despite your constant fawning after this object of your pallid affections. Perhaps if you stopped with the moping around in your bedroom writing dirge after dirge this person would notice you. At the very least it would leave you with less material to waste my time listening to.

 Most bands are no better. They spend thousands of pounds on enough equipment to sink a moderate sized liner  just so they can have that pillock from Muse's guitar sound and then just play the worst kind of average shit imaginable. No one song distinguishable from the next. But hey, the guitarist sounds just like that pillock from Muse so it's ok.

 I have seen people play sweet child o'mine, forget the words and even get the chords wrong only for it to be greeted with rapturous applause! Once some girl who, it was announced, had only started learning guitar a month ago brought the house down with variations on A E D. So it doesn't seem that a lack of any technical skill is a barrier from pleasing the slack jawed yokels. In fact, the less skill you play with the more they appreciate your efforts.

 Fat fingered mashing at the fret board seems to be the way forward. Forget everything you know because no one will notice your arpeggios or your deft songwriting. All it takes for a crowd to like you is a nervous grin, some between song muttering about nice everyone's being and poorly executed material. But don't think you can do this if you're a bloke. Oh no. Tits also help confuddle an audience. It seems girls have no place on a  stage and if one of the pretty little things has the gumption to enter this male world then extra effort should be made to encourage her. The delicate thing has feelings and emotions you know.

 My point being, if you're going to present yourself on a stage, have the courtesy to rehearse the tunes, learn the words and don't waste everyone's (mine) time by relying on the sympathy vote or that pillock from Muse's guitar sound.


This blog was brought to you by the letters A D and E, and the musings of this other blog

Lazy boy and the recliners...

 So....it's been a while.

 We have been busy though. New material is in the offing (wonder what offing means...or even if it's a real word!). With all new banjo parts played by everyone's favourite 40 Horses member Hux. We've also been playing a gig or two in the time your humble narrator has not been arsed to post on here.

 Our most recent gig was a thing called Jo-Co music festival. It was a charity outdoor affair with a really big truck thing as a stage. Yes, one of those. The venue was in Coalville so little was expected by way of crowd or that the crowd might appreciate something that wasn't 80s rock, and we weren't disappointed. That aside the gig started badly as with one stomp of his mighty boot Darren put the beater through the drum skin. Ace. This meant that our erstwhile hero used the main kit's bass drum. Not too shabby unless you noticed him having to stand at a ridiculous angle and constantly on the verge of toppling over.

  Anyway, the long and short of it is everything going ok....not great...but ok.

New shit.

 We don't just sit around all day absorbing the praise from you less inventive proles you know. We have done gone and recorded 2 new things to which our tame film man has applied gorgeous visuals to.

 This is mountains. A song that whilst recording the bass on Darrens boat I came over all motion sicky. Fecking boats!


Next is Inside. The only tale of any mirth is that Darrens craptop kept crashing after every slight tweak. Aren't craptops funny, or as Darren would have it "Fucking hilarious!"

I likes the look of this thing from Mr Minchin...

Special Xmas things

Well, hello there. 

  The Special season of 'Christmastime' is forcng itself upon us once again with a sort of angry glee as it pounds us to a pulp with horrifically Christmassy music.
  Your very own 40 Horses have been dragged into this macabre spectacle.
  Comedy duo Morgan and Parkin have requested our presence on their Christmas show with our rendition of a christmas song. We're not sure yet what song we'll be doing but we've sort of shortlisted it to 'Stop The Cavalry' or 'I Believe In Father Christmas'. You'll be needing your irony goggles.
  Either way, you'll get to hear the result soon.
 You can get a bit of Morgan and Parkin here 

Variation on a theme...

In 1956, Angus Waltham was on safari in Tanzania with his parents. On a hike through the bush, their group came across the dead body of a lioness with a small cub trying to nurse from it.

The cub clearly stood no chance of survival alone, and although their guide recommended that they leave the cub to its fate, Angus managed to convince his parents to let them take the cub back to Dar Es Salaam to live with them at the embassy. Angus called the cub 'Ndizi', after a famous Tanzanian sportsman.

For a little over a year, Ndizi lived at the embassy, often to be found playing with Angus - The boy and cub became inseperable, and Ndizi grew from a small cuddly animal into a much larger killing machine. Although there were no serious incidents at the embassy, after a few close calls where some live-in servants were badly scared by Ndizi, Angus' parents told him that the lion had to go. Angus reluctantly agreed, and with many tears, Ndizi was loaded into a cage on a truck, and sent on a long road trip back to Mikumi, where he was released. Initially, Ndizi tried to follow the truck, and wouldn't leave them alone until one of the guides fired a shot from his rifle into the air to scare Ndizi away. Angus never forgot that cub or the amazing events of that day.

Eight years later he was travelling through from Udzungwa to Dar on business when the jeep that he was in suffered a puncture. In the heat of midday sun, Angus and his driver changed the flat tyre, and as they lowered the jack, and stood back they heard a low throaty rumble coming from behind them. An adult lion had managed to get within 15 meters of them.

The large lion stared at Angus and sniffed the air, then slowly walked towards Angus. He couldn't help but wonder if this was his childhood friend from many years ago.

As the lion came close enough to touch, Angus summoned up his courage, reached out his hand and let the lion sniff his palm. The lion reared up on it's back legs, placed it's massive paws on his shoulders, looked Angus in the eye, and then bit his face off.

Probably wasn't the same lion.

(shamelessly stolen from http://www.bunchacunce.org/)

"Thanks for attending.....bye then"

 Another evening another gig. This one was a support kindly offered to us by the Nottingham band "Blood Orange" at the Running Horse Notts.

 I once again and in spectacular style couldn't find Darrens new paradise in the wild so spent another hour tear-arsing around identical country lanes, swearing and hunting phone signal. Once found though we plodded off to Nottingham to repeat the procedure in some of Nottinghams less welcoming estates which was rather more perturbing then the dingly dell had been.

 The gig itself was a stripped down affair as our shiny new drummer was off doing a radio session for someone or another, so it was just myself, Darren and our other shiny new fellow Mr Martin making his 2nd ever live appearance and 3rd ever, well, appearance at all. We ploughed through various yet to be classics in front of a largely indifferent bunch of cheese rockers. God bless them, if it aint in tight trousers and sporting girly hair then they don't know what to do with it. Not even shouting at them had any effect. they were nice, but lacked that certain...energy you expect of other living beings.

 My personal highlight was breaking the unwritten law of if a gig is sparsely populated you have the good manners to watch the other bands. This, for us wasn't an option as Martin and I were knackered and Darren had a curfew to observe. The main drawback to leaving was to do so we would have to walk between the playing band and the lack lustre audience, gear in hand and coats on. There was no way to make a discreet withdrawal.
 For reasons I will never know Mr Martin and Darren chose the most obvious, most likely to draw attention to us moment to leave. Just as Blood Orange had finished another pop/rock classic and thanking everyone upon their attendance. It was then a sheepish troupe of us trundled past, guitars in hand and very politely conducting our compliments and goodbyes in the middle of their set "bye then, thanks for letting us play".
  It was poor form and for that we apologise. Mortifyingly funny though. :D