GIG - The Roost Rock venue, Long Eaton 21st Oct 04

The Roost is a pretty decent venue. A nice pub with a large gig room tacked onto the side. Decent size stage, long rectangular room with dance floor, seating area and further raised seating area an not random pillars. The PA is almost big enough for the room, but is let down somewhat by the use of cheap microphones.

Original acts get Thursday's and Tribute and covers on Fridays (we Smurphed it a couple of weeks back).

Long Eaton suffers from being smack band between Nottingham and Derby and just a quick, cheap bus ride from either, meaning that there is a lot of competition from the cities for the live music audience.

Support band today were No Hope. They had some very interesting sounds going on, which I won't attempt to classify but words like indie, alt rock and ambient rock steer you in the general direction. We desperately want to get hold of a demo to see what they really sound like, as the live mix was a little muggy at times. We enjoyed them though!

So to our set. Another disaster laden bucking bronco of a performance which we somehow managed to keep astride. Paddy's amp disappeared about 20 seconds into the first song and when it eventually came back in, drowned out absolutely everything else in the foldback arghhh.

The Bass issue we had at Rotherham resurfaced and made Purgatory and Laughing in the Sun particularly bad going until Nev managed to tame the rumbling harmonics - looks like someone had a bit of a dick around with the amp switches and settings at Rotherham. So after a nightmare in which Ian really wanted to be beamed away we managed to wrestle control and rely on experience and a philosophical outlook to get through. So when Ian's amp blew a fuse and dropped down to half power, it merely raised an eyebrow.

We had a crack at Radio Waves in a new arrangement which we'd never played but discussed in the bar 1/2 hour before the set. This is only the second time we've gigged this song and the results we're encouraging.

So coming off stage, we had mixed feelings as to how good a gig we'd played. Ian thought it was a disaster but Paddy said he thought it was probably better than we thought. Having just listened back to the desk recording of the set, Paddy wins as it wasn't too bad at all - technical problems aside it was a fairly solid performance. We'll make some of the live material available for download at some point.

The crowd was thin, but hey it's a school night and we're out of towners. So not our best gig, but maybe we've got the dickey one out of the way for this season. We now have a couple of weeks in which to do some more performance polishing and service our equipment.

The set was:

1. Wrecking Ball
2. Smallville
3. Bully For you
4. Purgatory
5. Laughing in the Sun
6. Bubblegum and Machine guns
7. Scars
8. Radio Waves
9. Angelina Crush
10. Def Con 1

GIG - The Charters, Rotherham 14th Oct 04

This is the second time at the Charters for us! The night is run by Diatribe.

There was a five band bill. We took Mary-Jane with us, there was a band called '6 foot midgets' ('ey up lads), but I can't for the life of me remember the other two.

There is a really young crowd here - but they are full of beans.... and cheap cider.

Mary-Jane played a stormer, and Teri bossed the audience about in fine style.

Our gig wasn't too bad but we had a few technical problems - Nev was using a new bass cab which is awesome (what, like a hot-dog?), unfortunately the way we'd positioned the backline on 'stage' meant that Ian couldn't hear anything except bass overtones and vocal pitching was a nightmare.

Most of the kids has left by the time we finished, bed time, last bus and a general lack of interest in any music not purveyed by their school mates band, or breaking with a strict pop-punk formula to blame perhaps. But the die hards seemed to enjoy themselves!

Any how, a guy scouting for a new venue was impressed enough to offer us a gig after the first 2 songs, so we must be doing something right eh?

Set list

Wrecking Ball
Smallville
Bully for you
Its alright
Bubblegum & Machine guns
Grin
Live fast ...
Scars
Angelina Crush
Def Con 1
---------
Lucy


We are expecting some photos from this one, which will get added into this post in time!

Rotherham is the hardest place to get home from. Ian led Paddy on a very 'scenic route' which probably added 1/2 hour to the journey home and Lee only made it out alive be driving through a bus depot!!!

Writing Update - 3rd Album work in progress

So, we've been starting to put together stuff for the third album and thought we should give you a quick update.

The third album, which is currently unnamed, will be a double. The first disk will be chocked full of the type of tunes you'd expect from Grinn and the second will be a little more experimental and reflect a few more of our ideas and influences. All members of the band will be contributing songs.

As we start polishing songs we'll start dropping them into the live set to try them out on you.

Songs we are working on so far include:

China Doll
SwanSong
Victim Culture
It Only Laughs when I hurt
Carol Anne
Green Monkies
Fun with Firearms
Bored of Your Bored
M62
Headstrong
Downside Up
Standoff
Buy our Brand
Almost Human
Girl in Black
Ordinary World
Versions Of The Truth

Some of these may not make it onto the album - it all depends on how much material we think it good enough to include.

GIG - The Shed, Leicester 11th Oct 04

Bill:

Flare
Stole The Show
Liquid Mojo
Grinn
*no show*

Bit of a mission to get to this one - with Paddy starting the Day on the South coast and the rest of us at day jobs scattered around West/South Yorkshire. Still we managed to pull it together and get there for 6:00 as requested - shame some of the other bands couldn’t get their shit together.

So, decent little venue this (Winner of "Safest Club in Leicester" Award?!?) - enough room on stage and a fairly decent sound (thanks Paul, the sound guy). We've talked to the owner/manager Kevin a few times on the phone and he seems like a thoroughly decent sort of chap.
They put on Saturday matinee gigs so a younger audience can get to see live music - fantastic! For the record we are still trying to sort something similar in Huddersfield.

The headline act 'Flare' from Norway were loading in as we got there. Flare are nice guys on their second UK tour - I hope we can stay in touch. Their sound check sounded good and they might make a decent support act for the Smurphs sometime if we can make the timings work.

Anyway, out hearts sank as we saw their drum kit. When ever we gig we tend to carry all our gear - we don't take a drum kit only if we have been assured that the kit being provided by the headline act is a full kit - which we were, but it wasn't. At first it looked like there wasn't even going to be any rack toms, though a single teeny hit tom arrived later.
We can't blame Flare for this, they are a foreign band touring the UK in a tiny van as best they can, but we could so easily have brought out kit.
Promoters really don't seem to grasp the importance of providing a decent or at least full drum kit - its kinda like providing guitars with 3 strings.
Any hoo - Lee did a sterling job under the circumstances.

So set up and sound check was from 6 until 7:30 when the doors open. It was a five band bill and we, as first time visitors to the Shed were scheduled for second on the bill - fair enough. Any way – the opening act never bothered showing up and the third band on the bill didn't bother getting to the venue until 8:10 - bleeding amateurs!!!!! So running order and timings were in a constant state of flux. Anyhoo we were eventually given 40 minutes (no problem).

There was no owner, promoter or any authority figure in evidence so Paul the sound guy was managing things as best he could. Personally if we were running the show and a band, especially one from five minutes down the road, turned up over two hours late they'd be told firmly but politely to piss off home again, but a sound engineer can’t really make that call!

So we opened the show, decent crowd, most had come to see Stole the Show by the looks of things who were main support and they mostly seemed to get into it - as audiences go they were pretty good to us and Ian's bantering did start to draw them out of their shells a little.

We played one of the two short set formats we are using as the moment, but stuck 'Lucy' in the middle to bring us to 40 minutes - Actually I think we did about 45, but sod it, we got there on time and brought all the kit we needed! You see Grinn are professional and punctual.

Wrecking Ball
Smallville - dedicated to Christopher Reeves
Bully for you
It's alright
Lucy
Freefall
Scars
Angelina Crush
Def Con 1

Few gaffs, but mostly a good performance. Good to see old friends Paul and Neil walk in unexpectedly part way through to bolster local support from RicheyJames and SG.

After our set the tardy Liquid Mojo climbed up on stage and what should have been a 10-15 minutes change over took over 30 minutes as they line checked. Saw some of their set from the bar but didn’t really get it.

Lee did some meeting and greeting after the show and says 'Hi' to everyone he met. Thanks to all who came to watch our set.

I don’t know whether ‘Stole the Show’ did, as we shipped out while the mojo lot were playing because we had a long drive and early starts the next morning. I hope they had a good one, they sounded pretty good in sound check – kinda pop, punky, indy, hard rock from what I could tell, but I only heard 1 song – sounded interesting though. They panicked a bit when told they could extend their set to 40 minutes as apparently they only have 25 minutes of material (we could probably manage a couple of hours), but they deserve their place on this bill due to the volume of punters they dragged along.

I hope enough people managed to stick around to see Flare, we’d have liked to have seen them!

I can’t find any web links for any of the other bands I’m afraid, if anyone knows them, mail me.

No pix – I got one, but its too dark to make anything out.