GIG IN THE WOODS

During 2007 I found out that a couple of my old associates Scott Gee and Jae Wardle had formed a band called Jonah's coat. I got back in contact with them via their myspace page. They had come up with the crazy idea of doing a concert in Holly Hayes woods which was a place we spent countless nights hanging around during our teenage years. The advert read "BRING YER GUITARS, BRING YER ALE, AND BRING YER CHRISTMAS JUMPER AND JOIN US ROUND THE FIRE FOR A NIGHT OF INTOXICANT FUELLED MUSICAL MADNESS"

On one hand it looked like a great idea but I had 2 big worries about what could go wrong. Firstly what they were doing was illegal and if people heard us the police would be there. Second was the kind of people you wouldn't want there turning up.

On the day of the gig however it rained so much that the band had to put out several notices telling everyone that it was all still going ahead anyway. Several people turnedup early in the afternoon to build a shelter and sort out where the band was playing. I assigned myself fire making duty's just like in the old days. I think I collected enough fallen logs to run a small power station let alone a camp fire. During this time I committed the unforgivable sin of drinking Skol and Fosters however I don't care because they were given to me for nothing.


To be honest as far as the gig was concerned I was expecting just a couple of people to turn up with some old battered guitars. But how wrong could I be ??? this was the full works with generators, speakers, drum kits and several other bands playing as well. How all this stuff got carried in and out the muddy woods without being damaged I will never know.

The gig itself didn't rearly kick off until after 8pm or was that the point in the day that I upgraded to drinking Kronenbourg. The bad weather put a lot of people off turning up so numbers were kept to a reasonable level. You could hear the bands playing from the Holly Hayes estate but it was no louder than the background noise you get from the pubs on a saturday night.


In a nutshell a great night was had by all, several people got lost in the woods in the dark but that was unavoidable.


THE REST OF THE PHOTOS ON PHOTOBUCKET

MY SISTERS ACCOUNT OF THE EVENING

ANOTHER BLOG OF THE EVENINGS EVENTS






At the stroke of midnight I took a short video clip which didn't turn out too well because of the lighting.

On a more serious note there was the issue of cleaning up the litter that has been left behind the following day. The area of woodland we had used was in a right mess and that mess was directly traceable via the internet to the people that had left it. I went up and filled the best part of 6 bin bags with all the cans, bottles, plastic bags etc that had been left in that area and took them away. Then I started taking away the tools and plastic sheeting however all this took several visits over the next week because I can't drive. Went to collect the last couple of plastic sheets the following week only to find that some idiot had poured the last bit of the petrol over them and set fire to them leaving behind a melted plastic