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5 Days in the life of the Hand
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Greeting blog folk.
We are indeed 14 days into our tour of death and destiny, so wanted to give you all a wee guide as to how we recommend spending a lovely weekend following the death of your tour van...
Thursday:
1. Wake up in London with sever hangovers from a London show
2. Organise transport for the next 4 days (i.e. borrowing a car from The legends that are Jean & Colin) Check oil, water and fill said car with deisel.
3. Get stopped randomly be a film crew asking if we a band and and doing an impromtu acoustic number in the back of their camper van. We check their credentials later that day and it transipres that they are indeed working for OrangeUnlit on a National tour and we are the first band to feature...
4. Drive to Bristol an pay a blinding set in Mr Wolf's. Swagger toa Jamaican pub and husstle the landlord at pool, attacking him mildly with a cue in a 'jaunty manner'. Chip back to top man Bertie Bougue's pad and eat his famous Butternut squash Lasage mmmm, then dance with Brizzle crew to dub and reggae until 6am
Friday:
1. Wake up at 10am, eat Bertie out of house and home and fail to replenish his coffee stocks
2. Trupet player has sudden realisation that he broke a tooth in half whilst drunkenly eating a wasabi peanut. His tongue cut open and he is unable to speak. With sympathy, the remaining band members manageto hold in their evil glee. Organise emergency dental treatment for Sunday
3. 5 hour drive to Beautiful Days festival in Exeter via 7 traffic jams, which should usually only take 90 mins.
4. Be told that we cannot unload to the stage due to site restriction, so almost die several times whilst trying to figure out how to drive a 4x4 through small rivers and badger dwellings. See some great acts, including Seth Lakeman, Pama International, Squeeze and Gabriella Cilmi. Give Gabriella Cilmi and her bass player a Big Hand dogtag each, which they are naturally over the moon with.
5. Play to the drunkest crowd you have ever played to and have a great time in the Bimble Inn. Show true professonalism in politely declining staying and sharing a tent with pretty, pretty girls in an attempt to get back to London Some say this may have been silly, but we are consumate profesionals...
6. Drive 3 hours to London, arriving at 6am.
Saturday:
1. Wake up at 9am to collect hire van
2. Return car to Jean & Colin and load hire van with gear, kicking the dead beast on every feasible ocassion
3. send 2 members of the Hand back to Edinburgh on public transport
4. Sleep for 5 hours. Eat amazing food at the Martin palace.
5. Leave for Scotland at 10:30pm with the CD player locked, cocked and ready to rock.
Sunday:
1 Arrive in Scotland at 5:30am and try to load our gear into our fringe venue,
2. Be told we can't load in until 10am, so go to an Edinburgh flat and wait fo 4 hours, drinking Red wine.
3. Load our gear at 10am and return hire vas to airport. Arrive back in Edinbugh at midday.
4. On a combined total of around 4 hours sleep over 4 days, decide that bed would be for wimps, so go for a quick pint.
5. One pint turns into 2.
6. 2 pints turn into 6
7. Lunch
8. Football on TV
9. Bodies go into shut down
10. Chicken kebab prolongs weekend by 2 hours
11. More beer in 2 hour period
12. Bed at 2:30am
Monday:
1. Wake at 9am and Stay in featal postion for 6 hours
2. write blog
3. get ready for a wicked string of 8 dates in the Edinburgh Fringe...
Pretty standard really.
Then start all over again... hmmmm.
See you soon,
Pabs x
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1 minute ago
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Venturer Camp
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Big Hand's summer of fun rolls onwards and onwards, minus, i'm distressed to report, one vital member, our poor over-worked, undervalued, piece of trash, fondly remembered, whipping boy chariot of fire, Beast from the East, who literally reached the end of its road, after taking us roughly three times round the globe, spluttering faithfully every mile of the way, and keeping our friend Dan the mechanic safely in business, who I'm sure will miss our almost weekly appearnaces at his garage with various ailments, from comedy to serious (like driving to London the first time effectively without brakes -"we thought those screeching noises were normal").
I'm glad to say this did not stop us, no, we are hardier than that, and the sleep depreivation leant the whole episode a certain dreamy drunken quality, which certainly helped. We made it safe and sound to one of our favourite gigs to play, The Woodcraft folk summer camp, where we were royally looked after (apart from the weather, which I'm fairly sure was out of their hands), and played two immensely enjoyable shows to many neon-clad lord of the flies (but in a loving peaceful kind of way) teens, one an acoustic set, which is becoming more and more fun to do, and the next day, a raucous, manic, loud, crazy full on electric show. Add to this plenty of red wine, camp fires, singalongs, and muddy suits, and all in all it was a lovely couple of days. Next stop Bristol...
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5 days ago
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Invernecessarily good
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Well, it has been a wonderfully crazy few days in Big Hand land - we ventured to the very far north of the planet, through glaciers and polar bears, to Inverness, where we were so far away the sun actually shone for a while, owls swooped in the trees (of which there were plenty, contrary to the theory of our resident geologist Pablo), the sun never set, and everyone was in peculiarly high spirits. In fact, it was a trip of contrasts, a kind of sandwich of gigs, with, for various reason, disappointing unappetising bread and the finest filling known to mankind (surely involving giant prawns and tomatoes).
On the thursday we entertained the good people of Hootenanny's, courtesy of our good friend, and finest story teller this side of Arabia, Davy the ghost. Now this is a lovely venue, who look after us royally, and this time was no difference, but this time in our wisdom we each ate a spectacularly huge (and delicious) nan bread kebab, about 15 minutes before stage, and such was its seductive power, even bursting at the seams we were daringly challenging each other (and managing) to finish it all. Consequently, it was all we could do to not pass out during the set. Somehow hollow-legs-Ramsey was excused from these shenanigans, and was more than making up for our torpor, and provided us with our officially funniest stage moment to date, spectacularly entangling himself in the mic lead, for about 5 minutes, never at any point stopping dancing, like a bizarre snake wrestler. It was a show stopper.
Next day was Belladrum, where we had the fortune to be upon the amazing main stage, where we lured the masses towards the stage with our up-beat show tunes, relatively clean suits (minimally muddy), merchandising giveaways, and both ridiculous and sublime version of the Vanilla Ice classic, Ice Ice Baby (who can resist the power of that one). It was our pleasure and privilege to play, and must go down as perhaps one of our best ever gigs. Afterwards we swanned around the site, signing wellington boots, giving our dog-tags to a very impressed One Night Only (though for some reason they didn't take up our offer of swapping them with their tour bus), drunkenly serenading our friends from Rapal TV and other assorted young fellows with our acoustic ramblings, scowling at Scouting for Girls, and generally getting nice and merry on the black isle cider.
From these peaks we drove back to Inverness for another gig. In a restaurant. Playing chart music. With staff telling us off for putting feet on tables, a non-existent soundman, half a PA, and a huge coil of wires. We staggered through. Afterward, while the strong arm of the law (our rhythm section) flexed its muscles and retrieved our dues, myself and Philo were treated to a fine chilling ghost story (complete with shouty surprise ghost moment), from Davy - it was an odd but somehow very fitting way to end the trip.
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8 days ago
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23 August 2008 at 8:00 PM |
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Where
2 Rivers Festival @ Moloko,
New Street
Paisley
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Details
A nice wee indoor festival on the West coast. Should be fun
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30 August 2008 at 4:00 PM |
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Where
Rat Race Aventures,
Baltic Square
Newcastle
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Details
A free gig in the toon. Aye that?ll do nicely!
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20 September 2008 at 5:00 PM |
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Where
Knockengorroch Festival The Hairth
Knockengorroch farm
Nr Castle Douglass, DG7 3TJ
UK
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Details
Cost:£60 weekend ticket
Back to end the festival season at the first scottish festival we played with the current lineup. Nice Keep yer eye on: www.knockengorroch.org.uk/ for details
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