Trials & tribulations -- What a weekend!

This Easter weekend"s been really great with lots of stuff going on in the town and I was in the thick of it. First we resurrected our old band after nearly six months and renamed it "Creepey Cool" - (misspelling is deliberate) a much better name that The Fezz which you may remember from an earlier post). Anyway, we practised for the first time in the lead singer"s flat - the first time we"ve been able to do so as his new neighbours love music unlike his old one. This was in preparation for a gig at the I,Q. in Boston which is also a first for us. We were meant to"ave played there several times before but the gigs fell through.
On Saturday, although it rained we managed to find cover and busked outside near the market stalls for a couple of hours and even flogged a T shirt with the new band logo. We also played a new song that the lead singer had just written which went down really well. The true test of course was yet to come at the I.Q. (Indian Queen) on the Sunday night. I"ll come back to that later.
I nearly stayed in that Sat night but thought "what the hell" after getting a call from another friend and went out to the Axe & Cleaver ( another well known local pub & live music venue) He was telling me that a barman there got his ear bit off the weekend before by a crazy Irish bloke and had to go to the hospital in Nottingham to get it stitched back on. Apparently, he was trying to stop this bloke from causing trouble in the pub. I actually saw him that night but couldn"t tell whether the hospital succeeded in doing so because he always wears a cloth around his head.
We then ended up in "The moon under the Water' a Wetherspoon pub and we met a girl & her auntie who I"d known for a few years. I remember us telling them that we"d been to the local strip club 2 weeks before & the girl said to me "next time you go just ask for me and I"ll give you a free one." I was amazed, I didn"t know that she worked there but I"ll definitely remember that.
I then went to the I.Q. and met yet another friend. There weren"t many people there although there was a band playing, the punters were obviously saving their pennies for the Sunday event. We then went to the White Heart hotel bar - not the sort of place I usually go to - I ordered my first drink which was one pound fifty. I gave the barman a tenner but mistakenly he gave me more than that back. I thought "what has he given me?" I got back to the table and without thinking blurted it out to my friend. I said that I wanted to return it because I could not work out how much more they"d given me. The friend, who is a born again christian said you must do or else it would be dishonest.. I realised that he"d given me a ten instead of a five pound note and returned the money to the bar.

Trials & tribulations -- What a weekend cont:

The next day, (Sunday) I went out for a meal at the new Italian restaurant where the Trustee Savings Bank used to be -- very fresh & modern inside . It was actually my brother"s partner Clare who took us. I had spaghetti, bacon bits sprinkled with Parmesan cheese with a cappachino which was very nice, except I didn"t have enough.
The timing was good because the I.Q"s live mini music festivle was starting at 4pm.which meant that I had a couple of hours to kill. I went to the IQ to check to se what equipment they had, had a pint and then went to the lead singer"s flat to run through the songs. At that point we had no idea how long or even what time we"d be playing so we got down to the I.Q at 4pm. The first bands were pretty good but very loud and the place was soon packed to capacity -- I stood outside most of the time because of this.
The bands played various rock covers vintage & modern. not bad considering it was only supposed to be a jamming night and the crowd were pretty wild compared to a usual Saturday night. We were beginning to wonder how we"d fare with the crowd in there -- plus Dave, our lead guitarist hadn"t turned up. We were also getting a bit concerned if we"d even get to play. We needn"t have worried though, cause by 9pm most of the bands had played and we set up and a very experienced drummer, lead guitarist & bass player joined us. We played several songs including "Walk on the Wild Side" as well as our own songs and it went down a storm -- even though the other players hadn"t played with us before. The crowd went crazy, dancing & jumping about -- one girl started fiddling with the knobs on my keyboard. There were one or two things which went wrong, two of the lead singer"s guitar strings broke and my keyboard power lead played up a bit but none of this affected us or the crowd. Overall an amazing night.