Tag / Gigs

by Gareth

Stoney Lacuna

Not much new to report really – except that I’ve decided to bite the bullet and said I’ll go on the ski holiday to Switzerland in the New Year! I’m hoping to get some lessons in before I go, so that I’m not totally rubbish when I get there!

Had quite a good night out on Saturday. Went into town with Sarah, Emma and some other guys to see a band called Stoney Lacuna at a bar in the Northern Quarter. There was a pretty good crowd there, and the place was pretty packed. I hadn’t been to anything like that for absolutely ages, but I really enjoyed it.

Oh and it’s my birthday today… which is a bit of a non-event considering I’ll be working late tonight!

by Gareth

Festival:Manchester

Spent this weekend over at Heaton Park for Festival:Manchester which has been running in the city all week. They’d set up a big stage and skate park there, and I think they said there were around 30,000 people attending on the Sunday, so it was pretty packed there!

There were some good bands on – ones that stood out for me were Cathy Burton, bandwithnoname, Steve, Michael Tait and Toby Mac (from DC Talk), and Tim Hughes wrapped the whole thing up with the London Community Gospel Choir on the Sunday night.

29th Chapter and the band that Hope’s in (BlushUK) also did guest appearances with the Tribe which was really cool – they looked pretty comfortable up there, even in front of such a massive crowd.

On the Saturday afternoon, I went over with Michael (when I eventually found his house to pick him up!) and also bumped into a few people there who I knew as well. It actually got quite cold, and I hadn’t really taken particularly warm clothing with me, something which I rectified for the Sunday! Anyway, for the second day, I went up to Heaton Park on my own, but met up with Sarah and Emma who were there with a load of friends, and it was a really good afternoon and evening. My voice is still wrecked from Soul Survivor, but I did at least try to join in with some of the acts up on stage!

I’ve got some (slightly blurry!) photos of the weekend here.

by Gareth

Soul Survivor 2003

Got back from Soul Survivor at 3.30 this morning, so have spent most of today asleep! I’ve just been living in a tent for 14 days, so it’s so nice to be able to get back into my own bed!

It seemed like I was there for ages… technically it was for three Soul Survivor weeks, so it appeared to be longer than a fortnight. During my first week there, I spent a lot of my time working with 29th Chapter in the Pulse dance venue because I’ve produced visuals to run with all their tracks, so was dealing with all the technical hassles backstage during their performances! I also got chatting with the guys from bandwithnoname who were also in the Pulse that week, and gave them my card in case they ever want any visuals doing for their shows, because they’re based nearby to where I live. It’s funny ‘cos in one of my first posts in this blog, I mentioned that I was at their launch night, and that I wasn’t really into their music, but now I really do like it! My musical tastes must have changed a bit over the last eighteen months!

The second week at Soul Survivor allowed me to relax a bit more… I spent a lot of the time hanging out with a load of guys I know from Tamworth who were camping there that week. I hadn’t seen any of them since last summer so it was cool catching up with what everyone had been doing. What was a bit of a shock was finding that Matt Passey has got engaged to a girl called Amy, and also that Rob Steward has got engaged as well!

And then for the final week, I had to move my tent to yet another pitch, but this time I was camping with Sarah from lifegroup and her friend Emma. Also there were another couple of their friends – Caroline and Colin – but they were staying in a local B&B because Caroline’s going to be having a baby in less than 5 weeks!

It was a really nice few days to end the holiday, but I was really feeling tired as it drew to a close, and I seem to have picked up a bit of a throat infection or something whilst being there! Or it might be something to do with the fact I’ve just eaten junk for the last 14 days!!

Check out my massive collection of photos from this year’s Soul Survivor here.

I bumped into quite a few people who I hadn’t seen in a long time whilst I was there… on the first week, I saw Fiona Bailey from uni who was there with some friends, and then Ali came down from Bristol on three of the days with a couple of girls who live nearby to her. And then, in the second week, I saw Michyla Hickling (also from when I was in Birmingham) and spent some time catching up on what people have been up to over the last few years! Someone who I was surprised to see was Rob Davies who I lived with in Kings Heath just before I moved permanently to Manchester – I’d not heard from Rob since ‘cos he moved back to Wales when we all moved out of the house. Oh, and quite weird was on the penultimate night, after the main meeting, someone came up to me and asked if they knew me. I looked at her for a few seconds knowing that I recognised her, and then suddenly realised that it was Chris Thomas who was my smallgroup leader when I was at Riverside! It’s mad the amount of people you’ve lost touch with that you bump into at events like this!

by Gareth

Launch night

Just got back from a kind of launch night for a new band produced by Zarc Porter and Mark Pennels called ‘The Band With No Name’ (www.thebandwithnoname.com) and they were pretty cool! It wasn’t exactly my taste (hip-hop/rap/dance) but I could appreciate the quality of it. My mate Jeb asked me this morning if I wanted to go ‘cos he had a couple of complimentary tickets, so I wasn’t originally planning on being there. We drove probably about 10 miles into the Cheshire countryside to this massive hotel in the middle of no-where, on a hill overlooking the whole of Manchester (was a pretty impressive sight!) and saw this band perform some tracks and outline their vision for working with kids across cities all over the UK. Andy Hawthorne was there as well, and he gave a short talk and it all sounded really exciting! I did feel like me and Jeb were the outsiders slightly ‘cos there were probably about 150 people in this function room, and I’m sure they were all reasonably important bods… I recognised quite a few faces of people from events I’ve been to. Anyway, came away with a nice goodie bag with a poster, single and t-shirt, so all in all, a good night!