Tag / Manchester

by Gareth

I’m a geek!

Last night I was at a Geek Party at Rob & Jenny Kay’s, where you had to go dressed as something inspired by geek chic! Now it may come as real surprise (since I am a bit of a self-confessed geek) that I was really struggling with a costume for the night, but with a couple of days to go, I suddenly hit on gold!

I decided to go as the ultimate geek – Mr Dave Bateman!

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To make this dream a reality, I wondered about the best way to go about it, even Googling to find out how to make an actual 3d head(!), but finally settled on printing his face onto some card to make an oversized mask, with a couple of eyeholes punched through his actual eyes!

It wasn’t the most comfortable thing to wear for the whole evening if I’m honest, but I really enjoyed how it slightly freaked people out as they talked to me!

When Dave himself finally arrived around 10 o’clock, I think he found it pretty strange to have a bobbing-head version of him staring right back!

And the mask proved so popular that everyone wanted to wear it!

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Check out the full set of photos from the party in my Facebook photo album.

So what else? Well, going back a couple of weekends, I was down in Tamworth for Brandon and Chloe’s 2nd birthday party!

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by Gareth

Music and pain

A couple of weeks ago, me and James went down to London for two days to do a shoot with the 29th Chapter for their new music video.

It was a pretty manic couple of days – we headed down late on the Tuesday night and stayed in a Travelodge on the M1, and then arrived in Ealing for about 10 o’clock. The shooting was split into 2 blocks – the first day was a chromakey day, and the second was a live performance.

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James.

The greenscreen that had been hired for the shoot was massive! We spent the morning rigging it up, then tried to light it evenly which was easier said than done! Then the guys got into their costumes (which I won’t reveal at this stage – I’ll wait until they’ve announced what single they’re releasing!) and we spent the rest of the day filming various set pieces and individual verses. It was a pretty long day… we wrapped around 10.30pm and then had a bit of a drive to a really nice hotel in some other part of London (I have no idea where!)

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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

House nightmare, plus Commonwealth Games!

Right… quick update on what’s happening in my life!

I moved out of my house a week ago, which was an absolute nightmare! All my stuff is now spread about at my mum and dad’s garage, my grandparents’ spare bedroom, Cathy’s cellar, Sarah’s garage, Jeb & Nicky’s back room and a storage unit in a warehouse in Stockport! I’m also currently renting a room in Emma’s house in Levenshulme with a girl from Spain and a guy who’s up in Manchester as a volunteer in the Commonwealth Games. It’s a pretty small room, with quite a lot of my things in it(!), but hopefully it should be just for a few weeks.

Actually, we’re looking to exchange contracts and have completion for around the 20th August, so that’s only a couple of weeks away. It’s worked out quite well (I hope!), ‘cos if it does get sorted that week, then I’ll be at Soul Survivor for week A – be back in Manchester during week B, which is when I should get the house – and then be back down to Soul Survivor for week C. I was originally planning on being there for week B as well, but Chris had problems booking, and by the time he applied, week B was totally full, so all the Coton Green guys are going on C.

I got into the spirit of the Commonwealth Games on Saturday – there was a spare ticket available to go and see the Rugby Sevens Quarter Finals at the City Of Manchester Stadium, so I ended up going to that. It was really cool… I thought I might not enjoy it ‘cos I’m not particularly interested in rugby, but I really got into it, and the atmosphere in the stadium was amazing! I even ended up watching the semi-finals and final on TV on Sunday afternoon – I never thought that would happen!!

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!