BOTB over

Well that one was a pretty fun night again - congrats to everyone who played!

First up (in case anyone needed proof the draw was random) were Babagau and Friends. Babagau is a crazy Greek bassist, and his friends were Marc, myself, Terra and Ronan for that night. Normally we just get together and jam for a couple of hours at a time, without stopping or talking - but as the LMS demanded a half hour set and two disparate songs, we swapped some instruments after 25 minutes, paused for a couple of seconds, and then carried on. Two guitars with effects, one fretless bass with a load of effects, and a full digital keyboard with an effects pedal, you get the idea.

The music was a bit less fun to play than normal, and I literally could not hear my keyboard on stage for the entire half hour, but it was still pretty amusing watching the reactions of the usual LMS crowd to some experimental prog. I think the overall opinion was; "Good, but not my style" - which is fair. Oh, did I mention I was half naked and coated in varying bits of body paint? Pics when I get them..

Following that was Allucinere - Terra's 'hardcore' lot, and the only Aston band at the moment who are properly recording, gigging and making a lot of their own original stuff. It's not quite my sort of thing but I do really like a couple of their tracks - normally the ones led by Rob Moore, their keyboardist, who's ace.

Bit early in the night, and a bit of a rubbish crowd for their needs meant that there wasn't too much rocking out or anything, but they still put on a good show - and I do have one photo of Terra doing his little Busted jump from a pretty impressive height:



On third (I think) were The Clerks, who ended up winning the night. Very improved from last year, playing some proper rock mixed in with some indie. They were very tight and had a nice groove to what they did, and clearly enjoyed playing the music too, which is important. When they led in the intro to Sultans of Swing myself & Gib almost cried, thinking they'd screw it up beyond belief, but I only managed to count 3 mistakes during the guitar solos, so I'm pretty happy with that. Good job.

After (or before) The Clerks came The Queue, Aston's ultimate pub band, playing a nice mix of pop rock and um, rocky pop. Tony seemed a bit confused (ie: drunk) as they came on stage, and at first thought he was a crowd member, and then a keyboardist, before being persuaded to play the drums. Nothing massively special from these guys, but good fun music all the way through - and an awesome techno intro to one of their originals from keyboardist Matt - loved it.

Crank Cranker/The Reacharound Agenda came on fifth - they're anything but poppy. Marc Harvey (who also played as Babagau's friend) jammed on a bass with a bunch of effects whilst John Guy laid down some nice beats. I really liked the way that Marc would drop into the background sometimes and you'd actually hear the drums leading - don't think anyone else managed that on the night, and John's a good drummer too. I enjoyed it, not entirely sure the majority of the crowd did though, I think they wanted something a bit more danceable by that time of night.

Penultimate band on was my own lot - the gorgeous Tie-Dye Quartet, and I'm pretty sure if there was a 'best dressed band' award then we deserved it. Terra looked smart, Tim & myself wore suits and Julie-oh wore the fantastic dress that we bought earlier in the week for her.

We played three originals (catchily titled 'Julie's Song', 'Tim's Jam' and 'Ina's Jam') and two covers (Ain't No Sunshine [Eva Cassidy style] and Just The Two Of Us [Grover Washington Jr. Style]) - which seemed to go down pretty well. We got a round of applause after each song, and even got the odd one after what the crowd thought was a particularly good solo from whichever of us.

Ju's song was a little bit odd to play, as for some reason we managed to start it at about twice the normal speed, so I'm not sure how that sounded, but being nice and professional we worked around it - just meant I had to play walking bass instead of the nice groove I'd worked out. We'd only practised Julie's song and my jam twice, within the space of an hour or two a couple of days before the gig, before that we hadn't even heard them. Tim's jam we knew a little better, as we'd made it up that time we played at Boots, and that went well - the theme's so haunting. My jam's pretty much just an excuse for a 5 minute bass solo, but I noticed Julie doing some funky stuff on the trumpet in the breaks - can't wait to hear that one!

Final band on was The Hookahs.

Anyhow, great night was had by all, well done to the Clerks, and as soon as I get photos and mp3s, I'll post them up on here :)