This Perfect Day: MOTFEST 2010

This years's Mouth of Tyne Festival again got perfect weather and was the best attended one I've seen so far. The website is here. The downside of this was that the food and drinks trailers had permanent queues which we circumvented by bringing in our own drinks which meant we could lie on the grass , talk and listen to the bands in glorious sunshine , not having to move to get a drink. The contents of our pack looked like this at some point in the afternoon.

The only time we had to move was to get up for a toilet break, and must admit the portaloos were spotless and almost pleasant to use!!! Maybe that's a sign of age.

Only caught four of the acts.

Walked in on Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves of Destiny who were excellent crowd pleasers , and included a cracking version of "Devil In Disguise" . Well worth tracking down and here's a litle video of them below:

Next up were the Batacuda Sound Machine from Auckland New Zealand (web site here) who served up some festival friendly funk. Them live below:

Next up were the hit of the day , The Easy Star All Stars , who entertained with dub and reggae versions of most of Sergeant Peppers , Pink Floyd's Money , Radiohead's Paranoid Android and closing with Karma Police . An odd choice to finish with but awesome and perfect festival entertainment especially in the sun . You can download their albums here , and see them below doing "Money":

Headliners were the Lightning Seeds , but without England in the World Cup Final (which wasnt gonna happen) they had their work cut out . The opened with "Sense" my absolute favourite and managed to keep big chunks of the crowd dancings even through the ill advised cover of Phil Spector's "Be My Baby". Below is an acoustic rendition of Sense:

All in all another excellent Festival , looking forward to next years!!

The Good, The Bad, and The Abominable Showmen - Next Gig Tyneside Irish Centre - Thursday 4th November 2010

From Jim

All

The next Abominable Showmen gig will take place on Thursday 4^th November at The Tyneside Irish Centre, and will have a Country / Western / Cowboy theme to it

Tickets will be £4 and T-shirts will also be available, design to be confirmed but Chris will come up with something special as usual.

Let me know if you would like to come along.

Cheers

The Abominable Showmen

Jim Stevenson

Strategic Systems Solutions

Newcastle Office

From Tom:

The Abominable Showmen boldly ride once more! Thursday 4th November.

Even a goldarned fool plumb knows you should never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a Showman from any direction. So you'd best lock up your cattle, silverware and womenfolk cuz the rootinest, tootinest, shootinest hombres west, east, north and south of the Pennines will  be thundering into town imminently.

Yes indeed, those desperadoes of notoriously abominable disposition shall be inflicting their scandalously intemperate musical ways upon the good folk attending an otherwise respectable soirée at the Tyneside Irish Saloon on Thursday 16th September, the Year of our Lord 2010. The God fearing and temperate few amongst you should consider themselves forewarned, for I believe the Showmen intend to exercise what they regard as their irrefutable Constitutional right to arm bears.

As you may have calculated by now, they will allegedly be performing both kinds of music. Country AND Western.
Leastways they appear to be professing a 'Cowboy' theme or some such and they have further remarked that all funds herewith obtained shall be devoted to worthy causes. Bar those intentions I currently claim sweet ignorance.

They proclaim that admission shall be  £4.00

For those wishing to garb themselves appropriately the latest Paris fashions will be available, as soon as the Showman Dog & Pony Express delivers my Sears catalogue. Should you possess a spirit of enquiry or a perhaps even penchant for partaking in this event, feel free to direct your attentions to me.

Y'all take care now.
And remember, if'n you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'. (A lesson some of my foremen have yet to comprehend).
Spread the word.

     Black Tom.  (2nd floor back at the SLH branch of the old PPA mine).

Abominable Showmen - Centre For Life 26th November 2009

The gig was a sellout - call back for photos, video and the like.

Here's the missive from Jim :

"All

Just wanted to let you all know that we raised £570 on Thursday night.

This will be divided equally between Cure For Parkinsons and St Oswalds Hospice.

Thanks to everyone for helping raise this amount.

Cheers
The Abominable Showmen
---------------------------------------------
All

We just wanted to thank everyone for a great night last night.

We had a brilliant time and we hope you enjoyed yourselves.

I’m not sure exactly how much we have made as I still have some to come in but I’ll let you all know as soon as I find out.

As usual we would like to thank the following…..

Graeme Bell and Tim Hines for setting up and manning the PA,
The Centre For Life for letting us have the room for free and to all the staff for their help,
Tom and Mike for selling shirts and tickets

And especially to all you that came along, bought shirts, tickets, copious amounts of alcohol and helped make it such a brilliant night.

Thanks
Chris, Richie, Stephen and Jim"

Abominable Showmen - Next Gig 26th November 2009

The supported charities for this gig are St. Oswald's Hospice and Cure Parkinsons Trust.

From Jim

"All

Just a quick note to let you know that the SSS band The Abominable Showmen are playing at the Centre For Life on November 26th.

The room will not be as big as it was last time as we will have it partitioned off so the number of tickets will be less than previous gigs (about 120 – 130 I think but I need to confirm this)

I know it’s a few weeks away but let me know if you would like a ticket, they are £4 each, with all profits being donated to charity (to be decided)

As usual we will be selling shirts as well and they will be around £10 each depending on how many orders we receive.

The gig will have an 80’s theme to it (although not all the songs will be from that era) and the T-shirts will reflect this.

Let me know if you want any tickets and if you want shirts please let me know what size.

Thanks
Jim

email: jim dot stevenson atsign sssworldwide.com (to stop spambots)"

=========================================================

We have decided to go with the A-Team design.

We have also decided to get some camouflage shirts printed, (please note that the camouflage shirts are smaller fitting than the usual shirts we get).

Please let me know as soon as possible if you would like the Black or Camouflage

The cost for these will be

Black £10.00 (£13.50 girls) Camouflage £12.00 (£13.50 girls)

If you want one please let me know size and colour please.

Cheers
Jim

Summertyne 2009

The Summer Festivals are coming thick and fast and the Tyneside Americana Festival under the Summertyne banner is another great one.This year must be the best one yet with a superb turn out and an incredible line up. Some goigs are paid and some are free and it's a combination of live acts and films shown both inside and outside of the Sage.

Because of the clashes , the fact that there was hardly an inch of free space outside , the hot sun and all that , I ended up catching just a couple of the acts .

Two Fingers of Firewater and Eliza Gilkyson produced some excellent country sounds , but unfortunately I missed out on the headlining Hot Club of Cowtown , due a major sun induced headache.

However Ryan Shaw was a major revelation , the band starting with a reasonable funk / soul instrumental workout , before Ryan appeared with a stunning rendition of the Jimmy Cliff song "Many Rivers To Cross" , this was followed by one of their own song featuring gorgeous backing vocals from the band. If you want to download the album you can download it here. Here's them in 2006 doing "We Got Love":




Had to cut the gig short to catch Baby Gramps inside for his fourth set of the day!! I've seen Baby Gramps before and theres a lot of debate as to whether he's real or animatronic!!. Let me put you right, the guy is a total gentleman as I found out talking to him after the gig . The gig itself featured a new pirate song , and a hell of a lot of audience participation. A Baby Gramps gig is an experience you will never forget, this him with the Akron Family doing "Cape Cod Girls" on Letterman:



Bands Featured :

Memory of a Free Festival - MOTFEST Sunday 2009

The Mouth of Tyne Festival has been going for a number of years now (see the website here)and still maintains the essence of a decent free festival , no wristbands , no fenced off areas, decent music and you can get a decent drink either at the Iron Horse Saloon in the Priory on at one of the many pubs along Front Street such as Hugo's and The Turks.

The rain kept off and early in the afternoon with visited the trad jazz stage. I'm not really a fan of this sort of music but the bands fit the event and it's enjoyable to lie on the grass, drink beer , and soak in the atmosphere. We caught the Hot Five Jazzmakers from Canada and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band from Switzerland , both were excellent. Any bands available are on the carousel at the bottom of this post.

Next up were the excellent Soznak in Front Street . They should have been on the main stage. If you've never heard them think Baghdaddies with African instead of Middle Eastern influences. And the video is the rather wonderful "Weekily":


Unfortunately , we had to leave them early to see the wonderful Teddy Thompson who even covered Abba's Super Trouper , has the most amazing voice and held the crowd spellbound for an hour. The guy is a genius , just like his dad.

Amazingly the headliners Dodgy were even better , being greeted by bright sunshine and steaming through hits and album tracks delighting the crowd. Someone got "Staying Out For The Summer / Good Vibrations" here:


The problem was that the Baghdaddies were in South Shields when Dodgy were on so here's them doing "Not Drowning But Raving":



Here's some stuff from the afformentioned bands on Amazon:

Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?.. It Certainly Can!!

..a tribute to the not so early, but still great Lux Interior , late of the Cramps, who shuffled off his mortal coil earlier this year. This post will grow as I sort pictures and video, so give me a day or two . The videos for Jeepers Peepers will NOT be youtubed unless they specifically want them done.

The night was organised by Mr Dave Campbell , circus master extraordinaire, providing us with a veritable cornucopia of delectably depraved entertainment , in keeping with the memory of Lux Interior.


The excellent Jeepers Peepers Burlesque group opened up the festivities and provided superb diversions throughout the night...

Here's some images from the event , accompanied by Link Wray's "Rawhide" available here.

Incidentally the Cluny are hosting the "Female Tournament of Tease" to select the "Naughty North" entry.

We then had a suitably shambolic magician Steve Drayton, straight out of the Wheeltappers with an array or tricks and jokes which stretched the meaning of the word "entertainment" . Definitely he has to be seen to be believed!!







First band of the night were Staggerin' Jon Lee and His High Class Chancers with and interesting fermentation of Link Wray , Pedal Steel , and Fifties crooning, appropriately attired!!







Then came bug eyed escapologist
Chris Cross seen with the
master of ceremonies (left)
and on stage (right).





Due to a band dropping out , Ratty and The Shitkickers, filled in
admirably with their own brand of entertaining psychobilly.









The Light Brigade provide a superbly Cramped set of echoey Human Fly Rock and Roll!!








The finale was the almighty Coyotemen, all backed by some incredible B movies ("The Mad Butcher", "Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks" and "Teaserama" are three that I can recall at this point). All this cost a fiver . It was really like have your very own time machine!! Besuited , and suitably masked the set was a litlle slower than normal as this was a Cramps Tributes , but still as impressive as ever , and it was good to hear that the still "Take Shit From No One"!!!!


....and finally The Coyotemen's rendition of "Teenage Werewolf"

.......