It has to be said that it is a sad factor for any band when one of the highlights of their annual itinerary is a gig at a children’s fire work party, and yet that is just the case for The Mudheads.
CJ does a lot of the practical work for the band, building cases, restoring the trailer etc, so in gratitude of this the band perform once a year, free of charge, at the primary school, at which both his daughters attend.
For some reason CJ has never secured us a gig at one of their ‘summer’ affairs. No, it’s always on firework night, and it is ALWAYS freezing.
That being said, it is a highlight for the band as we normally perform to about three hundred enthusiastic kids and parents.
The whole idea is having a live band (of hopefully high enough quality) prevents the punters from legging it as soon as the last firework has popped, and keeps them around long enough to drink all the beer and polish off the hotdogs, thus raising more funds for the school.
As always, it’s a bit of a rush as we are on at 6:30pm and Aaron in particular doesn’t finish work until gone 6:00pm. This leaves him about 20 minutes to get all away across town in the rush hour!
I managed to get there early and CJ and I got all the gear up (although to be fair, poor old CJ had emptied the trailer and put everything up in place...on his own...he is a diamond). Although we had to scale the PA down, which was a bit of a shame, as everything including the lights were running off of a single 13amp plug. CJ who is a lot more knowledgeable about such matters assured me that by using the ‘full’ PA, we could take out half of Bristol…or at the very least….the bandstand in which we were playing.
Aaron (who doesn’t drive….and anybody who has tried in one of the UK’s major cities wont blame him) had his erstwhile chauffer at the wheel (his girlfriend) and they found themselves endeavouring to re-enact the scene from the Italian job with the three minis through the back streets of Bristol.
Against the odds, he made it to the gates of the school at bang on 6:30pm only to be halted by a bit of a snag. The bloke on the gate.
“You aint coming in here mate unless you've got a ticket”
“But I don’t need a ticket, I’m with the band”.
“What band?”
“The band that is playing over there in the band stand”
“I don’t see no band”
“That’s because one of them is stood here talking to you, you twit”
Thankfully, the chair of the Parent Teacher Association” heard what was going on and came and rescued Aaron who made it to the band stand just as I was going to plan B and getting the old acoustic out!.
Now bear in mind that most of the music coming out of the speakers until that point had come from ‘High School Musical’ we could have been in for a bit of a long night. However, it would appear that the majority of people from South Bristol like their music loud and fast, which is just as well as this is exactly what we specialise in.
The fact that we must have looked like the Teletubbies we had so many layers of clothing on didn’t appear to deter anyone and we performed as per plan and thankfully on form and had a great time.
Thankfully the electics held and the only bangs and flashes came from the fireworks and not from any of our equipment.
After about an hour Aaron’s fingers started turning blue and the crowd were beginning to disperse, and so we decided to call it a day.
It was then that somebody bounded up and asked CJ if we could play in somebody’s living room for a surprise 40th birthday party…and CJ said yes!
Now that would be hilarious! We turn up with a couple of tonnes of amplification and drums…and somebody has a heart attack!
I think we had better get the acoustics out!
Hey, but at least it will be warm.
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