I wasn’t prepared to offer any advice, everyone I’ve know who has found themselves in a similar situation, including myself, has dealt with it in a different manner, but I offered my time and ear should it be required.  Most people tend to hold on too long before taking the step of admitting they have a problem.  Thinking that they only need a week to ‘pull myself around’ people are often surprised how hard the wall hits them now they have let the barriers they have set up lower just a fraction.  My week turned into nearly six months but I know others who have made it back earlier and some for whom the process took longer, there are no hard and fast rules.

I hope that the current situation resolves very soon for my friend as I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.  I know the next few weeks are going to be difficult for them so I will be here as and if they or their family need me.  

Really looking forward to next week’s trip to Madrid so I thought I’d show what I was off to see…if this works!

The Guild I’m a member of is ‘Ready to Bleed‘ (RtB) which was set up by a bunch of wastrels from Scotland who all worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland.  This quickly spread to further family and friends and eventually to me via Billy and Steph.  Steph’s brother Stu being one of the original members.  RtB is now a truly international set up with members in the States, Sweden and Portugal whom we have picked up along the way.  Like all large groups of people tensions arise every so often and being a largely adult Guild we discuss these tensions in a mature manner until they are resolved.  However we are currently undergoing tensions which could threaten the continued harmony.

My gaming goals are largely set by the amount of time I allow myself to play each week.  That currently stands at a couple of evenings through the week and weekend mornings, allowing me to progress at a reasonable rate through the game without totally alienating Gill.  I could certainly play more, the damned thing is so addictive, but real life (Gill) is far too important to ignore.  Others in RtB are either single or play with their partner so the opportunity to play is greatly increased and herein lies our current tension.  A number of people are concerned that RtB isn’t progressing as quickly through the game content as they would like and that the Guild is holding back their character development.

This has lead to a couple of our Swedish friends leaving the guild for pastures new and at least one player has removed their main character from the Guild to join another who are further through the content.  I can understand that RtB just wasn’t offering them what they wanted out of the game and I wonder how many other players are feeling the same way.  I know of at least three players who have been approached by other guilds to join them and leave RtB and I’m sure there are probably more.  As things stand the number of players we have lost won’t have much, if any, impact on what RtB is capable of achieving but any more, especially if they are healers, and we could be in trouble.

The player who removed her main character is also one of RtB’s officers, those who decide the direction we should take, and I’ve been waiting for her to lose that status but that hasn’t happened yet.  I know I’m not the only one who feels she shouldn’t have that role any more and if the situation persists I’ll make my feelings known to both her and the Guild Leader.

I needn’t have worried, what followed was one of those life affirming moments you occasionally get where everything comes together at a gig to create an atmosphere and spectacle that fills your heart with joy.  Now I know that all sounds a bit over the top and pompous but you could see it in the faces of the audience who sang along to every word leading Steve Overland to just stop and let them get on with it, a huge grin plastered across his face.  The entire band looked totally overwhelmed at the reception they were given, Andy Barnett stood there with tears streaming down his face and each and every one of them played a blinder.  The feel good factor was even to last through a 10 minute power shortage which put the backline and PA out of action with not a single boo to be heard. 

I’ll not bother with a set list suffice to say it was a crowd pleasing ‘best of’ that covered pretty much their whole career and included Blood and Gasoline, my favourite.  I don’t have the skill to put into words just how good it made me feel being there, the planets must have aligned and God sent angels to kiss our fevered brows for all I know.  At the end of the set, just to please us all even further, it was announced that they would be looking to tour in the New Year.  I can’t wait.

So back to the hotel it was to discuss the day’s proceedings over a pint or two.  The general consensus was that, of the bands we saw, three were poor (Crunch, Jorn and Harem Scarem), one was OK (Jaded Heart), one great (Tyketto) and one exceptional (FM).  That might not seem like a great return for our near £200 outlay for tickets, hotel and petrol but I would have paid that just to have seen the set FM produced, it was that good. 

There were a number of tables of people in the hotel bar all going through what appeared to be the same dissection as we were and all seemed to be smiling.  That is until the table to the left consisting of what looked like two couples were joined, uninvited, by a third who proceeded to highjack their conversation.  We left watching them look for an escape route, grateful that it was them rather than us who had been stuck with ‘been there, done that man’ and his equally goby wife.

With the first, largely disappointing, half of Firefest gone anticipation grew as the next three performances had been classed as ‘special events’, two farewells and a reunion.

First up were Harem Scarem a Canadian act that had made a significant impression on the melodic rock world over the past decade or so with many proclaiming them as the best band on the scene.  I’d never really bought into the hype and the only CD I own by them is a Jap import odds and sods compilation of b-sides and live tracks that I’d picked up somewhere for a couple of quid.  I wasn’t too sure what to expect but judging by the number of punters wearing their T-shirts a lot of people were really looking forward to this, their final gig.

Boy was I under whelmed, what a waste of space.  Not only did the music largely leave me cold but the band themselves didn’t seem to give a stuff.  Listless banter between songs played with all the willingness of Margaret Thatcher signing a petition supporting the miners strike gave no life to what was supposed to be a rousing final send off.  Perhaps the reason lay behind the fact that the band had just grown bored with the Harem Scarem persona evidenced by the revelation that they weren’t splitting up at all but rather undergoing a name/style change.  Coming from a band that did the exact same thing about 5 years ago the news was greeted with groans from most of the audience.  So long guys, please close the door behind you.

Next up was the final ever show from Tyketto and the thing Gill had been looking forward to all day, frontman Danny Vaughn.  In truth Tyketto only ever came out of the woodwork for the occasional short tour of festival and hadn’t recorded anything together in years so it was no real surprise that they were calling it a day.  Danny Vaughn continues to tour and record with his own band, Vaughn, and recently also secured in spot in the Eagles cover band Illegal Eagles so has little, if any, time for anything else.  As for the other guys, well no one seems to know what they have planned. 

As soon as the band hit the stage it was obvious that they were about to show Harem Scarem exactly how to go about putting on a celebratory, farewell show.  Mixing the set between songs chosen by posters on their website, set regulars and songs chosen by the band themselves Tyketto pretty much covered their whole career evenly.  Everything was played with a verve sadly lacking from Harem Scarem and the audience responded, singing along with gusto.  My personal highlight was a stirring rendition of ‘Standing Alone’ but the whole set was top notch.  Well done chaps, thanks for all the good times and I hope the future holds much creative joy for you all.

So there we go, two starkly different ends to a bands musical journey and this to be followed by the rebirth of one of Britain’s finest proponents of blues based melodic pop rock (couldn’t think how else to describe them, AOR doesn’t do them justice although I guess many would label them as such).  I was feeling a little concerned at this point.  FM were the reason I let Gill talk me into coming tonight but how would they be received after 12 years away and having to follow a great crowd pleaser like Tyketto’s set?

All will be revealed in part3.

Firefest is one of a number of melodic rock festivals that have been set up over the past decade or so, others include The Gods of AOR and Z Rock, but apart from a singular visit to the Gods I’ve tended to avoid them.  The main reason being the paucity of bands that are actually any good or have an original take on the genre, like the Journey clones who tend to proliferate the scene.  This time though I was prepared to bite the bullet, after a bit of a shove from Gill, and get my ass down to Nottingham.

Billy, Gill and I set of from Newcastle at about 8:30 and made it down to our hotel in great time.  We changed in our rooms and headed for Rock City which, it turns out, was situated on the road behind the hotel.  Very handy.  We had a small problem with the non arrival of our tickets but a quick email to the organisers sorted the problem with three tickets awaiting us at the box office.

The first band on the bill were Jaded Heart who had already started their set when we arrived.  I have their 2^nd (I think) CD, Slaves and Masters, which is Ok but nothing special and have resisted any temptation to purchase any more of the back catalogue, so I wasn’t expecting too much from them.  They put on quite a nice set (only recognised one song) of mid tempo rock that seemed to be a bit of a crowd pleaser.  Nothing to entice me to rush out and spend my hard earned but pleasant enough.

Crunch were the next band up and they intrigued me.  They started out life a Christian hair metal band (Guardian) before morphing into a modern rock band (Adriangale).  I have some Guardian on vinyl and the first Adriangale CD; all picked up on the cheap and all fitting into the OK but nothing special range in my collection.  Oh that Crunch were that good but boy did they stink.  The most interesting thing about them was wondering why the vocalist thought wearing the outfit he chose was a good idea.

We missed the next band, Valentine, due to the desperate need for some food.  Not that I was unduly worried, lead vocalist Hugo has built his reputation on being a Steve Perry look-alike/sound-alike but without any of Perry’s range or power.  So burgers and margaritas won out over poor Journey clones.  Taste for the win!

Speaking of people who have pretty much built their career due to sounding like someone else, next up was Jorn Lande.  The David Coverdale/Glenn Hughes clone strode onto stage and proceeded to indulge in as many Spinal Tap-isms as he could fit in during his 45 minute set.  Adding insult to injury his voice is obviously struggling at the moment and he insisted on doing more covers than original stuff.  His butchering of Deep Purples Stormbringer was particularly cringe worthy.  Next!

The blessed relief that greeted the end of Jorns’ set also marked what could be considered the end of the first half of the show.  Up next would be the 3 ‘special events’ of the day, more of which tomorrow.

I bit the bullet recently and created a Facebook page.  I had been avoiding doing so, it’s not like my social life is so hectic or exciting that it need to be electronically controlled, but I received an invite from a couple of people at work so…

The interface for creating the page couldn’t have been simpler and within five minutes a basic profile was up and running.  From there you can add numerous applications to the page, some showcasing your interest in music, books etc. and other which allow you to send friends virtual drinks *shrug* each to their own I guess. 

I plumped, amongst others, for an application called iLike which allows you to nominate your favourite music artists and add 30 second samples of some of their tracks to your profile.  I limited myself to artists I own stuff by just to try and keep a handle on numbers (I’m up to 183 artists at the moment and still nowhere near through my record collection yet) though I was disappointed that such musical titans as Pariah, Tysondog and pretty much any other NWOBH band you care to mention are conspicuous by their absence.  I also took the iLike music quiz which proved to be a bit of a bugger as I had never heard of half of the bloody bands they threw at me, especially the rap stuff.  Still finished with the top score amongst my friends though…I imagine that just makes me sadder than most.

One of the other things you can do is join groups of like minded Facebookers (what is the right collective term for Facebookers? A Library? An Omnibus?) on pretty much any subject you care to mention.  I have joined groups on music, American Football, Oncology etc etc and I’ve been surprised by the number of people who I know that I’ve stumbled across in there.  The biggest collection of people I know exists within the Mayfair Rock Club groups and a number of dodgy photographs from my Rudi Voller phase have made an appearance.  I must have a hunt through my photos to try and exact revenge.

Well I was due to visit the Carling Academy on Friday to see Y&T but wasn’t feeling too good, in a sniffley, man-cold, had a hard week kind of way.  Now normally Gill would have just dragged me out by my ear and made me enjoy myself but not this time.  You see we were due to be travelling down to Nottingham Rock City for Firefest IV on Saturday and neither of us wanted to take the chance that I might really be crook and make things worse and having to postpone the trip.

Gill tootled off into Town to meet Billy and I spent the rest of the evening doing a bit of this and a bit of that before giving up and going to bed and reading.  I’m currently working my way through Dave Sims‘ Cerebus graphic novels after requesting those that I don’t already have for Christmas.  It is a good 10+ years since I’ve read them and I’m thoroughly enjoying the Conan spoof madness.  If memory serves me well the series starts off well then becomes great before mirroring Sims’ own madness and going of the rails in later volumes.

I was in a semi conscious state when Gill returned full of good cheer (and cider) and she proceeded regale me with the nights events for about 20 minutes before dozing off.  I spent the next hour or so listening to her dulcet snoring and came to the conclusion I may as well have gone to the gig after all.

Picture if you can the scene. 

Four sweaty blokes sat around a table at the world famous Mr Latif’s Curry House fresh from basking in the glory of a Magnum gig at Newcastle’s Carling Academy.  Armed with bottles of Cobra lager (there was nothing else) we preceded to spend the next couple of hours taking it in turns to nominate a band/artist and then all of us choosing a favourite track by said band/artist.  I’m not sure what the staff or the rest of the punters made of it but we had a great time. 

This of course led to discussions regarding favourite tracks by genre, year released, track number etc. etc.  Now with all of us suffering at this point from serious Cobra poisoning there was no way we were going to remember all of this so we decided to do something about it.  A plan was hatched that every 2 months a compilation CD would have to be produced to the specification nominated by one of the four.

Now this of course can lead to problems as we all have similar but distinct music collections.  Billy is the king of prog madness, Rob is very much a classic rock bloke, I’ve got a collection that veers all over the place (Roland Rat anyone?) and poor Paul has a wife who has managed to limit his music purchases.  Given that we have had to come up with topics we can all comply with.

First up was Paul with a nice broad topic “The Best of AOR” and here I came across a problem I knew would challenge me the moment we came up with the idea.  I change my mind too often.  Ask me for my favourite bands of all time and depending on the time of day and which way the wind is blowing I’ll give you a different answer.  OK UFO will always be in there along with Rush but the other three could be anything from the Platters to King Crimson to Hawkwind to Jethro Tull to The Outfield to Jimmy Smith to….well you get the idea.

I made an initial shortlist of about 150 tracks, and that was difficult enough, before paring things right down to about 25 then plumping for the final selection which was decided by what would fit on the disc as much as than anything else.  The best thing about the whole experience was definitely digging out LP’s that hadn’t seen the light of day in years and rediscovering what made me buy them in the first place.  Or in some cases what had made me refuse to play them again in the past 15 years.

I’ll post some reflections on each of the CD’s we’ve produced so far; the Best of AOR, tracks or band names containing numbers, tracks that have a connection with the next track and the current task of track titles containing names.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the results so far and have enjoyed listening to the guys choices of tunes and there has been far less duplication than I anticipated.