A new year greets us
with the blooming and sad decay of January. Snows, sleets and slush have been
our bed follows this month but has it dampened our British weather hardened
spirits - well to be honest it has a bit. Traumatic hailing from headlines
almost everyday might have suggested that the UK was a goner this time for
sure. Thankfully, other than occasionally damp socks and the cats down at
'E.ON' getting fatter we've just about pulled through.
The Monsters kicked
the year off resolutely practicing hard and gigging. Perhaps the most fun we've
had was trekking down to Moira to play at the National Forest Folk Club. We
almost didn't make it down because of the weather and Kieran's car angrily
throwing one of its wipers onto the motorway in protest. Kieran affectionately
calls his car Roxanne or 'Roxy' for short - it seems like it was a bad time of
the month for Roxy but she survived delivering us unharmed to Moira. We played
to a smallish weather beaten crowd who where really supportive, wildly cheering
after each set. We played two sets premiering two new songs written recently -
Amy's Gastown and a Finish tune
called 'Vralkada'. The show went
fantastically well warming the audience up for their journeys homeward in the
snow.
Unbeknownst to us Dick
Dixon was at the National Forest Folk Club , appearing at the end with a big
grin he wanted to congratulate us. For those not in the know - Dick Dixon runs
a number of folk enterprises but is best known for being the man behind Warwick
Folk Festival. Dick enjoyed the night so much that he asked us to come along to
Warwick and play a few concert spots in 2010 immediately after we'd played! We
were delighted with the offer and accepted, if you're at Warwick this year come
and say hello. We'll be doing concert performances and we'll also be doing
workshops. We have yet to confirm the particulars of said workshops but
suggestion range from clogs, fiddle, bass, tune accompaniment etc. Kieran has
been muttering threatingly about doing a workshop called 'ComMandoCello' or
possibly 'Going ComMandoCello - no
capos, no pants ' if he can get away with it.
On that note festivals
have been approaching the Monsters with increasing regularity. The word is out
- who left the bloody door open, it's going take ages to find the bugger. ...Er,
onwards I guess....The Monsters have been planning different shows and ideas have
been plentiful, favourites currently include - Acoustic performance with extra
special tandem jumping, elctro-dance performance featuring Producer 'the touch'
and Beatboxer Ashely Hobbins and the original Pans People and one of our favourites
the UV ceilidh (lit entirely by Ultra Violet lights). The possibilities are our
oysters....or something like that.
New ideas have been
pulsing through the frighteningly net savvy David this month as the internets
course through him making monsterceilidhband.co.uk more and more high tech like
the Lawnmower man at a sÃÂéance. Please stop by and check it out - David hasn't
come out of his room and has been insisting on people referring to him as 'the Webmaster
Dave'. He has created new forms and built a database driven website Steve Jobs
would be proud of (would have said Bill Gates but we Monsters are Macs now!).
If you understand what all that means please leave us a comment on myspace or
facebook explaining it in as small detail as possible. In fact don't bother we
won't understand....except for David who will probably quite like the company of
another person who only speaks in hexadecimal right now...
Reverbnation is our
new vice at the mo and you may well get this little blog posted to you if
Kieran manages it. Check us out on it - do whatever it is you do with it, then
get yourself a can of stella and go down the quayside, pet.
Exciting news about
Amy - she will be available on iPlayer for the second time since her fantastic
performance at the end of the Sting's Winter song book. Amy will be on
Scotland's BBC TV Alba with the fantastic Shee. We'll update you with more news
when we get it. Coincidentally the Shee have been booked at this years National
Forest Folk Festival along with the Monsters. Other artists include Ade
Edmonson and the Bad Shepherds and The Peatbog Faeries.
From that plug we
claim the bath chain of loneliness, turn the tap of completion off because
we've finished running the blog. We hope you've enjoyed a good soak in the
murky waters of the Monsters.
Taraa for now,
Monsters
