So this weekend was pretty musically eventful for me. Two shows in total. I only played at one of them myself but a few of my good mates are in a band and they were playing a gig in a little village called Blunham. I’d never heard of it either but it’s just outside bedford. So yeah, having been at the cinema in Bedford watching Ice Age 3 (pretty good, nothing all that special though) I decided to go straight there, which turned out to be a bad idea because we got there before the band!
It was an all day “village fete” style affair with a lorry with a side-panel missing as the stage. Given that it was a day time sort of event we all sort of guessed that my friends band (Kicking Kays) would be on at some point during the day like, six or maybe sevenish, but no, they were told when we got there that they would be on at 9 – 9:30, and considering we got there at around half past four, we had a lot of time to kill.
So we began lying on the grass in the sun watching people fly their model aeroplanes in the field next to us, which appeared to be part of the whole event. One of the model planes flew right into the power-lines and the music cut out and the bouncy castle started deflating (full of children) – hilarious. The power was only out for a short time, around 20 seconds or so, but even so, we started to think it wasn’t coming back on and I don’t actually know who it was that flew the plane into the power lines, but I bet he/she was panicking.
The power did of course come back on, and that incident with the model plane was pretty much the last eventful thing that happened while we were there, after that, the six of us decided to go for a leisurely stroll round the village of Blunham. We started wandering down some back alleys behind houses, just generally trying to pass the time, and we came across a river. We’d been walking through some woodlandish area and then we saw a river with a weir stretching out in front of us. It was pretty wide as far as little back-water village rivers go, and pretty deep, and so of course the question was, who is going to get in?
We should have all known the answer to this question as if anyone was going to get in, it was only ever going to be one person and sure enough, with the offer of £12 on the table, Danny Barton, the lead singer and guitarist in Kicking Kays was in the water and swimming about. Sam, the bassist got down into his underwear and almost went fully in, but I think decided against it as Danny looked pretty damn cold when he got out!
So, Danny was of course dripping wet having been in the river (and not seen a penny from any of us I might add) and Sam was wandering around in nothing but his boxer shorts, it was fairly obvious to passers by that they’d been in the river, but what were they going to do? There wasn’t a “no swimming” sign anywhere. Or so we thought.
On wandering to the other side of the river (there was a bridge) we saw, clear as day, a big sign with the name of the river on it (I can’t remember what it was called) and “No Fishing” and “No Swimming” in big red writing. So, given that Danny was STILL wet and Sam (for some reason) was STILL in his boxers, we thought someone was probably going to say or do something less than friendly any minute as there was pretty much a steady stream of people walking past, so we decided to head back to the field.
Upon arriving back we were still only around halfway through the wait, but nothing more of note happened, so after a LONG wait, Kicking Kays were finally on the stage, and despite a slightly dodgy guitar sound on one of the guitars, they were absolutley brilliant. They kind of have their own brand of rock, I don’t really know what to call it other than Kay Rock, but it’s almost a cross between the Foo Fighters and Kings Of Leon, although when you imagine that match it doesn’t really sound like the Kays, I don’t know, you’ll have to listen to them (myspace.com/kickingkays) they really are very good. When onstage they combine their music with their natural ability to make people laugh and all in all I’d say Kicking Kays are one of my all time favourite bands to watch live, and they’re getting lazy with their gigging and general self promotion so anyone reading this blog needs to go to their myspace and comment the hell out of it saying that they should keep at it ‘cos they’re good.
So yeah, that’s one half of my music weekend, I’ve rambled a bit more than I intended to so I’ll post about the Sunday tomorrow.
Much Love x
