Blogs

The one downside about being in a band is that you can't ever go and see yourselves live.  The one thing I would just love to be able to do, is jump off my stool, come out front, join the audience who were dancing to our music and then simply pop back onto my stool again. When there is dancing doing on,I start bouncing up and down on my less than springy stool.  It is a pretty unforgiving stool and at times I've nearly taken out as much equipment as Sharon has the potential to do when hopping around on one leg.

Hi Y'all - I have wanted to draw up a diary of my part of our collective experience all week but have been dogged with technology nightmares so I'm just going to describe my highlights in brief, before I forget all the detail!

A dead laptop battery, limited internet access and lack of opportunity have meant very few (no) blog activity from me. When we have had the chance the pics have come first - hope you have seen them.

They like rock in Chesterfield, and they are starting to like The Amplifires. A whole bunch of guys who we have met before at The County came down to the Vic - quite a long trek really - and they danced, pogo'd and well adored us. We autographed posters as well. We were told the sound was great and we are being re-booked on cancellations and whenever they can fit us in. We also manged to get some gigs in Sheffield too - not Gleadless!

 Thanks guys, its great to feel wanted! See you next time

The real highspot of last weekend was playing Bonsall Carnival - challenging too as we played an entirely covers based set including the 'Tollerton' numbers. Sharon shouted "Bonsoir Bonsall" incredibly loudly and was almost overwhelmed by the audience response of "Allo Amplifires". This is what it was all about. At one point too we had a load of people up dancing! Sadly we had to leave early so only caught the first few numbers when the members of Eat Cake blew the audience away with their tight, tuneful and tasteful renditions of ever popular favourites.

Work has started on the new CD, drum and bass tracks were laid down a week last Sunday using David's house as the control centre and his garage as the live room for drums and DI'd (Direct Injection - silently recorded) bass. We managed to get eight tracks recorded in a very productive day. This compared very favourably with work we did two months earlier at a commercial studio where the inadequacy of the equipment and an inept (for inept read well-meaning but clueless) engineer resulted in nothing more than a hole in our pockets and little else.

Played two encores last night - the audience was THAT enthusiastic! The venue is just starting to put on bands and we are always keen to help enterprising owners and businesses. The audience at the bar was small but it was hot and many people were outside listening - don't blame them! They made themselves heard though and they clapped and cheered for more - I expect we will be back soon. Thanks for a good night if you were there.

 Steve