Rosie and Ed's wedding

After a disgracefully long break, filled with occasional rehearsals of variable quality, the Mudansha Tour kicked off again in the stunning surroundings of Houghton Lodge, where we were honoured to be asked to provide the music to round off Rosie and Ed's wedding day.

The omens were not brilliant - the request for a huge stage had gone missing, and we were on a tiny corner of an otherwise fantastically engineered tent. The roof of the fantastically engineered tent had a ventilating flap that was less-than-fantastically engineered, and let the rain in onto our kit and the dance floor, and shutting the flaps involved Dave and Charlie doing a routine from the Chinese People's Army Gymnastics Team. You had to see it to believe it. How no-one got injured is a mystery.

Dave was in the middle of a long weekend charity walk, and looked somewhat the worse for wear - ditto Ian (just back from a long mid-afternoon gig in Arundel) and Charlie (just back from long gig in combine harvester). Tod and Ian looked completely refreshed, though.

After some brilliant speeches and cake cutting, the whole throng gathered for the romantic first dance. Once again, there had been a tiny misunderstanding, and as the bride and groom prepared to do the routine they had rehearsed to Fleetwood Mac's cheesy pop classic 'Ooooh, you make loving fun', the Old Gits launched into Fleetwood Mac's gritty blues classic from the mid-Sixties, 'Need your love so bad'.

Confusion reigned for several bars, as the bride and broom looked at the band in disbelief, and the band all looked at each other wondering what had gone wrong (apart from Charlie starting in the wrong key). There was then a collective 'Oh Well' (geddit?), a mass shrugging of shoulders, and everyone just got on and danced.

For a band woefully short of competitive performance, we did very well. There was the odd outbreak of cramp, the odd outbreak of crap, but when the rigorously enforced stop time came, we think everyone had had a good time. We certainly had, and that's (almost) what counts.

We then ate too much wedding cake and cheddar. Nom nom nom.

The Star Wars Gig

For part two of the May Bank Holiday feast of music, we hit The Fox at Bramdean, setting up in the garden next to the bouncy castle. It was a delight to have Dan joining us again for the day, giving Todd's voice a break, and letting us do a few more songs that weren't Dan-free. Pictures below reflect the day perfectly - a young audience stunned into silence by our playing, Dave giving it what for, and a member of the Fox's staff who couldn't resist the urge to dance on the tables.....

 
 

At last....the Mudansha Tour starts!!

After months of preparation and rehearsal, the Mudansha Tour started. During these months, we've spent many hours in Shed 3b, honing our mediocre musical skills to the point where we felt fit to hit the road again. We tried breaking in a new guitarist to replace Dan, but after a couple of rehearsals and being given too much home work, Will decided he wouldn't join us after all. A shame.
Undaunted, we persevered, and after a false start at the Greatham Inn (get well soon, landlady), the Tour kicked off at the Bull Inn in Bentley. Some of the locals took the news rather badly, it seems....

 

It was the perfect way to get going again - a warm welcome, a sparse but enthusiastic crowd, and we played very well.

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

The Name of the 2015 Tour

One of the year's most important jobs has been done: a name has been found for the 2015 Tour.
It will be:


 無段者



^{(For those whose Japanese is a little rusty, this is 'mudansha', a Judo term, used for those who are beginners; in other words: "those without dan")}

Tod's holiday snap

This is apparently Tod on holiday. I'm not convinced.....I mean, we know he tans easily, but is that really him? Looks like Labi Siffre to me.

Update, 26 Feb: It's not Labi Siffre, it's Harry Belafonte. All together now: "Mary's boy child....."

Not dead yet

So I was sitting having my hair cut the other day, chatting with the lovely lady cutting away at my golden locks, and the topic of the Thomas Lord Old Gits came up. I directed her to this blog, and it dawned on me that it was in severe need of updating.


After all, we're down to just five of us now. When Dan left us, we lost 16% of our band and 25% of our talent. But we're still going. Just.


Gigs for 2105 are being mooted. One or two are certainties.


We're not dead yet.

[Update: gigs for 2015 are also being organised. My head hurts.]

The End of the Jacques Cousteau Tour. Perhaps.

And so our 2014 Tour - the Jacques Cousteau Tour - came to a rather premature halt in familiar territory: in the lovely sweeping chalkland overlooked by Old Winchester Hill.

There are three ways to be sure that you're playing at a proper farming gig. First, and most obviously, the venue is full of farmers - including special guest David Handley of FFA. Second, the venue smells of sheep, being a big new concrete barn that, until moments before we arrived, must have had several hundred of 'em inside. And third, what sounds like the worlds most unoriginal click-track - a single pulse every five seconds - is, in fact, an electric fence energiser just outside the barn interfering with the PA. I bet my cousin Rupert Flindt (top sound engineer at the BBC) never has that problem when he's setting up Elbow at the Albert Hall.

 

Here we see Todd manfully trying to balance our rich, nuanced output against some raw whitewashed walls. Helen bravely took over later, and then Simon arrived to twiddle the knobs as we got going. I did ask Helen (rather late in the evening) if it had gone well. "Shmm fibble wuttle snibs tee hee puppies burp" she explained. 

 

See what I mean about the walls? Note the two groupies staring wistfully out of the barn, thinking of all the shopping they'd rather be doing.

The view out of the barn.

Anyway, the punters poured in - helped, no doubt, by the signs cluttering half of central southern Hampshire. It was pointed out that a 'D' was perhaps missing from the end of the first word. And despite all the moaning about the walls and the concrete, we has a great evening, and we hope everyone else did. I thought we were technically on top form - nice to have Quentin back from his conference. I asked how it had gone, and he told me: "I can make a window to discuss your compatible incremental resources." Which was nice of him.   There was a lot of dancing, lots of cheering, and - bizarrely - a vast crate of Magnum ice creams for everyone to enjoy. Mix that with a few pints of beer, a burger, a sausage or two, leap around for a bit to some classic tunes from the sixties right up to the present day.........Maybe it wasn't sheep that the barn smelt of.

Perhaps Helen should have the last work of the Tour: "Fshmuggly!"

Can that really be it for 2014?