Last pic from the Bramdean gig

More pics from the Bramdean gig

Proof that you can fit a full contingent of Old Gits on a small stage, although it is a tight fit....

 

Did someone say 'Tight Fit'? All together now: "A-wim-oh-weh, a-wim-oh-weh...."

 

 

John and Dave looking cool as ever....mind you, not cavorting around with a toy lioness helps.

Final setting up and tuning up.

During the ploughman's lunch break, Simon and Charlie discuss cattle......Tod checks for pulse to see if he's been bored to death yet.

Simon hard at work with his knobs.

 

The FC Tour: Bramdean Village Hall.

When the local parish magazine uprates its advert for your gig from half a page (see previous post) to a full page, you know you're in business. Either that, or they haven't sold enough tickets to fill the village hall. It made no difference to us either way, we loaded up the Stealth Trailer just as Storm A for Arsebandit (or whatever it was) hit the south coast, and we headed down to Bramdean for the penultimate gig of the Fingers Crossed Tour.

 

 

We've played a few village halls over the years, and Bramdean qualifies as the most well-kept and spick'n'span of the lot. Beautifully decorated, clean as a whistle, and with high ceilings - I can remember it being used as a badminton court in the 1960s.  We did worry a bit about the acoustics, but our worries were diverted to the fact that the playgroup had not in fact been thrown out, and all their stuff was indeed still onstage, behind the curtains, and, yes, we were going to have to squeeze ourselves in between the tiny chairs, wetwipes ("Hmmm, very handy" said the huge pianist), bean bags and toy lionesses.

 

Luckily, we're down to a five-piece now, so once the monitors were delegated to tables just in front of the stage, we had loads of room.

 

A quick chair count suggested that 44 tickets had been sold, and everyone was in and ready to go by 8.15. Off we went, and the first dancers hit the floor after only a couple of songs. Despite fears of being rusty after a few weeks off (and without rehearsals), we played excellently. There was a pause for the raffle to be drawn, and to devour the world's simplest and best ploughman's supper (huge pianist nicked a packet of wetwipes from the playgroup before tucking in).

 

We over-ran our 11.00 finish by forty minutes, by which time everyone was one their feet, most of them doing line-dancing (which works really well as a way to get even the most reluctant Astairs and Rogers away from their tables, although it can seem a bit incongruous to be line-dancing to the Stones).

 

A huge thank you to the Bramdean Village Hall Committee for inviting us and feeding us, and letting us play with the toy lionesses.

Next Gig...fingers crossed.

We're off again!!

Suddenly, after months of inaction, the Thomas Lord Old Gits stormed back into action at the fantastic venue of Salisbury Racecourse, where a reasonably large group of land agents were celebrating a major anniversary.

It was a very smart occasion, Black Tie and all that, and the TLOGS had the misfortune to follow one of the nation's wittiest and most talented after-dinner speakers of the modern era, and so did well to perform as well as we did. We managed to entertain a hard core group of dancers for a couple of hours, while the more senior land agents watched on approvingly (we assume). Still, the first gig of the Autumn mini-branch of the Fingers Crossed Tour got off to a fun start.

Bad News

After a splendid, if somewhat sweat-soaked rehearsal last night, we were fully primed for Her Majesty's Big Bash on Saturday.

Unfortunately, the phone rang at 8am. It was the organiser of the Bramdean Royal Celebrations, with the sad news that only 23 tickets have been sold, and the event has been cancelled.

Apparently, it's nothing to do with us keeping the punters away - it's just that Paul 'Where-ever I lay my hat' Young is bringing his band to Ropley that night, and the Alresford Music Festival will also be in full swing. Oh, and there's a huge wedding as well.

These things happen.

Old Gits in action

Rare footage of us in action has been added to the right of this page.

Our old Introduction

For those who miss our old Elgar-based intro (i.e. me), here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtQ2_U8pKXw

The 'Fingers Crossed' Tour kicks off

At last! After a dreadful long winter of rain, rain, rain, a heart attack, and yet more rain, the [Thomas Lord] Old Gits were back on tour, performing in one of our favourite local pubs, the Fox in Bramdean. We'd been promoted to playing indoors, and given a later slot than last year, but, what with it being Monday night, the crown was sparse, but very appreciative. Highlight of the evening was watching Tod keep going after a nightmare journey back from oop north, resulting in a sleep-free night Sun/Mon. His voice vanished after only three or four songs, and sort of came back a few songs later, but we muddled through, and played quite well. All those evenings in Shed 3b weren't wasted. Rumour has it that we were being filmed for posterity, so look out for coverage of us murdering all sorts of classics from the 60s right up to the present day...

The Greatham Gig

 

 

This is the one that was rescheduled after a last minute cancellation ages ago. It was worth the wait. Despite the rugby being on in the corner, we managed to grab the audience's attention and entertain them royally. Some of the young ladies from the nearby spiritual retreat actually stopped gazing adoringly at John for a bit and got up and danced. Got to love these moody black and white shots of us setting up.