Newcastle March 30/31

Cigars for the Man invited us to Newcastle to play two shows with them over this weekend. On friday we played the Cambridge Hotel with them. For us, it was a fairly unremarkable show. There were some technical difficulties with Tim’s mic and the foldback for my pad but it wasn’t too significant. Cigars were really fantastic though. AfThe bass player, Justin also plays in The Porkers as does Rob the trombonist. Their myspace belies the experience each of the members have as musicians and the energetic and convincing performance they made.

After the show we proceeded to Chloe’s house for a party and - maybe later on - some sleep. We probably invited a few too many hangers on given that it was in fact Chloe’s parent’s house. A hardcore couple who had come from Woollongong as well as our photographer, Swanny were with us and Cigars for the Man turned up a bit later. Kieran told his cousin and her friends about the party expecting that they would give it a miss but sure enough they turned up. Before too long and before Julian and Cigars had exposed too many bodyparts, people started to clear off and we could go to sleep. Kieran and Nick followed K’s cousin and the girls off for the rest of the evening (a fruitless endeavour).

The next evening’s show was at the “grand junction hotel” in Maitland. We imagined Maitland to be kind of like the Queanbeyan of Newcastle. In fact, after following Justin’s van to the show we had little idea where we were and only an inkling of the route back to canberra.

The “grand” hotel was a traditional looking aussie pub the major feature of which was that it didn’t have room for our band. We setup nonetheless in our most compact configuration and plugged a few mics into the little PA system. The first few songs were a bit lacklustre but after we played a new punk tune we found the energy to put on a really satisfying show. People in the pub even payed attention (they couldn’t really help it).