Haven’t written any game-related posts for a while. But it’s now confirmed that I will be running a Kalyr RPG playtest scenario for four players at Gypsycon next weekend. Which of course means I do have to finish the scenario.
Should be fun. This one’s going to be psionics-heavy, because the psionics system is the one area that really needs some serious playtesting.
It’s now Thursday night, and I still haven’t quite come down to earth.
The weekend began with the five and a half hour journey from Cheshire to Bournmouth by Virgin Voyager, followed by a lengthy wait for the coach to the convention site, a holiday centre and caravan park just outside of Ringwood in Dorset.
The whole thing was a big meetup for fans, not just from Britain but from around the world. One of the first people I met was Paul Konstant, who’d come with his family from the US. There was another fan from New Zealand. The weekend was a chance to properly get to know a lot of the people who’s previously been just faces at gigs, and to put faces to names for regulars on the band’s web message boards. So I met up with the likes of Dr Wart Hoover, Paul Ozzy Hodgson, Mike and Eileen Foley, Peter the Great, David Taylor, Rog, Anthony from Holland, and many many more.
Friday was the warm up, consisting of an ‘open mic session’ around an imitation campfire, plus a set by the local band Rushing With Apathy. RWA showed a lot of promise; I wasn’t quite sure about the singer, but the instrumental side was pretty solid; more Rock than Indie. The open mic session was a bit variable, but it still takes some bottle to get up an play in front of some members of the band.
As well as the music (a total of eight live sets over the three days), there were a lot of other events. I took part in the ‘Eggheads’ quiz on Saturday, with four teams of volunteers going head-to-head against a team made up from members of the band. Unfortunately our team didn’t make it past the first round; how can anybody expect to beat Bryan on questions about Mostly Autumn? The question-and-answer session got some illuminating answers, including those for the three questions I submitted. No, they don’t reject the ‘Prog’ tag 
Then there was the charity auction on Sunday, with people bidding �200 for Heather’s worn-out tambourine, bits that had fallen off included!. It raised more than two thousand pounds in total.
Things like this showed the human side of the band; who would have guessed that their nicknames are “Faery Pants”, “Witch Face”, “Bum Face”, “The Crow” and “The Princess of Atlantis”.
And then there was the music itself.
For the main events on Saturday and Sunday the small stage was far too small for all seven of the band to fit, so they ended up using the stage purely as drum riser, with the rest of the band playing on the floor in front. This meant that they played to an audience sitting cross-legged on the floor; very very 1973. I have to say that Angie Gordon misquoted me, I didn’t actually say that’s the first time I had sat cross-legged on the floor at a gig; I’m not quite that old! The front row was made up of small children, which made for a very different atmosphere from a more normal rock gig. I think it’s the first (and probably last) time I’ve ever played air guitar at a gig while lying flat on my back.
First musical event of Saturday was a short solo set from Angela Gordon, just voice and piano. Some beautiful songs, some of which would also appear in Odin Dragonfly’s set later on, and showed what a talented singer and musician she is.
Odin Dragonfly played two short sets on the Saturday and Sunday. They were every bit as good as last time I saw them, with an amazingly rich sound from just two people. Although their album still isn’t out, I found that I remembered most of the songs from York a few weeks before. Saturday’s set finished with the cover of Jethro Tull’s “Witches Promise”, starting with the spectacular flute flourish, then Heather broke a guitar string on the first chord. Oops. At least meant Angie got to play that intro a second time! I can’t wait for the album.
Iain Jennings’ Breathing Space played a lengthy set early evening on Sunday, with a special appearance by former (and Mostly Autumn) drummer Andy Jennings. As with Odin Dragonfly it was more or less the same set as I’d seen performed in York in February, but this time without the terrible equipment problems that had marred that gig, so I got to see what the band is supposed to sound like. Because they were a late addition to the bill, it meant they were also without guitarist Mark Rowen who was on holiday in Canada! Stand-in was a fellow called Alex (don’t remember the surname) who did an admirable job, even though he was leafing through a folder with the chords in it between songs. Bryan Josh took over for the last four songs, MA oldies “Distant Train”, “Hollow”, and “No Promises” and “Believe” on which he’d played on Iain’s album. A strong performance that ought to win them plenty of new fans. And hats off to Livvy and Andy for playing two sets back to back, totally not far short of three hours.
The obvious highlights were the sets by the band themselves finishing off Saturday and Sunday. Saturday saw MA performing their full 2½ hour set. It was much the same setlist that they’ve been playing on the tour so far, drawing heavily from the excellent new Heart Full of Sky interspersed with just enough old favourites to keep the old-timers happy. I haven’t seen them live since the Astoria launch party six weeks ago, and the whole performance was a lot more confident, especially Gavin Griffiths’ performance on drums, now he’s settled in to the role. Don’t know what the mix was like further back, but from the front the backing vocals were very prominent, with good enough separation between Heather’s, Angie’s and Livvy’s voices. Are these more elaborate vocal harmonies a replacement of sorts for Iain Jennings’ cinematic keyboards? I noticed Angie replacing some of Liam’s guitar lines on flute as well, such as the end of “Heroes Never Die”. Did she do this at the Astoria, or did I notice this time around because the flute was higher in the mix?
Sunday’s finale, with Andy Jennings guesting on drums straight after playing for Breathing Space, was an absolute blinder. Whereas Saturday had seen a tight professional set, this time they were on fire, and tore the place apart with incredible energy. Limited rehearsal time meant quite a few songs repeated from the previous day, but we also got plenty of oldies like “The Last Climb”, “Heart Life” and of course, all the jigs. Just after midnight we all sang “Happy Birthday to You” to Livvy, who turned 22 on Monday. Then they closed with a stunning version of “Shrinking Violet”. Sadly they ran out of time, and we didn’t get “Mother Nature”. Could any over-hyped indie band come up with a performance like that?
There was an incredible vibe during the whole weekend. The organisers Sarah-Jane and Jeanette, the convention centre staff, and of course the bands themselves all did a fantastic job. The first Mostly Autumn convention was a huge success, and I hope it will be the first of many.
I’ve uploaded more photos from the weekend here.
Tomorrow morning I’m off to Ringwood in the New Forest for what should be a totally progtastic weekend at the first Mostly Autumn convention.
There’s a lot of music over the three days. Not only will there be two full length Mostly Autumn sets on Saturday and Sunday nights, we’re also getting a set from the wonderful Breathing Space, two sets from Odin Dragonfly, a solo set from Angela Gordon, and the local band Rushing With Apathy.
And then there’s a chance to properly get to know a lot of the people that I’ve just briefly said ‘hi’ to at gigs, or ‘met’ on the two web forums.
The only downside is that I get to spend the best part of five hours on board a Virgin Voyager, all the way from Stockport to Bournemouth.
Dapol have put up some pictures of their N gauge Habfis2 in Cargowaggon livery.
I always associate these wagons with Guinness. As part of my first job, I visited the Park Royal brewery on a number of occasions in the mid 80s. At the time a lot of the black stuff was distributed by rail, in these wagons. Despite the ‘Great Britain <-> Continent’ branding, I think all the rail-borne traffic was internal to Britain. They even had a pair of ex-BR 08 locomotives painted in Guinness livery named “Lion” and “Unicorn” shunting them around the brewery. The place is closed now, and all the Guinness drunk in England comes from the one true Guinness brewery in Dublin.
At the time, I didn’t actually drink the stuff.
This, from Mark Rowan of Breathing Space is just depressing.
I need to pre-empt this by saying that it is worthy of note that Breathing Space are what may be called (for want of a better genre) a ‘classic rock band’. We’re a six piece band with 2 keyboard players. Some of the sounds we use are quite complex as you may know, for example Distant Train - we play this to a basic click track (this has always been that way, even when MA performed it), Iain and Ben play numerous different sounds during the song. I myself play the original flute motif on guitar synth, then switch to standard guitar for the build up chords and the closing solos. As a band we nominally play 2 x 45 minute sets.
So, after explaining all this to the promoter, they get a gig at the Mixing Tin in Leeds. Then this happens…
Unfortunately the promoter unbeknown to us until yesterday, booked us along with 7 other bands, each playing 30 minute sets using equipment provided by the headline act. :\
OK if you’re an indie band, (thrash/bang/you’re my wonderwall/thanks goodnight/go home), but not much good when you’ve got Distant Train in the set!!!!
Trying to get something booked in it’s place at a more suitable venue.
Breathing Space are a great live act. They’re good enough that I’ve travelled from Manchester to York to see them, got home at 5am, and still think it was worthwhile. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with the music scene in Britain when a band this talented struggles to get gigs.
Ian Jones had previously stated that the Manchester show, at the Walkabout club in Manchester as ‘a bit of an experiment for the band’. For those not familiar with the place, The Walkabout is a bar and nightclub in the city centre. To my knowledge they’ve never had a live band before; I tend to associate the place with office parties. The event was part of a ‘classic rock night’ featuring two DJ sets as well as Karnataka’s performance. I susoect that organisers are on a bit of a learning curve on running this sort of event, resulting in one of the stranger gigs I’ve been to in recent years.
Not that I can fault Karnataka’s performance, every bit as strong as it was at Crewe the week before. The new material came over especially well, especially the one with drum loops (Lisa commented on my very bad dancing during that one!) From the front, the sound was OK, but nothing like as good as the perfect sound at Crewe Limelight; don’t know how it sounded further back. They missed out the drum solo this time round.
There appeared to be some confusion over how long the band were supposed to play. The band finished playing the usual set closer ‘The Gathering Light’, when Lisa announced they’d been asked to play a bit longer, so they played three or four more songs. But what happened to ‘Out of Reach’? Was there supposed to have been an encore? The moment the band left the stage, the second DJ set started up without a break!
That DJ set, apparently by the former singer of the Inspiral Carpets, was to be honest, pretty dire. What was billed as a ‘classic rock set’ seemed to contain an inordinate amount of rap. Ugh.
Still an enjoyable evening, even though the feel was more that of a pub gig than a rock club.
So the train companies are to get a thousand new carriages to be delivered by 2014, 994 of them presumably for Greater London, with half-a-dozen for the rest of the country. What’s left unsaid is whether that’s a thousand additional carriages, or whether a significant proportion will simply be replacements for older rolling stock which will be worn-out by 2014. The sooner the dismal four-wheeled ‘Pacers’ are dispatched to the scrapheap the better.
Naturally, free market ideologue Patrick Crozier is not impressed. All the railway companies need to do is treble the fares, and all the problems of overcrowding with vanish! He does make one valid point, though:
Groan, because, if the last train splurge is anything to go by the new trains will be either unreliable, inappropriate, expensive or late - or all four.
He’s talking about the 1955 modernisation plan, when the nationalised British Railways wasted vast sums of taxpayers money on locomotives some of which turned out to be pretty much useless, and failed to outlive the steam engines they were supposed to replace. Many of them were ordered from manufacturers whose works happened to be in areas of high unemployment, despite the lack of experience in building diesel locomotives.
I don’t think that’s going to happen this time round; in the last few years we’ve already seen a lot of new trains delivered, as will be apparent to anyone that travels by train. If (and it’s a big if) they resist the temptation for the sort of political meddling we saw in 1955, all of those new trains will be repeat orders of tried and trusted designs already in service. So hopefully we won’t get the equivalent of Metrovick Co-Bos or NBL Class 21s this time around.
I’ve been asked very nicely to post a digital version of this flyer on my blog.
As my review of last month’s York gig indicates, they really are worth catching live. I will be seeing them at the MA convention on 25th March (I’ll actually be there all weekend), and most probably at the Gravy Train in Newton-le-Willows (of Vulcan Foundry fame!)
I never did get to see the original lineup of Karnataka live. I only knew their atmospheric celtic-flavoured progressive rock through the albums, especially the excellent live double “Strange Behaviour” that turned out to be their swansong. I discovered them just around the time I started going to gigs again. I almost got to see them supporting Blue Öyster Cult in 2003, but they pulled out because Rachel Jones had lost her voice. I was planning to see them on the tour scheduled in late 2004, only for the band to split just before the tour.
When founder Ian Jones reformed the band with a completely new lineup a couple of years later, I was more than a little sceptical. How much of the spirit of the original band would survive with just the bass player remaining from the original band?
I hadn’t originally intended to go to the Crewe show, having pencilled in the Manchester one ten days later. But I got an email from an old friend Ian Redfearn who I hadn’t seen for five years asking if I was interested in going to the Crewe show, so I changed my plans. On a wet Thursday night the Crewe Limelight didn’t contain anything like the heaving throng that I’ve seen turn out for Mostly Autumn shows, but there were still a decent number of people there by the time Karnataka finally hit the stage.
Two or three songs into the set I was converted. The new lineup produced the same sweeping atmospheric sound, and more than did the music justice. Vocalist Lisa Fury has both a great voice and stage presence. She kept close to the original vocal arrangements rather than reinterpreting them, which is probably the wise thing to do at this stage, although with just one singer, some songs had to manage without the two-part harmonies. I was also very impressed with Enrico Pinna’s fluid guitar work; very ‘prog’, but never once lapsing into self-indulgent noodling. Not quite sure what to make of keyboard player Gonzalo Carrera’s hairstyle; so 1970s he could have been an extra in “Life on Mars”. He should have worn a cape! The flawless two hour show mixed a lot of old favourites with several strong new songs that bode well for the new-look band’s future. The finished with the audience singalong to the encore “Out of Reach”, which is as good a way to end a show as anything.
I shall probably be still be attending Manchester Walkabout on March 18 for a second helping.
And so you get back to the image problem that the coach presents. Cars mean individuality and freedom, trains mean romance, and coaches mean school kids singing obscene songs and being sick in the aisle on their way to Llandudno.
From a BBC News article on coach travel.
