Rock and roll weekend

So, Friday night our band played their second gig at Kendal’s most prestigious music pub – Bootleggers. I say prestigious because it is their policy to only book decent acts, so if you’re a rubbish band you won’t get on, or if you do, they won’t have you back! The other main music pub in town by the way is Dickie Doodles, where the emphasis is on quantity rather than quality; music of some description every night of the week, but it’s usually half decent at least. Our band has just invested in a shiny new mixing desk so there was a bit more fiddling to do in the soundcheck (I’m chief fiddler and knob twiddler), but there were no problems and nothing broke down as happened last time we played there. It was busy, very busy, with a great crowd as usual, and wow, what a gig. Fantastic. Great reception. Not having had chance to rehearse that week we ran through a new number in the soundcheck – "Monster", by The Automatic. English readers will most likely have found it difficult to avoid this summer. It seemed to sound ok so we played it towards the end of the night. Now it’s kind of a silly song, "What’s that coming over the hill, is it a monster, is it a monster..?" but fun nevertheless. Our bass player had been whining slightly at having to do it, and freely admitted that he was just too old for this sort of stuff, though he’s a LOT younger than me. So I said that if he still didn’t like it after we’d played it live I would personally buy him a pipe and some slippers, and reassured him that this was the sort of song that would get the whole room jumping. This is exactly the effect it had on the room in fact, and I was spared trips to the tobacconist, and Woolworth’s for a pair of old man’s slippers. It’s a great buzz to see so many people jumping up and down in synchronisation to your "beat", but it’s a solid old stone-walled building so the foundations were safe from crumbling I’m sure. Daryl our bass player now likes the song a lot more, ‘nuff said. The whole gig was good though, not just the frenzied reaction from this one song, and we all agreed it was our best gig yet. I’m so happy to be in this band, really loving it.

The next night I was off down to see Pip’s band for the first time, glam rock outift – Glamorize. Actually I was there to do more knob-twiddling as Pip had asked me to do the sound for them. Sound engineering is something I’ve done a lot of in the past, working in an arts centre, a recording studio, touring Europe with live bands, not to mention mixing the sound onstage with most of the bands I’ve played in. Not sure what Pip's band thought about a girl doing the sound for them, a transsexual girl at that, but I have to say the sound was awesome and they all thanked me at the end.

I was impressed by Pip’s band, a fairly normal looking bunch of blokes when I first met them, who suddenly appeared onstage in sparkly suits, wigs and make up, in true glam rock style. They did look good, all acting rather macho and glammy, with Pip at the back adding a subtle touch of femininity in Pippa’s wig and immaculately applied make up. Lots of practice see…

I’d only heard Pip play the drums briefly in his front room, so it was nice to see what he could do for real, and yes, he is very talented. I would be more than happy to play in a band with him, and I am pretty fussy. His new drum kit, following the theft of his old one, looks and sounds great, just the sort of drum sound I like, and one that makes it easy for sound-engineers like me. The band were very together, put on a great show, seemed to be enjoying themselves and got the crowd going. It rocked, and a good night was had by all. It was nice for me to be able to do the sound without having to worry about playing the keyboards at the same time, and of course you can hear it better when you’re in front of the speakers than when you’re onstage! It’s been a few years since I’ve done the sound for a band like that, so I really enjoyed myself. Well done Pip and the rest of the band, and thanks for asking me to help out, it was a real pleasure.

Two nights in a row of serious rock and roll and I felt surprisingly healthy the next day, maybe I’m not getting too old for this just yet…

Which is just as well as our band has two more gigs over the coming bank-holiday weekend. Saturday is a charity auction for the NSPCC at some rich person’s house on the far shore of Lake Windermere (the exclusive side), which I just found out today is a Caribbean theme, so I have to find something suitably sexy. Shame my grass skirt is at the dry-cleaners. Monday is an outdoors afternoon gig at the Lancaster festival, so it should be an interesting weekend.

Today I was seriously frazzled by laser, I’ve had 17 sessions of IPL and 2 of laser, today being the highest power I’ve experienced to date. It bloody hurt, my face was very red, and doesn’t look exactly great even now. It should calm down soon though. After a year of IPL I have seen only slight improvement really, definitely noticeable but not as much as I would have hoped for, which is why I’m now trying the laser. I’ll give that a few goes and then have to decide whether to go for electrolysis (all my friends have had bad experiences with scarring from electrolysis so that concerns me a bit), or see if my doctor will give me Vaniqa, which I’ve heard good reports of, but which is something that would probably have to be used forever. Maybe it’s better to concentrate on permanent hair removal while I’m not working full-time, but not if it means being scarred for life. I guess I won’t know until I try.

The pain, the problems, the inconvenience is all worth it. Better to be frazzled by laser than have your brain frazzled by gender dysphoria. Still, I’ll be glad when it’s all over, but realise that all this is part of a very long process.

Just gotta keep on rocking.

xx