Namfest

WooHoo!! We did it! We have now gigged with our new line-up and it rocked!

We rolled up at the Olympiad in Chippers at around 5pm to drop off our gear and have an impromptu sound check. We met the wonderful people from Midas Sound who were engineering for the night. Wow! What a sound it was too. As soon as Thumpy Monkey heard the power of the kick drum he was in seventh heaven. At around 7.30pm we had arrived at the venue with better halves etc. We all pretty much admitted to having nerves - new and super Bass Monkey confessed to having been nervous all week and the rest of us suffering a bit with a mixture of excitement and the all important tension!!

The first excellent band, King Rat and the Desperados completed their set and before we knew what had hit us - we were being introduced and on stage at 8.20pm. We kicked of steadily with Somebody Told Me and then proceeded to relax into the whole Namfest thing. We completed our set with our own debuted song, Radio You (which we officially love!) and Chasing Cars. No time for an encore and off we went, happy and buzzing with the result of several months of hard graft and fun practices! Bass Monkey has now been fully initiated (watch out for the official ceremony though Si!!) and grinned the whole night through.

Ten minutes after we left the stage, half of Chippers, including the venue blacked out power wise and we all had to leave the building. We kept our spirits up with a quick run to the offy (thanks Boss Monkey) and a sing song before proceedings continued again post power outage. Bad Lizard were incredibly tight as usual (we love you guys) and Miss Vickery set the Fest alight with a brill session. The evening was concluded with the Halagoogoo boys which was original and exciting too! Loved the Bass player's pants! What a guy!!!

Things became a little blurry for the rest of the night as we seemed to lose Boss Monkey and MWT in some bar and Sound Monkey and me stayed up into the small hours importantly putting the world, the music industry and our lives to rights before eventually retiring, tired but happy to our warm snuggly beds.

Quick massive thanks and congratulations to Ben and Laurence for the whole Namfest thing and we hope you raised tons of cash for your extremely worthy cause 'Make a Wish'. We had a blast and hope you enjoyed it too.

Loads of love and hugs

Shouty Monkey xXxXx