I think I’m being silly here. When I write up a gig, I’ve usually seen more than 15 minutes and 2½ songs. If I put photos on the blog, I use ones I’ve taken with my camera or ones that I’ve nicked from the bands’ websites. I frequently don’t know the names of the songs I’ve heard (unless it’s a Goldblade gig) and I don’t this time, so there’s no change there but I’m going to blog anyway.
Let’s set the scene. I’m stood in the kitchen washing up after Sunday tea. Sunday tea consisted of roast beef, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots and turnip mashed together, cauliflower, baby new potatoes, yorkshire pudding and gravy. You can tell I didn’t make it, can’t you?
Well, it’s 6.30pm and earlier in the day (17.21 to be precise) I’d received a text message from my eldest child and only son, Harry, saying “We’re on at 6.30”, so I told the younger of my two daughters, Bobbie, that she would have to finish washing up for me. I got into my car and drove into the centre of Preston and parked up near the covered market (there, on the right). It was by now about 6.40 and I’d missed 10 minutes of their set. “Their” being Harry’s band, Spiral Tower, and the set being at Preston Live – a showcase of Preston bands.
I think (I’m never sure with Spiral Tower) that I saw 2½ songs. Amazingly for me, I can name the 3rd song (or the 2½th), Keith’s Contraption (which you can hear on their MySpace page), which starts off with a bit of keyboard wizardry from my very own Harry. I stood there feeling very proud and with a maternal smile on my face until I decided I needed some pictures of the band.
I took this one with my mobile phone and I apologise for the quality – it’s rubbish. As you can see, I was stood to the right of the stage and a little way back with the rather foolish but proud smile on my face. That’s Harry behind the two keyboards. You can just make out Phil (who had a little trouble with his mic during Keith’s Contraption, due to it cutting out and making him sound like Norman Collier) at the right of the stage. Ben’s on the left and Raz is playing the drums.
Then I moved over to the left side in front of the stage, held my phone above my head and took this rather shaky picture. I’m very, very sorry. It’s not at all clear but you have to remember I was overcome with maternal pride and I was holding my 1.3 mega pixel mobile phone high up in the air. I really shouldn’t be so hard on myself, should I? There was a good mix of people with several long haired gentlemen who seemed to be enjoying the set (well, one of them threw horns at the stage after each song – I feel a little silly using the expression “throwing horns” being a little elderly for the activity myself).
Spiral Tower are good, even if I do say so myself. They’re good instrumentalists and Phil has shown that he can sing as well as growl. They play a mixture of Prog and Metal and it works very nicely in my opinion. I wish I’d seen the whole half hour set, instead of two thirds of it but it wasn’t to be. I felt it incumbent upon me to do the washing up and that took priority.
I won’t be so damn silly next time and hopefully, they’ll be on for a bit longer – at least 45 minutes.