I just got a spam with the subject line "For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide". I... yep, it's definitely Monday.

( Random update. Cut for length (work, weekend, and general stuff). )

And (lj)lonescorpion just left me an email with hints on how to do the fourth mission in DoW, so I think that's my evening sorted, then!

So. How/what/who is everyone else doing today? ^_^

Laters,
Rath

Just in case anyone's reading here but not on my LJ... behold, Fire & Forget on Youtube! Camerawork by (lj)ironlord (thank you!) and editing/posting by (lj)lonescorpion.

So yes, this is us. I am mostly invisible behind our singer, but you can see me from time to time... Enjoy!

Love,
The Navigator

If you saw me in a police car, what would you assume I'd been nicked for?

Laters,
The Navigator

argh argh gig tonight so much shit that could go wrong want to crawl under a bucket argh...

I wanted to write this review last night, ie before I'd actually had a break in the thirty-seven-hour period of not sleeping that formed most of my weekend. It would have been much more deranged and fun reading than the slightly (only slightly...) more coherent review you're about to get instead. However, by the time I got in last night I was so dead that (lj)lonescorpion had to force me to go to bed rather than do anything else. So.

( How it happened was like this. )

So yeah. How was everyone else's weekend and please can I go to bed now? ^_^

Lots of love and cybernetic bats to all,
Rath x


[1] To everyone who knows that one: yes, I know you will now be hearing it on loop ALL WEEK. I'm just evil like that.

...dude. WE PLAYED OUR FIRST FESTIVAL. ^_____________^

I walked into work this morning, and suddenly I'm a minor celebrity. I was over in the galley kitchen that we have for the offices on my staircase, and one of the senior staff from another office popped up at my elbow and was telling me how great Fire & Forget were at Strawberry Fair and how much her kids loved us, and I was standing there grinning like a total idiot. This is what this shit is for, this rock'n'roll business. It's for the moments when people come up to you and look at you with this new, bright-eyed, admiring respect, and tell you that you spoke to them, inspired them, showed them a good time... whatever. I went up there on the Strawberry Fair stage knowing that there were probably people in the crowd who only knew me as my boring, carefully restrained office self, and I put my heart and soul out there, and suddenly people are looking at me like they've never seen me before - but in a good way. And it feels fantastic, both from a personal self-esteem perspective and from a more selfless stance of "whoa, we made people happy!" It's the pay-it-forward factor of having been able to do for others, even on the tiniest of scales, what the bands I love have been doing for me all these years. And let me tell you, it's awesome.

( The actual gig. )

I also stewarded afterwards, for what wound up being about five hours total, and caught a couple of other good bands in the process (names that stick in my head are Caimbo, The Alice Band (not my usual thing but good at a festival) and Talulah). Working front-of-house is a weird job, because being security staff of any sort gives you an automatic -4 to all Charisma checks. Everyone assumes you're there to stop them having fun. My take on it is that if I'm wearing that vest I'm there to make sure that everyone is having fun and no jackass spoils it for anyone else, and that nobody gets hurt - so I try to keep my manner friendly, be helpful, and explain the reason if I ask people to do something. This paid off this year, as I got plenty of grins and waves and laughter and thumbs-up from the barrier warriors down the front and I didn't have to yell at anyone even once. Tiring work, but not so bad. ^_^

...there was going to be other stuff in this post but you know what, I'm running off at the keyboard here. I'll stop and do another post later on.

Laters,
The Navigator

PS And lest we forget, (lj)blackmetalbaz texted me on Sunday to say we'd achieved the unthinkable... he had a Fire & Forget earworm. This aggravated accolade may, actually, be my favourite piece of feedback from the whole event. ^_^ Cheers Baz!