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Entries for 2025 are in the blog archive.
Don't worry if you missed them, it was all rubbish.

January 1st:
Our New year's eve gig last night was pretty good. Two spots - the last finishing at 11pm. We had a bit of a discussion about an offer that had come to us to do a jam night at a venue in Leigh. They wanted us on Sundays doing 9pm up til midnight, which was no good to us. I said to them that we didn't really fancy hosting a midweek jam night. The band isn't available at all during February, so there is no rush to find anywhere else to do it. I'm a bit worn out with doing jam nights. They are a lot of hard work for not a lot of money. I was home just before midnight and able to help deal with two barking mutts, driven up the wall by the horrendous barrage of fireworks.Awake before 9am this morning, so up and into the coffee. I sent Paul (our guitarist) a message, saying I hope he's feeling ok. He was really struggling with some severe flu symptoms last night and he really didn't look well at all. I knew he had family things lined up today and that he would naturally feel duty bound to be there. I got a message back from him much later on, saying that he had been in bed for most of the day. I hope he's better soon.

January 2nd:
In the evening it was the final night at what was our jam night venue, Tilwalds in Tyldesley. I popped down for a quick hello and a drink. I would have stayed longer if any of the jam night crowd had been there.

January 3rd:
On driving duties for a relative, a trip for some radiotherapy treatment at the Christie Centre in Salford. I will be pitching in to do a few of these runs, along with other family members. It's really weird going back there 8 years later. It's not changed at all and there are identical people in the waiting room to when I had my own treatment. There's a general air of calm, though I'm sure that most of the people undergoing the treatment are probably not that calm, but everybody behaves. One Asian gentleman who was there, accompanying his wife, didn't know how to not look like he's really staring intensely at people. It was quite un-nerving to have such persistent eye contact with him.

A bit of book work in the afternoon. I had been passed some 1975 demo recordings by the band our book is about and they are radically different to what has actually been released. We are being sent some more of these recordings by an old friend of the band and they do constitute an interesting late addition to part two of the book. They have never been circulated. I also re-jigged part of the cover artwork. We have less than a month to go before we publish and I can't resist the temptation of doing a slight bit of tinkering with the artwork. It looks really good.

Evening TV: Runaway on Netflix, The Traitors.

January 4th:
A bit of recording in my home studio in the early afternoon. The song is one of my own that dates back to the mid 1980's and was about my late first wife Julie and her very early morning start to travel to her job. It's a reasonable enough version, which I started work on a while ago. I had a backing track down, so I re-did all the vocals about three times to get them to the point where I was happy enough with them before getting on with a final mix. There are a few more partly completed tracks to go at. I'm thinking of doing a CD of my own work to release later in the year. I don't care if it actually sells or not. I'll just get a hundred or so copies manufactured and send them to people.

Jaunary 8th:
Up early and got my wife to Wythenshawe Hospital for 9am for her procedure. I was able to get her home late in the afternoon.

January 9th:
Some hospital driving duties again.

January 10th:
I haven't felt like writing very much this last week or so. It's been a stressful time, with my wife having a heart procedure, which was VERY concerning, not to mention a couple of sick pets. The band lruched back into action tonight, which was a little bright spot amongst all of the murk that's our lives at the moment. The parking, load-in and set-up were all quite stressful, which is unusual for that venue. We were a bit loose in the first half, but we were properly warmed up by the time of the second half and that was really enjoyable. We filmed the gig and there are some clips up on YouTube.

January 12th:
Some hospital driving duties again.

January 15th:
I had a long, rambling message last week from someone called Will who had been looking at our Facebook page and our website, asking me for advice on how to get gigs for his band. I sent him a few quick paragraphs of what I thought was decent advice back.

He seems quite young and may not have much idea about how these things work. I don't think his band have any sort of web presence. What they need to do is get organised to go out to some venues and talk to them. They need to get some video together. They need a set list and something to show to venues to get them to take a punt on them.

There's been a string of messages since then and he was basically trying to get ME to sell his band to venues. Sadly, I don't have the time to manage someone else's band for nothing. I also have no great desire to become the next Colonel Tom Parker. My polite response excusing myself from working for them did not go down well. He got rather snotty about it all and blocked me. So he's probably now bugging someone else. I have missed out on that opportunity to make zillions and watch my proteges on Top Of The Pops.... oh wait... Good luck to Will and his band. He never actually managed to tell me what they were called. He seemed to be more focused on which venues paid what amount than getting his info out there.

I'm busy enough chasing up venues for my own band to play at, without the hassle of running another band. It's sometimes really hard work. I have historically always been the one who has ended up, doing the diary, creating Facebook events, building a website and doing all of the admin, messaging and contacting venues with details of my own band and pointing them to our page and our website which has all of our videos on it, a list of the songs we do, our gig dates and available dates and some photos and videos of us playing those songs live. I've been on web design courses and photoshop courses. I've also had to learn how to be quite a bit of an accountant and have won some difficult battles with Excel spreadsheets.

The people who run venues have other things to do than wade through messages from people looking for work with them, so you sometimes have to nag them a bit. Persistence and patience and politeness when you send that third message pays off. If you're reading this and you're running one of the venues that we play at, it means you've read my messages and been good to us. Thanks so much for taking us on and having us play for you. It's not easy running a venue these days.

In the evening I went for a drive out to pick up a quite powerful 400w floor monitor speaker so I can hear my own vocals better at gigs.

January 16th:
Last minute revisions to the new book. We are on 223 pages.

January 17th:
Today would have been my late wife Julie's 63rd birthday. She only made it to 24.

In the evening we played at the Hindley Arms and had quite a good gig. It wasn't too busy for the first half, though those who were there were into it. The second half was really good.

We had a chat about one of the venues that we played at in December. We had filmed the show and I was listening back to the audio of it. The crowd were really really into it and enjoying the gig, though after we had finished playing, the Concert Sec grumbled ay us because a couple of people left before the end.

January 24th:
Another new release project suddenly on the go. I got word that artwork was needed a couple of days back, so the sleeve and disc label are now completed. I got the master copy of the music sent to me yesterday, so I will be getting on with arranging pressings on Monday.

Our tenth anniversary gig in the evening was somewhat disrupted by our drummer's transport breaking down on the M61 on the way there. Paul was only a short distance from home when we got word, so he nipped home and collected an electro-acoustic guitar. We did what we did last time we had drummer trouble - and played as a duo. It went down really well.

January 25th:
We played an early evening show (supposedly 6-8pm, but the football ran a little late) in Padiham - our first time at the venue, though I think I've played there before, years ago. We suffered from the run-up to payday, but played to a decent-sized receptive crowd (with our drummer) and have been re-booked twice later in the year, As we finished early, I managed to fill up the car on the way home and had some pizza when I landed at home. Better than getting home after 1am.

January 26th:
Up at a reasonable time. My wife isn't well - achey and sore all over and she spent most of the day in bed, or asleep on the sofa. I did some book work and ordered the CD singles that I needed to deal with. The release should be in a fortnight or so.

January 27th:
The Three's next release might be out on vinyl too. A vinyl 45 is very attractive, but awfully expensive to do. We did our last album through Elastic Stage and that seems like a plan for the next one too. 

January 28th:
An afternoon out in Manchester with two friends turned a bit weird when I bought one friend's round for him, in return for a favour he had done for us.The other friend got all bent-out-of-shape about it all. I'm re-thinking whether I continue this friendship after all of these years, as it was plain embarrassing to have my other friend subjected to this tirade and I'm not going to do it again.

In other news, the garden fence between us and next door has now been replaced at our expense. I now don't have to look at their mess of a 'back garden' through collapsed panels.

February's blog will be in the blog archive for those of you with the folder password.

January 30th:
The band played at the Thomas Egerton on the outskirts of Bolton. A nice gig which we had some friends attend. A good crowd who got involved.

January 31st:
The band played our last gig of the month at The Musketeer in Leigh. It's always a littlebit nerve-wracking playing there, as the place is usually empty early on, until the crowd usually turns up - just in time for the band starting. You do wonder if people are going to come. But they always do. We really enjoyed the gig itself and played some requests and snippets to keep them engaged. We played really well and went down great with them. Back later in the year. Now for a bit of a welcome rest from playing shows until March.

February 4th:
Some final editing for Part Two of the Noize book which covers 1977 to date. It's now been checked and uploaded for paperback and hardback and a paperback edition for Australia, who require a different print standard. Publication has now been put back to the 14th of February, partly due to the constraints of Amazon's publishing machinery. This fits in with other projects and isn't the worst thing that could have happened.

February 5th:
My PSA weighs in at 0.06 this morning. Suitably low, but slightly up on what it was last time. I will have to keep an eye on that.

February 12th:
I've been really busy. I compiled a nine track album and have released it on LP and CD (with two bonus tracks) via Elasticstage.

THE NOIZE part two has come out. More book work for our April book.
There will be another announcement tomorrow.

February 13th:
We have released a CD single for Slade's Jim Lea: Nostalgia / All I Want Is You.

February 14th:
Early sales for the Jim CD and the Slade book are quite encouraging. My album has done a little, but I haven't really been pushing it at all. I have no particular ambitions for it and just wanted a copy for myself. If anyone else wants it, they can have it.

February 17th:
We've sold a lot of the Jim Lea CD's and The Noize Part Two is doing well.

The unsold CD's of The Three's album are going back to Graham, as he paid for them and he wants them back. Fair enough. The album has done what it's going to do (not very much at all, as we could never get the whole band to agree to play any of the songs from it) anyway. I have vague plans to reissue it in a new sleeve on Noize Books And Recordings in a while with some bonus tracks - demos and live recordings, so that new version can be ignored too.

February 26th:
Since I posted last, there has been a little bit of activity around band bookings. I have had to move three dates because of band holiday dates changing and the fact that Del Amitri have just announced a show in Manchester. The 'holiday dates' gigs have both been rescheduled for January next year and the November date will be rearranged shortly. At least we were able to give the venues several months notice, so they were not too bothered about the changes.

We were offfered a support slot in March for the Bay City Rollers at a venue in Blackpool, but we were already booked out. I do worry about the band being a bit rusty when we do go out again. I will do a little rehearsal along to a live recording to get back into the songs, as I haven't been thinking much about band stuff at all these last weeks. I'm sure we won't play too badly though. The books are doing well and the Jim Lea CD single is not far from sold out.

March 8th:
The band have lurched back into semi-geriatric rock and roll action after a 5 week paternity break and we were all raring to go. I did drop in a couple of 'interesting jazz notes' and there will therefore be a disciplinary meeting next week.

March 11th:
I saw two studio recordings that I played bass on (with a band that I was joining last year - Shabby Tiger) posted on the internet. The group has not rehearsed at all since last year, due to the singer having some issues and also the group's original drummer having some very serious health issues as well. It has all been very quiet. I'm glad to see that the songs are out there at last. I contacted Toni - Shabby Tiger's keyboard player to see what's happening.

March 12th:
Toni came back to me with extremely shocking and sad news about Paddy O'Hare, the group's singer, who was found dead yesterday. Just bewildering.

Here are the two songs that I played bass on.

March 20:
The Inn On The Wharf, Burnley. I was tired out and not really very much in the mood for this. The crowd were not too great at all until we were finishing.

March 21st:
The Hulton Arms, Bolton. I partly put the low attendance down to the shitty AI image that had nothing to do with us which advertised our gig. We were far more in the mood for this one and we played a lot better.

March 27th:
Paddy's funeral in Oldham today. I did the RC service (standing room only) but didn't carry on to the wake. I just got in the car and came home.

Discussions in the band for new songs to rehearse.

All entries, text and images in this online diary are © Ian Edmundson.
Only a thick Brummie twat will reproduce them without permission and totally out of context to totally twist their meaning.
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