Firstly a big How-Doooo to everyone on the forum and to Squeezy John & co for keeping it up and running! I'm a newbie here, but I've been totally addicted to Bellowhead's musical voodoo for over a year now. I got to my first gig at the start of the year at Theatr Hafren here in Wales and had my eardrums and other assorted internal jangly bits...well...jangled, and jangled onto another level at that!
I went to Glastonbury mainly with an eye on seeing the band on the Avalon Stage, but because of the awful weather and the cesspit our tent had turned into, oh and the festering sores and protruding bones from crashing into the swamp several times, we had to leave early before we had nervous breakdowns, or Typhoid...or Cholera...or...Anyway I was gutted, but managed to get to The Shrewsbury Folk Festival this bank holiday weekend and I have to say YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Because that's the sound every part of me wanted to squawk as I bounced around in my pirate tricorn right in front of the stage!
I wanted to start my forum career with a massive, gushing thank you to the whole band for making my weekend, but especially Mr Spiers and your chilled out smiley face, inspirational. I read another post where someone said how seeing Bellowhead had made them feel like a new person, well I would have to agree with that, you lot totally blew the tent down!
It was a little embarrasing when the compere stomped in about four songs into the set and demanded everyone in the aisles get out of there, or the resulting 'fire hazard' could stop the gig and I sensed the whole team spent the rest of the set trying to recover momentum lost in that moment. But you were magnificent, the amount of sweat pouring off the whole crew made that obvious...from the opening 'Over the Rainbow' joke, to the kick-ass 'Frozen Gin' which is one of my favourites - How they expected anyone to stay seated I dunno...There were far too many po-faced Folk-purists in that crowd turning their noses up and not experiencing any of the pure musical joy that was radiating out from the stage!!
Cheers Squeezy, Master Boden and everyone else in Bellowhead - I'll be at the Shepherd's Bush gig you can count on it - play a few shanties for me haha!
PJ
I've stuck on a couple of photos from the other night, managed to get some nice ones as I was so close.
