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Good evening Finnegan's Wake!

That's now about 6 years solid we've been playing Finnegan's Wake in Edinburgh and last night proved why this venue remains one of the jewels in our crown and why we value it so much! The place is absolutely amazing!!

With an Andy compiled set of classic rockers and mature cheese, we were set for a good night - and boy did we have one!! Resurrecting Another Brick to kick off, we were off and running great style. Strangely, this was followed by The Darkness "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" and the audience seemed to go into fever pitch! As we powered through the first set, we totally loved the reaction and response - as usual this feeding us to go on giving it 150%! Quite seriously, as a band there is nothing beats a fantastic reaction to make you play your socks off and by God we got it last night!

Rocking into the second set and we kept the momentum going with more great tunes and more great reaction. Andy and I had a great time leaving the stage for a bit of a walkabout and mingle with the audience. If anything, in fact, this was actually quite difficult as Finnegan's was packed to the rafters! Didn't stop us doing the obligatory floor slides and duck walks (Andy) and lie backs (Me).

Despite continuing sound issues (John's temperamental Trace and Iain bursting a snare tape) the sound "out front" was awesome and so powerful! 

Funniest thing for me on the night was Andy in the middle of "Song 2" announcing "IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!". OK Noddy!

However, next time out it IS Christmas!! We're back to our favourite City Centre venue on 17th December so bring your mistletoe and pucker up for a chocolate Santa!

Thanks again and best of luv!

Neil  

Good Evening Saucy Mary's!!

And indeed it was!!

We made our long awaited return to Skye's finest on Saturday night, Saucy Mary's in Kyleakin. For some reason the couple of months since we were last up seemed much, much longer - must be the anticipation of heading back to this awesome venue!
The trip up was interesting and educational - one topic of conversation was "inventive means of murder through the years"! John won that discussion with his description of a copper pipe up the jacksie followed by a red hot poker up the pipe! We then observed a 45 second silence as we passed Sir Jimmy Saville's house in Glen Coe - one second for every degree he is buried at!

So,Saucy Marys..... Sammy was in Glasgow at the Chilli Peppers gig (boo....) but Laura was there, Ali was there and Danii came down to see us!

Our welcome was absolutely amazing, with Laura coming round from the bar to give us all big hugs! Then, just as we were about to set up, Ali arrived - more hugs!! Getting to like this.... 

After a fairly rapid set up we thought we were ready to roll at about 10pm, until John discovered there was still a problem with his bass amp! Shit! Quick dismantle of the frontage but still couldn't get to the root of the problem.. Plan B - bass went through the PA again. In terms of the PA, in the confusion, I'd plugged in one of the main PA leads wrongly so more panic! Couple of minutes of sweat and we were ready to roll.

For this gig, we'd decided to record the whole thing and thank God we did!! It sounded awesome!! A hot, rocking, non-stop performance went straight on record. When I say hot, particularly for me as the leather trousers were brought out again in honour!! 

Musical highlights of the night for me were the first outings of two new AC/DC tracks - Andy's feature "Thunderstruck" and "TNT" especially for Danii. Both felt fantastic and, listening back, sounded even better!

The night ended at bang on 1am - halfway through the band intros and before we could get into "Heroes" as two cars of Northern Constabulary's finest were sitting outside! One of the things The Shine have (in addition to rock prowess and unfeasibly large genitalia) is respect. There was no way we were going to put Saucy Mary's licence at risk or cause Laura grief - so just killed the gig dead! It's just not worth messing about with the licence or reputation...

Quick towel down and strip down of the gear and it was time to chill out for a few minutes. Huge thanks again to Laura for accepting the dates (all on the planner section of this site) for next year! Then, during our chill out chat, we discovered someone who might have been worth trying the copper pipe / poker experiment on.... :-)

Anyway, this gig (which DIDN'T result in the inevitable killer hangover like last time) is dedicated to Laura, Ali, Danii and the picture of Sammy from stage left and all at Saucy Mary's - God bless her and all who sail in her!

Until next time, best of luv!

Neil