Portugese for the day???

England play in the Football World Cup Quarter-final tomorrow (that's soccer by the way!!) . They are playing Portugal and I have split loyalties! Now, I am Welsh, and traditionally Welsh people dont support England in anything! I however am not that way inclined. Obviously when it comes to sport I will support my fellow Celts (Scots and Irish) whenever they play the English, but when it come to playing Johnny Foreigner I will back England.......BUT.....I have suddenly developed a huge craving for Nando's Chicken!!!!! Nandos is a chain of restaurants that sells Portugese Piri-Piri Chicken, and, in my humble opinion it is the food of the Gods! It is kinda like the thinking man's KFC!!! You get three choices of heat in yer chicken, Medium, Hot, or Very Hot!! I tend to go for the Hot option!
Now then, the reason I might not support England is due to the fact that there is this rather scrummy waitress in my local Nandos who would frown deeply if I was to support England before her beloved Portugal! I know this particular young lady has the hot's for yours truely cos she keeps giving me extra chicking wings for free when I get a take-away! So I think that just for a few hours tomorrow afternoon I will pop to the local pub with her and show my undying support for that little strip of land just off the Spanish coast! After that I might even treat her to a meal (Nandos of course!!) and then ask her back to my place to show her my collection of odd socks (I might even give her one!!). We'll see how it goes.
In the meantime I thoroughly recommend Nandos, especiaaly if you like hot and spicy chicken, actually, that's all they sell so if you dont like hot and spicy chicken I would suggest you stick to Burger King etc.
I had Extra Hot Chicken Wings last night, just to try it, and I have to say that it was a BIG mistake!! It is definitely "toilet roll in the fridge time" today! My ass iss glowing! If I did a hand-stand you would be able to see me from space!! But dont let that put you off! Go try it for yourself!
C'mon Portugal!!!!

The row behind....grrrrrrrr

Question: When you are 300 yards from the stage at an Eagles concert, what kind of brain does it take to believe that holding your mobile (cell) phone at arms length will make the slightest goddamned bit of difference to the quality of sound the recipient of the call will hear???
Answer: The brains belonging to the complete set of fuckwits in the row behind mine who kept shoving their phones along side my head when Hotel Cali was being played!!!!

The show was great, the band were the highest quality, the people in the row behind me were top brass morons!
They talked all the way thru the show, well, screamed is more like it. Talking on phones, shouting to each other when there was a song being played that they didnt know, and when Glen Fry was telling the story of a song they'd written on the evening of 9/11 they didnt even have the courtesy to pay attention and appreciate the emotion that the band were obviously trying to instill on the crowd. The people behind me were an embarassement to themselves, really, really sad!
Go to a concert, get stoned, get drunk, laugh, sing and enjoy, whatever turns you on, but not at the expense of everyone within a 10 yard radius of you!! Some people just dont have values anymore, I was brought up to respect others and not to cause trouble. My parents are both honest, caring people and it has rubbed off on me! For 20 years my father faithfully handed his pay-packet over to my Mother every single month! This was all ok until she found out he was paid weekly, then all hell broke loose. Should all married couples be frank and earnest, or should one of them be a woman...
Right, got that off my chest, thanks for listening, lol. I really enjoyed the show tho, those guy's are true pros, no matter if you like their music or not, they are good at what they do.

I've always like the Eagles, but never really wanted to play any of their stuff in my band, with the possible exception of Take It Easy. Spiny are best descibed as being "raw" lol, so the finer tones of Eagles songs wouldnt really fit too well into our set.
Maybe a punked-up version of Desperado??? Maybe not eh.
Later.

A mighty welcome :-)

After only one post on my new Blog it was nice of our kid Delbut to introduce me to a few of his chums across the pond! Many thanks to Ranceman and Metalchick for a welcome message, cheers guy's, I'll try to meet the required standard but I can't promise to met the giddy heights that Del has reached just yet! Ranceman, I've been to Toronto! Awesome town, I loved it there! Although I was as sick as a dog in the CN tower! Why oh why did they put a glass floor in that thing????
Del, are you trying to tell me that there are more than 3 chords????????????? I am sure that if Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and John Lee Hooker knew that they could have made a name for themselves! Anyway, we have two guitarists in Spiny, I know 3 chords (A, D and E) and Paul knows a few others so where's the problem? Between us we can cope.
I just got back from the 40th birthday bash and am about to have an ice cold shower to try and shift the earthquake in my head, then it's out into Cardiff for another birthday celebration, this time it's my Dad! The whole family is meeting for dinner then it's off to the Millenium Stadium to see the Eagles in concert!!!! It should be a good show, I've seen them once before about 4 or 5 years back and they were top quality. This time they're playing in a 78,000 seater stadium and I actually think my appartment is closer to the stage than our seats, but it should be a good day nonetheless!!

There were some interesting folk at the party last night! One girl was telling us of a dream she keeps having about a snake trying to bite her ass! I tried to tell her that it was all very Freudian but she had no idea what I was going on about, so I got her another pint of vodka and moved on.

My "sister-in-law" (who's birthday it was) had the following presents off her boyfriend (my Brother and lead singer in Spiny Norman!!)
1. Tickets for the Eagles Concert.
2. A criuse around the Ionian and Medeteranian seas visiting the islands of Greece and various other exotic and historical locations from the birthplace of civilisation, starting next Saturday and lasting for 2 weeks!

Do you know what he got me for my birthday a few months back? A guitar lead! I love him really. (joke Al, joke!!)

I also had a small boat with a tiny motor for my bathtub off a girlfriend of mine. She totally misunderstood me! I asked her for a quick tug, but she obviously was thinking on a different level to me!
Oooo my head!
I need a cold shower, pain killers and sleep, but hey, I guess a few more beers and a couple of JD's will have the same effect eh? Here we go then....wish me luck!

In The Beginning........

So it begins.....My first attempt at a Blog!! My mate Delbut (finest drummer this side of me) has been blogging for many a moon now and so I thought I'd give it a go myself. I am a guitarist/singer in the band Spiny Norman, along with Del, (thats me on the right incase you were wondering!!)
This Blog will give you an insight into what it's like being part of a covers band in South Wales, from rehearsing to gigging!
I have no intention of using a spell checker, so dont even go there ok!!!!
This isnt the best time to actually start a blog about my band cos we have no rehearsals and no gigs lined up for at least 3 weeks so in the meantime here's a brief band history..........
We formed in 1996 and it's now our tenth anniversary!
Was that brief enough for ya?
There's more info on the Spiny website.

Here's a bit about me:
I am 38, I am single, I live in Cardiff Bay in South Wales. I am a chemist and I work with radioactively labelled organic compounds for use in the drug discovery industry, it's all good fun and for those of you who want to know more about nuclea chemisrty but find it difficult to understand, here's an easy guide:














Actually I'm not really allowed to say what my work entails, it's so secret that not even I know what I do! In the secret organization I work for, all identities, for security purposes, have to be kept strictly confidential. For instance, I haven’t the faintest idea who I am, nor do I know what my job is. When I drive myself home from work, I have to wear a blindfold so I don’t find out where I live. I also have to be quite secretive about my real name, as do my coleagues, Now this all-pervading secrecy over names could, of course, be very harmful to the normal smooth running of whatever it is we do in our department, so, in order that we have something to call each other, we simply stick pins at random into a phone book. And this week my name is Slumberland Quilts. But that’s just a cover.

I cant wait till we start gigging again, this Blog writing is harder than it looks (Del, you make it look sooooo easy!!)
Ok, as soon as I can think of something interesting to write I'll be back! I'm off to my sister-in-law's 40th birthday party now up in Abernoname. If I survive the vegetarian buffet I'll post the outcome!