Liondialer - Liondialer LIVE!

Intro - this is an amalgam of parts from four different gigs, plus a spoken intro from Danny from the Ladybarn gig; the original intro had a rather different spoken exchange that was finally removed for all kinds of reasons, but mainly to not give air to the Green Room heckler who was so roundly dismissed with a 'fook off!' from the guitarist - it may yet appear as a bonus mp3 somewhere.

Saki - played to a cold and empty room, and its measured tone can be explained by Greg thinking the soundcheck was the actual gig and playing accordingly; once the actual performance began it had a pace that the soundcheck didn't.

Green Room 2 - a later section of the Green Room performance.

Bay Horse - recorded in the dark cellar room of a Manchester 'Northern Quarter' drinkery, the audience commentary throughout comes from a bunch of blokes playing pool feet away from the 'stage', utterly indifferent to the presence of 'performing' 'musicians'. Ivan Hall sat behind his amplifier adding subtle (and often inaudible) nuances via a ridiculous chain of effects pedals. No one noticed.

Green Room 1 - the opening of the piece above. The Green Room is a very pleasant 'arts' bar/venue/theatre. The audience were generally sympathetic.

Ladybarn - recorded in a small room upstairs in a nice old Burnage hostelry, and, booked as an acoustic duo, the entire performance drove very vocal drinkers away, in part because Greg grabbed one of their pint glasses from them, emptied its contents (their beer) onto the floor and then attacked his cello with this improvised bottleneck. The sublime harmonica was an older gentleman, very drunk, who joined in from behind his pint, and kept up his pure tone despite the barrage of noise that followed this excerpt. It's his 'if it's too loud, you're too old, so fook off' at the very end of the album (and which should have echoed the Intro's intended Rochdale dismissal), and at the time it just added an extra frisson of tension to a tense evening (the promoter was afterwards quite shocked at what she had booked), but listening back to his comments, his own enthusiasm is palpable. He claimed to have played with The Hollies in the sixties, but we had no luck in identifying him afterwards, and then the Ladybarn closed down, and no one checks their myspace any more, so he's still currently unidentified.

Music Box - a 'proper' venue on Oxford Road, and as support to Dead Meadow (and before a Spaceman 3 'tribute' band - that we should all live so long to see such things) - this was the end of the performance, and an errant mic inadvertantly left open by Danny distorted every movement onstage, until they both succumbed to it, and so their set ended with an empty stage spitting fizz and crackle from Danny's gear, and after Greg had stopped punching his laptop, leaving the soundman to fade it down, the audience were left to applaud their equipment's finale. A girl was overheard afterwards on the phone telling a friend she had just seen the worst band ever: "they didn't even have any songs!". Wish we had a recording of that.

Rarefish - recorded at a Belgium radio session, this is a two minute excerpt from twenty minutes, and an impromptu acoustic set, because none of their European power adapters worked, and they were both too hung over to find an alternative. Greg's playing is as delicate as his hand, after drunkenly punching a wall or something the night before.

The Afterword - and the aftermath of the Ladybarn. Goodwill and consternation, and substantial encouragement from that evening's special guest. "Proceed gentlemen."

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