Gareth Harrison

Well it’s my birthday today, and I’m at work! Woohoo!

But last night was a little better anyway… went to see Delirious on their World Service tour in Bradford with Sa – and the gig rocked!!

We got there quite early so grabbed some food, then met up in the theatre’s bar with Caroline and a couple of her friends who were also there – but they had tickets for up on the balcony, so we all grabbed a quick drink before we headed down to the main floor for the gig. They were really good – it was quite a different atmosphere from when we saw them back in January… it was certainly a spectacular show! The support act – RRWC – were also pretty good, and impressed me enough for me to buy their CD (which I even got signed by the band, even though I didn’t know who any of them were!!)

There was quite a funny moment when a couple that I know from working at Spring Harvest – Emma and Iain – were called up onto the stage to do a slow dance whilst the band played ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’!

So all things considered, it was a totally brilliant night!

Anyway, back to my birthday… I’m so happy to be officially a year older! Prezzie wise, got a bit of cash from family, and a really cool T-shirt from Miss Wallace, so not too shabby really!

It’s been quite a busy – there’s been quite a bit of running going on, and I’ve seen six different bands playing since last Wednesday!

Music first then… last Wednesday night I went to the Roadhouse in town with Sarah, Emma and Caroline to see Stoney Lacuna do a gig, and they were really good, and we had to listen to two other bands playing before they came on. So that’s three down, three more to go…

Then on Saturday, a few of us went to Alton Towers for the day, followed by a gig in the evening with a gospel group called Sinai, singer Rebecca St James, and headlined by Delirious. The theme park was cool – but massive queues though. Didn’t get onto the biggest rides because the wait was over 2 hours, but still got onto some good ones. The concert was great, although it was quite an experience being in a 12,000-strong mosh pit!!

I’ve been doing quite a lot of running at the gym, but I went running outside for the first time yesterday afternoon. Jamie drove us out to a village in Derbyshire called Mellor to do about an 8km circuit that he normally does on his mountain bike… so as you can imagine, it was quite hilly! We managed to do it in about an hour and 10 minutes with a mixture of running and fast walking. It’s so much harder running outside than in the gym, you really feel it on your feet running on the road. One thing that is quite a worry to me is that after a while my toes went really numb, then just became very sore on every step. Don’t know why they’re hurting like this, and could really do with that not happening this Sunday! Have decided to take a break from running for today, but will be going to the gym tomorrow. I’m getting my dining room replastered on Wednesday and Thursday, so my plan is to try an get out and do a run somewhere near to home at some point during those days.

Right, well it’s been a few weeks so I thought I’d better do a quick update!

At the end of January went to see Delirious play a gig at Liverpool Cathedral, and it was awesome! There was quite a group of us – me, Oliver, Rosie, Sarah, Emma, Colin and Caroline – and we also saw Fiona, Jules, Neil and Sarah who had made their own way there.

The cathedral itself was amazing – it’s 100 years old, and looks really cool. And it was fantastic seeing a band like Delirious playing there. I saw them play Coventry cathedral when I was at uni, and that was one of the best gigs I’d been to. The atmosphere at this one was brilliant, and they played a good mix of their new and old stuff.

The place was totally packed, and the view wasn’t the greatest because the stage wasn’t that high, but even with the wierd acoustics of such a large building, the sound was really good.

Then last weekend I went down to Kidderminster for the Reach weekend away. I had to take the Friday at work because the coach was leaving Manchester at 5.30, and it would’ve been pretty difficult to get there for that time. Anyway, there were two coaches taking us all down there, and I think I chose well, because the other coach got lost and went north instead of south, and arrived a couple of hours after we got there!

It was quite wierd, because the place we were staying at used to be called Fort Rocky, and I went there on a summer camp back in 1987! I had hazy memories of a lot of the things there, but the place was a lot smaller than I remember it – maybe that’s because I was a just a kid then!

Jamie managed to dislocate his shoulder again playing basketball on the Saturday afternoon, and since he’d travelled there in his car, I ended up driving him back home, along with Sarah, and a new guy called Simon, who I discovered is good mates with Andy Chadwick who I knew as a kid, and was on the same summer camp at Fort Rocky back in ’87!

Check out the photos here.

Not much new to report really – except that I’ve decided to bite the bullet and said I’ll go on the ski holiday to Switzerland in the New Year! I’m hoping to get some lessons in before I go, so that I’m not totally rubbish when I get there!

Had quite a good night out on Saturday. Went into town with Sarah, Emma and some other guys to see a band called Stoney Lacuna at a bar in the Northern Quarter. There was a pretty good crowd there, and the place was pretty packed. I hadn’t been to anything like that for absolutely ages, but I really enjoyed it.

Oh and it’s my birthday today… which is a bit of a non-event considering I’ll be working late tonight!

Spent this weekend over at Heaton Park for Festival:Manchester which has been running in the city all week. They’d set up a big stage and skate park there, and I think they said there were around 30,000 people attending on the Sunday, so it was pretty packed there!

There were some good bands on – ones that stood out for me were Cathy Burton, bandwithnoname, Steve, Michael Tait and Toby Mac (from DC Talk), and Tim Hughes wrapped the whole thing up with the London Community Gospel Choir on the Sunday night.

29th Chapter and the band that Hope’s in (BlushUK) also did guest appearances with the Tribe which was really cool – they looked pretty comfortable up there, even in front of such a massive crowd.

On the Saturday afternoon, I went over with Michael (when I eventually found his house to pick him up!) and also bumped into a few people there who I knew as well. It actually got quite cold, and I hadn’t really taken particularly warm clothing with me, something which I rectified for the Sunday! Anyway, for the second day, I went up to Heaton Park on my own, but met up with Sarah and Emma who were there with a load of friends, and it was a really good afternoon and evening. My voice is still wrecked from Soul Survivor, but I did at least try to join in with some of the acts up on stage!

I’ve got some (slightly blurry!) photos of the weekend here.

Got back from Soul Survivor at 3.30 this morning, so have spent most of today asleep! I’ve just been living in a tent for 14 days, so it’s so nice to be able to get back into my own bed!

It seemed like I was there for ages… technically it was for three Soul Survivor weeks, so it appeared to be longer than a fortnight. During my first week there, I spent a lot of my time working with 29th Chapter in the Pulse dance venue because I’ve produced visuals to run with all their tracks, so was dealing with all the technical hassles backstage during their performances! I also got chatting with the guys from bandwithnoname who were also in the Pulse that week, and gave them my card in case they ever want any visuals doing for their shows, because they’re based nearby to where I live. It’s funny ‘cos in one of my first posts in this blog, I mentioned that I was at their launch night, and that I wasn’t really into their music, but now I really do like it! My musical tastes must have changed a bit over the last eighteen months!

The second week at Soul Survivor allowed me to relax a bit more… I spent a lot of the time hanging out with a load of guys I know from Tamworth who were camping there that week. I hadn’t seen any of them since last summer so it was cool catching up with what everyone had been doing. What was a bit of a shock was finding that Matt Passey has got engaged to a girl called Amy, and also that Rob Steward has got engaged as well!

And then for the final week, I had to move my tent to yet another pitch, but this time I was camping with Sarah from lifegroup and her friend Emma. Also there were another couple of their friends – Caroline and Colin – but they were staying in a local B&B because Caroline’s going to be having a baby in less than 5 weeks!

It was a really nice few days to end the holiday, but I was really feeling tired as it drew to a close, and I seem to have picked up a bit of a throat infection or something whilst being there! Or it might be something to do with the fact I’ve just eaten junk for the last 14 days!!

Check out my massive collection of photos from this year’s Soul Survivor here.

I bumped into quite a few people who I hadn’t seen in a long time whilst I was there… on the first week, I saw Fiona Bailey from uni who was there with some friends, and then Ali came down from Bristol on three of the days with a couple of girls who live nearby to her. And then, in the second week, I saw Michyla Hickling (also from when I was in Birmingham) and spent some time catching up on what people have been up to over the last few years! Someone who I was surprised to see was Rob Davies who I lived with in Kings Heath just before I moved permanently to Manchester – I’d not heard from Rob since ‘cos he moved back to Wales when we all moved out of the house. Oh, and quite weird was on the penultimate night, after the main meeting, someone came up to me and asked if they knew me. I looked at her for a few seconds knowing that I recognised her, and then suddenly realised that it was Chris Thomas who was my smallgroup leader when I was at Riverside! It’s mad the amount of people you’ve lost touch with that you bump into at events like this!

Just got back from a kind of launch night for a new band produced by Zarc Porter and Mark Pennels called ‘The Band With No Name’ (www.thebandwithnoname.com) and they were pretty cool! It wasn’t exactly my taste (hip-hop/rap/dance) but I could appreciate the quality of it. My mate Jeb asked me this morning if I wanted to go ‘cos he had a couple of complimentary tickets, so I wasn’t originally planning on being there. We drove probably about 10 miles into the Cheshire countryside to this massive hotel in the middle of no-where, on a hill overlooking the whole of Manchester (was a pretty impresive sight!) and saw this band perform some tracks and outline their vision for working with kids across cities all over the UK. Andy Hawthorne was there as well, and he gave a short talk and it all sounded really exciting! I did feel like me and Jeb were the outsiders slightly ‘cos there were probably about 150 people in this function room, and I’m sure they were all reasonably important bods… I recognised quite a few faces of people from events I’ve been to. Anyway, came away with a nice goodie bag with a poster, single and t-shirt, so all in all, a good night!