It Was Fourteen Years Ago Today...

... Macaroni Penguins played their first ever gig, at Piggy's Birthday Party, in his house.

We had just acquired a drummer, Michelle, the previous day, but she declined to play with us at such short notice, so the four of us - Mark, Mike, Jim and Fred (our former keyboard player) - struggled through 11 songs backed by a TR-505 drum machine and a dodgy amp.

The songs played were:

1. Keep Your Hands To Yourself
2. Vampire Blues
3. Is She Really Going Out With Him?
4. Hard To Handle
5. So You Think You're In Love
6. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
7. Walking By Myself
8. R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.
9. Fearless Heart
10. Future's So Bright
11. Stepping Stone
    

Interestingly we recently played another 11 song set at Snodfest 2008 - due to time constraints - and that set had exactly no songs in common with our first ever set. Although having said that Stepping Stone is still our third most played song (after Another Girl, Another Planet and Make Me Smile) and still the song we traditionally end on, and another two songs (Hard To Handle and Future's So Bright) are among our top ten most played songs, although have been absent from recent sets. And one of the songs from this set (Fearless Heart) went so well that we have never played again. Ever.

But, things have moved on, 14 years and 92 gigs later we have lost a keyboard player and gained a drummer and a backing vocalist, lost a drummer and gained a different one, gained a lot more songs and lost a few as well, gained a lot of experience and lost a lot of nervousness.

Here's to 2009.

"But they're guaranteed to raise a smile"