Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

As you'll have gathered, I don't go round painting things (apart from fences, kitchens, the spare bedroom . . .) but there was also plenty of music pencilled in for Artistes à Suivre.

After months of rehearsals, and a series of frustrating setbacks, Les Malfonctionnaires finally got out to play the entire 40 songs-plus in our set.

Thanks are indeed due to all the lovely people (lots of them much younger than us . . .) who filled Les Prés en Bulles à Quillan and bopped until they dropped.

Lots of short, sharp songs and keep firing them off. That was our strategy from the moment we first started rehearsing the band. And it works . . .

More thanks are due to photographer Martin Castellan. The upper photos show Mark, Kate, Debs and Stan, with close-ups of Debs and Stan.

Personally, I was deeply thrilled not to be standing in the entrance to the toilets this time, (see previous ace rock report) and thus eligible to be in the pictures.

Actually I think it's a fab pic but I put that down to the photographer . . . perhaps one day I will be a guitar hero . . . if I can just stop dropping bum notes all the way through those nifty little four-bar George Harrison guitar breaks . . . we can all dream . . .

There are people who think that the much-missed George wasn't much of a lead guitarist. As it happens they are all wrong, a fact which hits me forcibly every time I make a mistake.

The main reason for this misunderstanding is that The Beatles were a vocal band with guitars unlike The Stones who were, and still are, a guitar band with singer. The truth of the matter is that George was underrated, understated and a damn good player, bless what may remain of his cotton socks . . .

*All photos copyright Martin Castellan 2011