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Well were do i start. Theres so much I can say about CODEGO as a band and as individual musicians. As a band they are keen to entertain and are exelent quality song writers. Codego have played in various venues big and small for the past few years. They've played around the Halifax area and all over west yorkshire and beyond. Codego made quite an impact on the leeds music scene. With all venues welcoming them and offering more gigs than it was possible to handle. As time passed CODEGO had a mix up in band members and stopped all gig bookings, cancelling the ones already booked. Now the band is back in full strength with origional bass player, rythm guitar and lead singer. Now the line up includes keyboards and lead guitar. Thats right, now theres 4 of us entertaining the world as we know it.
Lee was and still is an inspirational singer, with powerful and energetic vocals, capable to raise an eyebrow or two in any sort of crowd. And now he is the new rythm guitarist bringing twice the talent to the crowds they do play.
Ozzi still remains to be as entertaining as ever. Not only does he come up with some cracking bass lines, he also comes up with some quality guitar riffs. The guy is a living legend who will never give up.
Sam. What a guy. Exactly what CODEGO needed. With balls of steel he joined a band where Ozzi could possibly be old enough to be his father. He didnt let it intimidate him.
The last member to join the band was Alex. Alex had been tinkling the ivorys for about two years when he joined. He loved the sound of CODEGO so much he changed his classical style to fit in with the rest of us. As the only member of the band to don a pair of spectacles its safe to say he looks stupid. Although he does sometimes wear contacts. Ahh bless. So far his contribution to the band has been outstanding, If he keeps up the good work, CODEGO will sound better and bigger than ever before. Alex has now completed all of the music CODEGO have been working on. And it is top quality stuff.
Watch out for this band. They will be playing near you before you know it. After spending weeks pestering folk for sponsors Codego, Dooby and Nev have finally done the National 3 peak challenge.
Thats Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell pike in the lake district and Mount Snowdon in Wales.
We started our challenge in Scotland for the first of the 3 climbs.
Gotta admit that it was the single most difficult thing I've ever done. But by working as a team and eating peanuts we battled through the rain, wind, rough terrain and absolute darkness to get to the top of Ben Nevis. I imagine that in the daytime this would be a challenge on its own, but at night it proved to be very flipping scary. Not a single light apart from the ones on our heads to lead the way. There was a distinct smell of shit in the air. We didnt start the time till around 5pm and got back down around 11pm. Quite a good time I've been told. We did promise to put videos of us playing a song together at the top of each mountain. I now think we may have bitten off more than we can chew with that idea. It was freezing and at that stage it was also the windiest place I'd ever been. Carrying a guitar to the top was enough for me. I almost dropped it off the side a coupla times accidently on perpose. We did attempt to play a short effort of A Great Change at the bottom but fatigue was low and morale had long dissapeared. It wasnt our best attempt of a song but it will be shortly posted on our myspace with a montage of climbing from each of the peaks.
Big thanks to the charity for supplying us with the mini bus and a big thank you to the two lovely chaps who drove all around the country for us whilst putting up with Sams jeep talk. The bus wasnt the comfiest of rides but it supplied us with complete alertness to every speed bump in our 1000 mile trip and a massive dose of convoy cock.
On the bus we all decided to get into our dry clothes. But none of us had dry clothes because we took our bags up the mountain incase we needed to wrap up. Everything got soaked. I didnt relise this until I had gotten completely naked only to find all I had dry was a pair of socks. Naked to change socks. Thats a first. Alex had convoy cock.
Next up was Scafell peak in the lake district. This is the smallest of the 3 but for me it was by far the most challenging. It was so steep the grass was tickling my nose on the way up. It took an hour longer than we thought to get to the mountain as the main road leading to Scafell was closed for the night for road workings. The satnav wasnt helping and our map reading skills were proving to be as usefull as a monkey playing darts. Nev decided to flag a car down which turned out to be a local bobby patrolling the area. Quite cool of him to give us a police escort to climb a mountain. Although at this point I think we could have easily have turned back and gone home to bed.
We finnally arrived at our destination and started a dark early morning climb to the top of scafell. It took two hours of walking and sweating for the sunlight to finally pass the clouds and help us see that we had taken the wrong route and was about an hour in the wrong direction. This was a bit disheartning but we still managed to plod along and get back on track. All the time Sam kept his convoy cock. We got to the end of the walking part of our journey and had to start to climb. On any other day climbing up a waterfall wouldnt be the easy way through, but for me it was just a way of taking the weight off my feet and on to my hands. It was so windy that the water was flowing up hill. And thats no shit, it really was. We got to the top of the water fall and walked for another half hour. In this time we had split up slightly with a few 5 minutes behind. When we caught up to the others we thought it was the top. There was many a tear shed, mainly by Sam when the rest of the group politely told us to hurry the fuck up and we will be at the top.
Eventually we did get to the top. Now i thought Nevis was a windy scary place but this was unreal. I could only imagine that this was what venus would look liike. It was just sharp jagged rocks with cloud smashing you in the face like a pillow fight at a girly sleep over. It was almost impossible to stand up but tottally worth being there. We started to go back down. It took about two hours less to get down than it did to get up as we were all starving and almost ate a sheep.
We got to the bottom, got back on the bus and headed for Wales.
After our detour on the bus in Scafell and the long way up a mountain the same place we was a coupla hours behind. So what was supposed to be a day time climb ended up being another one in darkness. We started the climb complete with convoy cock in the day light but with winter approaching we didnt have much time left till the night came in.
Dannys family met us in snowdon and decided to join us on the treck to the top.
I was loving the first hour of the walk as most of it was flat but about another hour in it got rough and steep again. Now I don't know anyone who has struggled with Snowdon before so I can only presume we took the wrong way up. There was very minimal path and it was dark so it was hard to tell. The weather wasnt so bad. We felt quite mild with our layers on and stained underwear. It was spitting and a bit windy but I think we were quite enjoying this one. When we told people about what we wanted to do for the leeds society for deaf and blind people they thought we were nuts for doing it without a guide. Up untill now I didnt get why we would need a guide to follow a path.
We got lost on the way back down. This completely took away any kind of joy we felt for getting to the top of the final mountain cause all we wanted was to be back in the bus feeling bumps in the road and having a beer with convoy cock.
We set off in the direction off down, untill we got to a cliff. So we kept on doing the same thing. Left then down left then down until we found a path. Even though I thought we was on the right path something felt wrong about it. Every thing looked the same everywhere so it was hard to tell. We ended up going uphill again untill the path was split. I'm presuming we took the wrong trail as we ended up miles away from our destination. After a coupla hours of walking down and left again we got to something what we thought was a river and we was going to follow it to the lake in the middle. Not so far from where we started from. It wasnt long before we saw light coming from the river. This is when we realised the river was actually a road. Oz pissed himself with happiness but alex was still adamant that it was a river. I have no idea why a car would be driving smoothly up a river but he was convinced we would have to swim. Personally I think he had his swimming trunks and wanted to get some use out of them. We was still probably a good half mile away from the river road but we kept heading in the genaral direction of the floating cars. Also by this point Lees torch had died and was sharing the evermoving light coming from the other headtorches. We finnaly made it to the road which felt like absolute bliss just to be on tarmac again. Even though we was walking up the hill with double yellow lines at either side Alex was still suspicious about this strange river we had discovered. We got to the top and saw the bus waiting patiently for us. Jumped on cracked open a beer and headed back to glorious Halifax.
I think all in all we was about 4 hours over our 24hour time but we did have a few mishaps along the way which really slowed us down. The walking and climbing seemed effortless considering that we are just a bunch of regular idiots that play in pubs on a weekend, and Dooby and Nev.
40 hours away from home, uk's 3 largest mountains, 4 hours sleep and gallons of convoy cock.
Pretty special weekend.
Thank you for any sponsors you have promised to donate. We will be shortly knock on doors for the dosh.
CODEGO, NEV AND DOOBY
Proceeds will go towards the Leeds society for deaf and blind people. A charity chosen by The Lawson family. There is a tax claim option for the employed sponsors.
We will have sponsors that will help towards the funding of the CODEGO album. Each person who donates £10 pound or more will receive one free CODEGO album as well as the satisfaction of giving to a worthy charity. An album launch will be organised around Christmas time.
If you want to sponsor CODEGO just drop a text or an email and let me know.
07961625162
with the following details.
Name
Full address
Phone number
Donation amount
and if you could let me know if you can claim tax aid. (basically if your in full time work or not) you dont have to pay extra. It comes form the goverment.
We're only gonna do this once so please sponsor us generously.
Please visit our charitys website @>www.leedsdeafandblind.org.uk
For more details contact the band at codego@fsmail.net
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