After a very successful show last year Abel Ganz will once again stage their ‘Prog Before Christmas’ event in Glasgow which this year will be held on Saturday December 17th.
Drummer Denis Smith said “last year’s event was such a success with both Tiger Moth Tales, and We Are Kin making the night so special that we started discussing among ourselves whether it might be a worthwhile idea to try and make it a regular, annual event, with special guests invited along each year”. Very soon after we began talking about it we got the news that our dear friend and one of the original founding members of AG – Hugh Carter has been diagnosed cancer. So – this kind of made our minds up for us and we are now organizing The Prog Before Xmas 2016 as a charity fund raising event with all the proceeds going to https://www.maggiescentres.org/
Like last year Abel Ganz will be joined by two other Prog acts to round out the bill. John Young from Lifesigns – who will perform a solo spot. https://www.facebook.com/Signslife/and Big Hogg from Glasgow https://www.facebook.com/bighoggband/
Denis says “we are absolutely thrilled that both these acts have agreed to join us to help make this what we hope will be a memorable night and hopefully together we will also raise lots of money for a very worthy cause. We recently became aware of newcomers [and fellow Glaswegian band] Big Hogg and have all quickly become great fans of their style. Really interesting, great tunes, and definitely a band to watch.
We are all also huge fans of Lifesigns so of course we are all delighted that John has so kindly agreed to come and play for us.
This year, the Abel Ganz set promises to be quite different and a bit of a ‘one off’ performance. Denis explains – “it so happens that before we learned that Hugh Carter was ill both he and the other original founding member of AG, Hew Montgomery, have over the last six months or so been preparing a reissue of the very 1st AG album Gratuitous Flash from way back in 1984. This got me thinking – since I knew this reissue was coming up wouldn’t it be a great idea to try and reunite the original line up of Abe lGanz to play a couple of tunes from Gratuitous Flash at the 2016 Prog Before Xmas event. I knew that this would be something that would be a real thrill for Hugh and when I talked to him about it he was delighted!”
So – this is something I have been working away at the last couple of months and it has proven to be quite a challenge as at least one of the original line up of the band had not been seen or heard from in over twenty years and the rest of the guys have not played together in decades. However, I am happy to say that I have now tracked down every single one of them and once they learned of Hugh’s illness they have all agreed to play at this year’s Prog Before Xmas!!!
So – please spread the news far and wide. This will be the ONLY gig that Abel Ganz will do this year.
Thanks very much and really hope to see as many of you there as possible. Love to all – Abel Ganz
