Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Music is an artform in itself, a language we all understand.
Who eeez theez "Mike"? I know not ov heeem, and weeesh heeem to be taken away vrom mihy blog.
Sorry, was reminded of one of my fave "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoons, where Calvin is wearing a Groucho Marx "disguise" (i.e. glasses and big plastic nose + tache) and is looking up at his mother saying "Who eeez theez "Calvin"?" - and I kinda segue'd it into a Borat impression while I was at it.
Man like Heff, him speak truth - Müf rehearsal was a goodie, just need to come up with some lyrics for our newer "new" song and we'll be away. Incidentally, in true "band" style, the newer "new" song is tentatively titled "New new song", and may well remain that way as a symbol of one of the universal musical truths permeating unsigned (and a lot of signed ones as well, I should imagine) band culture today. I'm particularly loving Lee Alloway's drumming at the mo, he does some beautiful reggae stuff, and I noticed on Monday that he uses a double bass pedal too! Granted, apparently he's been using it for all five or six of the practices that we've had so far, but quite frankly when you've lived life like I have, your short term memory is one of the first casualties. And I really love Lee's drumming too - very reggae in places *ahem*. I thought it would be hard to replace Iain - and it was. So I was right. *pats self on back* But Lee has just made the stool his own, if that's not an unfortunate turn of phrase. When we had Iain drumming, it was like we were just messing around and seeing what would happen, with Iain acting as our musical director. With Lee, it's like I feel obliged to not waste his time (I'm perfectly at ease with wasting Mike and Sam's time!), to knuckle down and apply myself rather than just fanny around and enjoy myself, so he's brought a real sense of purpose with him. Fair play to him. Hope he hangs around longer than our last drummer did. Don’t want Müf to turn into a Spinal Tap-esque drummer graveyard.
Must get round to getting those lyrics penned tho - the last song we wrote was inspired by the recent bombings/terrorist atrocities in London, which was kind of strange as I don’t usually do political songs. I feel pleased to have pushed myself a bit further though, and it's not like I wrote it for the sake of writing it, we had the music done and I was going to sob pathetically like some love-sick teenager over the top but then the bombings happened and before I knew it I had finished off a set of lyrics about politics, the government and all sorts. At first I felt a bit like Rik from the Young Ones, but once I understood that I actually believed the things I had written, I found my conviction and can quite happily sing them now, without feeling self-conscious, etc. I also came to the conclusion that "Semtex Backpack" would be a great band name if anyone had the cahones to use it.
White Sunday - cover your eyes/ears, Mike - played a stormer in the Half Moon in Putney last night, awesome stuff. Loads of people came down to see us including my team leader at work; it's a great venue with a great soundsystem and an engineer who knew exactly what he was doing (no arse/elbow confusions as is often the case) and a great time was had by all. Laughed like a drain for much of the way home, and was talking to a guy as we were packing up who said that he loved the band, thought we looked great and sounded better, and that he loved my "Satriani thing". I'm still deeply happy with that as I write this, it was more the way he said it than anything; I don’t play anything like Smokin' Jo, I like to think he was just saying "well played" in a way that he knew I would appreciate. People say all kindsa weird stuff to me about my playing, I take it all with a pinch of salt cos I know guys who can easily rinse me out in terms of shredding and theory and stuff, but if someone says something nice and they mean it, it doesn’t matter what or how I played, it's just deeply gratifying to think that someone enjoyed it apart from me. All the music I play I generally do because I love it - not to impress or further myself, just because I love it and that's all that matters to me. To realise that someone else thought it was cool as well just about boggles whatever mind I may have had to start with.
Fringe festival.. Nyaaargh! So much to do, so little time to do it in! I've already had to scrap plans for the hip-hop night I was so keen to get booked, and if I can’t get in touch with the assistant manager at Pavlov's Dog to confirm the acoustic all dayer I want to do then I'll have to flush that down the pan till next year as well!! I will be relieved when this year is over and we can start planning next year's properly, it seems like only one in every three things we've tried to arrange will happen and that makes me feel slightly crap as I had such big plans and feel a bit guilty about taking on the responsibility, knowing that I had a fairly full plate anyway. Oh well, as long as it gets better and better every year until it's the full-blown festival that everyone involved has been so excited about since we first started mooting the idea. But as I say, I still have a hundred things to try and do / sort out / investigate / book / fund!
It's good to be busy.
Sorry, was reminded of one of my fave "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoons, where Calvin is wearing a Groucho Marx "disguise" (i.e. glasses and big plastic nose + tache) and is looking up at his mother saying "Who eeez theez "Calvin"?" - and I kinda segue'd it into a Borat impression while I was at it.
Man like Heff, him speak truth - Müf rehearsal was a goodie, just need to come up with some lyrics for our newer "new" song and we'll be away. Incidentally, in true "band" style, the newer "new" song is tentatively titled "New new song", and may well remain that way as a symbol of one of the universal musical truths permeating unsigned (and a lot of signed ones as well, I should imagine) band culture today. I'm particularly loving Lee Alloway's drumming at the mo, he does some beautiful reggae stuff, and I noticed on Monday that he uses a double bass pedal too! Granted, apparently he's been using it for all five or six of the practices that we've had so far, but quite frankly when you've lived life like I have, your short term memory is one of the first casualties. And I really love Lee's drumming too - very reggae in places *ahem*. I thought it would be hard to replace Iain - and it was. So I was right. *pats self on back* But Lee has just made the stool his own, if that's not an unfortunate turn of phrase. When we had Iain drumming, it was like we were just messing around and seeing what would happen, with Iain acting as our musical director. With Lee, it's like I feel obliged to not waste his time (I'm perfectly at ease with wasting Mike and Sam's time!), to knuckle down and apply myself rather than just fanny around and enjoy myself, so he's brought a real sense of purpose with him. Fair play to him. Hope he hangs around longer than our last drummer did. Don’t want Müf to turn into a Spinal Tap-esque drummer graveyard.
Must get round to getting those lyrics penned tho - the last song we wrote was inspired by the recent bombings/terrorist atrocities in London, which was kind of strange as I don’t usually do political songs. I feel pleased to have pushed myself a bit further though, and it's not like I wrote it for the sake of writing it, we had the music done and I was going to sob pathetically like some love-sick teenager over the top but then the bombings happened and before I knew it I had finished off a set of lyrics about politics, the government and all sorts. At first I felt a bit like Rik from the Young Ones, but once I understood that I actually believed the things I had written, I found my conviction and can quite happily sing them now, without feeling self-conscious, etc. I also came to the conclusion that "Semtex Backpack" would be a great band name if anyone had the cahones to use it.
White Sunday - cover your eyes/ears, Mike - played a stormer in the Half Moon in Putney last night, awesome stuff. Loads of people came down to see us including my team leader at work; it's a great venue with a great soundsystem and an engineer who knew exactly what he was doing (no arse/elbow confusions as is often the case) and a great time was had by all. Laughed like a drain for much of the way home, and was talking to a guy as we were packing up who said that he loved the band, thought we looked great and sounded better, and that he loved my "Satriani thing". I'm still deeply happy with that as I write this, it was more the way he said it than anything; I don’t play anything like Smokin' Jo, I like to think he was just saying "well played" in a way that he knew I would appreciate. People say all kindsa weird stuff to me about my playing, I take it all with a pinch of salt cos I know guys who can easily rinse me out in terms of shredding and theory and stuff, but if someone says something nice and they mean it, it doesn’t matter what or how I played, it's just deeply gratifying to think that someone enjoyed it apart from me. All the music I play I generally do because I love it - not to impress or further myself, just because I love it and that's all that matters to me. To realise that someone else thought it was cool as well just about boggles whatever mind I may have had to start with.
Fringe festival.. Nyaaargh! So much to do, so little time to do it in! I've already had to scrap plans for the hip-hop night I was so keen to get booked, and if I can’t get in touch with the assistant manager at Pavlov's Dog to confirm the acoustic all dayer I want to do then I'll have to flush that down the pan till next year as well!! I will be relieved when this year is over and we can start planning next year's properly, it seems like only one in every three things we've tried to arrange will happen and that makes me feel slightly crap as I had such big plans and feel a bit guilty about taking on the responsibility, knowing that I had a fairly full plate anyway. Oh well, as long as it gets better and better every year until it's the full-blown festival that everyone involved has been so excited about since we first started mooting the idea. But as I say, I still have a hundred things to try and do / sort out / investigate / book / fund!
It's good to be busy.
# posted by AK @ 13:37 
