Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Hehehe.. What a weekend! What a week! Spent last week in court hoping to see an end to a legal matter that has been a pain for 2 years, thankfully justice prevailed and now I don’t have to suffer getting up at stupid o'clock to drive to Canterbury every morning! The worst thing was the breakfasts on offer at the services on the M25.. Gastronomical sadism.
Also managed to have a bit of a weekend! Went out on the tiles Fri with flatmate and some foxy friends for alcamaholic fun and games - ended up in the Turtle before staggering home (my life is 100% better for being able to walk home from town in less than 10 mins). Pottered about in town for an hour on Sat before retreating to watch as much rugby as my schedule allowed. England were uninspired, Samoa were their usual physical selves - the only time the English 8 hunted as a pack was when the fight kicked off. Fair play to Mark Cueto for deciding to kick off on a player twice his size (dangerous tackle or no!), and an honourable mention to Lewis Moody for performing the shortest peace-keeping mission on film. He knew Cueto was going to have words with Al Tuilagi so went over to make sure it was all kept civil, which lasted for about half a second when Tuilagi punched Cueto, prompting Moody to start unloading with some big right hands. If only the UN peacekeepers took the same approach, we wouldn't have had any trouble with Iraq at all. T'was silly; you can’t promote pugilism at that level of rugby, hopefully Moody will miss the Wales game next year!
Then Wales did the Aussies. When I say "did", I mean "annhilated at the scrum". The commentator's comments were "For years the Aussies have undervalued the scrum, now it looks like all their chickens have come home to roost at once" as Chris Horsmann and Duncan Jones and that new hooker-whose-name-escapes-me made mincemeat out of the Aussie front row. Brilliant. Almost as good as the Ashes in the summer, only we've always known that the crims can’t scrummage. The rest of the Aussie play was great, it wasn't a drubbing anywhere other than the set-pieces, so it was a classic game which Wales won. Wow, how many times have I been able to say that over the years? Rarely - which makes it all the more satisfying! Anyway, as soon as the ref blew up I was on my way out the door to soundcheck with Müf at Impact studios on Cardiff Road.
Cool venue, small crowd (it was FREEZING outside, and Cardiff Rd. is a fair old trek to get to) but a great night with DSA opening up with some frontline punk stylings, Daily Dose doing their smooth blues/funk rock thang and us trying to stay sober enough to keep it together. I loved it, probably bouyed by the Welsh game, and really really enjoyed it. What a laugh. Thanks to all concerned!
Left Impact at midnight, headed to a poker game in Abingdon where I stayed all night *details of the night have been censored to avoid adverse repercussions*. before coming back to Reading at 9am to be at a recording session for All Wrapped Up (we needed a new demo). 7 hrs later I must have gone home, but I don’t remember much past 3pm - I started passing out by then, but somehow managed to get everything finished? Obviously it's not ideal to have to use the Force to see your way through such obligations, but from now on when I say that I can record tracks in my sleep I mean it in a very literal sense. I think I kind of apologised to the rest of the band, but as we did everything that needed doing, it seems to be a case of no harm - no foul. I guess I'll know when I hear the demo! Comments so far include:
"I couldnt quite believe it actually - there we were, guitar strumming in the background, and then it just stopped. Got to the end of the song - shouted Alex down the mics - no response. Walked into lounge - the poor lad is zonked out on the sofa, hands still in position on fretboard! Annoying and amazing (and very amusing) all at the same time!!"
White Sunday CD is with the printers (CD Mule = top man!), we've done some photo shoots to go with the new tracks and if 2006 continues exponentially from last year (it's my 1 year anniversary of having joined in Jan!) then we'll be laughing. Have already got some big gigs booked, as well as some very cool local shows (playing at the Purple Turtle on 9th Dec), and got some good mentions in the latest edition of "Blah Blah" - including news that Gareth from the Palestinians recently got called "a lesser AK", which made me smile - and sympathise with him! Him being compared to me would be like me getting compared to, I dunno, Richard Digance? It's not what I am going for, so why bother with a comparison? The Palestinians do a wicked angry, political punk rock thang - so I reckon Gareth would have taken it as a reassurance that at no point do any of his songs degenerate into pentachronic widdle-fests! Gareth, should you be in need of any sort of consolation, White Sunday are described in the same issue as being "Ian Brown with Slash on guitar", which was well-intended but irked me none the less. If it had said "Rock and roll, with a guitarist who can remove knickers at 200 yards" it would have been OK, but I guess no publicity is bad publicity.. Must remember to write my own press releases in future.
Also managed to have a bit of a weekend! Went out on the tiles Fri with flatmate and some foxy friends for alcamaholic fun and games - ended up in the Turtle before staggering home (my life is 100% better for being able to walk home from town in less than 10 mins). Pottered about in town for an hour on Sat before retreating to watch as much rugby as my schedule allowed. England were uninspired, Samoa were their usual physical selves - the only time the English 8 hunted as a pack was when the fight kicked off. Fair play to Mark Cueto for deciding to kick off on a player twice his size (dangerous tackle or no!), and an honourable mention to Lewis Moody for performing the shortest peace-keeping mission on film. He knew Cueto was going to have words with Al Tuilagi so went over to make sure it was all kept civil, which lasted for about half a second when Tuilagi punched Cueto, prompting Moody to start unloading with some big right hands. If only the UN peacekeepers took the same approach, we wouldn't have had any trouble with Iraq at all. T'was silly; you can’t promote pugilism at that level of rugby, hopefully Moody will miss the Wales game next year!
Then Wales did the Aussies. When I say "did", I mean "annhilated at the scrum". The commentator's comments were "For years the Aussies have undervalued the scrum, now it looks like all their chickens have come home to roost at once" as Chris Horsmann and Duncan Jones and that new hooker-whose-name-escapes-me made mincemeat out of the Aussie front row. Brilliant. Almost as good as the Ashes in the summer, only we've always known that the crims can’t scrummage. The rest of the Aussie play was great, it wasn't a drubbing anywhere other than the set-pieces, so it was a classic game which Wales won. Wow, how many times have I been able to say that over the years? Rarely - which makes it all the more satisfying! Anyway, as soon as the ref blew up I was on my way out the door to soundcheck with Müf at Impact studios on Cardiff Road.
Cool venue, small crowd (it was FREEZING outside, and Cardiff Rd. is a fair old trek to get to) but a great night with DSA opening up with some frontline punk stylings, Daily Dose doing their smooth blues/funk rock thang and us trying to stay sober enough to keep it together. I loved it, probably bouyed by the Welsh game, and really really enjoyed it. What a laugh. Thanks to all concerned!
Left Impact at midnight, headed to a poker game in Abingdon where I stayed all night *details of the night have been censored to avoid adverse repercussions*. before coming back to Reading at 9am to be at a recording session for All Wrapped Up (we needed a new demo). 7 hrs later I must have gone home, but I don’t remember much past 3pm - I started passing out by then, but somehow managed to get everything finished? Obviously it's not ideal to have to use the Force to see your way through such obligations, but from now on when I say that I can record tracks in my sleep I mean it in a very literal sense. I think I kind of apologised to the rest of the band, but as we did everything that needed doing, it seems to be a case of no harm - no foul. I guess I'll know when I hear the demo! Comments so far include:
"I couldnt quite believe it actually - there we were, guitar strumming in the background, and then it just stopped. Got to the end of the song - shouted Alex down the mics - no response. Walked into lounge - the poor lad is zonked out on the sofa, hands still in position on fretboard! Annoying and amazing (and very amusing) all at the same time!!"
White Sunday CD is with the printers (CD Mule = top man!), we've done some photo shoots to go with the new tracks and if 2006 continues exponentially from last year (it's my 1 year anniversary of having joined in Jan!) then we'll be laughing. Have already got some big gigs booked, as well as some very cool local shows (playing at the Purple Turtle on 9th Dec), and got some good mentions in the latest edition of "Blah Blah" - including news that Gareth from the Palestinians recently got called "a lesser AK", which made me smile - and sympathise with him! Him being compared to me would be like me getting compared to, I dunno, Richard Digance? It's not what I am going for, so why bother with a comparison? The Palestinians do a wicked angry, political punk rock thang - so I reckon Gareth would have taken it as a reassurance that at no point do any of his songs degenerate into pentachronic widdle-fests! Gareth, should you be in need of any sort of consolation, White Sunday are described in the same issue as being "Ian Brown with Slash on guitar", which was well-intended but irked me none the less. If it had said "Rock and roll, with a guitarist who can remove knickers at 200 yards" it would have been OK, but I guess no publicity is bad publicity.. Must remember to write my own press releases in future.
# posted by AK @ 16:48 
