ComEnts

So I was walking past the BBBs on my way home from work last night and I spotted my brother Andy in there having a beer, so I popped in! Had a couple of beers and the subject of the Oakford Social club (new indy bar/pub/venue, I've mentioned it a few times...) came up. I asked if the Oakford had had any effect on the BBBs as the Oakford seems to be looking for very similar customers (eg. me). He said "yeah, our entire Friday night crowd has gone!".

Pretty amazing, I thought there'd be an effect but I didn't think it'd be that big a difference. The After Dark seems to still be busy at least, it was rammed for Sesame Street on Friday.

This'll probably be the last blog of the week, I'm off to Prague tomorrow and don't get back until late Sunday afternoon.

So, we had/have an idea for the cover we have to do for the Joey Ultra gig on the 10th Jan. We tried it out last night. PaulC said it was dreadful... and he wasn't wrong!

So we're probably pitching it at just about the right level.

Just noticed Rob's comment below offering to help us record. That would be awesome but would involve someone outside the band (other than Ben Marwood when he brings us tea) actually hearing our music!! A scary prospect. If we had decent recordings we might even be tempted to put them on MySpace or something!

In other news, I went to see James Bond on Sunday. I thought it was excellent. Much less silly than the recent Bond's, more realistic action sequences and 'gadgets'. No invisible cars or space lasers melting ice caps. Bond actually got the crap battered out of him and bloodied, cut, bruised etc. Very good.

I was told off on Friday night for not posting enough blogs possibly so people would know where I was to avoid me. I said it was because I hadn't been doing anything, but apparently I have to post even if it's about what I'm watching on TV.

Last few days have actually been quite busy. On Thursday I was at the Oakford for the Rebus DJs Presents night. Playing live were To the Barricades, who I thought were very good. Friday night was Club Velocity which was also excellent. I missed The Vice due to the new early Club V start time of 8:30 which was a shame. SHRAG were great, a very Club Velocity band, featuring 3 arty indy girls playing shouty punky songs but they were very good. The Palestinians were really good - will it be their last ever gig? Who knows. I hope not but it seems kinda inevitable.

Tonight it's Joey Ultra's weekly rehearsal. Got a new song recorded (just so we can remember how it goes, no-one is ever allowed to hear it...) last week. Indy Disco. I'm loving Binz's lyrics. They make me laugh. I'm not sure if I'm laughing with or at them, maybe it doesn't matter!

I'm off to Prague at the weekend (thurs-sun) for Austin Palestine's stag do so the plan for the rest of this week is just to hang out at home with my girlfriend. On Tuesday we'll be watching Heston Blumenthal making insanely complicated science pizza, probably utilising a laser or industrial vacuum pump or something and then Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares.

Wednesday I'm not sure about yet, maybe that'll be an excuse to post again then.

So... I got the Joey Ultra recordings back from Paul today. Recordings that no-one outside the band should EVER hear!

It's a long time since I've done any microphone in the middle of the room recordings, even when we did last do them with Sonic Undermind we had Rob (Rebus/Bleeding Ear) in the band and he could get an excellent sound out of a 4 track and a couple of mics. His 'live' recording of Mighty Ogun that we did in a rehearsal room at No Machine is my favourite out of all the recording we ever did with Sonic Undermind. That was using slightly more than just a microphone and a 4 track, but not much more. Anyway without that amount of time, Rob's knowledge, ear and attention to detail, it was never going to sound as good... but I didn't expect it to sound quite as shit as it did production wise. I think next time, a few extra mics maybe, (ironically Rob has most of Paul's mics) and I wonder if we can scrounge a mixer.

Anyway, these were only really so we could take the songs away and remember the structure so it doesn't matter too much about the production. Aside from the shocking school band in a garage (ah, the good old days) sound, it was actually a lot more promising than I'd thought it'd be. Some good catchy songs, some nice musical moments but there's a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it. We're also very light on songs. We've got 3, 4 at a push, + a cover would be ok for a 20 minute set but we need to write more as well as polishing this stuff. Hopefully next rehearsal we can put these 4 to bed and start work on some new stuff.

And hopefully it's just the recording making us sound like a school band in a garage. Why agree to a debut gig with some of the best bands in Reading at a night that's always incredibly rammed! It's not even just the band's debut, it's 2/5ths of the band's first EVER gig. Not that that's an excuse, but I guess the toilet will be getting a few visits, and the bar a bit of a hammering before we're on. The worst reaction would be patronising praise. I'd rather get a "that was shit" I think.

2 months to go until the Joey Ultra debut gig so it's time to knuckle down a little bit. We spent last night consolidating some of the songs we've written and recording them for posterity (so we can remember how they go exactly). It was the best rehearsal so far I thought. The recordings sound relatively shocking which could either be down to the 1 mic in the middle of the room recording style or our general lack of quality. It was the best session so far though. I really enjoyed it

We've slacked off writing new songs a little bit, after the initial few ideas worked really quickly very little of the later stuff has really worked. I need to make some time to come up with some ideas. I'm still not really sure what Joey Ultra's sound is. Somewhere between Metal, Shoegazing Indy, Blink 182 and the Libertines. But where's the common ground?

I've been so minimalist with guitar playing recently I need to get back into the headspace of playing and writing using proper riffs and chords rather than just playing the same 2 notes over the whole song. Actually, I think the fewest I used was 3 notes on Schmindie by Müf but I was trying to get down to 2 or even 1. Joey Ultra isn't really that kind of band though.