ComEnts

I didn't get to enjoy the rain this long weekend as I was mostly ill in bed. Woo! It was rubbish.

I have an exciting new project in the pipeline. With some of the people I used to do the Fringe Festival with before it was hijacked. I think it's going to be a lot of fun but it's currently top secret. We've been meeting up for a few drinks every so often because it's fun and we were thinking about doing something different but hadn't got an idea. Suddenly, as I was leaving the meeting on Thursday (because I was already ill) we had a flood of inspiration and a brilliant plan was formed. I hope it will pan out as great as it is in our head.

Don't you love these 'nothing is going on' updates? I know I do.

So, we've got about 3 weeks until the big Introducing: Joey Ultra gig, our aim was to have 2 new songs written in time for the gig and we're on track. Recent rehearsals have been a little disrupted by various holidays and other interruptions so we hadn't made quite the progress we'd hoped but as of Monday's rehearsal we have 2 great new songs in the bag. Kings of England which is an epic metal 2.5 minute pop song and Last Day of School which is just a really catchy summery 2.5 minute pop song. Last Day of School was one of PaulC's ideas, featuring bizarre chords which is nice because it's a bit more interesting to play than a lot of the things I write which are really simple. The good news is we can ditch some of our weaker older songs and replace them with the new songs.

We're coming up to about 9 months since the band had its first rehearsals and we're working much more like a proper band now. We have bitchy musical arguments and everything. Also our singer, Local Celeb Binz, has learnt a huge amount. He'd never sung in a band before but his singing, lyric and melody writing are improving all the time, as is his understanding of the songs and things like when he needs to come in. He's writing some really catchy melodies at the moment, it's great! Ann, our drummer and my girlfriend (I should be careful what I say...) is also getting way more comfortable behind the drum kit and is getting louder and louder every week. I'm sure once we get the new house with drum basement kitted out she'll improve even faster.

In other news we went to see the last Rebus gig (at least for the forseeable future) on Thursday last week. They were great, and were supported by Somebodys Mind, who I also like. It wasn't really billed as a farewell gig and it seemed like a kind of quiet conclusion. No big encores or cheers or anything. Alex had said he didn't want a big farewell gig, but I think it would have been nice. Never mind!

There are some really big gigs coming up in the near future. Pete and the Pirates have their single launch at the Water Rats in a couple of weeks, then it's Joey Ultra, then there's an all star line-up for Jail Guitar Doors at the Fez on the Saturday afternoon. Don't miss any of them!

Last summer (it seems like it wasn't very long ago) I bought myself a new valve distortion and a guitar synth. I have been struggling a little with the guitar synth. It sounds brilliant and is really fun to play with but slotting it into a song without just sounding a bit messy and screwing everything else up has been a bit tricky. In the Joey Ultra jam last week PaulC had written a song he thought the synth would go well over so I took it to my rehearsal for the first time in ages. It actually ended up sounding pretty good. There are a few other places in our other songs where a messy noisy synth sound can go pretty well, so I might end up using it a bit more. Good news!

Although it sounds great, there are some limitations. First one is that it really doesn't sound good with chords, there are exceptions, but it's a good generalisation. The other major thing is that if you want to play anything at all quick on it you have to have the attack set at 0 or the sound doesn't kick in before you've moved onto playing the next note.

photo by Andrew Spiers
It's been a busy ten days, sorry for the lack of updates. Last monday before rehearsal we had a photo shoot with Andrew Spiers. It was a lot of fun, I'd spent the evening before making some "Who is Joey Ultra?" signs. (I also did some, What would Joey Ultra do? ones but we didn't use them.) We went for our usual pre-rehearsal drink in Up the Junction a bit earlier and then ended up in the Graveyard at the Junction trying to get pictures of us with sky in the background. Good stuff.

Rehearsal afterwards was a bit shambolic, I think everyone was really still thinking about the photos. This week we had no normal rehearsal at Impact due to me and the drummer/girlfriend being in Dublin. Instead we got together for an informal songwriting jam, which turned out to be mainly PaulC teaching me riduculous chords for some new songs he'd written. They have a lot of potential. We also did spontaneously write some music for Kings and Queens of England. The lyrics had come from an old song that we worked up but discarded, the new song is an instant 2 chord classic I reckon. I love it when stuff comes easily like that!

This weekend was spent in Dublin, had a really good time. We drank way too much Guinness the first two days/evenings and on the third day I stuck to wine and Gin and Tonic. I can recommend the following:
McDaids pub, really old Irish pub with fantastic Guinness (and shows premiership football on a cunningly placed TV). Although, for daytime visits only, apparently it's very locally in the evenings.
The Guinness Storehouse (pictured), but book in advance on the internet and save yourself 20 minutes of queuing.
The open top bus tour of the city. There are a few different ones. The company with both Red and Yellow busses is good. Red busses have driver commentary which tends to be a bit funnier than the proper tour guide commentary on the Yellow bus. Once you've bought a ticket for these you can get on and off them as many times as you want for 24 hours. Really handy for sightseeing, and they drop off at the Guinness Storehouse.
The Mezze bit of the Cedar Tree restaurant. I think it's 2 associated restaurants, we went to the Mezze Bar bit, which is at street level. The Really excellent Lebanese food, great service, and it looks really cool inside with a load of stone mosaics on the wall. The Mezzes are basically like set menus of tapas followed by a main course. You need to book a table if you're going in the evening though.

What else... oh yeah, last night some of the band were interviewed for Blah Blah magazine, we talked a lot of crap, god knows what'll get printed!