I’m not sure why men seem to think that ‘meeting up for a
drink’ is some sort of positive, ‘getting-things-done’ sort of activity, but
generally they do – while women do not. Usually, I would concur with the
ladies on this one. Not that I’m averse to a drink – on the contrary, I
love a beer, but I almost never mistake having a beer for having a meeting.
In this case, of course – as you can read here – simply
seeing each other was in fact a proactive step towards actually doing
something.
The emails from this late November period seem a bit
strained. Neil and Nige were both obviously keen to be seen as easy going and
humorous, but trying too hard in these areas tends to have exactly the opposite
effect.
We met up on Saturday 15th at half two at the George &
Dragon in Wargrave. During this meet (at which we all got along swimmingly) we
heard George’s first reference to his having played in a gypsy jazz band and
Neil’s first ‘well, we’re just hobbyists, aren’t we?’ comment. I suppose I should
have seen the danger signs here straight away…
The really good thing about the meeting was 1) we set a date
of January 5th for our first rehearsal and 2) what had started out as a good
feeling became an excellent one. Again, I really don’t know why, but I knew
this was going to work – and it seems that Nige did, too.
By Tuesday 18th The Rhoom had been booked for rehearsal and
Nige was going through some odd explanations of how he and George would be
playing Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles (“It would, on the surface of it,
appear to be a simple evolution of both George, and myself to play our
(completely different roles), put the two together, and hey presto (hopefully)
it's the Beatles live on stage! Lennon is kinda working along with the Bass
line creating a driving sound in the background, whilst Harrison seems to be
kinda vamping along with the chord work and fills. Seems quiet simples").
What?!
Interestingly, however, is that a song list with
‘arrangements’ (read as: “keys and who will be playing the solos”) that Nige
sent through on December 18th contains 26 songs of which only seven
are no longer part of the set – one of them, of course, being Saw Her
Standing There!
And so it all went quiet for the Christmas period and,
following a brief reminder email from Nige on Jan 4th – he really is
good at that. I guess it is the being prepared army training or some such. We
met up for a six-hour rehearsal on Saturday 5th…
Sunday saw various emails thrown about regarding song
arrangements (Roadhouse Blues and Worried Life Blues) and a call (from me) for
more rehearsals during the week with just Nige, Neil and me. I note there is no
hint that we might be unhappy with Neil from these mails.
A word is spread that we can meet as a trio on Tuesdays and
Nige is desperate to be out and gigging by the end of February.
Neil then comes back and says he can’t rehearse before 4pm…
useless for me. In the end we went for a Wednesday from 6 to 9pm. Neil also
sent through a couple of songs he’d like to do – one of which was an out
and out country number. He never really got it, did he? Nige and I discussed
the possibility of doing Spoonful, Crossroads and Voodoo Chile. George added
Hey Joe.
(Nige also suggested Born Under a Bad Sign at this point,
saying it was “a nice easy one”… I finally nailed it for our most recent gig on
September 21st!)
By the time we tried to get booked in The Rhoom, we had missed
the chance. The Rhoom was fully booked. We called off all rehearsals until George could next make it down on Jan 26th. In the meantime we
started discussing recordings…
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