Birth of a Band 14

Nige’s relentless hunt for gigs never faltered – and never does. He is the dream member for any band… Really. The rest if us were now pretty much settled back into a life of practising and doing what we felt we needed to do, safe in the knowledge that the gigs would be piling up. It’s a good place to be, provided this was what you really wanted to be doing.

For Angus, it was becoming clear that this was not what he wanted to be doing.

In a way, it’s pretty unfair in that a couple of months earlier, our stalwart drummer had lost his job and thus was able to dedicate a lot of time to improving his chops, runs, fills, paradiddles and all those other things drummers do. It was paying dividends.

Then, around mid-July, a new job came in that Angus was clearly excited about… and that’s when the whole ‘might be going horse riding’ stuff started. And that’s what is unfair. I was pleased when he was out of work, and became pissed off after he found a new job... There's something wrong with that, isn't there?

Nige sent me an email asking about mid-week gigs and I said that if we could top the money I earn on an Open Mic Night (which at the time were running on Tuesdays in Maidenhead and Thursdays in Marlow – the latter still going strong, the former… well… ahem, let’s move on, shall we?) I could find a dep. All other days were fair game.

It turned out that a pub in Bracknell, The Goose, was looking to invent a mid-week slot for live music. At a push, they might try a Sunday. At first Nige was keen on the mid-week idea – and for me, if we could have got a Wednesday night, that would be knocking five gigs a week! I crossed my fingers…

Nige came back shortly afterwards saying that, because of his new job, Angus would only be willing to do weekends…

Does that include Fridays? No. It’s agency work and deadline driven, so, while promising to fulfil all Friday gigs already booked, he asked Nige not to book any more Friday gigs.

What?!

My response to this was: “Ok. That’s it. I’m looking for a new drummer.” As it turned out, Nige had already put the feelers out on the various musician websites and forums. I felt bad about this – and I think Nige did, too – but I wasn’t going to have a band member dictating which days of the week we could or couldn’t have gigs. There had to be a priority and that had to be the band.

A couple of guys from West London answered Nige’s calls on Band Mix and then this: “Hi, I’m an experienced Blues/Rock drummer. Looking to join a great dedicated full on blues rock band that really wants to gig as often as possible. Also love to rehearse/jam. I have good availability and a deep passion for playing live. If you are looking for a powerful passionate drummer who lives to play the blues get in touch. I live near Reading have transport, good kits and no hang ups or restrictions.
Cheers
Ant”

Well, he certainly talked Nige’s and my talk… Let’s see if he could walk the walk…

Birth of a Band 13

Following a weekend that included two successful gigs and something approaching a living wage in the pocket (at least for a couple of days) we then had a fortnight with nothing in it.

A band needs to shooting out feelers for festivals soon after the New Year, so with Custard Cream starting gigging in May, the chances of being in the ‘outdoor calendar’ was pretty slim. These were always going to be quiet times.

Nige suggested we should get together as a trio (minus George, that is) and I concurred. Unfortuantely, I was away for one weekend and Angus another. So what about midweek?

Angus said no. To be fair, he had booked this time off when Nige had asked for dates when we were not available, but I felt certain that we could have found a couple of hours somewhere in between July 17th and August 10th… Apparently not. My turn to wrankle…

After this – and I need to add here that Nige and my attempts to get together for a two-man rehearsal also foundered – another ad hoc gig popped up at The Chequers in Marlow on August 16th. Then another at The Pub with No Name the week before (Noctor’s – now The Corner House), where I was now organising an open mic night. So that would be two gigs in my territory in one week. I was going to make as much noise as I possibly could.

Nige then found a gig in Reading on the 17th. August was really filling up… Then Angus came through with his now-(for us)-legendary email: “I might be asked to go horse riding on the 17th, and if I am, I would like to go, so I can’t do that gig.”

What?! Not: “I’m going horse riding, I told you I wouldn’t be around”, but “might be”. To say that I felt as though someone had hit me in the face with a shovel is not over-egging it. Might be?! Might be?!

Nige’s response was, to say the least, not diplomatic. I was sitting at home. Silently seething at this invasion of nonsense into our ever-burgeoning state of well being and self importance, when Nige fired from the hip in an email of no uncertain terms. He concluded with: “Fucking think about where exactly you really wanna be Angus!” I had to agree. 

Angus’ response was to acknowledge the work Nige was putting in getting gigs, but pointed out that sometimes new unavailable dates would be added and Nige should contact him before confirming each new gig in order to avoid the embarrassment of having to pull out.

This seemed a little churlish on the face of it, but when you consider that Angus was never exactly prompt at replying – in fact a number of times, he needed prompting in order to get a reply from him – the tone was pretty condescending. I was purple with rage. God only knows what Nige thought.

The next day, Nige confirmed that he had cancelled the gig on the 17^th and all but apologised for his email. I’m not sure why, but he was keen to get things back on an even and friendly keel…

Nige and I then corresponded and concluded that the only thing that had redeemed young Angus was the fact that he was obviously doing his homework and improving on a weekly basis… But we agreed that this was definitely ‘strike one’ for him.

Birth of a Band 4

So, we had to oust Neil from the band (see here), but, as Nige wisely pointed out, even better to have Neil at a rehearsal than no-one, so we delayed telling him he was out until we could find someone to take his place. We all started putting our feelers out.

My first port of call was a guy called Angus who played with a really cool bunch of guys, but in a band that was clearly going nowhere. The lead singer preferred hiking and hockey to playing guitar and the bandleader is not the strongest character you will ever come across – though an absolutely lovely bloke…

Anyway, I thought Angus might be able to squeeze us in as well as his other band. As it turned out, he was champing at the bit to find a more serious band. I assured him that we were precisely that.

Thus, after an email from Neil on Feb 13th saying we should establish a set list to get used to playing the songs in order, Nige (having volunteered, I hasten to add) had short-straw duties to perform as our next rehearsal was Feb 16th…

Neil did not take it well, Nige told us, but (interestingly) after a long and painful silence, said: “Andy had made his mind up early on that I was not up to his standard, and it was only a matter of time.” Me?! I articulated my surprise to George and Nige at the rehearsal.

“Yeah, well you did keep giving him ‘The Look’,” Nige said. The Look?! “Yes, when we make a mistake you give us a look that can kill,” explained George. Really?! “Yup,” George continued. “And add to that comments like: ‘Why can’t you get it right? It’s the simplest, most classic fucking song ending in all of history!” Who did I say that to? “To Neil!”

Oh…

How little one can know one’s self sometimes.

At the rehearsal, Angus had had almost no time at all to get to know the songs, but he kept going with admirable stoicism and with his laid back, friendly demeanour, he won us all over. “I just can’t wait to get gigging,” he said. You and us alike, mate.

We arranged for Angus to come over to me (Feb 24th) to re-record the drum parts on the songs we had recorded and set about sorting out the next time we could all get together for a rehearsal. Saturday March 2nd was mooted, but Angus asked if we could do the Sunday instead. I thought nothing of it – it suited me, and anyway, George couldn’t make that weekend, so that was that. The next rehearsal was 9th March.

Angus came over for the recording – and it is here that I really should have seen the signs. He came around, set up his kit, recorded a song with a couple of mistakes, so I said, we should do it again… “Can we leave it till the end,” he asked. “I’d rather do the next one…”

We went through the songs like a dose of salts and he couldn’t wait to get away. I later got to know (for the wont of a better word) his girlfriend and realised what was happening. Poor old Angus spent his entire time with the band trying to balance his job, his girlfriend and the band, but the band always came last – and the girlfriend always hated the band.

After re-recording the drums, of course, we needed to re-record everything else. Not a bad thing, but more time. Looking back, I think I was very naïve to think we could have got a band from scratch out gigging in a month. We would have been playing for six weeks by our next rehearsal – and nowhere near getting a gig… Let alone having recordings to tout.

Birth of a Band 2

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 18^th 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 4^th – 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 5^th…

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 21^st!)

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 26^th. In the meantime we started discussing recordings…

I was, by now, getting pretty frustrated…

Manners will get you nowhere

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I suppose it kind of ties in with the whole ‘Joys of Mediocrity’ subject thread that those who succeed tend to be single-minded, ruthless and altogether unpleasant. This is a sweeping statement that will garner a huge wave of protest and the production of a series of exceptions that go an awfully long way to disprove the rule. But…

I watched the Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll movie a year or so ago (and terrifically good it was, too). In it Andy Serkis’ portrayal of the late, great Ian Dury showed a man so determined to succeed, and so convinced of his deserving success that anyone or anything that stood in his way was treated with such an utter disregard as could easily be interpreted as contempt.

Pop and rock music is littered with such people. David Bowie, Eric Clapton – in fact all three members of Cream – John Lennon, Eminem, Victoria Beckham even… And not just music, of course. A brief look at the life of Charles Dickens will produce a very similar picture. Brian Clough, anybody? Alex Fergusen? Robert Oppenheimer?

Single-minded people tend to work hard and push through obstacles and barriers. The hard work brings them up against more barriers than the lackadaisical, and the stubbornness keeps them battering at them until they give way.

I’m sure to their kith and kin, these people are as lovely as any other person on earth – certainly once they have achieved the important goals they seek – but to the rest of us… Well, we are just potential barriers or obstacles.

I kind of wish I had known this 40 years ago. If someone had had the foresight to instill this into me as an 11-year-old, I’m almost certain I would be far closer to achieving the things I want to achieve by now. I am sure that I would ‘be there’.

Instead, I am still trying to convince myself that it is worth being a little more unpleasant if it means getting what I want. Dammit all, I’m not exactly Mr Popular as it is – why the hell should I worry about what people I don’t really know think?

But I do.

Those of you following the news on the Mechkov website will be well aware that I have been gigging recently with a new band – a covers band playing the music of Cream and Hendrix and the like. This band began rehearsals in February with a mind to start gigging in March.

The guitarists, Nigel and George, were the protagonists in getting this band together and they called upon the skills of me for bass and vocals and Neil for drums.

Problem was, Neil was awful. Bad timing, bad rhythm and just all-round not very good at playing the drums. I kept schtum, thinking two things: first, he could improve if he takes it seriously and rehearses properly. Second, he has been brought here by the guys putting the band together.

Three weeks and lots of rehearsing later, we recorded the band in my little studio. It all sounded ok for the time we allowed ourselves… Except Neil. A friend of mine later said that his drumming sounded like someone falling down stairs… yes it did.

I finally told Nige and George that I couldn’t play with this guy.

“Oh, thank God for that!” they said. “We were just saying to each other that we couldn’t gig with him!”

“So why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

“We didn’t want to upset you!”

Dear, oh dear! You see? Had I (or any of us) been a little more single-minded, a little more determined to get what we wanted and not let anything stand in our way, we would have ousted the dodgy drummer after rehearsal number one. Instead, we plodded on, wincing and grimacing, hoping that something would change or that someone else would do something to make a difference.

As Britons of a certain age, we are brought up that minding your Ps and Qs is an essential virtue. That might well be so, but no empires were ever built worrying about other people’s feelings. Sometimes you just have to say: “Please, stop. Please, go away! Please! Thank you!"

The end of one rainbow

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Now, why would I have gone to all that trouble of starting to document my task of documenting a new open mic night only to come to a shudderingly abrupt halt just eight weeks into the project.

Well, there are two reasons. First, my wife kept saying ‘do you really think you should be writing a blog when you are earning as little as you do?’ which is, sadly, true on one level.

Second – and if it hadn’t been for this point, I probably would have ignored my wife and continued – I chickened out.

When writing a blog, one needs to be brutally honest and true to one’s thoughts and opinions, however upsetting they might be for the people you are writing about. When organising an open mic night, one needs to nurture relationships and create a nucleus of loyal participants. Pissing people off could well be counter-productive.

The fact is, the main body of support I got for the Plough’s Tuesday evenings included Psycho Deano (a lovely bloke), Sassy Lozza (my wife), The Mafia (nice people, but always tricky in terms of conversation), Jeff the Jock (who is as lovely as he is boring beyond belief) and Not Manic Mark (again, as sweet as honey, but a real effort to talk to and play with). Among this group, only The Mafia would both play and sing. All the others either required me to play and/or sing. But I needed these people to make sure that someone was there in the pub to keep East End Bob happy.

So, taking the micky in a blog might not be the most conducive method of mollification of my muso masses. With these guys coming regularly, anything else was a bonus.

And so the Tuesday evening chugged on through up to Christmas and into the New Year, becoming stronger and more defined with each passing week. In order to keep East End Bob happy and in control, I agreed to a pay cut, but he was decent enough never to pay me the minimum amount – always adding a little extra on and often giving me the full fee.

Then the last week of March was upon us and – after a couple of quiet evenings – no-one came! For the first time ever, not a single person showed up. I was gutted. East End Bob was mortified.

This stung me into action. I immediately got on to the Slough Observer and wrote press releases, gave interviews and sent over pics (taken by The Mafia). The lovely people at the paper promised me good coverage.

Then I got a message to ring East End Bob…

“I think we’d better knock it on the head,” he said… At least I think that what he said. It could have been ‘a thud with berry knocker on the air’, but I took it to be the first one. The second one was just ridiculous.

The next Tuesday some 15 people turned up having seen the article in the Observer. I wasn’t there. I just smiled a knowing smile and thought to myself: “Bob, you chickened out. We’re as bad as each other.”

Fighting Fire

It’s something of a dilemma for many musicians – particularly those just starting out and hoping to be able to make a living at making music. The biggest dilemma, of course, is that it looks as though anyone hoping to make a living with music will do exactly that – make a living. Nothing more and very probably a lot less.

I come from a generation when the pop and rock heroes didn’t simply make a living, they became mega-rich, they signed deals that tied them up for ten albums (and how they complained) and could be a law unto themselves, spending months and hundreds of thousands in the studio.

After the teasing weeks of waiting after the new album was announced as imminent until it was actually available in the shops (remember record shops?) there was then the delight in watching the record slowly climb the charts… Would it make the top 20? Top ten? Top five? Number two? Number one?

And to reach number one in the album charts you used to have to sell thousands, tens of thousands – even hundreds of thousands.

For us, the prospect of becoming a rock star was an ambition to be rich beyond our dreams and recognised everywhere we went… And the music? Oh, yeah, well, that would look after itself… Hmmm…

No, today’s aspiring musos have the prospect of being signed up for a single if they’re lucky, an album if they’re unbelievably lucky and then, if they are staggeringly talented and hard-working after the luck has run out, carving out a career in the pubs and clubs around the country.

What is happening, of course, is that, with the rise of the peer-to-peer, file-sharing prevalence the record companies are selling fewer and fewer CDs and making less and less money from any sales they do achieve – online or physical – leaving them to go down the route of the book publishers: only those already famous are worthwhile signing up. Ergo Simon Cowell’s staggering success (make ‘em famous through humanity’s innate voyeurism, then make a record with ‘em. Number one for Christmas and ‘so long and thanks for all the cash’.

The hope of the aspiring musician is gigs and a website. The beauty of the website, of course, is that the artists or bands can release their own material, get it up online and hopefully create a groundswell of interest (boosted by the gigs). If the P2Ps and file-sharers take a liberty, then so much the better. Their name is getting out there and success is round the corner…

But of course, it isn’t. By feeding the expectation that music should be free, the muso that goes along with P2P file-sharing is slowly destroying his or her own hope of earning that living. The only hope that remains is that a following can be achieved and the muso can earn from gigging.

Yes, you can earn from gigging, but almost every musician that has gigged non-stop for decades will soon tell you how much they look forward to spending time in the studio – or even at home (heaven forbid).

For me, my gigging days are over, unless I can scoop up the odd performance making swooshy electronic noises or singing covers for an evening at a local pub. I don’t much care for the idea of living out of a suitcase again. But I love making music and I love recording it.

Because of this, I’m in the process of building a website and I’m going to try to sell my music through it. If I could one day cover the costs of that project alone, I would be pretty happy – I’m not so stupid as to think I’m going to be a rock star, but I am still finding myself balking at the thought of some twonk paying 50p for a song and then distributing it to the world for free.

I hope people will like the music I will be putting up online, but I also, equally strongly, hope that they don’t fuck about with what is ultimately mine.