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.

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.”

Solo simplicity

They say that the simple things in life are free… Or is it that the free things in life are simple… Or is it that the best things in life are free… Or is it simple?

Oh, I don’t know, but sometimes simplicity acts as a highly efficient duster, sweeping away the cobwebs and clearing the way for a deeper, more significant activity. This is the value of creating soundscapes – or auraloramas – for me. It is an instantly accessible method of getting something done, putting something into my own personal reality that is capable of delighting me on an immediate level, putting into action theory and practice and, if I’m really lucky, laying the foundations of future compositions.

As you might have seen in my previous blog (here) I recently went through one of those downward spirals caused by one too many inopportune moments of taking it easy. As I discussed then, while things seem pretty hopeless from within the labyrinth of mental blackness, the cure is a simple one: get up off your arse and do something. I wrote a blog about it and felt a lot better about things as a result – it made me observe me from outside, as it were.

All well and good, but that was just the first step – the ‘wake-up’ if you like. The following morning I had to continue, so, forcing myself to get work and chores out of the way, I hurried down the garden to my studio and plugged in my guitar…

Whaddayaknow? I wasn’t so much short of ideas of what to do as standing in a dusty wilderness where ideas have the moisture sucked out of them before they can even take their first breath.

Thankfully, I was plugged into my Gigadelay unit, so I switched it on, eased in a couple of notes, layered a couple more chords and there I was, 15 seconds and I had a spontaneous ‘composition’ to deal with, add to, manipulate. The music was coming back at me, demanding attention and calling out for progression. I had to deal with it.

I immediately felt better and before too long, I had laid two separate chord sequences on two asymmetric loops (one about nine seconds, the other 23), into which I blended a sort of ‘filigree’, high-pitched collection of notes/sounds on a third loop (can’t remember how long). I really liked it, it made me feel good – and what is more it has given me a couple of ideas (as a result of the ‘accidental’ chord patterns) of a song – or maybe two.

Having listened to it for a while, I then recorded about four minutes of it, feeling it would go well on the next auralorama album (Meditation) and I was planning to go back to more conventional practice, but after I switched off the first two loops, the third carried on by itself – and I thought it sounded great, so I copied that onto a longer loop and started all over again, creating a longer, more dramatic soundscape.

I know I am easy to please, but this was, for me, very exciting – and not only the possibility of another new song based on the second piece, but a whole concept for soundscape performance. Build a piece up, then deconstruct and at some point use what’s left as the framework for the next piece.

(The first of these two auraloramas is now up on Youtube – called Acceptance – and can be found here.)

Needless to say, the next day, my work and practice were better still and my energy levels are still on the up. It’s simple, really.