At the time
we had a regular weekly routine of getting together every Thursday at Stephen’s
house, where he had had the good taste and foresight, with the judicious
application of a number of mattresses and some gaffa tape, to convert his
cellar into a rudimentary rehearsal space. This meant both that we saved
ourselves the unnecessary expense of renting out one of those proper
air-conditioned soundproofed places with coffee making facilities and
nice-looking rugs on the walls and that when we turned up we were already set
up and good to get started. It also meant that during the week (in the days
before cable TV and The West Wing box sets) it was possible to relax with one
of those new-fangled discman CD players, a set of headphones, a full drum kit
and The Best of The Band for an hour or so, until the next-door neighbour politely suggested that it was time for Coronation Street and while she was here, could she possibly have this month's rent?
When he
moved out I was only too pleased to take on the lease and the drum kit and occasionally extended the
opportunity to rehearse in (literally) homely surroundings to a few friends having asked for contributions to
the larder in lieu of something quite so vulgar as money. Hence the discovery on one occasion upon my return to the bachelor pile, having made
myself scarce for the evening while a group made up of vegetarians
practiced downstairs, of a box of PG Tips, two cans of ratatouille and a packet
of runner beans. Some other times I'd get sausages. Occasionally there would be lewd notes referring to my girlfriend.
The deal with
gods kitchen rehearsals was that we would warm up with a couple of things that
we already knew (possibly last week’s homework) before moving on to polishing
up some new material that I probably would have written during the week. At ten
o’clock we’d finish off with another couple of songs from the repertoire or we’d
busk a cover version someone had heard on the radio to see how far we could get
through it before the momentum of the whole thing either overtook us and it
collapsed in an ungainly heap in the middle of the floor or we miraculously
made it through to the end. We’d then go to The Spread Eagle just around the
corner to discuss the session over a couple of cool pints of Guinness. Regular as clockwork, every week at eight o'clock.
The consistency
of this routine meant that I had to come up with a regular stream of new
material, if only to keep the rhythm section interested from one session to the
next, which certainly helped keep my songwriting muscles supple and toned (the only things that were at this point) and also meant
that we were pretty much in a constant state of readiness in case anything came
up in terms of live opportunities. I’m not necessarily saying that we put our 10,000 Outliers hours in,
but it did (and does) mean that even without having played together for a
couple of years now we can pretty much get together at the drop of a party
invitation, do a count in and rattle out half a dozen numbers straight off the
bat without pausing for breath as, gratifyingly, we did last night.
One of the
things I was most pleased about was that none of the stuff we went through
sounded out of time (chronologically at least, if not tempo-rhythmically). With
so much guitar music under the metaphorical bridge these days it’s hard for anything to not sound like it is tipping
a nod and a wink to what has gone before anyway, but I know that our Muswell Hill still beat Oasis’s
Kinktastic She’s Electric out of the
gate by a good four years (“This is about that bloke who twatted you one in The
Old Times that once, isn’t it?” enquired Mr. Wendell on second guitar) and the
recorded version of The Boy Who Loved
Aeroplanes still has an expressive grandeur that speaks volumes beyond its humble
four track origins*.
By twenty
past ten we have worked through the set we are going to play at the weekend.
“Ted Bidits!” calls Stephen cheerily, the traditional The Big Wheel-inspired
count down to curfew. I start a chugging rhythm with muted chords on the guitar.
“When I said…” I begin singing “…that I loved you, I told a white lie, don’t
you know?” It is an old song of the drummer’s, a twelve bar in E and we
rattle it off with what passes for panache in a converted woodshed in the middle of the Suffolk countryside. “And that…” he chuckles at the song’s
conclusion “…is what happens when you let twenty one year olds listen to George
Jones”. Wendell and I consider the implications. “Wouldn’t it have been great
at the jubilee concert if they’d booked the wrong G. Jones?” he posits. “George Jones, rocking a hula hoop and
singing She Thinks I Still Care” I
tender. “Now that…” he assents “…I would pay to see”.
*I like to
think that the early work producer Owen Morris put in on some demos for me a
few years earlier paid off in spades for him when called in later to work on Champagne Supernova.
No comments:
Post a Comment