"I'm with the band"

It is sometime after 11pm. After much research and investigation I have
finally been able to locate the mandatory Bar, cafe, restaurant, Internet
aware, book exchange, and Laundromat that every university town requires.
I was here under the pretext of looking for a comfortable couch and a
decent espresso, but it was probably just my desire to get bandwidth that
kept me here.

Fortunately the sound of deep thumping from somewhere below me pulled me
out of my self absorbed obsession with email and made me go for a wander
into the basement.

What I found was surprising not only because there was an entire
subterranean level to this place that I hadn't discovered, but it also
explained why people kept disappearing downstairs. I thought that they
were just going to the toilet, but my subconscious head count wasn't
adding up. Luckily I was right :

There was a band playing in the basement.

And this really was a basement. A standard household basement that could
barely hold 20 people and was thus causing a certain amount of discomfort
for the 30 or so people who were in there.

Not being one to shy away from adventure I paid my dues at the bar ( yes
there was a bar down there ), decided against squeezing myself between two
broken chairs and a patch of carpet and instead stood in the corner with
my head at an uncomfortable angle so I could see what was actually going
on.

Well, yes there was a band, but this wasn't exactly a stadium gig we were
dealing with here. It was definitely the ad-hoc hand built set up that we
have all grown to know and respect from our struggling student days. The
guys had a second hand missing desk, some borrowed music stands, the
keyboard player also had to do the mix and they had one acoustic pickup to
share between them.

"We need to take a break now while Darren rebuilds his guitar"

I'm also sure that one of the two speakers wasn't working, but no one
cared. They were all friends anyway, this was just a chance to play some
music without the neighbours sending around the constabulary to 'turn
that music down!' at one minute before midnight.

After the second set, the writer of the music then settled in to talk, in
an apologetic way about his home produced EP and how it had taken him a
year to produce, he still felt that it needed some changes, but, '...If
you don't mind the few mistakes, you may want to listen to it more than
once'

Inside my head I found the daemons screaming the harsh reality to this
poor fellow : 'Your music is just fine, the only reason it you don't like
it is because you, like every other consumptive artist out there, are a
chronic perfectionist and can't leave well enough alone !!'

If he's just laid down the tracks, done a rough mix and then handed it off
to some friends to clean it up, he could have had the whole thing done in
less than a day.

Thats the problem with all these 'desktop publishing tools' they give you
too much time and not enough feedback. If he'd been paying an hourly rate
for the studio and had a Sound engineer shaking his head and reaching for
the Jack Daniels every time he said 'Can I just do that bit again' he
would have nailed it by the second take.

Never publish your own stuff. Everyone needs an editor, even me.

As I settled back and pondered this, I watched them play with their
no-frills setup and noticed how the guitarist kept tripping over his cord
that was obviously too short. It made me wonder at what point in your in
your success path do you finally go to your agent and say

"I'm not doing this again without a wireless amp."

It also made me wonder, that in this day and age when people are bent out
of shape about the health aspects of wireless equipment, why has this
never been a problem for the rock and roll industry.

And why, and this is food for thought, is it that, of all the wireless
equipment that exists in the world, mobile phones never interfere with
musical instruments ?

Then again, perhaps here are some things that aren't worth worrying about.


Tags travel,london,hotel,restaurant,music