Oooh : half a rehearsal

One thing I have to mention incidentally: "How Safe We Must Seem" is a Dakota Suite song and hence the title of the blog. It also mirrors what we usually think about gigs. I've mentioned it before, but we are sometimes not very good. No, really really not very good. 

The Tanned Tin festival was a case in point. I mean, OK, so anyone can have a bassplayer that gets songs confused and plays the wrong bassline for two songs which he's got mixed up in his head. It may have been four songs, actually - now I come to think of it, I was spending at least 50% of that gig wincing. I may have just been in denial about the true awfulness. The sorry thing is that we were watching the other bands and some of them were really good. I can't remember their names, but they seemed really tight and passionate and the crowds were quite excitable. 

We, on the other hand... Well, we ambled through the set, except when we sped up to cover up bassboy's erroneous meanderings, and all of us fucked up repeatedly. This may have been due to the fact that we only really had one rehearsal before we went, despite not all playing together for about a year before that. 

But what was really embarassing was seeing a review in a paper afterwards that said we were the best band of the festival. Either this reviewer was on better drugs than we were, or he was convinced that the emperor's clothes were sparkly and shiny. They bloody weren't. 

Anyway, the point being that we decided we'd rehearse before this outing. New bass player, new danger. And since I live in London, whilst Chris & David live in Leeds, I figured we'd get more done if I found someone who could play bass in London. Then we could rehearse in pairs. Despite the good couple of months we've had to think about it, I'm pleased to announce that we haven't made it stale and over-rehearsed. Myself and Alex have managed two whole rehearsals, during which time we must have played the whole set precisely twice. 

This is more difficult than it sounds. For instance, despite the fact that I know all the songs and can probably sing half the words (you wouldn't want to hear that, though, trust me) I have a mental block about song titles. I can rarely remember which song is which til I hear the opening chords; and I can't recognise a song from just one section because... well, I'm a drummer, innit? Not a real musician or anything. So, when I hear the bassline I really need to hear the other instruments / vocals to get the full song. This means that the London rehearsals have involved me, Alex and an iPod. 

This really points out to me just how "loose" some of the recordings are. We play "Divided" in the style of the Che single rather than the album version, probably because (a) it's easier to play for everybody and more specifically (b) it's easier for me to play. However, listening to it and trying to play along with it makes me wince - I now realise that the recording speeds up by a warp factor of 9 from start to finish. Shit. How stoned was I? 

So anyway, using maths as a defence, me + Alex rehearsing twice = 2 x 0.5 DS rehearsals = 1 whole rehearsal. Then we rehearse on Saturday all together in Crystal Palace. Then we do the soundcheck thingy. That means before we play on Sunday night we'll have done 3 whole rehearsals. 

And that, my friends, is a fucking record.