Hello again everyone, hope you’re all well. I missed another update last week and it seems to be becoming a habit lately. I had a solid run of weekly posts last year and I hope to resume that soon but a busy life gets in the way sometimes. I’ve had a good couple of weeks though with many interesting events, so let me tell you about them.
Last weekend I booked a rehearsal room with the band at a place called Fallen Industries on the Wirral. It’s nice and handy for us and they have a really cool set up (see pic below). On Saturday afternoon we blasted out the tunes for 3 hours in the blazing heat. I was tired after that I can tell you, but it was well worth it. Being able to play at full volume with a good PA, drum kit and amps makes a big difference and can only help our development I think. We’ve been working on our first original tune called “Jimmy Carter”. It all stems from a practice where somebody mentioned him and I immediately piped up with the trivia nugget “Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer”. It just sounded like the opening line of a song to us, so I went off and got working on turning it into one. We’ve got the structure sorted now and after some deliberation the lyrics are also in the bag. I’d written comedy verses about Jimmy White and Jimmy Hill but we decided to just keep the tune about Jimmy Carter rather than force in jokes. Ross came up with a great couple of verses. I can’t say I knew a lot about Carter but a quick look on Wikipedia provided plenty of material for lyrics. He’s related to Berry Gordy the Father Of Motown and also the late great Johnny Cash. You’ll be able to hear a decent recording of the song soon hopefully.
On Sunday I headed over to Liverpool for my friend Rosie’s birthday and somehow I ended up taking everyone to Riley’s to play pool. It was a good night. On Monday I got some work done during the afternoon and then prepared for the Linux Outlaws live show as usual. We had a good crowd and I think I everyone enjoyed it. I edited the recording between other jobs over Tuesday and Wednesday then shipped it back to Fab. It was released on Friday as episode 155 “There Is No Fabian Stable”. On Thursday night I went down to see the band and work on songs with the acoustic guitar for a change, we went unplugged. I think we could have 3 or 4 decent original tunes in the next month, if we manage that I’ll record an EP or something for everyone to hear. I should start looking for another gig really and get that booked too. It’s been 6 weeks since our first gig and we can’t rest on our laurels forever.
Most of the rest of my week was taken up with Drupal development for a couple of different sites. There was a bit of drama last thing on Friday as I got a call to say one of the sites wasn’t loading, and a very busy site at that. Just what you need at 16:30 on a Friday afternoon. After talking to the server admin and doing a lot of serious head scratching, I finally discovered the problem was an external service with an embedded widget on the site. Thankfully it wasn’t my fault for once. I disabled it and then dashed out to catch a train to Liverpool. I went for dinner with some friends at the Ego restaurant by the Philharmonic and enjoyed a lovely pepperoni pizza. We went to a pub around the corner afterwards and had a good night, until I realised I had 8mins to make it to Central station and get the last train home. I dashed off and just missed the train by literally seconds, not all was lost though as I managed to get the New Brighton train to get me much nearer home. I jumped in a taxi from Birkenhead in the end and made it home in good time. It wasn’t expensive either but I need to keep a better eye on those train times in future!
Over the weekend I spent a lot of time preparing Rathole Radio which was broadcast and recorded last night. Lot’s of friends turned up to listen live and that’s always nice, I’m really thankful for all the wonderful support I receive. I’m actually just working on the release of that episode as I write this. Multi-tasking like a good-un. I also watched England play out a disappointing draw with the USA in the World Cup on Saturday night. I hope we’ll improve as the tournament goes on, we need to, otherwise our World Cup will be over very quickly. Considering what a football fan I am it’s suprising it’s taken me this long into the post to mention the World Cup, but it started on Friday and it’s safe to say I’ll be watching with great care.
Upcoming:
We’ve actually decided to postpone the Linux Outlaws live show tonight because of the World Cup schedule, we’re dirty layabouts I know 😉 We’ll have a rearranged show later in the week. Stay tuned to our updates on Status.net for more news on that. I’m planning to hit the rehearsal room with the band again this week and test out the new song at full volume. I’m also just about to the release Rathole Radio so go and have a listen to that.