The Great Outdoors

photo by Romey Criswick

Last Saturday the band played outdoors in deepest Surrey as part of a fundraising event hosted by the Brockham Choral Society in aid of the Brigitte Trust. The weather was good and a fun time was had by one and all. Bruce is still suffering with his sprained wrist so has been excused keyboard duty on doctor's advice and instead provided additonal vocals. For those who would like to share a flavour of the event I attach a short video for your enjoyment. The sound is not great as it was recorded and filmed from behind the band. Note - next time take an additional long mains lead!

With our sortie into the great outdoors over our attention turns to learning some new songs for a new album and forthcoming concerts in 2010. At the moment I have the outline for a couple of new compositions and a number of traditonal songs that I think will work well. The next thing is to get everyone to get their diaries out to arrange some rehearsals for the autumn.

Regards - John

The new term begins

Ed strumming it large at the 2007 charity garden gig - photo by Bruce

Everyone is now back from their holidays and we are starting the new term by taking part in an outdoor charity event organised by Ed's choir group to raise money for the Brigitte Trust.

http://www.brigittetrust.org/

As I write this the summer rain is falling but I hope by the time of the gig in the middle of August that we'll all be basking in the sun and enjoying ourselves and lots of money will be raised for this worthwhile charity.

Best wishes - John

Film Noir (Yesterday's News)

Well, I've finally managed to finish off the video for Film Noir and upload it to YouTube. After a bit of help from my computer consultant, I seem to have been able to link the video on YouTube back to the blog. So, if you click on the 'Share' below it should play OK.

I had problems and couldn't get the correct aspect ratio uploading straight to the blog, which is why I've gone via YouTube. And then the audio was overloading so I had to go back to the original material and start all over again.

Phew, I think I'll lie down for a bit now. Regards - John

Share

Picture of Ziggy (aka Mr Ratty)

in performance on top of the PA speaker at the Hunton concert.

Luckily the cack-handed guitarist didn't get in the way too much.

Photo courtesy of Dave's sister, Kathy.

Well into summer now and members of the band have either been on, are on, or are going on their holidays. I've no idea where they are at the moment. Hopefully everyone will be back in time for when we are next planning to get together, in August. After that we will start making plans for our next concerts and recording. Echoes of school-days - the beginning of a new term.

I've got some ideas for new things to do and, although I hadn't planned to, I have even started working on some ideas for new songs. Early days yet and they may come to nothing, of course. One of them is sort of about Helen of Troy. I think. Who knows what it might end up being about. I often find I start writing about one thing and then it goes off on its own in a different direction. I just go along for the ride. Having started it I noticed that some time ago we'd booked to see Troilus and Cressida and later on Helen, at the Globe over the next few weeks. Hopefully that might give me some inspiration as to how to finish it.

Bye for now. John

A shot from our concert at Hunton Village Hall on Saturday.

Thank you to all of you who came to the concert on Saturday and in so doing helped to raise money for the charity, GamBLE. There was a good turn out for our first performance in Hunton. I'm not sure how much was raised but we think it will be enough to pay for one or two more teachers for the school for a year. So well done.

The gig went very well and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We were able to try out a few new songs in public for the first time and they went down well so we'll add them to the repertoire for future gigs. Lowlands Low and John Barleycorn were completely new songs; Our Captain Cried and Long Last were old songs that we've brought out of storage.

So now it's back to looking at new material for future rehearsal and recording.

Regards - John

A shot of Derek from our St. George's concert

I realise it has been a long time since I last wrote something here so first of all I must apologise if you've been checking the site and not found anything new to read. My intention was to write something every couple of weeks but things have been rather hectic recently with the builders being here since late February and the place being in turmoil most of the time. I hope to do better in the future.

Well, it's nearly Saturday 16th May and our concert at Hunton Village Hall in aid of GamBLE. Tickets are limited but I understand there are still a few available so give the box office a call on 01622 814027 and talk to Clare or Derek if you want to come along. We are booked to go into the rehearsal studio on Friday for our last rehearsal before the gig. We've added a few new songs to the repertoire since the November concerts so there will be some first time live performances to add to some old favourites at Hunton.

Once the concert is over I hope to have time to finish off the video for Film Noir and to get it up on the website for all to see. I've finished all the studio and evening location shooting with Joceline who kindly helped out for this video and who was featured dancing in the Arabesque video. All I need to do now is add in the band and do the final edit. For those that are interested I am adding a still from the video so far.

Still from Film Noir

Anyway for now it's back to practicing for the Hunton gig. Now how does that song go?

Best wishes - John

A picture from our St. George's concert last November

I don't know where the time goes, we are already half way through February. Next Saturday sees our first rehearsal of the year in preparation for our concert in Hunton in May. It will be good to get playing together again. Apart from going over the songs we did at our last concerts we will be looking at some new songs to add to the repertoire for our forthcoming gigs and possibly for our next album.

Having thought I wouldn't be ready to write anything for a while I find I have a couple of new ideas in development. The most recent tune I came up with suggested a fairly traditional theme for the words - "As I walked out one May morning..." sort of thing. The next thing would be to think of a story to tell. Something about pirate gold came to mind. Also the phrase "lowlands low" kept coming into my mind as I hummed through the verses. I decided to google 'lowlands low' and see what came up - the last resort when you get stuck - in my case the first resort.

This brought up a number of tradition song lyrics and in particular the song "Edwin in the Lowlands Low" which had been recorded by various people such as Martin Carthy, Steeleye Span and my hero, Peter Bellamy under the varying titles of "Young Emma", "Edwin" and "Edmund in the Lowlands" respectively. The subject matter covers gold, young lovers, cruel parents, murder and insanity and no happy ending for any of the protaganists - so just right for a Childe Rolande song and we can say it's not our fault as it is traditional. As with most traditional songs there are many variants of the song lyrics. I have chosen the version from the 'Penguin Book of English Folk Songs' as the starting point for our interpretation. I thought to call it "Lowlands Low".

John