24/365 # Red Light Company

After hanging upside down, peeking out of a tea cup and levitating in the last few days I thought I’d take it easy today with a simple shot.

 

Had a band practise today, I really should’ve taken the camera; I could’ve got loads of cool band-type shots! Ne’r mind, maybe next time.

 

Bit of a tricky one today cos our drummer’s broken one of his knuckles (insert ‘stoopid drummer’ joke here) and couldn’t play, so we had to run through six new songs with just a crappy drum machine beat to keep us in time!

 

That said we pretty much nailed the six songs and they should be ready for the next gig, when we can finally breathe new life into our set and retire some of the songs we’ve grown to hate!

 

For the sake of posterity, the songs we learnt today were:

 

Blitzkrieg Bop – Ramones

Learn to Fly – Foo Fighters

Umbrella – Rhianna but we did the Manic Street Preachers version

Bartender & the Thief – Stereophonics

Live Forever – Oasis

The Middle – Jimmy Eat World

 

We’ve got at least 15 more to learn, then we’ll finally, after over four years, have more than twenty songs to choose from for gigs.

 

We kinda gave up after that and just mooched around, tried to come up with some music of our own and after that . . . mooched again. But I’d say it was a pretty successful one, learning and nailing six new songs in one practise has got to be a record for us.

 

Awww, and Joe and Ben got their Transformers we bought them Friday because they’ve been good all weekend. Ben asked me to transform his and I realised with horror that I’ve lost my ability to work out how to transform a transformer without the instructions! What’s going on? When I was seven all I needed to do was look at a Transformer and I’d know how to change it – it must be a child-only power that you lose sometime during your teens – another sign of my impending entry into the land of the thirtysomething.

 

So anyway, today’s 365. I’d run out of ‘clever’ ideas today, and it was going to be a really lame shot of me surrounded by amps and guitars pre-practise. That was a bloody awful shot though, even Lightroom couldn’t improve it much (though it made a valiant attempt).

 

I should probably go back even further . . . there’s this band. They’re very new and I saw them support Editors in March, and they're totally brilliant.

 

They’re called Red Light Company, I’ve done my best to plug them on Flickr before (see here) and they’re really good. They’re my favourite band of 2008 in fact.

 

Since the Editors gig I’ve been desperate to see them in their own right – and I spotted they’re playing in Portsmouth in July, which is only a couple of hours drive from Weymouth. I’ve also wanted to take Lydia to another gig as we had a great time when we saw the Manic Street Preachers last December, and she wasn’t present at the Radiohead gig last week.

 

I told my brother about the gig and tonight I got a text from him to say he’s bought five tickets to see Red Light Company and me and Lyds are going! My mum’s offered to take the kids overnight so we’re goin’ to see Red Light Company at The Cellars in Eastney, Portsmouth on 27th July!

 

Tickets are only £6, you guys should all come along!

 

So anyway, that’s the thinking behind tonight’s shot, just a little hooray cos we’ve got tickets to see a great band in a really small venue before they’re huge. It’s like a really tasty gig sandwich, a slice of Radiohead with a filling of Red Light Company, and to finish a slice of The Wildhearts in September – mmm-mmm!

 

If you view on black I look like I've got a sunburnt face! Ha ha!

Done