A weekend wasted's not a wasted weekend

Published on Tue 26 Jan 2010

If every weekend could somehow be as nice as the one just gone I might have to stop complaining all the time. I think part of it might have been that I've started drinking much better coffee since buying a cafetiere last week while gripped by the same whim that led to me getting a tablecloth I'll almost certainly never use. I'll make someone a lovely wife one day.

Also cheering me up has been The Bugle podcast which has been occasionally making me laugh rather too loudly while walking along Mill Road at lunchtimes. Thankfully Mill Road is full of nutters so, if anything, I've actally been less conspicuous by doing that. Check it out - apart from anything else it features the first recorded incidence of someone from Birmingham saying funny things since Jasper Carrott finally retired his routine about accidentally trimming too much off his bathroom door so that it was more of a saloon style, allowing everyone to see him on the loo when walking up the stairs.

Anyway. On Friday I did a few songs at the Folk Club, getting a bit more practice in at the old playing while sober malarkey. The conclusion I'm coming to is that it improves my singing (though arguably it'd be tricky to make it that much worse) but affects my guitar quite badly because my hands get all nervous and start doing stuff on their own. I played The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Magnetic or Rhetorical (a new song! It was going to be called "I Really Don't Care What You Did With Your Trust Fund", but I decided that was a bit obvious. It seemed to go down well, though I'm worried it's slightly cheap) and Edinburgh cos I cocked it up last week. People were very nice to me, even though I didn't finish until really late. Kate did a longer set a bit earlier on and was really good. I also made use of the evening to do some experimenting with soft drinks, and have decided that all of them have drawbacks. Lime and soda is cheap, and would be perfect if people always got it right, but it's a risk because it's pretty awful if over-cordialled. Kiwi and grape J2O is really nice, but can't be relied upon to be present, even if the other, inferior, J2Os are, and is a bit pricier. Orange juice and lemonade is good, but you can't drink more than a pint or two of it. In the interests of science I also tried diet pepsi and alcohol free lager, both of which are beyond disgusting. So there we go.

I was up bright and early on Saturday for a last minute same-day-as-the-gig practice with The Travis Waltons, which sounded great, and then went off to watch Cambridge outplay but lose to York City, and then went to The Portland for soundcheck, and to make the best of my day off my dry month. 

I dread to think what I'd have been like if I had been completely sober, because my hands were shaking for our entire set as it was, but it went really well for a first try and I didn't let anyone down I don't think. There were plenty of people there and they clapped and cheered nicely. I didn't really watch any of the other bands, which is a bit naughty, but they were all loud and angry and there were nerves to deal with before we played and adrenaline to deal with after. Later I ran into a few people who solved some of the mystery of New Years Eve - I was apparently seen pulling myself along the handrail of the bridge round the corner from my house at 7.30 am, and part of what happened in the intervening hours has been cleared up, much to my relief...

On Sunday I went to The Junction 2 to see Midlake. It's the second time I've seen them, and the second time I've seen them because someone else has dropped out. I'll get my own ticket next time - they were brilliant. A full, complex and fairly haunting sound. They seem to have sprouted a couple more guitar players in the last few years, as well as a lot of Fleet Foxes style facial hair and retro shirts. I guess they don't sound all that dissimilar to Fleet Foxes actually (ethereal, wouldn't have been out of place 40 years ago, very good at harmony etc. etc.), but there's a lot more depth in the songs (i.e. they aren't overtly shit). There are also more flutes... There is a bit of a niggling feeling that the whole band is being done as an academic exercise and they'd all rather be playing jazz, but when it sounds so great who cares really.

The support act Sarah Jaffe was very good too - a bit more straightforward maybe (not that that's a bad thing), but there were a couple of really killer songs. I intended to buy a CD if there was one, but didn't get round to looking in the interval, and then was too blown away by Midlake. Both acts were sharing a keyboard player who had a keyboard not unlike mine, and I got a bit obsessed with the nosies he was making and trying to figure out how he was doing it. As usual when I've played a couple of times that have gone well and then gone to a great gig I'm all enthused and wanting to play all the time. Which is good because I've got a fair amount of that kind of thing coming up in February.

Other than that I've not done much. I destroyed my friend Ben at squash last night - the not drinking thing seems to have made me fitter. Saying I'm like a cat is probably going a bit far, but I'm certainly better at moving about and hitting things really hard than usual. It has also made me hungrier. On which note, I have some Gu mini desserts in the fridge calling to me. They're small so I can have two.