So this is another of my series of things written in the bar in Heathrow Terminal 3. It's not the place that's most conducive to writing in the world, but it does have the advantage that there is bugger all else to do and I can't get on the internet. I'm going to New York for the week, and, again, I'm narrowly missing a series of bands I'd really like to see (notably The Mountain Goats and LCD Soundsystem). Virgin's staff are all dressed up in shiny scarlet wigs for Comic Relief. I really hope that doesn't carry over onto the plane - those guys are red enough at the best of times. I'm not really sure who Comic Relief is aimed at - I remember being really excited about the first one back when I was at primary school (something to do with Philip Schofield getting put in the gunge tank) but schoolchildren aren't really in the best position to donate and, from an adult's point of view, the show itself is only about as funny as a bunch of middle aged women standing outside Sainbury's shaking buckets in silly glasses or dressed as clowns saying "I'm kerazee me". It probably is for the kind of person who needs a safe excuse to make an exhibition of themself. Maybe it's time for another in the relief franchise apart from comic and sport. Not that Sport Relief even makes sense. Light? (everyone could set fire to things for charidee) Manual? (erm - something to do with sponsored assembling of flat pack furniture?) I don't know. To be fair, I'd not be averse to seeing Schofield gunged again.
It's been a fairly musical week. Last Friday I saw Dave supporting The Golden Retrievers and enjoyed both. The latter I wasn't sure about until about halfway through when they played The FourTrack Tapes (check out the myspace) and they won me over. Songs about how disappointing making music can be always strike a chord. Get it?
On Saturday I did a couple of songs at CB2, a cafe round the corner, which was fun. I got to catch up with some people I've not really seen properly in a few years, and had another go at singing without a microphone, which is still strangely unnerving. I sang ok, but not that well, not that any of the people I didn't already know would've cared either way. The highlight of the evening was a wonderful rendition of Father and Son by (a different) Dave and a young version of Tom Conti's character from Shirley Valentine, who seemed to have listened to different versions to prepare but powered on through anyway. I love that kind of thing.
On Sunday I did another last minute set at The Zebra, a pub round the corner. Last time it went well, so I was expecting it to go well until I remembered that if you expect things to go well they'll turn out badly, so I started thinking "Oh no, I'm expecting it to go well, so it'll be bad now" which of course meant that it went well. Setlist: The Ghost of Paddy's Night Past, Watertight, Magnetic or Rhetorical?, Muscle Memory, The Temptation of Adam (I got the words this time, but messed up the guitar a bit), A Happy Ending (I think this might be quite good), Soaked to the Skin. Jacqui and Geoff played too, and were great - every time I see them they have a couple more really funny songs. It's impressive.
A lot of the rest of my time this week has been spent trying to get "Trinkets and Offcuts" sounding acceptable. It largely is, I think, despite the normal paranoia about how easily people can look past my voice, but it's a lot less intense than Scars and I don't know how I feel about that. I think the songs are all "quality songs", but I'm not sure what I'd think if someone else had done it and I heard it. Whatever. I'm not going to make a big deal of it (not that it's in my power to anyway), and I'm very keen to get it finished because I am actually excited about the songs that are sitting and waiting to be recorded. I've been thinking about the cover art. It was going to be a picture of the lyrics to the songs scrunched up in the bin, with a booklet of them unscrunched and food stained inside, but it was too hard to get my writing legible at a small size and I think I've had a better idea anyway.
I made this page that shows a selection of photos that I've taken with no words of explanation at all. It pleases me, though it does make it look like 90% of what I do is watching bands and travelling rather than sitting in front of computers bemoaning how much time I've wasted.