Some Peace and Quiet at Last?

The band’s all a bit up in the air at the moment. Jake’s just finished university and what with good jobs being hard to find (to be honest, he might as well stay here and take up alchemy) it looks like he’ll be moving away. This leaves us without a guitarist, and with Sam and myself in our third year, do we really need the hassle of band life?

We’re not sure quite what is happening. We’re playing Eastleigh Festival in July and as the band’s survival chances seem comparable to a lemming surrounded by foxes shouting ‘Orange is an autumn colour, it’s spring. What’s wrong with you guys?’, we’re treating Eastleigh as our last ever gig.

It’s interesting how quickly the focus changes. Until a couple of months ago it was always about pushing forward, trying to get ‘somewhere’, or get noticed. Frankly if a person can’t notice that there is a band on and everyone else is facing the opposite way to them, clapping and cheering, I don’t why we should put in the extra effort. They would seem a lost cause.

Now that we’re approaching the final curtain, as it were, we’ve start to realise that we should just have a bit more fun at gigs. It doesn’t matter if the audience are booing, or throwing bottles, or spears, as long as we’re playing on a stage we’re going to get up there and give it our all. In a way it’s taken a lot of the pressure off of us, as we’re no longer thinking about how many people we have to bring, or whether there’s a certain producer in the room we need to impress, or are the bands that play before us so good they’ll make us look rubbish?

For me personally it’s made things a lot more enjoyable as I’m a natural worrier. I find it hard to just get into the music and enjoy it. I’m usually thinking about that fill I have to play halfway through the next song. Will I get it right? I usually do, but then I’ll find something else to worry about. The fear of dropping sticks is usually sufficient to keep me paranoid for the whole set.

But now even I can sit back and relax, although not so much my sticks don’t reach the drums, or I fall off the back of my drum stool. What’s that old saying, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.’ It’s true, and although band times have always been a laugh, I don’t think any of us until now have appreciated exactly how much fun they can be.

You may have noticed, this leaves me with a problem. How exactly am I meant to keep writing about the band experiences when there is no band? Don’t worry, folks, I’m sure I’ll find something…