The evening before...

Tear myself away from a leaving do at work (and a girl called Isabelle) for a pratice before our Inn On The Green gig tomorrow. Aziz*, a friend of Si's comes along and seems to enjoy things as we belt through our set. I'm a bit worse for wear (free tab at the leaving do), but only 'Sheena Is a Punk Rocker' which was great last time sounds week. We may drop it. If we can't get a three chord Ramones song right, well...

Being drunk makes every song seem a minute long. Strange. I keep track of where we are in a song (just), but find myself surprised as each song ends, and struggle to remember whether we even played some of them. Must resist when we play tomorrow night, although I learnt a valuable lesson last time when the wait before playing meant I over indulged before hand and wasn't at my best (understatement!).

*As we make our way home in the van it turns out that not do Si and Aziz share the same birth date (to the year), but so does Jamie. Aziz works out he odds, and they're slim.

Post practice

A tiring practice tonight. Warm up with three or four songs, add The Ramones 'Sheena is a Punk Rocker', practice Motörhead's 'Dance', Arctic Monkeys 'Bet that you look good on the dancefloor', and Green Day's 'American Idiot', then work out a set for next Friday. It goes something like:

Blitzkrieg Bop
Pretty Vacant
Song 2
Dance
Bet that... Dancefloor
Live Wire
Too Drunk To Fuck
Anarchy In The U.K
Sheena is a punk Rocker
American Idiot

We tear through it in rehearsal, and it all works well. 'Live Wire' I either get of fluff up badly enough to consider dropping it. But it's a great song, be a shame to lose it. By the end of the set I look as though I've run a half marathon. Having to bring a towel to practices (and a change of shirt to gigs). Supposed to go to a housewarming, but it's gone 11pm and I just wanna crash.

Practice practice practice...

A practice tonight without the bass player (who is in Spain). I've tried that in the past, and it's been a bit crap. I tend to play off the bass a lot more than the drums, and a practice with just a drummer can be too freeform to be useful. But we play 'Bet that you look good on the dancefloor', 'American Idiot' and 'Dance', and every song sounds a lot tighter than before. The singer has obviousy learnt the lyrics, the drummer and I have the song structures down, and playing without a bass gives me a chance to focus on how the guitar sounds (you can't hide when you are on your own). Very useful, and great fun.

We have a practice on Friday which might be our last before the gig on June 1st. Hopefully we can add another couple of songs then.

Post practice

I love rehearsing. If you're playing live, you can hardly smile at the end of a song and say "That was fucking awesome - let's play it again a few more times!" The crowd (I use that term loosely...) expects you to play a set. Go figure. But in rehearsal, you can do a song till you nail it, or just play one you love. And it's better than any cd/mp3. It's all down to you. Either play a safe solo and enjoy the rest of the band, or shred the hell out of it (again, I use that term loosely in my case!).

So tonight was a blast. We added "American Idiot" and "Bet you look good on the dancefloor" to our set, with an eye (ear?) to adding Motörhead's "Dance" next time around. And possibly another Ramones song.

Three weeks til our next gig. Hopefully we'll have more than a handful of songs to play.