I marked the lawn as my territory in the time-honoured way yesterday, the badgers having further violated the sacred turf in their search for dinner. Unfortunately I only have a standard-sized bladder and was unable to lay claim to a very large area, so they'll probably just dig their holes at the other end of lawn. They're probably doing it right now.
It's been an enjoyable week Betika-wise; I've finished a song that's been hanging around for a while (under the working title "Theme from 'SLAGS"'), I think it's proper title will be "Bad Thoughts" because that's what it's about, or maybe "An Englishman's mind is his castle". I can't see it making it's way into the live set for a while as there's a bit of a backlog of new tunes already.
On Wednesday I went to Hubcap's new studio to have a listen back to the songs from the sessions we did with him and start work on the definitive vocal takes. We didn't achieve very much on this occasion, we pretty much spent the evening singing into various different sized-and shaped microphones trying to decide which one we liked the sound of best. Bizarrely, it was the cheapest one! Work starts in earnest on the singing this afternoon.
The Seated Greater Betika got it's baptism of fire on Thursday night at LIMBS. We set up in a slightly unusual configuration with Rich at the front with his non-drumkit made of an electrified cardboard box and various bits and pieces, and then the rest of us sat in a tight semi-circle around him with Carolyn and I right at the back. Because LIMBS' Alcatraz home is somewhat on the intimate side we had some nice symmetry going on with the front row of the audience sat right in front of us in a semi-circle that mirrored our own. The set we played was "Robot (2)", "I killed a fly", "Love let me not hunger", "Let these things forget themselves", "If you go to work on me I'll die", "We will not know peace", "Girlshaped", "Hunting with dogs" and "Thunderstorm". I think it would be fair to say that we were a bit wobbly to start off with, the first couple of songs contained a certain amount of free-form jazz that hadn't been there in rehearsal, and we came badly unstuck at the end of "I killed a fly". We hadn't bothered to rehearse it for a while because it's the simplest song in the world and we play it quite a lot, it never occurred to any of us that to get the slow-down (rallentando I think is the musical term) at the end of the song right we actually need a fair amount of eye-contact! I was sat behind and to the side of Rich, and he was directly inbetween me and Imogen, so there was no way of co-ordinating what we were doing and the whole thing stopped in much the same way as a derailed express train. Carnage! Luckily for us we had a friendly crowd who let us get away with that kind of nonsense, and that's what really made the night for me- it was an imperfect performance but the vibe was just right. There will definitely be some more Seated Betika in a cramped venue near you soon!
Sooner still, Carolyn and I will be doing an Acoustic slot at Solid Air (the last at Destiny) on Monday next week, and the whole band will be playing standing up at Mr. Smiths on Friday with support from The Marlins. More details are on The Schedule page of the Betika website.
Enjoy the Bank Holiday!
Dave
