Spent the weekend doing things that were good for me. On friday night five-sevenths of Betika went to see True Swamp Neglect and The Delicate Hammers at The Central in Parkstone. Delicate Hammers were completely unknown to me but Chris Swamp has been raving about them for ages, and it turns out with good reason. It's difficult to describe exactly what they're like, there's elements of hip-hop and soul in there, but their vibe is somewhere between...I dunno, Pavement and Misty's Big Adventure? Entertaining, thought-provoking, toe-tapping and heartwarming in equal measures. If things go to plan, you'll get the chance to see and hear what I'm on about in a couple of months, I've asked them to if they'll make the trip down from Manchester again and play with us in July.
The Swamp themselves were absolutely sublime. The first time I ever saw them was at The Central three or so years ago; that experience was an epiphany for me, and Friday's set was like that all over again. They did very little of the "Sleep Function Lost" material and concentrated mostly on new or nearly-new stuff, as yet unrecorded. Quite early on, Chris dedicated a new song to "the rock band Betika", it transpired on account of the fact that in writing it he took a phrase from the lyric of "We will not know peace" (from Betikassette 2), turned it round, added more much better words and an amazing anthemic tune and threw it right back at me, brass knobs attached. If it wasn't so good I'd be consumed with bitterness and jealousy that it was so good! A stunning set followed, it seemed like somehow all the things that make the Swamp great had been magnified, like somebody had selected them with a mouse and hit the "Bold" button. I spent the whole set at the front grinning like a complete goon.
The sun was shining on Saturday morning, which made a fantastic change from last week's rain, and so those Betikans who had risen late and hungover at Betika towers resolved to go outside and make the most of it. The wind was blowing strong and steady, so Carolyn took Chris, Lexi and I out into the New Forest to fly a kite. Kites have changed a lot since I last flew one. The last kite I flew was made of polythene and balsawood and had a picture of an owl's face on it, and was controlled by a very thin single piece of string. The kite that we flew on Saturday (which belongs to Brad from Brenda, a gentleman of sufficient stature to handle such things) was basically a parachute about as wide as I am tall (3 square metres in area apparently) controlled (!) by four nylon ropes attached to two metal handles. The place we chose to fly the kite was pretty exposed, so the wind was really strong and gusty which Carolyn said might be a bit dangerous. She proved herself correct minutes later when the kite was launched with Carolyn at the controls- it flew safely for a couple of minutes before a gust caught it and she was dragged off her feet and along the ground. That basically set the scene for the rest of the afternoon- we took turns wrestling against the immense forces involved, and being bodily dragged across the field, terrifying picnickers and horses in our path. It was terrifying for me too, but in the same exhillarating way that rollercoasters are. I slept very well on saturday night.
Sunday afternoon was spent cutting my nan's lawn. How rock and roll is that? It took a long time because the grass was about a foot high, but it was very satisfying to have finished and I got hot enough to take my shirt off and get a couple of hours of sun on my pasty white body for the first time in a long time. I've become really apprehensive about cutting long grass since I left a couple of frogs horribly mutilated a couple of years ago when I was strimming the garden at my old flat, I dread finding half a mouse in the grass-basket when I'm scooping the clippings out. Happily as far as I could tell I managed to avoid killing or maiming anything this time, so no bad karma there.
I've finally got back to work finishing off the third Betikassette, something that should have been done long ago but which has been put off since Christmas while we've been working on the album sessions with Hubcap. I'm making no promises, but I'm hoping that Betikassette 3 will be done in time for the gig on May 6th. The tracklisting has changed, owing to me having written a new song that seemed to fit on it better than one of the songs previously earmarked. Now it will contain: "Bob Hope", "You can call me brother", "Robot (2)" and "If you go to work on me I'll die". All the songs will be played at the upcoming Betika gigs this month, which will be taking some different formats- as we've developed as a live band over the last year we've become progressively more and more about playing uptempo songs, jumping around and doing our best to make people dance, which none of us would say is a bad thing, but in our previous incarnation we played very, very quietly using the most minimal instrumentation, and we still have slow, sad, quiet songs from that period ("Heads smashed in...etc"), along with newer songs in a similar vein that we've written since, that just wouldn't work in the standard Betika set. So we're rehearsing a completely different set consisting entirely of those songs. It's going to be almost like a completely different band but with the same group of people playing the same instruments, only quieter, probably sitting down and trying to be as intimate with our audience as decency will allow. The first outing for this parallel Betika will be at the LIMBS night at Alcatraz club on Thursday 28th April. It'll be sad but pretty.
Dave
p.s. Details of this and other forthcoming Betika performances can be found on the SCHEDULE page at www.betika.co.uk
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