www.betika.co.uk
This week we've been recording "Love let me not hunger" and working further on the batch of new songs we're going to be unveilling for our Winter 05-06 collection. One of them is brand new, so much so that the ink is still not dry in my notebook. It's called "TwentyFive" and I started writing it while sifting through the latest batch of recordings made by The SK5 (the improvisation group consisting of myself, Mooro from SeeMonsters, Chris from True Swamp Neglect and Lee from Dutch Husband). The modus operandi of The SK5 is to get together once every couple of months, plug in our Casio SK5 sampling keyboards and guitar effects pedals, and then noodle away for a couple of hours, recording absolutely everything as we go. Chris Swamp then edits these often epic jams down into more easily palatable chunks, until we've got enough good bits to make a record, and then we start all over again. We also record all our gigs, but somehow the minidisc always goes wrong when we play well, but works perfectly when we're not at our best. Anyway....I was listening back to some stuff we recorded a couple of weeks ago, and one particular tune jumped out at me, and I started making up words to it, and then I developed it a bit more and lo and behold, half an hour later I had a song! I told Rich, Lee and Chris about ripping off their work, and they didn't seem too bothered- I will of course give them writing credits so they get a share in the royalties when it becomes a massive international hit in six months time.
Elsewhere, Chris Betika, Carolyn and I have been helping out in the latest incarnation of Sancho. Somehow, I've ended up playing drums and singing a bit, and also simultaneously with that playing bass or keyboards in a couple of songs. And my trademark horrible trumpet, of course. Carolyn has wound up playing bass as well as her usual vocal and woodwind things. Chris has sensibly opted to stick with the guitar. Other personnel are Rizlo (laptop and bass) Kerrie (keyboards, voice and glock), Kieron (viola) and Sancho Paul himself (guitar, voice, bass, keyboards, typewriter etc). This Sancho will be released into the wild on (I think) 15th December.
Next full-band Betika gig is now not until Friday 9th December (with Toupe and True Swamp Neglect), the 26th Nov show with Flipron having sadly been cancelled. There will however be a chance to catch Carolyn and I doing some acoustic stuff at Le Bateau on Sunday 27th - check out the website for details and future gigs.
