www.betika.co.uk
Some four years ago, Carolyn and myself were involved in the making of an album called "Children's television themes from a parallel dimension", which consisted of forty tunes that could have been the themes from kid's TV programs from the '70s, but weren't. They were mostly written and recorded by former Betikan Steve Christie and the release was credited to "Steve Christie and wRong", though I wrote some of them and recorded them at home, co-wrote some of them and played guitar, drums and trumpet on others while Caz contributed some winds, as did Claire Small, also one quarter of Betika at that moment in time. Bizarrely, given the amount of time that has passed, Stuart Maconie has gotten hold of a copy and played a couple of tracks from it on his "Freakzone" program on BBC6music tonight, opening the show with one of Steve's tunes and closing it with one of mine, with loads of interesting stuff inbetween. You can listen to it again for the next few days here if you so wish.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Beasts etc
www.betika.co.uk
I had a couple of interesting animal encounters this week. The first was when Lex and I decided to take advantage of the evenings suddenly being light and took ourselves off for a walk in the woods - within about 50 yards of the house we were lucky enough to spot a herd of deer almost perfectly camoflaged amongst the trees. We must have been as close to them as they'd tolerate, they all stood or lay staring at us long enough for us to count ten of them, mostly bristling with antlers, but didn't make any attempt to move away until we tried to sneak a little closer to them, and then they casually wandered off, not looking particularly peturbed. The second incident took place when I was returning home late folowing an SK5 gig - I turned into a lane to find it blocked by a group of enormous animals with glowing red eyes that looked uncannily like the great big dog things that Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis turn into in "Ghostbusters". My blood froze, and the thoughts that flashed through my head were; a) They must be from space, and: b) the were probably going to eat me. On closer inspection, they turned out to be nothing more sinister than a herd of cows who happened to be staring straight at my headlights. I had a similar experience a couple of years ago on tour with Seemonsters, driving back from Liverpool though the night I pulled in to a service station only to be confronted with what I was convinced was a giant puma. I think extreme tiredness must mess with my sense of scale - in this case I was looking at a perfectly normal domestic cat.
We've been working on some more new tunes this week, including something written specially for a compilation being put together by Bhone in aid of the Julia's House Foundation, which will be available at the all-day gig we're headlining at The Gander on May 5th. All the other bands performing on the day are contributing a song, including exclusive tracks from Dutch Husband, True Swamp Neglect, Mezzotints and Little Boat, so it's shaping up to be something quite special. Our song is called "I cannot just stand idle while you smash the things I love", though this may be changed to something shorter! Other newies we've been giving our attention to have been "Spackattack" (a working title that seems to have stuck), and our first 8-way joint composition, which is called "The National Animal" and is either amazing or really annoying in the repetetive, catchy way - Martin recorded us jamming the song on his phone but I haven't heard it back yet.
I had a couple of interesting animal encounters this week. The first was when Lex and I decided to take advantage of the evenings suddenly being light and took ourselves off for a walk in the woods - within about 50 yards of the house we were lucky enough to spot a herd of deer almost perfectly camoflaged amongst the trees. We must have been as close to them as they'd tolerate, they all stood or lay staring at us long enough for us to count ten of them, mostly bristling with antlers, but didn't make any attempt to move away until we tried to sneak a little closer to them, and then they casually wandered off, not looking particularly peturbed. The second incident took place when I was returning home late folowing an SK5 gig - I turned into a lane to find it blocked by a group of enormous animals with glowing red eyes that looked uncannily like the great big dog things that Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis turn into in "Ghostbusters". My blood froze, and the thoughts that flashed through my head were; a) They must be from space, and: b) the were probably going to eat me. On closer inspection, they turned out to be nothing more sinister than a herd of cows who happened to be staring straight at my headlights. I had a similar experience a couple of years ago on tour with Seemonsters, driving back from Liverpool though the night I pulled in to a service station only to be confronted with what I was convinced was a giant puma. I think extreme tiredness must mess with my sense of scale - in this case I was looking at a perfectly normal domestic cat.
We've been working on some more new tunes this week, including something written specially for a compilation being put together by Bhone in aid of the Julia's House Foundation, which will be available at the all-day gig we're headlining at The Gander on May 5th. All the other bands performing on the day are contributing a song, including exclusive tracks from Dutch Husband, True Swamp Neglect, Mezzotints and Little Boat, so it's shaping up to be something quite special. Our song is called "I cannot just stand idle while you smash the things I love", though this may be changed to something shorter! Other newies we've been giving our attention to have been "Spackattack" (a working title that seems to have stuck), and our first 8-way joint composition, which is called "The National Animal" and is either amazing or really annoying in the repetetive, catchy way - Martin recorded us jamming the song on his phone but I haven't heard it back yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
