Betika

The Paper Odyssey

2012-02-10T22:14:00.003Z

Our old friends The Paper Cinema are getting some fantastic press for their current production "The Odyssey". This was in The Times this week. They're on at the Battersea Arts Centre until the 25th Feb. I'd post a link for tickets, but the whole run is sold out. Look out for them at an arts venue near you soon!

littleboat album

2012-01-09T23:50:00.002Z

This is rather lovely.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://chrislittleboat.bandcamp.com/album/littleboat"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;littleboat by chris littleboat&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Milk Solves Thailand

2011-11-23T20:45:00.002Z

Carolyn and Will have moved to Thailand, where Will has turned amateur sleuth and has started documenting his investigations here: http://milksolvesthailand.blogspot.com

Betika - Conch Club

2011-04-28T15:07:00.000Z

Moozikk

2011-04-21T12:36:00.002Z

This is what Martin has been doing lately.

This is a review of it.

I did try to write a song for it, but I couldn't make my fingers do what I had in mind. I'm going to work on that.

Flyer

2011-04-17T22:43:00.004Z

Click it to make it bigger

Videos for Old Songs

2011-04-17T22:17:00.002Z

The Sleeper Wakes

2011-04-12T22:16:00.002Z

We've been re-animated for four weeks now, the limbs are getting looser and the little tingly moments in the rehearsal studio are becoming more frequent. Our ranks have been swollen to 9 with the return of Imogen who is flitting between bass and supplementary horn duties. The gig on 29th April will see (I think) a total of 15 people on stage, but you'll have to come along to see who they're going to be.

We've contributed a track to a CD that will be available over the BhOne 5th birthday weekend with all proceeds going to Julia's House and the Dorset Cancer Unit, and if all goes well there might even be an EP of previously unheard Betika stuff being hawked for the same good causes. Work Continues. And when it is done, that will be that.

A Other Blog

2011-04-03T22:02:00.002Z

This is where Mark, Gary and I are doing a bit of writing about various musical and electronic things we've cobbled together over the years, some of which you may have seen or heard on Betika recordings or at gigs.
zaardvark.blogspot.com

New Bands

2011-02-21T21:13:00.003Z

This is a new band with me, Mark and Andy Guttridge (ex-Brothers in Sound, Clams, Yufei Chowder). We are called Zaardvark, and we make sort of Prog.

This is Martin's band, which isn't new; Here is their MySpace

And this is Will's new band;

This seems likely

2011-01-27T22:33:00.002Z

This was posted on Facebook today, so it must be true. Time to dust off the hitty / blowy / twangy things and try to learn our hands what to do again. Please come, give freely to the good causes, and watch us try our hardest.
We have top secret special guests. We have a training regime. We have almost agreed upon a set we all like.

Bob Hope @ the beeb.

2009-09-09T21:41:00.002Z

Sound: Live Radio Session March 08
Pictures: Approx 800 still pictures from the Betika Archive

Mad again soon

2009-04-21T22:38:00.003Z

www.betika.co.uk

Having driven the long-suffering Betika slightly angrymental lately recording my overcomplicated songs (challenge risen to, and the angry comes across in a very positive way, I think), I began glugging off my own beastly medicine today - the singing has started. We began with Peter Marfan, which is a song about obsessive running, so takes were alternated with sprints around the carpark to get in the correct mind-frame and achieve the right degree of breathlessness. On some takes this was overdone, and the results verged on tubercular. Think we got some good stuff tho. Carolyn goes through the same mill on Friday. Bet she can't wait.

Some freebie downloads

2009-02-16T23:11:00.003Z

www.betika.co.uk

Some songs from the old line-up to download.

I Killed A Fly - recorded for "Halflove" but left off, for some reason. Pete Doherty heard it and asked us to support him.

The New Shrew - almost a completely live recording from late 2007. The bits we cheated with are Imogen's backing vocals and some electric guitar I did afterwards.

The Castle - nearly live too. Again the backing vox are overdubbed.

Undersleep - recorded in an abandoned hotel in 2004 and lost shortly afterwards when an archive was corrupted. Recently restored thanks to new-fangled studio trickery.

Hatred in the rain.

2008-06-25T18:23:00.005Z

www.betika.co.uk

Another wet festival! This was the otherwise very lovely Sundial Fest last week. Thanks to Tone for the vid!

A thing I made.

2008-05-21T20:12:00.005Z

www.betika.co.uk

Pictures above are of a two-stringed electric fiddle I made recently from the amputated leg of an old table and some old guitar parts. And some Meccano. It's made entirely of things I had lying around the house and garden, the only thing I had to buy was the bow, which was the cheapest factory second I could lay my hands on. It sounds surprisingly violin-like, though we don't have a trained fiddlist in the group so brave volunteer Mark will be spending some quality time with the thing before it's unleashed on your delicate ears.

Lots of new songs on the way. I got no damn hair thanks to a clippering accident. I was trying to save money on barbering, and I sure will for the foreseeable future. And on shampoo too.

Cover etc

2007-12-19T22:25:00.001Z

http://www.betika.co.uk/
Our friends The A&E Line have just made a mini-album of truncated covers of songs by bands called "Einen Einfach Fahrkarte Nach Bournemouth", which has a version of our song "Twenty Five" on it. You can download it free from their MySpace page.
Also, following Toupe's "Villains", I have discovered a second song which includes a reference to Betika or me - in this case with reference to a Smiths tribute band that some friends and I were talking about starting a few years ago- "Richard and Dave played guitar / but neither one wanted to be Johhny Marr / Both sang a fine "Girl Afraid" / Rich had the quiff, but Dave sings like that anyway / I hope that it worked out alright". The song in question is "Zammo" by Miniature Pygmies, whose two-album back catalogue I have been enjoying immensely over the last couple of weeks and highly recommend.

The Last Song

2007-11-05T23:24:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

This is The Missionary, the last song to be performed in public by the Modernday Betika. A massive thankyou to Tone from BHone for putting on the gig, to all the other bands who played, and to everyone who came along, and everyone who has lent us their ears over the past few years.

We go studio now. See you next year with the Betika of the Future!

L'autre Betika

2007-11-05T22:17:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

We've been aware of this lady from the Ivory Coast for a few years now, but this is the first time I've heard or seen her. My french is just good enough to recognize that it's being sung in the song, but I can't pick out more than the odd word - can anyone who paid attention at school help out with a translation? (I spent my french conversation lessons talking with my teacher about rugby, in English) I'm guessing from the uncontrollable sobbing at the end that it's not such a happy song....she's not half bad at singing though, and it's one heck of a catchy tune. According to le wikipedia francophonique she's also a film and TV actress and won "best female" at last year's Cote D'Ivorie music awards. And she has an acute on the "e".

Vampire Moustache

2007-11-05T22:13:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Live Sancho last week, thanks to bh one

The Candidate

2007-10-16T23:42:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

This is a video of the first ever public performance of our newest tune "The Candidate". Second public performance November 3rd...

Johnny and Susan

2007-10-16T23:34:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
A new Sancho song, shot by Tone of BH-one at our recent show with Acoustic Ladyland. I was suffering an uncharacteristic touch of the nerves as Seb Rochford (also of Polar Bear / Basquiat Strings, and all-round drum deity) was watching us from the side of the stage. Not that anything I could have done could possibly have impressed him, even if had I relaxed to the point of being able to play properly...

End of Phase 3 - Party!

2007-10-01T16:32:00.000Z

http://www.betika.co.uk/
It is with some sadness that I must announce the impending demise of Betika as we know it. Chris and Imogen (the 7th and 13th people respectively to involve themselves in the band, according to our meticulous records) are departing for a lengthy stay in Japan (much to the amusement of the Japanese, no doubt - "Imogen" is Japanese for "Potato person", which is a mild insult meaning "yokel" or "bumpkin", and "Chris" is a street name for heroin. I don't do any better, the closest pronounciation to my name is "Debu", which means "fatso"). They leave at the end of November, meaning that our next show will be our last together. Hopefully not the last for the band, which if all goes well could be functioning in a de/re-constructed form in the first quarter of next year, pending the discovery of suitable new personnel - if you're a bass-playing girl, we'd love to hear from you!
To mark this milestone, we're throwing a party! As luck would have it, the band's dissolution co-incides with the re-opening of The Gander, which seemed to be lost to the town as a live music venue when it closed a few months back. We were just about the last band to play there when we closed the BH One charity all-dayer in May, so it's nice to be one of the first bands to play there on it's reopening, and it seemed fitting that we put on another all-dayer to mark the occasion. So we (I say we, but credit is almost entirely due once again to Tony from BH One) have put together a line-up of some of our favourite bands from home and away that looks something like this:

Betika (home)
Team Cat Rescue (away)
Dutch Husband (home)
Dead! Dead! Dead! (away)
Blind Voyeurs (home)
Littleboat (going away)
Slate Caverns (home)
Creepythinguy (home)

with the best DJ sets imaginable between bands and late into the night. There will be cool freebies (in the form of limited-edition ep's and food) as an incentive for early arrival, probably some kind of raffle and general fun stuff. A large and very detailed flyer will be posted in due course!

SK5 Things

2007-10-01T16:20:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
The SK5 have some news! A new track entitled "We speak glue" has come out on "Do not Bend", a compilation of circuit-bent sounds from Tiger Claw Records. The 5 are also very pleased to have been invited to do a session for Resonance FM, which will be recorded at one of their "Scaledown" events on Nov 30th and broadcast I think the following evening. Precise details will follow nearer the time. A week or so later (9th Dec), the 5 can also be seen in Bournemouth at The Sunday School project in Rubyz Hall supporting The Pirate Ship Quintet and Charlottefield. We might see if we can find the time to select some material for a new e.p. from the endless hours we have in the archive to mark the occasion.

Catching up

2007-09-16T20:29:00.000Z

http://www.betika.co.uk/

It has been so long since the last entry that you would be forgiven for thinking that I'd lost interest in the whole thing - here are highlights of the many things that have kept me from the blog of the last couple of months:
1) Me and Lexi got married! A very happy, if quite wet day was had by all in late July. Here's a picture of it.

2) Betika were lucky enough to be invited to play at the Vale Earth fair on the lovely island of Guernsey. Possibly the best festival we've ever played at, and certainly the best we've ever been treated. Massive thankyou to Barney, Toupe and all at the festival. Some video was shot and will be posted shortly, in the meanwhile, here's a picture of that (courtesy of BBC Guernsey)

3) Those of us in Betika who also play in Sancho have been helping Paul Hanford out with his latest batch of recordings - drums on my part, with guitar from Chris, trumpet from Martin and Caz singing. Apparently the record is nearly finished, but I don't know what Paul's plans are for releasing it are, I'd imagine it'll be early next year before it goes public.

4) I've been working once again with Monkey Head Transplant, a band I last played with way back in 2001. We (that is Mooro, Skott, Klive and I) reconvened following a chance encounter between Klive and I at a Betika gig in Lewisham last year. Our first gig in six years was at Dutch Husband's album launch last week. Here's a song from it - "To Hell with the Architect". I'm not usually the singer in MHT, this clip just happens to be of one of the two songs where I have to juggle lead guitar and voice.

5) Work has begun in earnest on the next Betika album. We're trying to work out a method whereby we can acheive the near-impossible and capture the energy of a live performance in a hi-fi studio way. Preparation seems to be the key, so we're making lots of recordings of rehearsals, the idea being that we will make all the changes to the songs in pre- rather than post-production, which is what we did with "Halflove", so the actual recording process should in theory be very quick, relative to the months we spent tweaking things and re-recording songs for the last album. By the end of the process, I'd grown so sick of hearing the songs over and over again that I couldn't bear to hear any of those recordings for about six months and the words and music had long since ceased to hold any meaning for me. I'm very keen to avoid a repeat of that.

6) As soon as we get the new songs on tape (or more probably a hard disc drive, which doesn't have either the ring or the romance of the older medium) Chris and Imogen are leaving us to spend some time seeing the world, starting in one of my favourite places, Japan. This as you can imagine will leave a gaping hole in our ranks (also Dutch Husband), but it is a hole we will find a way to fill, hopefully in a new and exciting way, though we have no idea what that might be yet. If you play bass, guitar or other "lead" instrument (keyboards or violin could work), and think that you might like to be involved, do get in touch. There's not really any money in it, but conversely we're pretty much self-sufficient so rehearsals and gig transport won't cost you anything. And you'll get into to lots of festivals free, and we try to do a short tour of nice places once a year. A car would be a good thing to have.

Volkspiotr

2007-07-04T21:19:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Here's another vid courtesy of BHone - it's of us playing "Volkspiotr" on the Curiosity Stage at the Bournemouth Live festival. You may not be able to tell from the clip, but it was absolutely hammering down with rain at the time (hence the duffelcoat), so I have to say a massive thankyou to all the people who must have gotten soaked watching us.

In other news, Gary's wife Simone gave birth to a girl on 21st June - her name is Ameile Jane, and we were formally introduced last week. I was amazed at how tiny and yet how perfectly formed she was - apparently all babies start off like that, but I guess I've never seen one so young before. Mum and Dad looked very pleased with themselves!
In upcoming gig news, Sancho are playing at the newly-refurbished Central in Parkstone this sunday evening, as part of an indoor extension to the afternoon's Grooves on the Green mini-fest, and Betika have just confirmed a support with Vincent Vincent and the Villains, just around the corner at Mr Kyps on Weds 18th July. Somewhere inbetwen we'll be doing the Larmer Tree festival and Littleboat will be playing at Latitude. There will then follow a brief Betika hiatus when we take time out to get married, go on holiday and that sort of thing, returning on 9th September with Glowglobes and Men Diamler @ Fruit.

EPI Pictures

2007-06-07T22:21:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

There's some pictures of last week's Betika-curated EPI gig here. They were taken by Tone from BHone.
Big thankyou to the All-singing Razorblades, Dr Joel, Men Diamler and everyone who came to watch!

Betika / Men Diamler Vids

2007-06-05T22:32:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

These are a collection of videos of live performances by ourselves and our good friend Men Diamler, shot on the day after Carolyn's birthday party last year, which was the last and messiest of a long line of messy parties thrown at the old Betika Towers. The gig was in the miniscule basement of Bar Fruit, a space so tiny that we decided that amplifiers and microphones would be unecessary.

Men Diamler - "Gonna feel so much better". This is the song he sang with us at the EPI gig last friday.

Men Diamler - "John the Revelator"

Betika - "Girlshaped"

Betika - "Let these things forget themselves"

Betika - "Twenty-Five"

Betika - "By Default"

All clips shot by John Jeffreys.

The Mouse

2007-05-21T17:31:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Maybe the mouse had thought it had found a good place to hide; maybe one of the cats had left it for me as a token of affection. Either way, I didn't notice it until I'd run the garden roller over it at least twice, bursting it's little body open in a very unpleasant way.
This week we saw deer, foals, calves, a tiny foxcub and two baby badgers. I didn't burst any of those.

Dormitor

2007-05-17T23:20:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

From BHone website, taken at their magnificent all-dayer last saturday.

I made a friend today.

2007-05-17T23:10:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

He's a cat. I've named him "Mike".

CTVTFAPD rediscovered

2007-04-22T21:43:00.000Z

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.

Beasts etc

2007-04-01T16:48:00.000Z

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.

The Castle

2007-03-18T00:03:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Here's another video shot by the BHone team - they've also posted a review of last Tuesday's show. This song is called "The Castle", and this is the first recorded version of it.

A Betikoverversion

2007-03-14T20:20:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

THIS was recorded at The Fox in Lewisham last September by Simon of Raygun Promotions. It's three covers sort of rolled into one.

How warm is your blood?

2007-03-12T21:34:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

The new Sancho song, live at EPI3, last Friday. Movie stolen from BHone

Fans of bands begining with "B" should come down to Centre Stage tomorrow night (Tuesday 13th), where you will be able to catch Betika, Buswell and (Adam) Boucher.

I like these pictures

2007-03-01T23:37:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

These were taken backstage at Mr Kyps when we played with The A+E Line in December, by a very nice lady named Fiona.

Piano Dancing

2007-02-22T00:44:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

This video was shot while working on the next Sancho record. The thing that I'm jumping up on down on and the others are hitting with hammers and crowbars is the frame of the worst piano I've ever played, which I also had the misfortune to own. I wrote "Dormitor" on it, and probably some other things too, but it was so horrible that I was unable to form any kind of sentimental attachment to it, so when we found we had to vacate Betika Towers, rather than go to the trouble of moving it, it got ripped apart and the bit you see us abusing got used as a sort of natural echo chamber and collaborative percussion instrument, which is what we're doing in the vid.

Evil Betika

2007-02-21T13:30:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Chris discovered today what happens when you run "Betika" past the spell-checker on a mac...

Sancho LP in shops!

2007-02-19T18:40:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

At long, long last, Sancho's second album "Mystery Year" has been released! All the important stuff about it (where you could get it if you wanted it, what those in the know who have heard it thought of it, etc) is on the Seed Records website. It warrants mention here due to it's high headcount of Betika guest appearances - Caz sings some of the songs, Chris plays guitar on it, and I can be heard straining to force notes out of the end of a trumpet in places. There will be Sancho shows happening in the near future in locations near and distant, I will let you know more about them sooon.

New SK noise

2007-02-19T18:25:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Here's a couple of bits of video our Martin shot of Chris, Lee, Mooro and me making some startlingly scratty sounds at the most recent SK5 show.

The SK5 - "Slound"

The SK5 - "The Intelligent Mechanick"

Set List from Tuesday

2007-02-19T18:01:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

If you were there and were curious, these are the songs we played;

The Mark - newie with lots of brass and lots of singing. Imogen made her Betika trumpet debut and Lexi and Chris popped their vocal cherries.
Bob Hope - with an accapella introduction caused by unplugged bass. Must tighten up the changeovers!
Pink Hulk - an oldie revisited.
The new shrew - Caz and Imo doing lovely girlie harmonies. Due to be taken to the studio shortly.
Long slow fade - very short new song with big joyous trumpet outburst where the chorus should be.
Dormitor - we really cocked this up due to me trying to be clever. Imogen had cramp in her fingers so I played the first verse v. slow, then we all came back in at the right speed in a way that verged on slick. Opinions differed though on how many more verses there should be and it ended in a trainwreck.
I killed a fly - old and recorded but not yet released. To be rectified soon hopefully.
The Castle - a song we haven't played for probably two years, radically remodeled around galloping rhythm section.
The Missionary - newish, third time out, lots of shouting.
Twenty-five - our friends Frances and Jane were both celebrating, and this is the only song we've got about birthdays.

A Valentine's Thing

2007-02-09T18:17:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

This extremely pink flyer (created by our friend Frances aka Animal Magic Tricks) has written upon it all the important details pertaining to the gig we're doing on Wednesday next week, which also happens to be an important day for greetings card manufacturers, florists and chocolatiers. Curious about St Valentine and what he did in order to become patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, florists and chocolatiers, (oh, and "secret admirers" (stalkers)), I looked him up on Wikipedia, and it turns out that not even the Vatican knows exactly who he was (he could have been one of three people) or a single thing about him (regardless of which of the three he actually was), leading me to conclude that it is far and away the most tenuously over-commercialised of the formerly religious feasts. I'm not at all against the whole love and affection thing, just the idea that we should feel more loving and affectionate on an arbitarily chosen date, and demonstrate this with the purchase of certain traditional tokens at artificially inflated prices. You should treat your significant other the best you can every single day. So cancel the supposedly romantic dinner you had planned at a restaurant that crams doe-eyed couples in like battery hens and bring the love of your life along to see us and the other fine bands! And if the poster is to be believed, a squirrel and a shrew slap-fighting each other to the death! We will be trying out a few new songs; we have one about a biblical curse, one about the ever-present threat of demonic possesion, and one about things getting better. We've also been working on a couple of songs dealing with triumph in the face of disfunction, and I've foolishly begun work on a song written mostly in phrasebook Japanese (with at least one line of German), to be sung in four-part harmony. I can't see the band thanking me for that one.

Last night we saw a male and female deer, and about thirty seconds afterwards a pair of Barn Owls. This morning we saw a five-car pile-up.

Gary's Dream 2

2007-01-15T17:26:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

"OK, I've had another strange musical dream, I'm getting worried now. This one was a gig in a small venue with a balcony. On stage were the Greynotes making a strange un-describable sound, followed by Swamp,whose performance consisted of them appearing individually one after the other singing and playing guitar. Meanwhile a few people led by Chris (Reed) were jumping from the balcony onto the floor and running back up the stairs to do it again. When I tried it I really hurt myself, and Chris showed me these nearly invisible elastic fibres they were attached to which explained why they didn't hurt themselves.Carolyn was wandering around the top section looking for a book amongst the bookshelves that were in the bar.Outside the venue I was attacked by a man with a golf club who was trying to steal some of the bricks from my dad's house, which was next-door to the venue."

Gary's Dream

2007-01-09T13:14:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
This arrived in my email yesterday;

"I had a very strange dream last night that Betika were playing at a festival which was in a huge arena. I was late for the gig, wandering around the site, which was like a supermarket, trying to find my gear. I was held up by a bloke who was looking for a strap for his bassoon.

For some reason I was playing bass on the first song, but when I looked at the set list I didn't recognise most of the songs. Some of the song names contained characters that are not of the English language. Chris taught me the first song as I arrived on stage and it consisted of me playing b-flat constantly while everyone sang 'chick....chick.....chick' like a chant.

There were tv cameras everywhere, and cables like trip wires all over the stage. I remembered I hadn't tuned the moog, and I was relieved to find it in tune when I started playing it.

Does this mean anything to anyone else?"

We start work on the new songs for '07 tonight. Lots of new idea, new instruments and people doing new things. Lots more singing.

Fans of David Bowie who have a copy of "Lodger" and access to software which can reverse audio might be interested to hear what happens when you listen to track 3 backwards...

New Year News

2007-01-03T18:51:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Hello! And a slightly belated Happy New Year!
I've a couple of newsworthy things to report that are of a personal rather than a musical nature: firstly, Gary is due to become the first Betika parent - with a little help from his lovely wife Simone - when the fruit of their loins is brought into the world sometime around June; secondly, after some five years of sinful co-habitation, Lexi and I have decided that the time has come to tie the marital knot in an attempt to regain some respectability within our ultra-conservative peergroup. The big day isn't until the summer, but will hopefully involve small children dressed as vikings.

In Betika-the-band news, we're planning on keeping our collective heads down for a short while (until we've learnt some of the gothmetalgypsydiscojazzsludge I've been writing) before resuming our attempts to push ourselves and our record into as many strangers' faces as possible. Things aren't 100% confirmed yet, but we're hoping to be able to announce our first venture overseas shortly. I'll say no more in case I jinx it.
No gigs for a little while then, but I'll be taking the stage for the first time this Friday (5th Jan) with The Greynotes, who are essentially The SK5 with a different name and a few more instruments. About an acre of instruments, actually, as we found when we got together for a jam last night. As with The SK5, everything we do will be improvised, recorded, and if it's any good edited down into a record at some point. It may take a while before this happens as we still have several hours of SK5 material in various stages of completion to work our way through first. This flyer explains all of the many things that are happening as part of the gig of which we are a part. Our projected visuals will be made in real time by Nic Beard and Imogen of The Paper Cinema. If you're having trouble with the tiny text, click on the flyer and it should become larger.
Silver Apples are amazing! Thanks Rizlo!

Halflove on iTunes

Fate?

2006-12-05T19:50:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Over the weekend I've been working on arrangement of a new song entitled "The Great Bear". It's something I've been working on for a while, not because it's been particularly hard to write but because the writing process has found me inadvertently straying uncomfortably close to horrible rock cliche. I've been aiming towards a slightly harder, darker sound, but I've been very conscious of the fact that in doing so I'm toeing a very fine line beyond which things cease to be death-pop (or whatever it is that Betika do) and start smelling like the boys' changing rooms at secondary school. The main cause for concern has been the two electric guitar parts, and how easy it is for them to overwhelm the singing in louder songs, and the key to getting them right came from an unexpected source.
My dad has been clearing the remainder of my stuff out of his house (all the stuff I never had room or need for when I discovered the wonderful world of rented accomodation) and delivering it to me in cardboard boxes. While sorting through one of these boxes on saturday I came across a copy of Guitarist magazine from about 1984 that I bought at a car boot sale because it had an early (pre-"Hatful of Hollow") interview with Johnny Marr. It was great from a guitar-geek point of view, because he explained in quite a lot of depth how he set his amps up (a Fender Twin and a Roland Jazz Chorus), and it led me to start messing around trying to recreate his sound, and in doing so I turned on the Chorus effect on my practise amp, which had a curious result. If you're not familiar with Chorus, I guess the best way to describe it would be as a big button marked "80s", think "A Forest", "The Killing Moon" or "This Charming Man", the slightly wibbly guitar sound on "Brass in pocket" or Kirsty Macoll's "A New England". Ot the into to "She sells sanctuary". It was an effect that everybody used back then but almost nobody touches now, so tied is it to that particular period of time. But touch it I did, and mysteriously the new sound made my fingers go in all the right places and in no time I had two nicely complementary guitar parts worked out, albeit guitar parts wearing outsize black jumpers, eye shadow and biiiiig hair. The important thing was that the notes were right - all I had to do was not use chorus and suddenly we were back in the early 21st century. Not difficult really, as between the three guitarists in Betika none of us even owns a chorus pedal, just the built-in effect on my crappy practise amp that never leaves the house. Happy that I'd cracked a difficult musical nut, I got back to the job I'd become distracted from some time previously - sorting through boxes of my teenage junk. And you'll never guess what I found in the next box I looked in:
A Chorus Pedal!
The co-incidence was strange enough, but stranger was the fact that I have absolutely no recollection of ever having had this pedal in my posession at any point in the past. In the middle ages this kind of thing would have been hailed as a sign from God, if not a full-blown miracle (or maybe witchcraft) and probaly brought to the attention of the pope. I'm not a religious person, or particularly superstitious (unlike my magpie-saluting girlfriend), but I find my instinct is now to use the thing...but at the same time I have serious reservations because I know I'd be getting dangerously close to '80s pastiche. I'm deeply torn.
Wouldn't hurt to try it, I suppose?

Coincedentally

2006-11-15T23:57:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

I popped in to see Carolyn straight after writing the last post, and guess what she cooked for our lovely dinner? Sausages, of course! I'm glad to say that I was able to eat them without encountering any kind of psychological problems, so it looks like I'm cured.

urgh...ahhh

2006-11-15T17:55:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Had a bit of a horrible day yesterday - learned in the morning that a friend and colleague is seriously ill, which was quite upsetting, and then at lunchtime found myself first on the scene at an incident at work where somebody had cut their calf muscle so badly that it had opened up the way a sausage splits if you don't prick it before putting it on the barbeque, which was pretty grim. Left me a bit disturbed for the rest of the day, kept getting shuddery flashbacks of this gaping wound, found myself unwilling to cook sausages for my tea when I got in. Goodness knows how ambulance crews and firemen cope seeing much worse stuff than that every day.
Today started much better, my copy of the new Joanna Newsom album arrived, I'm partway through my first listen as I type - first impressions are that it's going to take a bit of getting into, it's only five tracks long, but the shortest of these is 7 minutes and 17 seconds long! But I also get the feeling that perseverance with it will reap wonderful rewards.
Must go now, have to meet Caz.

Natural Justice

2006-11-09T22:37:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Funnliy enough, I'm sure this story previously existed as an urban legend. Served the bastard right though! Same applies with this and this. I'm sorry if none of these items have made you feel particularly proud to belong to the same species as the people in them, I will endeavour to present feelgood content with my next post to compensate! In the meantime, going on YouTube and doing searches on "Rube Goldberg" and "Parkour" should take away the nasty taste in your head. Works for me, anyway.

In the pipeline

2006-11-09T19:59:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Here is a movie Carolyn shot of local heroes Steve and Thom of the Fantastic A+E line dancing on stage with The Flaming Lips last Sunday (they're the two Santas at the front on the left). The volume was way too much for Carolyn's camera to cope with, so it sounds like they're frugging away to Merzbow, but you get an idea of what a full-on full-spectrum sensory overload the Lip's shows have developed into. And Deerhoof were fantastic too, of course, though they'd sadly been shunted into the opening slot by the addition to the bill of Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, whose album I've tried really hard to like but after repeated listens they're still not pushing any of my special buttons.
Out here in the country I've been writing songs and making plans. We've had our nasty old piano tuned and have been struggling to remember how to play it. Lexi has met with considerably more success, she has far better technique than I so has been filling the house with Chopin, I on the other hand still haven't recalibrated my hands from the years spent playing various Casio and Yamaha mini-keyboards and find myself playing unintended jazz chords where none should be. I've written a couple of songs over the last week; one which doesn't have a title yet but has an awful lot of words, it's another peice of musical reportage in a similar vein to "By Default" but with a better tune; also one called "The Sickening", which sounds a bit like something Clint Eastwood could have sung in "Paint Your Wagon", and was inspired by a shirt/quiff combo I was sporting the other day that gave my reflection ever such a slight resemblance to Johnny Cash when viewed from the corner of my eye in low lightinh conditions. If the rest of the band like it, it may well find it's way onto our next recording, which will be an ep of songs that didn't make it onto "Halflove" because either there wasn't space or they just didn't fit in. We did a cracking version of "I killed a fly" early last year that will definitely be included, as will "Let these things forget themselves" and "The New Shrew", both of which were pencilled in to close the album at various times but were ousted by "The best thing ever" at the last minute. I'm hoping that we'll find a nice sounding and suitably vibey space to record in, and start work as soon as Gary and Imogen are finished with making the Dutch Husband album, something that I'm as eager to hear as True Swamp Neglect's recently completed second long-player. I've also started work on songs for the next Betika album (due 2008 if it takes as long as the last one!), the general feel of the things I've written so far is noticebly darker than our previous work and they're most definitely designed for dancing to. Speaking of which, an idea has just popped into my head, so I'm going to sign off now and pursue it.
Go and see the Swamp at The Gander on Saturday!

TV Food Dreams

2006-11-04T17:24:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

These are real dreams I had a couple of days apart about two weeks ago...

1). I dreamed an episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer is cooking Marge dinner for a special occasion. The dish he has chosen to prepare for her is a Tesco Value Pot Noodle, something she is exremely unhappy about. Homer has a trick up his sleeve though- he produces some raw squid, chops it up into small cubes and adds it to the pot noodle. "Here you are, my dear" he says; "A Rubbery Event".

2) Same thing, but an episode of Father Ted. Some other Priests pay an unexpected visit to Craggy Island, which causes Ted and Dougal some embarrassment as they have no biscuits to go with their tea. Mrs Doyle comes to the rescue by spreading mint sauce on some Ryvita. "Dere you go now" she says; "Emerald Toast".

I would like to recommend that you purchase "Year of the Leopard" by James Yorkston at the first opportunity, I think it's his loveliest yet. And if his travels bring him to a town near you, go along and see him. You won't regret it.
Coming to a town very near me tomorrow are The Flaming Lips - an exceptional live band in their own right, but what has really excited those Betikans who are going to the show is who they've got as their tour support - only chuffing DEERHOOF! IN BOURNEMOUTH! If you're going to see the Lips, make sure to get there early and catch the Hoof. Also keep an eye out for Steven Lake of the Fantastic A&E Line, who will be donning a furry animal costune and dancing the night away at the side of the stage.

The past few Betika gigs have been absolutely fantastic, and that has been 100% down to the people who came to see us - thankyou, wherever you are!
I've got the net at home again now, so normal Blogging service should resume as of now. Watch this space for more of same...

Now here's an Odd Thing

2006-10-15T20:51:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Now, here's an odd thing. So odd, I thought it was worth a blog entry.

Last night, after successfully locking myself out of my flat for the second time in as many weekends, I ended up taking a taxi round to my very good friend's parent's house.

The story of how the taxi was caught is an interesting psychological case study in itself, but I'll leave that for another time.

It was about 4am in the hallway, and I had been persuaded by my good friend that if we were quiet, we could get away with doing some things that you wouldn't want your own parents overhearing, let alone someone else's parents who you haven't actually met yet. I wasn't totally convinced, and so had my ears pricked for any noises from upstairs.

What I wasn't expecting was the front door to suddenly open and a young, apparently plastered, girl to come staggering in. I legged it into another room, leaving my friend in a compromising position on the floor as the mysterious girl advanced and then began to climb the stairs.
From his prone and slightly naked position, I could hear my friend asking her who she was - 'Michelle', and what she thought she was doing in his house - 'Shhhhh.......shhhhhhh.......' was all she would answer as she ignored the unusual attire and position of her inquisitor, and made her was upstairs, into his Dad's bedroom, and into bed.
I then overheard a rather bewildered conversation between my friend, his Dad (having woken up understandably in a bit of a panic as a total stranger got into his bed), and the mysterious and very comfy Michelle as they tried to work out who on earth she was and why she had decided to sleep, Goldilocks style, in someone else's bed. All Michelle would answer was 'Shhhhhh....shhhhhhhh'.

A few minutes later and she seemed to have woken up from whatever state she was in, and realised that she most definitely wasn't in her own bedroom. Then, 'Shhhhhhh......shhhhh.....' was replaced with 'Oh my God.....Oh my God.....Oh My God......' as she was escorted out - turns out she lived a couple of roads away.

It was honestly the oddest thing I've ever witnessed with my own face, she was either the world's most drunk person, or was possibly sleepwalking. I'm starting to think that maybe she was sleepwalking in some way, as her demeanor seemed to change so much from when she first appeared and would only say 'Shhhh.....', to when she seemed to 'come round' and realise she was in a strangers house. Sorry, make that a complete strangers bed.

I think sleepwalking might be the focus of my next piece of research.

Ps. Thanks to everyone who came along to the Gander last night, it was amazing! Even if my dress strap broke mid gig and I flashed my bra at everyone. It was a nice bra, anyway.

The End of an Era

2006-09-30T09:07:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
It's been over a month since any of us have blogged, and this has been mainly due to a fairly major upheaval in some of our lives - we have moved out of Betika Towers! The house had been our rehearsal space and recording studio for two and a half years, not to mention the place that Lexi, Chris and I called "home". It was the venue for many a crazy party (and a couple of micro-film festivals), and became a social and creative hub for us and our friends, and I'm really sad to be leaving. I'd have stayed there longer, had I had a say in the matter, but our landlord sold it out from under us, so we had no choice but to relocate - Chris is setting up home with Imogen in Boscombe's fair city, and Lexi and I have retreated into the woods for the winter, where I'm going to write the next album by twilight amidst the mossy trunks, before returning to the town in the spring. Where Betika will be based is unclear, but I'm sure something will turn up - there's a few rehearsal studios in the area, but I kind of fancy something with a bit more character, a church hall or a victorian school or something. Maybe a barn? Who knows.

A visual treat for you

2006-08-21T20:21:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
Like most of the Planet, I've become addicted recently to YouTube (the website, not the Scottish insult), staying up late into the night downloading footage of Bowie or Young Marble Giants from '70s TV shows (check out the Bowie interview with Russel Harty) or mobile phone video clips of Deerhoof. I was trawling around for something else tonight when I found this Flipron video, which was made by our very own Martin. Betika are taking a short summer break, or at least some of us are - Chris (wearing his Little Boat hat and clogs) and Imogen are out on tour with Nic Beard and his Paper Cinema, calling at London (twice), Newcastle and the Edinburgh Festival. On their return, our next gig is at The Joiners in Southampton on 7th September, where we'll be supporting none other than....Flipron!

Want to purchase our record online?

2006-08-05T21:41:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
You do? Well, simply click here and enter "Betika" in the search box!

Launch Party Pics

2006-08-02T09:27:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
Some pictures of the album launch last Friday, as taken by Steve Beck, can be found here.

Review #2, All change at MySpace

2006-08-01T21:21:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
Here are the news for today:
There is another review of "Halflove" at The Acrylic TomTom.
There is a write-up of the album launch gig at BhOne.
We have changed all the songs on our MySpace page. You can now listen to the album versions of "By Default", "Twenty-Five", "Dormitor" and "Bob Hope".
Gary's cousin Geoff's steam-powered gramophone was featured in The Times today.

An Interview

2006-07-31T17:39:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
Further to the first review of "Halflove" posted on the site the other day, there's an interview with Carolyn and me at www.bhone.co.uk in which we attempt to explain a bit about the songs and the making of the record. I don't think we really give too much away, I make ridiculous pretentious statements and contradict myself and Carolyn gives me the mocking I deserve. We also come clean about some of our wierd compulsive behaviour...

Massive Thankyou!

2006-07-29T21:17:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
On behalf of my fellow Betikans, I would like to say a great big thankyou to every single person who came to the album launch party last night, for it was your presence and participation that made it the incredible night that it was. I had more fun playing last night than I think I've ever had before, everybody in front of me seemed to be dancing or singing along, and every time I turned round to look at the band there were ear-to-ear grins all round. It was bloody brilliant! I hope your Saturday mornings were less painful than mine, my fantastic Friday night came at a price, and I paid in braincells. But it was well worth it. I will post some photos of the night soon.

There's a review of "Halflove" that's just been posted on BHOne, and this will be followed by an interview with Carolyn and myself and some other Betika-related content in the next few days.

Today's the day!

2006-07-28T12:52:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Had a marvellous gig at Talking Heads in Southampton with Toupe and Little Green Last night, a fantastic evening in itself but also a spot of last-minute training to make sure that we're 100% match fit for tonight, when "Halflove" is formally introduced to the world, and vice-versa. All the details you need to know about the event are in the posts below, but I should warn you that our guestlist is almost at full capacity, if you want to come email us at info@betika.co.uk and we'll do our best to squeeze you in, but please don't make a journey if you haven't heard from us that you'll be able to get in, I'd hate to have to turn anyone away.
Have a fantastic weekend whatever you do,
Dave

Larmertree Pictures

2006-07-22T16:35:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Here's a few pictures taken by Julian Stodd of one of our three performances at the Larmertree Festival last weekend. Due to various quirks of fate we ended up playing on all three days and on all three stages! These pictures were taken at the Big Top stage on the Sunday. If you were at the Fest and took any pictures of us, I'd love to see them - if you mail them to me at info@betika.co.uk I'll post them up here.

The big Betika news this week is that we are throwing the launch party for "Halflove" on Friday at Centre Stage in Bournemouth, where we'll be playing the whole album in it's entirity for the third time ever. It's free, and if you'd like to come, just drop me a line at the email address above and your name will be duly added to the list.

Alternatively, if you're a Southamptonite and find yourself unable or unwilling to travel over to the 'mouth for the festivities, we're playing at Talking Heads in Portswood Road on Thursday in support of our good friends Toupe. Toupe will also be joining us at the launch party on Friday, as will the Old Psychiatrist's Club.

See you somewhere hopefully,
Dave

Now we are eight

2006-07-09T01:39:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

photo: Paul Savine

for the last eighteen months or so, Betika has consisted of these seven people (l-r: me, Lexi, Caz, Rich, Imogen, Martin, Chris). This is quite a large number of people to have in a band, but still it isn't enough to accurately recreate live the sound of the record we've just finished making, and so we're very happy that our long-term producer and even longer-term friend Gary has (re)joined us (after a spell of being our bass-player while Imogen was broken), playing extra guitar, synth, percussion and singing. He's been very much one of us for a long time, in a behind-the-scenes kind of way, now he has a namebadge and a uniform. Look, he's wearing them in the top photo, he's on the far right.

NOW it's finished.

2006-06-28T23:41:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
It really is this time. Tomorrow we collect the Master of all Masters and take it to the pressing plant, we've got the proofs of the artwork back and it all looks lovely.

Well actually...

2006-06-26T16:41:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
...it turns out that it isn't quite finished! It has become clear on repeated listenings that we have rather over-egged the ending of "Love, let me not hunger" with unnecessary massed harmony vocals that make it sound a bit like Boney-M, which seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time, so a last-minute remix is in order. As luck would have it, we have a day to spare, so this shouldn't set us back at all, it just means that some of us will have to spend an extra evening in the studio tonight, and after 841 days, one more is nothing! Barring some unforeseen disaster, the whole album should be mastered by the end of tomorrow, which will make it a doubly special day as it's also Carolyn's birthday. And it's Imogen's the following day, and Martin's a few days after that, so Betika will be mostly partying hard this week!

If you'd like to see the toll these celebrations are going to take on people who are already nearing the point of mental exhaustion, come down to Fruit on Old Christchurch Road on Sunday night (2nd July), where an acoustic-based micro-Betika will be playing some songs. Also playing on the night will be Jar and Men Diamler, both hailing from Bristol and currently on tour around the south doing good and interesting things, and also Farther, Nicky Hann, Glen Ross and Pete Read. They will all be good, and we will most likely be in a shocking state. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Imogen will be playing the double bass!

IT'S FINISHED!

2006-06-25T21:03:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

IT'S FINISHED.

Not all booze and flying!

2006-06-20T16:11:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
I'd like to make it clear that in spite of appearances (see last two blogs), we are in fact working very hard on getting the album finished, and not just getting drunk on exotic booze and swanning around in light aircraft. The Vicious McGinty was in fact invented while we were mixing the new improved version of "By Default", and Martin did all of his bits ages ago, so he's lucky enough to be free to do whatever he wants. Spare a thought for Gary, Carolyn and myself though, next time you're enjoying the sunshine, or having a drink with friends in the pub, or just going to bed when your mind and body tell you that it really is time you got some sleep. Spirits have been up and down over the last week, there was a bit of a lull around thursday / friday when I became quite despondent and short tempered and Carolyn and I almost had a row by accident (but didn't), but having gotten By Default finished on saturday, and after getting a decent amount of sleep over the weekend, things seemed to have swung to the opposite pole by last night. Last week's sighs, groans and mock-foetal misery-balls had been replaced by near maniacal laughter at our own stupid jokes, and rolling around with same, which I was incredibly glad of. We now have two songs left to sing and mix, then the whole thing goes off to be mastered and then manufactured. And then we'll be like prisoners freshly released from a lengthy sentence, marvelling at how much the outside world has changed while we've been inside, eyes agog at all the new technology and fashions, terrified of how we're going to cope outside the strict but dependable framework of the prison routine; without the rules and regulations that have taken away the need and the ability to think. So many decisions we'll have to make for ourselves! do we try to go straight? or do we re-offend?

From the Betika Cocktail Companion: The Vicious McGinty

2006-06-19T14:53:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Small measure of "Green" - a 30% syrupy liqueur that Gary got in Majorca last year that tastes aniseed-y and a bit menthol-y, a bit like Pernod but more like cough medicine. You might know what it's actually called - do let us know!
Ginger Beer
Hot Chilli Powder
PP3 9v Battery (IMPORTANT! THIS MUST BE FLAT!!! If you use a new one it may result in burns!)

1) Mix the Green and the Ginger Beer together in a small tumbler.
2) Dab a small amount of chilli powder on your tounge with a finger.
3) Take a sip from the glass. Swallow slowly.
4) Dab the terminals of the flat battery on your tongue.

Your mouth will now be full of sensations, and will probably be feeling all the emotions at once.
5) Repeat steps 2 onwards until glass is empty.
6) Repeat steps 1 onwards.

As with all of these recipies, Betikorp takes no responsibilty for whatever state you end up in if you choose to make use of the above information, and the subsequent mess you make of your life.

This drink is named in honour of Lawrence McGinty, the ITN Science Correspondent.

£22

2006-06-16T01:36:00.000Z

Hello. Last friday I went with my friend Pete to Kingston Deverill in North Dorset for his birthday treat. His mum had bought him and a friend a ride in a glider each at Bath, North Dorset and Wiltshire Gliding Club. So he invited me.
Except when I got there, I found it was a 'first lesson'. So I now know:

1) ...How to put on/take off a parachute
2) ...What to do in case of an emergency in the air. ( pull both cockpit levers, release your seat belt, get out of glider, pull red parachute lever)
3) ..How to steer left and right ( left= left pedal pressed while you move the stick left) ( I know its not called the stick!)
4) ..That the pilot who flew with me knows where Blandford is, because he lives there and has to put up with all the noisey musicians like me.
5) You can travel for miles and miles by 'hopping' from thermal to thermal ( where the warm air rises so I was told)
6) For every 1000 ft, you can travel 3 miles, so if you were at a hight of 4000ft you would be able to travel 12 miles before you landed. Unless you found another thermal and maintained your height.
7) Gliders are very light. You can pick them up with one hand. ( I had my camcorder in the other hand).
8) You are winched up on take off at a speed of 60 knots and then when flying maintain a speed of 40 - 50 knots unless you wish to land.

Soon I would like to be joining the Gliding Club I went to so that I can become a qualified glider pilot!
Then I'll buy my own single seater glider for about £1000 - £2000. Or save up and get a professional 2 seater for about £20,000 when/if i'm really rich.
I can't wait. The take off is such a rush!

The gliding lesson cost £22.

more info on where I went here www.bwnd.co.uk

Not a psycho

2006-06-13T13:20:00.000Z

I Just read Dave's blog and feel I should clarify my thought processes when I'm tired.
It's perfectly true that like most people, I'm generally thinking about stuff ALL the time, but I do sometimes seem to have the ability to just switch my brain off, especially when I'm tired, or doing something a bit boring. It's nice - sometimes you need a break from your thoughts, especially when they are the silly, looping kind and not the productive kind. I think I might have trained myself to do it during the many hours I have spent invigilating exams. I do just stare at things and genuinely think about....nothing. Or I just look at something. Not intensely studying it, just looking at it. One bit of my brain says "Look at that lightswitch", so I just do. And then another bit of my brain says "Oh yeah...... a lightswitch". And I look at it for a bit. And then Dave says "What are you thinking about?" so I say "Nothing". Then I clarify it a bit by saying "Actually that's not true". Dave looks interested, thinking that I'm about to reveal some deep working of my mind. So I say "I'm actually just looking at that light switch" and then he looks at me like I'm a psychopath. I'm not, though.

www.betika.co.uk

Tired Now

2006-06-12T16:32:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
I did a Murray Walker on myself last night. Carolyn was saying how tired the recent spell of intense Betika activity has made her, and I rather flippantly told her that she was probably going to bed too early. I've been going to bed as it's getting light, then getting up and going to work or to do Betika stuff, and so far (after about two weeks) I've felt pretty good, if perhaps slightly removed from the real world. Today I do not feel so good. We spent last night trying to get my vocals right on "Thunderstorm", and I was having real trouble with my nasal passages, probably due to hayfever. We did take after take after take until I literally couldn't sing any more and Caz couldn't keep her eyes open (I took a nice photo of her sleeping on the drumkit, she looks very peaceful yet extremely uncomfortable). I had a relatively early night (asleep by 12.30), but was woken far too early by..................a Thunderstorm! Initially, my thoughts were that this was a sign from God that I should get up and record yet more singing, but my body strongly disagreed, and the resulting tug-of-war between the two left me in a semi-waking state for far too long. Eventually I slipped into one of those horribly realistic dreams about getting up and going to work, only to find that I worked in a wizard school and could fly by ever so gently lifting both feet off the ground and floating upwards.

I may have slightly Murrayed myself in my last post too, when I said that cabin fever had yet to set in. I've found myself becoming concerned - borderline obsessed to be honest - with Carolyn's claim that sometime she's not thinking about anything. On occasions she'll just stare vacantly into space, often looking thoughtful, sometimes troubled, and I'll ask her out of curiosity or sometimes concern what she's thinking about, and she'll reply "nothing". Now I know what you're thinking: Everyone does that, and when they say "nothing", they just don't want to talk about whatever is on their mind. But Caz insists that this isn't the case, and that she really isn't thinking about anything. And that concept terrifies me. I never stop thinking, and I couldn't if I wanted to, my thoughts come in a constant high-pressure stream that can't be turned off. I've tried that Zen meditation technique where you think of a candle and blow it out, and all that happened was my heart stopped beating and my corpse had to be re-animated by evil (aren't they all?) scientists. I've tried using mantras to block out other thoughts, but always they creep back in. To me, the idea of the absense of thought is like the concepts of infinity or death, impossible to properly get my head round. When Carolyn says she's been not thinking of anything, it's like someone telling me that they haven't been breathing for the last ten minutes, or more sinisterly, it has echoes of Charles Manson's assertation that he had no conception of remorse (When asked in a documentary if he was sorry for the murder of Sharon Tate, he replied "Charlie don't know what sorry is" - the look in his eyes said he meant it). It's like something important is missing, and I'm growing paranoid that she might be some kind of psychopath. Or a closet Zen master. Either way, I'm starting to look at her like Homer and Mr Burns looked at each other after they got buried in that avalanche.

I wonder what the longest time is that two people have been confined in a small space with only each other for company? Probably in orbit, or on a remote lighthouse. I wonder how long it took before they started having these kinds of thoughts?

Nearly finished now (me and IT).

Too cold now for shorts

2006-06-11T01:26:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
Just got in from a marathon mixing session that saw us tick three more "DONE" boxes on the album master tracklist. Listening to what we'd done on the car stereo on the way home, it all sounded to these ruined ears like big lovely pop music, which is good, because if it didn't after all the time that's been spent on it, I think I'd have to walk into the sea fully clothed and keep going until I couldn't go any more. Even the songs that had previously been causes for concern and planters of seeds of doubt seem to be good now, it's amazing what you can acheive just by being anally obsessive about small details. Spirits remain high generally, and Betikabin-fever has yet to steal over Gary, Caz and myself, despite our having spent pretty much every spare minute of the last....god knows how long in one another's company. Carolyn did nearly smash her flute to pieces against a guitar amp today mid-overdub, and also punched me a bit, but this was because she was arguing with herself, and not me at all, I think.
This week we have mostly been recording people who play in orchestras. I have learnt two interesting things about Gary;
a) He likes to stroke bumblebees.
b) He chews milk.
Light soon. Bed now.
D

Album Mentality

2006-06-09T11:20:00.000Z

Betika are spending this lovely sunny spell shut up in one of 2 airless and hot rooms with little to no natural sunlight. Why? To finish our album, thats why. It sounds good and it had better be, by the end of this we will have probably lost weight temporarily, mental stability permanently, and the ability to ever enjoy listening to music again without instinctively analysing the tone and timing of every instrument for the rest of our lives. I am now spending more time shut in the aforementioned airless rooms with Dave than I have ever spent with any human being in my life, including myself - no massive rows as yet - irritability and despair have raised their ugly heads a couple of times but generally spirits are manaically quite good. When this is finished, I will be requiring him to wear a mask with someone else's face on it for a bit, to give me a break. We are basically running on adrenaline and tea plus Lexi has kindly formed a small catering company to provide hot meals and snacks during this time. We've kept a diary of the whole process, excerpts from which will be published in the illustrated childrens book "Mummy, What's Wrong With Those People?" that will accompany this album.

I am at work now, this is where I sleep.

www.betika.co.uk

Betika in a Nutshell

2006-06-05T13:01:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
There's a review here of our lunchtime slot at the Larmertree Party at Salisbury Arts Centre about a month ago, which is concise, accurate and extremely favourable.

News and Whathaveyou

2006-05-26T00:18:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
a) Betika, back to full fitness in the Imogen arm department, are playing the Joiners in Southampton tonight! Today, incedentally, is Friday 26th May. We won't be playing anything new, just old things, but greeted like long-lost freinds, with vim, vigour and lovelovelove, the things with which an old friend should be greeted. That's all we can offer really. Skill is right out of the question, but who needs it when you have the kind of glue that holds us ( that's us and us, AND us and you) together? No fucker, that's who.
2) AaaaaaaaaaaaTttttttttttttttttttPppppppppp! Were you there? Wasn't it good?
Friday was mostly guitar solos, culminating in Dinosaur Jr, but never mind - Broken Social Scene!
Saturday was sublime end-to-end, can't even remember half of what I saw, largely due to mine and Caz's strict 2-standard-drinks-per-hour booze reigime, which lasted way, way beyond sunrise. I think it may have been 14 hours, plus extras to take away the taste of the chilli powder we dabbed on our tongues in the name of science, in order to find out what bits of our tongues did what, you see? (About a centimetre back from the tip does spicy). Boredoms were staggering, Dungen (pronounced Doonyen, thay said) were a revelation (albeit from 1971), Joanna Newsome has stolen my clogged-up, jerky heart away forever, may I never get it back. Camber Sands is not called so for nothing, for grains of it got everywhere, between indie gymnastics in the Pontins playground and passing out in a sanddune at stupid AM (post Newsome, an adrenalinatastic brush with a Wierdo Indie Knifeman and many, many hours of Real Hard Dancing), my pockets are still full of the stuff and I didn't even take these trousers with me.
Sunday I don't remember much, missed the Delicate Hammers in-chalet gig due to body having gone way beyond maximum endurance. Electralane were pretty special, and then nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. And then somehow I got home, enriched to the max by R Kelly and his "Trapped in the closet" nonsense. I urge you to steal this particular cultural artifact into your life using internet file-robbing tools. Or maybe buy it from amazon.usa
iii) Keep 30th June free in your diaries! There will be a Betika party then, and I hope that you can come.

Things we have seen lately

2006-05-17T00:20:00.000Z

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1) Life-sized scrap metal sculptures of two giraffes (parent and child).
2) A buzzard, circling right at the end of my road. Like foxes, they're encroaching more and more into urban areas. I wonder what it is they're eating? Maybe they're raiding bins, or perhaps they swoop down and carry off pigeons?
3) Carolyn saw a pygmy hippopotamus chasing a rabbit round a field for ages. She says she'd like to think that they were friends and were frolicing gayly, but I think she knows deep down that the hippo was intent on biting the bunny in half with it's flip-top head.
4) Guillemots (the band, not the birds). And Joan as Policewoman. Talked to Fyfe Dangerfield (vox and keys) afterwards and tried to explain (with sung examples) how "Trains to Brazil" has one of the top five lip-trembling lyrics of all time, in particular the bit about the pile of telephones starting to shake and ring, which I've always taken as a reference to the 7/7 tube bombings. Like everyone who knew somebody in London that day, I was straight on the phone as soon as I heard the news to make sure they were okay. I can't begin to imagine how it would have felt if those calls had never been answered, as was the case for hundreds of people.
Incidentally, the other songs in the top five are "Mr Bojangles" (where his dog up and dies); "The village green preservation society" ("God save the George Cross, and all those who were awarded them"); "Love will tear us apart" and; "Two little boys". Fyfe quite rightly added "Bright Eyes" to the list (but on no account the Steven Gately version, not ever ever ever.)
ATP this weekend!

In the interest of science...

2006-05-11T23:38:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

...I've eaten Sugar Puffs for breakfast every day for a week. Now not only my wee but my entire life smells of honey until around lunchtime. I'd be interested to see if eating asparagus at every meal would have a similar all-pervading effect, but two possible drawbacks spring immedeately to mind
1. The cost - asaparagus don't come cheap, partly because of
2. It's fabled aphrodisiac properties. There's a risk that the test subject may be transformed into some kind of raging nymhpo and have to face up to all the responsibilities that come with that.

Some of us went to see the Go! Team tonight, and it was 9 out of 10. Kid Carpet wasn't half bad either.

The Science of Asparagus Wee

2006-05-06T16:15:00.000Z

Smelly wee has been the hot topic of conversation at Betika Towers recently - I think it all started a couple of weeks ago when we were watching ‘Brainiac’ – Jon Tickle was investigating the curious phenomenon of why wee smells really bad, like rotten eggs bad, after you eat asparagus. To cut a long story short, they found that not everyone seems to produce smelly wee, and not everyone can smell it even if they do make it. These abilities appear to be genetically determined.

I’ve never noticed my wee smelling funny in that way before, but Chris reckons his definitely does. We did a little test on Friday night - Chris was having asparagus with his dinner, so I ate some and then spent most of the rest of the night visiting the loo and coming back crestfallen when I couldn’t detect the horrible eggy smell that is supposed to appear.

Why? my scientific brain wondered. Why me? I must find out! So I did, and much like I discovered during my investigations into the science of cheese dreams, the story is not yet a complete one….

What makes the smell?

I hope you like biochemistry as much as I do because I’m about to go into lots of unnecessary detail, just to make me look clever.

The smell apparently comes from the breakdown of amino acids contained in the asparagus into other smelly chemicals which are then quickly excreted in urine, because they are toxic.

That’s it. You can stop reading now if you like, because the rest is just 3 pages of blah.

Exactly which chemicals are involved is apparently hotly contested within this niche field of interest. I love people who dedicate their lives to an insanely narrow area of research - if I was Prime Minister, I’d fund them up to their eyeballs. I would do this by banning 5p’s because they are annoying, then I’d give all the 5p’s to the scientists.

Cheese fans know all about proteins and amino acids, but here’s a crash course for the uninitiated.

Proteins are the most important chemicals in the whole world, in fact, they are slightly more important than the Queen. I did start writing an enormous list of things that proteins do for us but it got so long that I’m just going to summarise it by saying that if they didn’t exist, neither would life on earth.

Proteins are relatively gigantic molecules, made from lots of little molecules called amino acids all joined together in a chain. There are 20 different kinds of amino acid, and the order they appear on this chain is determined by our DNA. This long chain then folds up on itself into a vastly complicated 3D shape which gives every protein its magical powers.

So that we can stay alive, we need to make new proteins all the time as without them, we would be quite simply dead. They are more important than saving baby seals from being clubbed to death, remember.

We get all the building materials we need to make new proteins from our food, so we need to be able to break down the proteins we eat. We break them down into amino acids, which can be rebuilt into the proteins that we happen to want. Of the 20 kinds of amino acids there are, some are referred to as essential, and some as non-essential. We can’t make essential amino acids in our bodies so we have to eat them, but we can convert them into non-essential ones by chopping them up and doing a cut and shut job to create new types in a process called transamination.

Any amino acids that we don’t use for building new proteins can’t be stored so the liver does some kind of magical thing where it turns them all into toxic urea and then puts this into the blood stream, whereupon the community minded kidneys scoop it out and convert it into urine. This is why I don’t understand people who drink their own urine because they insist it’s good for them. Roland Rivron did it on telly once but apparently he is friends with Jools Holland so he can drink piss all he likes as far as I’m concerned. Surely it’s all the toxic rubbish your body doesn’t want? They are stupids. I’d only do it if I was shipwrecked or something, although I was told the other day about the best way to avoid dehydration if lost at sea with no fresh water. Apparently, you must get a friend to pour seawater up your bumhole because then your large intestine will absorb the water and leave the salt behind.

To do any of these jobs, we need enzymes – a big group of chemicals in the protein family. Life is just a whole mess of complicated chemical reactions, but left to its own devices it would be such a slow mess of reactions that we’d die waiting for them to start. Enzymes speed it all up to a healthy pace. Again, another example of why proteins are more important than the new series of Top Gear. And it pains me to write that, I love Top Gear. Does anyone else other than me and my flatmate Julie find Jeremy Clarkson a little bit attractive?

When you eat asparagus, you are eating all the proteins that it is made from and you then digest these into amino acids.

In the competition to find out which amino acids cause the egg smell, 2 clear leaders emerge.

The first is called asparagine, there are crazy high concentrations of it in asparagus and that is in fact where it got its name from. When asparagine is broken down by enzymes in the body, one of the resulting by-products is called asparagine-amino-succinic-acid monoamide .Shunned by the body for having an unnecessarily long name, this chemical passes out of the body in urine. It contains sulphur, which would account for the eggy wee smell.

Feeling highly pleased with themselves, our niche researchers thought they had the case closed until other scientists claimed that actually, the amino acid responsible was called methionine. This is a non essential amino acid that plants synthesise from the chemicals Aspartic acid and cystine. Aspartic acid is more or less the same chemical as asparagine give or take an ammonia molecule, so the 2 front runners seem to have something in common.

Anyway, methionine gets broken down by enzymes to form methyl mercaptan, (good name for a band?) which seems like a fairly nasty chemical – although it's produced in living organisms, it can used as a jet fuel additive amongst other things and is renowned for smelling really revolting. It too contains sulphur. Hmmmmmmmm.

This reminds me of something I should have included on my blog when I got back from Iceland – all the water smells of eggs because it’s heated by geothermal sources. When you have a shower, you actually smell worse afterwards.

So. These are the 2 likely candidates – they both theoretically break down to form smelly sulphurous compounds that are excreted in the urine. Researchers have tried to isolate these compounds from urine to find out once and for all the cause of the asparagus wee mystery – so far its looking like methionine is the culprit. I also read that a man who was prescribed methionine as a dietary supplement by his doctor suffered from smelly wee without eating any asparagus at all.

Why doesn’t everybody’s wee smell?

Amazingly, quite a lot of research was started in this area in the 1950’s and continued through the 80’s. The general consensus seemed to be that being an ‘excretor’ or a ‘non-excretor’ is determined by genetics – specifically by an autosomal dominant inheritance pattern. If you remotely care what that means then read on, for I shall explain.

When we inherit our characteristics from our parents, we inherit a full set of instructions as to how to put a body together and keep it working from both of them, in the form of DNA.

DNA is a very long but surprisingly simple molecule that is split up into sections along its length known as genes. Every gene is a coded instruction that tells your body how to make a particular protein, (more important than Daddy AND chips, remember) and ultimately, the characteristics that you have. DNA curls up to form chromosomes, we have 23 pairs of them in all our body cells.

Because you inherit DNA from both parents, you end up with 2 versions of every gene. This means you have a choice of which instructions to use to make your proteins. (Remember, more important than what car you drive) For example, there is allegedly a gene for whether you can roll your tongue or not. One version is ‘Yes I can,’ another version is ‘No, I can’t.’ Versions of genes are referred to as alleles and generally you can only use the information from one of them. So the information your body uses depends on whether the alleles in question are dominant or recessive. Recessive alleles hang about in the background, trying not to get noticed. Dominant alleles push themselves to the front, shouting ‘Pick me! Oooh PLEASE pick me!!’ Consequently, if there are dominant alleles about, their information always gets used, whereas you only use the information from recessive alleles if you have no other choice. Just as well, since most genetic diseases are caused by recessive alleles.

In the case of asparagus wee, it was found that the ability to produce the foul stuff is a dominant trait.

God! All that waffle just to get to that point.

An autosomal characteristic is one that is carried on one of your 22 pairs of ‘normal’ chromosomes, rather than on your pair of sex chromosomes, so this means that males and females are as likely as each other to have the characteristic, and this is indeed what they found in their study.

(When characteristics are determined by genes carried on sex chromosomes, it’s usually men that get the rough end of the deal especially if the problem is a recessive one – haemophilia, colour blindness, bad sense of direction etc – because the male Y chromosome is so silly and small that it cannot hold many genes. This means that any defective alleles they carry on their other sex chromosome (the much larger X chromosome) cannot usually be compensated for by a working, dominant allele on the Y (because its so teeny tiny), whereas us girls with our 2 fabulous X chromosomes don’t have those problems nearly as much - if something is wrong with an allele on one X chromosome, the equivalent allele on the other X chromosome is inevitably working fine)

So, in order to make smelly urine, you need to have inherited the dominant allele that tells your body to make the enzyme that converts asparagine or methionine into their smelly breakdown products. If you have the recessive version, you won’t make the enzyme so your wee won’t smell. Apparently, it’s about a fifty/fifty split in the UK.

I was a bit bothered by this, because I don’t like the idea that there is a possibly important chemical reaction not happening in my body. I’d rather have smelly wee than not be able to break down amino acids (never thought I’d write that particular sentence) and I would have imagined that not being able to do that may have an adverse effect on the body.

So I’m more inclined to agree with other studies which suggest that actually, everybody makes smelly wee as a result of enzymatic break down of amino acids, its just that not everyone can smell it. Again, this is thought to be an inherited characteristic that I now can’t be arsed to write about.

Apparently, over 90% of Israeli’s can’t smell it.

Can I make my wee smell good?

No doubt some of you are now worried that your private areas smell like bad eggs, as you should be, cleanliness is next to godliness after all, and will probably want some advice about how to tackle this problem. I would suggest not eating asparagus. Dave reckons his wee smells nice after eating sugar puffs, so maybe you could substitute one for the other. Don’t see why sugar puffs should be restricted to breakfast time, it would be nice to see them on the menu at more smart restaurants.

Throughout the afternoon, whilst I was writing this, I found that my flatmate actually had a big bunch of asparagus in the fridge, so I’ve been eating it. Now I’ve almost convinced myself that I can actually smell it and I’m very confused. My next article may be on how the mind seeks out and often finds what you are looking for, even if it isn’t actually there.

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Penzance

2006-05-06T10:18:00.000Z

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So many things to write about, so little cohesion in my head! I guess Penzance is a good place to start...

Seven fully functional Betikans, one slightly broken Imogen and a magnificently bearded Nic the Paper Cinematographist clambered aboard a cavernous minibus at stupid o'clock on Good Friday and headed west. Bank holiday traffic! So many roadworks! So many caravans! So many "comfort breaks"! Got chatting to a roadside cafe proprietor called Phil, got some good showbiz catering stories out of him, ended up talking about Johnny Dankworth's frankly bonkers Schoenberg-influenced 12-tone big-band music and hearing tales of late nights in Ronnie Scott's. Made pretty good time past wind-farms and abandoned tin mines, arrived in Penzance mid-afternoon and immedeately sought out a chemists so I could get some painkillers for my horrendous toothache. We decided to find ourselves a nice pub garden to sit in - cue several orbits of Penzance's one-way system before we opted to take a trip out to the charmingly named nearby village of Mousehole (pronounced "Mowzel", I've since been told). It was here that we learned that 6' 6" wide roads + a 6' 6" wide minibus + oncoming traffic = one of those situations where everybody has to get out of their cars and have a conference about what is to be done. We also discovered that Rich Betika is highly skilled in manouvering large vehicles in tight spaces. I'm so glad it was him driving and not me! Eventually we found the perfect pub with a garden overlooking the sea, in a village called "Paul", an idyl so remote that when we piled out of the van the only sound we could hear were those made by birds and insects. It turned out that this was because the pub was shut. Gary said it was the most disappointed he'd been since some childhood FA cup final where whichever team he supported at the time had been beaten so badly it had caused him to lose all interest in the game to this day. Downcast, we piled back into the bus. We found ourselves a pub on the outskirts of Penzance, which turned out to be my favourite kind - a small one that only serves lovely dark brown beer, and spent an hour or so sat outside making Betika-related drawings for Nic to incorporate into the paper cinema. I drew a Sopwith Camel, a fox and a face with a disturbingly blank expression on it, Gary drew an interesting portrait of Kate Moss, I wish I could remember more - I know Martin drew something very elaborate, but I can't think what it was. If I can get the pictures back from Nic I'll scan them and post them here so the keen amateur psychologists amongst you can analyse them and work out which section of the mental health act applies best to us.
The gig in Penzance was fantastic and really strange for the same reasons - not only was the venue (the Acorn Arts Centre) packed, there was also a table of people in the middle of the audience shouting for songs from "Heads smashed in..." era onwards. Long-term Betika fans! If we could, we'd have played everything we were asked to, unfortunately we'd only succeeded in downloading a portion of the repertoire into Gary's already jam-packed head, so we couldn't really deviate from the set we had planned, which naturally included none of the songs that were being requested! We did manage to make one exception - the shouters seemed particularly keen to hear "I've been in an accident", so we retreated to our dressing room, worked out an ad-hoc arrangement and played it for the first time in over two years as an encore. Martin and Gary had never played it, but Gary did produce the recorded version so had a pretty good idea of when to do what, and it turned out pretty good, I think. It felt good, anyway. By the end of the song I was relaxed enough to attempt to sing a high B without breaking into falsetto, not something I'd normally consider behind closed doors, let alone in front of an audience of innocent music fans. But I was taken with the spontaneous urge, and somehow I managed to not only hit the note but hold it. For a couple of seconds it was like I could properly sing. Not something I'm about to do again in a hurry though!
We hung around at the Arts Centre for a few late night drinkies with the crew after the gig before attempting to sneak into our youth hostel without waking the German backpackers with whom we were sharing a dorm. I was wishing I hadn't bothered an hour or so later when, fatigue finally having overcome even chronic dental pain, my slumbers were disturbed by teutonic snoring of Wagnerian volume and resonance. ||: Eventually I got to then point where I was so tired that not even this could keep me awake. But then it was so loud that not even my tiredness could keep me asleep :|| (I have used a device from musical notation here to explain what happened for the rest of the night). The coming of daylight seemed to coincide with the last of my painkillers wearing off and toothache returning with vengance, so I got up and took myself off for a walk around the grounds of the hostel. I took a couple of ibuprofen but they seemed to do nothing so I found myself the softest breakfast the kitchens had to offer before going for a shower, only to find the cubicles occupied by, as it turned out, our German roommates! Did I mention that they both had ridiculously long and shiny hair? The kind sported by extreme melodic power-metal band Dragonforce? Obviously, hair like that needs a lot of washing, conditioning and so on, so my wait was not a short one.
Back in the van and back on the road we found ourselves with the best part of a day to make the journey up to Salisbury for the next gig, so we picked up some tourist information leaflets to see what kind of diversions we could take ourselves on. We settled on making a visit to Perranporth, which has an amazing big surfing beach and proved to be an ideal venue for a game of intra-band 4.5-a-side football. I am not one of nature's footballers, but amazingly not only did my team win 2-1, I also scored one of the goals - an acheivement I will always regard as one of my greatest.
And that's what we did in Cornwall. For what happened next, see the entry "Some very kind words" below.

iCast - for fans of "Thunderstorm"!

2006-05-06T09:56:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Gill Mills, of BBC Radio fame, has included our song "Thunderstorm" in her latest Podcast, available from www.icast.uk.com or via iTunes (do a search for "iCast" in the music store, it's the one with the little green and white picture of an iPod, labelled "explicit"). We're the first track! Gill has also recently done a podcast showcasing the bands on Transgressive records, including the very lovely Ladyfuzz, with whom we shared a stage in Salisbury a few weeks back and whose album "Kerfuffle" gets a regular airing at Betika Towers.

We've been played on the Jonny Yeah Show

2006-04-28T22:37:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
I kid you not! Check it out.

Some very kind words

2006-04-17T19:46:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
There's a very nice review of the gig we did in Salisbury with the wonderful Ladyfuzz on Saturday here. I was in a funny mood caused by a combination of toothache, sleep deprivation due to toothache and a snoring German, far too many painkillers and plenty of free booze (thanks to the guys at Dirty Boots, who know how to treat a band!) and consequently my inter-song "patter" took the form of a series of increasing outrageous lies. For the record;
* We are not called "Gymkhana"
* Our songs are not "mostly about our love of trotting"
* The third song we played was "Pink Hulk", and not "Dirty disgusting fucking horrible nasty fucking shark", as was claimed at the time.
* "Dogshit on Toast" is not one of the top ten worst meals I have ever been served. We don't really have a song called "Dogshit on Toast", though I kind of wish we did now.
* "Hatred" is not dedicated to the fox that left a tarry stool outside the patio doors of Betika Towers.
* "Thunderstorm" is not the tune played by Belgian Ice-cream Vans. Neither was it a big hit "before most of you were born".

Apparently my lies made Chris laugh so hard he was nearly sick live on stage, which would have made for a truly unforgettable night for all present. Maybe next time. Next time will definitely see Carolyn rapping again, after her impromptu rendidtion of "Buffalo Stance" which we slipped into a semi-planned version of "Devil's Haircut", which we in turn slipped into John Kongos' "He's gonna step on you again". I envisage that some kind of "Rap Off" featuring all seven Betikans will form the centrepiece of our live shows in future.
A fuller account of our Easter micro-tour will follow shortly, when we've reassembled events from our collected memories and gotten our story straight. In the meanwhile, a massive thankyou to everyone we met, from what I remember there wasn't a single person we met who wasn't fantastic and wonderful.

Boring Holiday Photos

2006-04-09T12:13:00.000Z

Iceland is rubbish, when I got back I didn't have a clue what was going on in Eastenders.

I did, however, have the rare opportunity to teach a coach load of bored travellers the game Car! Dog! (see D von B's earler post). We tried the original version but since Martin is in more bands than there are cars and apparently dogs in Iceland, I had to adapt it slightly to reflect the nature of the terrain. We therefore played Horse! Table Mountain! instead and it went down a treat.

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Metal bodies in my finger

2006-04-03T22:22:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

I had a random and unexpected episode of self-torture yesterday. I was folding up an old microphone stand when I suddenly felt a strange, dull pain in my finger - I looked to see what might have caused it, and discovered that a piece of chrome plating had flaked off the stand and embedded itself beneath my fingernail. Blood started seeping out, and it quickly became apparent why things beneath the fingernails were the instrument of choice for torturers from ancient China to the modern day. I tried pulling it out with a pair of needlenose pliers, but being a piece of flaky chrome plate, the bit at the end that I was pulling just, well, flaked off. I realised that I'd have to do something that was going to cause me a lot more pain before things stopped hurting. I cut away as much of the nail around the foreign body as I could bear with a pair of side-cutters, then accompanied but an awful lot of screaming and cursing I pushed one side of the needlenose pliers under the nail, (and so not to push it in further, under the piece of metal), gripped it and pulled it out as best I could. Did I mention that I was doing this with my left hand? I've probably got better than average dexterity in my left hand than the average right-hander as a result of the years I've wasted playing music, but it still felt very unnatural to be conducting exctractive surgery on myself southpaw. As a consequence, the metal came out in about half a dozen short stages, rather than the one short, sharp tug I was aiming for. When I finally got it out it was about two millimeters by four, totally disproportionate to the amount of discomfort it caused me.
I spend the day doing something much more pleasant - making field recordings of an open fire, and then later of birdsong out in the New Forest. The birdsong made me particularly relaxed and happy, spring has most definitely sprung and I reckon there were a good dozen species around me, all in good voice. And one other that didn't make a sound, as far as I could tell, and I spent ages watching it - a Green Woodpecker, not something I've ever had the opportunity to sit down at watch at length before. I don't know if they do actually peck wood, like the spotted woodpeckers do, this chap was pecking the ground with his enormous great long beak, every now and then thrashing his head around - like a dog that won't give your tennis ball back - as he wrestled with some unfortunate subterranean invertibrate.
In the evening Carolyn and I returned to the room where a very different incarnation of Betika recorded "Heads smashed in by the boy/girl thing", to record what will be the first section of the first song of the oh-so-nearly finished new record. We did this for continutiy, and a little bit out of nostalgia. The section we wanted to record was only around a minute long, but we did something like 67 takes of it! I think we cracked it around take 52, but we kept going, just in case we managed a better one. We'll listen back to it all tomorrow and find out.

Endings

2006-04-01T01:24:00.000Z

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Today was the end of March, also the day that the SK5 played their last ever gig, the day that the last ever Pand'a Flesh clubnight happened, possibly the last time Cicatrix will gig round these parts, the day my good friend Ali resigned from her super-stressful job, the end of term and the day the marmite ran out.

Sprung

2006-03-30T23:27:00.000Z

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It's a week late, but I felt the seasons change today. It was still raining constantly, but the rain today felt somehow summery, whereas the rain last week had a distinct wintery edge to it. The wind was against me, but blew away some brainal cobwebs and left something far more useful in their place.
The bushes were thick with birds.
Carolyn did a cool thing today.

Listening

2006-03-29T22:53:00.000Z

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We are listening. I am lying on the floor, I have my head in the bass drum, because there is a pillow in it, and a pillow is a good place for a head. Carolyn is sitting on a chair nearby, her face pressed against a microphone, the microphone is pushing her top lip up on one side, so she has an Elvis sneer. It looks a bit odd, but I don't mention it, I guess she must like the way it feels, who am I to judge? We hear a word that we think might be out of tune, we look at each other, and know that we're going to have to sing this song AGAIN.

Car Games, The 'hoof, The best thing ever

2006-03-29T17:19:00.000Z

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Chris, Imogen, Carolyn, Lee Dutch and Nic Beard drove up to see Deerhoof at The Scala on Monday. I find it always helps on resonably long journeys such as these to have a few car-based games to help pass the time - an old favourite is "car!dog!car!", the rules of which are fairly simple; If you see a dog, shout "Dog!", and thereafter, when you see a car, shout "Car!", each and every time you see a car, until such time as you see another dog, at which point you shout "Dog!", and remain silent until you see another dog, at which point you shout "Dog!", and begin shouting "Car!" again. And so on. This game works best if one of the occupants of the car is easily annoyed by repeptitive shouting that if driving along a busy road quickly begins to resemble the sound of a colony of seabirds. It can get quite exciting if you're approaching a motorway where there's going to be an awful lot of cars but almost certainly no dogs - will there be a dog, or won't there? Oh God, please let there be a dog!.
On Monday we concocted a slightly more advanced game, based on car makes. Chris, Imogen and Lee were in a white Peugeot, and Nic, Caz and I were in a pretty much identical car somewhere on the same motorway, but we didn't know whether they were ahead of us or behind. Just in case we passed them, or vice versa, to make it clear who was in the better car, we decided that every time we saw a Peugeot, we'd act as if we were having the best fun in the world EVER, rolling our heads back with laughter and sipping imaginary cocktails. This evolved to encompass other manufacturers, for example if we saw a Ford we'd pretend to be having an argument ("Look, there's a Ford!", "NO IT ISN'T!!!"), if we saw a Mitsubishi one of us would pretend that the others had kidnapped them, and if we saw a BMW we'd attempt to affect a Thousand-yard Stare. We were pretty bored.
The 'hoof were absolutely stunning, and I got to proplerly enjoy their set this time, unlike the show at The Fiddler in Bristol last year where I spent half the gig in the loo with digestive issues, and felt pretty cheated as a result, so I got some unfinished business-type closure-joy too, if you know what I mean. Though that was of little signifigance next to the monumental happiness brought about in me by the four people up on the stage. The way they play together is somehow jaw-droppingly tight AND sloppy, a lot like the Magic Band I guess, but where Beefheart can be unsettling and sometimes a bit disturbing, everything Deerhoof do is filled with humour and warmth, but not humour in a cheesy way, or a clever-clever Frank Zappa way. Maybe in a Japanese way? Anyhow, I don't think there's another band I've ever seen or heard that has simultaneously done that. Or done it so well at least. I said hello to Greg the drummer briefly afterwards, he looks a lot like Tim from The Office, but I didn't say so, or ask him if it was deliberate. Very nice bloke. I got him to sign an autograph, then I gave it to him to keep, so he'd never forget who he was. Oh, and we bumped into the guitarist from Stout, who was there at the creation of the Pink Hulk cocktail at the Joiners, we thanked him, and learned that his name is John.
The journey home, punctuated by the traditional Fleet Services toilet-break, was spent trying to remember what Terrence Trent D'Arby's hits were (after Caz or Nic started whistling "Wishing Well" for some reason), and trying to remember who recorded "We don't have to take our clothes off" around the same time, because I always thought it was TTD'A, but recently learned that it wasn't. (Google has just revealed that it was Jermaine Stewart, not Jackson on Greer, as was suggested somewhere round Virginia Water).
I've finished a new song this week, it's called "The best thing ever", and it's the closest thing I've ever written to a lovesong. By this I mean it includes no direct biological references, merely allusions of a similar nature.

Imogen's X-ray

2006-03-21T23:38:00.000Z

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The "X" that marks the spot is actually two titanium pins!

Joiners Photos

2006-03-20T22:13:00.000Z

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There are some rather good photos of Betika playing at The Joiners last night here, courtesy of Skott Wallis of The Hat / Lounge / Blind Voyeurs / Tex La Homa / Monkey Head Transplant fame. I particularly like the way he's mostly taken pictures of me!
Good Work, Skott!

A Very Bad Thing

2006-03-20T18:04:00.000Z

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First off, a massive thankyou to everyone who came to see us at The Joiners last night, I hope we were worth making the journey for and you enjoyed the other bands as much as I did. Sadly, grim tidings lay in wait for us as we left the stage - a text came from France via Chris with the news that Imogen had broken her wrist in a skiing accident. It is with some shame that I must confess that my first concern was that our bass player wouldn't be able to play for a while, rather than that my friend had hurt herself, a product I think of my increasingly obsessive one-track Betika-head. The delay between the two was only a nanosecond though, there is still a human being in here somewhere! The text said that she was being kept in hospital overnight, and I immedeately had visions of her being alone in a vast, icy Victorian dormitory ward patrolled by a grim French Matron, hopefully the reality of the situation was slightly more modern and less starchy. I wonder if French hospital food is better than ours in the way the rest of their cuisine supposedly is? I'll have an answer on that mid-next week I guess.
Big thankyou also to Hubcap, normally the overseer of Betika recordings, who provided bass-guitar cover last night in Imogen's holiday absence, and who may now find himself doing more of same while broken bones are mending...Poor Imo :(

Further Pictures

2006-03-13T22:26:00.000Z

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There are some pictures online of the gig we did last week with HaHa Party People and Flipron, taken once again by Paul Savine. Click here to see us pulling hilarious sex-faces and ape-like action poses!

I have seen the future...

2006-03-13T17:53:00.000Z

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...and it doesn't have any electricity in it! We (that is to say Imogen, Carolyn and I) had something of a revelatory experience last night when we had the pleasure of playing at an acoustic night in Bristol that was so acoustic there weren't even any microphones. It must be stressed that this was in no way due to some oversight on the part of the organisers; it was a brilliantly concieved and executed event that harked back to some mythical golden age of making-your-own-entertainment.
The venue was a packed cafe (Cafe Delight on Gloucester Road, recipent of the big fat Betika seal of approval food-and-drink wise!), which didn't have a stage or any kind of designated playing area, so the people playing just found themselves a little bit of space amongst the audience and did their stuff - far and away the most intimate gig I've ever done. As we arrived (after the usual "I think we're lost!" / "Where do we park??" hastles) Jar was starting her set, and immedeately the brilliance of the concept of a totally acoustic night became apparent. Jar's music is so incredibly slight and minimal - just voice and a few notes picked out on glockenspiel, violin or guitar - that even the slightest murmur of conversation from the opposite end of the room would have smothered it completely. But every person in the place sat in complete and utter silence and hung on every word and every note of every song. Have you ever had that thing where you're lying awake late at night, and every tiny little noise that the house makes sounds like burglars breaking the door down? Exactly the same thing happened, the tiny little sounds coming from Jar's glock filled the silent room like the chiming of miniature churchbells.

I think our set would have to be the single most enjoyable performance of my life so far - I have to admit to having been a little apprehensive about being placed under such intense scrutiny, but looking around the crowd I found the faces to be friendly and curious, and it turns out that playing and singing are much easier to do when you don't have to worry about microphones and amplifiers and things. We did six songs; "You can call me brother", "Girlshaped", "We will not know peace", "Pink Hulk", "The taming of the shrew" (for the very first time in public) and a version of "By Default" that drew disgusted groans and laughter from the audience in all the right places.
On after us were Vijay Kishore, a man possesed of the loudest and most remarkable voice I've ever heard ("Like an indian Jeff Buckley but like Jeff Buckley in the good Thom Yorke way" would be a lazy but not innacurate way to describe him), and then Francois and the Atlas Mountains Ensemble, who took up half the room with their bodies and their collection of instruments (THREE glockenspiels, two accordians, tenor sax, clarinet, double bass, melodica, a couple of guitars, various percussion and voices), and who filled the air with a rich and glorious range of sounds. We drove the long road home tired but very, very happy. Big thankyou to Theo from Factfans for letting us be a part of such a great night!

More Betika later this week closer to home when we play The Joiners in Southampton on Sunday 19th sandwiched betwen Misty's Big Adventure, Flipron and The Michael Wookey Band. If you would like to go, email us RIGHT NOW!

Some pictures

2006-02-18T23:33:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk

Photos 2, 7, 8 Steve Beck, 3 Holloway Photography, 6 Unknown, 9 Fran, 12 Mal Tween, 14 Paul Savine.
Others by Dave and Caz

Upcoming in the very near future...

2006-02-12T01:24:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
A very lazy blog tonight, but it's late and I'm tired and I have a dozen things to do by morning! A cut-and-paste from today's mail out I'm afraid...

Dearly Beloved,
a couple of exciting Betika-related things coming up this week!
First of all, we'll be playing our first hometown gig of the year this Tuesday (14th Feb) at Centre Stage in Westbourne (next to the Pig and Whistle pub off Queens Road). Also on the bill are Gravamen Sound and The Jurado Brothers, and as it's Valentines we'll be playing what by default are some love songs! It £2 to get in, doors open at 8pm and the bar is open late, in case you're in the mood for a midweek binge (and also useful in case you have Valentines sorrows to drown).

For those of you further afield or still hungry for a piece of us, you can catch our first ever appearance on national radio when Phill Jupitus interviews us for his BBC6 Music breakfast show on Thursday (16th Feb). We'll be having a chat, previewing some new Betika recordings and maybe choosing a tune or two between 8.30 and 9am. If you're not going to be near any digital radio-recieving apparatus at the time, or want to hear it again, you can listen to the show online for a few days after broadcast by going to Phill's page on the 6Music website.

hope all is well with all of you,

Dave von Betika

I'd forgotten what a gorgeous record Lambchop's "Nixon" is. Just played it on a whim and am now re-thinking my all-time top ten to include it...

Joiners, Betika at the Beeb (for real!)

2006-02-04T09:57:00.000Z

www.betika.co.uk
A big thankyou to everyone who recieved us so warmly at The Joiners last night, it was a pleasure and a privilege to play for you! Thanks especially to those folks who made a special trip to see us, and everyone who finger-clicked / hand-clapped / sang along, many a Betika heart was warmed by the reception we got! Big thanks also to Toupe for giving us the gig, and the soundman (Martin, I think? I have boozy fuzz where some of my memories should be), for getting the sound spot-on in spite of our multitude of instruments and things breaking down. Oh, and the guys from Stout, who set up an ad-hoc mailing list for us when the free CDs ran out on the merchandising table. And just about everybody I spoke to, for being such thoroughly decent people! We'll be back at The Joiners on Sunday 19th March in the company of the fantastic Misty's Big Adventure and Flipron - mail us at info@betika.co.uk if you want tickets / seats on the bus!

Betika will be doing an interview with Phill Jupitus on his BBC Radio 6 Breakfast show in a couple of weeks, on the morning of Thursday 16th Feb - DAB / Digital TV / internet listeners will be able to tune in to hear us having a wee chat and previewing a couple of previously-unheard recordings from the (nearly finished!) Betika album.

Next Betika gig is Tuesday 14th February at Centre Stage, Westbourne. Bring a loved-one!

Pink Hulk

2006-02-04T09:38:00.000Z

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I've invented (or at least stumbled across) another drink, which has been christened a "Pink Hulk", after one of our songs. It's pretty simple to make;

1 shot Rose Tequila (not sure how readily available this is)
Lemonade
Ice
Straw (v. important!)

Rose tequila is a bit like Baileys, in the respect that it curdles very easily when brought into contact with just about anything else, but in this case if the lemonade is good and fizzy it reacts and forms a thick pink foam that should be stiff enough to support a straw within a couple of minutes. It tastes not unlike a thick strawberry milkshake bought from a high-street burger-and-fries chain whose golden arches I have not passed under for some years as a matter of principle and personal preference. But there's booze in it.

I think it's safe to say that you'll only ever need to have one Pink Hulk in your life.
Thanks to Isaak who mixed this monster for Carolyn and I, and the guitarist from Stout who egged us on, then indulged in one himself.

Birds / Betika at the beeb (ish).

2006-02-02T17:17:00.000Z

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I saw a couple of birds in my garden this afternoon that I've never seen there before, one was a Long-tailed Tit, and the other was probably a Siskin, though it was more of a greeny-grey than the yellow colour shown, and it wasn't feeding upside-down, which is normally how you'd tell them from greenfinches at a distance. It did have a distinct black cap to it's head, but I don't think it was a Blackcap, it had a definite finch-y look to it.

There's a short profile / interview thing about us on the BBC Dorset website here.

...and yet more bad

2006-02-01T17:52:00.001Z

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We don't seem to have shaken our run of bad luck! Firstly, Carolyn's car failed it's MOT today in what may prove to be a horrificaly costly way. Secondly, my bike was making some very odd noises every time I put on the front brakes on my way back from work, and when I had a look at it when I got home I found that the nuts holding the front wheel on had come loose, so I was lucky I hadn't attempted to wheelie over any puddles, or bunnyhop off any kerbs! I wouldn't have nearly so many teeth as I do now. Thirdly, the Purple Purge youth concerts at Wimborne's Allendale Centre, one of which we were due to play in May, have been called off. It seems that the local constabulary think that shutting these concerts down will help aleviate the town's under-age drinking problem, though the association they've made between the two seems to me to be quite a vicarious one. Chris Brown (The Wimborne Town Crier, and driving force behind Purple Purge)is planning some protests against this descision, if it's something you'd like to be involved in, have a look at his website.

More bad things, and some good ones

2006-01-30T17:22:00.000Z

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Our run of bad luck continued into sunday; Chris still couldn't get his car going, in spite of Imogen's attempts to fix it, and the van hadn't miraculously repaired itself either. I decided to do a spot of gardening, and while raking up some leaves I trod in some fox poo, which I didn't notice until I'd walked it all through the house. I cleared it up, and in doing so narrowly avoided being electrocuted by the Hoover, the mains cable of which had been mysteriously sliced open, exposing both the live and neutral, as I found as I was coiling it up. I attempted to record some singing in the afternoon, but my voice had dried up to a reedy thin squeak of a thing (most likely the result of my caffiene-binge on Saturday), so we recorded Caz doing some oboe and melodica instead. Which was good.
Other good things have happened since, in the form of some very exciting gigs we've got lined up for the next couple of months, more on which when we're in possession of all the pertinent facts. There's going to be a couple of chances to catch Betika this week if you live in or are prepared to travel to Southampton. Caz and I will be popping into the open mic night at The Talking Heads to do a couple of songs tonight, and the whole band is playing at The Joiners on Friday (Feb 3rd) night in the company of Toupe, Stout and This Black Static.