We've been played on the Jonny Yeah Show

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I kid you not! Check it out.

Some very kind words

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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.

Metal bodies in my finger

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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

Joiners Photos

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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

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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

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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...

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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

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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...

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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!)

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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

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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).

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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

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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

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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.

And how we beat it...

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Well, Imogen and Richard got back safely, Imogen succesfully repaired her damaged hands with superglue, Rich and Gary dragged their ruined bodies into the recording room and we set to the task in hand with only two of the six hours we'd allocated remaining. And we did three almost flawless takes of "25" straight off the bat, and nailed "Hatred" in seven. Vocals and overdubs tomorrow, mixing next week, job done next weekend! Or that's the plan.
I've made myself go a bit mental tonight, I've been drinking tea non-stop today, I've had a couple of beers over the course of the evening and I haven't really eaten since breakfast, now I'm simultaneously dog tired, hyper to the point where I'm shaking, incredibly happy about the way the session turned out and yet somehow really sad. It's not very nice and I wouldn't reccommend it.
I wrote a new song this week called "The taming of the shrew". It's about small animals.

The Curse of Betika

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Today we're supposed to be doing the last recording session for the album, however;
First thing this morning I wanted to go to the guitar shop to buy a new lead - I got in the van, it started first time then died abruptly and wouldn't even turn over after that. I was in a hurry, so I jumped into Lexi's car. That didn't start, but after much coaxing finally got going. Meanwhile;
Hubcap (producer) stood up at home and pulled something in his back which left him in agony.
Rich (drummer) was angle-grinding some metal racking at work, and knackered something in his shoulder.
Carrying these injuries, they arrived at the session. However;
Chris and Imogen had gone out for a walk, and in the course of a game of frisbee Imogen managed to tear two of the nails of her bass-playing fingers. She tried cutting them back, but decided that they really needed sticking back together with superglue. After much hunting, no superglue could be found, so she decided to go back to her flat to get some. Her car has been broken for some weeks, so she borrowed Chris'. Or she would have, only guess what? It wouldn't start! Not so much as a squeak would it make. Exactly the same as my van. So Rich has taken Imo home to get some glue so she can fix her hands so we can start recording, some four hours after we originally intended. I'm praying they make it back unscathed.

Merry Christmas

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That's all! Have a good new year too!

More Pictures

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There's some more lovely Paul Savine pictures, this time of Caz and myself playing at Le Bateau last sunday (and all the other folks also doing so) here.

Pix and things

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Some photos of Chris, Carolyn and I (also The Kid and The Shed) doing some acoustic songs at Solid Air this Monday can be found here. They were taken by a chap called Paul Savine, who clearly has something of an eye for this kind of thing, and is a very nice fellow to boot. The gig was a bit of a strange one, we arrived to find that almost all of the acts had pulled out due to illness and various other reasons, and we had to extend the short set we'd rehearsed - beyond songs we knew, past songs we sort of knew and right the way into a song we haven't played in public ever before ("The Castle"). There were a few ad-hoc re-arrangements of some songs, including me and Chris taking turns attempting to play basslines of Chris' guitar on a couple of songs with mixed results, it was all very seat-of-the-pants, and not a little ropey in places, but very good fun at the same time.
More acoustic Betika this week at Le Bateau on Sunday, just me and Caz this time, but in the company of Indigo, Frankie, Farther and The Shed (again). See you there maybe?

I've scored!

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A film, that is! I've been writing and recording some music this week for a short currently being made by my friend Glenn Sadler. It's the sequel to "The Aldwych Hall Horror", a spoof paranormal / detective caper from two years ago, which I also did some music for. For "The Aldwych Hall Horror", I made some very creepy noises by playing an autoharp with a metal slide, which were used more as abstract sound-effects than music - this time round I've been a little more conservative and written an actual theme tune! I wrote it on a cheesy '80s Yamaha keyboard that I got a few weeks ago from a second hand shop, and it initially had a John Carpenter (Halloween / Assault on precinct 13) kind of feel to it, but it came up in conversation with Carolyn that Brad (her very close friend and accomplished bass-player from Brenda//) has a double bass and a cello, so I arranged it for those instruments, along with oboe and flute which Carolyn played. And what a difference it's made! My crappy little synth piece now sounds almost like the work of someone who knows what they're doing. I'll put an mp3 of it up here after the film has been premiered, I don't want to give too much away yet. Eventually, when I've done enough of these I'll put together a CD of film music, I'm still a way off though, only having only done two-and-a-half to date (not counting those rare occasions when I've whored myself out to The Man and done stuff for cash). The other film I did, "Watermelon", directed by Tim Clague has being doing the rounds of various film festivals this summer, I believe it made it's way as far as Cannes. I expect Tim will put it on his website in the fullness of time, I'll put a link to it up as soon as he does.
On a related note, the SK5's animated film "Utility Soul Shambles" got a screening in a cinema in Newcastle last week, which is quite exciting, the first time it's been viewed on such a large screen as far as I'm aware. I haven't heard back yet how it was recieved.
A couple of weeks till the next full Betika shows (9th / 10th Dec), but tomorrow will find Chris, Carolyn and I at The Green room, doing a set consisting entirely of songs that Caz sings, and next Sunday we'll be down at Le Bateau doing something similar, but with me doing a bit of singing too. I'm also going to be doing some singing the following weekend with Toupe, who have asked me to contribute backing vocals (as part of a group of singers) to a performance they're doing in a theatre which is being filmed for a DVD which will be their next release. I don't think I'm an obvious choice for even a backing singer, seeing as how I'm not really very good at singing in any of the commonly accepted ways, but Grant insisted that he really does want me to do it, and so I will. I'll tell you all about it afterwards.
time for me to get some zeds now,
nighty night
D

Stealing from my friends

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

What we did at the weekend

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Carolyn and I did an overnight session at a studio called Alchemea in Islington this weekend. We recorded acoustic versions of "We will not know peace", "You can call me brother", "Pink Hulk" and "The only way is up" with John Jeffreys, who is one of the many new friends we've made this year. The trip was the first long-distance trip Carolyn had made in her new (old) MG (a '79 BGT), and also the first time we'd attempted to fit guitars into it- it turns out that despite appearances, you can actually get quite a lot of stuff into the back. It's a good job she didn't get the roadster version! We travelled up in the early evening and did the usual hicks-go-to-London thing of getting slightly lost and exercising poor lane discipline, we arrived around 10 and we worked through pretty much solidly and very productively 'till about 7am, when we packed up and went home. Carolyn was far more sleep-deprived than me, so she went home to bed. I on the other hand was wide awake somehow, if a little ragged around the edges, and I wasted the afternoon doing this. I apologise if you are a fan of, or are even aware of the original version- this will probably upset you just as much as that bloke out of The Darkness' horrid version of "This town ain't big enough for the both of us". It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I hadn't slept for over 24 hours and I was very, very tired.
In other developments, I've built a sequential switch circuit into the Lexitone, as Betika's Casio MT-40 is henceforth to be known. I made a particular sound with it while recording the demo of new song "Penis" by manually sliding around the switch that selects the sounds, and I wanted to be able to recreate it automatically, so with not a little help from Imogen (who is our resident electronic genius) I designed and built a circuit to do the job. It's the first thing I've ever made with ICs in it, and probably the only thing I've built since school with transistors for that matter. I'll post a proper illustrated account of how I done it on the web somewhere when I get the time, in case anyone is interested in doing something similar, the circuit can be applied to any instrument that uses mechanical switches to select or modify sounds.

"I'm not showing you mine until you've at the very least described yours"

An article

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Our Martin has written a piece for the local BBC about our experiences at the lovely Manor Farm Festival last weekend. You can read it here.

Recipe for disaster?

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Rumquila Blanket

1.5 litres of good quality lemonade
250ml Mount Gay or Morgan Spiced rum
200ml Red Bull or similar
50ml Tequila
dash of Ribena.

Drinking this last night should have given me one hell of a hangover this morning, but for some reason I'm feeling absolutely no ill effects. Perhaps it will catch up with me later when my liver spontaneously ruptures.

The rock band Betika takes no responsibilty for the consequences of any use you make of the above information.

Uneasy Listening

www.betika.co.uk
I had a vivid and disturbing dream last night in which I was sat at a table eating dinner when an air-raid siren started up, closely followed by the sounds of bombs detonating close at hand. The building opposite the one I was in was hit, and it started to topple over towards me, only to stop abruptly at an angle of about 45 degrees and hang suspended in the air. It was still like that when I woke up in that sudden, sweaty way you do when you've had a nightmare.
The siren-sound in my dream hadn't been the sound made by an actual air-raid siren, instead it was the sound of violins imitating one, as heard in Penderecki's "Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima". I expect the piece has been played a few times on BBC Radio 3 lately to mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs on Japan, but it'd been a couple of years since I'd heard it, so I had a dig around and found a recording of it this evening. If you've never heard it, you can get it for the next few days by clicking here, it's quite long, so it's about 10Mb in size and may take a while to download if you're on dial-up, but definitely worth a listen. I think some of it may have been used in "The Shining", certainly some of Penderecki's stuff was; this is even more disturbing given it's context. Listen to it nice and loud, there's lots of horrible detail in the quiet bits. It's like being eaten alive by ants.
Apart from that, my listening has been mostly post-punk this week, The Slits, Gang of Four and Young Marble Giants all enjoying heavy rotation. I had meant to demo some new songs, but I inflicted an inexplicable freak injury on one of my fingers that caused one of the joints to go black, swell up and not bend in the correct way, impairing my musical abilities beyond even my normal levels of hamfistedness. All was well enough by yesterday to play unhindered at the Endorse-it In Dorset festival (at which many a Betikan got horribly drunk and occasionally soaking wet), so barring further freak accidents I should be able to get some musical sketches done in the next couple of days.

For anyone waiting to hear from me...

www.betika.co.uk
I'm becoming acutely aware that I have a backlog of packages I've promised to send to folks and emails that need replying to - apologies to those concerned for taking so long about it, I've got a mind like a sleep-deprived and slighty hungover sieve and a gazillion things to remember, but I will get round to doing everything eventually. If you think that I've completely forgotten you, there is a slight chance that you're right so please give me a kick up the inbox and remind me.

You'll no doubt be thrilled to hear that I've written a song called "God gave me a penis", after an evening watching The Organ (who were bloody amazing) and drinking lager shandy.

Potter. Is poop.

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I wasted the best part of a weekend reading the new Harry Potter book, in which only one thing happens in six hundred-odd pages. Imagine "The Phantom Menace" without the special effects - that's how rewarding an experience it was.
I will never let a book cheat me of so much valuable time again

The Great Outdoors

www.betika.co.uk
Loads of gigs since the last post- firstly with Delicate Hammers, who came down from Manchester to play with us a couple of weeks back and spread some half-hop tinged love around Bournemouth. I'd taken the day off work so I could be at home when the Hammers arrived, and I'd spent most of it pottering around the garden without bothering to switch on the TV or radio, so it wasn't until about 3.30pm that I went to check my email and discovered that the terrorist attacks on the London Underground had taken place. Talk about living in a hole. So I got onto the phone to my Londonfriends pretty sharpish to make sure they were all okay- this was the third time I've had to do this in my life, and the first call in each case has been to the same person, my friend Ali. She was living in Manchester in '96 when the IRA blew up the Arndale Centre, then working just around the corner from one of the nail bombs that were set off in London around '99. Trouble seems to follow her around, but thankfully never quite catch up with her. This time, as before, everyone was present and accounted for. For me at least.
Naturally, the atmosphere at the gig was subdued. Again, this is the third time I've found myself in that situation, trying to play music while feeling strange and slightly numb with shock, to an audience in the same state. The night Princess Diana died I played a gig (with Police Dog and The Elastins), and also in both the 12th and 13th of September 2001 (with Tex la Homa and Betika respectively). It doesn't get any easier, but we all still played our hearts out as best we could. The Hammers were awesome, but for me Betika's set felt a bit like an out-of-body experience, like it wasn't quite real.
A couple of days later we played our first outdoor gig of the year, at Grooves on the Green in Parkstone, which is a relatively small event that just runs for an afternoon in a park. We thought it would be a fairly small-scale do that would ease us gently into the festival season, but as it turned out the weather was glorious and there were probably a couple of thousand people there. Which turned out to be a very good thing. I've had to start changing the lyrics to some of our songs slightly, so as to protect the younger audience-members who are so abundant at daytime festival events from the cussing and grown-up subject matter. I hadn't really thought about this prior to taking the stage at Grooves, so I had to come up with some bizarre off-the-cuff nonsense. Some of it was words, some of it was just noises. One section of "By Default" just went "bimbimbimbim, bimbim bimbimbimbim", though Carolyn, having a filthy mind, thought she heard even worse language in there than there would normally be.
In conclusion, an afternoon of good clean family fun was had by the whole band.
Thursday last week took us to the Larmer Tree Festival, where we were scheduled to play a couple of sets over the first couple of days of the festival - as it turned out we played no less than four! The first one was just before seven on the Thursday when we were the first act on a bill the culminated with a set by Jools Holland and his r&b orchestra (some time later and on a different stage!), then we returned at around 11.30 that evening to play another, more wired set joined by Sancho Paul on vibes and some random strangers on extra percussion. Chaos ensued. The next set we did was Friday lunchtime when we played a few of our quieter songs, kicking off with the first outing of "You can call me brother" which Carolyn and I did with just guitar, melodica and voices, and concluding with "Hatred", which has fast become my favourite Betika song. Having retreated back to camp with Hubcap and Lee and Sarah Dutch, we had a bit of a singalong around what would have been our campfire had we been allowed to make one, and inbetween various Pavement and True Swamp songs (it took all of our collected minds to remember all of the words to "Dear Fingerprint") we worked out some nice four-part harmony singing for "If you go to work on me" (Imogen and Hubcap providing the extra voices), and also a cover of Hefner's "The Greedy Ugly People", which we've been considering doing in our acoustic sets for a little while now, but had become reluctant after having witnessed Darren Hayman's own spine-tingling rendition a few weeks ago. It all sounded rather lovely, so we took it all along to an open mic session much later that evening, where it didn't seem to work quite so well. We'd done several hours of drinking inbetween, which in retrospect probably wasn't such a great idea, and not something we'd do again in a hurry.
The rest of the weekend was spent watching bands, highlights for me were Jose Gonzales, This is Seb Clarke, Otis Lee Crenshaw and what little I caught of Flipron. I'm sure there should be many more, but it's all a bit of a blur to be honest.

Lots of new songs being rehearsed at the moment, look out for a couple at this week's Betika gigs;
Wednesday @ o'neill's - with Dutch Husband and One Shade Lighter
Sunday @ Le Bateau - me and Caz doing acoustic stuff.

First Blog in ages

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I set this up a few months back with all the best intentions in the world to keep it regular and up-to-date, and all of a sudden a month has passed since I last posted here. In my defence, I've been keeping pretty busy with work on the record- Hubcap and I have now got our mixing heads on and we're doing marathon 12-hour sessions per song and are slowly but surely parting company with our minds in the process. It's incredibly difficult to stay focussed on what we're doing when the sun is shining outside and there are people to see and books to be read, and mixing is one of those tasks that requires 100% total concentration, otherwise we're just wasting our time. Good results seem to be coming in though - we'll preview some new recordings on our MySpace page in the near future so you can judge for yourself. I don't know when we'll have the whole thing finished, we have a deadline of 22nd of July, which is drawing frighteningly close at an alarming rate, so I'm guessing that we'll have it finished at 11:59 PM on the 21st!

Several Happy Betika Birthdays this week - Carolyn's was on Monday (I made her one of my trademark disturbing photo-collage birthday cards, which one day will have a horrible disturbing internet gallery all of their own. But only when there are enough of them.) - Imogen's was on Tuesday (I found a rather lovely semi-acoustic bass in a second-hand shop a couple of days beforehand which I've lent her as a kind-of-present) and Martin's is today. I'm not sure what I'm going to give Martin, but it's going to be amazing.

I've been re-reading the "Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy" quintilogy over the last couple of weeks, and listening to (amongst other things) Raymond Scott's "Soothing Sounds for Baby (vol.1)", Jethro Tull's "Benefit", "Innervisions" by Stevie Wonder, "Music for Airports" by Brian Eno and a disproportionally high amount of Betika mixes. I've been lucky enough to attend a couple of those really rare gigs this week where absolutely everything on the bill was amazing- on Monday we celebrated Caz and Imo's birthdays in the company of Sunshine Republic, Brenda and True Swamp Neglect, each of whom was on absolutely top form, and last night Chris, Caz, Lexi and I went up to Bristol see Darren Hayman (of Hefner fame) and Steveless. The venue they were playing in, The Cube, is a tiny backstreet cinema-cum-theatre-cum-live venue (which has a lovely old-cinema smell and vibe about it), and so it was an all-seater, pin-drop quiet gig, which was absolutely perfect. Steveless, who you may have heard on John Peel's show around about this time last year, did a set of what was kind of misanthropic observational stream-of-consciousness-standup comedy but set to accompaniment from guitar, bass-drum, melodica, accordian and kazzoo and delivered mostly deadpan but interspersed with random YELPS! and SCREAMING! I was grinning like an idiot all the way through. Then Darren Hayman did what was basically a greatest-hits set of Hefner songs, along with at least one song by The French (his post Hefner band) and some stuff from his new solo records. Definite highlight was "The greedy ugly people", which he played on a ukelele (causing me to radically revise my previously low opinion of that instrument). Lexi nearly cried, and so did I. Another beautiful moment occurred during the interval, when a) I discovered that The Cube's bar served tea (I was driving), b) I learned it would only cost me 50p and c) at that moment, the DJ played "Grave Architecture" by Pavement. Sometimes the smallest things can make you very, very happy.

"Hatred" is the wisdom of Lexi set to music.

Look out for Betika and Delicate Hammers at Mr Smiths this Thursday! 8.30, £3.

Good, Bad, Ugly

www.betika.co.uk
BAD:
Rich has done himself quite a mischief, legwise. Whilst walking his dog early on Sunday morning he managed to bend it the wrong way and tore some ligaments in his right knee. This means he's on crutches for a bit and won't be able to play the drums for a week or so, but he's confident he'll be fit for the PodParty gig at Smiths on the 19th.
In other illness and accident news, Lexi is miserable with a cold and I managed to get quite badly sunburnt whilst gardening a couple of days ago. I discovered a whole new world of discomfort yesterday when I got my hair cut and all the really short hairs found their way down my collar and onto my already itching-like-mad back and shoulders which were far too sore to scratch. I've also hit my head on shelves twice today, in one case ironically when bending down to gain access to a chemicals cabinet that was installed in the name of health and safety.
GOOD:
I wrote a new song this week, called "Hatred". We ran through it at rehearsal a couple of nights ago and I caught Chris whistling it a couple of hours later, so I reckon it could be a winner.
The singing on the Betika album is 9/10ths done. It has been a painful and unpleasant experience for all involved, but I think that ultimately is will all be worth it. We'll have the first two or three tracks mixed ready for the start of the festival season so we've got some CDs to give away by the hundred.
UGLY:
There is a video interview with Betika on where-r.co.uk. In it I look very uncomfortable and like I have tiny little eyes like a shark. That aside it's a lovely bit of film-making, with some live footage from one of our recent shows.

and that's all
Dave

Disintegration

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We played a showcase gig for the Larmer Tree festival a couple of days ago at o'Neill's. The night had been set up by Conrad and Paul from Solid Air with the aim of getting a couple of other bands (d'Urberville and Penny Come Quick) and ourselves to play in front of the people who run the Larmer Tree and hopefully impress them enough to get a place on the bill. It sounds a bit like a Battle of the Bands, and it felt like one too, the sense of cameraderie that normally exists between bands sharing a bill didn't seem so strong. There was a faint whiff of competitiveness in the air, though that may just have been me! Whether there was any need for this I don't know, it may well be that all three bands have made it onto the festival line-up.
I personally had an absolute disaster of a gig. For starters I've had a cold all week, which seemed to start in my voicebox and spread out to my lungs and sinuses as the gig drew nearer. I spent a couple of days effectively mute, hoping that rest might keep my voice at least functional for the night, and was drinking cough medicine from the bottle before and after we played. I sort of managed to keep it together singing-wise- being congested in the nose and ears makes pitching things properly an even greater trial than normal, and I wasn't sure if any of the high notes would come out. As it turned out, they didn't! At the end of "Dormitor" I have to go up to an F#, which is as high as I can comfortably go before breaking into falsetto, it's normally a bit hit and miss but I'm generally somewhere close. When I sang it on thursday my voice just broke up into a gravelly rasp- like Rod Stewart gargling something with quite big lumps in it- that didn't seem to have any easily-identifiable notes in it. But that was the least of my worries by that point! During the first song (Bob Hope) I managed to break a guitar string. I've gone years without breaking a string on stage but at two of our last four gigs I've managed to do it. Initially my superstitious side got the better of me and I thought perhaps that a particular audience member who was present on both occasions but not at gigs where I didn't break strings might be some kind of string-Jonah and be causing it to happen. But then logic intervened. I think that the reason is that I've been using a different guitar for the last four gigs. I've got two acoustics which I use on stage, an old Framus that dates from around 1970, and a mid-'80s Yamaha. The Framus I found in a loft in a very bad state, it had been under a heavy roll of carpet for several years and the neck was bent like a banana. Fortunately, it's construction is a bit unusual in that it has a bolt-on neck, which made it very easy for me to dismantle, put right and re-assemble it. When it was all back together it turned out to be one of the nicest playing and sounding guitars I'd ever encountered (though it looks like crap) and it's been my main, well only, live and recording guitar for the last couple of years. Unfortunately all that time has taken it's toll. There are little hollows on the top of the guitar either side of the neck where I've been playing it so hard that the my plectrum has been digging into the wood, and the bolt-on neck isn't quite as secure as it used to be, it moves around a bit now so it doesn't stay in tune very well. Consequently I've semi-retired it and only use it for "By Default" live, because that song requires a different tuning, and in its place I've been using the Yamaha, which was the guitar used to record "Heads smashed in...". The Yamaha is similarly beaten-up, having been abused quite badly before it even got to me, but it's of much sturdier construction than the Framus so I'm not so worried about beating it up further. It turns out though that another unconventional bit of design on the Framus, a metal plate on the bridge that the strings slot into, makes it much less liable to string-snappage, I guess because the angle that the strings bend through as they go over the bridge (which is where they invariably seem to snap) is much smaller than the 90-ish degrees that the strings on the Yamaha are bent through with its standard wooden-saddle and plastic-peg bridge. The snappage I suffered on thursday was particularly bad- not only did I break the string, but in doing so I managed to rip the plastic peg that secured it to the bridge out of the guitar and send it flying into the dark nether-regions of the stage. Having broken a string a few weeks back at The Villa, I had a contingency plan in mind- moving the set around so we play a song ("Love let me not hunger") that doesn't involve me playing guitar, while I change the string. I hadn't however reckoned on putting the guitar into a state where I couldn't restring it. A small panic set in and scrabbling around on the floor ensued until Carolyn found the missing string peg and the ever-reliable Hubcap very kindly replaced the string. The guitarist from d'Urberville also very kindly offered me the loan of his guitar, but it was a Takemine that looked like it cost ££££s and I didn't want to run the risk of hurting it so felt I'd better decline. The whole business probably only cost us a couple of minutes, but that seems like a lifetime when you've got a roomful of people staring at you and a load of bright lights shining in your face. Also, the loss of momentum is bad psycologically. We have a ritual where we have a quick huddle and pep-talk just before we go onstage, where someone will say a few encouraging words so we hit the stage in the right frame of mind and explode out of the starting-blocks when we begin the first song (and get carried away and break guitar strings). Unfortunately it's not possible to re-enact this ritual mid-set when everything has ground to an embarrasing halt, and on those occasions it takes real effort on my part to keep doubt, uncertainty and ultimately despondency from creeping into my head and making me play bad. I'm getting better at it with practice! The rest of the set went off relatively hitch-free, but I came offstage in a foul mood, convinced we (or more precisely I) had blown the audition, so to speak. I drowned my sorrows in Meltus (for chesty coughs and cattarh).
I guess things must have gone considerably better than I thought they had, because a few days later we'd been offered not one but two slots at The Larmer Tree, one of them on the main stage supporting Jools Holland! Needless to say we accepted PDQ.

We've confirmed a couple of other festival dates, check out the schedule page for details.

busybusybusy

www.betika.co.uk
It's been a fun- and thrill-packed week for Betika;
On Monday night Carolyn and I did an acoustic set at Solid Air, and a pretty random one at that. We suffered simultaneous mental blockages mid-gig, and couldn't think what any of our songs were called, or how they went, or which one we should play next. We did consider playing a few seconds of all of them, but settled on five arbitarily selected tunes. I can't remember what they were.
Tuesday we had a Betika rehearsal where we finished beating the set for Friday into shape. Things seemed to go pretty well, which isn't always necessarily always a good thing, sometimes a good rehearsal just before a gig leads to complacency and a sloppy performance on my part. Chris didn't attend, he was at the Arts Centre getting angry at Herbie Hancock for playing the wrong kind of jazz.
On Wednesday me, Lexi, Carolyn and Martin did an interview with a pair of nice ladies from www.where-r.co.uk, and then went to see yourcodenameis:milo at The Old Firestation, which was one of the finest gigs I've been to in a long time. It was great for the following reasons;
1) a really amazing band played in my town, which has been a rarity for a long time. The last noteworthy gig in Bournemouth was Brian Wilson last March and before that The Flaming Lips and Clinic way back in 2003;
2) playing live they were as good as, if not better than their recorded output;
3) I had a brief chat with Paul the singer afterwards and he was a really nice bloke.
On Thursday night a bunch of the other Betikans took themselves off to witness what was by all accounts an incendiary performance by Brenda at Rubber Soul, while I spent the evening in Hubcap's studio singing "Robot" over and over again, each time a little better than the last until we were happy that we'd got a pretty decent take of it.
This is getting a bit like the accounts of my weekends that I had to write every monday morning at Primary School- On Saturday I got up and then I...and then I...and then I...and then I...and then I...and then I went to bed. On sunday I woke up and then I...and then I...and then I...and then I...and then I...and then I went to bed.
We played at Mr Smiths on Friday night with support from The Marlins and a DJ set from Nic Rawlings. It was one of those magical nights where everything came together and worked just like it's supposed to but so rarely does- The Marlins were fanstastic, they made me feel strangely nostalgic but not about anything in particular, like I was yearning for a childhood that I never lived through and have no memories of...?; Nic played exactly the kind of obtuse-but-fascinating set I had hoped he would (I'll try to get a tracklisting from him at some point); the audience were a good mix of old friends and new faces who seemed to appreciate what we were doing, and plenty of them were dancing and shaking various bits of percussion. Not much more we could ask for really! For the first time ever we had an encore planned, but I was terrified that if we left the stage after "By Default" that everyone would assume we'd finished and leave! Happily, we got called back to the stage not once but twice, ending with impromptu renditions of "He's gonna step on you again" and "I killed a fly".
What was going to be a quiet after-gig drink at Betika towers for those of us who were driving somehow turned into some kind of party. Nic had never DJed before, but he's clearly been bitten by the bug- he was playing us Ivor Cutler and Bonzo Dog songs until about four in the morning.
I didn't want to get up on Saturday morning. I'd had far too much exercise convulsing around the stage for an hour the previous night, and I'd had far too little sleep. But I had to get up and do more singing at Hubcaps, so get up I did. We'd decided a while back to record mine and Carolyn's vocals simultaneously because we do a lot of stuff where we're singing in block harmony and it's nigh-on impossible to get the phrasing exactly the same if we sing our parts seperately. Doing it together has the advantage that we can watch each others lips and get the phrasing absolutely bang-on, but the disadvantage that there's double the chance that one of us (usually me, to be fair) will sing some kind of bum note that necessitates the re-recording of both of our parts. Needless to say, it's a painstaking and time-consuming process, which within a few hours will cause everyone involved in it to lose first all sense of objectivity and perspective, and then ultimately their minds. I'm normally the first to go, but in a rare turn-up for the books Hubcap and Carolyn both lost it long before I had the chance. When we took a break, Hubcap went out into the garden with a video camera and pointed it at a nondescript clump of greenery, adding live narration as he went; "These are my plants..." - long pause - "These are my plants...". Poor fella. Nothing constructive could be achieved after that, so Carolyn and I retired to the Towers to watch Doctor Who and work on a top secret art project about which I can reveal nothing for the time being. All will become clear in due course. Horribly clear.

Next Betika gig is on Thursday 19th May at O'Neill's, Old Christchurch Road.

Betika Seated, Badgers again.

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I marked the lawn as my territory in the time-honoured way yesterday, the badgers having further violated the sacred turf in their search for dinner. Unfortunately I only have a standard-sized bladder and was unable to lay claim to a very large area, so they'll probably just dig their holes at the other end of lawn. They're probably doing it right now.

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

Sooner still, Carolyn and I will be doing an Acoustic slot at Solid Air (the last at Destiny) on Monday next week, and the whole band will be playing standing up at Mr. Smiths on Friday with support from The Marlins. More details are on The Schedule page of the Betika website.

Enjoy the Bank Holiday!
Dave

A spot of clarification

www.betika.co.uk
On re-reading last night's post, it occured to me that it could be interpreted as implying that Sunday night's audience was great and Friday's wasn't. This was certainly not the case- we were warmly recieved on both occasions, and in a way that made me feel all the worse for my screw-ups and the way things went on Friday. I finished the set with the feeling that we might have just squandered a lot of goodwill by not putting in a performance as good as we're capable of, and I felt that it was largely down to me. Hence the angst and hand-wringing.
For a punter's point of view of the night, have a look at this. There's also some photos (the first on the web of the current line-up, I believe) including one of me and Carolyn where I look like a corpse. I am actually doing that deliberately, it's become a reflex reaction for me to imitate the dead as soon as anyone points a camera anywhere near me, especially when under the influence of booze. Don't know why. Many thanks for the pix and write-up Steve!

Autopsies

www.betika.co.uk
We played a couple of very different shows over the weekend - the first we had very high expectations of and ended up disappointed by, and the second we weren't really sure what to expect and it turned out to be fantastic. Whether this is a psychological trick or an accurate reflection of how things went is impossible to tell. Events conspired against us at The Villa on Friday and we didn't get a soundcheck, so the sound guy had to sort out our slightly unorthodox set-up over the first couple of songs, nevertheless we were playing together well and hard- too hard, it would turn out as I snapped a guitar string at the end of "Volkespiotr". That's the first time I've ever broken one playing with Betika, (maybe because I've just started using a different guitar?) and I didn't really have a contingency plan. I had a second guitar with me but it was in this ridiculous open F# tuning that I use for "By Default", so I started worrying about what I was going to do next instead of concentrating on what chords I was supposed to be playing and what words and tune I was supposed to be singing. After that I just couldn't seem to get my head back into the right place for playing. I borrowed Ed Hat's guitar and we finished the set but it felt like the energy we had at the start had vanished somehow and I came off stage really angry at myself for having screwed up and let the rest of the band down. My sorrows were thoroughly and comprehensively drowned at the bar afterwards.
Tonight Carolyn and I did what we thought was going to be a short acoustic set at Le Bateau in Parkstone- when we got there it turned out that not only were we going to be the last band of the night but also a couple of acts had dropped out so we had to play for a bit longer than we thought we were going to have to. We though we were going to be doing four songs, in the end we did "Summers of solemnity", "One day my house will be flooded" (an appropriate song given the appalling weather), "I killed a fly", "We will not know peace", "If you go to work on me I'll die", "Girlshaped", Simon and Garfunkel's "I am a rock", Iron and Wine's "Naked as we came", "Robot" and a super-rare performance of "I've been in an accident", which I make to be ten in total. There was lots on unrehearsed ropeyness on our part but the audience was absolutely fantastic, they were quiet as church mice in the quiet bits, they laughed at the lyrical jokes, they handclapped along during "Robot", they applauded long and hard and they shouted out for more until we played more. A perfect gig, basically! If you were one of those audience-people, I thank and salute you!

There's more live Betika action coming up over the next week or so- Thursday will see the full band playing some of the songs we never usually play using cardboard boxes for drums at LIMBS, the following Monday we'll be doing another acoustic set of indeterminate length and mood at Destiny, and on the Friday (May 6th) we'll be laying the ghosts of The Villa to rest at Mr Smiths full-band style, in the exalted company of The Marlins. That night will also see Nic Rawlins (Sancho cover artist and paper cinematographer) lose his DJ cherry.

The battle with the Badgers continues.

Six items about music and nature.

1. There's some MP3s of The SK5 to download from www.gishsounds.com, along with all kinds of other lovliness selected for your listening pleasure by the boy Gish, late of Miss Black America and Tex La Homa (though not at the same time as me and Rich), currently of My Hi-fi Sister and Sunshine Republic. Click on the "sounds" link on the front page.

2. Badgers have done an unbelievable amount of damage to the lawn I spent hours mowing last week. I spent this afternoon filling in countless badger-holes, a pointless and sisyphean (sp?) task if ever there was one, I know they'll all be there again next time I look. (By badger-holes, I mean of course ones they have dug in their search for juicy earthworms to eat, not the ones they live in. I haven't been burying them alive!) Apparently the smell of human urine discourages them, so I'm going to make sure and drink plenty of water next time I go a-mowing.

3. I saw the first swallow of summer today, along with some of his swallow mates. He's a good month or so early, I don't normally see them until around May / June time - another symptom of global warming I suppose. On another ornithological note;

4. There are an extraordinary number of buzzards around at the moment, they're not usually a common bird around here but over the last couple of weeks I see one on pretty much every car journey I make. I guess they're getting like foxes and moving into more urban areas where there's lots of whatever buzzards eat, mice, rats and beetles maybe?

5. An opportunity for spotting Betika in the wild will occur in the next seven days when Carolyn and I perform a few of our songs arranged for two voices, guitar and woodwinds at Consortium next Sunday (17th). There will also be two full live bands and probably two other acoustic acts, but I don't know who any of them are as yet but I will post details as I get hold of them.

6. Delicate Hammers (see last post) are confirmed to play with us at Mr. Smiths on Thursday 8th July. This is very good news!

Swamp, Hammers, Kites, Grass

Spent the weekend doing things that were good for me. On friday night five-sevenths of Betika went to see True Swamp Neglect and The Delicate Hammers at The Central in Parkstone. Delicate Hammers were completely unknown to me but Chris Swamp has been raving about them for ages, and it turns out with good reason. It's difficult to describe exactly what they're like, there's elements of hip-hop and soul in there, but their vibe is somewhere between...I dunno, Pavement and Misty's Big Adventure? Entertaining, thought-provoking, toe-tapping and heartwarming in equal measures. If things go to plan, you'll get the chance to see and hear what I'm on about in a couple of months, I've asked them to if they'll make the trip down from Manchester again and play with us in July.
The Swamp themselves were absolutely sublime. The first time I ever saw them was at The Central three or so years ago; that experience was an epiphany for me, and Friday's set was like that all over again. They did very little of the "Sleep Function Lost" material and concentrated mostly on new or nearly-new stuff, as yet unrecorded. Quite early on, Chris dedicated a new song to "the rock band Betika", it transpired on account of the fact that in writing it he took a phrase from the lyric of "We will not know peace" (from Betikassette 2), turned it round, added more much better words and an amazing anthemic tune and threw it right back at me, brass knobs attached. If it wasn't so good I'd be consumed with bitterness and jealousy that it was so good! A stunning set followed, it seemed like somehow all the things that make the Swamp great had been magnified, like somebody had selected them with a mouse and hit the "Bold" button. I spent the whole set at the front grinning like a complete goon.

The sun was shining on Saturday morning, which made a fantastic change from last week's rain, and so those Betikans who had risen late and hungover at Betika towers resolved to go outside and make the most of it. The wind was blowing strong and steady, so Carolyn took Chris, Lexi and I out into the New Forest to fly a kite. Kites have changed a lot since I last flew one. The last kite I flew was made of polythene and balsawood and had a picture of an owl's face on it, and was controlled by a very thin single piece of string. The kite that we flew on Saturday (which belongs to Brad from Brenda, a gentleman of sufficient stature to handle such things) was basically a parachute about as wide as I am tall (3 square metres in area apparently) controlled (!) by four nylon ropes attached to two metal handles. The place we chose to fly the kite was pretty exposed, so the wind was really strong and gusty which Carolyn said might be a bit dangerous. She proved herself correct minutes later when the kite was launched with Carolyn at the controls- it flew safely for a couple of minutes before a gust caught it and she was dragged off her feet and along the ground. That basically set the scene for the rest of the afternoon- we took turns wrestling against the immense forces involved, and being bodily dragged across the field, terrifying picnickers and horses in our path. It was terrifying for me too, but in the same exhillarating way that rollercoasters are. I slept very well on saturday night.

Sunday afternoon was spent cutting my nan's lawn. How rock and roll is that? It took a long time because the grass was about a foot high, but it was very satisfying to have finished and I got hot enough to take my shirt off and get a couple of hours of sun on my pasty white body for the first time in a long time. I've become really apprehensive about cutting long grass since I left a couple of frogs horribly mutilated a couple of years ago when I was strimming the garden at my old flat, I dread finding half a mouse in the grass-basket when I'm scooping the clippings out. Happily as far as I could tell I managed to avoid killing or maiming anything this time, so no bad karma there.

I've finally got back to work finishing off the third Betikassette, something that should have been done long ago but which has been put off since Christmas while we've been working on the album sessions with Hubcap. I'm making no promises, but I'm hoping that Betikassette 3 will be done in time for the gig on May 6th. The tracklisting has changed, owing to me having written a new song that seemed to fit on it better than one of the songs previously earmarked. Now it will contain: "Bob Hope", "You can call me brother", "Robot (2)" and "If you go to work on me I'll die". All the songs will be played at the upcoming Betika gigs this month, which will be taking some different formats- as we've developed as a live band over the last year we've become progressively more and more about playing uptempo songs, jumping around and doing our best to make people dance, which none of us would say is a bad thing, but in our previous incarnation we played very, very quietly using the most minimal instrumentation, and we still have slow, sad, quiet songs from that period ("Heads smashed in...etc"), along with newer songs in a similar vein that we've written since, that just wouldn't work in the standard Betika set. So we're rehearsing a completely different set consisting entirely of those songs. It's going to be almost like a completely different band but with the same group of people playing the same instruments, only quieter, probably sitting down and trying to be as intimate with our audience as decency will allow. The first outing for this parallel Betika will be at the LIMBS night at Alcatraz club on Thursday 28th April. It'll be sad but pretty.

Dave

p.s. Details of this and other forthcoming Betika performances can be found on the SCHEDULE page at www.betika.co.uk

Sick

This is what I get for joking about being bedridden! I'm back in the land of the living for the first time in nearly a week having picked up a really filthy cold just after making my last post. A while back I did something similar, boasting to Carolyn that I never got colds and my immune system was impervious to all disease- on that occasion it took me less than 24 hours to come down with a really hideous throat infection. This time I've been getting dizzyness and headaches and running a temperature and having wierd delusional dreams about maths. It didn't seem like a big deal to start with, so I did a couple of rehearsals with Carolyn for an acoustic slot we had booked for last Thursday, and in doing those I completely destroyed my already raggedy-edged voice, and for the first time ever we had to cancel the gig. Apologies to anyone who came along to see us, and thankyou. In other Betika-health news: I have given Lexi and Imogen the gift of my cold, Rich was still in mump-quarantine last week but should hopefully be safe to attend rehearsals this week, Carolyn, Martin and Chris all seem to be okay.

We've recorded the last instrumental part on the last song! The last bits we did were Martin's horn on "Dormitor" and Chris and I playing some unison/octave lead/twang guitar on the same song. Now we're going to take a short break to let my voice and everyone's sense of perspective return before doing the final vocals and mixing, hopefully in a couple of weeks or so. In the meantime I'm going to be doing some more SK5 stuff- it's strange, but the four of us have hardly spoken since the last time we played, which would've been before Christmas, we've all been locked away in rooms somewhere working on new stuff with our respective "proper" bands. We're doing a set on Monday 28th at Destiny, completely unrehearsed, which is very much in the spirit of the project, and will attempt to record it as always- speaking of which, we'll have some copies of "Utility Soul Shambles" with us on the night, if you'd like to hear it, come and ask one of us. Chris will be doing his Little Boat thing too.

Getting There and Losing It

The drums are done, the bass is done, 99% of the guitars are done, the flute is done, the percussion is done, the melodica is done, the synthesisers are done, guide vocals have been done, all that remains to be done is Martin's trumpet, some flawless vocal performances and a little bit of tidying up, and the whole recording part of the project will be done. After that will come a short break followed by probably weeks of trying to mix it all. I don't really have the attention span for mixing and having to listen to the same song over and over again for hours on end makes me go a bit funny. I'll end up with a bit of the tune we've been working on stuck in my head for days afterwards, and every now and then I'll start whistling it subconsciously before realising what I'm doing and angrily telling the tune to f-off, normally in a shop queue, on a bus or in some other crowded place. To the casual observer it must look/sound like I have some musical form of Tourette's. No matter what I do, even if I listen to other catchy music, the Tune creeps back into my head every time I drop my guard, which is probably once every fifteen-twenty seconds.

Spring officially begins in one week's time, and not a moment too soon. My songwriting has been exceptionally miserable over the last couple of weeks, and I'm convinced that the blame lies with the almost complete lack of daylight in my life. I've made rough demos of a couple of songs; "ohgodohgodohgodohgod", which is very slow and sad but has a lot of harmonic angles in it, and "Empiness is here again!" which as the exclaimation mark might suggest is actually quite a joyful tune with very miserable words. It's a bit like the Velvet Underground doing mexican kraut-rock at the moment. But not like that at all. It might well be that both of these songs get abandoned forever once the sun starts shining and some seratonin starts circulating around my system again.

I hope Rich has gotten over his mumps. Apparently it can be quite serious in adults, and can cause enormous and painful swelling of the man-parts which can potentially lead to sterility, all of which I'm keen to avoid. There seems to be a mini-epidemic (an oxymoron surely?) of it going around the town's musicians at the moment and I somehow managed to avoid catching not only mumps but also measles, whooping cough and chicken-pox as a kid, which means I'm at risk of catching them all now in their more unpleasant adult forms. But then again, if I was bed-ridden for a while I would finally have a chance to work my way through some of the mountainous heap of unread books in the corner of the bedroom....I'll have to check with Rich how bad it really is...

Rock-baby and Antler-man

It's been a good and busy week since the last post, here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to...
On Tuesday we got together to do some work on the live set. I'd like to change it quite a bit, and extend our repertoire generally, variety being the spice of life and my boredom-threshold being quite low when it comes to songs. To that end we dusted off a couple of songs that we haven't played for a while- "If you go to work on me I'll die" and "We will not know peace", the latter of which we did a bit of work on the arrangement of to incorporate some new vocal and trumpet parts that have been developed since it's recording for Betikassette 2 last year, and we ran through "Let these things forget themselves" for the first time in a couple of months. This week I'm going to be arriving at rehearsal with a great sheaf of musical scribbles which are supposed to explain how three new songs are meant to go. Normally I'd write parts out and make some kind of rough demo of new songs, but when we learnt "Bob Hope" a month or so back the demo I'd made was too appalling for even the band to hear, so I just wrote out the chord changes and we worked on it together, and it came together much quicker than it normally does- we had it up to performance standard in one rehearsal, which is unheard of, so I'm hoping we can repeat that with the three newies this week. I think the real trick is not going to be learning the new tunes but not forgetting the ones we already know in the process!
On Wednesday Lexi and I went to see the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra performing Stravinksy's "Rite of Spring". The concert was fantastic but sadly seemed to be attended mostly by rude old people. I'm sure that's a false impression formed by the hateful old bastards shoving past me and jabbing their bony elbows into me at the bar, patronising the bar staff and voting conservative, and I'm sure that there were plenty of perfectly nice people in attendance. It's just that I wasn't lucky enough to come into contact with any of them. Nevermind....
Thursday evening I spent alone working on new songs, then on Friday we threw a percussion party where we got as many as we could of the people who have shaken or hit things with us over the last year in a room together and got them to do it again along with our new recordings. Present were all seven of Betika, Gav and Kieron from Perico, Lee from Dutch Husband, Brad from Brenda and Hubcap, which I make to be a total of twelve. There were a couple of conspicuous absences, most notably Rock-Baby and Antler-Man who joined in at the Earthwise festival last summer and who were easily the youngest and oldest semi-Betikans ever, we just didn't know how to get hold of them- both were, after all, incapable of speech. But we soldiered on anyhow, we got quite drunk, and we made a racket for several hours, and then we got more drunk and then we played interminable games of magnetic darts until something like four in the morning. Some hours later Hubcap and I reconvened to listen back to what we'd done, and it turned out that what we'd done, in spite of the booze and the fun we'd had doing it, was unmistakably music. Which came as a relief, though I never should have doubted, we had musical talent on hand by the bucketful. A big Betika thankyou for coming along guys, if you ever need somebody to play rolling pin or saucepan on one of your future recordings just say the word and I'm there. Hubcap and I spent the rest of saturday daytime recording synth parts, Robot Dog has lent me his Moog Prodigy for a few days so we've got some monumentally fat sounds from that on the tunes. Saturday evening I had intended to finish off the soundtrack to Tim Clague's short film "Watermelon" that I've been working on intermittently since the summer, but the night before had left me in no fit state to do anything so I flaked and watched "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" diagonally with one eye.
Sunday evening Chris and I recorded the last couple of pieces for Watermelon, and also a series of very short free-form impov pieces for two increasingly de-tuned and mistreated acoustic guitars that started out as being something we thought might fit into the film soundtrack but ended hundreds of miles away, brain-damaged and learning to walk again after a nasty accident. I don't think any of them will ever get used for anything, or heard by anyone. In contrast, you can hear the main theme from Watermelon by clicking HERE.