Music Weekend, Kicking Kays, [inrem]

So this weekend was pretty musically eventful for me. Two shows in total. I only played at one of them myself but a few of my good mates are in a band and they were playing a gig in a little village called Blunham. I’d never heard of it either but it’s just outside bedford. So yeah, having been at the cinema in Bedford watching Ice Age 3 (pretty good, nothing all that special though) I decided to go straight there, which turned out to be a bad idea because we got there before the band!

It was an all day “village fete” style affair with a lorry with a side-panel missing as the stage. Given that it was a day time sort of event we all sort of guessed that my friends band (Kicking Kays) would be on at some point during the day like, six or maybe sevenish, but no, they were told when we got there that they would be on at 9 – 9:30, and considering we got there at around half past four, we had a lot of time to kill.

So we began lying on the grass in the sun watching people fly their model aeroplanes in the field next to us, which appeared to be part of the whole event. One of the model planes flew right into the power-lines and the music cut out and the bouncy castle started deflating (full of children) – hilarious. The power was only out for a short time, around 20 seconds or so, but even so, we started to think it wasn’t coming back on and I don’t actually know who it was that flew the plane into the power lines, but I bet he/she was panicking.

The power did of course come back on, and that incident with the model plane was pretty much the last eventful thing that happened while we were there, after that, the six of us decided to go for a leisurely stroll round the village of Blunham. We started wandering down some back alleys behind houses, just generally trying to pass the time, and we came across a river. We’d been walking through some woodlandish area and then we saw a river with a weir stretching out in front of us. It was pretty wide as far as little back-water village rivers go, and pretty deep, and so of course the question was, who is going to get in?

We should have all known the answer to this question as if anyone was going to get in, it was only ever going to be one person and sure enough, with the offer of £12 on the table, Danny Barton, the lead singer and guitarist in Kicking Kays was in the water and swimming about. Sam, the bassist got down into his underwear and almost went fully in, but I think decided against it as Danny looked pretty damn cold when he got out!

So, Danny was of course dripping wet having been in the river (and not seen a penny from any of us I might add) and Sam was wandering around in nothing but his boxer shorts, it was fairly obvious to passers by that they’d been in the river, but what were they going to do? There wasn’t a “no swimming” sign anywhere. Or so we thought.

On wandering to the other side of the river (there was a bridge) we saw, clear as day, a big sign with the name of the river on it (I can’t remember what it was called) and “No Fishing” and “No Swimming” in big red writing. So, given that Danny was STILL wet and Sam (for some reason) was STILL in his boxers, we thought someone was probably going to say or do something less than friendly any minute as there was pretty much a steady stream of people walking past, so we decided to head back to the field.

Upon arriving back we were still only around halfway through the wait, but nothing more of note happened, so after a LONG wait, Kicking Kays were finally on the stage, and despite a slightly dodgy guitar sound on one of the guitars, they were absolutley brilliant. They kind of have their own brand of rock, I don’t really know what to call it other than Kay Rock, but it’s almost a cross between the Foo Fighters and Kings Of Leon, although when you imagine that match it doesn’t really sound like the Kays, I don’t know, you’ll have to listen to them (myspace.com/kickingkays) they really are very good. When onstage they combine their music with their natural ability to make people laugh and all in all I’d say Kicking Kays are one of my all time favourite bands to watch live, and they’re getting lazy with their gigging and general self promotion so anyone reading this blog needs to go to their myspace and comment the hell out of it saying that they should keep at it ‘cos they’re good.

So yeah, that’s one half of my music weekend, I’ve rambled a bit more than I intended to so I’ll post about the Sunday tomorrow.

Much Love x

Success/Failure with Ex-Nihlo

So Saturday night was the night that I traded in my old six string for the chunkier, heavier four-stringed version, the bass guitar for one night only. One of my friend’s bands was in need and who was i to decline? I’d spent the Wednesday night and the Friday night learning the songs and it was all going to go seamlessly.  But anyway, we arrived and got told that we were playing first which wasn’t really ideal because nobody ever remembers the first band on, and seeing as it was a battle of the bands final we could have done with people remembering us , but hey, someone has to go first and I guess we just drew the short straw.

So after sound-checks and a short measure of merriment we were being told “5 minutes!” so we strapped on our respective axes, wheeled the amps onto the playing area (or carried the ones that didn’t have wheels) and began to put plugs in sockets, then before I knew it, we had started.

The first song did not go well. Not for me anyway, even though I had convinced myself that I knew all of the riffs and would be fine, as soon as the first song started, I had the familiar feeling that I recognised from practising with the guys, the feeling of  “oh crap, what am I supposed to be doing in this bit?”. But it wasn’t so bad in practise because when I got lost either Matt or Jonny (the guitarists) would turn and show me their fretboard so that I could just follow along with the root notes, but they were both moving far too much during the live show, and with enough hair to keep a wig maker happy for a year between them, i could barely see their fingers among the flashing lights and flying locks, let alone their position on the fretboard, so I had to kind of ‘wing’ the first track.

It got easier after the first song because I knew that the bass started the second one, and that was an easy riff, and then the rest of the song just sort of rolled out without too many hiccups. All the while I was kind of, rocking on the spot, trying to look impulsive and energetic rather than uncomfortable and trying too hard, although I think with the amount of time i spent blatantly staring at the guitars for guidance I probably did look uncomfortable but hey, I was playing  strange songs on a strange instrument and I was under pressure, and I think most people knew that, well, most people that were there to see us anyway, so I think I got away with maybe not looking entirely natural onstage.

By the time the third song came around I was thankful for a break. The third song was a slower one that was simply 3 notes all the way through on bass, the old 4, 4, open, 2 sequence (fret numbers) and so we all just had a bit of a chill out for that one which was nice considering my mouth was dryer than Gandhi’s flip flops by this point and sweat was pouring out of places I didn’t even know existed. All this was about to change with the beginning of the fourth song. This number was the most technically challenging with quite a bit of fast finger moving which I’m usually ok with, but everything is so much bigger and involves more effort when playing bass and pretty soon, my fret hand had almost seized up, but I just tried to relax it a bit and keep going, it wasn’t like I could just stop playing.

I think the fifth song drew the set to a close, I can’t remember if it was 5 or 6 that we played, but either way I was absolutely gone and as soon as we’d finished playing I tried to wheel my bass amp out round the back of the venue (the way we came in) to my car, I immediately regretted this as it was pouring down with the fattest heaviest rain I’ve seen in a while, and then when I got round there I discovered that the gate was locked and i couldn’t get out with it. Brilliant. So I had to wheel it back through the hordes of people I’d just had to steer it through along with many “excuse me”s and “sorry”s  and so five minutes later I was back inside with my amp having achieved nothing with that struggle except got very wet. So I thought “right, sod the amp for now, I’m gonna go see what the guys thought of the show”. 

So I went to find them, and basically spent the next couple of hours just chillin round a sheltered table outside. I got the impression that the rest of the band thought it went really well, Matt said that he hadn’t enjoyed a gig that much in ages and they all seemed to think it went pretty well, and so did I truth be told. I thought it was a good performance backed up by powerful music which despite a few cock ups on the bass, sounded pretty awesome.

I had left before the result was announced (it was a battle of the bands final)  and so I had to find out that we didn’t win by a text from a highly inebriated guitarist. So we didn’t win the battle of the bands, which would have been the icing on the cake, however I considered it a small personal victory as it was my first time playing bass live onstage and I didn’t completely screw it up, in fact, I think it went quite well.

See the beginning of this story – Bass Guitar

Until next time I have a story to tell,

Speak to you later x