28/01/05, Part II.

Iain and Andy from Proxy turned up to help us soundcheck in the afternoon and by 8 pm, we'd set up in a classic rhythm section vs. guitars formation. We played a final test song about 8.45 to the few hardcore Monkey enthusiasts who'd turned up early, and everything seemed to be going well.

Until I called Josh to ask when he was going to arrive with his CD deck and music for the pre- and post-band DJing.

"Hey, Josh. How're you doing?"
"Not good, really. The washing machine has been leaking water all over the kitchen floor and the plumber's not coming until tomorrow morning."
"Ah."

Still, he arrived in time, got set up and was laying down some suitably indie tunes for the early arrivals.

Ruth, having never hosted a band upstairs at the bar, was getting a little twitchy about the noise. Throughout the afternoon, we'd been playing odds and ends to get the levels set properly. She came upstairs at one point and told us that Doug's bass drumming was causing the downstairs DJ to mess up his mixing. "A small victory for live music!" we crowed, and then did as we were told and stopped pratting about.

Come 9 pm, we moved the DJ kit out of the way and got ready. Doug counted in Vertigo and away we went. I have to admit that the first few songs were a bit of a blur: I was standing stock still, concentrating entirely on playing and didn't really come out of my shell until a banana skin (thrown by Jez, of course) slapped onto the floor in front of me. This elicited a smile and I relaxed a bit for the rest of the set.

Turns out we can play pretty well. The sound quality was the equal of anything we've managed before, thanks to the afternoon of tweaking and re-tweaking. The sheer number of cameras flashing right, left and centre lent everything a surreal air (and, dare I say it, a slightly professional one?) and basically, it was fucking great!

Once we'd finished All I Want To Do Is Rock - one of the first songs that TM ever tried - we decided to damn the torpedoes and played Happy Twenty Thirty-Fourth Birthday, our notional encore, straight off the bat. And it sounded good, and people danced. Franz Ferdinand, take note.

Finally, when we hurtled through Vertigo again as a true encore ("Come on! You've got five minutes left!"), some of the audience sang along. Utter genius.

So, huge thanks to all of the guys that came along; you made it extraordinarily worthwhile and we were staggered that so many of you made it to our first gig. Josh, Iain, Andy and Ruth were all pivotal in organising the evening as a whole, so special thanks go to them for helping the Monkey out.

Roll on the next show! (Which, incidentally, might be a tsunami benefit gig at the Caley Brewery. Just so you know :)

Monkey gig trivia:

1. Dave did, in fact, sing:
   

   
   "I wanna stick my penis
   Right into your hole
   (Sorry guys)"
   

   
   in Creep. Just like he'd promised he'd do.
   
2. An itinerant ned twice offered to sing for us: "That wiz rilly great can I get a go at singing likes? Ah'm in a band n we do Oasis songs."
   

Have you got any more?

28/01/05, Part I.

So, we played a gig.

It all started here, on the back of a Galaxy wrapper, in the King's Bar in Bruntsfield. Filled with curry and the most expensive beer ever, we studiously ignore minor radio celebrity Grant Stott to hammer out the order of songs we could play already, songs we wanted to learn, and in a couple of cases, songs we hadn't actually written at that point.

In the end we stuck to the original set list pretty closely, only swapping Sister Isabel and Seven Nation Army, and replacing Whole Lotta Monkey (a rather too Zeppelin-esque Zep tribute) with a newly written song.

(It's a relief to be able to talk about the set list at last; we made a semi-serious effort to keep it a secret until the gig. This was only thwarted by a few minor problems:

• It's hard to keep any bassline a secret from flatmates that sleep only yards away from a bass amp resting on a solid wooden floor;
  
• Your correspondent's tongue can be fairly reliably loosened by the application of beer and/or the company of a beautiful young lady;
  
• Dom told everyone anyway :)
  

The rehearsals were by turns hungover, late, sullen, antagonistic and bored. But when they worked, which was more often than not, they went reassuringly well. We learned Creep in a single session. In another, an idly-played bassline was turned into our encore in the hurried 15 minutes before we had to pack up and leave:

Doug: "Did you come up with that?"
Me: "Er, yes. I think. Anyone recognise it?"
All: "Nope."

The patented "Sod it - let's make it a 12-bar blues song," approach was applied, and we were playing MonkeyFour before we knew it. A few bars in, Dave grabbed the microphone and sang, and Happy Twenty Thirty-Fourth Birthday just sort of happened, inspired by a hazily remembered Hogmanay incident.

To be continued...

28/01/05:

Tiny Monkey play live for the first time.

We rock!

I'll post a bigger entry later, and we'll have some pics up on the website soon.

TM might actually be turning into an honest-to-goodness band. We arrived variously late, hungover and ill to Saturday's 6-hour practice at the Brill Building/Core Studios and set up our kit. Dave, running enormously late and with an inflamed throat that meant he couldn't sing, turned up as the rest of us battered through the first few tunes of the set. A brief conversation about the nature of painkillers ensued, leading to Dave garlging some ground-up Nurofen dissolved in a cup of vending machine coffee.

"That's the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted," he said. "I almost vomited."

It worked, and we proceeded to the rocking. We seem to have reached the point where the quality of the playing depends more on our collective state of mind and how well we've managed to level our respective volumes. By the end of the rehearsal, warmed up, fed and less hungover, we pretty much nailed everything we needed to nail - I suspect the success or failure of Friday will hinge upon how well we all manage to contain our apprehension...

(One interesting thing that came out of the practice was that I sang for the first time. Problems with this include an inability to play the bass at the same time - I have trouble walking when I'm playing - and a vocal range that spans something less than an octave. Still, even though I won't be singing at the gig, it does bode well for maybe doing backing vocals sometime.)

* * *

Doug and I had arranged to meet up with Waxy and co up north in Braemar after the rehearsal, so we loaded up the wagon with boarding gear and set off.

We hit Perth around 9 and dodged the neds* to buy a crate of beer and a half bottle of Glenfiddich, and got the hammer down so we'd get to Mar Lodge at a reasonable time. I cracked open a beer because hey, it's nice to be the passenger sometimes. Somewhere just after Glenshee, Doug's iRiver, set on random, started playing Eve of the War from The War of the Worlds. As in Jeff Wayne's 1978, double-disc rock musical concept album version of The War of the Worlds.

I have to tell you, swigging beer while speeding through a moonlit, almost lunar highland mountain pass with bloated, genius prog rock narrating a Martian invasion of 19^th century Earth is a rare treat. We got to Mar Lodge about 10.30 pm and rallied through the snowy grounds. I was dizzy with the spectacle (and the beer, and the prog rock) of it all.

We reclined in luxury and drank beer. And criticised some creative Scrabble spelling, but of such things exciting blog entries are not made**

On Sunday Doug and I headed back to Glenshee for the first boarding of the year. The snow was mercifully fresh, and despite the biting wind and rocky patches, it was good fun. My faith in Scottish boarding has been restored.

All in all, an exhausting but otherwise excellent weekend. Long may they continue!

* What is it with the neds these days? They're everywhere. Has society suddenly become predominantly ned, and we, the non-ned, are the exception? It's bloody scary, I can tell you. Next week: I lament the way that kids have never had it so good.
** "Valted". What the hell is "valted"?

I've started looking for a flat.

I don't think I'm in the right mindset yet, though - I went to see one on Thursday night and the first thing I noticed was a Weezer poster and the second thing was the guy's Explorer leaning behind the couch. Still can't decide whether it was a nice flat or not. Also, the sheer amount of wonga that I'll have to spend on a decent place will leave me penniless (if, at least, not homeless) for the rest of my natural life.

Fortunately, Saturday's TM practice came along to remind me that the Explorer was the correct thing to notice about the flat. We're getting steadily better at most of the set list - if not at organising rehearsals - and I'm increasingly optimistic that the gig will rock one's fucking socks off.

Afterwards, we had a few pints round the corner from the Brill Building and then Dom and I headed back to Edinburgh. The boozing continued in the Wash, where I piggy-backed (not literally) on Dom's helpfully prearranged boozing with his scarily incestuous (not literally) mates. Edinburgh's a small place...

On Sunday, at 9 am (I know - I was so stunned to be up that early I forgot to have a hangover), I sold my car, and I cried inside.

P.S: Jeff, amazingly, has a blog. It cost Josh two pints to find out about it.

"You never have a blog."
"I do."
"No you don't."
"I'll bet you two pints I do."
<laptop is produced, address is supplied>
"Bugger."

P.P.S: So does Dev. Although as yet she's giving us the silent treatment.

Grim and bear it.

I was on the phone to Ruth a few days back, waxing misanthropic and self-pitying, and Katie piped up in the background: "At least you're not it south-east Asia!"

Point taken.

On the morbid tsunami theme, Sky News this morning had a report from Sri Lanka followed by a piece best summed-up by the phrase "German people blown over". Utterly astonishing. 150,000 people die in the worst natural disaster for decades, and the next item is about some German hikers finding it hard to walk across a car park because of the wind.

It's been a fairly quiet week. Stand-outs include a game of Monopoly at Ally's (I did say it was a quiet week), ending the flat's three year voluntary moratorium. Of course, it degenerated into a cruel mockery of free market capitalism, bringing out the more sociopathic tendencies of the players. A typical game, really.

The week took a more positive, cheesier turn when we had a fondue at Devon's flat. The conjunction of cheese with more cheese is terrific. It did, however, remind me of an incident in France last winter that left me covered in meaty fondue juice and taramasalata, and an appropriate person-shaped clean patch on the wall immediately behind me.

Lastly, TM got together for our first practice of the new year, and it rocked. Pure and simple. Core Studios are so much better than Banana Row. The gig is actually starting to look like an attractive prospect, as opposed to a bowel-looseningly terrifying one.

Happy New Year, chaps.

My New Year? Spaced, series 2, episode 7. Meh.