Blog: Geekpop Preparations

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A couple of weeks ago i was VERY pleased to get an email from the lovely people at Geek Pop telling me that I'd been picked to play at their VIRTUAL FESTIVAL this year. I've applied to many many festivals over the years, but apart from Indietracks this is the ONLY time I've been successful (and yes, i have applied for indietracks again this year, but have NO WORD - i spend EVERY January and February in a FLAP about whether I'll get to play or not, and this year is no different!).

As it's a VIRTUAL Festival it means that everyone's recording STUFF for them, rather than schlepping out to a field somewhere, which is EXTREMELY convenient, so I've been giving some thought about what I'd record. Do i have anything sufficiently geeky in my back catalogue, i wondered, which might fit? Aha! Yes, yes i DO! A LOT!

The problem turned out to be what to leave out, rather than leave in, as they only need THREE songs. This problem was exacerbated somewhat by the fact that I am doing a DUET with the marvellous Vom Vorton aka Tom from Lardpony (it was his idea, and we are TOILING over the writing of it as we speak) but happily Tom has negotiated another, currently SECRET but EXCITING, location for that song. In the end I decided to do one obscure song (Never Been Superstitious) one as yet unreleased (A Little Bit and Hey Hey 16K. It's a festival - not doing your HIT at a festival is RUDE, especially when it's THIS kind of Festival and THAT kind of HIT!

The event's not for ages yet, but yesterday I decided to get ON with it and start recording - I'm in one of those weird LULLS at the moment, when not much is actively going on but I'm THINKING and PLANNING for the huge amount of ACTION that's about to begin, so was experiencing that weird human emotion you call "slight boredom". It's not something that happens to me very often and i don't really LIKE it, so i thought this might help DISPEL the feeling. I was RIGHT!

First of all I tackled Hey Hey 16K, which I re-recorded at a slightly slower pace, at more of an AMBLE. You know how usually when people do a Stripped Down Acoustic Version of a song, they just slow it down and sing a bit wistfully on it? Well, like THAT, except not so wistful. I put a TONNE of guitars on it tho, it was ACE!

With that all mixed I moved on to Never Been Superstitious, the original version of which has some stuff on it that I'm not sure how i DID, not least the finger picking. All right, i know i COULD do it, but doing it RIGHT was giving me the STRESS, so i divided it up into two PARTS. The GUITAR did the... er... most GUITAR-Y bits, and then i did the bass notes on the BASS. HA! That showed it! I've not had the bass guitar out for AGES and, as usual, thoroughly enjoyed myself - one of my principal reasons for doing FAWM again this year was to give myself 14 chances to play BASS! It also had a WHISTLING SOLO which I just couldn't get the hang of, so did WEIRD COMPUTER NOISES instead. This too was FUN!

At this point I had to go and make TEA, so will embark upon A Little Bit another time... possibly on the UKELELE. It was all ENORMOUS fun to do tho - the nice thing about MY songs is that they really are a piece of piss to play, chordwise at least, so you can spend your time fannying around with tambourines and KEYBOARDS instead of BARRE CHORDS. If i ever look bored again do remind me of this!

posted 27/1/2011 by MJ Hibbett

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