Blog: Needles In The Rehearsal Room

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The Validators convened in DERBY last night, for some CONSOLIDATION work on the new songs. If ever you needed a TABLEAU demonstrating What We Are Like you could not have done better than a scene from Room 1 at The Music Shed: Me, Rob, Tom and Tim taking it in turns to relate our own experiences of "The First Time I Ever Drank A Pint Of Pedigree" (rather brilliantly, we all KNEW) whilst Emma did a bit of haberdashery. WE ROCK SO HARD! If ever you see reports of NEEDLES being strewn in our wake, they will be KNITTING needles.

We had a LOVELY time anyway - after a Warm Up RAMPAGE through "Never Going Back To Aldi's" and "The Lesson Of The Smiths" we ATTACKED "Looking At My Hands". Last time we tried to make the middle section SUPER SKANKING, but this never quite worked out, so this time we did the middle bit more like the rest of the song, and i must be frank and say it sounded BLOODY GRATE. So we did it again. This one's really come together nicely, with Tom especially chucking in some GRATE bits. Well done everybody!

NEXT we moved on to the NEW ONE, "Tell Me Something You DO Like", as discussed yesterday. One minor problem was that nobody could actually remember how the JAMMED version went, but we got going soon enough and it sounded VERY SHOUTY. It was DEAD GOOD! Oddly, it's mostly based on Rob's bassline, which on its own sounds quite FRUITY and INTRICATE, but the PERFORMANCE en masse made me want to jump up and down. So i DID. We all got a bit excited and there were several HOPES expressed (largely, it must be said, by the Don't Have To Learn The Words contingent) that we could play this one TONIGHT in Cambridge. GOLLY!

THEN we ran through "The Other Rush Hour", followed by a lengthy DEBATE about how to make it work better - we all like it, but HEY! It's not really HAPPENING at the moment! Cor, sometimes it is like being in a REAL band! That one was left for some THORT by ME about how to ARRANGE it a bit, and then we moved on to "Mental Judo", ANOTHER one that wasn't QUITE going right. We tried it a couple of different JERKY ways, none of which seemed to be any better, and then just as The Rhythm Section were getting EXCITED about leaving the title track OFF the album (because this gave them an excuse to REEL OFF other examples of bands using album title tracks as b-sides instead) we tried it SLOWLY. IT WORKED! I tried doing it in a sort of COUNTRY SLOW style, but listening back to it this morning in Rob's car on the way to the railway station, it actually SWUNG! Yeah! In a HEP SWINGING WAY! It sounded lovely - it was also noticeable that Tim, formerly The Most Important Punk In The Country is now quite happy to do FILLS that verge on the SHOW TUNE - HOORAH!

You'll hear what i mean when it's done, but honest, it is GRATE! THUS sated we SWEPT through "The Fight For History" (PRACTICE) and a recap of What We Have Done, packed up, and headed out. During this bit we had ANOTHER example of What We Are Like, as towards the end we all began to FLAG. NOT because of Rock & Roll EXCESS, but because most of us are usually tucked up in bed by that time. OH YEAH! With this in mind, and also the FACT that it's going to be a late night tonight, we didn't even go to the PUB, something i think UNHEARD OF even for a clean living bunch like us!

We'll make up for it tonight though - oh yeah! I might have PEANUTS with my BEER too! LET'S GO KRAZEE!!

posted 13/4/2005 by MJ Hibbett

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