Looking back on X-sTatiC
This year's Eurovision is starting to look interesting, with Germany fielding a country & western act and Finland a death metal band.
edit: Hmm, listened to the Finnish entry now; disappointing. They sound like a bog-standard euro-rock band with laryngitis; crunchier guitars perhaps, but no real bottom end, and with twee plinky keyboards that wouldn't sound out of place on a Europe single. Not feeling a lot of death in the room.
Still, I look forward to hearing Wogan comment on the stage costumes.
On saturday night I watched Doctor Who and then headed into London to join Dan and Mick (Ed had a gig and couldn't make it) for a group viewing of the video footage from the final X-sTatiC gig in Swindon last October. Though Mick and I have watched it already, Dan has yet to receive his copy so this was his first viewing.
Chicago Dave, who shot the footage, has put in an unfeasible number of hours putting this together, coaxing the best possible mix out of the sound, editing in and manually syncing hand-held camera footage with the fixed camera he had on the balcony. The lighting may be poor (nobody's fault, the venue just wasn't lit with video in mind) and he may have missed a couple of songs from the second set, but overall he's put together a bloody good package out of the footage he had, and I'm so grateful to have a copy of it.
At past gigs we'd come onstage to intro music on CD mixed by Dan, but on this gig he forgot the CD. So instead I raided my MP3 player and we came on to the opening Promenade from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Chicago Dave uses this to accompany the opening credits. It works so well you'd never know it was all a happy accident.
So, how did the performance stand up?
Well, there are plenty of mistakes that made us cringe, (thankfully almost none on my part, though my time drifts awkwardly in a couple of places), but this is complicated material and given the trade-off between perfection and intensity we'd go for intensity every time. Overall it was a blistering performance, and one we look back on with a lot of pride.
It was a blast watching it with the others, commenting, laughing, applauding, and seeing things going on that I wasn't even aware of until now. Peter Pumpkinhead has Dan and Mick sharing guitars, except for the intro and the break following the choruses where Mick plays harmonica. On the night Dan's guitar packs up after the first intro and he gestures Mick to take over ASAP. He then spends the first verse and chorus trying to get it working again, and gets it back just in time to pick up as Mick drops back to the harmonica. Somehow they get through it without a single break in the music. I didn't even notice on the night, nor over the subsequent months listening to the audio files.
Inevitably we all fell to debating what were our own personal highlights, and there was a lot of good stuff to choose from. Impassioned debuts for Beating Of Hearts, Paper And Iron, Scissor Man, and a somewhat ethereal Super Tuff. A rendition of Wake Up that was as tight as anything we ever managed, and the jangly audience participation arrangement of River of Orchids. And there's my own lead vocal slot on This World Over, which I think sounds decidedly fragile, but which the others rave about, as did the audience. Damn, but we had some good moments in that band, and it was great to get together and celebrate it again.
On sunday my brother held a naming party for his son. Like me, Carl hasn't followed our parents into christianity so there wouldn't be a christening, but he wanted to do something to formally present Samuel James to the world, and so a gathering was held at the house of Carl's father-in-law, with around 60 guests and a handful of short speeches. Dad said a few words: "Over the last hundred years we've been introduced to the concept of Planned Parenthood. What we still don't have is Planned Grandparenthood. That part's out of our hands; we do our bit and then all we can do is wait 30-odd years with our fingers crossed." And Carl began: "The little chap's asked me to say a few words on his behalf. 'Wah. Wah. Gurgle. B'uh. Eeee! Heheh. Zzzzz.' How very true those words are."
And the weather held off so there was lunch in the garden, and there were toasts, and there were lots of people happily nattering. Shame I was a bit flaked after getting back from London the previous night around 4am...
edit: Hmm, listened to the Finnish entry now; disappointing. They sound like a bog-standard euro-rock band with laryngitis; crunchier guitars perhaps, but no real bottom end, and with twee plinky keyboards that wouldn't sound out of place on a Europe single. Not feeling a lot of death in the room.
Still, I look forward to hearing Wogan comment on the stage costumes.
On saturday night I watched Doctor Who and then headed into London to join Dan and Mick (Ed had a gig and couldn't make it) for a group viewing of the video footage from the final X-sTatiC gig in Swindon last October. Though Mick and I have watched it already, Dan has yet to receive his copy so this was his first viewing.
Chicago Dave, who shot the footage, has put in an unfeasible number of hours putting this together, coaxing the best possible mix out of the sound, editing in and manually syncing hand-held camera footage with the fixed camera he had on the balcony. The lighting may be poor (nobody's fault, the venue just wasn't lit with video in mind) and he may have missed a couple of songs from the second set, but overall he's put together a bloody good package out of the footage he had, and I'm so grateful to have a copy of it.
At past gigs we'd come onstage to intro music on CD mixed by Dan, but on this gig he forgot the CD. So instead I raided my MP3 player and we came on to the opening Promenade from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Chicago Dave uses this to accompany the opening credits. It works so well you'd never know it was all a happy accident.
So, how did the performance stand up?
Well, there are plenty of mistakes that made us cringe, (thankfully almost none on my part, though my time drifts awkwardly in a couple of places), but this is complicated material and given the trade-off between perfection and intensity we'd go for intensity every time. Overall it was a blistering performance, and one we look back on with a lot of pride.
It was a blast watching it with the others, commenting, laughing, applauding, and seeing things going on that I wasn't even aware of until now. Peter Pumpkinhead has Dan and Mick sharing guitars, except for the intro and the break following the choruses where Mick plays harmonica. On the night Dan's guitar packs up after the first intro and he gestures Mick to take over ASAP. He then spends the first verse and chorus trying to get it working again, and gets it back just in time to pick up as Mick drops back to the harmonica. Somehow they get through it without a single break in the music. I didn't even notice on the night, nor over the subsequent months listening to the audio files.
Inevitably we all fell to debating what were our own personal highlights, and there was a lot of good stuff to choose from. Impassioned debuts for Beating Of Hearts, Paper And Iron, Scissor Man, and a somewhat ethereal Super Tuff. A rendition of Wake Up that was as tight as anything we ever managed, and the jangly audience participation arrangement of River of Orchids. And there's my own lead vocal slot on This World Over, which I think sounds decidedly fragile, but which the others rave about, as did the audience. Damn, but we had some good moments in that band, and it was great to get together and celebrate it again.
On sunday my brother held a naming party for his son. Like me, Carl hasn't followed our parents into christianity so there wouldn't be a christening, but he wanted to do something to formally present Samuel James to the world, and so a gathering was held at the house of Carl's father-in-law, with around 60 guests and a handful of short speeches. Dad said a few words: "Over the last hundred years we've been introduced to the concept of Planned Parenthood. What we still don't have is Planned Grandparenthood. That part's out of our hands; we do our bit and then all we can do is wait 30-odd years with our fingers crossed." And Carl began: "The little chap's asked me to say a few words on his behalf. 'Wah. Wah. Gurgle. B'uh. Eeee! Heheh. Zzzzz.' How very true those words are."
And the weather held off so there was lunch in the garden, and there were toasts, and there were lots of people happily nattering. Shame I was a bit flaked after getting back from London the previous night around 4am...