Blog: Back In The Saddle

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I was back up in Leicester last night - originally intending to go to an AAS Board Meeting, a CANCELLATION and a set of fortuitous circumstances meant that I actually ended up going to a Validators' Practice! HOORAH!

Truly, it was a beautiful thing to greet each Validator as he (Mrs Pattison did not attend, unfortunately) entered the room, it has been far too long since we were last together in ROCK. We worked out that it's about a YEAR, in fact, since last we gathered purely to ROCK, which meant it was ALSO about a year since Tim had last played drums, or since Rob had last played Bass. This made us all, shall we say, a little rusty in places, but when the MAGIC was there, it was there a LOT.

Many valuable lessons were learnt and theorems proved. First and foremost, after years of SWEATY LEGS in practice, I took a leaf out of Tim's book, and changed into some shorts. FANTASTIC! Also for the first time I tried using my Acoustic instead of one of Rob's electrical guitars, with my new Dean Markley pickup. MJ Hibbett HEARTILY endorses Dean Markley Acoustic Pickups, they're FANTASTIC.

I'd made a BIG list of songs we could have a go at, and we ROMPED through them at high speed, casting some aside, putting a few back to next time (when we've all had a chance to listen to them again, and remember how they went), and marking up the remainder for USE. We even tried out "Everything's Turning Out All Right" (which had never EVER been played by the Band before) and the heavily reworked versions of "The Girl Who..." Towards the end Mr Fleay displayed his UBER FAN credentials by reeling off a long list of Even More Obscure Than Usual MJ Hibbett Golden Oldies, which led to us having a go at "Red & White Sockets" and "Mr Right", songs which even I haven't played for YEARS. It's a lovely thing to have actually been GOING as The Validators long enough (and however slowly) to actually have a CHOICE of songs we can have a go at, rather than desperately trying to learn new songs to build up a full set.

It was FUN, and I'm EXTREMELY glad we had the practice NOW rather than, as originally planned, the week before the first gig. That would have spelt DOOM.

posted 25/6/2003 by MJ Hibbett

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