Blog: A Practice In The Wasteland

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On Saturday morning my alarm went off at 7.20am, just as it does on most other mornings when I have to go to work. On this occasion, however, I was heading not to a desk but to ROCK, for LO! I was bound for Leicester to meet The Validators!

As recorded previously on this blog, I tried out a whole HEAP of new songs whilst I was on tour with Mr M Tiller, and now The Validators were getting together to see if we could turn them into BAND songs. We'd originally booked 1pm-4pm in Quad in Leicester, but then the unexpected elevation of Derby County to the play-off finals necessitated moving it to 12-3pm so that our resident Derby season ticket holder could get back in time!

Annoyingly for me there were WORKS occuring on the trains, so instead of zooming straight to Leicester from St Pancras I had to go round to Euston, get a train to Nuneaton, hang around Nuneaton Station (REVIEW: "Not worth hanging around in") and then get another train to Leicester, where I met the aforesaid season ticket holder on the concourse. We got a taxi and ZOOMED over to the studio, which is based in Frog Island. It's a WEIRD bit of Leicester almost entirely comprised of abandoned, disintegrating factories. It basically looks like about half of the UK did in 1979 - an as yet un-redeveloped wasteland of bombsites and industrial decay, so that you expect to trip over an early indie band having moody promo shots taken.

Talking of which, once we got inside we discovered the rest of our own indie band already there getting everything set up. Or, in Emma's case, CROCHETING. It was, as ever, BLOODY LOVELY to see everybody again, and we had a LOVELY few hours of conversation, occasionally interupted by ROCK. After revisiting Two Blokes One Pub we delved into I'm Doing The Ironing, which took a LOT of working out. Over the years we have all assumed specific roles in the band, with Mr FA Machine taking on the mantle of "Musical Director", which basically means that whenever we try a new song everyone looks at HIM to tell us EITHER what we should do OR what we were doing wrong. He is very good at it, not least in his willingness to politely listen to people going "Can we do the bit that goes EEEE for a bit longer, and maybe sort of stringier?" or similar without murdering them (me). We tried several different ways of doing it, and ended up with a PRETTY GOOD version that involved some STRUMMING in the chorus that was a bit complicated for me i.e. different to the way I always do it otherwise, but ACE.

We then moved on to I Don't Have To Worry About That which was MUCH eaiser, before tackling You're A Tory Now which sounded GRATE, although sadly REALLY SHORT, so we had to do it again. Here our Musical Director had made a couple of suggestions for adjustments which I had put in (an extra "you're a tory now" to a slightly different tune at the end of the second and last choruses) and which WORKED!

The PLAN is to record SOME songs and then release them as SINGLES, hopefully backed with b-sides. The idea here is that it means we get to release something during THIS century, rather than having to wait to put an album out, and I proposed an IDEA to The Validators about how we might market these as PHYSICAL ITEMS. I will not reveal details of the idea here, lest THE MAN steals it before we can enact it, but suffice to say that we all had a good think about reasons why it might NOT be an ASTOUNDING IDEA THAT WILL CHANGE MUSIC FOREVER, and could not think of any.

It was soon 3pm so we sent Frankie off to catch his train while the rest of us ventured out into the RAIN to find a PUB. We ended up in The Salmon which, weirdly, is a pub in Leicester I have NEVER been in. That, I suppose, explains why it has not yet been knocked down. After a pint the Pattisons had to go, leaving myself and Mr T 'Tiger' McClure to have a RIGHT old chat about Diverse Subjects, which was FAB. Why do they all insist on not moving to London so that we can do this sort of thing more often?

It was a LOVELY day only slightly marred by my return journey. On the way to the station I checked the times on my phone and saw an ALERT saying one of the connections on the journey back had been cancelled. I went into the Customer Services office to check and MY WORD but the staff there were HORRIBLE. They GLARED at me with completely undisguised CONTEMPT, almost SPAT at me in their DISGUST that I was asking them for information, tutted at my question, gave me WRONG info, and then claimed that THEY had said exactly what I had said all along. It was most DISCOMFITTING, but then was very much made up for by the staff at CORBY, where we had to get off the train and change to a BUS. They were BLOODY LOVELY, with lots of information and clear guidance off the train, a bus driver who walked down the bus saying hello and explaining the toilets in a JOVIAL fashion and another member of staff who came aboard to apologise for us being there and explaining what would happen next. They were a DELIGHT!

The Validators gather again in a couple of weeks, for the Furnace Beer Festival in Derby (with us onstage at 6.30pm). I've checked and it's all proper trains that weekend - I can't wait!

posted 13/5/2019 by MJ Hibbett

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