Blog: Background Music: EYE OF THE TIGER

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Monday afternoon saw me at St Pancras, trying to get on a train to DERBY for our pre-tour BAND PRACTICE. However, down the road at King's Cross there had been a small fire so, in the words of The Evening Standard (nearly every day) it was CHAOS. The train I wanted to get on was COMPLETELY FULL and so Midland Mainline had brought in their EMERGENCY PLAN: An extremely peed off employee was stood in front of the closed gate, GLARING at people, getting more and more annoyed with people trying to ask him questions (especially if they'd, you know, BOOKED A SEAT ON THE TRAIN - the CHEEK!) and doing his best to IGNORE them. Meanwhile, downstairs the police had gathered people together - not, obviously, to tell them anything that was going on, just for the sake of it - AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ESCALATORS. GENIUS! This meant, of course, that people were bashing into each other, fighting through ever growing crowds to get upstairs to find that they couldn't get on the trains, then getting panicked because they didn't know if their tickets would still be valid because NOBODY WAS BOTHERING TO MAKE ANY ANNOUNCEMENTS.

So business as usual for the TRANES, really. I worked out which platform the (late) train to Derby would be going from and LURKED there, and ended up RACING someone along the platform to make sure i got a seat. HA! VICTORY TO ME!

I eventually got to Derby, went for some chips, bought some BEER, and then met with THE VLADS at The Music Shed for, slighty surprisingly, our first practice in about six months. We had a great big LIST of songs split up into FOUR categories: "New Songs We Theoretically Know", "Old Songs We Do Know", "Old Songs We Might Know" and "Songs We Need To (Re)Learn". The last list was by FAR the longest.

Tim assumed his role as SETLIST GUY, and into action we LEAPT with a rousing rendition of "Tell Me Something You Do Like" before meandering down MEMORY LANE with stuff like "Post-Subsonic Bass", "You Will Be Hearing From My Solicitor" and, for the first time EVER as a proper band, "Born With The Century".

Halfway through we had a listen to some songs in The New Improved Pattison Wagon, DROPPED quite a few that we'd considered, and as a group worked out how to play "Falling For Trust" - Tim had a GRATE new idea about how this could be made to work, as we've never played it live, and work it DID. It sounded so good we played it THREE TIMES!

By the end of the evening we had a list of 22 songs to choose from, which was EXTREMELY pleasing, and headed to the PUB to work out the Travel Itinerary for THE TOUR, pausing only to go "OOH!" at the penalities in The Football. I've left it to the others to sort it out, but it all sounded very sensible to me, and EXCITEMENT ROSE yet further at the prospect of our week ON THE ROAD. Today I've got some press releases to send out about it, and then that really is IT - all preperations will be complete, and we will be READY TO ROCK!

I can't wait!

posted 28/6/2006 by MJ Hibbett

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