Blogs - February 2006

28 Feb - 22:51

Finally finally finally, some new tunes. Losing My Religion isn't too bad, and we were jamming Oh When The Saints and happened to be recording, and liked the results, so there it is! We had a few goes round some other stuff, some of it pretty challenging, but sounding good. Thanks for all the suggestions we've had, we're rehearsing a few of them at the moment, and there'll be more stuff up sooner than soon. Honestly, this time I mean it....

- Ben

24 Feb - 12:05

Well, don't blame me. Andy's got some silly notion into his head whereby he can't do any jamming until he's got some bloody essay done. When I asked him when that might be, he said something along the lines of 'Sunday? Maybe?' Of course, he's still got time to chase girls around....

And all we need is an hour or so to lay down Losing My Religion. Ah well. Just have to hope Wales can cheer me up on Sunday by thrashing the Irish. Cross your fingers everyone.

- Ben

21 Feb - 10:47

‘Hello there, do you come here often?’. ‘What, to this bar d’you mean?’, replied number 37 with a Charlotte Church-esque voice – the chain-smoking as opposed to the Voice of the Angel one. ‘No, I was just, trying out one of those cheesy lines for good measure…’, I offered. ‘Oh, why?’, said this young, Welsh girl. I looked for divine intervention, but he was obviously busy – speed dating himself, perhaps. Here it was, my first experience of the Japanese-devised speed-dating, invented to help young lovers meet each other and so help curb a slowing population growth, and my first three minutes didn’t inspire me with confidence about the next hour and a half to come.

In the event, it wasn’t quite as painful as that awkward opener had led me to believe. To summarise – for those, who like me before, are still SD virgins – three minutes of ‘chat’ then a hooter/fog horn goes off and it’s all change – at total of 25 lads to 25 lasses. Conversations ranged from the ‘so, what course do you do?’ dire trite, to the Blind Date inspired, ‘when I was younger I wanted to be a ballet, when you were younger what did you want to be and why? That one to number 98’. At one point, during my own rambling anecdote about something fairly non-descript, I was cut-short by a Geordie lass saying, ‘sorry, but what’s your favourite biscuit?’. I said a Hobnob, turned out she was more a Bourbon girl, which soured the mood somewhat. To the other extreme, talking to a participant originally from Hong Kong, in the space of about 20 seconds, the conversation had moved onto the effects of British colonialism throughout the world – I wondered about bringing things back with the biscuit line, but in the end opted out. At one point, did try and get my friend’s best chat-up-line-ever in - ‘Do you have any pets?’ – just before the buzzer, but a quite imposing girl from Halifax countered it with ‘by the way, I play netball’ before I got a chance.

Comparing ‘dates’ at the urinals with a rival contestant, as you do, I said, ‘so, how’s it gone? Met any nice people?’ to which number 88 said in the worst bit of ‘traveller syndrome’ I’ve ever encountered, ‘Tricky really. Thing is, I’ve had a gap year in Africa so it’s been hard to find someone who I can really talk to. I did find one girl who’s had a gap year, so that was something.’ Each to their own though, I suppose.

Short-term memory loss made me forget most the numbers, so ended up circling 25 numbers prompting cries that I was a man-whore. Unfair, I thought. Anyway, have now got myself into a David Brent-style online dating situation where in the course of the week I get send photos and profiles of all corresponding numbers, will let you how things fare…

- Mr Lover-Lover

22:46

Little in the way of a blog-output on my part of recent, which I’ll apologise for at this early stage – I know how everyone was quite literally glued to last week’s ‘dismount’ bike story…

This time, in an echo of Ben’s words, quite a heavy weekend as the carnival that was my official, cough, twenty-third birthday rolled in to town, but fun seemed to be had by all. Woke this morning in the laundry room propped in between a mop and a vacuum cleaner, which is always a sign of a good night. A mild-accommodation crisis had in fact been the catalyst to push myself and four others - up from Somerset for the festivities - out onto the corridor. One or two diplomacy issues as such to address this morning relating to noise and the housemates who weren’t making it, but it’s all the fun of the fair/carnival.

Birthday wise one of the best I can remember. A beautiful day. Nice stroll. Superb company. Fine ale and free-flowing banter. Some somewhat miscellaneous gifts to report – namely those from my parents – although, if they are reading this, of course I would like to say, a big thanks, I’m very grateful! – Anyway, included in said package; one hip flask, one copy of the Economist, some mint tea, two books entitled the Prophet and ‘A Gift of Positive Thinking’, one bag of chocolate coffee beans and a pack of oyster mushrooms. I’m still unsure although it sounds like some kind of elaborate bag for Ready Steady Cook. I won’t normally mention other people in this blog, save you saying ‘who?’, but Chris Jordan deserves a special mention for the fact that he managed to find a set of flashing, neon boules. A quite remarkable gift and ideal for a 3am jeu. My experience with a boule team in France is something, undoubtedly, I’ll tell you about in due course.

Before then, I go speed-dating tomorrow night, so prepare for a wry take on organised romance over the next few days. In the meantime, thanks for the positive feedback. Keep spreading the EFL word and if anyone could persuade Ben to take off some of the less-than-flattering photos of yours truly, then I’d be grateful.

Over and out.

- Andy

19 Feb - 12:13

Well, here concludes the saga that will be known in years to come as 'Andy's Birthday' - 48 hours of debauchery and carnage across the West Midlands. The details are a little hazy, and my hands are still shaking, so I won't go into too much detail right now. Yesterday's yomp across the countryside to Kenilworth was a very pleasant interlude, but maybe when realised we were terribly drunk at 6pm we should have written off Skool Dayz as a bad idea. Never mind though.

In more relevant news, we're gonna try and get some stuff recorded today or tomorrow. Looking at doing 'Take Five', which would be a challenge and a half. We can handle it.

Big up to all the yompers.

- Ben

16 Feb - 17:53

Christ what a day. Spent hours in Andy's room trying to get the Buzzcocks tune down, took a lot longer than anticipated. I'm still not entirely convinced that the version we ended with works too well, but it's uploaded because, well, we got sick of the bloody thing. And yes, I know Christmas is the furthest thing from anyone's mind at the moment, but we knew that one so there it is, in all its inappropriately festive glory.

Thanks to everyone who's suggested stuff, we'll take it all into consideration. Keep checking back, we'll update whenever that pesky degree work allows us. We've got some new pics from today, I'll post those up on the gallery page tonight.

In other news, it's Andy's birthday this weekend. We're doing Metamorphosis in the union tomorrow night (see you all there. Yes, you) then walking to Kenilworth the next day to get fucked up in all sorts of new and exciting ways. The upshot is that we're going to buy him a proper Xaphoon as featured on www.xaphoon.com, but shhhhh, don't tell him. It'll be in C probably, so we'll be playing songs in a key other than D, shocker! I wonder how we'll cope.

Further tune news: we're going to be working on Madness' "It Must Be Love" from here on, which promises to be pretty much impossible - lots and lots of arrangement. It's our usual problem of having some bits that sound really really good, and others which just sound wank. Ah well, we'll give it a go. Andy reckons he'll have have a blog entry by tonight, so if your day has been disappointingly sane by all accounts, stand by for a fresh dose of abstracted literary noodling after he gets back from a talk about starving baby refugees or saving the whales or some nonsense.

I'm going to do some proper work now. Possibly. Maybe just a quick game of Call of Duty 2 to calm my frayed post-recording nerves....

- Ben

12 Feb - 17:25

Just a quick post to say that the requests page is up. Rather than a normal guestbook, which looks complicated and boring, it's just a way to contact us without having to email us. Anything constructive is more than welcome - we've got some decent ideas for tunes. Now that Andy and I are back on the sauce we should find more time and inclination to get to the centre. Maybe tonight, who knows.

Listening to a lot of Nine Inch Nails at the moment - I feel like it's a guilty pleasure but I'm not quite sure why.

And well done Wales for spunking the nasty Jocks today.

- Ben

11 Feb - 15:28

Well, slightly later than promised, we have a better version of Buttercup and an all-new, all-singing, all-too-rye-aying version of Come On Eileen, which actually sounds pretty good. The music centre turns out to be ideal for recording, and Andy's laptop is standing up to the task impressively well. We'd been trying Eileen for about an hour two days ago with no real success. We went in last night, played it three times the speed and there it was, sorted.

I'm looking for decent scripts for guestbooks to get some feedback from you lovely people. Bad past experiences with spammers make me want to do it properly though, so it could be a while. For now, if you have an idea for a tune, e-mail me and we'll give it our best shot.

- Ben

09 Feb - 17:54

I was taken back to my childhood today. There I am, cycling along, Van Morrison (new material) playing in my ears reminiscent of long car journeys, when out of nowhere this imposing figure stands out in my way. Policeman-esque, he has one hand held up denoting I should stop. I do. ‘Oi’, he proclaims. ‘Hello’, I reply back. ‘What are you doing?’, he snarls. Resisting the temptation to counter with the kind of wit and wisdom reserved only a 14-year in these circumstances and say, ‘having a conversation with you’, I recoil saying, ‘erm, going home’. ‘You know it’s illegal to be on a bike here’. ‘Illegal?’, I wonder – we’re on a wide path at this point by the way. ‘You’re a hazard and it’s bloody ridiculously dangerous’. ‘Yeah, but, erm’, I Vicky Pollarded, ‘there was nobody here but you, and I what was I doing dangerous?’. With one glance he took me back to being that very same 14 year old, chastised for this that or the other, then he said, back in Policeman speak, ‘dismount’. I shook my head and duly obliged tail firmly between the legs and waited for him to pull out a breathalyser. Who was he and what was his problem was with walking paced cyclists we’ll never know … In the meantime, I’ll be looking out for him to ride directly into on the next occasion thus proving his point that I’m a hazard.

Back with more anecdotes soon.

- Andy

11:14

Not feeling too fantastic this morning, but not too bad either, considering the surfeit of Sheppy's Oakwood Draught Cider imbibed last night at Wetherspoon's in Leamington. Beautiful sunny day here, I should no doubt be thinking of something constructive to do. Although I have just downloaded Call of Duty 2....

We'll get to the music centre and lay some more tracks down today. I promise.

- Ben

08 Feb - 00:09

Another day then draws to a close then at Warwick Towers and once again I’m not quite sure what I’ve done with it. Awoken this morning by our new and enthusiastic cleaner who appears to have something of a bin fetish – asking for them at any opportune moment – That, though, we shouldn’t begrudge her - she did do all the washing up yesterday. The space in between then and now has now seen a show-down of political sorts with my blind-tutor and guru of all things French and well, political, Roge; a baguette at lunch plus an in-depth discussion about the value of fruit in yoghurts and earl grey tea (‘Children really are the Revolution’); an impromptu recording session for EFL; an Italian lesson; a film and a quick jam. This blog, one hopes, for your sakes and mine might force me to do something a bit more interesting...

- Andy

07 Feb - 18:22

Site's up, looking pretty good, the song player's working (I hope) and it's all good. We've only got a few tunes recorded so far, but Cool Edit's the daddy of .wav editing and what we have sounds pretty good. So far we've been laying it down in my bedroom, which ain't ideal. The plan is to get to the music centre on campus in the next few days (it is half term, after all) and take Andy's laptop to get some proper recordings done. Until then, enjoy what's there....

The other idea is that people can e-mail us with ideas for tracks to cover. We'll give most stuff a try as long as it doesn't eat up too much time. Mega-complicated arrangements might have to wait till term ends. That's when work starts on Paranoid Android, goddammit....

- Ben