Assistant rehearsal 15/06/04

It's odd being vaguley directionless again, and it's perhaps a feeling we should fight against. Nevertheless, we've spent the last two months either working towards finishing our demo or preparing for the gig at the Freebutt. Now that we've done those two things and have nothing else imminent on the horizon we arrived at the rehearsal on Tuesday kicking our heels and wondering where to go.

But by the time we had set up our instruments Pete had worked out a rough, grungy riff and we started to play around with it, ending up with a loud, new-wavey stomp, sans vocals. Moving on, Don't Ask Me has been hanging around for ages and has had it's share of phases (Soul II Soul, Can, RRRRock, disco, reggae) - and we really need to get it organised. Fearing it all sounds too messy, Pete worked out a loud and brittle chorus; hopefully the variety should make the song easier to play. I promised to work on the lyrics this week, and I will. So far not much happens in that respect, the song hinging around the simplistic

"Don't ask me
Where to go.
I'm not ready to go".

which is hardly Leonard Cohen. It's hard to see quite how to fit it all together, but we had a nice progression going where it started with pounding, Can style drums and heavy guitars and melted into a hazy, Clash style stroll in the latter stages, so maybe we'll build on that. I sense a melodica riff beckoning...

The studio can get unbearably hot, and Brighton is baking at the moment. Suddenly it seemed irredeemingly stupid to be couped up in such a tight, warm space, so we went and sat outside by the harbour, dangling our feet over the wooden jetty and watching for jellyfish in the water. Andy reflused to volunteer any critisicm of the sting-happy species, and Ali was, I sensed, a bit put out. If ever there are organised jellyfish trials, or mass hangings of the "many-mouthed hunter" outside Hove Town Hall, I think Ali should be rounded up and questioned. I'm not saying he'd be behind it, I'm just saying he might know something. He is a man with a very low jellyfish threshold.

It reminded me of having a drink with Anne-Sophie, Sam and Dan at the weekend. When all around were generally rubbishing spiders and running down their contribution to the vast web (ha) of life, Victoria refused to put the boot in. "But", Anne-Sophie said, as if trying to understand, "you like spiders?" as if one were either for or against them, as with marmite. For my part, I quite like spiders, too, as long as the size advantage remains in my favour.

Tramping back in, we decided to spend a bit of time glueing old songs together - the intro of Broken matched up with our bratty, BSP styled instrumental. Vaguely aware that we only had ten minutes or so left, we just bashed back and forth between the two parts until it was time to pack up. It sounded great. I wonder how many new songs we can cope with, given that we only tend to play six song sets, but doing new songs is exciting and fun, so...

I finally got my firewire cable through the post today, so I'm going to have a go at editing some of our video footage from the gig (and last night's rehearsal) tonight. May even be able to find somewhere to host a few clips...