All the songs we're not playing. Also, it's official, we're aliens.
Howdy Folks.
The benefit of a local gig is the normality of the day after and the time to blog and reflect.
We played the Annandale hotel last night, or to be more accurate, the reincarnation of the Annandale. Much as with the Empire (also in Annandale) the retrofit makes it 'better', but some primal essence is lost in the cleaning. Also probably some evidence. Moving on.
I know that Demographics shift, people move in and out of the rings of the city. Change is natural. The music scene in Sydney needs to create its myth anew.
In the case of the Annandale, some sound reflection diffusion would assist :-) The bright shiny flat surfaces and direct box like construction maximises space but pumps even quiet stuff straight down the end of the place to the restaurant, and who needs Guitar Solo a La Loud with your slow cooked beef cheeks?
Being the thoughtful chaps we are we opted to start with all the nice stuff, figuring that by the time we got to the louder bits we'd have a slightly-more-partying crowd. That worked fine but it got me thinking about the other songs we weren't playing.
Come to think of it, we could have played most of the night in a quiet acoustic-ish mode, something we haven't done since the power failed at that Tamworth Festival show. But I digress.
Wildly.
ahem.
Somehow, two very gentle sweet little tunes have crept into the starting line up. 'All that's right' and 'Stopping By'. Mr Wizard would like to point out that neither of them have sufficient clever chords or changes. Beware the pent up chord progressions that doing such simple songs will unleash in him. No seriously. Just wait until you hear a new one, 'isnt how i wanted it', you'll plotz.
During this week we had a chance to work on the next batch of moonshine, including, yep, you guessed it, More Complex Adult Oriented Chord Progressions. Several new candidates will be rolled out at coming gigs, to live, to fly or to crash and burn. This wonderfully disruptive process yields triumph and tragedy. Bring it on.
Did i mention that all of these thoughts flashed through my head at the start of the show?
Thanks to DC's training and mutual agreement, we're now 'calling' songs rather than prebuilding a specific set. Sort of. We have 'song clusters' (face it we are so nerd-core) to allow Mr Wizard to swap guitars and also Yours Truly to check the vibe and match the song to it.
So, when you're at the aforementioned Annandale and think OMG it's a bright loud room, I can pick songs to suit, you cast your mind to the repertoire and think 'oh yeah we'll play that one' then 'oh no the boys will get mad if I call that one cos we haven't played it in months' and then 'hey that's a bummer that's a good song' and finally 'come to think of it, there's a lot of good songs we're not playing..'
When I voiced that thought, Mr Wizard pointed out that some of the 'show piece' songs we used to do - parchment farm, mississippi meltdown, Hollow Tree, Texas Rosie...etc etc...are completely out to pasture at the moment. Wow.
That's a bummer because some of those are band favourites. Of course, there are less well beloved experiments such as 'Shake'em down mama' and some relegated to the OMG bucket (sadly a personal fave, island time is in that bucket).
As the new songs come in to the set, of necessity, they unseat the previous champions (sigh). See what happens when I get Saturday off? I get all reflective.
I can feel a rehearsal coming on :-)
Also, we're Aliens.
