I went down to the crossroads...
Entry posted by mark555
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Another Saturday and it's band practice - after a week of being up at 5.15 every day and lucky if I am home for 6.30 every evening, Thursday was horrendous. The motorway had been shut at a key point where two motorways merged and guess where I was. It took me three and a half hours to drive the 52 miles home from our offices.
But, other good hings have happened within our family, my wife, Helen has secured a new job at a practice in the area after putting with dreadful treatment from the husband and wife team of doctors who have taken over the surgery where she has worked happily for thirteen years. She is very highly qualified in her nursing and was snapped up after a half hour interview. The people at the surgery where she is going to work could not be more different and the pay increase will be significant. On top of that, all our children are making their way in the world and we have a beautiful granddaughter who is a delight to us.
As we were not rehearsing last week because I had too much to do at home, I took my Strat and Tokai (Les Paul) to the tech to get them adjusted and repaired. The strat trem block thread had completely gone rendering it useless, (it's twenty six years old and I have had it from new) the stop bar posts in the Tokai had lost their ability to hold the posts upright. It turns out that they were made of aluminium and not up to the job they were made to do. So, new parts were engineered and fitted, the trem block was drilled and a brass sleeve inserted and threaded. I also had some minor adjustments made, a set up etc on both guitars. If you read my last blog entry, you will recall I mentioned a guitar player who had made his own strat and the bass players precision bass. I took my guitars to him last Saturday lunchtime and they were both ready for me the following afternoon. They were superbly done and are a joy to play. While I was at the guy's (Dave) house, he showed me some of the other guitars he has made and I am seriously considering having him build a Tele for me. He has made a pink Strat that would rival Kuz's Kern Tele, with a stunning flame neck. He even winds the pick ups himself and builds them from scratch, they sound excellent.
So, against a backdrop of good things happening, I was really up for practice today.
Today we were going to learn Sunshine of Your Love and Lola, the old Kinks hit. Well, wouldn't you know it, that sometimes it's the easy songs that just won't work, and we couldn't make make Lola work for love nor money and after ten minutes scrapped it. So, on to Sunshine of your Love, which went so well it was great to play. We were so pleased with it, out of the blue I said wouldn't it be great to do Crossroads? Right away, Dave, our other guitar player went into the intro, we all hit it immediately and played a stonking version, we were all on a real high with it, we could not believe how well it went. There are not many bands with Crossroads in their set, but it's in our now, and we are very proud of how we play it. So, two really good Cream numbers in our set, so we just rehearsed some songs we had messed around with in the preceding practices. Those of you from the States will very probably never have heard of Cliff Richard, but he was Britain's first true rock and roll star and had a huge hit with a song called "Move it", which still stands up today, it is a terrific number. We revisited it and it was perfect. It was recorded with a Strat playing lead and I nailed the song perfectly. On saying that, it's not too hard to play, but you do need a specific "touch" to get it right. We also ran through a few of our other numbers to keep them fresh, one of our own favourites is Riot in Cell Block Number 9, but we play it with somewhat of a kick compared to how the original version was recorded by The Robins way back in the day. Look for Doctor Feelgood on youtube and watch their version of it.
So today we are all really pleased with how things are going and very soon it will be time to start looking for gigs. The city of Sheffield is thirty miles south of here and has a lot of venues, so maybe we will be playing down there. We will soon be choosing two sets to play from our list, and polishing them until they are at a high standard.
Meanwhile, Wishbone Ash are playing in our town in October, tickets will be bought!!
To all of you who take the time to read my blog, thank you for doing so, and a thank you for the kind comments which are often posted, I still haven't worked out why I can not replay to them in the comments box.
Once again, thanks for reading.
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