Date: 25 November 2006
Place: Rich Bitch, Selly Oak

Another week, another practice. I was hoping to arrive on time this week but Katie was gonna come along too so I had to wait for her to get ready. The practice started as usual, tuning, Chris smashing his drums, then straight into a run through of “Russia”. I guess its our leading song as its the first one I learnt and we play it all the time. Its coming together well. We tried it last time with an extended intro, which sounded really good but perhaps goes on too long for a final version.

After last time, Nick said he wanted to do a Pixies cover, so we all agreed in the pub afterwards that we would give “Hey” a try. So last night, I sat down and learnt it for today. Luckily I also took the liberty of learning some other Pixies songs that came on afterwards, because when I arrived at practice, I found out we were doing “Gouge Away” instead. So I had to have a quick listen to the song on Nick’s iPod to remind myself of it. The bass line is pretty simple but I didn’t know the pattern so was just kinda stringing it together (I’ve now listened properly and realised it was very basic.) We had a few run throughs of that, finally giving up and moving on.

We mainly worked on the Clapping song Hand Clap Attack Which started out with a nice clapping intro, that sounds nothing like Mickey(!), and has built from there. Its sounding good now. James wrote some lyrics and we have a verse and chorus sorted. The only problem was getting from the verse into the chorus because there is a tempo change, and the guitars both come in, and its a heavy chorus so its a lot to jump to. We still need some work on that but its another song slowly working towards a final finished track.

Did the usual trip down to the Pear afterwards for food. Played some pool, which unfortunately, I was shockingly bad at. I lost all 4 games I played. The first against James (potted the black), the other 3 were doubles, swapping partners each time, and each time I was awful. I attribute it to not playing for ages and having lost the knack (cue James playing “My Sharona” intro – we stop after the intro cos thats all he knows). Had a few more drinks then came home.

Finished the evening watching a few episodes of Call for Help with Leo Laporte. Its a good tech show, similar to TechTV, The Screensavers and the like.

All in all, good day. Practice is good, I’m more confident, although I need to learn the songs, and perhaps get them recorded so I know what I’m playing when. Hopefully in the next few weeks, we can record one or two roughly to get a start on an album or EP.