"Just go for it"

The life of a Rock God isn’t all about partying hard and fighting off the attention of adoring fans, at least it isn’t at my end of the field.

The life of a rock god is spent promoting, rehearsing, promoting, travelling, and even more rehearsing and sometimes you get to the point when you wonder if it really is worth all the hassle.

Let me explain.

One of the joys of performing in venues where they sell alcohol is that you often get approached (at speed) by people who wouldn’t normally even talk to the man reading the gas meter they are so shy. However, after three or four glasses of the good stuff they will talk to absolutely ANYONE!

That usually ends up being the band.

Of course most of these good folks have been raised on a steady diet of ‘Fame’, ’High School Musical’ and ‘Britannia High’. They have grown to firmly believe that when some wide eyed student began tapping the edge of their soup bowl with a spoon in the school canteen that indeed the whole place did erupt into a crescendo of musical excellence simply plucked from thin air; with singers and musicians performing unknown songs to a studio produced perfection as if it were spirit born.

With this firm and unyielding belief grasped firmly in their grip, they don’t half get the hump when you confess that you “don’t know how to play ‘Sweet Child of Mine” by Gunz & Roses or something similarly complicated

“Yeah you can” they slur “Just go for it”.

Just go for it!! How many times have I heard that phrase.

What these connoisseurs of all things heavy metal don’t see is the rush that all three bad members have to make on a Thursday evening to get to CJ’s where we have our own little rehearsal studio, to spend hours, days, weeks even months learning the songs that we perform.

We are far luckier than most bands we know as the norm is to ‘hire’ some rehearsal space in a local studio. This involves loading the van at one end, unloading it at the studio, setting up, practicing…taking it all back down again and loading into the van and probably unloading it into the bargain. Oh! And you normally have to fork out 40 to 50 quid into the bargain.

As I said, we are extremely lucky as in between bands, CJ built himself a rehearsal studio in his double garage and the hardest thing we have to do is plug in the guitars and open a beer (we are also blessed that CJ had the fore thought to add a fridge to the whole equation).

One draw back to this blessed rehearsal space is that it is sound proof. Now to those of you that have heard us this may seem somewhat of a blessing. However, in being sound proof it is also air tight….we have used a test meter in there to read the air quality but have found that the surest indicator that we need to open the doors and fast is I begin to sing in Klingon.

Anyway, this weekly ritual happens every Thursday come wind, hail or snow and we spend hour upon hour debating (arguing) about what songs we should consider and then week after week learning them and perfecting them.

Some songs are easier than others. Believe it not, the more badly written a song, especially lyrically, the harder it is to learn. A song by Billy Bragg or Sting, not a problem….Jacko? I’m stuffed….even now after about 5 gigs performing it, I still can’t get the words to ‘Beat It’ in the right order. I am beginning to develop a new respect for soap opera actors who have to learn HUGE chunks of script week after week and get it right!!

Even then probably only about 1 out of every 3 songs makes it beyond the first or second gig.

This represents an immense amount of time and emotional energy, so when some lager fuelled impresario demands a song by the latest X-Factor victor, you will understand me when I say that something inside me dies just a little.

I have learnt to refrain from making sarcastic comments as it doesn’t always go down very well.

When one ‘well oiled’ traveller of life traversed the length of the bar as if a sailor walking the deck of a sailing ship in a heavy wind and asked “Do you know any Donavon? My response of “What? Jason?, was perhaps a little ill advised.

Ah well, as the great CS Lewis once wrote “Upwards and Onwards”, but woe betide the next idiot that tells me to play some ‘Puff Daddy’ and to simply “Go for it!”