Tie-Dye Quartet Pictures

The wonderful Chris Lush not only took photos of Tie-Dye Quartet for our album artwork, but also comes along to the occasional gig and photographs us. Here's a few shots from our show on Thursday - be sure to click on each image to get sent through to the full quality pictures, the previews really don't do them justice.


<sub>Our good looking drummer, Pete Ford


Presumably this was a tricky passage...


Guitar solo!


Can't forget the trumpet


There was a very good crowd on the night


Seriously, people were queueing up outside the door, one in - one out</sub>

I'll also see if I can dig up some audio from one of the people who was either filming our set, or just watching the entire thing through a digital camera lens. Presumably the former.

Xx

First gig for a while

Last night was the first gig I've played with the Tie-Dye Quartet since recording and...whew. I think the best description for the night would be 'a bit Spinal Tap'.

Our guitarist got held up (after giving a guitar lesson, what are the odds?) and we were almost about to start playing without him when he came through the door. The stage set-up was, to be generous, not the best I've ever seen. Suffice to say that I could only hear the drums, as could the drummer. Lots of head gestures were in order. Oh, also my bass string snapped during the third song and we had to have a quick improv guitar & drums jam whilst I changed it in record time.

Still though, no matter how badly we thought we performed, everyone genuinely seemed to think it sounded great - even the other musicians in the audience. We even got offered a gig at someone's Ball in a fancy hotel, and sold a few albums once we were done playing. Clearly the acoustics were fantastic eh?

We're going to be practising hard now for some of the more important (and/or paid) gigs we've got coming up - this was just a free show at the University bar. If people thought last night was good, then I don't see how we can fail :)

I'll get some pics up once our official photographer has finished Photoshopping them to make us look good. I might even put a short video or audio file up too if I can find one which doesn't make me wince too badly.

BOTB over

Well that one was a pretty fun night again - congrats to everyone who played!

First up (in case anyone needed proof the draw was random) were Babagau and Friends. Babagau is a crazy Greek bassist, and his friends were Marc, myself, Terra and Ronan for that night. Normally we just get together and jam for a couple of hours at a time, without stopping or talking - but as the LMS demanded a half hour set and two disparate songs, we swapped some instruments after 25 minutes, paused for a couple of seconds, and then carried on. Two guitars with effects, one fretless bass with a load of effects, and a full digital keyboard with an effects pedal, you get the idea.

The music was a bit less fun to play than normal, and I literally could not hear my keyboard on stage for the entire half hour, but it was still pretty amusing watching the reactions of the usual LMS crowd to some experimental prog. I think the overall opinion was; "Good, but not my style" - which is fair. Oh, did I mention I was half naked and coated in varying bits of body paint? Pics when I get them..

Following that was Allucinere - Terra's 'hardcore' lot, and the only Aston band at the moment who are properly recording, gigging and making a lot of their own original stuff. It's not quite my sort of thing but I do really like a couple of their tracks - normally the ones led by Rob Moore, their keyboardist, who's ace.

Bit early in the night, and a bit of a rubbish crowd for their needs meant that there wasn't too much rocking out or anything, but they still put on a good show - and I do have one photo of Terra doing his little Busted jump from a pretty impressive height:



On third (I think) were The Clerks, who ended up winning the night. Very improved from last year, playing some proper rock mixed in with some indie. They were very tight and had a nice groove to what they did, and clearly enjoyed playing the music too, which is important. When they led in the intro to Sultans of Swing myself & Gib almost cried, thinking they'd screw it up beyond belief, but I only managed to count 3 mistakes during the guitar solos, so I'm pretty happy with that. Good job.

After (or before) The Clerks came The Queue, Aston's ultimate pub band, playing a nice mix of pop rock and um, rocky pop. Tony seemed a bit confused (ie: drunk) as they came on stage, and at first thought he was a crowd member, and then a keyboardist, before being persuaded to play the drums. Nothing massively special from these guys, but good fun music all the way through - and an awesome techno intro to one of their originals from keyboardist Matt - loved it.

Crank Cranker/The Reacharound Agenda came on fifth - they're anything but poppy. Marc Harvey (who also played as Babagau's friend) jammed on a bass with a bunch of effects whilst John Guy laid down some nice beats. I really liked the way that Marc would drop into the background sometimes and you'd actually hear the drums leading - don't think anyone else managed that on the night, and John's a good drummer too. I enjoyed it, not entirely sure the majority of the crowd did though, I think they wanted something a bit more danceable by that time of night.

Penultimate band on was my own lot - the gorgeous Tie-Dye Quartet, and I'm pretty sure if there was a 'best dressed band' award then we deserved it. Terra looked smart, Tim & myself wore suits and Julie-oh wore the fantastic dress that we bought earlier in the week for her.

We played three originals (catchily titled 'Julie's Song', 'Tim's Jam' and 'Ina's Jam') and two covers (Ain't No Sunshine [Eva Cassidy style] and Just The Two Of Us [Grover Washington Jr. Style]) - which seemed to go down pretty well. We got a round of applause after each song, and even got the odd one after what the crowd thought was a particularly good solo from whichever of us.

Ju's song was a little bit odd to play, as for some reason we managed to start it at about twice the normal speed, so I'm not sure how that sounded, but being nice and professional we worked around it - just meant I had to play walking bass instead of the nice groove I'd worked out. We'd only practised Julie's song and my jam twice, within the space of an hour or two a couple of days before the gig, before that we hadn't even heard them. Tim's jam we knew a little better, as we'd made it up that time we played at Boots, and that went well - the theme's so haunting. My jam's pretty much just an excuse for a 5 minute bass solo, but I noticed Julie doing some funky stuff on the trumpet in the breaks - can't wait to hear that one!

Final band on was The Hookahs.

Anyhow, great night was had by all, well done to the Clerks, and as soon as I get photos and mp3s, I'll post them up on here :)

BOTB

Well, battle of the bands is coming up again, and it should be pretty damn fun.

I'm opening up the night with Babagau and Friends - our prog jam group, which is going to be interesting. We've never prepared any material or played to any sort of pattern - whenever we get together we just jam for 2 hours straight with no talking or other communication at all.

As it's a live performance though, we're going to have to cut down to half an hour, and in order to qualify as participants we need two 'songs', so we're just going to stop halfway through and then start again, creating two separate pieces. I think I'll read The Raven by Poe during the first quarter hour, and then just solo on keyboard/harmonica/vocals for the other quarter hour. Oh, and I'll also be mostly naked and covered in body paint - probably blindfolded too. Should be fun.

The other band I'll be competing with is of course, my lovely Tie-Dye Quartet (which oddly enough, has actually been a Quartet recently) - and we'll be dressed up smart and playing something a bit more 'normal'. Julie's written a lovely vocal song, we've got a haunting jam Tim made up when we played at Boots and there's a very bass-led (obviously) jam of mine we'll be performing too, along with two standards (Ain't No Sunshine and Just The Two Of Us). We had a get together today and went over the three originals (learning Julie's and my own from scratch, in about half an hour, not bad eh?)

So, if you're about on Thursday, I'll be onstage at 8pm and 10.30pm, and the rest of the night should be great too :)

London tomorrow!

Well today was pretty lovely all around. Got up late and had Frisbee as usual, although we had to wait around for half an hour watching a fairly decent basketball game that had overrun into our time.

Had a nice evening with Gen after that, we made some Welsh cakes (although she grilled half of them, 'Welsh cookies' anyone?) which turned out alright, watched House Of Flying Daggers (great, by the way) and I gave her a massage for an hour or so (also great, of course).

London's tomorrow though, for the MSP event - staying overnight in the Hilton and off to Namco station on the Sunday, both of which should be awesome. Going to record a 2 hour prog jam before that too, I'll upload that somewhere if anyone's going to be taking copious amounts of drugs and needs a soundtrack anytime soon. The real fun's going to be on Monday though when we get talked through all the Cool Stuff in Vista - I love MS presentations, they're always so professional and interesting.

Was hoping to see Blue Man Group in the evening with Lucie too, but that's just not practical - we'll do it some other time though :)

Punk ain't dead

Decided to skip the LMS tonight - though the room was surprisingly full, they made £110 tonight by only charging £1 or £2 per head, or sometimes nothing. Instead, I spontaneously decided to go and see the Ruff And Ready tour at the Academy. The King Blues were playing, and I loved them when I saw them supporting Capdown. Also on the tour were Mouthwash (who I was too late to see), Failsafe and headlining were Sonic Boom Six.

Failsafe were pretty good, and seemed to almost be getting into what I consider the real spirit of punk by the end of their set - even though it was a bit heavy and distorted for my usual tastes. I should point out that when I think of punk, I don't think of spiky haircuts, swearing or distorted guitars - it's not a look or a style of music, it's a philosophy and a passion.

That philosophy, that passion, that sheer indefeasible spirit was what I saw in the last two bands tonight. Even though the styles of music were so wildly different, the message and the feeling behind it was the same.

The King Blues had bongos, a ukulele and a couple of acoustic guitars, along with the usual rhythm section and the odd few interesting instruments thrown in every now and then. They combined rap with folk with doo-wop, but it's the spoken word interludes and the preaching to the crowd that really wowed me. You could really feel the passion and fire in every word, as the frontman spoke out against all forms of discrimination and right-wing facism. This wasn't mindless anarchism, this was intelligent and heartfelt, with well thought out points, inspiring not violence or aggression, but thought and inner-searching.

Sonic Boom Six kept the pure punk ambience of the night alive but in a wildly different way. Although King Blues, not Sonic Boom Six were the band from London, I really got the vibe of the London garage scene from these guys. The sort of freestyle rap and hip-hop I'd normally associate with the streets of inner London was mixed in with some heavyish 'punk rock' (as the musical genre is annoyingly called) and some good old fashioned ska. Extremely danceable stuff, a wildly eclectic mix of styles thrown together and some really high quality hip-hop thrown in there (none of the modern 'pimp n playa' stuff, just quality beats and some superb raps and improvs thrown in) to really round it off.

Punk, in its truest and purest form isn't dead at all, the music, the culture and the look may have changed or died, but the spirit is still there, still waiting, go check it out sometime. A caveat however - you're not likely to find it by browsing the 'punk' section of your local music store or torrent site, you'll find it out on the streets, in a small upstairs gig, or on some pirate digital radio - where it belongs.

2006 Awards

1) Drinking buddy
Would probably have to be Terra, bit of an odd choice as he doesn't actually drink, but on the plus side, that means he's able to get me somewhere near the vicinity of my bed when I'm too wasted to stand.

2) Lifetime service award
What? Erm, me. I'm great.

3) Newcomer of the year
Rachelle's probably the best newbie we've gained at Aston this year, though kudos to Babagu aka 'crazy greek guy' for getting prog rock jam sessions started up!

4) High point of the year?
Well, take your pick really..any of the jazz gigs, birthday weekend with Lucie, house Christmas party, any of the CompSoc LANs. Nah, I know what the high point was. It was the day Xander returned from London bearing the golden box of Guitar Hero.

5) Low point of the year?
Probably walking into my Comms & Info Skills oral exam, sitting down, and then realising that everyone else in the room had an entire powerpoint presentation and full set of notes with them. The examiner wasn't too impressed by my improv speech, though I thought I did a decent job.

6) Best holiday?
What's a holiday? Tenby with Lucie :)

7) Anthem for 2006?
Monkey Steals The Peach - Guitar Hero. ;) Or possibly Beer by Reel Big Fish.

8) Any regrets?
Don't be silly, I'm awesome.

9) Best night out?
If it was that good, I wouldn't remember it now would I. Let's say one of the Reading Festival nights though, they were all great. Or maybe Laserquest & bowling with CompSoc.

10) Worst night out?
Probably that time in the Sacks where I left before any of the good acoustic acts came on, and then managed to get the wrong bus and have to walk three miles home, and then stayed up all night doing coursework with Clush, before handing in the worst piece of crap I've ever designed and implemented. Free sausages were ace though.

11) Who did you spend valentines' with?
Lucie (I hope).

12) Best relationship?
Only got the one sorry.

13) Worst relationship?
So I guess it wins this prize too...three in a row for Lucie.

14) First gig of the year?
Playing - probably with my jazz band at an LMS gig.
Watching - couldn't tell you, memory's not that great.

15) Last gig of the year?
Playing - paid jazz gig at Sutton Coldfield Baptist Church Youth Group's Christmas Ball (that's a mouthful eh?).

Watching - Capdown, Buzzkill, King Blues & some local band at Birmingham Barfly. Great night, lots of dancing and good music. Really impressed by all three of the main bands, the local lot looked decent too.

16) How did you spend your birthday?
Went to Tenby with Lucie =)

17) Best decision made all year?
Joining the Microsoft Student Partner scheme. Buying a trumpet was pretty ace though.

18) What are your plans for next year?
Get a first on the second year of my degree, get & go on a good placement (Rare Game Studios, Microsoft or Google hopefully), play a bunch of jazz, play a bunch of Ultimate Frisbee and generally have a good time.

19) Most stupid idea when drunk?
Allowing Gib near me with a camera.

20) Biggest surprise of the year?
Waking up (insert humorous position/situation here) after a night out.

21) A phrase to sum up this year?
"EFFFFFFFFFFFFFF"

22) Most commonly used word/ phrase?
"What key are we in?"

23) Best film?
American Beauty - I'd never actually watched it through before this year.

24) Best album?
Roflcopter - Music to hoover to. Or, if you want a non-imaginary album; Mose Allison - Allison Wonderland.

25) Best kiss of the year?

Gib. Of course.

The end of term LMS/Karaoke

Well, last Thursday was a night I'll certainly remember! But, not for a few more weeks I imagine, had a tad too much to drink towards the end. The Live Music Society here at Aston had their final gig of the term, which I believe was meant to be Christmas themed, and it was pretty fun for all.

I got to open up with some smooth jazz from the Tie-Dye Quartet (who, annoyingly enough, were actually playing as a quartet for the first time ever) - we ended up improvising most of it though, as we'd barely played with Julie-oh on the trumpet before and we were just trying to get a bit of practise in before our proper gig the next day.

Side note - the proper gig was great fun! We dressed up smart but still ended up outclassed by all the 14-18 year olds who were there for their Christmas ball. Had a class time - free Christmas dinner, and an hour and a half or so of playing jazz, with a crowd who were dying to dance. And we got paid for it! We had to change half of our set and play songs we'd never practised just to keep everything upbeat enough - we'd planned a lot of slower songs as we thought they'd be a bunch of shy, self-conscious teenagers.

Anyhow, back to the LMS night. Next up were the two external bands - Hampton St and Shattered Age. Hampton St featured the legendary Mez on drums, who didn't dissapoint, and it was good to see Whitty again on the vocals (he was still raving about the jazz too, which was nice) - he's a real showman. Wasn't too impressed with Shattered Age, but they weren't too bad either. The Clerks came on after that - and they were massively improved from last year, though my senses were becoming a bit clouded by that point. Allucinere finished up the support acts' part of the night, whilst I sat near the bar drinking away.

Finally, I got to go back on stage with Roflcopter for the last set of the night. Normally, I'd have relished the opportunity, but by now I was finding it rather hard to stand up, let alone stand up and keep my balance with a bass around my chest. According to photos, and witness accounts, I did actually manage this feat, and some deluded fools even seem to think I managed to play a couple of basslines too. I do remember pulling the lead out of the amp more than once, and wowing the crowd with multiple variations of jokes that weren't funny the first time though, so not all was lost.

What's red and not there?
No tomatoes. - Thanks to Rob Miles for that one.

What's orange and not there?
No oranges.

What's yellow and not there?
No yellows.

Next, so I'm told, came karaoke, and according to the photos of the night, I got my hands on a yard of ale, along with various other drinks. The next day I woke to see a flash video of myself dancing to numanuma circulating the internet, but that wasn't my primary concern, as I was lying atop my bed wearing only a furry purple glove.

Great evening and a nice round off to the year - especially after the weeks and weeks of pretty much non-stop work I'd been doing.

Xx