Best Laid Plans...

...or Rock & Roll weekend heads south!

So, this weekend I wasn't working and Tim was away on a course so I had planned an intensive musical time.

Things started off well enough. Col of AxeVictim's band, Magic Ship were playing a support gig at the White Hart in Barnes. Magic Ship are a good-time rockin' band and the perfect way to get the musical juices flowing. For the sake of 'journalistic integrity' I have to say that their performance wasn't up to the standard of their previous Half Moon headlining gig, but there were pre-show issues with the promoter, the evening's line-up was incredibly badly thought out, with a strange mix of electric and acoustic acts, which sucked the life out of the room and then on top of that, Col's Firebird was throwing a wobbly, refusing to stay in tune. Not to mention the fact that through illness and so on they'd not managed to squeeze in a rehearsal inbetween gigs.

Despite the ribbing that we gave the band post-set, they did manage to get on top of most of the songs, particularly "Monkeyphonic Alphabet" and "Lucky Lost". Lucky's not my favourite tune of theirs by a long shot, but they managed to knock it out of the ballpark on Friday night.

A few beers, some good music and the last train home to civilization. A promising start to the weekend.

When I woke up early on Saturday morning I was buzzing with ideas. Intro riffs were running through my mind. Power chords, lead lines. The works. By the time I'd showered and my head was starting to clear I could feel things starting to slip away so I quickly fixed coffee, grabbed the nearest available guitar and started to try and nail down my inspiration.

Nearest guitar... big mistake. The nearest guitar was the acoustic. Not the rock 'n' roll leviathon that I needed. I could literally feel the inspiration slipping away as I sat there, plucking at the strings. D'Oh!

Frustration set in, so I took a step back and looked at some of the homework that had been set for Rockschool. I was keenly drawn to the first solo from "Let It Be" that we'd been told to study, learn, whatever. It's not a hard solo to learn by any means, but it's got bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs etc, which I guess was the point of the exercise. I 90% learned it. Not well enough to play it through without looking at the tab, but well enough for now.

I was starting to get back into the groove. Riding the George Harrison wave, I started writing down lyric ideas... Not Good. ABORT!!! ABORT!!!! My mental rhyming dictionary was fully engaged and I couldn't not rhyme! Everything I came up with was trite.

So, I decided to take a break... at which point I realised that while music may be the food of love, my company tax return was due and I needed to get that out of the way to put some food on the table. Disruption. Documents to sign, information to mail off.

I could go on, but let's just say that from then on, whilst I did manage to play/practice guitar more, my muse had definitely left the building. It really does underline the fact that when you have inspiration you just have to seize it there and then. Don't shower, don't fix coffee. Just get to work!

Oh, and yes, I had a listen through to most of the new Guns album. You know, they just let the perfect adjective into the next edition of Collins English Dictionary: 'Meh'!