Everything Old Is New Again

So, I was sat in the Southwark Tavern on Saturday night, sipping a pint of merlot and mentally jamming along to the surprisingly groovy soundtrack they had blaring from the PA. Loads of song ideas were coming to me. I think it was a combo of the slight wine buzz and the fact that the music was blurred by the chatter from the inebriated punters.

I had all kind of stuff bouncing around inside my head. Dance tunes, angry rock 'fight' songs... all kind of off-the-wall ideas. At some point, though, I remembered an archive of old songs that I'd recorded back when I started playing guitar 'for real' again, some 4 years ago now.

The songs were really nothing more than random chord progressions over which I'd jammed a little. At most I might have written a basic lyric and recorded that, too. And they were all taped before I had anything even vaguely decent for laying down a drum track.

After The Tavern, we stopped by Shunt Lounge again, just to see what was going on. It was all very 'London Underground' themed, with lots of tube memorabilia hung up around the place. For the first time I noticed an old piano, abandoned in one of the corridors. Recalling my childhood I bashed out a version of "Chopsticks" that my mother had taught me. I then started screwing around with building some triads, 7th chords etc. Man, it was fun to play that thing, even though about a quarter of the keys were missing and not all of the remaining ones worked.

On Sunday I spent some time delving into our archived computer backups to see whether any of my early recordings still existed. To my surprise, quite a few of them were were still there, saved for posterity. I say 'surprise' as we've not had much luck with computers over the last few years. All the PCs we've bought have suffered hard disk failures. During one particularly bad crash we lost so many of our digital photos that it was a bit like having visual Alzheimer's.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that I dragged out a few of the old recordings and had a listen. What surprised me was that despite being really simple, some of them were really quite good. They actually sounded like songs. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that perhaps they were good because they were so simple. They had an openness to them. A naivety, even. I even found one cut on which I'd sung. The lyrics were terrible, but even so I didn't hate it. I think I'm going to work the old stuff back into my 'to be developed' pile.

Shake the tree, see what falls out...

Open Mic @ The Spice Of Life Pub (Soho)

Last night I went to my first Monday night open mic at the Spice of Life pub in Soho... not to perform, as a spectator. I've been along to their Tuesday night gigs before, which are either a blues jam (mediocre ego fest) or a 'groove' jam (really good).

The format of the evening is that you turn up early, put your name on the list and then wait to play. Each artist gets to showcase two songs per session. It seemed like you were supposed to play acoustic guitar or piano, though there were also harmonicas and a cello in the mix.

The first thing to say is that overall I was really impressed with the quality of the performances, particularly in terms of the vocals. Most of the acts could really sing. There were a couple of stand outs for me, a girl called Amanda whose voice was just amazingly evocative: a hippie-chick with a rootsy folksy style. The other one was a couple of guys on guitar and cello. I think they were Karimi & Moore. Moore's cello work was fantastic, but Karimi's incredible voice was killer. A true talent.

My plan had been to go along and chat with some of the people, make contacts. You know: network. Not much happened this time around, unless you count that I was hit on by a drunk straight woman, but I plan on going back. What was neat about the open mic was the variety of songs and styles showcased. Their groove jam was similar in some ways, but not as structured. The blues jam, which I had possibly unrealistically high expectations of, was a free-for-all ego trip, with each musician competing with the others on stage for their 15 minutes of fame.

Although I didn't network as I'd hoped this time round, I did feel inspired listening to all that original music. I came out of the pub with a few song ideas of my own:

One Last Trick (Before I Settle Down)
The Only One (I Couldn't Get)
If You're Gonna Do It, Do It (Don't Waste My Time)

Okay, so there are no stellar ideas there, but at least my creative juices were flowing.