16.3.12

This is happening.

BRISCOE GIG #1 
The Lansdowne Hotel - 19/01/12
The Owls
Briscoe
Jimi Linton (Solo)


I can see the Lansdowne from my office. I looked at it a lot on this day.

We were actually supposed to play our first show on a Thursday in mid December, but Jacob was hospitalised with gallstones on the tuesday night. He admitted himself after a rehearsal spent looking (but not sounding) particularly pale and disconcerted. He's a committed bastard godluvim.

We practiced our arses off leading up to that December false-start but with Yak in hospital and the standard xmas/new years absences, we didn't play together again until this Lansdowne gig.

But it was amazing.

I play with Jimi in Ranger Spacey so i know how good he is. If you see his solo stuff, pay attention. Listen to the lyrics. Hear him strap a vocal to a chord progression like an angry patient to a bed then administer the morphine til it sinks back into the covers. Heavyweight songs. Raucous rock'n'rollers from the north, The Owls played after us and they smashed it too. Plus they are total gentlemen. We've since shared the stage with them in Newcastle and if we never play a gig without them again i will be a happy kid.
____

Well. What a fucking thing your first gig is. What an absolute mess, what a jumble. You're brain trying to untangle your stupid fingers while recalling and spitting out lyrics in the right order, and close enough to in-key that people can listen to it. Then you look around at your friends, concentrating hard, sweating onto their instruments, making noise to join with your noise and occasionally acknowledging each other - brother and sisterhood in extremis. We knew the songs, no one else did. We were shouting secrets, we were letting cats out of bags, we were the only ones in the cabin who knew how to land the thing - it's the crazy rush you can only have at the beginning.

The shambles, though, is something I never want to lose. I don't think i ever want to be tight, when shit is on the brink of falling apart that's when you feel alive. It's also why i like a big band with lots of elements, SO MANY THINGS CAN GO WRONG IT'S THE BEST. I have this image in my head of the six of us at the top of a hill with our jackets caught in a car door. Handbrake: off. You'd wanna watch that right?






2 comments:

  1. *tugs furiously at jacket*
    *panics*
    *clings to car*
    *rejoices*

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can that image be the next album cover, please?

    ReplyDelete