Last night, I had a rehearsal with my band, The False Dots. I've no idea how many rehearsals the band has had in our career. I'd guess that its probably between 1,500 and 2,000. It is often the highlight of my week and I always look forward to it. Last nights rehearsal was a bit unusual in that we had two extra guests. We are playing a private party at the weekend and will be having an extra trumpet player join us, as well as a guest vocalist for a couple of songs. When the guest vocalist turned up, his first question was "where's the beer?". These days, when we rehearse, we are an absteemious bunch. Graham and Tom both drive to rehearsals. It was not always like this.
I was recalling with Graham when we used to rehearse in 1988 and he'd bring a mate of his called Buddha. Buddha would sit quietly in the corner watching us rehearse. He'd constantly roll large joints and smoke them, whilst sitting in the lotus position. At the time, this was not that unusual. However, what made Buddha different was that he had a pet tarantula which used to sit on his head. I am not an arachnophobe, but I tend to try and avoid poisonous things that can hurt. Buddha assurred us that the spider was tame and friendly, stating it was better behaved than a family cat. Whilst I didn't mind him sitting there, I did give it a wide berth. I don't know if it was the fumes or the music, but the spider was very well behaved. I don't think too many bands can claim a tarantula as a fan. At the earliest rehearsals, we'd always have an audience, often girls that we knew, who we thought would be impressed by our stunning lack of music aptitude. We'd get cider and beer and after rehearsals, sit around with our friends listening to music until the early hours. Often, we'd also have a game of five a side football, under the M1 spotlights on thr roadway at Bunns Lane Works.
I recall one incident, where we were playing at around 1am, the games were actually pretty serious for us. The Police clearly thought the studios were a den of drug taking and inquity and three vans turned up to bust us. They were bemused to find us mid game. They had expected a bunch of stoned hippies to cart off. Even more dsconcerting to them was the fact that one of our mates was the son of their boss, the chief at West Hendon. After that, they left us alone.
As we all developed stable relationships, the girlfriends would sit in another room and chat whilst we rehearsed. After football, we'd usually have a cup of tea. One ot my favourite memories was when the Flower Lane industrial estate was being built on the old railway sidings. The workers were on a 24/7 schedule. We had a rehearsal, followed by a game of football. At around 2am, we retired for tea and biscuits. To the horror of Steve, one of our mates, there was no sugar. So he strolled over to the workers hut at 2am and asked for some sugar. I think they were completely bemused.
We always took rehearsals seriously. We'd do things like rehearsing in the dark, with a strobe on, so that we could play with lights and not be distracted. We'd also rehearse standing on chairs and jumping off at key points. to ensure we could do the dynamics of a show properly. One passing musician who watched a rehearsal said that he'd never seen anything like it and suggested that we were more like a circus act. Six months later, we did a gig with them. They were as dull as dishwater and their static show got the response it deserved. Of course, they were disdainful of the fact the audience liked us.
When Paul Marvin was in the band, his Dad Hank of the Shadows gave us some great advice. He said "You don't rehearse to learn the songs, you should do that at home, you rehearse so that if you make a mistake, you can seamlessly recover and no one will notice". As a result, we always used to try and put each other off and clown around at rehearsals. Often bits would get incorporated into the show. The net result is that to this day, I always get a buzz and enjoy band rehearsals. I was in a covers band on bass for a short time. It was good experience as a player, but no fun at all.
Here's a little clip from a recent rehearsal. Tom our trumpet player filmed it as he played!
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