I love my band!

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Originally uploaded by ambroseneville.

Continuing the theme of posting last week's events, I thought I'd tell you about one of my highlights which was playing at a mental health arts event for Mad for Arts. We were on a bill of predominantly jazz-related music and spoken-word recitations; I knew before we did it that we'd be the only rock band, and yet again we'd be on a line-up that wouldn't be of bands with a natural fit with the music we play, but it almost felt as if the more mis-fit, the better.

There was a very cool sampling duo with broadly jazz instrumentation called 'Rabbit' who were mesmerising to watch and listen to, particularly in combination with their freaky projected visuals. Delay pedals combined with saxophone occurred in one of the other bands as well, which I enjoyed listening to, in the same way that I'd enjoy listening to the wierder sections of The Mars Volta.

What really made the night for me (apart from the newky brown ale, obviously) was that when we went on-stage, it felt like we were hungry again, with the kind of aggression that we'd had when were a brand new band, only with much much better songs to back it up. Guitars were thrashing about, I was narrowly avoiding smacking my face into various solid objects, and there was a sense of barely-orchestrated yet fun chaos about the room, from my point of view. People were either retreating into the recesses of the crypt to get away from the completely un-jazz noise we were banging out (did I mention, it was a gig in a crypt!), or otherwise coming forward with renewed enthusiasm (we're definitely a Marmite band). This is why I'm in a band. I want to let loose, and getting some sort of reaction from the onlookers is a significant bonus. We're playing in Oxford this week, with my Uni mate (and ex-band-mate) Jake's band. I'm really looking forward to it, and I just hope we play as well as we did last week!