Local Hero Records, Canterbury
Local Hero Records, Canterbury, 4th June 2005:
Two exciting developments in one day! A Local Hero gig that finally co-incides with an available drummer, and my first opportunity to witness the new expanded four-piece Hexicon (it seems to be the season for new-expanded line ups). This was fairly short notice, so Gav was unavailable. I did half of the set solo and half with “my sister Meg”, aka Luke. Yet again recording was technically compromised. What tends to happen is either we play well and the gig isn’t recorded at all (often the sound man isn’t up to pressing a button marked “pause”), or we get a good recording and play badly! Tonight I took a chance on taking a lead straight out of the desk without being able to hear how it sounded. It didn’t work. One channel was mush, but the other, obtained by a solitary ambient mike was fine, so the instrumentals came out okay.
Because of the absurd academic labour that has been taking up my evenings and weekends of late, I still haven’t got The New Songs in a performable state. In an effort to refresh my set, I’m either delving ever further back into my archives or looking for ever more esoteric cover versions. I started off with “No Way Home” from way back in 1997, a song that indeed, has yet to find a home. It was followed with a cover of The Only Ones’ “Another Girl, Another Planet”. Joined by Luke, we did “Cocoon”, “Dracula’s Guest” (live debut for this tune), “What’s Under The Stairs?”, “It’s A Small Town” and finally “The New Victor”, for which Paul Rains joined us to provide some wailing sci-fi Hammond from the outer-limits (I’m quite glad we got this on tape).
As ever, names escape me, but Hexicon’s new BIG BAND line up (there were in fact five of them, but the bass player left on Tuesday) features a keyboard/glockenspiel/French Horn/backing vocal/percussionist and a drummer who bears a strong resemblance to MC Honky! According to Mike and Paul, they’ve been in a similar position to us with getting new songs ready, but they played a lot of material that I haven’t heard before. Although in their duo phase Mike and Paul made a good job of creating the illusion of a bigger band with their instrument swapping antics, the extra manpower really enhances their sound and gives a much better impression of their The Noises People Make EP. Result!