Playing catch up...

To FOPP again today (this time the Cockburn St branch – still nothing....

Albums of the day on the Jukebox:
Craig Armstrong - As If To Nothing
Isaac Hayes - Black Moses
ELO - ELO 1

Tonight I finally finished off the recordings for OOTBCD4. Indigo Rose and Danny Dyer had missed their original sessions through illness and so the committee arranged for us to meet up again at The Waverley...

Indigo Rose and her band were late this time so I took Danny first...

He has a trance like style of playing his Spanish acoustic guitar and his voice is badly affected by his ongoing throat cancer which was the reason for his missing the original session...

His three song set was entertaining and I especially liked the touch of attaching two egg shakers to his foot with velcro to provide some percussive backing...

Some man!

Indigo Rose played at OOTB last Thursday (for which I’m still to write my review – argh) and spent around 10 minutes (at least) tuning up her guitar...

Tonight, with two guitars (Ms Rose and Norman Lamont- the latter via several synthesiser type effects), bass and flute (Fraser Drummond) to be tuned, we were 25 minutes into the alloted 30 before the group was anywhere near ready to play..

Since no-one else was due to be recorded we played on for an extra twenty minutes or so and managed to get down three or four takes of her song – I’ll probably use the last, in which we plugged the bass directly into the desk to get rid of a very annoying buzz...

Whist I enjoyed these sessions, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy they are all now finished – of course it’s a bit of a back to the drawing board situation now re the final production of the CD as these two additions may well lead me to change song choices for others, running order etc etc...

I’ll work on that on Sunday...

Re the OOTB review, John Barclay of Impossible Songs has set the bar rather high with his review of my two songs on the night:

“By not starting with what would have been a very appropriate and relevant “Hello Hooray” cover by Alice Cooper, CBQ disappointed a large chunk of the OOTB audience (those born before 1972). Apparently his version was rejected at an early stage of rehearsal due to lyrical height and weight restrictions and some sage like advice from Mrs CBQ (Executive Producer). Maybe we’ll hear it the next time OOTB moves (?). So instead we got a smooth original rendition of “The Happy Song”, which on a superficial level seemed happy enough, though the references to Ice Cream vans and “take some of them and a couple of those” suggest some darker aspects of modern happiness but I believe that’s the way folks live out by Corstorphine these days.

Next was a particularly well chosen (if slightly awkward for the listener) cover of a certain Mr Paul Gadd’s “Hello Hello”. I didn’t recollect or remember that there was much to the song, as CBQ laconically stretched it out to five minutes or so (I must have mixed it up with some other seventies piece of pop jumble). Anyway it was played and sung at a slow and sombre pace with whispered “oohs” replacing Mr GG’s lusty grunts and rock n’ roll bellowing. This soulful, brave and ironic version of a song from the black back catalogue of things we’d all rather not think about caught the now steadily growing OOTB audience slightly off balance. I rather liked that and the fact that it’s sometimes pretty good to be misunderstood, understand?”

Cheers John!!

Elsewhere today – discussions with webmeister Craig re adding Paypal to the new version of the Crispycat Website (current version at http://www.crispycat.co.uk/) which he’s working on...

Ian Sclater also writes requesting MP3 versions of his album to upload to his website – currently under construction (http://www.iansclater.com/)...

And so, back home after the session, and after watching “Grand Designs” – in which a couple converted a concrete water tower into a modern home, or rather built a modern home around it – and a low key episode of “Desperate Housewives” – I did some converting, some e-mailing and some updating of the diary which I’d let slip since the weekend...

And now to bed at 1am as Ian’s song “The End of Another Day” aptly plays on the headphones.....

Highlight of the Day : John Barclay’s review of CBQ