"reminds me why i loved having a band..."

nothing has ever reminded my of what I felt abt playing guitar in the JAZZ INSECTS (no one sounds like the JI cuz we were UNIQUE yet also TERRIBLE!!) => Very occasionally I get reminded of being in Shropshire County Orchestra as a teen. Which I loved. No orc or rockband I was ever in was so much fun: first time I fell in love; first time I went to Canada; first time I saw ppl taking drugs.

(grrr did that fix it?)

I'm rehearsing with a band after a 5 year break. All we want to do is work up a set for some gigs which *might* happen in the Autumn, and probably record a few tracks in the studio. Due to busy lives, we just don't have the time for regular sessions, so it's a case of getting together every few weeks when we can all make it. Our first rehearsal, a couple of months back, felt so good. Just plugging in the guitars (rockism alert!) and mikes, and making a bloody noise felt great.

On Friday our keyboard player sent me a rehearsal tape and live gig tape (at The Garage, Highbury) from 1996 of our last band together. I'd never heard it before and forgotten many of the songs. We rehearsed once or twice a week, back then, and put a lot of effort into the band. Anyway to get to the point, the tape is absolutely fantastic - I can't believe how good we were, yet I can't listen to the tape without feeling awful at the waste of such good songs and the knowledge that, even if we were to resurrect some of the material, it wouldn't be as good. Our *time* has passed, and we didn't even know what we had. I can't really go into how it all ended, but (I know this sounds big headed)if we had found a way to continue there's no way we wouldn't have been successful. All weekend I've been *hearing* flashes of music we didn't make, or nearly made.

So what band was that Dr C?

For much of the nineties and even into the current decade, I have been more of a session musician,..recording and playing live with whoever can afford to pay me. But from November of 94 to November of 97, I devoted all of my attention to a group that I felt had something special going for it. I especially look back with fondness for the time that we spent actually composing music that was not so derivative of everything going on with the climate of music in those days. We laughingly considered ourselves an alternative to "alternative". The more established we became, the more we played and the less we created. As we received attention from record labels and radio stations, heads began to swell and less focus was put on becoming better. When I joined the band, I had decided to give it a three year period to see where it would go. This decision was based on some advice that Robert Fripp had personally given me back in 1992. Seeing that we were not quite as driven as from the start, more willing to rest on slight achievements and not push for better, some seemed to be in it for the attention of girls and money over the integrity of the music, I quit the band and it, effectively, broke up that same day. I now wish I had given it some more time. But I have gone on to record and play with musicians of higher caliber (such as David Poe, Bruce Hornsby, Eric Bazillian, and more) though I am doing their thing...it's successful, but it's not my thing, it's somebody else's success for which I am just a sideman.

When I hear bands, I often hear the potential as much as I hear the band. Part of this is maybe a side effect of having been a session player for so long, you listen to the music with the mind of what you could *bring* to it, rather than what is actually there. It's funny, I listen for bands I *don't* wish I were in, because if I can hear room for me to improve them, then I won't like them.

The last time I FELL IN LOVE WITH a band on first listen, it was the Fairy Traders, because they ARE the band that I wish I'd been in when I was 18. It's jealousy and a bit of nostalgia mixed in with genuine love of what they are doing.

I have the aforementioned feeling about a lot of peppy bashabout teenagey bands (mostly Wolfie, actually), having had plenty of fun doing such things myself. Later I was in Michigan-style shoegazer bands and as such can get into certain guitar noises that probably aren't really all that interesting.