My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 14/9/2004 - The Music Shed, Derby

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Films about bands are always full of LIES. For example, while it is true that SOME Mayors may OCCASIONALLY be evil, it very rarely manifests itself in a desire to close down the local skateboard park, and even when it DOES such decisions cannot be reversed, nor corrupt officials deposed, by staging a benefit concert. Not since the 1832 reform act, anyway.

An even bigger fib is one of omission. A MASSIVE part of being in a band is practicing - INDEED for some bands practicing is all you ever do - but this hardly EVER appears in films, and even when it DOES appear it is nothing like the real thing. If you believed what you saw in the movies you would be convinced that all band practices go through the following stages:

1. Everyone lolls around a massive room, draped with ethnic rugs, looking cool yet restless.

2. The Nervous Nerdy Guitarist (who will grow his hair long as soon as their first single is released and then, depending on the kind of film it is, either get addicted to heroin OR "hilariously" call Mr Big from Big Records "dude" at an inappropriate moment) will say "I've got an idea for a riff" and then play THE GOOD BIT from THE FAMOUS SONG, nervously.

3. The Drummer and The Bass Player nod enthusiastically and join in, IMMEDIATELY knowing how it goes.

4. The singer, after some thought, suddenly KNOWS ALL THE WORDS and starts singing them.

5. FADE to the next night, where they've learnt it all EXACTLY like the record and are playing to a MASSIVE crowd of people going MENTAL.

This is NOT how practices go. For a start, the room you practice in is usually dank, dark, small, and STICKY. The stickiness comes from the years and years of BANDS who have been in there, OOZING. The fact that bands are predominantly made of of young males at that difficult age when their MUM has stopped telling them when to have a wash and haven't yet got a LIFE PARTNER to take over the responsibility means that a room where hundreds of them regularly congregate in groups to jump around and shout is ALWAYS going to be a bit whiffy.

All of these FACTS were true for our new rehearsal venue, The Music Shed in Derby. As rehearsal rooms go it was pretty good - they certainly had better GEAR than we'd been used to before - but the STICKINESS was all present and correct. More strangely, the room we regularly booked gradually got SMALLER. Every time we went in something NEW had been left in there - never an exciting additional instrument or anything remotely cool, but something odd like a chinese screen, or lampshade, or at one point what looked like a computer server and terminals, so that each time we were in we'd get shoved closer and closer together by all the FURNITURE, until we were all pretty much sitting on the bass drum.

The Music shed had two other points against it - well, three, if you counted their strict instruction that ALCOHOL was not allowed in the rooms, but as nobody ever paid any attention to it I guess we ought not to either. I think the main reason they tried to BAN BOOZE was not for puritanical reasons, but rather PRACTICAL ones, as the first proper major DEMERIT was that they had NO TOILETS! I believe this situation has since been rectified, but at the time you EITHER had to borrow a key, walk across the car park, unlock one door, enter a CODE to get through another, and then SLINK through some unoccupied offices to find their toilets OR suddenly find the other side of PARKED VANS to be VERY INTERESTING INDEED.

The other major downside of The Music Shed was that is was under a MAGICAL SPELL which meant that, if you ever managed to find it, you would always FORGET where it was as soon as you left. That's the reason I've always given for getting lost on my way there so often, and it is the reason I am sticking to.

ANYWAY, to return to the LIES of films, they also chronically misrepresent the process of actually practicing by MISSING most of it OUT. The bulk of any practice is somebody saying "Come on then, let's do that one again", everybody else MOANING, then eventually agreeing to have another go at a song you've been playing for YEARS but still somehow contrive to cock up every time you play it. Only a very small part of any session is taken up with "jamming", and this too is far away from the Hollywood Image. A REAL Jam invariably begins with five minutes of everybody looking SHEEPISH, like a group of schoolchildren who have not done their homework but are hoping someone else will be the first to admit it. Eventually someone will start playing SOMETHING - this will ALWAYS be something slow and, frankly, GOTHIC. Relieved that someone has at least taken responsibility everyone will join in and SLOG through the miserable repetitive tedium of it all for about 10 minutes, generally following the TWELVE BAR BLUES chord arrangements, purely because they can't be arsed to think of anything else.

Many MANY bands get no further than this - almost ANY bill of bands will feature at least ONE who have thought this is ENOUGH and, if you are at a GOTH or BLUES night it will be ALL of them. It is only through the purest WILL that, once that's got through, somebody else will be strong enough to say "All right then, how about this?"

And that's usually when the next band comes in to set up their gear. Maybe that's why Hollywood chooses THEIR version of events instead?

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