Blog: The Launch Of An Album

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At last, after YEARS of gestation and MONTHS of preparation it was Album Launch Day. I had an early morning BOOZE CRUISE to Tesco, to get ready for having The Validators stay over, a BIG BATH, and then headed into town wearing my SUIT. It was a special occasion!

I arrived at The Fly to find The Tiger and The Pattisons already arrived and setting up, and we were soon SOUNDCHECKING. The soundguy, Luka, was GRATE - there are loads of LOADS of arsey incompetent soundmen, a small group of NICE ones and an even smaller group of competent/can actually be bothered ones, so when you meet somebody who is ALL these things it is worth SHOUTING about. Mr F A Machine arrived as we were mid-CHECk so we finished off with a full compliment all, as stated above, pretty full SOUNDED.

As The Fly is in my WORK HOOD I knew PRECISELY where to go for a decent pint, and we were soon stood outside The Museum Tavern ("surprisingly nice" - EVERYONE, EVER) having some TASTY beer, after which we ended up in Pizza Express having a) tasty pizza b) traditional pre-gig Setlist ROW. This went on for quite some time - one might have thought that, having REHEARSED and AGREED the entire setlist for the tour, choosing the songs to play this time would be PEASY. NO.

The "discussion" was still RAGING when we got back to the venue, and we spent a happy 90 minutes watching bits of Typewriter and The Kiara Elles (both of whom were dead good, and I would certainly benefit from seeing them when NOT massively nervous) and greeting the various lovely people who turned up. I think the loveliest thing about the whole evening was seeing so many DIFFERENT people from different BITS of My Life In ROCK all rolling up, not least my sister-in-law Annie who i haven't seen for AGES. It was GRATE!

But things could only remain delightful for so long and so, at 9.30pm PRECISELY, we went on stage and did THIS:

The Lesson Of The Smiths

Best Behaviour

My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once

We Can Start Having Fun

Do More Eat Less

All The Good Men

Billy Jones Is Dead

Clubbing In The Week

Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid

Do The Indie Kid

It Only Works Because You're Here

Easily Impressed

Proper Album Launch setlist! It was BLOODY GRATE! I was a bit worried about STARTING with The Lesson Of The Smiths but it seemed to set things up nicely, and the new stuff seemed to stand up - to be fair, a LOT of it isn't that new to our Gigging Agenda, but there were at least two songs in there we'd NEVER done live as a band before, and several we'd only done once or twice. We Can Start Having Fun was slightly waylaid when SOMEONE (there's no point in apportioning blame, is there?) went AWRY with the lyrics, but we managed to bring it back round again, and Do More Eat Less sounded GRATE - I'd worried about what to do in the middle INSTRUMENTAL/LIGHT OPERA section, but it turned out to be an ideal opportunity to take my jacket off (Album Launch: WEAR A SUIT) - if we carry on with this kind of STAGE CRAFT we'll have LIGHTS and GANTRIES by the end of the tour.

We've never properly done Clubbing In The Week as a band but it felt very very NATURAL when we DID do it, and led us into the BIG FINISH when there was MUCH Joining In before ENCORE TIME. As with the COSTUME CHANGES above I have to confess we DID practice doing It Only Works Because You're Here with me starting alone then everyone gradually coming back in... although Emma appeared to forget this and seemed surprised then IMPRESSED when it all started to happen!

It was all GRATE, we had a LOVELY time and even managed to be back home CHEZ MOI by 11.30pm, where we enjoyed a lenghty session of BEER/CHAT/WHISKY before retiring to bed. If the tour is anything like as good as this was it's going to be FANTASTIC!

posted 10/5/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

It was a really nice evening all round, and myself and The Buttons On My Shirt enjoyed it thoroughly - well worth the trip down as well.

It was all good fun especially as you had people dancing to Do The Indie Kid, and everyone yelling "Oi! Hibbett!" at the right time.

Ooh yes.
posted 11/5/2009 by Warren

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