Run And Tell All Of The Angels....

It's early evening on a wintry English Sunday. The rain is making the sounds and patterns that feel cold as I watch it fall on my window. Every now and then a stranger wanders past my house, huddled up with cold, umbrella battling against the wind. It's very England, very winter, very London.

But that's what's happening outside, inside all is sunny and warm. Yesterday I bought a new speaker/amp system to plug my iPod into. Good quality sound is something I've missed since I moved into this house and its appearance has increased my feelings of comfort beyond description. If you read my posts you'll know how important music is to me and it's now blasting around the house at whatever level I choose.

As I sit writing this I'm listening to "Learn To Fly' and absorbing the beauties of a playlist that consists of one setlist from a gig that I did with MLC, the best covers band I've been a part of. We've now advanced to "Are you gonna be my girl?" by Jet. Each song brings back a myriad of memories for me.

Like all great bands MLC never formally split up, we just imploded really, in a car crash full of affairs, musical differences, life changes and former best friends starting to hate the site of each other. When things were good we were great and, when things were bad, we were, well, not so great. Each song takes me back a few years, to the band practices, to the gigs and to the fun we had.

Being in a good band can feel like a privilege, it can be an honour just to play with a group of people, whether it's a gig to a huge audience or merely a rehearsal to a couple of people. The joy can be found in the sensation of making music with others, of coming together and being far better as a sum than as an individual.

And now it's "Wide open space" by Mansun, a fantastic band that also imploded, albeit with a load more success than MLC. As I listen to the guitar solo and the song ends I can visualise Mark, our keyboardist, finishing the song.

"Hard to handle" is up next, the Black Crowes version. At our last ever gig I let a friend play the drums to this and I hit the dance floor. It was the first time I'd ever heard the band play with someone else drumming. Singers, guitarists and the others cna sometimes stroll out into the crowd and hear what their own band sounds like whilst playing, us drummers don't normally have that pleasure. We never know how similar a different drummer sounds to ourself either. Catch 22.

It's a great thing, this whole music lark.

Just a random post really, it feels good to sign off as Reef play "Place your hands on me", damn that feels good!