Trimming The Bush - Sunday's Music

Some of my weekend was devoted to coming down after the last drum outing with Mimosa. The gig was fun, the band was tight and the drummer was fucking excellent, even if I say it myself. The presence of my successor in the audience made me feel a bit more on edge than usual but I'm a relaxed sort of chap so I was never going to be edgy and nervous like a bag of lemmings who have just joined Al Qaeda.

Also in the crowd were my parents and three of the four guys from my covers band. I was told by Chips, the singer, at the break, that watching me play was like watching his wife sleep with another man. I took this as a compliment but told him that it was the last time it would happen. The thing with his wife was a one off too and I hadn't realised she'd made a video.

Plans to relax and do next to nothing yesterday were slightly ambushed by the parents after I'd woken up. It's quite sweet really, I sense that they're glad to have me around and for me it's a bit like living with kids, just ones that happen to be in their seventies. I had barely woken, showered, done my hair product and all the other everyday shenanigans of an everyday metrosexual when they asked me if I'd help my Dad cut the bush, that one in the garden. As the good Sri Lankan son I couldn't object and set to work with all the enthusiasm and gusto of a Saturday teenager in an English shop when being interrupted by one of those things, you know, "customers" I think they're called.

Three of us were in the garden. It was one of those late summer early autumn English days. Blue sky, bright sun and warmth tinged with that touch of chill in the air. My Mum was moaning about my Dad and my Dad was ignoring her, I was floating around doing my best to ignore them and failing with spectacular success. All was quite normal. My Mum's specific reason for moaning was that my Dad wouldn't let her mow the lawn, not that a Sri Lankan Mother needs a reason of course.

My Dad, whose relationship with danger and risk taking is about as close as my sexual relationship with Britney Spears, had decreed that using the lawn mower would place her in severe danger of electrocution. And by "her" I mean my Mum, not Britney. Why? Because there was a slight dew on the ground, not rain, not swampy conditions worthy of a strange marsh in the Lake District in Winter. No, just a vague misty sheen on the top of the grass.

My Mum complained to me about this, saying that she'd asked Academic Bro about this a while ago and he had diplomatically said that my Dad was talking rubbish. I went with Academic, always a good move when the question is about lawnmowers, grass and a thin layer of dew. I said that I didn't think there was huge danger. I was ignored, as was Academic.

The bush trimming commenced. Dad trimmed and I bagged up. After about five minutes I felt the need for music and sloped off, hoping my absence wouldn't be noticed. I did some scrolling through the iPod menu but there was only one artist I seeked; Morcheeba. I don't know if you know the Morcheebans, well their earlier stuff, but it is, along with Moon Safari by Air, the perfect accompaniment to a chilled Sunday morning. The contrast couldn't be greater as I sit here typing this while listening to the calming tones of the Distillers.

After Morcheeba ran out I switched the music to Ojos De Brujo, a Spanish Flamenco outfit that I discovered some time ago while poking around the iTunes store in the same manner that an old slightly eccentric Uncle would look around second hand shops for old watches. Track one was a little bit too wild for the 'rents so I skipped ahead to track two as the old man and I carried on with our bush trimming.

Things were smooth and Latiney, organised and peaceful until I saw it. It was my Mum, in the garden and on the patio. She was heading towards me with that Sri Lankan Mother look. You know the look, like a female elephant just before it charges, I think they must have special classes at Bishop's College or something; Sri Lankan Matriarch classes.

The look was accompanied by my Mum doing some sort of dance. Now I say this as a man who can't really dance to save my life, something you may be surprised about what with my reputation as a fiercely grooving drummer and all, but it's true. Give me a drum kit and I'm happy to attempt to make you dance, moving limbs of all sorts in time with the music as I use them to hit an assortment of things. However, give me the sound of another fellow on the drums , or any other instrument, and those very same limbs move with the rhythm of a jelly using a pneumatic drill.

My Mum had decided that we were listening to Salsa and therefore felt a desire to dance and a need to get me involved. She said something like

"Ah Salsa, come and dance"

I didn't. This is England after all, it was Sunday morning and there's a Vicarage next door. At the next break I went inside and changed the music to the Dhol Foundation. The bush trimming continued to the sound of those Dhols and my Dad and I were quite happy. Salsa girl wasn't so happy but she was weeding or something and rapidly forgetting things.

After the gardening session was over I had an idea. I went online and bought three tickets to see Billy Cobham with Asere, his Cuban band. They're playing in Teddington of all places in couple of weeks time, in a venue in which I've played, probably the biggest achievement of my drumming career. So, in a fortnight I'll take the olds off to see Mr Cobham and some Cubans. I can't wait.

Now, as I finish this they've gone out to watch some Jazz and I'm home alone. My God. Being a child to parents who are music obsessed is tough at times. I'm glad I'm not like that!

Have a good week all!

Copying Or Creating

Tonight I'll be playing my very last gig with Mimosa, the funksters. It feels quite sad, but in a positive way. I'm excited about and looking forward to the gig in its own right but can't help pondering and wondering about things.

Since I started drumming I've lost count of the number of bands I've been in let alone the amount I've auditioned for, but the Mimosa experience has been almost totally pleasurable and certainly a learning experience that will stay with me forever. The biggest reason for this is that it's the first and only originals band I've been involved with.

Playing in covers bands is fun, of that there's no doubt. To play a couple of sets and be Dave Grohl in one song, Chad Smith in the next and Stevie Wonder next is challenging and stimulating. I've seen many a drummer play a covers set and play each and every song, no matter how varied they may be in their original form, as if there's only one style of music in the world. Bashing their way through Superstition as if it was a punk song, tearing into Creep as if it had been written by the Sex Pistols and making Hotel California (which I hate anyway) sound as if it was the song that heralded the birth of grunge.

Style is everything for me and the art of drumming in a covers band (IMHO) is to replicate the style of each song accurately. That doesn't mean that we have to copy the part note for note but that the feel of the original song has to be retained.

It's all well and good and an art in itself. Listen and learn the original, make sure you're technically capable of playing it, which isn't always the case, practice your part, then put it together with the rest of the band and perhaps add your own touches and flourishes.

And then we come to Mimosa, or the originals situation. Rather, and then I came to Mimosa, the originals band. I auditioned with them but it wasn't slotting into an existing band as it was more of a start up thing. The name hadn't even been chosen at that stage and there was one song that was about three quarters written. I got the job, as you know, and fuck me it was a new and different scene for me.

I knew that it was a funk project and therefore that it I was expected to be funky. The rest was a whole new world for me. One of listening to a guitar riff and trying to come up with a drum groove to go with it, then remembering the part until the next rehearsal, which was one of the big challenges. I was used to having a CD or the original song to listen to but in an orginals band, unless each band practice is recorded, there are no points of reference other than memory. Remembering a drum part is tough. A guitar line can be sung in the head, vocals involve words, drums are very different.

It was my first time being in a band with a brass section and a percussionist too. I've always considered my drumming to be groove oriented but I realised that I had to focus on that even more than before. The sound is so big and busy, particularly with a busy and funky bassist, that sheer groove and being solid matters more than ever. So much of the filling out of the sound is achieved by the other instruments that there is little space for the drummer to demonstrate his ability to play like Billy Cobham falling down a flight of stairs.

Over the three and a half years the songs have been written, nurtured and developed. My playing has improved endlessly and I'm sure my overall musical knowledge has matured considerably. I feel pride in each song and for my own little contribution of a drum part to them, as if each is a little baby that I've given birth to, perhaps without the pain. Learning to play in an originals band has definitely helped my ability to play covers, my competence in flying by the seat of my pants has gone up several notches.

As I prepare for the final gig I realise that I now understand the difference between copying and creating. Both are valid ways to do something, both are hard to do, but they're very different.

Whenever I've heard those stories about chaps who are brilliant forgers of art, who can copy a Da Vinci or a Rembrandt so perfectly that that even Mrs Da Vinci or a random art expert couldn't tell the difference, they always say that the forger was a brilliant artist himself. That may be the case but he's not the one who thought of what to do in the first place. Copying the Mona Lisa is one thing, having the idea in the first place is another.

That's the difference. Some people can look or listen to something and critique it, judge it and often improve it. They're the forgers, the people in covers bands. Some can come up with the brilliant idea in the first place and may be weaker at improving it. They're the Da Vincis and the Rembrandts, though the theme tune to Friends was about the only thing they did. Others can do both.

I strive to be in the second group, I often find myself in the first group and I would love to have a foot in each of them.

Thanks Mimosa. I've learned, I've enjoyed and it's been an honour.

Days Of RD (What's going down)

Now and again it's nice to do a little catch up post, to tell you what's happening in my life. It's like a signpost except it's a blog post and has far more words.

Frankly, things around these parts are a bit mental, so mental that it would be far more productive if I got on with sorting stuff instead of writing stuff. Oh well.

The gig on Saturday with Mimosa was great. It was a venue that was new to us but well established and we went down well to the small audience. A small audience in this case is one that was low in numbers, it wasn't a small audience as it would have been if we'd played to a dwarf convention. Our percussionist had to cancel at the last minute so I was left with all the hitting things duties, which was interesting and surprisingly challenging.

It meant a couple of extra and unexpected solos for me and I had to play with a "bigger" feel at times. With the percussionist there I often have to lay back in my playing to stop it sounding like a teenager doing his work experience in a drum shop falling down the stairs while carrying too many drums. On Saturday I had to do the opposite and it was a nice little challenge to face.

Packing up the contents of my house continues. This weekend sees me moving back to my parents' place while the house sale of the former family home ticks away nicely. So, at the ripe old age of 42 27 I'm going to be back with the rents, as I believe you call them, for a while. This is both good and bad.

Having Sri Lankan parents is great when you need some of the things at the bottom end of Maslow's hierarchy, food and lodging and those sort of things. I'm looking forward to the food and the company. I'm dreading the whole Sri Lankan motherliness and the other bits. Positives and negatives.

Being a drummer isn't very space friendly I must admit. When I was looking for my house the drums were a major consideration. Space for my electronic kit and easy parking and loading are requirements that can be limiting in London. On top of that there are noise issues, even with a "silent" electronic kit that's played through headphones. My Dad is pretending not to be, but is seriously excited about the prospect of having my electronic set there. He's kindly cleared space for them and I know that he'll be spending lots of time when I'm at work sitting in front of them.

The packing, the bubble wrapping and the driving car loads of things continues. Sunday is D day.

The first evening of practice with the covers band after our summer break happened on Monday. We all had our "homework" to do over the summer and, just like schoolkids, we'd all done it to different levels. It's fair to say that I'm the Dinidu of the band, the swot, the teacher's pet, the only one who actually had done all his homework. I'd learned the intro to Rock 'n' Roll, something I was proud of, then found out that it was "too complicated" for the guitarist to understand and he wanted me to simplify it.

It's one of the best and most recognisable drum intros ever and so often played wrong by dodgy drummers in dodgy pub covers bands so it hurt my pride a little bit to be asked to simplify it. I guess it's similar to asking a lead guitarist, after he's meticulously learned the lead guitar part to "Sweet Child of Mine", to forget it because the band have decided to do a bit of karaoke and maybe a toilet break there instead.

Talking of toilet breaks we had an amusing thing happen during Saturday's gig. Our guitarist began "Little Wing", that long bluesy sexy Hendrix intro and, as he started playing A, our bassist, literally put his guitar down and ran off the stage. He returned several bars later, I think it was sixteens bars after the bass was supposed to come in, and carried on playing. Later he told us that he was "busting for a piss" and couldn't hold it in any longer. It was one of the more bizarre things I've seen at a gig, though I accept it's probably not right up there in the top eschelons of bizarreness at gigs. It's not quite in the same league as Aerosmith running off stage to do hard drugs in between songs, but close. I don't think he washed his hands though. Chee!

Next week is a no mercy week. On Sunday I move, then Monday evening there's a covers band pratice, Tuesday there's a Mimosa practice, Wednesday will be with the girls and then Thursday sees me jetting off for just over a week. But they're all my choices and I love them all.

And I'm still writing the post about the improvements God will make to Man. There's a lot of them!

London And Drums

There are days in the locale of West London on which I feel as if life is mighty fine, mostly because it is.

It started at 8 this morning when I was woken up by an East European cable engineer. Not under the circumstances you're thinking, this was a Polish chap that had been dispatched by the Indian call centre to fix my broadband. He arrived at 8 AM, which gave me an early start. The broadband was fixed and I rose with the lark, well the Saturday morning lark.

I showered and then strolled down to my little shopping parade at the end of my road. It's not actually my shopping parade, other people use it too, but it feels like mine. That greasy cafe was my chosen destination. I ambled past the flower shop, the one with the slightly sexy, slightly old and slightly rough lady (that's all in the one person, not 3 women). I said "good morning" to her, putting on my most charming smile. I can tell she wants me from the way she feigns total disinterest in me. It's obvious.

A quick stop at the Indian open all hours shop to buy a tabloid and then I was in the Turkish cafe ordering a full English breakfast. Reading the bad news and the sexy news in the tabloid as I ate my eggs, bacon, sausages, beans and bread and watched the world outside come to life made me feel as happy and sparkling, like a big glass of Diet Coke with ice.

I debated with myself on the merits of an English breakfast against a Sri Lankan breakfast. Which would I never eat again if I was forced to make a choice? The perfect Sri Lankan breakfast for is white string hoppers, chicken curry, pol sambol and some white potato curry. The perfect English breakfast is eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms and white bread. The two couldn't be more different and yet I can devour either with the gusto of a Sri Lankan traffic cop picking up the 500 Rs note you accidentally dropped when stopped for speeding.

The answer to my breakfast question is still to come. Luckily, as C pointed out to me, I don't have to decide. Do I like rhetorical questions?

Some practice this afternoon and then I'll be off to Reading for the Mimosa gig tonight. Thurday's rehearsal was the dog's. Tight, funky, sexy and slick. The rest of the band were pretty good too.

My excitement about the gig is tinged with sadness. It will be my second last one with them, but enjoying it and floating in that feeling will be my objective. I know I'll do it.

There isn't much more to tell you really. If I could have had Colombo and the girls in my day it would have been perfect. I'll tell you more about the gig as soon as I know.

Which breakfast would you sacrifice?

Working My Notice

I think I've already mentioned it but I'm currently "working my notice" so to speak with Mimosa, the funksters.

I've never been through this before and it's an interesting experience. I decided to leave them because of various things, most of which I don't want to go into any great detail about. But, at the time I decided, the band had a couple of pending gigs in the diary. I told them I was leaving and said that I'd be happy to do the gigs that I'd committed to and come to band practices as required. I also said that I'd be happy to jump now if they had another drummer lined up.

They asked me to stay for the gigs and here I am, going to band practices every week, a gig on Saturday, then my last one with them about a month later. I'd quite like to tell you that I'm going to concentrate on my solo career or something and, in a funny way, that is my plan.

I've got the covers band, which I'm enjoying immensely. The music in a covers band isn't as challenging as playing originals but it's often more fun to play live. The guys are fun and interesting, with little band politics or "issues". It's also more relaxed in terms of commitment, which suits me too.

In the short term my plan is to just play in the one band and do some woodshedding. I know the term woodshedding sounds like something one of Soixante Neuf's boyfriends would do about twenty minutes before she's due to arrive at his place, but that's not what it means in drummer language. No, it means serious practice on one's own, not necessarily in a shed but I guess that would be the proper definition.

I intend to use much of my freed up time to improve my playing and go back to some more studying of the drums. Since I started playing I've strongly believed in the value of getting out there and playing with others. There's no substitute, you can be the best drummer, or the best on any instrument, in the world, if you play alone in your bedroom. It's only when you go out and play with others that you move up some notches and learn certain things.

For the last couple of years I've been doing so much band playing that I haven't had much practice time, nor much desire to practice. It's ironic. I was talking to a creative friend the other day who told me that he spends so much energy on being creative in his job during the day that, when he goes home, he's kind of spent. He can't write a book because his creativity is used up by being creative during the day.

It's like that. I spend so much time going to band practices that I often don't feel like practicing. My playing still improves and moves on from the practice I get in band practices, but it's only certain aspects of my playing. The improvements are in very specific areas. I might be able to play half decent funk or sound like Taylor Hawkins (neither of which I can do) but I won't learn how to play jazz from the bands I'm in. Sometimes the only way one can find out what's over the edge is to jump, or be pushed of course.

I think that with the covers band will satisfy my need to play with others and the practice will help me improve and learn new things, until I start to yearn for more.

That's where I'm at now and the thing is this working my notice business is quite hard to deal with at times. I've never done it before to be honest. All the other times I've left bands it's been a sudden thing, either me leaving or the unit disbanding.

The biggest challenge is that the guys' hunt for a new drummer really tests my sense of abundance. Mimosa is a really fantastic band and I've been involved since day one. The drum parts on each of our original songs are mine, written and thought up by me, played by me and sometimes developed by me or all of the band. They're not complicated or technically challenging but they are mine, like little babies that I've had and nurtured.

And now I'm half in and half out. I'm trying to be open and abundant and interested in how their drummer hunt is going, yet a part of me feels pretty damn scarce about it.

Abundant Rhythmic is all adult and sensible. Abundant Rhythmic wants them to find a drummer who's much better than me, who might come in and have his (or her) own ideas and might make them sound better. Abundant Rhythmic wants them to find someone who improves the band. Abundant Rhythmic wants to watch them with the new improved drummer and to enjoy it and feel good about it.

In the other corner Scarce Rhythmic feels a bit differently. He wants them to struggle to find a replacement, or to get a crap one. He wants them to audition loads of hopefuls and turn them all down because they're not up to the high standard set by the master (that's me in case you hadn't realised). He wants to go to a gig and watch them crash and burn with the new pillock, the total idiot who they don't even like. He wants to hear the audience say that the band is good but the new drummer lets them down.

For the past weeks I've been there at band practice as always, playing the songs we've done for the past three years and getting them wrong in the same place as ever. Abundant me has been asking how the recruitment drive is going, while Scarce me has been all angsty and narky to hear that there are now three people interested and they might be auditioning next week.

Abundant me tells them that they should just let me know and I'll make myself scarce on that day. Scarce me feels that I'd love to suggest I sit in to give them my "expert" opinion on the hopefuls. Scarce me knows what I'd tell them anyway.

A band practice tonight and the last but one gig is on Saturday night. And I finally think I've found my perfect balance of scarcity and abundance. I know exactly what I want them to do.

They need to find a brilliant drummer, one who I think is fantastic, who I think makes them sound better. Then they need to tell me that they think he's fantastic and brilliant, only not as good as me.

That'll suit me.

After all they're my drum parts.

Gig

Whenever I write about drum stuff or band related things, people lose interest. Comments decrease, viewings go down and "regulars" sit and wait for something interesting to come along. I don't mind that, I've got my new found sense of writing for myself to fall back on and I've got the biggest gig I've ever played to tell you about. A number of people have asked me how the gig went and I wondered how I'd write a "review" post on it. After all, I can't make a claim to be an objective reviewer and I'm hardly going to tell you that my band was crap am I? So I've decided to be self indulgent. I'm going to attempt to describe the thoughts and feelings that I had during the gig. You probably won't last until the end, but just in case you do, I'd like to thank you in advance.

It happened on the Thursday before last. The "Funk Vibes" gig.

For about four months we have had the thing booked in the diaries. In itself that is an achievement, after all we're looking at musicians here and diaries, paperwork and admin aren't things that slot into the average musician's lifestyle too easily. Fortunately we in Mimosa are all far from average, considerably below it to be precise. In the diaries therefore was this "big one" a full blown proper gig in a theatre that holds a proper sized audience. We were one of three bands on the bill and we were the second band in order of brilliantness.

We had our last band practice on Tuesday night and were as meticulously and as thoroughly prepared as we thought possible, all our own individual practice was done and we felt as ready and as raring to go as a starving Chikungunya mosquito on a pay per infected person bonus scheme. There was just the wait to go through. On Wednesday night I did no practice, not even to sit down at the kit. I always think that it's better that way. On Thursday I came into work as usual then left at about lunchtime to go home, get my stuff ready and attempt to get "in the zone".

Home I headed, with thoughts zipping through my brain from "How much hair product should I use?" to "Will I remember the fills in Little Wing, the ones which for some inexplicable reason I either play perfectly or make a total hash of?" There were many other things, including my work issue which was still looming large, in the old grey mass. For your information though I went for the "not much and probably not enough product" approach and the "total hash" approach.

I did all my stuff at home. I'm not superstitious and don't have a set routine prior to a gig so this time I ran through most of the set on the practice kit, paying attention to the trickier bits. I undressed, showered, brushed the teeth, all that kind of stuff and then spent ages dressing and messing with hair product to give me an unkempt, unshowered and unclean look that would befit the rock 'n' roll image. Then the tools of my trade had to be loaded in the car. It was a kitshare and I was using the kit belonging to the drummer in the headlining band, the norm in these things, so I only had to take a minimum of stuff. The minimum for a drummer that is, which is still roughly seventeen times more things than most drum shops hold in stock.

That consisted of two snare drums, a bag of cymbals, my double bass pedal, my own stool (in case I couldn't adjust the height on the other one) and my bag of "consumables" (sticks, nuts bolts etc). All this just about fitted in my boot. Oh, and Shalimar the Clown too, not to be confused with Ronald. Shalimar is deadly, very obsessive and from Kashmir whereas Ronald is continually laughing, full of junk food and wears big red shoes everywhere.

And off I went, with a drumpitty drum, drum drum, drum.

Further shattering your image of the rock 'n' roll drummer I got there about an hour before I had to, settled into the warm car and got out Shalimar the Clown, Mr Rushdie's latest. It's had me engrossed for the past weeks, albeit in a way that's slow and painful. I have to reread every other sentence because the language is all poetic and flowery and I'm just not used to that. It's magical language, but it takes some getting used to. After my alloted time I strolled into the theatre, trying to portray the image of nonchalent funk drummer who's cool as a cucumber yet still a bit excited. I pulled it off superbly, but no one was there to witness the act. Damn!

Now up until around this point I had been feeling calm and relaxed. I knew we'd be playing to a largish crowd. Not large by the standards of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or the Foos, they'd probably have more crew than we would have crowd, but by our standards this was a biggie. I'd been calm though, I felt ready and relaxed and I knew that the paying punters would be on our side. Mistakes are all part of a live performance and, from my perspective, this gig, as with any, wasn't going to be about playing every note perfectly. It would be about getting out there and grooving, making it feel good, keeping good time and being solid.

Then I walked into the theatre.

OH FUCKINNN 'ELLL!!!!

is the only accurate way to portray my feelings. It was a proper theatre, with seats, stalls, those balcony bits, fold up velour chairs and a full size stage. There was even a stage curtain. Hell, there was even a "Green room" backstage. It had settees and fridges and dressing rooms complete with a closed circuit TV camera to watch things going on onstage. This wasn't the local pub in Basingstoke, it was a real venue.

I spent some time wandering around and eventually found the stage. It was at the front of the place and about four times the size of Luxembourg. I located the drummer from the main band setting up his kit and headed towards him. We've met before and he's a nice bloke and a superb drummer so we exchanged the usual drummer pleasantries; what do you think of Bush's foreign policy? Did you watch the Panorama programme about Alexander Litvinenko? What do you think the Bank of England will do to interest rates next? What kind of sticks do you use? Just the normal idle chit chat between drummers.

There wasn't much I could do to help him set the kit up so I sat down and began to warm up with some sticks and a practice pad, a marvellous nerve settler. Then we went through the rigmarole of getting all the levels set correctly. This is the bit where you hear the singer saying "one, two" over and over again, where you hear the bass drum being hit endlessly and all musicians try their hardest to play incredibly hard musical snippets yet make them sound easy and relaxed. The sound man is the one setting levels and balancing things and the rest of us are busy trying to impress, without looking like that's what we're doing.

You see, making an impression on the run of the mill boisterous punter is quite easy, it's impressing other musos that's hard. We all try to do it, we rarely admit it though. Just don't tell anyone I told you.

Kaldera, the main band, did their soundcheck and they were their usual tight and slick selves. Then we got up and soundchecked a brace of songs. All was smoothly juicy, the other bandmembers were playing their own instruments and I had to adapt quickly to another drummer's kit. I had my cymbals, my snare and my bass pedals so all I had to get used to was the positional stuff.

It's an exciting and whooshing type of experience to play on a stage where everything is done properly, but even more so when you're used to a different scenario. I was suddenly faced with the luxury of two monitors, a drum kit that was fully miked up and a sound engineer that could give me the exact monitor mix I wanted. It's not something I'm totally alien to it so I was able to ask the engineer for the mix that I knew I wanted. But it's the feeling of playing a fully miked up drumkit that' s vastly different to the norm for me.

When I'm doing a gig in a small venue, which is pretty much all the time, the drums will have no miking up at all, except some rare occassions when the bass drum may have a mic in, just for a bit of extra bottom end. So all the balance of the drum sound is down to me, the drummer. If you're in the audience the balance of my kit, ie how much bass drum, snare drum or hi hats you'll hear, will be dictated entirely by how hard, or softly, I hit each respective thing. The great drummers can change the feel of a song by the balance in their play and often, when people talk about groove, they are referring to that balance as an intrinsic part of it.

When you're on a bigger stage, in a bigger venue and the whole kit is miked up, it's the sound engineer who dictates how the crowd hear the drumkit. The noise levels are so great that hardly anyone can actually hear the natural acoustic sound of the drums, all they're hearing is what has been amplified through the PA, all I'm hearing is what is put out through my monitor mix.

The result is that everything changes. I can tap the bass drum like a feather and the sound guy can decide that it should be the loudest voice in the kit, or I can smack seven bells out of my snare drum and he can decide that he wants just a tiny whisper to come through. Now, in practice he wasn't as extreme as that but there's still some very different conditions to become accustomed to in a short time. I find that the best thing is to concentrate on playing the correct notes and not worry about balance too much. That I did, or tried to do.

So we finished our soundcheck then vacated Luxembourg. It meant that all my stuff had to be taken down from the kit but that's showbiz. We left the stage, headed for the bar and the Green room and watched the young Indie band hit the stage for their turn to do the honours.

I have noticed in myself that, immediately before a performance, I struggle with the whole socialising thing. I feel as if all I want to do is get on and play. I see other people happily chatting and laughing and all I want to do is get out there and get on with it. I used to struggle with this, now I accept it and leave the socialising to others while I get warmed up and ready.

I wandered around the theatre, fluttering from the Green room to the bar to the stalls to the circle, then doing it all again. Surprisingly I wasn't recognised by hoardes of screaming fans. At one point the wife recognised me, I think it was the fourth or fifth time I walked past her, but I managed to evade her before a conversation started.

I hung around in various places and watched the theatre fill up with people. This filled me with a mixture of electrifying excitement and terrifying tension. Excitement that many of these people had actually paid some spondulicks to see us and terror that they had paid some spondulicks to see us. Then the Indie kids came on stage to do their stuff. They're a nice bunch of lads if a bit angsty, all good musicians with hair, beany hats, attitude and most likely repectable city jobs during the day. They did a half hour or so set, which I watched from every part of the building, just because I could. I had a yellow wristband, an "access all areas" thing. It wasn't quite like having one at Glastonbury but I sure as hell wasn't going to waste it.

They did their thing, their parents, friends and girlfriends applauded wildly and keenly and then we took to the stage to get our equipment set up again. After about twenty minutes we were ready. We convened in the Green room, all full to the brim with a mixture of nerves, excitement and fear. We did one of those group hug bonding things, you know the ones that all Americans do fourteen times a day. Well we're not used to that kind of touchy feely stuff in England so, on infrequent occasions when I'm involved in one, it's quite a motivational and powerful thing. Off we headed, through some doors, down some corridors and through one more door until we appeared out on stage, in front of our adoring fans.

I felt a rush of blood, a twinge of exhilaration and quite a lot of wind. The culmination of all the months of rehearsal, of all the practice and all the songwriting was about to take place and it felt unreal and dreamlike. In the few seconds between sitting at the kit and counting in the first song it felt as if a lifetime of thoughts and feelings went through my head. At least it does now. At the time my main focus was on recalling the tempo of "Summertime", our first song, correctly. I did.
Debby, our most beautiful and wonderful singer, said some singerish things to the audience. Things like "we're Mimosa" and the routine stuff all singers say. From the very back of Luxembourg and behind a drum kit with lights shining on me I couldn't see much of the audience but, like a silent but deadly, I was well aware of its presence.

"One, two, one, two, three, four", I said, although I didn't actually say it, just clicked it in with my sticks.

Bang!! We were in with the introduction to "Summertime", my favourite song of ours. We launched into its smooth Latiney first eight bars, then stepped it up a notch to go into the bridge before the first verse. We played the song faultlessly and kickingly, a damn fine way to start. When we had written the set list I'd been dead against starting with one of our best songs but, with hindsight, I was probably wrong. It set us all up for a good gig. Don't worry, I'm not going to talk you through the nuances of each song we played, but the rest of the set continued in the same vein.

The audience was with us, which is always useful. They cheered and whooped and hollered at all the right times. We've got a certain looseness about our live persona that I think is a positive thing. Not a looseness in our tightness, just that we feel like an older style funk band, there's more grit than I've seen and heard in other bands, a tad more of an edge, as if it could all go horribly wrong at any moment. In band practices it usually does.

I had a few mishaps, nothing drastic or lifechanging but there were two or three occassions when I mis hit my ride cymbal and just played some air instead of metal. Each time it happened it was noticed by the band and there was brush of eye contact together with a smile and a laugh, a good sign that we are tight as a unit and that we can take these things lightly.

I know that there's a smattering of musicians and thespians who read this blog and I'd be eager to learn if you have experienced this same feeling when you perform live, or if it's just me. It's the feeling that I get on every gig, looking down at the set list and I suddenly have the thought that we've spent so much time practicing and suddenly we're halfway through the big climax. There's no going back, no "can we just do that again from the second chorus?" no "I'll run through it a few times at home and have it sorted for next week".

It's knowing that I could have played that verse a bit better, or I could have come out of the fill with some more emphasis on the one. It's also knowing that it doesn't matter. It's not like a recording, where you, and others, may listen to it for years with a critical ear. It's a moment in time that people have loved or hated or anywhere in betweened, and it's the next one that you need to do well. The big thing that seems to hit me on every gig is how much of a build up there is for a forty five minute set that flashes by in a blink. I guess professionals who may be out gigging much more frequently don't share that feeling as they might be playing the same set the following night and will have that chance to slow down the fill or do something a bit differently if the mood takes them.

We moved on, then three songs before the end, we came to our slow and moody song, featuring a guitar solo. Only this time it didn't. At the point of the guitar solo, after the build up fill on the drums, there was a massive loud deafening silence coming from the vicinity of Rich, the guitarist.

Anyone familiar with guitarists will tell you that this is unusual. Silence? Guitar solo? - they just don't compute. It meant that one of five things had occurred; either Rich had died, fallen unconscious or had a major equipment failure, or I had died or fallen unconscious. My highly tuned brain sped into action, unlike Rich's highly tuned guitar, and within minutes I realised that I was both alive and conscious, thus eliminating two of the possibilities. Our esteemed guitarist, who had chosen to wear a black and white shirt on the night, presumably in case someone was filming the event on a very old camera, was busily looking like one of those old fashioned mimes. He was rooted to the spot, guitar slung round neck, making frantic waving actions and gesticulating wildly with his arms.

Frankly I thought this behaviour strange. Here we were, on stage, guitar solo due and he decides to do a Rowan Atkinson impression. And people say my timing is bad! I did the honourable thing and carried on playing. After about sixteen bars I realised that Rich probably had some kind of equipment failure, he was just so wrapped up in his mime that he hadn't figured it out himself. We rose to the occasion, we played on and skilfully kept our cool and the song together. Finishing the song with some very clever ad libbed vocals and saxophone twiddly bits in place of guitar we then had to sort out the problem.

Debby made a brief announcement that we'd have to take a short break to fix the broken amp, I came out with a side splittingly hilarious joke which she relayed to the audience, along the lines of

"can someone call an ampulance?"

She ruined it by telling them to "blame" rather than "credit" the drummer for it. A simple mistake, could have happened to anyone.

And then we left the stage.

Behind the scenes there was much panic. The amp was blown and there were problems getting hold of the guitarist in the other band to try to borrow his amp. Frantic phone calls were being made, our guitarist had given up on the mime stuff and was now looking worried and I was superfluous to requirements so I wandered off to mix with my public. One of the characteristics of being a drummer in the average band is that you're the least recognised person in the unit. This suits most of us groovers, it's probably a fundamental reason why we chose the role in the first place. If we had wanted limelight, stardom and recognition we would have been a singer, a guitarist or a blogger.

I can stroll around straight after coming off stage and people may just look at me with a hint of recognition in their eyes, usually followed by a "didn't I go to school with you?" type of statement. At first I used to get pissed off with this, the other band members were busy lapping up the adulation, being bashful and having sex with groupies while I had to fend off weirdos from my old school. These days I've accepted my lot, although sex with groupies would come in handy.

I strolled through the theatre and was accosted by an old woman dressed in black with wide open staring eyes. She was sniffing something and looked at me. I was just about to say "No I didn't go to that school" when she muttered to me, sounding like a cockney villain played by an American actor in a low budget film, the kind who thinks we all know the Queen and talk like Dick van Dyke.

"Here d'ya want some?"

"What?" said I.

"Some of this" she thrust this glass bottle under my nose.

"What is it?"

"Poppers" said the mentalist.

A three week discussion ensued. Mentalist trying to persuade me to have some, me just wishing she's be struck by lightning and get out of my way. Eventually she did, well not the lightning bit but the get out of my way side of the wishlist.

Up I went into the upper bit of this theatre, the balcony bits, to find the wife and friends. I was chatting away merrily, they were complimentary about us, then I saw a band appear on stage. An unusual band in that they had no drummer. Already you've probably figured out why, but it took me a little longer. With a burst of speed that hasn't been seen since I was told

"Errm you'd better come down, I've had a small crash in your car"

I ran towards, well anywhere in the general direction of the stage. I flew past the off her face mentalist, through some doors, down a corridor and got there. We only had two more songs to play, an original and our version of Little Wing, the Hendrix song. We blasted through the first one and I bumbled my way, just about, through Little Wing. It's become evident that it's a kind of jinx song for me. On every gig prior to this I've played it perfectly, but in band practices, it can be hit or miss, quite literally in my case. You know when you think about something too much and then mess it up, well that's what happens. I miss a fill and then make a total hash of the same fill every time I have to play it later in the song. Luckily for me the fill only comes up about nine thousand times in the song, so I can get away with it!

There were plenty of stares in my direction from bemused bandmates as they were left wondering if they had come back in on the three instead of the one. I just smiled, shrugged and gave that look that implies they had all messed up. Six of them all making the same mistake at the same points and me being correct, that plan was never going to get past the selection committee. It was worth a go though.

It didn't really matter. We finished, we soaked up the applause, we patted each other on the back and shook hands, we felt mighty fine and we were going to revel in it.

And that was it. We all stayed back to mingle and watch the stars of the show go on after us, they were wicked, slick, groovy and classy. I know that sounds like a cheesy American detective show but it's how they were.

Then off we went. It was my biggest gig so far, top fun with a top band. Hopefully it won't be the biggest I'll ever play.

It was one of those targets that I was working towards and, as I look back at the recent past, it's becoming a fading speck on the horizon. I still haven't come down, that'll take some time. We played well, I played well, I enjoyed every minute of it. I made some mistakes, which I've learned from but, above all, we had fun.

The music and performance effect is like a drug, once it's got a hold of you there's no turning back. But, it's all good. I used to look at struggling musicians and wonder what the attraction was, why they'd live a life of financial poverty and often sacrifice success in other areas in order to pursue their music. Now I understand. I wouldn't do it, I don't have the ability, the drive or the talent, but I understand.

If you got this far, thanks for sticking with it. I promise not to post for a while.

Next stop - Colombo.

Yay!