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The band will play on ...

My various adventures and ups and downs while trying to put together a band in Buenos Aires. Connecting with like-minded musicians, who want to play for enjoyment rather than money or ego, isn't as easy as it might seem ...

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(He's got) Betty Davis eyes

So far this year the boat that is the band has been pitching and rolling from one storm to the next, with me at the helm doggedly fighting to stop the whole thing from completely capsizing. First there was the cowardly walkout by half of the band, just when we had a gig to prepare; then the painfully slow process of trying to get Hugo and Nacho ready for the concert itself; followed by the impending departure of Germán and the desperate and largely fruitless search for a suitable, and ultimately any, replacement. While that search should be taking up most of my attention, other unnecessary distractions continue to arise.

At 50 years old, Nacho is an overgrown schoolboy and - in that sc…

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Play that funky music

Sometimes everything comes together just when you least expect it.

It had been a tense few weeks running up to the latest concert, and I wasn't the only one in the band with doubts about whether the brass section could deliver the goods. I was beginning to despair and had pretty much written off the concert before it even began. The late addition of Marisa on backing vocals had given the band a much needed boost of positive energy, but it seemed too little too late.

As the concert approached I seriously considered dispensing with the services of both Hugo and Nacho, believing that they were actually making a negative contribution to the sound of the band. Two weeks before the gig, Nac…

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Changes

Vinilo Sensation has undergone huge changes since the return from summer recess; not all of them for the better ... perhaps.

Everyone was back and ready to move forward by the end of February. Things had slipped quite a lot and it was going to take a while to get everything tight again. My stated goal was to be ready to play a concert by the end of April. In addition we now have two new members - Hugo and Nacho on sax and trumpet - and these guys need time to fully integrate and learn the set.

Summer had been a bit disappointing in terms of progress. With various band members away, we were incomplete from the end of December to the start of March.  Practice continued, and I had hoped t…

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Teenage Kicks

My true musical awakening coincided with the dawn of New Wave, and was largely due to the influence of my cousin Ian.
 
I'd always been fascinated by music and drawn towards the weekly TV pop shows; unfortunately most of my early childhood had run in parallel with some of the most infantile music Britain has ever produced. However in 1976 things began to change; Punk arrived and really shook things up. Hardcore Punk - The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Stranglers - completely passed me by (I was only 10 in 1976). But what followed really grabbed hold of my attention.
 
One summer afternoon in, I guess, 1977 I took my bike and cycled round to my cousin's house. I remember that afternoon wi…

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Two out of three ain't bad

Last Friday - 5 days ago - the band played its final gig of this year. After the heady euphoria and enthusiasm of the previous two concerts, this felt a bit flat. Technically we probably played our best, but some of the adrenaline was missing from what felt like 'just another gig'. I don't think it helped that we were playing El Suburbano - the location of our first concert - again. 

The fact that we played this concert at all was simply down to bad planning. After the success of the first gig, back in October, the intention had been to play two more before the end of the year. But as we moved through November nothing else was on the horizon, so we decided to ask the very agreeable owner…

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Fever

Our second concert, just a couple of days ago, saw a move into the big league: Stadium venue and live television!
 
Ok, so the 'stadium' wasn't River Plate (although that was just around the corner), but an indoor basketball arena. The television was live, but mostly focused on the game not us. And as for the 'big league' ... well, I know nothing about basketball, but it was a Wednesday night and there we're plenty of empty seats. 
 
Outside the band, Tom (Tomas) is a web designer and has been working on a project with the management of a sports club, Obras de Sanitarias. Apparently the place is quite important from a sporting perspective. However, when not being used for bask…

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Hair of the dog

Vinilo Sensation
"YES! YES! YES!" - (punches sky; high-fives; etc). This first concert was an overwhelming success; now we just need to replicate the performance next time.
 
The concert was last Friday; almost 10 days ago as I write. Everything just came together at the right moment and everybody was on top form ... and thoroughly pleased with themselves afterwards. There were inevitably some issues about presentation, but no musical problems or disasters. All-in-all, better than I had hoped and by far the most personally satisfying concert I've played in ... decades.

My idea had been to make this a 'practice concert'; only very close friends w…

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Ice-cream sundae

Make mine a 99
With the concert getting ever closer - only 6 more days to go - everything is sounding pretty tight; which is good, because there will be no more rehearsals before the gig. I'm not particularly nervous and I keep telling myself that we are often too self-critical and the audience won't really notice minor fuck-ups. The selection of songs was chosen with that in mind: Familiar, but not too familiar.
 
The band has undergone another name change and is now called: "Vinilo Sensation"; this is supposed to be Spanglish for 'Vinyl Sensation', but to me it sounds like something you'd get from the ice-cream van if you didn't have enough money for a ninety-nine. …

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If you leave me now

OK. So maybe I spoke too soon in my over excited last post. I'm not sure if it's the pressure of the coming gig or something else, but Marelena - trombone - isn't happy and possibly wants to leave the band.
 
Marelena is a tiny little woman who hardly says anything and has always pleaded poverty to avoid contributing to the cost of the studio. I'd always assumed she was about 20-22 and a student or something, so let her do what she wanted; besides, with 7 other people, her lack of financial contributions were easily absorded by the rest of us and we were happy to have her and her instrument along. However, things are not at all as they seem.
 
A couple of months ago, it was noted by various pe…

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Come together

Undercover Brother ?
A gig! A real live gig! Three weeks and we will play our first live concert; I can hardly believe we have got this far already.
 
To be honest, it's a bit too soon, but the opportunity has come up and after all the hard work it's time for a bit of a reward. We will be on the bill with two other bands at a 'Funk Night' in a local bar/music club. The venue, "El Suburbano", seems ok: There's a large enough stage area for all of us to be comfortable; the sound engineer is paid for and we might actually get paid! ... yes ... paid! Based on how many people actually turn up to see specifically us, rather than one of the other bands.

We are supposed to …

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Feels like the first time

So six months have passed since my last post and obviously a lot has happened. After a difficult summer where things were beginning to grind to a halt and the whole project almost fell apart, we managed to find some new people and the band has gained some extra momentum. 
The Wow Factor
 
There have been a few ups and downs, as one would expect, but I've been avoiding writing anything about it because for some reason positive comments seem to put the kiss of death on things. Every time we make a tenuous step forward I want to put fingers to keyboard, but I hold back. However now seems like a significant moment and time for a review of the past few months.
 
Janu…

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Summer holiday

Mouli.
My very dear friend who sadly
passed away just before Christmas.
A happy soul
who will be missed by many.
The Christmas/New Year period would present a small interruption to band practice wherever one happened to be living, but here in the Southern hemisphere it represents the start of everyone's summer vacations. Even people who aren't taking much of a break still manage to get away from the city for a while. Consequently, practice sessions have been a bit thin over the last couple of weeks.
 
I thought it would be best to keep the practice sessions happening - even without all the band - to maintain some kind of continuity and in order not to lose the practice ro…

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Stop 'n go

After a somewhat disappointing start, November has seen a lot of progress: It would appear that I now have a band ... including that ever elusive keyboard player.
 
It seems I have to be very careful what I write here, as almost always the opposite of what I say or expect happens. When things are going good and I write about them, there is often a sudden down turn in fortunes. Equally when I express my frustration about the lack of progress, my words can ignite a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope my positive tones here don't put the kiss of death on things.

In my last blog entry I voiced my doubts over the level of commitment of some of the band members. I was right about Victor t…

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I'm waiting for the man

Lou Reed died this week, so it seems kind of appropriate to name this post after one of his songs. I think 'The Man' to which Lou Reed was referring is something of an abstract concept; the man I'm talking about is more tangible: my guitarist, Nicolas.
 
What is it about guitarists? I mean, they're easy enough to find and therefore fairly easy to replace, so they should be generally easy to keep under control ... one would think. But guitarists seem to be at the root of all my recent band problems. The last band, El Reflejo, all fell apart because of an overgrown teenager on guitar (the details have been discussed at length elsewhere), and now this band is slowly grinding to a halt, large…

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Let's hang on

Despite any ups and downs and setbacks, it's important to maintain a clear vision of where the project is going and to keep things moving forward.
 
It's almost October and the current band has been holding together for around two months, perhaps a little more, and I'm generally pleased with the progress we have been making. There have been some changes in personnel: Pablo on bass has been replaced by old friend Tomas, and there were a couple of different guitarists before we settled on Nicolas. The great news was that Nicolas has a friend, Victor, who can play keyboards; not so well, but it fills out the overall sound and provides a palate of additional colours to add to the mix. There a…

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Back in the saddle

After the long dark winter months, a new ray of hope has come peeping over the horizon.
 
I haven't written anything for a couple of months, because there's really been nothing to write about. After a somewhat disappointing May followed by a completely lifeless June, finally, at the end of July something seemed to be happening.
 
Around the middle of the month there was a flurry of emails from interested parties - mainly guitarists and bass players - and a couple of weeks ago I gathered a few together for a try out session. Things went well and the following Friday some of them actually came back. I've been holding back from writing about any of this as I didn't want to appear too hope…

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Come what May

The month of May has been a bit of a disappointment. I knew that this process would be long and hard with dry and demoralizing stops along the way; I guess that's where I am now.
 
As I said in a previous post, at the end of April I got rid of the people who don't fit into the plan, which left just Tomas and myself. I had a singer, Ariel, waiting in the wings, but he was largely untested. This meant I had no musicians to play melody and so practice sessions were put on hold. Around the middle of the month I found a guitarist, Gustavo, and we all got together, but he wasn't interested in continuing, so everything is back on hold. However, the session with this guitarist did provide an op…

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Music was my first love

My childhood was spent in a world that just seemed to pulse to one beat or another.

The first piece of music I can remember hearing was Starman by David Bowie. That hook leading into each chorus - sounding like the introduction to a nightly news broadcast - did its job perfectly and just reeled me in. It was many years before I would fully appreciate the genius of Bowie, but that song was like the first kiss of my long love affair with music.
 
Some years ago I found a box full of old 7" singles which I had bought (or had been bought for me) in the early 1970s. I'd like to be able to say that "this marvelous and eclectic collection showed an appreciation of music well beyond the ch…

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Falling apart at the seams

A change of some faces might reinvigorate the rest.

As I predicted, keeping this band together in its current form was simply too much to hope for. Gonzalo (keyboards) was enthusiastic, but time and other commitments have forced him to drop out. Anna (vocals) is very unreliable and doesn't always come to practice; she's missing about 30% of the time, which is really not good enough. She is also very focused on her Blues style - Joss Stone covers - and not really interested in other suggestions. Andres (guitar) is Anna's boyfriend/toyboy and so if she goes I guess he will too; his style is a little too Rock, anyway. That leaves just myself and Tomas on bass.
 
These musical differences and …

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Don't look back in anger

Some of the fun and games I had down the years, making music back in the UK.

DNS

The first bands I played in were mostly back in the 1980s, which makes this week an appropriate time to review what happened back then. Margaret Thatcher - that icon of the '80s - finally dropped dead this Monday, followed by a spontaneous out-pouring of celebration across Britain ... well, at least across the North. To go into too much detail about her and her legacy would take more time than I have this evening and anyway, it isn't really what the reader came for. I will say one thing, however: under the squeeze of Maggie's heel, there was a huge flowering of sub-cultures right across the a…

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