Saturday 6th of September, 2003
I get solos and noodly bits
In order to get to Crouch Hill for the Quillin gig I have to leave at 9:30. Well, 9:45. Anyway, earlier than I would have considered even getting up ten years ago. I take the Godin and the VG88 and buy a travelcard. So then we set up. It's actually quite pleasant to have a privileged place to sit (well, after I manage to get a chair - Joe sends me in to find a stool in the main building, but there isn't a stool to be seen. He's been there hundreds of times, and has he ever seen a stool? Let alone two? I get home, do a little stuff and decide to deliver a package by hand that I've meant to get in the post for well over a week (I've mislaid the address, although I know the door and letterbox it is to go through), so I take the tube to Chalk Farm, drop off the package and run away like an eight-year-old. Oh, well.
So to Finsbury Park on the tube, then by bus to the Crouch Hill Community Centre for the Chill on the Hill All Dayer. Mr Quillin meets me outside and I sit and ponder the lovely September morning as he busies himself, then we repair to the Bowling Green Room upstairs to rehearse or prepare or practise or something. Anyway, we run through the songs, Joe hammering them out on the battered upright piano, Steve beating on a plastic barrel from the play equipment and me playing the VG through Joe's keyboard amp. I get solos and noodly bits, including some playing using a patch named after a certain Heartless Raging Venal Leader, whose tone it somewhat resembles, but which Joe characterises as Smashing Pumpkins. So Smashing Pumpkins sound it is.
Joe and Steve go off to the shop and leave me to play around, using such delay as the unit has to make some kind of soundscape thing using the Slow Gear patch (which simulates the sound of a volume pedal without the hard labour). Kids play the piano - Chopsticks and Kumbaya and I jam along with them, although I don't think they notice.
I prepare a line to use - that I'm looking for two stools in order that I can fall between them - but, perhaps luckily, don't get a chance to use it.
Anyway, I get a chair, and fold up one of the available sofa cushions (for the as-yet not apparant crowds to lounge on, Roman-style) to raise me up and I'm happy enough except that I'm not, as such, making any sound. It takes a while to sort that out - occasionally someone will appear and say "We're twenty minutes behind" or whatever, but it's unclear whether this is a problem or they're trying to beat some personal record. But it gets done and I get sound coming out of the monitor and then we start and - though I say so myself - we rock somewhat.
Unit 7 (our name and not my decision) is a really good band, no matter how we jumble up (this time Joe's on Piano and I'm on guitar, previously I was on bass and Joe was on guitar. This arrangement is better, I think, but then I get a solo so I would).
After us I hang around, eating crisps and drinking ginger beer, watching a soul band from Up North play as the rain that's been threatening for a while starts to fall and the sofa cushions are wrapped up in tarpaulin. I had wondered why in so many years observing the weather, why I hadn't become capable of telling from the way it was at, say, 10:00 how it would be a couple of hours later and the answer seems to be that the weather is totally mercurial and bloody-minded.
I stop off at the Spice of Life, where Steve, who was playing drums this morning, is DJing with some friends. He also does techno thingies and percusses for orchestras. Busy boy. We chat about things, then I walk home and go to bed.