Beware Norwegian men in their pants in the middle of the night

One of the most exciting things about being in a band is that you never quite know where it’s going to take you. A lifetime of weirdness has followed me during my life in music, so much so that it has become the norm. I have met people at gigs who have become lifelong friends. I have also met people at gigs who have been at various points along a continuum with “Eccentric and interesting” at one end, and “completely certifiable” at the other. During our time in a band called Edna, Jon and I were sharing a room (steady) in a house that had been rented for us during a short tour of Norway. In the middle of the night, a crazed man wearing only a pair of pants burst into our room in the middle of the night and started yelling at us in Norwegian. Also in only our pants, we yelled back (in English) and he left, grumbling. To this day we have no idea what he wanted, but it appears that we won the midnight pants war in Norway.

Memories – like the corners of my mind                                                                  As often happens I’ve stopped working on Moon Landings – my new song, in favour of a new, new song called Sinking Battleships. I’m still looking in the rear view mirror of my life with this one. It’s broadly a bunch of pre-school memories, probably distorted with time, glued together without rhymes. I’ve tried to avoid words that link these verbal snapshots, so the memories seem disjointed and come flooding at you like they do when you remember them. My Nan used to live near Bristol zoo and when I stayed with her I could hear the lions roaring at night, which was terrifying but thrilling at the same time for a nerdy four year old. After one bonfire night when I was five, a burnt out rocket landed in next door’s chimney pot and stayed there for what seemed like years. And so on, I’m sure you get the picture. None of the memories are anything dramatic or dangerous, just the small moments that come together to make a life. Feel free to message us with some of your pre-school memories and we’ll share them with the millions who are currently reading this blog.                                                                                   So after this one, that’s it for the memories for a while and I think I’ll turn to the future for inspiration. And if Sinking Battleships doesn’t make it onto the album, you’ll probably hear it as a free download, if of course you’re a member of our

Sunday the 12th February 2012

Extra Curricular Corner

As we all know if anyone in The Ocrchestra is going to 'play away' it'll be those merry scamps in The Percussion Division and yesterday Barry O playd to his biggest crowd yet, 18006 in total, when he stepped in as holiday cover for the Drummers at the Madejski Stadium in support of Reading FC; Reading beat Coventry 2-0 by the way. On a more musical note, this weekend, we also recorded  2 backing tracks for future projects. Thanks Jon for twiddling the knobs and thanks also to Yaz for stepping up to the plate and handling backing vocals for Friday nights gig in Tracys absence.