Thankyou Carl

I took the posters off the wall, I stacked my cds into boxes, I put protective bits of plastic over electrical equipment and I put it all in a borrowed car and sat in the passenger seat while my housemate George drove me through the rain, round the corner, back to Sunmast Heights. The Morden Residential Offices. Glosses Fur Die HQ.

Adam and Rory’s place.

I can wave farewell to that brief regressive spell in a student house. Five weeks of small inward monologues about the ratio of food purchasing/consumption and cleanliness. Five weeks of returning to an empty rejected filthy house, my housemates having decamped to the more inviting prospect of their other half.

I am back to the smoky late night loop pedal workouts, the communal teas, the intellectual biscuit chats, the wit and the fury. The daily questioning of purpose, of direction, of satisfaction. Typewritten paper found in piles, homemade books inviting a reader. Whispering quietly into a cocked ear. Inky words smudge deeply into the white.

Large photographic lomo collages. Instant nostalgia.

Secret Pete and Dud renditions; glass of wine. Genius in the gaps. Laugher bursting forth past walls of forced restraint.

Shared loneliness and loss. Artistic preoccupation through necessity. An agreed prolific through faraway loves. Creative suffering.

And Saturday spent holding back the physical and mental anguish that accompanies a seasonal tide of phlegm while myself and Rory locked ourselves indoors, and played the same four songs over and over.

Underprepared and quietly confident, we ran, guitars swaying and bags of leads weighing us down, to the bus.

Before we had too much more time to think about it, we were on that historic Cumberland Arms stage, in front of a small crowd of Saturday nighters. And Morden Wenger (Adam).

Despite our agreed intentions of playing a continuous set with minimal crowd interaction, Rory found the microphone and the opening silence too deafening:

“Did you know Carl Kennedy is playing tonight? What are you doing here?”

The twenty random people in the room looked genuinely a little upset to have found themselves so far away from the prospect of a Neighbours musical side project. Still, they were here, they would listen.

We began our set with a six minute feedback and percussion wash. It sets the tone. I closed my eyes and let my limbs do the work. I found myself humming and aahing into the microphone, blissfully uncaring of the potentially bemused audience.

The dynamic develops. The noise and the seeming lack of structure gives way to coordinated count ins and rehearsed songs with words and harmonies and fuck off syncopated free drumming. Each song, or structured/rehearsed piece is conjoined by the ever-dazzling loop pedal. Endless intrigue and invention and modal developments through that heavy-duty bit of Boss kit.

I had a cultivated intensity for the set. Eyeballing audience members, recalling a song’s meaning and conception as I sang the words. I had decided to remain generally silent between songs in order to avoid the wandering nonsense that I am prone to uttering when given a stage.

We shared knowing looks and agreed nods throughout to reign in those improvisations. Smiles for the occasional fuck ups of words or rhythm.

As we left the stage to a pre-recorded loop, we felt we had done a pretty good effort for a first gig. Words that stick in my mind from those who were present:

Beautiful.

…early Floyd.

That’ll do.

Holes in our set up are easy to find. We have no pickups for our acoustic guitars. Playing into a microphone is one thing. Playing into two is just ridiculous. I so wanted the freedom of movement, but to play into a guitar microphone keeps one stood stock still, legs stomping for lack of anything else to do.

Now that gig number one is complete there is a sense of a ball rolling. A momentum started, an instant learning of lessons and a desire to hone the sound and the dynamic.

And perhaps we have agreed on a band name. In honour of that ailing faraway nineteen year old puppy, we thought we might call our band:

Nachmi.

The coming weekend brings me a gift of love. Effie The Baron, the Israeli, the girlfriend, is making the short (ahem) trip from Rishon Le Zion to Newcastle for a week or so of catch up.

Thankyou God. Thankyou Steph and all those who helped make it happen.