Found myself the recipient of an offer I could not refuse yesterday.
Houdini and Frau Pouch are recording a split single next Monday at Soup Studio in Limehouse, East London. They had plans to film the occasion but for whatever reason the plans fell through. Greg from Houdini contacted me and asked if I would be interested and/or available to join them in the recording studio and capture the session on video.
I agonised over it for about five minutes, I had already used so much of my leave allowance doing projects just this month, and I need to ration my days off carefully. But this is exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing so it really was a no-brainer. I emailed my line manager, requested the leave and told Greg that I would be there with bells on. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, money is tight, so I had to ask Greg if he would be able to cover the cost of transport and tapes. I've never asked before, and it won't be a lot, but it's money I'd otherwise be losing on every shoot.
Houdini and Frau Pouch will be recording two songs each over an 8 hour day at the studio. They'll be recording in the live room, so they'll perform as a full band rather than going into soundproof booths and recording tracks separately. I'll be there to get footage of them in the live room and just hanging about in general. I also want to see if I can get some talking head segments. I'll probably bring along my consumer camcorder as well as the Canon XL1S, the battery is running really short but I can plug it into the mains and still use it.
I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog before but I used to play bass in a band called The Contortionists several years back. Joe from Frau Pouch was our guitarist. We used to gig quite a bit around London and it's great to meet bands from our day who are still going strong. Managed to see the ever-impressive Yokozuna (I really must video those guys soon) at the Urban Bar in Whitechapel recently, a venue that I'm growing to like more and more. I also fired off an email to a band we shared bills with a few years back called Silent Front, I don't know if they'll remember me but I've offered my services for one of their upcoming Camden shows. Be good to get more experience and get myself out there. Plus they are fucking good!
There's a lot about being in a band that I miss, especially playing live but I think I'm better at taping shows than I ever was at playing bass (I'm not very good at taping shows so you can only imagine how unmusical I was). I get to relive it a little whenever I film a gig, I get a buzz! It's not too late to get back into being in a band of course, but sadly I sold all my gear about a year ago, times were tough and I didn't have much of an option if I wanted to make the rent. It actually came to that. I'm sad that it's all gone, but I was never much of a musician. But I feel a really strong connection to working with video. I think this is more... me. But working with musicians and filming live shows, I'm getting the best of both worlds. It makes me happy.
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