Review Of 2000 Pt 3
On June 30th Dan and I made our way down to the basement of a West London pub, to watch Liam make a mini solo-debut on an acoustic night. He performed 'Noriega' , 'Nazi Dog' and 'Chiswick High Rd', the latter two being brand new. While nerves meant he made a few errors on Nazi Dog, overall he was a big hit. But he wasn't planning to leave the band, not now we were on a real roll. The Hope and Anchor were now more than happy to accomodate us whenever we wanted. We picked Saturday August 12th, and once the June recordings were completed, we focussed on getting new material ready for the gig. Into the set came 'Fat Nora' and 'Pismel' (at that stage both unrecorded), and 'Maren'. Rehearsals were going amazingly well, and everyone was on a big up, when out of the blue we received some very sad news. Darla Borsos, one of our most loyal and dedicated fans, had passed away from Hodgkins Lymphoma . She had chatted with us on the fanclub mailing list, and felt more like a friend than a fan to us. We were shocked and deeply saddened. We made a decision to dedicate our next album to her memory.
The gig itself was a triumph over adversity. It was incredibly touch and go as to whether we would be able to play. The week before the gig, Ravi, our drummer, was mugged.
As well as stealing his bag, the assailants beat him up, and caused extensive damage to his jaw. The doctors told him he needed an operation, and scheduled it for the Saturday of the gig. We tried a rehearsal without Ravi and it was appalling, there simply wasn't time to rearrange the tunes without a drummer. I dreaded having to cancel the gig on incredibly short notice, and all Ravi could do was see if he could find a way round things, but he couldn't let me know till 2 days prior to the concert. I can't recall the last time I've been so stressed. I wasn't sleeping at all in those few days. But Ravi is so cool, he asked them to move his operation to the Monday so he could play with us, and luckily they were able to do it. And because it was the gig that so nearly didn't happen, we all went out there as relaxed as anything and played our socks off.
Ravi played especially brilliantly I might add, despite clearly being in pain.
The songs went down really well, including the 3 new ones. Maren was a big hit, with several people mentioning it specifically afterwards as a fave. Fat Nora got a huge cheer, and Dan's 'Pismel' is so good that, though it was the songs debut, we made it the encore, and it got everyone dancing.
In the instrumental jam at the end, I leapt into the crowd and was dancing among them, marracas flayling wildly (oo-er), which went down well. The set list was: Dummy Love, 1500 Wasted Nuns, Nevada Fighter, Maren, Fat Nora, Kirsten, Noriega, Yuki, Chuck's Party and Pismel.
Top Left: Dan, in his element. Above Right: Aiden extends his percussive range on 'Fat Nora'. Above Left: Liam and his harmonica enliven '1500 Wasted Nuns'
After our traditional summer break, we reconvened on September 2nd, to finish recording the album. We cut 'Noriega' and 'Pismel' from scratch. In addition, we took Liam's amazing 'demo' of 'Fat Nora' and wiped his backing vocals and replaced them with Dan and mine, and that was the finished song! I also re-recorded my vocal for 'Maren', and Liam overdubbed some guitar parts on 'Eva', and that was the album recorded. For the first time in over 9 years, I didn't bring a camera to that recording session so no photos exist. It was at that session, that we made a decision to put out our next studio album, before our rarities album. Our reasoning was that for people who were just getting into our new sound, it would be far better to hear a recording representing where we are now, before one that documents rarities, with varying levels of sonic quality and the inherent lucky dip approach of a rarities album. We moved the new album forward to December, and the rarities album back to March, to tie in with our 10 year anniversary gig.
I began making plans for that concert. We wanted to do something special, and longer than our usual half hour sets. So we decided to try and organise a charity concert (as we had after five years together), where we'd do 2 sets. An originals set, covering our entire history, and a covers set which would be prinarily Monkees tunes, in keeping with our history.
As if all that wasn't enough, we were approached by Peter Tork's management, who we had been recommended to, by a mutual aquaintance. They were interested in a Peter Tork/Shorty Blackwells UK Tour, but were keen that I organise it. Delighted by the concept I agreed, without, perhaps, taking the time to work out just how much work would be involved.
Meanwhile we began mixing the album on September 19th, Dan, Liam and myself gathering one night a week at my house, entrusted by the others with this difficult job. We had a self-imposed deadline of November 4th, when we were going to get the CDs mastered. Still, it seemed a long way off.
In this hail of activity, we'd all forgotten The Monkees tribute CD, but we were to get a rude reminder, when we read a press release announcing the album was on sale, without our song. We quickly contacted the label who explained that as it was 2 years since they'd first approached bands, they emailed them all again to make sure they still had permission to use the songs. As our email had changed, they couldn't contact us, and rather than take a risk, they dropped us from the line-up. It was a blow, but not a major one. The song they were using was by now four years old, and fairly average at best. It certainly wouldn't turn people on to where we were in Sept 2000, musically, and could even have been counter-productive. So we rolled with that punch and moved on to our next challenge. Ex-Shorty Mike Ulrich and Shortyworld star Chris Cranie had finally found time in their schedules to work on their promised remix of Dummy Love which they'd be interested in since Oct 99. 
For us this meant a trip to Chris Cranie's home studio in North London on September 30th, to lay down a fresh version of 'Dummy Love' which they could then work with to make their remix. We got all our parts recorded in one day, now the remixing was in their hands. Before leaving, however, we got Chris to take some shots of us, one of which would be used on the inside cover of the new album, 'Mountain Therapy' (the name came from the fact that to get over difficult relationships, Liam and Ravi have both found climbing a mountain to be theraputic.) As October rolled around we began making plans for a gig to launch the CD upon it's release in December, but there was to be plenty of drama before that would come to fruition.
Top Left:Liam plays his Dummy Love part on the Gretsch. Above Right: Ravi adds some kicking drums. Left: Stuart plays the keys one-handed! Right: An outtake from the sessions for the inside cover.
Next Page
Home Page