2006 Pt 1

With Liam returning from Japan in December 2005, he was keen to get straight back into the Shorties groove.

Although we had no gigs pending, and were intending to focus on getting our new album ready for release, everyone fancied kicking off the cobwebs in a rehearsal, and so, early in the New Year, we gathered at the Joint to jam up a couple of Liam's new songs. The occasion was more important than the quality of the rehearsal, though the rehearsal was both fun and productive, and one of the jammed up numbers, Centrifugal Bugle, seemed to offer a great deal of promise.

                                        15 year Anniversary

Unbelievably it was on Feb 1st 1991 that Mike, Saul, Liam and I first convened at Mike's flat in Keele, and recorded our 1st song 'Elephant Sings The Blues'

On February 3rd all seven current Shorty Blackwells met in London, for a special meal to celebrate fifteen great years together. We convened at 'The Gun' pub in Liverpool Street and, as luck would have it, the first four Shorties to arrive were Aiden, Saul, Liam and Mike; the four original band members. We took the opportunity to get a photo of the four of us.

 Soon enough Dan, Matt and Chris joined us and we moved on to a much nicer and more relaxed pub, hidden away in a small back street, which had the feel of a gentleman's club, with comfy sofas and tables, and a gentleman playing some very tasteful piano. Then it was on to the main event, a fantastic meal at 'The Brick Lane Brasserie'.

The conversation flowed freely and there was much laughter and a great deal of reminiscing.

It really was a wonderful night and a great way to celebrate. All too soon, midnight was receeding into the past and people began to make their way home.

 Saul, and I stayed over at Dan's house, and, the following morning, recorded 2 'All Shorties' radio shows.  Every band member suggested favourite songs they'd like played and we made sure we included at least 1 song suggested by every Shorty. We will be podcasting the shows shortly.

                Left: The full 2006 lineup celebrate.   Right: The original four (Liam, Aiden, Saul, Mike) 15 years on

Having appropriately celebrated our 15 year milestone, it was time to focus on the future once more. On February 15th Dan and I met at his house and recorded some guitar and vocal overdubs for Osbert Scoon. We focussed primarily on the 5 tracks we planned to mix the next weekend, and managed to make a breakthrough on the vocals for 'He Plays The Lottery'.

On Feb 18th and 19th Dan, Mike and I gathered at Mike's house to begin the mixing for 'The Disturbing Testimony Of Osbert Scoon'. We had forgotten to bring the manual for the 8-track recorder which presented an immediate problem. The vast majority of the songs have more than 8 tracks and require 'bouncing', ie: converting 2 separate tracks onto one, until you are left with a maximum of 8 tracks (the most the machine can handle at one time...hey it was a cutting edge machine when I bought it...ten years ago!).

Luckily Mike can usually find a work around solution to most problems, and he set his brain to work, while we started mixing 'Return To Skiffle Rock', one of the few songs with less than 8 tracks on it. By the time we had finished 'skiffle', Mike had a cunning plan. It took a bit of surfing on the internet and downloading of software and freeware etc, but we found a way to transfer everything to Mike's PC and use a program that could handle all the tracks at once. It did mean a bit of tricky 'lining up' of the all the tracks so they all started together, once they had been moved to the PC, so it made things slightly slower than they might have been. That notwithstanding we got a further four songs mixed. These were 'The Independent People's Revolutionary Office', 'He Plays The Lottery' 'Armies Of Terror' and 'Bob Dylan'.
We then sent out copies of these prelimanary mixes to the rest of the band for their approval.