Having missed the small gig at the Third Man shop the night before, there was no missing this.
As soon as we got there we saw Gaye Black and her companion and soon Karina, Terry, Anna and Shirley showed up. It was an exceptionally friendly and supportive audience from the start.
This was a promo gig for the album I Play My Bass Loud, and it was wildly oversubscribed. we were ready for this! Flanked by her new musicians, the songs from the album were brought to life in the most wonderful way. Records always need to sound shiny, but tonight the songs sounded rocky and powerful. The two band members took on a lot of the stress of switching instruments, which happened almost without being noticed, and sorting out the monitor sound. Intensive rehearsals had paid off and then some: this is the first time for a long time that I've seen Gina be able to just sing and perform without having to address some kind of technical issue.
Uninterrupted, the flow of songs was nothing short of fabulous. The vocals were really well-rehearsed, lead guitar and bass duties shared out between the three of them, and the flow of goodwill from the audience was almost like an additional band member.
I heard my bass line in I Play My Bass Loud the song! There were four of us playing on the recording in addition to Gina: Emily Elhaj (who plays for Angel Olsen), Shanne Bradley, Jane Monro and me. Jane was there too at the gig.
Afterwards there was a huge queue of people to have their albums signed. I will wait for mine. How lovely to have know these songs from their inception (almost), right up until now!
BTW I sang on some of the tracks as well as playing bass and guitar on some of them, and co-wrote a couple of them too. You can hear Thurston Moore, Anne Wood and of course Youth and more on the album. It's very good and there are plenty of really catch songs on it with very perceptive and 'now' lyrics on them. Hooray for raging elder females!
No comments:
Post a Comment