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NEXT GIG WITH THE ADAM KIDD BAND
13th February Below Belushi's, Brighton
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This is Dragon, the bass player. I like to think that I can play anything with strings on, or that you can hit, but that would be a monstrous arrogance. It's the bass that has my heart. Give me a few fat strings to pluck and I'm a happy man.
I'm a band kinda person. Jamming bands. That's me, see. What I love.
Most of favourite times and tunes have been on stage or in a rehearsal room, when everyone lets go and just plays.
The songs on this page are some of the very many occasions when a tape has been queitly rolling in the background. It wasn't always listening with the best ears, but still...
PEOPLECOVEREDINFISH was my first band. A raucous, chaotic mess half the time, but when it came together... This 'T.R.O.' is a very short version - it would often be over ten minutes long. We always held flexibility and change in high regard, and were in love with the evolving nature of our music. We were like heavy metal beatniks with decent music and coffee.
LAND OF PLENTY rose out of the ashes of PCIF, a more directed band, more fluent. Whatever flowery words, we played a lot less guff, and a whole lot more brilliant music. And we had a singer. Mindy joined, and suddenly we had to play proper songs, with words and everything. This 'Inversalm' here is a jam. I didn't have a right lot to do with starting this one, so it's a bit cheeky putting it on my page, but hey. Mark, the guitarist, was doodling away. I was trying to work out what he was doing (a long and complex process), and, if you listen very carefully, you can just hear the drummer come in, walk across the room, sit down and start playing. And once the drums are going, there's no turning back. I love this tune. None of us had any idea what we were doing, yet we all played exactly right.
These were both Exeter bands. Exeter was abandoned for Brighton. Brighton's nice.
'UNTITLED 4' is a little jamette with some guys soon after I got here. I had just got a new fretless, and this is what happened. The music was always a bit derranged and unsettled. But it ws raw and weird, and that's the way I like it. We never settled on a name, but I like to think of us as Criminal Swing. Any one know Slaine? you know from 2000AD? Well, if Slaine was a chihuahua instead of a celtic warrior, this is what his warp spasm would sound like.
ANY ODD WORLD. Good band this one. We played some mad gigs. More jamming, much more actual songwriting, some very silly songs and one or two awesome ones. We could fill a pub with more mad pounding funk-skiffle-metal-folk-weirdness than any band in Brighton, and did as often as we could. A really fun band to be in, we're all still friends. Just working on other things. Though we have been known to spontaneously come back together from time to time...
ALIENSONG is just a bunch of music stuff that I should be getting on with. It's all the bits that a band isn't. Computers, noises, broken glass, ridiculous time signitures. One of these days I'll finish the songs. Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.
So there you are. I love music, and am happiest in a sweaty room throwing the stuff wildly around. I pretend to be an artist and photographer as well, and have done for years. Before computers came along, I used paper and pencil and ink and smudging fingertips. And while these are still useful, the digital image and the sheer manipulability of it all brings me back to the hard drive with increasing regularity. Computers are good for making films on, which is another thing I do. Making a miniature sci-fi epic with SubThing, right now.
Here's some of my artwork...
And some photography...
So there's a few bits and bobs you can make small-talk with if ever we should meet in a pub. I'll have a tequila, cheers.
