New songs!!!

After succesfully writing together for the first time with our song Strong Enough Aaron and I have been working hard on developing our writing partnership. In the last couple of months we've collaborated on a whole bunch of new songs and at the same time I've snuck out a couple of new compositions! Goodness knows where I find the time. Here's a little lowdown on what's in the pipeline:

Blue and White - by Aaron and I... this is a song about lunar module pilot Michael Collins, who travelled with Buzz Aldrin and Neal Armstrong on the first lunar mission that lead to a landing, Apollo 11. Collins had to stay in the ship and orbit the moon while the others went exploring, out there in space he must have been the most alone any human being has ever been!

Almost Home - by Aaron and I... this is an odd lyric, in some ways it is quite ambiguous but I see it as releated to Stowaways and End Of The World, in that we see a relationship strained by apocolyptic circumstances.

Chasing Hearts - by Aaron and I... about a guy who sees the girl he likes being persued by predatory sex addict men. A bit of a reflection on the clubs and party scene we used to frequent more often I would say.

Take It As It Come - by Aaron and I... a ballad about sticking your course through tough time and making the best of it, no matter what life throws at you.

Body In The Boot - one of mine... this is a weird lyric again, it's a sort of story. There's a guy and his girl has left him by faking her own death/kidnapping and then years later he sees her alive. The twist is that he's been pretending to himself she's been alive all this time anyway... but this is ambiguously put, he's 'kept her alive' - so her memory, perhaps, but how is not discussed. A while back I was toying with 'Skeletons in the closet' as an album title, and this would fit that very well. We sense our narrator is psychotic himself - the faked death plays on a real obsession I have with people who come up with extreme solutions to every day problems. (I was watching horrible bodies last night and some woman had started giving herself daily enemas with coffee to deal with her constipation and then had become addicted to the coffee enemas; people are strange.)

The Poison Apple - another of mine... I wrote this song about Alan Turing, who was a code-breaker for Britain during the second world war and is thought to be the theoretical father of modern computing. Turing as gay and after the war he was prosecuted for indecent conducted and forced into a chemical castration which destroyed his body (he grew breasts, his penis and testicles shrivlled up) and his brilliant mind. Turing had an obsession with Snow White and used to chant the withes mantra about dipping the apple in the brew. When he eventually committed suicide he did so with an apple he had dipped in cyanide.

March 3rd Private Party

On March 3rd we played a Private Party for my Mum's birthday. My Mum runs ACT (the drama school) so they used the Kemptown building to host the show. It was the first time my brother and I had been playing on the same bill but not in the same band since we were really young teenagers learning the ropes in a much less vibrant Brighton scene than the one we have currently.

We asked Ben to leave the band last year just before deciding we would call ourselves Fragile Creatures - we felt his drumming style was a little too busy for what we were trying to create - I don't really want to go into it, cos it's hard to discuss without sounding like I'm slagging him off! Ben is an excellent drummer, we just had to make a decision that he wasn't working out with the group when we went into this intense period of defining ourselves last year.

Ben now drums in a great group called Eliza Jaye and The Tarts, who won the coin toss and headlined the party. It was a lovely evening and in the end we were glad to go on first as we'd been given free access to the bar, so it would have been a much sloppier set if we'd played any later!

we played:

1. Stowaways
2. Sunshine
3. Fragile Creatures
4. End Of The World (For Two)
5. Slow Down
6. This Strange Dance
7. She Makes Me Nervous
8. The Chemicals
9. Strong Enough
10. Into The Night

We also played Hold The Line (by Toto) after an encore was called for. I borrowed a lovely silk kimono from the schools costume cupboard to wear onstage and was allowed to keep it at the end! It felt good having a bit of a wizardy cloakness to flap about in. An old friend of my Mums told me she had a nice kimono I could have too, if I popped in to visit her shop. This might be my new stage 'look'!!!

Feb 16th Show!

We really enjoyed playing The Pavilion Theatre on Thursday February 16th. We'd never played on such a big stage before and it was probably the biggest crowd we'd played to, despite going on early at 8pm. The organisers were very enthusiastic about out set and said they woulkd love to have us back further up the bill and hopefully they will programme us into some shows they are doing in The Dome bar during the Brighton Festival.

Here's our set:

1. Stowaways
2. Fragile Creatures
3. End Of The World (For Two)
4. This Strange Dance [shorter arrangement]
5. She Makes Me Nervous
6. The Chemicals
7. Into The Night
8. Strong Enough

5th Feb show...

The show at The Duke of Wellington on the 5th of Feb - Sun afternoon - went really well. We got lots of good feedback form the locals and it has been decided we should play there on Saturday nights in future! Result. I wasn't able to play as much of an acoustic set as I had initiall planned. As best as I can remember this is the set that we playted:

Set 1: my introductory acoustic set:

1. Blueprint
2. Wake Up Tired
3. Willin' (by Little Feat)
4. I Won't Tell If You Won't

Set 2: first band set
1. Stowaways
2. All You Believe In
3. Bird in a Cage
4. Sunshine
5. Just A Fool
6. Slow Down
7. Dear Michael
8. Down In The Basement
9. Empty Head

Set 3: final set
1. Virtually
2. Fragile Creatures
3. End Of The World (For Two)
4. The Chemicals
5. This Strange Dance
6. She Makes Me Nervous
7. Into The Night
8. Hold The Line (by Toto)
9. Strong Enough