turning on (the plus signs)

i guess i should write a bit about the Plus gig last week since it was a good night, and raised some questions about where we're at. It got a pretty good response, thanks for coming out, sounded good apparently, and to me felt alright, even though towards the second half I managed to miss getting the lyrics right, i had rehearsed them fairly thoroughly but then got lost in the song and missed the right points of entry, and through that lost the momentum a bit, but managed to find it again by going a bit mental at strategic points ;-) That's how i usually do it in rehearsals, recordings even, go right into bits of lyrics, change them around, find new lines, scare myself even, change the emphasis, do a trip into private language. That's what plus gigs used to be like, messy, a bit anarchic, with sudden shifts in intensity, and never quite the same. i guess people like it though when i'm singing lyrics and am more in control so i'm reasonably happy to try and oblige, i actually quite like some of these lyrics now, the way they put some weight behind the songs is powerful to me too. thing is though, about halfway through we played a brand new number, and i went straight back into wild man mode, and couldn't shake it off afterwards. i actually thought that new number was one of the best of the set, and new ones don't always work for me the first time we play them. so there was a weird balance between rehearsed and improvised, and i think it's okay to do that now, to suddenly let rip, to switch modes, to surprise etc. Whenever we play a set i never quite know which songs will work and which will not, it's like a lottery so i will say the first half was strong and then there was a bit where we lost the momentum a bit but Plus Today, the only old one, was magnificent and brought us back again. I'm getting a bit bored with the old stuff but this one felt alright, was really beautiful, intense and over the top as per usual. Overall i think there was a lot of control even though some of it was loose, maybe because of it, and it had a slow burning, complex, introspective, shoegazerish vibe, where there were several things going on at once and not everything worked equally well.

Here's the setlist:

Shades of Green
Pink City
Tired Eyes
Cold in Summer/When I'm Pretty/? (The new one...)
Seeing Time
Ephedrine Daddy
Plus Today
Teenager

Teenager, a sometimes total monster track, i screwed up a bit unfortunately, it wasn't bad but nowhere near 100 %, but the track before redeemed it, i guess. Wayne, the promoter, played a Virgin Prunes track 'Walls of Jericho' from the live bit of Heresy for me while we came on (he played the rest of it after the set), The Phobics were fantastic, full on garage punk, and GNA did their global noise attack thing for an enthusiastic crowd, so a fun evening out. I'd like us to play at the Rhythm Factory again, nice venue and crowd...good people!