The Scribe | 
10 23rd, 2008| 
Well against the odds Rotten Hill Hang had a great gig last night at the good ship.
What were the odds? Well mainly that I packed everything into the car (that’s Arran’s drums, which I still had from Friday’s gig and my guitar, effects pedal (no great loss) and, worst of all, HAT!), shut the boot, and promptly realised that I’d locked my car key inside, where it remains.
We were due on stage at 9pm, so I called the AA, who said that yes, they could come out within the hour (I specifically checked because it was already 7:20), but that I’d have to upgrade to home call out, plus pay a call out charge of £85. I did so, but at 8:20 I decide to call to check where they were. It seemed that they could now not make it till around 9:30pm, so instead I called my friendly local rehearsal studio and borrowed, or rather hired, a guitar.
As “luck” would have it, in the light of the current credit crunch wifey and I had spent the day reviewing our finances and found that a) if we cut out some of the bizarre forgotten direct debits we could save the equivalent of a reasonable holiday every year (to save repeating myself I wrote about it on my whimsical side project how to survive the credit crunch) and b) we really can’t afford such baboonery as locking keys in the car.
Worse still, at some point during the evening the guitar that I’d borrowed, a rather spiffing Telecaster reissue that was almost exactly the same as the one Mick was playing, developed a large chip in the veneer on the back that I’m going to have to pay for one way or another.
Bottom line, that gig, in front of about 20, admittedly very enthusiastic, people, will cost me a small fortune :-S
I like to think there’s a lesson to be learned, but the worst thing is, I can’t for the life of me think what it is! Suggestions are invited.
P.S. The key is still locked inside the car, but it will be sprung tomorrow one way or another, because we have our gig at the 100 Club tomorrow evening so I need my own guitar and, more importantly, my hat!
An upshot of bumping into Gaz last week was that he told us the theme for Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues sound system at Carnival is Jules Vernes’ (apostrophe usage - discuss) Around the World in 80 Days and as luck would have it we were planning on pushing the boundaries of our Dickensian thing to include Jules Verne as well. I mentioned this to Gaz, who said we should play on his stage because we’ll fit in perfectly. Well - apart from the fact that we don’t play ska.
So it’s been a while huh? Well most of June was spent working on the band. Turns out that our crazy modern sound is more popular with the kidz than we knew and 
it’s all starting to move. The highlight of the month was when we played at Jewellery designer Stephen Webster’s party in the wonderful old East End music hall Wilton Hall. The party was entirely based around our song “Pick a Pocket” (soon to leak out as a single) with its Dickensian theme. 
You can hear a rough, unmastered version of it on our 
Short (well - it wasn’t a cover as far as he was concerned of course!), then Mick came on for the 5th and 6th songs, one of ours (can’t for the life of me remember what it was right now) followed be the obligatory 
Should I Stay or Should I Go. It was only during the rehearsal the day before that I realised I’d never played it before in my life. The closest I’d come was when Mick and I sampled it for the song The Globe in 1991. Mick started to tell me the chords, but I pointed out that he didn’t really need to because you could probably go up to anyone in the street and they’d be able to play it.
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