Busy Week!

Anna asked me to support her on guitar and backing vocals at her acoustic Brewery Tap gig on the 2nd March. We spent an hour the night before preparing some of our covers to perform, including:

Numb - Linkin Park

Another Way to Die - Jack White

Drive - Incubus

Untouched - The Veronicas

Gravity Rides Everything - Modest Mouse

Englishman in New York - Sting

Honza also joined us on stage for some Lighthouse original songs:

Sleeping Walkers II

Listen, Angels Sing

Stay With Me

Lighthouse

Breathe 4 U

Altogether it was a very profitable evening, having brought more than the minimum number of people to the venue and we performed well. Anna was paid the promised £50, and extremely kind in giving me £20 of it for my help on stage.

[1 hour 30 minutes] rehearsal time[2 hours] performance and preparation time

The next day in the evening, Ryan and I began writing some songs for The Other Service, including a song based around a riff he had, which I helped develop as well as create a chorus part using the lyrics he had written a while ago, named "Burden of Proof". We also worked on Simon's simpler song "Run Through Me", adding a counter melody to the main chord progression.

[1 hour 30 mins]

That Wednesday (5th March) morning, The Other Service spent two hours rehearsing with Jono on bass so that I could play guitar and concentrate on vocals for the songs with only Ryan's guitar. We went over all the covers we played at the jam night - Jono having learnt them all previously before coming to the rehearsal. It all went very smoothly, and we even worked on the original song "Run Through Me". It did not take long to learn, being fairly simple - which was fairly appropriate for us since we'd only been playing a few months.We will be rehearsing again on the 18th March and playing at The Old Bell jam night again, hopefully with some more original material.

[2 hours]

As the 8th March was the Regional Final of Live and Unsigned, Lighthouse spent Thursday and Friday evenings and Saturday afternoon rehearsing and preparing.
On Thursday myself, Anna and Honza met at The Polish Club to arrange the three and a half minutes that we would be playing at the contest; composed of 1:45 of a cover song, the other 1:45 of an original song. We had decided on "Untouched" by The Veronicas and "Sleeping Walkers Pt II". It took us roughly two hours to learn and arrange The Veronicas song in our style, using delay effects on the guitars and the contrast between mine and Anna's voices. We would segue straight from after the first chorus into the shortened version of "Sleeping Walkers Pt II".

Friday evening we rehearsed as a full band in The Polish Club hall to teach Roman and Petr the arrangement. It didn't take long to play it as a full band - most of the two and a half hours was spent perfecting it and working on stage presence. It was also important for Petr to try out and get used to his new acoustic drumkit. In this session, Petr also presented us with the CD covers for our demo album, which we all agreed looked fantastic - we would now begin using them for promotional purposes, later on we would sale them at gigs.

I booked the university practice room for a final two hour rehearsal before the competition, since it had all the best equipment such as PA which would be particularly useful for the vocals. We constantly went over the three and a half minutes to try and get the best possible performance we could before the gig.

[6 hours 30 minutes]

We met at 8am on Sunday to travel to Sheffield for the soundcheck at 10:15. These took place very rapidly - there were about twenty acts altogether and each was given about forty seconds to soundcheck. I had initial worries about my effects pedal's power inlet playing up, but I managed to sort this with tape and blue tac!Unfortunately we had not sold all our tickets for the concert, we had five spare. Many other acts had ordered more tickets to sell and additionally we hadn't done much promotion - so our expectations were low.However, when it came to our turn we gave our performance everything we had and the only problem we encountered was Anna's microphone accidentally being turned off to start with. My effects pedal behaved itself and the audience seemed to enjoy the performance.

After all the acts had played, the judge's scores were made and the audience votes counted. Ten acts would be called out who would go through to the Area Final. We were surprised and ecstatic when "Lighthouse" was called out! We will be playing at the Area Final in Salford on May 3rd, but this time we plan to carry out a lot more promotion via press contact and interviews. This shall also be helped via the distribution of our new demo CD.

[4 hours] from arriving in Sheffield

Additionally, I had an acoustic gig at The Brewery Tap on Monday 9th. Although I brought nineteen people and played for just about two hours, I was not paid the £50 that I expected. I had to play extra time due to open mic performers turning up, so I will take this up with them at a later date.

My setlist featured many original songs:

Condemned

Upon Reflection

This Infectious Mood

Too Close for Comfort

Losing The Gift

Leave My Heart

Patriarch

Your Curtain Call

I also played a variety of covers, a couple of which with Anna - I shall upload a link for a video compilation of the set shortly.

[2 hours]

Total time: 11 hours

The Other Service

After constant extenuating circumstances, myself, Ryan and Simon finally got round to rehearsing a few songs to play at The Old Bell jam night. We had been spontaneously jamming in Simon's room where he kept his drumkit, going through a few cover versions that we knew for some time now, and it was not until a fornight ago that we booked the university practice room to get a solid set together. I compromised to temporarily play bass as well as vocals, with Ryan on guitar and Simon on drums.
In total we had two rehearsals, because in the first one I had a throat infection and was unable to sing so we needed a second for the important vocal cues. Each lasted two hours, and the setlist we constructed was as follows:

Breathe - Pink Floyd
All My Life - Foo Fighters
Remedy - Seether
Plug in Baby - Muse
Hell and High Water - Black Stone Cherry
Killing in the Name - Rage Against The Machine

After discussing band names, we settled on "The Other Service", at least for now.

[4 hours]

Unfortunately, I have no video evidence of these rehearsals. But a friend of mine managed to capture some of the songs we played at the actual jam night on Wednesday 25th February. There were many bands on that evening, and we had to split the set into two halves. It went very well, the only problems we faced were a few missed cues and the lead being pulled out of my bass during "All My Life".
For our final song, I asked a friend of mine Jono if he would play bass for us during "Killing in the Name" so that I could concentrate on frontmanship as a vocalist - something that this song demanded. We made it known that we were looking for a bassist so that I could concentrate on vocals and guitar, but it looks as if Jono may be able to fill that role for us.

We all agreed that it was more than worthwhile, and we had a great time - seeing a lot of potential for us as a group. Ryan and I have subsequently started writing some original material, hoping to have some of them to showcase the next time we attend the jam night. We received a lot of positive feedback about our performance, and the landlord showed particular interest in getting us a paid gig there.

A video of our set can be viewed here: http://www.esnips.com/doc/ee5e9b47-bde3-4d9f-9c9d-66f2b081d5bd/jam-night-25th-february_0001

[3 hours]

In the meantime, Anna has now returned to the UK temporarily so that Lighthouse can begin rehearsing again for the UK live and unsigned regionals on March 8th and our acoustic gig at The Brewery Tap on the 2nd.