Preparing to be good, preparing to be bad!

The rehearsals in Brighton have resulted in the revival of a little gem. After not being played for around 25 years we have resurrected ‘Get Up and Fight’ from our first album ‘Beggars Can Be Choosers’ and a mighty thing it is too.
It sounds fresher today than it did when we first recorded it and we are very excited to be playing it in the three gigs we have coming up soon.

Just to let you know, Colin Dredd will be making a guest appearance again at the Rebellion Festival gig on Sat 12th August but he will be away having his annual holiday at Womad before that date so will not be in attendance at the Brighton or London gigs. For those, we are having our good friend singer/songwriter Paul Howard pop up to sing a couple of Neurotics songs that my vocal cords cannot reach anymore.

Apart from the rehearsals at the weekend there was time to relax, it was Simon’s and my partner Clare’s birthday so we went out on Saturday night to Brighton. We had a fantastic Indian meal and unseen to us around the corner in the room was a woman who laughed hysterically for most of the evening and we never knew why. I fantasised that this is what happens when you go out with a professional comedian but the opposite is probably true, they are probably all depressives.

One of the lovely aspects of this social time together was that Don, who has only been playing with us for three years (when it was originally intended to be one gig, has fallen in love with the Neurotics and the songs and wanted me to know that, which then sparked off Simon to say similar things.

There is nothing like having a band this committed, this close, and this enamoured by the songs, I am really honoured and to me it is a thing of beauty.

Pity it will all come to an end soon, but then every thing does, without fail.


1965

"Do it now or else, do it now or you’re a just a fucking johnny bag, just a fucking girl!"

I hate these people I thought, I hate these people so much and I hate myself for being with them. I was petrified, it wasn't just a fear of violence, it was a feeling of being ostracised, I needed to be loved so much at this time but I couldn't get enough, I couldn't even get to be liked, my last chance was to be accepted. Now I was loosing that, that's why I was scared, I was rooted to the spot, unable to walk away and unable to do their bidding, They were asking too much, but they always did. Oh how I hated them, did I tell you that? I did? Oh, I'm sorry, I tend to use repetition as emphasis, did I tell you that already? I didn't? Oh I have now. Yeah I hated them and the only reason I was here was because being one of their friends was far preferable to being one of their victims, but I seem to be on a never ending apprentiship of humiliation without getting the stinking diploma!

We were standing in the large car in Bush Fair that serviced both the shops and Keat’s House doctors surgery, over a small perimeter wall a stones throw from us was a bus stop where a queue of bored people waited patiently for a bus. They had nothing to do to pass the time but listen to a small group of kids arguing.

We didn’t really see them, they were not in our world.