by JamesFearnley Tue Feb 15, 2005 8:52 pm
You missed a ramshackle gig of what? seven songs or something fortyfive minutes, maybe fifty (I stayed on to play four songs with my mate Justin Clayton - whom I've known for a long time, excruciating expat existentialist - and then stayed on longer to do punky swampbeat Carter family stuff with a band called Dead Rock West) and people came who'd heard about The Cranky George Trio (there are four of us) on this website, I think, as well as LA Weekly, where I find out we were among the picks of the week (how can they possibly judge that? We never played before) from as far afield as Santa Clarita and Long Beach and I think Orange County. Dermot Mulroney played cello and guitar and mandolin. Kieran his brother played ukuleles and fiddle. I played guitar and accordion and a hatbox with a bass drum pedal fixed to it (my weekend project) and Brad Wood played bass and guitar. We all sang. We were nervous, for certain - it's been seventeen years leading up to this gig, for we all met in 1988 or thereabouts - leastways myself Dermot and Kieran - and have been playing in one another's houses for that long, until Zander Schloss (the wiener man in Straight to Hell, Circle Jerk bass player) met me somewhere and said he was getting a band together which eventually became the Low and Sweet Orchestra, with Kieran and Dermot and myself providing what everyone wanted to call 'the colour' - anyway, seventeen years leading up to this one gig with just the original three, the brothers and me that is, and the joke is that the next gig's going to be seventeen years hence. I hope it's sooner than that. So, don't know about the next one. Dermot's a working actor of course, and Kieran's a working writer/director, and Brad's a working record producer - so, if scheduling permits, we'll be out there again, somewhere.
Songs we did: an instrumental called It's A Great Big Shame (a bit weimar republic perhaps but with a sumptuous refrain). Bashful Boy (Brothers Grimm-like fairytale song about a near-mute with a girlfriend that fits in his pocket). Drunken Boat (Waiting for Herb, with the words changed a bit). Wander the Strand (maritime waltz about loss and sailing, set in Hull). Life Is A Pain (country song about a guy on the wrong side of things, and on the wrong side of that too). Madrid (seafaring song about a twat who hates every town he goes to, containing a list of sixteen towns in succession which are awfully difficult to sing in the right order). Bones (a serial murder song). Without You (the Harry Nilsson classic - because it was Valentine's day).
Hope your show went as well as ours did.
You missed a ramshackle gig of what? seven songs or something fortyfive minutes, maybe fifty (I stayed on to play four songs with my mate Justin Clayton - whom I've known for a long time, excruciating expat existentialist - and then stayed on longer to do punky swampbeat Carter family stuff with a band called Dead Rock West) and people came who'd heard about The Cranky George Trio (there are four of us) on this website, I think, as well as LA Weekly, where I find out we were among the picks of the week (how can they possibly judge that? We never played before) from as far afield as Santa Clarita and Long Beach and I think Orange County. Dermot Mulroney played cello and guitar and mandolin. Kieran his brother played ukuleles and fiddle. I played guitar and accordion and a hatbox with a bass drum pedal fixed to it (my weekend project) and Brad Wood played bass and guitar. We all sang. We were nervous, for certain - it's been seventeen years leading up to this gig, for we all met in 1988 or thereabouts - leastways myself Dermot and Kieran - and have been playing in one another's houses for that long, until Zander Schloss (the wiener man in Straight to Hell, Circle Jerk bass player) met me somewhere and said he was getting a band together which eventually became the Low and Sweet Orchestra, with Kieran and Dermot and myself providing what everyone wanted to call 'the colour' - anyway, seventeen years leading up to this one gig with just the original three, the brothers and me that is, and the joke is that the next gig's going to be seventeen years hence. I hope it's sooner than that. So, don't know about the next one. Dermot's a working actor of course, and Kieran's a working writer/director, and Brad's a working record producer - so, if scheduling permits, we'll be out there again, somewhere.
Songs we did: an instrumental called It's A Great Big Shame (a bit weimar republic perhaps but with a sumptuous refrain). Bashful Boy (Brothers Grimm-like fairytale song about a near-mute with a girlfriend that fits in his pocket). Drunken Boat (Waiting for Herb, with the words changed a bit). Wander the Strand (maritime waltz about loss and sailing, set in Hull). Life Is A Pain (country song about a guy on the wrong side of things, and on the wrong side of that too). Madrid (seafaring song about a twat who hates every town he goes to, containing a list of sixteen towns in succession which are awfully difficult to sing in the right order). Bones (a serial murder song). Without You (the Harry Nilsson classic - because it was Valentine's day).
Hope your show went as well as ours did.
