october 10th was a big deal on the hobopop calendar - anyone who was anywhere near us in real or cyber-life will recall that between organising bringing guests up for rehearsals and performances and trying to explain that the show had been sold out for weeks to lovely people who wanted tickets we also had to write a set-list and play it through a few times. just a few, mind. it was busy, since we were (as always) organising the promotion and whatnot ourselves too, radio sessions here and there, and poster drops all over town...
we made a decision early on not to allocate the usual reams of press seats to give away to people in the hope of reviews. these are hard to fill and guarantee nothing. rather, we thought, put the energy into making a great show and filling the room with people who really wanted to be involved, in the hope that their energy would spill out of the room and that they would be not only the essence of the recording but also our publicity after the show. we certainly got an amazing amount of great feedback, and had a room full to bursting with genuine excitement and enthusiasm.
so, we worked hard - well what do you expect i guess. we always do. and i must say it was damned good fun too. the last minute additions of clive mellor on harmonica and the wonderful baba israel (artistic director at contact) who agreed to compere the night for us were worth the extra rehearsals and meetings etc. we do think it came off about as well as it could have done - and got that vibe back off everyone in the room too.
so what happens after that (apart from the aftershow with one of the best DJ sets i've ever heard james from the brute chorus play, i mean)? to be honest, we've been hiding away a bit. we skipped the country only days later, switched our phones off and spent a week with family halfway up a spanish mountain. we'd earned it.
but things have gone on in the meantime. just before we left we hooked up again with barkley, our recording engineer, to listen back to the show over soup and chocolate, and pick the tracks he was going to mix down for us while we were away - we're hoping to hook up again this week and put the finishing touches to the work, ready for mastering. at that point we'll come back here and give you a tracklisting for the record. exciting.
we actually got more than we hoped, too - the plan was for a mini-album, maybe 7 songs, but now it's looking like we'll have about 40mn of stuff we just don't want to get rid of. that's pretty much a whole album (are there rules about how long things should be etc?). it's all pretty honest - like we said from the start, we're not interested in doing any overdubs, repairs etc - it's all going down on disc exactly as it was on the night, despite the technical gremlins and the inspired wrong notes. the energy was right. that's what counts.
so now we are having fun with ideas, preparing some little interviews for the web, getting other plans in the pipeline (gonna be doing some fun internet stuff next year i think), putting the finishing touches to the tour for the spring, and collecting 5s:
just for fun, you understand - but if you fancy contributing to our 'wall of 5' please send your pictures to us and we'll keep growing the collage. maybe we could reward particularly awesome ones with CDs or tickets... pictures of you wearing your no.5 jewellery from wonderhaus also most welcome. it's to be available from the hoboshop in time for christmas.
more soon...
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