Wimbledon

Wimbledon

I can't wait to do the gig on Thursday. I don't know why. I have a good feeling about it. Maybe because we're playing a new song that I'm excited about. It's called "All I Need To Know". It's a rocker. If there are any Londoners out there who are reading this, please come along. The venue is called The Watershed. It's about a 5 min walk from Wimbledon train station. We're on stage at about 10pm. Well, it's listed as 10pm but these things never go strictly to plan. If you do want to come, let me know and I can put you on a reduced guestlist - sam@thevibrants.com

We're rehearsing again tomorrow night. Coming up with more new stuff. Basically I'm trying to keep busy coming up with material for our first album. I'd rather have too many songs to choose from than just enough. It's got to be a rock n roll album that will be remembered. Otherwise there is no point.

Cheers to everyone who has left comments on my blog page. I read all of them and I believe I've replied to everyone. If I've left anyone out, it's just me being forgetful and I apologise.

Cheers

In The Attic

In The Attic

-some people have been reading my blog! Last night me and Giles played a couple of songs and had a bit of a chat on WHO TV's 'In The Attic' This is a ("mental") show presented by Rachel Fuller and Mikey Cuthbert, where guests come on, play some songs and talk about what they're up to, answer a few questions etc. It's all very relaxed and light hearted. Very enjoyable to watch and even better to be involved in. Last night's other guests were: Joseph, Simon and Pete Townshend. A family affair. There was a pyjama theme. I don't wear pyjamas or have any night wear for that matter, so I borrowed a dressing gown off my brother.

We played 'New Way' and 'Beauty'. Both songs are on our new EP that we shamelessly plugged. BUY OUR EP! GO TO WWW.THEVIBRANTS.COM/MUSIC AND CLICK BUY NOW!

I can't really remember much about what we spoke about on the show. Except: Giles going on about how he'd been dumped, Me having dreams about my teeth falling out (I'm insecure you know!) and Me thinking that Giles was the class room bully when we were at school. How first impressions can be deceiving.

Overall it was a very enjoyable experience. The highlights for me were Mikey singing "Come on Ryan", Rachel's fashion section, Simon singing "Time The Healer" and Pete's stories. We'd like to do the show again sometime and play a couple of different tracks and talk about something else than dreaming about teeth falling out.

I think the show is on loop today on WHO TV! So check it out!

Rehearsal Last Night

first of all...I don't know if my blogger editor is fucked but I can't write titles. There's no box above this editor that says "title", so I'm just writing a title in the content box. Anyone know anything I can do to sort this out? echo...echo...echo

It would help if people actually read your blog, Sam.

Anyway. I don't care if no one reads this. I find it quite therapeutic to write stuff down.

Rehearsals last night were the best they've ever been. We used to always just rehearse the set and never really give ourselves time to work on new material. Last night we worked on a new song "All I Need To Know" and I recorded it on minidisc. It sounds quite good actually. I was worried the song was never going to come together because it centers around this Kinks -esque riff that's quite strong and there's no real vocal melody. In the beginning it was quite boring but more parts have been written and chords have been moved around a bit and finally there's a song.

We also worked on a new hook/riff that I wrote yesterday. It sounded great. It's got a kind of Off beat/ ska feel to it. I wrote some lyrics to it yesterday too with the title 'You're stronger than you think you are' but after hearing it back with the full band playing, I think it's back to the drawing board in terms of words. I don't think the lyrics suit the feel of the music. I'll put these lyrics to something else one day.

Lewisham

Lewisham

Well we played in Lewisham on Saturday night at Dirty South... From playing front of 500+ people at the Marquee, we played in front of about 7 people at Dirty South. It happens... We have a fan base just about everywhere except South East London! We played well. We bashed through our set like we were declaring war on the audience, blaming them for it being DEAD. It's stupid that you moan about it being empty to the people that are actually there, I know. We thought the promoters were tried and tested and pulled their own crowd and that's why we were interested in doing the gig in the first place. Giles's first words at the mic were "Hello Busy Lewisham". Alex (drums) wanted to pull his gear off stage and piss off home. Spoilt brats we are. Joke. I can understand why Alex was angry. It's just that we've done so many great shows to a lot of people and promoters are starting to come to us to offer gigs. We're almost in a position where we can pick and choose. To me, we made £100 out of the gig which is unusual and I treated it like a rehearsal. Maybe we should have jammed some new material that's not quite ready yet. Those 7 people may go and tell their friends about us, who may go and tell their friends and on and on...who knows? On Thursday 3rd November, we're back in South West London at The Watershed in Wimbledon. Looks like a good venue. My only problem with it is that there's a room where a DJ plays rock n roll music just before the room where a band plays live rock n roll. The room where the DJ was playing rock n roll was a lot busier. It was when I was there last anyway. What's that all about?

I am Sam

I am Sam

I'm new to the art of Blogging, so I'm writing with the hope it all comes together at the end and makes some sense. I'm also writing with the knowledge that no one will read this unless I tell people I have a blogspot. Do I want to do that?

I was introduced to Blogging on Tuesday. Giles (Vibrants' singer) and me had the pleasure of seeing a gig in a pub called The Bedford in Balham featuring Rachel Fuller, Pete & Simon Townshend, Foy Vance and Mikey Cuthbert. It was a free gig for 250 lucky people. If you were 251 in the queue then you were turned away. Most of the people in the audience were bloggers and knew about this intimate occasion because they read and contribute to Rachel, Pete, Mikey and Mikey's girlfriend Rene's Blogspots. I found out about the gig when Laurie, Vibrants' Hammond player, said he'd seen it advertised in The Times a couple of weeks ago. The whole gig was great. I'd heard Mikey's stuff before and been in the studio when he's been working but had never seen him perform live to an audience. I was told that he was very nervous prior to coming on stage but that didn't show at all. I was really chuffed he recognized me actually. Simon Townshend produced a demo for us at Oceanic (Pete Townshend's studio) a couple of years ago. I'd never seen him perform solo so It was great to see. I was blown away by his final song 'The Way It Is'. Foy Vance was the only artist on the night I wasn't familiar with. WOW! This bloke can f**king sing! He came over from Dublin at Rachel Fuller's request after she'd performed with him at Ronnie Scotts. It's hard to describe his voice. You need to see him live. This is starting to sound like I'm reviewing the night. I'm not trying to. It already sounds better than the one in the Evening Standard though. Rachel Fuller's set was great. It was her night, she thought it up and organised it and got all the artists to play for free. She was the headline act but the last performance of the night was from Pete Townshend. Apparently he hadn't done such a cosy, intimate gig for 30 years. He joked that his father once told him that if you start playing for free, your career is as good as over. Anyway, I felt very prevailed to be there right at the front by the stage watching his set. All the acts joined the stage to do a version of 'I'm One' at the end. Excellent! Review over. I was talking about blogging wasn't I? It seemed like the whole theme of the night was 'Blogging' and 'Bloggers'. Each act mentioned their very own Blogspot and invited people to check it out. I was chatting to people after the show and they encouraged me to create my own Blogspot. So I have. I find it difficult to write about myself and what I'm doing. I don't assume you'll find it interesting. It's great if you do though. I'm still asking myself why I'm doing this. I'm writing this whilst I'm at work. I wish I could say that I was a full time musician but I need to work part time selling phones so that I can pay bills and buy strings. It's a shit job but it's really flexible so when something comes up like a gig or a meeting, I can shift things around to suit me. Got rehearsals tonight. We're going to work on new material. Things are bubbling along nicely for The Vibrants and the next few months are going to be exciting. We've got a gig coming up on Saturday @ Dirty South, Lewisham. We're told it should be quite busy. It's always best doing gigs when you can play to new people. Too many promoters in London don't actually promote and they expect bands to bring 40-50 people to satisfy their overheads. Bands then scrape together the same 40-50 people that come to all their gigs and so therefore never reach a new audience. So, here lies the answer to why I now have a Blogspot: to reach a new audience. Cheers