Practice Makes …. Er…
It’s the smell that hits you first. Opening the rickety metal door, under the arches of a nameless train line, the mix of damp and slightly rotting wood greets you like an old, long lost but not very close friend. Aha, I thought; parfum de rehearsal room.
Poking my head round the corner to the ‘office’, which did not appear to have seen a duster in decades, I was greeted by Dumbledore. Well he looked like him anyway, a hirsute man whose long flowing beard, variegated from grey to very grey, reached from just below expressive eyebrows to the bulging belt on his rather tattered jeans, an impressive appendage so wide and full it almost entirely concealed the tie dye t-shirt, spattered with long-dropped food - testimony of summer bites, as T S Eliot might have put it. Smiling brightly, for it is nice to be polite, especially to the Keeper of the Key, I introduced myself, explaining that I was the new drummer in the band rehearsing in the big room. He looked away, evidently a man who decided that making eye contact was a waste of energy in 1972, and had encountered nothing since then to change his mind.
His informative thumb kindly beckoned me to the anointed destination.
I walked along a corridor narrowed by piles of aged amplifiers, one with a hand-made ‘broken’ sign, presumably to deter kleptomaniac guitarists, then pushed the heavy soundproofed door; the venue for our first rehearsal. The hand of history lay heavily on my shoulders, as a former member of The Ugly Rumours might have said.
Inside, the capacious room had a manky sofa to the left, a Fender Rhodes piano on the back wall with many bits missing, and a couple of unnecessarily huge loudspeakers, presumably to fulfil the childhood fantasies of egocentric guitarists (is there any other kind? I hear you ask). To the right was what I can only describe as ‘a drum kit’.
Now I know it might be argued that the central purpose of this instrument is, you know, to be hit quite a lot, but as a general rule it’s better if that happens on the drumheads. This one appeared to have instead been battered on every available inch, so marked was the once ruby red surface of the shells. It looked like it had been in a fight. I felt instantly sorry for it, sighed, and picked a stick from my bag.
‘Thwack’, I went hopefully on the smaller tom, mounted precariously above the bass drum. ‘Clang’, it responded, a noise – not really a sound, definitely a noise – which managed to contain every note and overtone known to man, and probably a few dogs too, without ever settling on just one. I have heard jerry cans sound more musical. The floor tom was even worse, wobbling like an over-confident drunk, seconds before the fight starts. As the note reverberated, it went from wah to woo and back again, as if uncertain on which aural island to place its rather tattered flag. The bass drum - known to some as the ‘kick’ – had clearly had more than a fair share of kicks in its poor, benighted life, managing to evoke disappointment and disillusion with each muffled strike of the rickety pedal.
I took out my drum key and set to work.
Half an hour later, after much tweaking and prodding, pressing the heads with thumbs and wishing I’d brought a kit of my own, the toms had graduated from bad to bad ass, and the bass drum had acquired a new sense of its own importance. Progress. I removed my vintage snare drum from its case, where it had been hiding until the percussive coast was clear, then mounted my cymbals. They shimmered in the rather dingy light, old friends in this grave new world. A small warm up followed, consisting of a militaristic snare drum figure inspired by Max Wall, then my go-to workout, a mambo. This requires playing lots of different things on many different surfaces all at once. I’m sorry to be so technical.
Feeling the evening now stood some chance of being bearable, the drums being vaguely in order, I settled down with a banana to await the band. First to arrive was the lead guitarist, a new guy like me, and evidently rather experienced. His hair had clearly been inspired by Peter Frampton, in the days when Peter Frampton had hair. He smiled enthusiastically and said ‘hey’ in an American accent. This could be fun, I thought. Then he removed a vintage Les Paul from its case and revealed a large bank of foot pedals. This will definitely be fun, I concluded.
Within half an hour the entire band had arrived, the last being the bass player, delayed by a meeting in the City and still wearing a dark suit. He devoured chocolate biscuits while tuning his instrument, a copy of Paul McCartney’s Hofner bass but the other way up, then downed a large glass of Coca Cola. The rhythm guitarist, a chap both ascetic and perhaps a tad acetic, had chosen a contrasting grey suit. Unpacking a Stratocaster, he removed his tie, instantly signifying his rock’n’roll credentials. The singers came, one by one, and we kicked off with Brown Sugar.
It was, to be honest, quite good, so I said at the end ‘we’re ready for a gig!’, a joke that nobody got. We tried again, then concluded it could no longer be performed, because lyrics or something. Which slightly made me wonder why we’d done it in the first place. Three more tunes followed in quick succession; Boogie Shoes, that remarkably un-funky thing by KC and the Sunshine Band; Proud Mary by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which should really be called ‘Rollin’ On the River’, since that’s the bit everyone remembers; and Get it On by T Rex, which I decided mischievously would be absolutely brilliant played very slow with a smoky blues feel. But we didn’t do that.
After two renditions of each, everyone was smiling, including even me. It is the easiest thing in the world to play a rock rhythm at eighty beats per minute for tunes you’ve known all your life. So then we did them again. And again.
After five renditions of each melody, I began to long for the big band, whose two-hour practice the night before had included sight-reading twenty songs, including the theme from The Flintstones, a tune I absolutely love to yabba dabba do. As the evening wore on, I realised the bass player’s plentifully-consumed Coca Cola was actually red wine, which did not perhaps enhance the accuracy of his musical stylings. And then, flushed with a mix of triumph and a lack of available material, we laid plans to rehearse regularly, and then do a gig. In October. So soon!
We finally parted (Dumbledore still scowling) with many hugs and giggles of excitement from most and sundry. The next morning, I received some generous text messages from one of the singers, someone clearly complimentary, but lacking a complementary tendency to check for typos. ‘You are a brilliant drama!’, she wrote, suggesting Apple’s audio transcribe cannot distinguish between percussion and Succession. Then she wrote ‘you ate the beating heart of the band’. Which, you have to admit, does sound quite rock and roll.
So apparently I passed the audition, and we’ll be back in two weeks. I’ll bring my own drum kit. And a scented candle.
