The ides of February and all is well

Oh dear. I did warn you somewhere near the beginning of this excursion that I may neglect my blogging duties from time to time. The last post was in November. You could be forgiven for thinking that activities had ceased. Blogging activities certainly did. But no, life trundled on. I will divide this post into categories, I think. It will probably make it easier to follow than chronological notes.

So firstly I think, what happened with the solo EP x3 + LP plans? What happened with phases one and two? Fuck all, basically. The vids are still available on YouTube and one or two (literally) people have viewed them. No probs. There has been no subsequent solo recording. As of now, I have revised my plans. When I do finally get down to making some music up in the HBTS loft I think I will concentrate on making noises to share with Ron.

Secondly, updates on the studio recordings discussed in the last post:
I don't know why this wasn't mentioned because it had happened, but never mind. After listening to Jamie's preliminary mixes we decided some tweaking was necessary. The four of us convened at the college on Friday November 16th and in the space of a couple of hours had two class mixes. Make it Count (MIC) was a little later (19th) given the "radio edit" treatment, effectively cutting it by about a minute.
Make it Count currently sits in the can. The Girl I Knew Before (GIKB) should be released on all digital platforms by March 8th. Our mate Patto has already played it several times both on his Big Drive Home show on Bishop FM and his Friday morning slot on Darlo Radio.

Some early artwork, ditched because of the poor resolution of the original pic. Shame. We liked that one:

Revised artwork, variations of:

Now an update on McCormick rehearsals (I tell you what, it's a good job I never deleted the McCormick group chat).
December 5th, band rehearsal at Lorne Street. December 16th, combined rehearsal and video shoot at Whole Latte Love.
The next rehearsal was an acoustic one at Hughie's PoW on January 15th. It marked the first appearance of Catherine McGuinness (Cat) on keys*. I met Cat for the second time only at the first gig! The other two met with her a couple of times (19th & 27th ) at Northwood.

Northwood December 19th

McCormick video activity:
As mentioned above, the first video shoot was at Whole Latte Love on December 16th. Both GIKB and MIC were mimed to and filmed several times using the tripod camera and three phones.
Then on December 30th Ste and I met at Seal Sands, then went on to Seaton Carew to shoot some footage for MIC. This footage remains in the can at time of writing.

I started working on the promo for GIKB on January 2nd. The first released version was circulated briefly of YouTube before it was generally decided that a remake was necessary. The final version was posted on January 20th and, as of date has had 123 views and one comment of "outstanding".

McCormick live activity:
December 22nd (electric) at Whole Latte Love. BQSL's xmas bash. We were on first.
February 8th, Music Lounge. The debut of the acoustic quartet. Cat came on for the last four numbers, as lack of rehearsal prohibited more at present.
February 14th, the Whirling Dervish at TSone, Middlesbrough. Salsola headlined and James Lewis Mockett opened. Cat up for the last four, as before. I snapped a string for the first time!


*A video recording was made of some of this rehearsal by myself on my iPhone. I downloaded it onto my PC, however didn't get around to putting it in the back-up HDs, so when I had my PC crash a couple of weeks ago I lost it. As far as I can recall, this is the only raw file I have lost. Some of the things I was working on I have backed up the raw files, so can just start again. I was working on some audio and video for solo material, but nothing was nailed and, to be honest, most of it was mindless blithering, so it is probably just as well that it no longer exists. I can start afresh with a new project.