Frazzappa Gig

I've been asked to put a band together for a charity gig my work's putting together for their charity of the year, SiMBA and thought I'd blog about the process.  It'll likely be an immediate thought diary thing that I do after each rehearsal to help me keep track of how things are going with the songs but who knows, it may change along the way, I don't know.

Anyway, to bring you up to speed...  

I did a similar thing a couple of years ago and at the time I thought I'd challenge myself by being the singer of a band.  I'm normally, in fact scratch that, I'm ALWAYS the guitarist with occasional backing vocals when I'm gigging.  It's what I do and love but in all my years of playing live I've only ever sung lead vocals once and that was as an emergency stand in as the singer who was supposed to play dislocated his shoulder a couple of days before the gig (that'll sound familiar to some, I'm sure).  Weirdly, that was also for a charity night, for Comic Relief.  It was a tiny room in the basement of a pub in the Grassmarket area of Edinburgh and I only had to play three songs (Oliver's Army, People Are Strange and Sunny Afternoon if I remember rightly). 

It was awful.  No, I, was awful but it was a long time ago and possibly the first (or certainly close to) the first time I'd ever played in front of an actual audience.

Preparations for this gig have already begun and I've had a couple of vocal rehearsals on my own to see if I could actually sing any of the songs before I get the band in for rehearsals.  Here's the set along with my thoughts:

Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode)
No issues with this one so far.

History Repeating (Propellorheads)
Need to practise a couple of line but not too bad.

Shout (Tears for Fears)
Haven't really tried this one yet.  I'm not sure it'll make the final cut as I'm only really thinking about it as it's my daughter's favourite song at the moment.  The pace of the song might jar a bit with the rest in the set.

Istanbul (They Might Be Giants)
Oh, that's a lot of words to sing quickly!  Fun to do though and the biggest test is not to get tongue tied.  Might need another vocal to help out with some of the overlapping singing.

Punch & Judy (Marillion)
It went a lot better than I thought it would.  The opening line of each verse needs a lot of work though.  Fish sings weird.

Breathe (Prodigy)
Oh yes, this is going to my favourite I think.  The key appears to be to just go for it.  It'll be interesting to see if I manage to give it as much laldy in front of people as I do in a room by myself.

Love Rears Its Ugly Head (Living Colour)
If I can nail this one I'll be very happy indeed as it's quite a vocal work out.  Needs work but I think I'll get there.

Whipping Post (Allman Brothers)
Wow, I don't seem to struggle with the powerful singing that's required for this one.  I think it sounds pretty decent but not sure I can trust my ears as I thought for sure I wouldn't get close.

Crazy Horses (Osmonds)
This is fun although someone else will have to do the end of the verses and the bridge.  It's what the Osmonds do on the record and it's waaaay out of my range.

Two Tribes (Frankie Goes To Hollywood)
We can definitely rock this one up.  I need to listen to the vocal lines a lot more though as I'm all over the place with it.

Delilah (SAHB Version)
I think this will be ok.  I can't reach the big line at the very end at the moment although I hope it's more of a lack of practice than actually out of my range.

Right, that's all for this one.  I've got another vocal rehearsal booked in for the same time and place next week so until then!

Let me know if you've found this interesting at all and any and all comments are appreciated about the set as well as any other questions you might have!


F