Bands

I play in a couple of bands on bass and/or guitar. Currently these are:
Acuphuncture, a serious funk out group focussing on songs with weird chords, uneven time signatures, and most importantly, a fat groove. In the band I play guitar with a stomp-box style set up, usually just wah and a phaser, alongside the amp’s distortion channel. We started mid 2005, with our first gigs in November that year, and while our set is mainly covers, we’re working on expanding our set of original material.
Casa del Funk. This band has existed for long enough that we now get a fair trade playing at band member’s weddings. I first joined way back in the summer of ‘99, on guitar. At that point there was a bit of an upheaval in Casa as various original members were leaving Cambridge, so a new singer (Giles) and bassist (Steve) joined at the same time. The band averages out to be a nine piece: four part rhythm section, three horns, one singer, plus Dr. Chin, our dancer and occasional backing vocals. (Yes, we had a dancer. The theory behind this is that no-one wants to be the first on the dance floor, but Chin danced for the sheer love of dancing regardless of other people, so we stuck him out front as bait. The usual result of this was Chin in the middle of the floor surrounded by a load women trying to dance with him, who in turn were surrounded by a load of men wondering where all the women had gone.) There followed nigh on five years of disco funk carnage: Derek leaving and joining a few times, horn section rearrangements, bad gigs, good gigs, and hilarious drinking all the champagne left at the ball and dancing to Right Said Fred at 5AM gigs. High times, as someone sang. In the end I left because I hadn’t thought about what I was playing for about four years, and decided to spend some time playing other stuff. During my time I off I played more and more bass guitar, and it happened that the bass spot in Casa became open, so I have now rejoined. Thus I float between the roles of guitarist and bassist in Casa, depending on who else in the rhythm section can make the gig. Despite the vaguely latin name, these days the set list looks more like a disco cheese board, with Earth Wind and Fire, Jackson 5, Rose Royce and the Gibson Brothers on the menu. We do spice it up though, with some Deodato, Stevie Wonder, Tito Puente and Santana adding jazz, funk and latin flavours. My guitar set up for Casa gigs can be a bit of a Riverdance session, with wah, compressor, a modulator (phase, flange or chorus) plus the amp’s control pedal(s). Bass set up is simple, one bass and a big fat amp, but I vary the sound by using a mix of fingerstyle and slap lines.
Side projects:
Electro-classical melange, helmed by Andrew Martin. This project is so large, ambitious and experimental that its single outing to date has been to the pub to have some drinks. I have no idea whether I’ll be on guitar (in my mind I’d be using a classical, which I’d don’t own yet) or bass (an electric upright, I think, which I also don’t own). Yes, this band is an excuse for me to buy more gear.
Older bands:
Un-named band, Cheltenham, aged about 19. I’d been playing guitar for a couple of years and had been listening to a lot of Buffalo Tom, and wondered if my friends Tim (a Jethro Tull obsessive), Rhiannon (Bon Jovi obsessive) and Mike (Iron Maiden obsessive) wanted to form a band. We talked about it down the pub, we shared our music collections, we split before ever actually playing due to musical differences. It was probably for the best.
Session work, Cambridge, for a student film soundtrack, aged about 21. OK, it wasn’t really a band, but up until that point I don’t think I’d ever played outside my bedroom. I’d seen an ad looking for players, which resulted in three guitarists, a bassist and a drummer sitting in a small room in Queens’ college with the most “lovey darling sweety mwa” thespian lass I’d ever met. My favourite moment was when the thespian lass asked us, “Could you make your guitar sound like an orgasm?” The guitarists replied, “Err… no.”
Blue Cheese, Cambridge, aged about 22. Five piece jazz band fronted by a mate’s ex-girlfriend. I seem to recall we actually had Dave, Casa’s drummer, play kit for us once or twice – little did I realise how many gigs I’d play with him in the future! BC mainly played real book stuff, and was a real booster for me because I entered the band with very little idea of what a jazz guitarist played (though to be honest, I still haven’t). I still haven’t much of clue now! I think I played with them for about half a year, eventually leaving because I had no transport and all the gigs and rehearsals were a couple of miles away, and taxis became a bit of a drain on my wallet.
Octosound, Cambridge. The only band I’ve really started! I’d been listening to a lot of stuff on the Ninja Tunes label and Jurassic 5, realised that while a lot of it was sampled the original sounds were made by instruments, so why not start a band to make what I’d call loop-based music? I was aiming for a funky electro ish sound, using lots of effects on my guitar and avoiding strumming as much as possible. I was joined by Andrew Martin (vocals + piano/percussion), Derek Scurll (drums), Katie Eagleton (flute, bari sax, bass clarinet, typewriter), Fran Alexander (electric violin) and Tavish Fraser (bass). We spent about 18 months jamming out ideas and generated many CD’s worth of ideas, but never really finished anything. Finally Tavish headed back to New Zealand and Derek and Katie left soon after. For once finding new players didn’t take long and we were joined by Mark Salad (drums), Carl Taylor (bass) and Dario Galasso (guitar). With fresh input we got our shit together and put on a couple of gigs. By this point we were sounding… well, by this point I didn’t have many reference points because we’d drifted into a kind of art/prog rock area! Though after recently purchasing Gorillaz Demon Days album, I don’t think we’d have sounded out of place supporting them. A few months after the first two gigs Andrew and I had independently come to the conclusion that we’d headed off in a musical direction that we weren’t excited by, and nearly simultaneously left the band. Cue acrimony.
The Alex Harris Band, Cambs. and Herts. The AHB first played together in October 2004, and the core players of Alex (vocals, guitar), Russ Fletcher (lead guitar, backing vocals) and myself (bass guitar) continued for a bit more than a year with (or without) a couple of different drummers. The AHB play a poppy kind of rock (or is it a rocky kind of pop?) with a twist of modern urban soul, usually only playing tunes the prolific Mr Harris wrote. I used a fairly simple bass set-up; because many of the gigs were in pubs I’d just plug into the PA and use a practice amp as a monitor. I had to leave because between Acuphuncture, Casa and the AHB I was spening so much time out gigging or rehearsing that I was getting pissed off with music and never had the opportunity to work on my technique or play with new ideas. In the end I chose one of the bass-playing gigs to lose, and Casa gigs pay well so… It was a shame that I had to leave because I liked all the songs and the other guys were fun to work with.