Like Dreamers Do

These past coulple of weeks have been quite stressful and at the same time, amazing!
The band and I entered ourselves in the songwriting competition run by the Musicians Benevolent Fund (MBF). We had to submit two songs which demonstrate our compositional and lyrical skills and our performance abilities. The two songs that we entered with were 'Yellow Brick Road' and 'Mind Reader.'

Thankfully, with these songs, we were picked from over 2000 entrants to be one of the six finalists to compete in London for a prize of £5000, which would be used to further that persons musical career. Upon hearing the good news and finding out that we were the only Scottish band to be in the final, i couldn't help but get my hopes up. Representing ourselves, and representing Perth college and Scotland, the college generously funded our trip down to London to play infront of a panel of very reputable judges in the final of this competition. Judges including Guy Chambers (Robbie Williams' producer and songwriter) and Eg White (Composer of such songs as Duffy's 'Warwick Avenue' and Adele's 'Chasing Pavements').
The journey there was taken on the sleeper train which was quite fun and got us in at London at 8am... yeah. We took the underground from there to our accomodation in Balham, which was also where the gig was to take place on the thursday night (the 26th Nov), at "The Bedford!"

We got to the venue at 4pm and were coincidently catagorised into "Scottish Vs English", as they all seemed to be sitting over the other side of the room... there was no seats over beside them! Honest! But we did speak to a few of the bands/artists on the night before the competition started, and everybody seemed to be in the same frame of mind - excited, nervous, and quitely confident. We had the added attribute of being tired as hell..

Alas, we weren't awarded 1st place or any prize money... But no rattles were thrown and no glass eye's shed a tear, as i have never enjoyed myself that much in a long, long time.
We got to speak to the judges afterward to get feedback and constructive criticism - every judge contradicting the last, making the award seem purely based on musical preference and personal opinion. You never know, with a different panel we could have taken first place.
We also got a band photo shoot and a fanastic drunken interview after the show, both of which we have yet to watch back and laugh at :P

Our favourite part of the journey however, was the trip back on the train from Lond Euston to Glasgow Central, where witty conversation and inappropriate banter was at an all time high.
It seemed like we managed to clear our whole carraige haha

Aspirations have not been dented, as like dreamers do, we'll keep doing what were doing and we will use our own money in February to record a 7 track ablum, once again releasing it digitally on iTunes ;)

A trip is what you make of it, and we certainly made the most of ours. I got to see London for the first time. Oh... and Big Ben... thought...it would have been bigger... but yeah, the whole experience has only increased my confidence and increased my dedication to this band.
We have a busy week ahead with three gigs:
Tuesday the 8th, at Macsorleys Music Bar (Glasgow)
Thursday the 10th, at Bannermans (Edinburgh) - JP's Birthday!!! Make sure you all come to this one! :D
&
Sunday the 13th, at The Ark (Edinburgh)



In the mean time you'll be pleased to know that i will be doing my college work/homework and fattening out my graded unit. Thankfully, with the mischeif i get up to I have more to put in my graded unit now. I'll be writing about our amazing trip to London and also about the pantomime that i'm playing guitar for -"Calamity John." A modern twist on the old classic, played out by the childrens drama group in Perth Grammar Schools music theatre tonight and tomorow at 7.30pm

I better go and get ready for the panto just now. As long as i know that im organised then i'll feel content. I'll let you know in my next blog entry how the whole thing goes, and also if next weeks gigs were any good or not... or... you could just come and see the gigs for yourself ;)

Catchye later x