Rehearsals, singles, and new projects

I've never been a fan of hot weather, it drains me, people who like hot weather are the 'relaxing' type I imagine, but it slows me down and the wasps sting me. Just thought I'd start on a moan, there. There's some good stuff happening you know - and a few things bugging me, but such is life. It wouldn't be fun without the odd thing to keep me on my toes.

Dowsing For Sound is now out of the way - I enjoyed it, in fact I more than enjoyed it (I won't go on again about Dowsing and why it's more than a bit special, and Ickworth was surprisingly fantastic), but it was also rather time consuming so it feels nice to breathe a little before the next project. The next project being the fringe shows...although not much breathing space really, we open in Bristol next Saturday at a lovely little theatre. I'm not really involved with 'Probably The Greatest Goal...' as that's in the good hands of Michelle Golder, who always makes my work look better than it actually is, but from an Oscar Pike point of view we're probably slightly behind with rehearsals, due to external reasons beyond our control. See, this blog is public, I'm aware of that and I probably should be advertising the show and singing it's praises. But I don't need to - because there's enough of that on the internet already, if you want to see more about the show go to my website or look at the Sweet Venues page, this is where I can be honest. It is a lovely show - really nice, it's a bit different to last year's Oscar's piece - less action, more character-based, and a majority of it is set in the present, but it bounces along beautifully, there's a nice twist, some really fulfilling characters. It's going to be great - it's not looking great right now, it has to be said, last night's rehearsal was stressful and a little confusing, but it's only because we want this to be the best it can be. Grace is really into the whole attention to detail thing, she has so many ideas - I want to do her justice. We can, as much as next Saturday suddenly feels really soon. If you're in Bristol next Saturday, come and see it - we're really stressing about this one, it should be worthwhile. At the moment I feel like a totally rubbish actor (that's possibly because I'm not actually an actor), but I've got just over a week to turn this around.

But as I say - lots of good things happening/happened. Dowsing was a good thing, in an unpredictable, emotional rollercoaster kind of way. And with The British IBM things look rosy - our debut single, Animal, was released on Monday (complete with cartoon video on YouTube) and everybody seems to be talking about it, including friends who don't like any of the music I have previously drummed on, it seems to be one of those things that has caught the imagination of everyone who has seen/heard it. And the radio show with Trevor Jones on Tuesday was great too - feels like he's fulfulling his potential and it was a pleasure to drum to those songs.

I've just agreed to drum for a show in Ipswich called, 'The Sound Of Musicals' - it's slap bang in the middle of our fringe preview dates - considering I'm stressed now, this is probably a bit foolish of me to take on yet more work, but I just really liked the idea of this one. I know the musical director from years ago, and it just looks like something I can do really well, and it's in a great theatre in Ipswich, it'll do me good I think. And talking of musicals, I'm taking the music of Bristol-based band The Outlines and writing a musical for them for Lodestar Festival. It's going to be set in a blues bar, which also doubles up as a lonely hearts club, and it's called 'It's All Very Monday.' After all this rehearsing, and re-drafting, and drumming, and driving about everywhere, it feels really good to be writing again. For tonight, at least, tomorrow I need to get back to learning my lines...

Currently watching: Sorry (DVD), Euro 2012
Currently reading: The fringe script, over and over again
Currently listening to: Joe Jackson - The Duke, Glen Hansard - Rhythm and Repose, Dexys - One Day I'm Going To Soar