Beware the chicken, man. It's coming.
Band practice. Now there’s a word I didn’t think I’d be thinking about at the ripeish oldish age of 31 and a wee tiny bit.
And yet there I was, one numbed butt-cheek perched on a desk loaded with cool computer screens and recording gear in a room way too small and warm to fit four people, their guitars and their drum kits, vaguely jamming and warbling along to our own rendition of Johnny Cash’s Hurt with the other embarrassed but enthusiastic members of the newly formed Heroes & Hookers.
Picture the scene. A headstrong chick with awesome boobs and an even better voice. A vegan with superpowers and a drumkit barely two months old. A metalhead vaguely bemused at the sudden infestation of chirpy, hipstery emo-kids and their strange aspirations that involve metaphysical parrots and foxy proxy server administrators. (We’ve trademarked that, by the way.) And me: someone who gets grumpier and drunker the later it gets on a Monday night (work week, okay!), and then kills her fingertips via her poor steel-string acoustic who’s been pining in a corner of her study for a while. Revenge of the neglected guitar. *
We haven’t got a specific vibe yet, although the genre “freak *that the word which we do not speak* (rhymes with yolk)” has been mentioned. We’re apparently competing with David Lynch and McClusky, we’re definitely NOT getting anywhere close to Attack! Attack!, and we’re currently covering everything from Jeff Buckley’s Lilac Wine to Coheed and Cambria’s Welcome Home. Well, Lilac Wine was mentioned and then discreetly forgotten.
The first album has been mentioned. Oh yes. The first five crazy ass songs written. There seems to be a very specific avian theme running through everything we do. I could tell you the names of albums and songs – but you’d probably steal it. So I won’t. Except for maybe one – Beware the chicken. You can now laugh.
I think that we are all thoroughly, utterly crazy. Bands are teenage pipe dreams: everybody starts one, everybody drives the neighbours crazy, most fight and break up, and some grow up to become actual working bands, gain cult followings, wear cool outfits, shag hot (or any) groupies, vomit on stage, suddenly get engaged and then get… normal. Or become session musos. Or something.
Starting a band years after the cynicism has kicked in and the ability to survive an all-night bender has disappeared? Madness. Madness, I say.
And yet… There we were. Here we are. We don’t know what it is, but we like it. (He). And we’ll see you at a dodgy, downright dirty dive soon, where rotten tomatoes will NOT be allowed in at the door… But if you have a parrot on your shoulder, entrance is free!
* I know two of these people well and like all three, which I think gives me license to mention boobs and superpowers. I hope.
