30s, 40s, 50s….jazz, swing….upbeat for dancing….. romantic and smoochy…we do it all!
John came along last night with his bass guitar, and showed us all up by sight reading all our prices rather better than we play them after having time to learn them! He says he enjoyed himself, and is coming along next week to meet, and play with the rest of the band – we were three down last night.
And what a difference he made to our sound – I’d have hardly believed it. Right from the first few bars of Tuxedo Junction, we sounded more complete, somehow. He’ll be a definite asset.
Tonight we worked through our set list, including the instrumental pieces, so it gave me some time to take some sneaky pics! Sorry guys, but I think you all look really cool! 
After various holidays, breaks and illnesses, we were all together again last night, and loving it! We’ve more or less agreed our set list and running order for the June party, so just lots of polishing to do.
And the next gig has been firmed up – the Ridgewood Fun Day, on the 21st July – there’ll be stalls, beer tents, fun for all the family…and us! And we’re indoors, which must be a plus….
Just as I get back to work with room 10, half the band slope off! Only five of us today, but it all worked surprisingly well – we must be the five most important musicians, clearly!
It was lovely to catch up with everyone again, and terrific to be singing again, I’ve missed it so much.
We started learning Mack the Knife this evening, with its five…six…seven key changes? Who’s idea was it to do that one?! Oh….mine. Great fun though!
Next week we should have a full house of band members – should be interesting…
I’m away in Switzerland for a few weeks (I’m Pat, the vocalist, in case you didn’t realise who’s writing these blog posts….) but room 10 goes from strength to strength without me (cheek!)
The set list has been finalised for our first gig, so it’s now full steam ahead perfecting and polishing those numbers, those dance tunes, for the time being.
Well, last night’s rehearsal was a stomping success! We had great fun trying out different numbers at different tempos, aiming for 150 bpm – and it was really surprising how well they worked! I was dancing, the band were dancing, so much energy in room 10 last night!
We’re buying some more upbeat songs to add to these, so our dancing set is well on its way.
And lovely Ailsa, playing her alto sax, has decided to join us, so it seems we didn’t scare her too much last week!
Remember that party I mentioned a few weeks ago? Well, Karen, the organiser, came along to our rehearsal the other day, to see if we were the sort of band she was looking for, and…… we are! But we have to get more dance-type numbers to play, which is great, as that’s what we should be doing – people want to dance and have fun.
And Ailsa came along for the first time too, playing her alto sax. She was brilliant! Though I suspect she was surprised at the amount of sight reading she found herself doing…! Well played, Ailsa, I hope you weren’t put off!
Although we were down in numbers this week, we decided to meet up anyway – it’s often interesting doing songs without some of the instruments ..concentrates the mind! And tonight was no exception…
As Dan said – it looks like Hazel does everything! I think the rest of us could just stay at home, and let her play…we missed her so much tonight! And with Joël away too (we missed you, Joël!), our music was very ‘bare’ tonight – we had to lots of counting, timing our ins. And that was just when we weren’t laughing! (With each other, not at each other. Of course….!)
Hopefully a full house next week though. And a bassist coming along for a try-out, which should be interesting.
Sorry, no recordings yet – the quality of the recording wasn’t good enough.
Mark made a few recordings of us last night, as he seems to think we’re beginning to shape up (at last!) – we hope to add some snippets to this site soon, to give potential clients a taste of what we can do.
I missed last week’s practice as I was away, so this was the only sax I’ve seen for a fortnight! Back to work for last night’s practice though, and it was a great one. My friend Aladar came along to play his double bass with us, and it was amazing at the difference it made to our sound! Of course, he won’t have time to join us very regularly, as he’s so busy, but hopes to get to gigs, which is fantastic!
Now, all we need is a pianist/keyboard player…..anyone?!
room 10 