The bass player's a boxer!

It's 6pm on a Tuesday and the piano player is trying to get some more bacon from the corner shop. He'd previously swapped a paintball session for 60 rashes but only took 20, figuring he'd collect more as and when he needed it. The shop has just closed but the assistant is still inside packing boxes. He knocks on the door but there's no reply, so he squats down and peers through the letterbox.
"Excuse me, I need some more bacon!" he yells.
"Sorry my friend, the deal is off!" is the reply.
"What!? I gave you a £60 paintball session, you owe me another 40 rashes!"
"We don't want the session anymore!" explains the shopkeeper.
"Well then give it back!" the piano player snarls through the letterbox.
"Ok, but you owe me for 20 rashes then? £10 please!"
But the piano player doesn't have a tenner and so trudges home in the rain.
It's been a hard week, full of wind and rain and he hasn't hit the targets!
In fact, today he had to pay out £20 to sell at a shopping centre and then failed to make a single sale. The life of a charity mugger. Rosy!

Back at The Odd Folk HQ it's all go with the organisations for the premier of our film, How NOT to be in a Band, which is the tale of our ill-fated scramble up to The Illuminations Festival as part of last summer's three wknd tour. The film's in the last stages of the edit before the bass player takes it off to his studio in London to mix it and grade it. (You see we're finally starting to utilise his talents!) It really is a lovely little piece and we're really proud of it, well the bass player and I are. We're the only ones to have seen it, the others preferring to wait till the big night. And the big night will come on Friday March 14th at The Cube; a lovely old cinema in Bristol. We will then take it back home to Penzance the following Friday for another viewing in The Union, before finally taking it up to London; but finding a venue in the smoke is proving difficult and decidedly costly. 

poster by Mae Voogd

That aside, all is well in the Odd-Land; gigs are coming thick and fast; the online calendar we set up is proving a success, the violin's had a service (for anyone who's seen her at recent gigs she really did need one; held together with plasters and gaffer tape!), we've written new material, recorded a brand new song, stocked up on guitar strings and finally bought our own jack leads, after years on the blag. We're on the ball this year. Glowing from the recent euphoric gig at The Golden Lion which was packed to the rafters with friends and foes, all singing along and stomping. We garnered the largest collection pot they've ever had and they told us, quite literally to name our return date. Which for a bunch of ramshackle rapscallions from Penzance ain't bad.
The Golden Lion being one of Bristol's premier music venues and all that.
We're chuffed to bits! 

The following morning as we sat in a nearby greasy spoon nursing our hangovers, we dished out the evenings earnings. Not too shabby.
I played a little trick on the bass player, for a sudden flash-back of the film came to me; a flash-back in which he had said "We're not in it for the pay cheques! We're in it for the music!" So I kept his cut back, playing a fine old game with him, winding him up like a clock until I found out he's a boxer and he'd beat me like I stole God's supper! The bass player's a boxer!?
How come I never knew that!? He's an audio-editor and a boxer! We really should utilise him more often! Milk all of his talents. We could use him to our advantage: 'Oh really, you won't let us play at this year's Newt festival, Mr. Slugburger! Well how about I introduce you to our bass player and I'm sure he'll change your mind! Never mind being polite and proper to bookers, we could just bully them from now on!

Meanwhile, the piano player has upped sticks to Birmingham, just for a week mind! He's staying in the paintball house in the centre, him and 20 other charity muggers, all crammed inside like immigrants in a stash house. He's trying his luck in England's second city, seeing if he can meet those targets.

As the UK is battered by ferocious winds and lashed by killer waves.
As rivers burst their banks and submerge whole towns and we're flooded by a 100 years of rain; spare a thought for our piano player, sailing up the many canals of Birmingham without any bacon, but still searching for the sales.
I guess he's got a lifeline now, if any other of the other shopkeepers refuse their part of the deal, he can always call the bass player to box their ears!

www.theoddfolk.com