Twenty years ago the band that I was working with changed.
Life got in the way, the guitarist moved to Australia after getting married and
the bass player and drummer who were involved in another band that had more
gigs also moved on. So a small number of us continued with new players still
under the name of Red Touch.
This month after two decades of not seeing one another we
got back together again, playing the old material most of which were self-penned
numbers which we had not revisited in any form in that time. On listening to
the albums that we had released two things struck me, first of all we were good,
better than I or any of us remembered and secondly the songs were really well
written. Maybe it takes twenty years to have enough distance on your own
writing to be able to see what you’ve managed to create.
Listening back to old CDs the songs sounded like they were
written and played by other people I didn’t notice the type of errors that I
used to imagine when I previously played the music but now I could hear a
really solid level of musicianship and artistry in what we had created.
Meeting up and playing with the original members was such
good fun, everyone being excited to meet after all these years. There was a definite
feeling of love between the people and although we never left under a cloud of
animosity I don’t remember us being so close maybe this is a good example of
absence making the heart growing fonder.
This realisation fits the last blog post about beliefs and
opinions and that they may not be reliable as they seem at the time and they
are prone to change which highlights their unreliability. What do we do about
this? Well maybe we should just do things and not think about it too much and
then step aside and act as if it is not us to get some objectivity. The fact
that our opinion of the work was so distorted at the time is of interest to me
and although one could argue that our perceptions we be deluded now due to the excitement
of playing again it has been verified by people outside of the band.
The gig itself was amazing and was the icing on the cake with
the audience confirming what we had said about the quality of the band, but for
me the strange and surreal feeling of playing that this event engendered is the
most interesting all the members felt the same but expressing it in different
ways, one saying it was a memory for end of life reflection, another saying it
was a spiritual experience and others saying it was dreamlike and euphoric.
SO now it is time to ponder this and the coming year. 2016 was
rather a shock to all I think and to think of all of the musicians who have
moved on but it is time for us to look ahead at the coming year and what we are
going to set as a vision for our creativity
So I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very
merry Christmas with health, wealth and happiness for the coming year.
Vic
www.bluescampuk.co.uk
Thanks Miv
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