Ardingly ArtsFest: Room
for Improvement and others
In the last week before
the summer holidays began, my school hosted a week dedicated to the arts. As
part of this, on the Wednesday morning, there was a ‘Battle of the Bands’
featuring only students. I was pretty tired when I headed down to the main
stage, considering I’d just performed a play and was also suffering a minor
head injury, but it was warm and everyone was sitting on the grass in groups, really
relaxed, and it seemed like a great day to laugh at some of the people I go to
school with and maybe actually find some talent in some of them. And, what do
you know – that actually happened!
In total we had seven
bands perform, which surprised me – I didn’t know my school had that many
musical people, especially considering how many of the students had already
left for the summer by this point. First up we had ‘The Justin Ho Trio’, who
weren’t spectacular, although this might be an unfair assessment because they
were disadvantaged by being first up with no idea what to expect, and they lost
the element of surprise as the stage technicians kept asking them to play parts
of their songs to test the audio system. They played two covers, the first being
‘Crossroads’ by Cream, and the second actually being a cover of a cover, John
Mayer’s version of the Hendrix song ‘Bold as Love’, and both came across as
mediocre imitations of good songs.
They were followed up by
‘General Buller’, a band who played completely ridiculous original songs – the kind
that are so terrible they become really good fun for everyone involved, and it
could have been a really great set if it weren’t for the inane between-song
commentary of the frontman, who tried to convince us that the songs had Serious
Artistic Merit. But that’s a quality that’s meant to show without being pointed
out, as proven by the following act, unaccompanied singer-songwriter Charlie
Jackson, who really impressed me with his two original songs and who seemed
stylistically reminiscent of Coldplay’s Chris Martin in the early 2000s.
The next band to take
the stage was ‘Safe Kinda High’ (second Hendrix reference of the day) and
although they had it tough coming after Jackson, I thought they were great too.
Musically, similar to General Buller, yet they took themselves less seriously
and related easily to the audience as they played their mix of covers and
originals. Most of the band then left the stage, but their frontman Jojo Macari
stayed to perform as an acoustic solo artist. There on his own, you could tell
the songs had been written by the same person as the full-band songs, but there
were more vocals-based, more understated and more serious. One of these has
actually been recorded and released online, while the other remains untitled,
although I refer to it in my head as ‘No Recollections’.
Jojo Macari: Blown Away
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-HsnT9kXJI
Macari was also involved in the final band of the day, ‘The
Laces’, who opened with a terrible pool table joke, and clearly have talent
(specially their guitarist) but whose only song was in more of a hip-hop style
and so wasn’t my thing at all. It did, however, make for a good finish to the
event, but I’m getting ahead of myself… one other band performed in between,
and that was ‘Room for Improvement’.
I tell you, if this competition had been judged on audience
reaction, these five guys would have won by a landslide – the cheer when they
took the stage was enormous. First, they played the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Under
the Bridge’, a great song off an otherwise uninspiring album, and this band’s classically
trained lead singer, Dom Morgan, clearly has more talent than the original’s Anthony
Kiedis. The only problem with this is that he seriously overshadowed the other
members of the band. The lead guitarist, I am sure, would have shone in any
other setting with his solo, and yet here didn’t feel quite as important. Some
harmonies were also added by rhythm guitarist Thomas O’Dell, and I thought the
different approaches of the two singers (his quiet and gentle compared to
Morgan’s extreme and emotive) could have been made use of more – of course, I
discovered after that this would have happened if it wasn’t for microphone
problems!
Following this, the band played a rendition of Weezer’s ‘Island
in the Sun’, which was less polished, but this of course suits the song. It was
more of a full band workout and it seemed as though they were more laid back
and enjoying the moment by this point.
The night before had
been comedy night, featuring several famous comedians, but opening for them had
been a local professional band called ‘Reachback’. I’m happy to say most people
I spoke to agreed with me that there was very little to enjoy about them – no talent,
grating mic personality and an obvious pastiche of Paramore. At least half of
the student bands would have been much more deserving of that slot than they
were.
After the show, I spoke
to the rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist of ‘Room for Improvement’, Thomas,
about his band and the show as a whole. First I asked him about the band’s name
(this has always interested me – a name is usually the first thing somebody
knows about a band, so it must be a pretty huge decision to make) and was told
that during the band’s early sessions, which may have been lacking in
productivity, the lead guitarist suggested that the name would hint to the
audience to not expect much… and that it would hopefully be a nice surprise
when they turned out to be alright.
Moving onto song
selections, Tom told me that ‘Under the Bridge’ was the first song they figured
out how to play and therefore was the best rehearsed. It’s also one of the only
songs that all five members liked, considering how conflicting their music
tastes are – “psychedelic rock, punk, metal, hipster and weird pony dubstep”. ‘Island
in the Sun’ was chosen when they realised they needed a second song with half
an hour of rehearsal time to go, because its four basic chords made it a quick
one to learn. In Tom’s words, “we didn’t have an ending so did the musical equivalent of
sticking a band aid on it and hoping for the best!” Currently the band
have just returned from a difficult tour of Ghana, on which they spent their
spare time writing original songs, on which Tom writes the lyrics and all
members collaborate for the music.
I
then asked if, considering their cover versions stayed fairly faithful to the
originals, they thought this was the best way to play a cover or if they
thought it was better to rearrange it and make part of it your own (I had
recently persuaded him, a huge Beatles fan, to listen to 801’s reworking of ‘Tomorrow
Never Knows’). He replied that both can work, but if you change the song, it’s
important to ‘make it your own properly’. Staying faithful can, according to
him, be best for tribute bands, but these should still add their own little
touches, such as the guitar solo and harmonies on ‘Under the Bridge’.
I
was shocked to hear that Tom as a guitarist is completely self taught and has
only been playing for six or seven months! The guitar he uses isn’t a real
Fender Stratocaster, but could be mistaken for one from a distance. He told me
that it was his dad’s in the 80s (obtained under ‘pretty suspicious circumstances’…
intriguing) and that its bright red colour worked well with the band’s uniform
of white T-shirts and different trousers.
The
ArtsFest crowd was the biggest the band have played to so far in their career,
although they nearly played a car park show to several hundred people, and
would have if it wasn’t for the weather. Apparently, playing to a massive crowd
would be ‘amazing’ but also nervewracking, given the fact that any major
mistakes would be witnessed by so many people. However, considering how much
the band have enjoyed playing to smaller crowds, they aim to keep working their
way up to see just how fun it can get.
When
I asked him his honest opinions on the other student bands, his reactions were
mixed… one band which I’ll leave unnamed was completely trashed, and in his
words, had “No real stage presence: good instrument playing, but the singing
was just not good. The tone was off, no real expression and it just didn’t
sound nice!” However, he praised ‘General
Buller’ were praised for writing songs that suited the vocalist’s limited
range, and also singled out ‘The Laces’ for being one of the better bands and
having good showmanship. He believes his band shared that trait and their lead
singer managed to get the crowd excited before their playing started, and I’d
definitely concur with this.
To finish with, we talked about the future of both Tom
and the band. He hopes they can keep working together for now and cryptically
hinted that there might be ‘more opportunities for them, come September’. He
likes working in a group setting (despite the arguments) because the sound they
produce is a lot more full than what he can do on his own with his guitar.
However, he’s not completely sure what route he plans to take into the music
business. He just knows that he wants to get there, hopefully playing stadiums,
and hopefully playing a fusion of psychedelia and modern mainstream pop. I can
imagine this and will be following his career, however, I happen to know that
he also enjoys and is a natural at stand up comedy, so who knows…
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