Robbie Lesiuk

I recently played at this even with R4 and it was a tale of two gigs.

The first gig was the one I experienced; we didn’t play very well and this was confounded by me breaking a bass string. The lowest one. And I had no spares. Bugger.

The other gig was the one the audience saw; jumpy, sing-song songs viewed through a alcohol-viewed haze. Hooray for people drinking beer all day. Of course, the Scottish national football team helped us out by humping The Ukraine 3-1 and putting everyone in a good mood.

There are more videos over at the band website

Boredom, plus five minutes of PHP coding gives you:

In any recording of a live concert, or any concert footage on TV, there always seems to exist the same phenomenon. People cheer when the band plays their favourite song. This is a good thing, but what tends to annoy me is that the cheering never seems to start until the first words are sung. Regardless of how long the intro has gone on before it.

Maybe I am biased, because I play guitar, but surely you cheer favourite song at the opening guitar lines? Is the throbbing bass introduction not worthy of your applause? Or do people simply not recognise what song is playing until it is confirmed by the lyric?

One of the most recognisable introductions in the history of pop music has to be the plinky-plonky piano intro to “Close to You” by The Carpenters. I’m not a great fan of The Carpenters, but I am fairly sure none of their other songs begin in the same way. Yet, picture the scene; The Carpenters are headlining Glastonbury 2008, they have yet to play their most famous song, it’s getting to the end of their set… when… “Do-doo-d-do-doo….” the piano strikes up that instantly recognisable hook. Silence. Four bars later, Karen Carpenter sings, “Why do bi…” and before she finishes the third word, the place erupts in an overjoyed spackload of cheers and screams.

Of course, Karen Carpenter selfishly had to go and starve herself to death, so my theory can never be tested. Thanks a fucking bunch Karen.

Zoey Van Goey are a band based in Glasgow, with songs so catchy that I still can’t get them out of my head despite it being a couple of months since I saw them play live.

When I was playing with YIFI, Zoey Van Goey, Alan Bissett and ourselves embarked upon a short tour, which was frankly brilliant. Four nights straight of the Zoey’s tunes being beamed into my brain has left an indelible mark and a bit of a craving for more.

Luckily for me, that craving will be quenched shortly when they release their debut single. In fact, it’s already on their myspace page for a preview listen and I have had it on in the background almost constantly since I noticed.

Go and listen for yourself: http://myspace.com/zoeyvangoey, then once you are hooked like me, go along to their single launch night and buy a copy. I am so keen to go, that despite playing a gig in Motherwell on the same night, I am going to drive like a maniac up the M74 as soon as I get off-stage in the hope of catching at least the end of their set.

Today I finished making the website for my covers band, R4:

Go on… have a look!

Whis was, in all, pretty good. Alan Bissett joined them on stage for the first time since we did the Super Puny Humans tour, reading some of his prose while the band provided melchy, low-fi background noise.

It was pretty interesting to hear how it sounds not that I am not involved and can give an objective opinion from the audence’s perspective. I have to be brutally honest and say that it was great. They seem to have coped with the loss of my talent and personality admirably.

It was my intention to take loads of pictures, but an unwillingness to use flash and an unfamiliarity with the camera I had stolen from my father made for poor results. I messed with this in photoshop for a while… I am not sure it is all that great, but I kinda liked it.

Still, it’s nice to show face, support my friends and make sure we are all still talking to each other.

I made this picture ages ago, forgot all about it and it took me a good few minutes to notice/remember what the joke was.

Well, at least I thought it was funny.

After leaving Y’all is Fantasy Island, I feel sort of free. Not that I was feeling particularly opressed and I did love the music we were playing. Some of it I really loved.

But I don’t suppose playing in that band would ever really satisfy me. It started out as a friend asking me to fill in for a couple of gigs as a bass player was required Then before I knew it I was playing in every gig, playing more instruments and being the unofficial driver. Maybe in another life that would have been enough to keep me happy, but I think I am far to egotistical to sit back and continue to be part of someone else’s musical vision.

Maybe because I joined the band after it was established, maybe because song writing was not really a group-effort within the band, but I did not feel like it was my place to come up with creative ideas, or to write tunes for us to play. So what do I do after leaving a band in which I was feeling unfulfilled playing somebody else’s music? I join a covers band.

Falkirk based covers band Arthur recently suffered a major fracture and lost two members. Like so many times before, word of a bass playing vacancy came my way on the local music grapevine and after a couple of meetings, a bit of an audition-ey rehearsal and some practice sessions I found myself playing with the re-christened R-4 in Inverness. We are going back up this coming weekend too. What is even better - we seem to actually make money out of it all.

So I am being kept musically busy with performance and teaching, I have the new College year looming. Am I fulfilled and happy? Of course not.

I am still playing other people’s music, which as fun as it is, still leaves a bit of yearning in my soul. I don’t know if I am a good enough songwriter to ever fulfil that yearning, but I suppose I have to try. So amongst gigs with the new band, an ever increasing number of lessons to teach and lots of fresh college work I shall have to finally write myself an album to record. The good news is that it is partly done - I have been writing it since I was 12.

So as I said to begin, I feel a sense of musical freedom. To misquote Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, it’s the kind of freedom and excitement you feel at the start of a long journey. Some kind of musical journey, hopefully.

It has been on the cards for a while, but I have finally left Y’all is Fantasy Island. The Wickerman Festival seemed an appropriate time to bow out and leave them to their own devices.

Things were getting a bit stale, they will probably benefit from the injection of new talent and I can go off to concentrate on my own music for a while.

Good luck boys and I hope I get in free when I come to see you. Click the photo for some more pictures from the Wickerman - it was a good day.

Yes, it’s an “Is This Music” review of a gig I played a couple of weeks ago. No significant mention of me, but I like to think of myself as the invisible glue that holds the whole band together.

Click to read the review or click the picture to see more gig photos.