Drum Machines Can't Dance
The Subbuteo Pitch Invasion Years :
After Ninth Circle There were a few incarnations of what was to become Subbuteo Pitch Invasion. Myself, Gary (the Bass Player from Procrastination) and Leighton were the main stay, a few other potential singers and guitarists drifted in and out (Mention to Marty here who lasted the longest and I'd credit him with being an original member of SPI). Leighton drifted off briefly leaving Myself, Gary and Steve (Guitarist from Procrastination) to hold it together, We started taking things a bit more seriously at this point, trying to write some original songs (one survived - "There's no love between us and never was" Called Jetplane by the band due to its chorus sounding very much like John Denver's - Leaving on a Jetplane (shh don't tell anyone), I wrote the lyrics for this one, it's about the rise of crap like the X Factor and the age of crappy Glorified Karioki singers... there was a theory that every 13 years a movement in music happens.. Rock n roll to punk to Madchester... but it never happened. Instead we got Coldplay, Seriously what the fluck...)
Things were moving along slowly until we managed to coax Leighton in to re-joining. This time with a bit of determination and a lot of great riffs from Leighton we managed to pull together about a dozen brilliant indie style tunes. We played our first gig at The Caberete Voltaire in Edinburgh, about 50 or so of our friends (and friends friends) made the place look busy, It was My first gig with proper mic'ed up drums and sounded fantastic. Our second gig was a quieter affair, because all our mates had turned up for the first gig, no-one showed for our second, we might have got away with it but the other two bands in the line up didn't bring anyone else along either... so the three of us played our sets to each other in a wee function room in Edinburghs Cafe Royal Hotel. It was actually a fab night, the other two bands (when I remember their names I will edit this) played their hearts out to an empty room.. again another nod to our punk roots.. don't let an empty venue stop you from having a good night.
Another slight line up change at this point. Gary hung up his bass for a bit and my cous Fraser joined us. We became seriously tight as a band, became regulars at the brilliant Bannermans Pub in Edinburgh, an amazing small venue in the vaults under bridge street in the cowgate, due to the curved vault rooms the sound is fantastic... if your ever in Edinburgh you'd do worse than to go along and have a watch.. bands on every night. We got to second round in Band Comp in Glasgow's Fury Murrays night club, we had to pull out due to other commitments.. a pity but it introduced us to Catbuster... a band we went on to play another two gigs with
I'd done a bit of research after we decided on our name to make sure we weren't in danger of copywrite issues, we weren't Subbuteo is latin for hobby (longer story for another time) anyway.. the outcome of my research was having the Son of the Inventor of Subbuteo, David, giving us a shout out on Radio Newcastle while he was promoting his new book, How f&n cool is that :) As I said a longer story than I have space for now.
Our last two gigs were a fitting end to the band .. our second last was in Hawick, the place where it all started, Fraser at this point was out of the band so we played without a bass player, we had gone a full circle back to Procrastination, still a brilliant night though. Our last Gig was in our Fave Venue Bannermans, Gary had re-joined for this gig, It was nice to end with the first line up.
It didn't really finish more drifted, All my band chums have spawned evil replicas of themselves ready to take over the world.... one day ....
So That brings me to ..... DRUM MACHINES CAN'T DANCE......
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The name DRUM MACHINES CAN'T DANCE comes from a conversation with Keith, singer with Procrastination, he was discussing the merits of replacing me in the band with a Drum Machine, hes a funny guy, to my defence the only reason I could think of was that Drum Machines Couldn't Dance... we later used this as the title for our demo tape (that nobody heard, not even sure if we did, i'll listen to it tomorrow...)
I started writing tunes using Fruity Loops, it's a great wee program that packs a punch, but gets a lot fiddly when you want to add live instruments, it's not really meant for that. So i upgraded to Ableton Live 8 for recording tracks, Reason 5 as a Drum Machine and Piano simulator. For editing and production I use Soundforge 8. Ive pretty much stuck with this set up for the last five years, it gives a good professional sound, with endless amounts of VST's. My hardware equip I've built up over time...
My first set up was a cheap midi keyboard, Leighton's Honer headless, body less guitar.. all routed in through line-in on a soundblaster sound card. I struggled by on this for years.. along with a pentium 1 comp.. this proved difficult to work with as the CPU would max out if I put more than three effects to an instrument, it helped my Sound Engineering skills (of which I started with zero) as I had to invent more workarounds to combat the CPU issue, some of my best stuff, including , and are written using this set up...
My current hardware set up is.. the same Midi keyboard (you don't need an expensive one as the computer controls the sound), Gary's original Procrastination Bass guitar - complete with Svens Adult Band sticker. Tanglewood Memphis Electric/acoustic Guitar, Epiphone AJ-220SCE Acoustic/Electric Guitar, Ibanez M510E-BS Acoustic Electric Mandolin, a mid range Condenser Microphone, a PZM microphone, all mixed through a Behringer Q1202USB, Which is re-routed back so it doubles up as my sound card. and an ACER I5 Desktop Computer. It didn't cost a million bucks to set up but the sound quality from this wee studio is comparitive to one that did, it's not worth 500,000 squid just to remove some easily dealt with hisses and minor latency issues.
Drum Machines Can't Dance is me, Don Urquhart AKA Obidon, Hi. All the music is made by me, Unless its a cover Version then I retain zero rights to the song (I always credit, where credit is due).
It all started way back in good ole 1988. Hogmany at Gary's... 20 people in the room decided to form a Rockband... conditions were first to get an instrument is in, didn't matter if you could play it or not. I knew someone, who knew someone, who's dad had a drum kit for sale; a sparkly jazz Olympic Premier 5 piece, with a few broken cymbals chucked in. So i was in.. Don the Drummer was officially 1/5th of Procrastination: Keith, Gary, Steve and Mike completed the line up.
procrastination noun [ U ]
uk /prəˌkræs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/ us /proʊ-/
the act of delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring:
By name by nature.. it was a wonder we got anything done. When we got our first gig supporting the mighty Skol 10/80 (more rampant than mad cow disease), we knew 3 songs all the way through, about half a dozen sort of.... we had one original and that was plagiarised from The Mekons - Where were you? .. our other two songs were Joy Division's Radio Live Transmission and The Cure's 10:15 Saturday Night. We were awful but you couldn't fault our commitment to our Punk ethics. After several more slightly improving gigs we called it a day... Big shout out at this point to Kelso's finest.. Svens Adult Band who were fantastic and the main reason people came to our gigs.
Ninth Circle
Ninth Circle (Treachery)Dante speaks to the traitors in the ice, Canto 32. At the base of the well, Dante finds himself within a large frozen lake: Cocytus, the Ninth Circle of Hell. Trapped in the ice, each according to his guilt, are punished sinners guilty of treachery against those with whom they had special relationships.
My next band was Drumming for Thrash Metal Band - Ninth Circle (who are still going under the name of Razor Sharp Death Blizzard, check em out). It was at this point I took my one and only drumming lesson (cheers Bri) . Playing drums for a metal band when a complete novice is a learn fast or die trying situation. We played a few gigs and actually sounded pretty decent (if you like 200bpm songs that have lyrics... but you can't make them out.., I'm listening to Kitties "Oracle" as I'm typing so the answers yes). The boys went on to win a battle of the bands after I left and the prize was to support The Wedding Present.. Jealous much.. well I was at the gig and got to share a pint or two with the Weddoes Drummer... Who put me and Leighton on the guest list for the following night at Level 8 Strathclyde Uni ... so that did make up for it. Plus I got to meet and drunkenly annoy Jessie Rae at the Band comp (he was a judge) he even signed a copy of his new 10" (steady now) and let me hold his Claymore (i said steady now) , the man is a complete ledge to me (check him out as well).
Part two - The Subbuteo Years to follow soon... please check back... also check out my Tunes in the Music section and some Vids in the .. suck eggs grannie...