glenatron | Entries tagged with the patient wild

When I was sixteen, four of us went around to our friend's house. He had a drum kit and we had guitars and a keyboard, so we shut ourselves in his room and started playing together. As far as I can remember we mostly played Enter Sandman by Metallica, maybe a Levellers song and we made up a riff of our own. It was, I daresay, somewhere close to the worst possible sound. I had never felt so unbelievably cool as I did right then. I was in a band. The next few weeks I did every job I could persuade my parents to pay me for, sold some belongings - including selling my nice guitar to my brother, if I recall correctly - and bought myself a bass and amp. One of our guitarists was substantially better than me, the other was probably not as good, it seemed natural that I would be the bass player. Our friend with the keyboard, which was not of absolute utility, became the singer by default.

Now, I'm not going to say that the Way Out Exits were the best band in history, but I can definitely say that we believed ourselves to be the best band in history. Our singer was seldom entirely in key, the rest of us were seldom in time and our drummer was incredibly good and kind of kept everything together musically. Inexplicably we never achieved the fame that we felt we deserved, but until we went off to university that band was core to my identity and the closest I have ever been to cool.

In the intervening twenty four years, I have almost always been in a band of one kind or another. As far as I can tell The Patient Wild is the eighth band I've played live with. I have written songs and worked with autocratic songwriters. Recorded an album that you can still find in the bargain bin if you are super lucky ( or still on Amazon aparently ) and probably played somewhere between one and two hundred gigs. It's been pretty cool.

This weekend we recorded a final set of songs with The Patient Wild. The best band I have been in by a broad margin and ( with the exception of those heady early days ) probably the most fun. We're a little older, musically confident and we know how to be a band. I am playing lead guitar and appropriately enough I'm playing that nice guitar I sold to my brother way back at the start. It is a real pleasure to play with this team, but there are babies and more on the way, our drummer is moving to Cardiff and we have barely played in the last year. This weekend was our chance to get the songs that we care about most, our latest and best, recorded for posterity and for us. We did an amazing job in terms of getting everything down in a very limited time and I'm super-impressed with everyone's performances. Listening back to the vocal takes it sounded pretty great even ahead of mixing. We won't hear the final product for a while, but I think it's going to be something special.

And you know what? I think that's it for me with bands. I've had a great time, but I don't need it any more. I'm too old to care about being on the scene, schmoozing promoters or struggling to play a gig every night that god sends in order to get on the bill for better shows. This is part of the reason that music is a young person's game. Also having skirted the edges of the music industry, I wouldn't want to get any further into it. Even if it wasn't dying under the weight of the idea that music can and should be free, even if every band wasn't desperately struggling to get their voice heard among the tens of thousands of others, the industry itself is cruel and seems inordinately packed with terrible people. It is an engine that runs on crushed dreams, trying to sail a boat across a lake that has almost totally dried up.

I'll still play music- I enjoy writing and composing, writing and arranging for the podcast is a real pleasure and I have no doubt that Stu and I will collaborate for a long time, but unless some extraordinary offers show up I doubt we'll be taking it live again. We've done that. We were good, sometimes excellent, occasionally spellbinding, but in time playing to the band's partners, two other bands and a promoter on a Tuesday night in Basingstoke? I think I've done that enough for now.

Current Music: The Levellers - The Boatman

One more thing: You can buy our mini-album on Amazon.

There is literally no reason that anybody would not wish to own this music. Although that said you can stream it for free if you follow the link on here a couple of posts back...

I have about a million things to post about, but I am also totally fired up about this game writing project I'm working on so that is consuming much of my attention and evening computer time at the moment.

However tomorrow Iris and I are hopefully - assuming nothing important falls off the lorry on the biggest motorway in the country - going to go and spend the day learning to do cowboy stuff tomorrow. I'm almost excited but also fairly nervous.

Also you can hear the BBC Berkshire Introducing show from this evening where The Patient Wild feature on the demo panel at the end. Having your music judged on air like that was fairly intense if I am honest.

I have a big post about horses to write, because there's all kind of thing to say about those, but first: Music.

The songs we recorded a few months back are finally out in the world and you can listen to them right here on The Patient Wild soundcloud.

This is unquestionably the best music I have ever been part of and I am very proud of how these recordings have worked out. Please give them a listen and, if you like what you hear, tell other people you know who might enjoy it too.

Being part of a band that feels like you are creating something unique and amazing can be a little dispiriting when it feels like nobody hears the things you have made.

Current Mood: pleased

We were supposed to play a gig in Camden tomorrow night, but the other band on the bill pulled out and we got unceremoniously cancelled at the last minute. Very frustrating because it would have been our first London show and felt like a pretty cool step. :(

Current Mood: disappointed

Today we were playing as part of the Oxjam multi-venue festival in Reading. We played the first show of the weekend at Pavlov's dog, after a brief delay while the engineers found some extra bits so that we could plug our acoustic instruments in ( we're a nightmare to engineer in that respect ) we were off. It was a good fun set with a decent sound and we felt like it went pretty well in terms of sound. I took my kit back to the car and we hung around to catch the next band. Our bassist ( who is a legend ) vanished off to another venue to see what music was going on there and it turned out the next band hadn't turned up and weren't going to. A moment later it was back to the car and on to the next venue to play another set. We weren't as good second time up- partly because the sound was less good in the venue, partly because we had already played one set with full commitment- but it was still good to play.

As we finished up one of the organisers came over and asked if we might be able to play a third set in another venue, who were also down a band. Just as we were setting to leave, the other band turned up, which was probably as well for Stu's voice and my fingers, but three sets in one day would have been quite legendary.

Instead we went off for lunch and then back to the car park to find that it cost fifteen quid to park in Reading for the day. For that money I would want my to be resting on a bed of caviar when I returned.

Anyway, the outcome is: Band still awesome. Playing two gigs in a day is fun. And if you somehow missed them before, you can listen to or download our songs here. You should do that if you haven't already.

You know how I mentioned the band a while ago?

Well we finally got our recordings mixed and, though I do say so myself, they are sounding pretty gosh-darned sweet. You don't have to take my word for it, though - witness for yourself the music of The Patient Wild:

Share and enjoy!

The tracks should be downloadable from Soundcloud there, if you want a copy in your own house.

Current Mood: proud

I don't know if many of you remember my years with Sequoia - it was a long time ago and it left me feeling pretty burnt out with music, bands and the music industry. I kept a very low workrate playing with my old friend

shanks01 as much because I enjoy hanging out with Stu as out of any great inclination to conquer the world with music. We tried working with other musicians with mixed outcomes and sometimes playing open mic nights, but essentially although we had some really good songs we were pretty unambitious about them.

Over the last eight months or so that has started to change. Another friend of Stu's plays piano and we finally got around to rehearsing with her. Turns out she is excellent, fitted in great and brought a whole lot more to the music. As the sound got bigger we realised we should find ourselves some other musicians to work with. After a few auditions and a few false starts we found ourselves a truly stunning drummer who is also the tallest member of the band and a super-nice guy. A little while later a shiny-headed bassist emerged out of the fog with the skills to fit right into the band's sound.

So now we are a five piece and after a week of increasing excitement ( helped by the fact that a friend of ours released his band's album last week and it is genuinely excellent ) last Sunday we played our first live gig. We were probably a little under-rehearsed, but there is no question in my mind that it was one of the best performances I have ever been part of. Stu is a great singer and front man, everyone else hit their notes like we were supposed to and the audience response was really cheering. Even the song where I play mandolin and almost always get my fingers tied in knots went pretty smoothly. We were totally buzzing afterwards and doubtless completely intolerable, but what a fun evening! The other two bands on the bill ( The Automated and Take Me Home ) were both genuinely good too, which is an unusual thing for a local gig and all in all it was a pretty good value evening for everyone involved. Hopefully even for people like

herecirm and

ramalam who had travelled long distances to be there.

We're lining up more gigs now and working out when we can get proper recordings done, but in the meantime you can find most of the tracks from the weekend over on Soundcloud or just listen right here:

Also

herecirm took a whole bunch of excellent pictures during the show, not sure if I can link them direct on account of it being Facebook, let's find out...

The Patient Wild, ladies and gentlemen. Why yes, I am wearing a suede waistcoat like it's 1994. I'm vintage.

Since Sequoia I have only really played music with Stu and Jena as Quesada & Molino. It was good fun but after a time Stu and I started to feel like getting a full band back together and in the end we decided to call a halt to that project and set up as a three-piece with Stu doing voice and guitar, me doing bass and finding ourselves a drummer.

We found a drummer but after a while of trying we couldn't make his playing fit with how we hear the songs in our heads so that didn't work out. During that time I also switched back to guitar because my guitar playing works really well with Stu's so we're now back as a duo on the quest for another two musicians.

We do, however, have a name and we're recording a lot of stuff from our rehearsals through Stu's webcam to give people an idea of the songs and also the way they develop from initial sketches through to the versions we play live and record. Probably we'll also have some talking-to-camera type stuff going on because we're funny enough to keep ourselves entertained if no-one else. So anyways, for anyone still reading may I introduce The Patient Wild...