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On Saturday 31st March, Rachel and I performed our first gig at the Rose & Crown in Bocking. Choosing this as our first gig venue gives us a certain level of safety knowing full well that the regulars will be supportive and appreciative of our efforts, but knowing we will get a royal barracking if we loused things up! What I hadn’t bargained for is the amount of additional attendees that included a fair portion of Rachel’s work colleagues and all of them arrived early enough to occupy the lower bar where we were playing. I also had a couple of people from work along for the ride, so this increased the level of putting my money where my mouth is! Have so say going into the gig I was extremely confident we would nail it, in fact I’ve never been so confident knowing that from late January through to the gig date we had both sweated blood and tears to get the 40 songs together in a presentable fashion. In fact in the three weeks leading up to the gig we practiced twice a week that also included a visit to Stag Studios in Witham to ensure all was well with PA.

The setting up of the Peavey PA proved to be a useful exercise as it reminded me how utterly woeful the out-of-the-box reverb is, and it certainly caused Rachel some concerns. Short of panic buying a £100+ dedicated reverb stomp box I decided to forgoe my electric guitar for the gig and set up the vocals to go through my Zoom g9.2tt effects unit – a decision that was to prove particularly prudent!

…and so, we were ready!

The gig itself went extremely well with Rachel belting out song after song, seemingly getting more confident after each song, and for the most part I remembered the music with referrals to the song sheets to a bare minimum. Unfortunately I fell foul to not adhering to my own practice methods and completely loused up Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’, from tuning the E string down through to the actual song itself it was a bit of train wreck, but finally got it together!! The reason – I didn’t practice it on the assumption that I’ve played it so many times I couldn’t possibly screw it up! WRONG! Needless to say, it, along with all songs we play, will be practiced in equal measure from here-on-in. Song highlights for me throughout the 2 hour long set included our truly wicked rendition of ‘Pricetag’, both Kings of Leon songs we do sounded fab (Use Somebody and Sex on Fire), Ed Sheeran’s ‘A-Team’ and our encore of Lady Gaga’s ‘Marry the Night’ capped things off perfectly (shame about the Yellow debacle also in the encore!). Hell, even my three songs a I did solo at half time went pretty well, particularly proud of Coldplay’s ‘Us Against the World’ that I had literally learnt the same day!

We now have another gig on Sunday May 6th at 3PM, supporting Beatles tribute duo ‘Words & Music’, and have just been booked to play at Benson Bar on Saturday May 12th starting at 8:30PM. Hope to see you there. :O)

In other news, I finally have all components for my Roland GR-55 guitar effects processor – once this baby is set up it will allow me to change tunings at the stomp of a pedal, so songs like Pearl Jam’s ‘Daughter’ will be featured in my solo performances and gives me the option to throw in a couple of Devin Townsend’s more calm songs! But not just that, it will turn the guitar into other instruments of my choosing, piano being one attractive patch that will allow for songs like Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ and Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’ – Of course I can acoustic guitar those songs up, but the ability to play it piano style would be awesome – or I could just learn them on my keyboard! Hmmm! Lastly, since it works off a pickup that monitors each of the six strings I can also have bass guitar on the bottom two strings for example and some synth strings on the top 4! It truly is awesomeness in a box – that is assuming I can work the bloody thing.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for now, keep an eye out here and also the Duality Web Page for more information on our next gigs and for media that should become available over the upcoming months. :O)

Currently permaplaying on iPod:
Rammstein – Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da : Fave track = Ich Tu Dir Weh
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago : Fave track = For Emma
Foster the People – Torches : Fave track = Houdini
Kina Grannis – Stairwells : Fave track = The One You Say Goodnight To
Florence and the Machine – Ceremonials : Fave track = Heartlines

Okay, so I still haven’t installed the strap locks, but I guess it was fate that got me there as I have recently purchased a beautiful Epiphone Gibson Les Paul from my friend Steve (used to be in Stuffed Olive band). Now, the sensible side of me was screaming not to buy it but there reasons why I pushed on regardless is that A) £200 is just so darned good a deal and B) I know he looks after his guitars extremely well so just know its condition will be pristeen. So I am now a proud Epiphone owner, the theory being I just needed a backup guitar for my Jackson at gigs, in case I break a string or just simply want a differently tuned guitar available and ready to go. I took it to band practice last night to hear it at good volume and can now proclaim it as my first choice! Fantastic sound and the sustain is just ridiculous! I’m a happy bunny.

In other news I am gradually putting together a list of cover songs that I want to iron out and upload to YouTube, the criteria being either that I’m sick of seeing seriously crap versions of great songs being murdered by other YouTubers or that I simply think will be great to play in my own style. I am also slowly (read: very) working on my album project that has been a brain resident for nearly a decade, codename: “Pigeon” as of now. :O) There are two tracks that are very old songs of mine, but will be massively re-worked to almost non-recognisable measure while the rest of the music is a combination of scrapbook ideas I’ve had over time. The benefit of playing a lot of acoustic music is that I often find passages by accident that I think will sound good in a song either in part or as a whole. Learning ‘Everlong’ by the Foos has given me the majority of one of the songs on the album for example. Get me and my drop D tuning!

Anyway, all exciting stuff at the moment, and with the band learning new songs by the month there’s a lot to be practicing. Up and coming gigs for Stuffed can be found at THIS LOCATION. :O)

Thought I’d drop a quick post in here since I haven’t done so in an age and things have moved on somewhat musically in my life, although my time is somewhat reduced with the introduction of my gorgeous daughter Lucy born on November 19th 2010. :O) Anyway, since my last update Stuart and myself have formed a duo called More or Less and have done a couple of gigs. Though this isn’t our primary focus, this is very much still the band Stuffed Olive it just gives us an option to learn new songs and to play at venues that can’t accomodate a full four-piece band. The band recently done a four track demo that can be listened to either on the website or on our YouTube Page, go check it out. Also check out my own YT TheKeithEllis page where I plan to upload videos of myself and/or the duo, and you can also see what stuff I’m currently digging out there.

I am now the proud owner of a Korg Microstation keyboard that I plan (when I get any spare time whatsoever) to learn inside out and hook up to the PC with Cubase and start writing stuff again. In my usual fashion I already have an album drawn up with song titles, with only two of the songs with any vague idea of what they are going to sound like!

Finally an update wouldn’t be complete without mention of the current albums that are floating my boat right now. Check them out on YouTube, google, wherever, but make sure you do:

Amplifier – The Octopus : Fave track = Interstella
Vessels – Helioscope : Fave track = All Our Ends
The Decemberists – The King is Dead : Fave track = June Hymn
Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport : Fave track = Lisbon Maru
White Lies – Ritual : Fave track = Strangers

Music has always been a massive part of my every day life, so it is no surprise to learn that I have in excess of 1000 CDs packed up in boxes and never played. Since the MP3 revolution, the only place I actually play CDs is in the car, and let’s be fair my 10 minute drive to the station hardly does Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” justice, with the only other journey I do regularly being the half hour trek to Rawreth for band practice.  Our house isn’t small, but it’s also not large enough to have the luxury of plush CD cabinets containing all of my collection for everyone to see (read: family who wouldn’t even give it a second glance!). Believe me, the horder and collector side of me inherited from my father would delight in having such an extravegance!

So I’m left with the altogether depressing prospect of selling them on. I have thought about putting all the boxes up in the loft, but that’s really not the nicest environment to be storing delicate CDs in. So, that leaves me online auctions, boot sales or finding somewhere that will buy the job lot. Online auctions is a fairly thankless task when dealing with music CDs, the only successes I’ve really had in the past being doing bulk offers, eg 5 CDs by the same artist in one auction. Individual auctions for each CD despite the wonders of Turbo Lister is still a frightfully tedious task, and then you have to cope with the crushing disappointment that they didn’t sell, and ironically greater disappointment when they do because you’ve then got to package the bloody things up and haul your ass to the nearest stupidly long queue in the post office!

Boot sales are all well and good but my experience of them in the past is such that everyone expects a bargain, so if you begin the day gleefully selling each CD for 50p, you will always get some jerk come along that scoffs at that price and asks if you’ll sell for 20p! I speak from bitter experience. One gets possessive about what you’re trying to sell, as not only do you know the original value of the thing, but it has also gathered personal value, making the whole 20p offer double the insult! I also detest waking up early on weekends, I do that all week - weekends are sacred! Then you get the random weather, the eejits who come to your car boot first thing in the morning like flocks of vultures seeing if they can rob you blind and then the feeling that you have actually wasted half a day of your weekend. Humph!

So, it looks like I need to sell the job lot to a company/business/individual who buys second hand media. Anyone reading this blog (haha, a laugh in itself!) that knows of such a place, please do comment here or get in touch, I have no qualms in travelling to achieve the end result so long as the entire collection ends up in good hands, and I get a nice bit of bunce for it. :O)