mostly david ephgrave

I mentioned a little while ago that I'd rediscovered a cassette of my old band Big Day Out's early demos and was struck by the songs and their energy. One such track was I Get High: a burst of musical sunshine that's very evocative of the time and captures what those first few years of BDO were all about. David Ephgrave · I Get High The demo comes from a session we did with our then-manager Martin Goodrich in 1997ish. Martin was one of the first people to buy into the band and support us. He was a lovely guy with a fair bit of musical knowledge, who also owned an analogue 8-track recorder, which was a dream come true for the band's two songwriters, Rich and me, to get to play with. My friendship with Rich must have seemed unlikely at the time - he was one of the cool kids at school whereas I definitely wasn't - but it was a sparklingly productive thing. We first got chatting in Design Technology classes (when we should have been working) when we found out we both ...

While sorting through some old things today, I stumbled across a cassette of early Big Day Out demos I haven't heard for years and, after putting magnetic-tape-to-tape-head using my first HiFi (which I rescued from my garage last week), I discovered they're still bloody good. The songs were recorded using our friend, one-time band manager and adopted-father-figure Martin Goodrich's 8-track in around 1997ish, and sound remarkably polished considering our tender age and the technical limitations. The joy and energy bursts from the speakers like the band are playing in your front room today and, while there are inevitable Britpop-style musical quotes we'd soaked up at the time - like the odd Oasis-Esque vowel sound - something sparkling and original still comes out the other side of it. And the songs - which are unashamedly out-and-out pop - are catchier than coronavirus. (Too soon?) Before I sound smug, I should point out the driving force at that time wasn't me, but ...

It’s hard to fathom, but in a few months it will be a decade since my old band Big Day Out got together one last time for a special reunion gig to raise money for Glyn’s and my first Edinburgh Fringe. I don’t how it can be so long ago; it’s frightening really. And that anniversary’s just the half of it, as while our reunion gig may have been ten years ago, we actually officially split up six years before that. Sixteen years have passed since we were still a going concern, which is as long as I’ve been out of drama school too. It was a sad end to something very special that, at the time, meant the world to me. When we broke up I was ripped apart, and what made it worse was I was the reason it ended, after the two consecutive UK tours I took after leaving college left the rest of the band thinking they could no longer wait for me. In retrospect this seems silly when, in reality, we could have easily found a way around it. But back then, faced...

I miss collaboration, which is something I haven’t had in my creative life for quite some time. While I’ve always been someone who generates ideas - be for it songs when I was in a band and music was my priority, or comedy for the various shows, sketches and stand-up I’ve written on my own or as a double act - I’ve always felt at my best when I’m part of a collective. For one, it’s more enjoyable to work with someone else, for both the social aspect and for the sense of a shared input. It’s also nice to not to be solely responsible for whatever it is you’re doing, and to have someone to bounce off when you do it: without this, it can be hard to find the motivation to see things through. Unfortunately, I haven’t had that shared input for quite a while. On one hand, it hasn’t stopped me; I’ve written three solo shows over the past three years, kept my blog up almost daily for nearly five, and have built the comedy club up to the point where it consistently hosts big acts; bu...

Today didn’t contain much in the way of writing, though I got to see my friend Rob, who came to Hitchin for one of our not-as-regular-as-we’d-like catch-ups. It’s always great to see him, particularly now we don’t get the chance to work together like we did when I was knee-deep in actor / muso work. Those gigs were far more bearable whenever he was in the band, particularly when we did the Buddy show together. I first met Rob in 2006, on my second Buddy tour. I did the first one the year before and hated it as - outside of the rhythm guitarist and drummer - it had a horrible atmosphere, with a band that didn’t click. Despite playing Buddy and being at the centre of the show, I was constantly undermined onstage by the emcee, who didn’t trust my ability and would consequently talk over me. He did this with good but misguided intentions, but it was tiring to always be backfooted by someone who was jaded with the show anyway, and didn’t consider how it...

My old band Big Day Out used to rehearse in a day centre every Sunday (like most aspiring rock bands, I guess). Whenever we arrived, there was only one thing on our mind, and it wasn’t music. Each week, we’d pray that they'd left their sensory room open by mistake. We only discovered the room by accident. The building was essentially a large square made up of four long corridors meeting at each end, with a courtyard in the middle. These passages had a more than passing resemblance to The Overlook Hotel. We’d wander up and down them in breaks between practising, trying all the doors along the way. On one memorable occasion, a door that was usually locked swung open to reveal a pitch-black room. After a few moments furtively scrabbling for a light switch, I found a whole bank of them on the wall. I flicked them down to be hit by a sea of colour: all manner of mirror balls, disco lights, bubble machines, psychedelic oil projections, fibre-optic and lava lamps came on at o...

Though it happened sixteen years ago, I still vividly remember the time my dad’s friend told me that my band should be like Shed Seven. It was actually worse than that. He said, “You want to be more like Shed Seven”, which implied that we already resembled the band a little bit, but could do with sharing more of their traits. It also suggested that he knew my feelings on the subject better than I did. He couldn’t have been further from the truth. If we’d showed even slight similarities to that nondescript Indie rock band, I’d have wanted to knock them on the head. If anything, we needed to be less like Shed Seven. It seemed an odd band to aspire to. I can’t remember any of their songs. It would be like deciding to be a politician, then modeling your career on Lembit Öpik. (Though he isn’t bad on the harmonica.) My dad's mate also said that we needed only one lead singer, as bands with more than one frontman didn’t work...