I spoke a bit about the origins of The False Poets in this here blog about the debut album that you might have checked out already.
I thought I'd spend a little while going over that first year from June 2012 to June 2013 when Tristan was fronting the group leading up to the recording and release of the debut single, Tell Me When.
The first rehearsal was held at First Avenue Studios, Heaton on Saturday 16th June 2012. I don't think Tristan had met Dinny or Dean before. Everyone always got on champion. Just mates getting together to play some music, really. I was in a band with Dinny and Dean when we were 16. Psychlone, Chester-le-Street's fastest thrash metal band. Well, in 1993, anyways. I don't think Dean had been in a band since Psychlone disbanded in 1995 (I left in 1994), but he'd kept his hand in by playing occasionally at home on an electronic drumkit. I'd been in a couple of other bands with Dinny. The short lived Mandalas in 2004 which morphed into the disappointingly named Justroy in 2005 for a year or so. I can't remember what Tristan's band or bands were called in the early 90s. They never played live tho. They did briefly feature Raoul Moat's brother & he thinks they were once offered a support slot for Napalm Death, but they declined. By the sounds of it they hung out, drank something quite rough and made some shoegazey noises. Could have been interesting!
Tristan and me were quite well versed in garage rock stuff. We never talked about writing our own stuff at first. Leading up to the first rehearsal the group were communicating via email sending mp3s of songs to learn. For the first rehearsal we decided to spend two hours knocking about with the Elevators' You're Gonna Miss Me, The Haunted's 1-2-5, Shadows of Knight's Gonna Make You Mine and The Groupies' Primitive. Considering we'd never all played together they all sounded pretty tight & really we could have tried more out in the end. I recorded the rehearsal on my Zoom MRS-4 track. I'm not sure where the mp3s for the other 3 songs are, but here's what is likely to be the final take of Primitive from that first day's session:
That's not too shabby, is it? For a first day, I mean, although I suppose we could lay ourselves open to accusations of not evolving our sound too much, but I digress! We rehearsed a couple of times a month. We soon increased to 3 hour sessions & there wasn't much mucking about during rehearsal time. Tristan bought a handheld Zoom recorder from Maplins. He was far more tech savvy than me. It could record in mp3 or WAV and was far more user friendly than my 4 track which was soon ditched. Tristan loved rehearsing, although was rather hesitant when it came to seeking gigs and playing live. Or rather, I should say he was very hesitant. Rehearsals were another matter tho and he was very inventive on the guitar. Something we could have explored a little more, like in this thing which he called Instrumental Thyme, although I'd go with the name Sloppy John B, personally. This from 27th January '13 which got played this once then never again:
By this time we had amassed enough material to easy play a couple of pub sets. I kind of forced his hand by buying a PA and The False Poets played their first set at The Old Ship, Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, February 2013.
Quite a racket, there! Dean updated his drumkit after that one. There was 20 odd people there, I think. Mostly friends and family, you know, but they mostly seemed to enjoy it and were paying attention, which helps. In the Mandalas and Justroy, typical gigs would be with a couple of other bands doing 25 minutes or so. This time around with The False Poets I figured if we had our own gear we could play longer and give us a chance to improve, although I suppose it's just doing the pub circuit, so perhaps I shouldn't big it up too much. It did give us autonomy tho, having our own PA. Tristan was intrigued by the desk and was saying that we could record ourselves through it. I was a bit dismissive of that, to be honest, but that's what we've done with Strange Season and Tristan's album False Poetry which he recorded himself is absolutely fine, so he was right again, really.
It was during February 2012 that we had the rehearsal session which lead to the 2020 lockdown release The Red Rooms EP. There's actually 45 songs we rehearsed that day, which is kind of ridiculous, although we did top that with 50 odd once. The Red Room EP is a good snapshot of the band at the time. Tell Me When took a bit longer than the other original songs to develop & would go on to be the first single. I wrote some chorus chords to go along with the idea for the verse that Tristan sent me and we worked on the different rhythm parts together as a band.
After Newbiggin, Tristan missed a couple of gigs. Prior to his final live appearance in June he tweeted that he couldn't stress enough how much he didn't like playing live, so I had to fill in a couple of times, at The Cluny 2 and Lumley at The Old England. He was never going to get to Lumley. He developed some pain in his wrist in the lead up to a pretty big gig at The Central in Gateshead. It could have been psychosomatic. I suggested, maybe he could take some cocodamol to help settle his nerves whilst also treating his wrist pain and in the end that's what he done. I was on the door taking money on the till & when he arrived he asked if we could start soon before the codeine wore off, looking a bit spaced. There was 50 odd at that show, tho pretty much everyone went to the back of the room. We opened with You're Gonna Miss Me and a big cheer went up after it which made him chuckle. That was our best night live as that 4 piece. Here's 3 marvelous posters he put together for the Get Primitive night at The Central:
I'm pretty sure we played all of what became the debut album that night. 7th June, that was. Tristan really didn't enjoy himself. He stayed in the group for one more show back at the Old Ship as advertised in the prestigious New Post Leader rather erroneously here:
I've got a recording of that last gig. It's not the best recording. I over sing at times, but the whole band play well and, when I get round to it, I might cut out a couple of songs from that to put exclusively on this here blog for all your kind souls who have taken the time to read these witterings!
That was Tristan's swansong with the band. Live, at least, anyway. He agreed to do it after his post Northumberland Arms gig which he called a Shambles in the Cellar, or something. He wanted to record, you see, which we did do in a studio for the first time on 15th June 2013, a year to the day since that first rehearsal.
Broadwater Studios in Gateshead, in retrospect, may not have been the best choice I made. I did a search for analogue studios in the North East and their website mentioned they had the ability to do analogue recording, but we didn't get that. We got closer to that with the debut album at Northside in Chester-le-Street. Maybe we would have been better off at First Avenue.
We were all accepting of the Tell Me When mix straightaway. Before playing us back Stick or Twist he told us he had done something to Stick or Twist which he thought had a very Live sound. There was chatter at the start to give the impression of the club, but I winced a bit, thinking it sounded like rhubarb rhubarb, rather than building any excitement, so that got binned off. I can't remember if I was in the Vox amp and Tristan in the Orange one or not. He since said that his fuzz guitar on Stick or Twist sounded like an angry wasp. It got a good review on a blog called Sound of Confusion & Jon Kelly of an indie show called the Orange Flavoured Pipe Machine just about raved about it when he picked it up from that blog, I presume. It did feel like an achievement, tho. Tell Me When sounded like something from 1964. It was a buzz to record it and hear it get played on Kick Out the Jams on Koast Radio. Tristan had the cover ready the next day. I was a berk. I would put things straight on soundcloud and post it on Facebook and think stardom would come when people heard the sound of our little band which we all thought had something from the off. He was ahead of the game with bandcamp tho and we still use the account he set up alongside the Nice Mind Records one.
Following that, the 3 of us Durham lot continued to rehearse and look for gigs. The band had got me writing songs again for the first time in years, as did Tristan who was writing and recording what Nice Mind Records put out as a solo album for him called False Poetry. All in all, it was a pretty fruitful year, whichever way you look at it.
