Twenty years ago the band that I was working with changed. Life got in the way, the guitarist moved to Australia after getting married and the bass player and drummer who were involved in another band that had more gigs also moved on. So a small number of us continued with new players still under the name of Red Touch.
This month after two decades of not seeing one another we got back together again, playing the old material most of which were self-penned numbers which we had not revisited in any form in that time. On listening to the albums that we had released two things struck me, first of all we were good, better than I or any of us remembered and secondly the songs were really well written. Maybe it takes twenty years to have enough distance on your own writing to be able to see what you’ve managed to create.
Listening back to old CDs the songs sounded like they were written and played by other people I didn’t notice the type of errors that I used to imagine when I previously played the music but now I could hear a really solid level of musicianship and artistry in what we had created.
Meeting up and playing with the original members was such good fun, everyone being excited to meet after all these years. There was a definite feeling of love between the people and although we never left under a cloud of animosity I don’t remember us being so close maybe this is a good example of absence making the heart growing fonder.
This realisation fits the last blog post about beliefs and opinions and that they may not be reliable as they seem at the time and they are prone to change which highlights their unreliability. What do we do about this? Well maybe we should just do things and not think about it too much and then step aside and act as if it is not us to get some objectivity. The fact that our opinion of the work was so distorted at the time is of interest to me and although one could argue that our perceptions we be deluded now due to the excitement of playing again it has been verified by people outside of the band.
The gig itself was amazing and was the icing on the cake with the audience confirming what we had said about the quality of the band, but for me the strange and surreal feeling of playing that this event engendered is the most interesting all the members felt the same but expressing it in different ways, one saying it was a memory for end of life reflection, another saying it was a spiritual experience and others saying it was dreamlike and euphoric.
SO now it is time to ponder this and the coming year. 2016 was rather a shock to all I think and to think of all of the musicians who have moved on but it is time for us to look ahead at the coming year and what we are going to set as a vision for our creativity
So I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a very merry Christmas with health, wealth and happiness for the coming year.
