Modern technology.

My mobile phone started playing up last week. It's nearly 4 years old so it's had a good innings. Mobiles have come along way in the last 4 years. I'm typing this on my shiny new phone and have sent the picture from it too. Does this mean we can take band pictures and have them online almost instantly from wherever we may be? I think it might, you know...

Everything in it's right place.

In a couple of weeks time (the Easter weekend to be as precise as I can be), a good friend is getting wed. The wedding means that Johan is coming to visit. Johan used to play bass in Doktor Mandrake, the band me and Paul used to be in.

In unrelated news, the same weekend Loz from Little Forty (the band that Ari and Gemma used to be (and still are (I like brackets in brackets)) in) is back from where he goes.

These two happenings mean that the former forms of the San Juan Boundary Dispute are all in the same city over the same weekend.

This in turn means that we will probably all end up having a night out together on Good Friday. The old gang and the other old gang back together as one big gang (as such).

So we will probably end up in the Victoria in Withington, at about 8ish.

We'll no doubt do an impromptu gig, at about 8ish ('til about midnight).

Doktor Mandrake, Little Forty and, if all goes to plan, a quite short debut performance from the San Juan Boundary Dispute.

It could prove be a very Good Friday...

McGinty

Genesis.

So here's either another waste of space in the online 'cloud' or possibly the first blog of the greatest band you'll ever hear. But hopefully it's somewhere in between.

This weblog intends to help you/me/them/everybody keep us on track and up to date with developments as things get going. It'll be good for us to document, might be vaguely interesting for you (whoever you are), plus I don't want the next entry on this blog to be four months from now with nothing much to report so it'll be a bit of a motivator for us. That's the theory anyway.

So this is starting pretty much at the beginning. We've so far had one practice together, one practice without Paul and the sticks and two with the bass.

Songs. Lots of songs. We need songs first so that's what we're currently doing and will keep you posted and hopefully up to date with demos too. Don't quite know what the plan is yet other than to do it. Mistakes and self-delusion of organically 'making it'* have hopefully taught some lessons along the way. We've all played for years in two very decent unsigned bands that never got beyond being that. Shame really. So this is second chance time. Attempt number two.

There's four of us. Gemma plays the lower stuff, I play the higher stuff. Paul keeps me and Gemma in sync and then there's Arwel. It's going to be fun seeing what Arwel does without a guitar. He used to be in a band called Mr International & The Getaway Gang. Gemma was in that band too, as was a strong man called Loz. But Loz had to go somewhere. He comes back from where he goes from time to time so Mr International still 'are' but less so than they were. In fact, they're not even called Mr International anymore. They're now called Little Forty.

The other two are me and Paul. We were in a band of four called Doktor Mandrake but prison and the like got in the way and so Doktor Mandrake couldn't go on.

So two-thirds and one-half of two bands have become one band of four.

New start. Blank canvas. A name that doesn't suggest any particular genre.

We all like lots of different things and so there's nothing concrete about what we want to do or should do. The current vibe is for something that's a bit of a cross between circus-freak-punk-funk. Whatever that might be. Feels like exciting times are just around the corner.

Enjoy it. We're going to.

McGinty

*'making it' = being able to make a living from making music.