One Year On

Sitting in bed on a Sunday morning (which is drifting into Sunday afternoon), listening to the new Dan Kelly album that Andre left on the coffee table and waiting around for Eels to play in around 10 hours or so. It's been roughly a year since we started the band, and it's weird to look around now and see posters that say we're playing at East Brunswick Club or The Tote and think that whatever stupid name we settled on all that time ago would be whatever would be on those posters. Or maybe they wouldn't. Or that it'd be what schoolkids shout out at me across the yard during my two weekly yard duties at school (although they seem to be obsessed with The Screaming Pigeons for some strange reason). The event was marked with a couple of gigs over the last week at Weekender at Ding Dong and a last minute job at Yah Yahs, and thanks to everyone who made the effort to come out and see us. Sometimes twice!

So, as I've mentioned, in about a month's time, we will will be laying down what we anticipate will be our debut album. I thought I had a pretty good handle on what it's actually going to be about a week ago when I burst into Andre's room with a piece of lined paper with ridiculous tracklists and album titles and how was going on and on about how awesome it was going to be, but after reassessing the situation I realise that I still have NO CLUE AT ALL. So, we'll just have to wait and see. I really don't want to do an EP; don't get me wrong, I have many, many favourite EPs but I have a big problem when I read bands talk about how they're putting out an EP to "raise their profile" or have it lead up to make this big grand statement that may never happen. But then again, we only have a few days of recording and too many ideas (or not enough ideas), and it'll end up being an EP. Or maybe a double album. I don't know. It's probably not going to be called "Qi" or "Hound's Brunch" or "Progress". This morning it sounds like it might be called "The Story of YIS".

By the way, this Dan Kelly album is pretty great. There's actually some pretty amazing Australian music that's being made lately; the last Love of Diagrams album was pretty great, and I'm still in love with the Mum Smokes double album that they put out a couple of years ago. It's amazing, and I don't say that a lot. It's a shame that sometimes the best bands can't stay together and will go off and do other things for whatever reason. Stay together for the kids, Mum Smokes.

Which brings me to something else that's pretty awesome about playing in this band; starting to play all the places that I've seen some of my favourite bands. Even though Fall Tribute Night at The Workers Club (formerly the Rob Roy) ended in a massive row, it was still pretty awesome to play there after going to see some of my first gigs as an eighteen year old there; seeing Love of Diagrams every couple of weeks (sometimes with a three-piece Mum Smokes). And, yes, we get to play East Brunswick Club next weekend, which is pretty awesome. Although I haven't seen as many amazing gigs amazing shows there as The Corner, I remember seeing Low play an amazing set there a few years back, so, it'll be pretty good to play there. We also get to play at The Toots' album launch in a couple of weeks and getting to play the main bandroom at The Tote (after playing the Front Bar and upstairs at Cobra before it shut) on a Saturday night. It's these small things that make me pretty happy.

So, I'm looking forward to at least a few more years of these kinds of cool things. Every time I feel my phone buzz in my pocket and see it's a new email on the YIS account, I hold my breath to see if it's another great gig offer (still holding out for Meredith or Golden Plains and then I can probably die happy) or somebody saying that they dug our band and want a CD (which sometimes happens!), but usually it's just something about staying harder for longer. Ah well.