August Newsletter

Kind wishes to all - that's how I wish to kick off the August edition of the Four Blokes Newsletter! Kind wishes to all of you. Apart from a few asides, this month's newsletter will primarily focus on the band's concert appearance at the Stage Door. Enclosed within, an exclusive window into rehearsals, backstage refreshment, and the chaos that ensued during our performance.

The situation on August 1st was less than ideal - the singular rehearsal for the concert was a complete shill due to lost and damaged equipment. Conditions were SUBPAR! Despite the winds blowing with the tide of time, I went up to the shed with a few Superking silvers and wrote a Sitar riff for Thistle using the notes of the Indian scale. At the end of last year I wrote a sort of poem about the relationship between suffering and loss and identity - first through the lens of plant life and then famous creatives from the 19th and 20th centuries. What sky would a content Van Gogh have painted? What novel would a stable Sylvia Plath have written? I had always planned to set it to Sitar and Tabla. The search for Indian musicians goes on - please write in if you have any leads, dear readers.

A week later, on the 7th, the boys travelled across the Itchen and into Pure Rehearsal - a mock tudor shithouse situated very near my ancestral docklands home. I come from a long line of dockers, you see! Most of the set got sorted that day, and we all broke for lunch. Oscar wasn't so pleased with the sweetcorn content of Tiago's veggie samosa... I looked on bemused from behind a hummus-dipped pitta bread. We shared olives and passed around a mega-bottle of Stella - MORALE WAS HIGH! Another half hour hard at work, then we called it.

A little trip to Wembley was in order, with Crystal Palace competing in the Community Shield for the first time! I caught the train from Sway, went for a few creamy ones in the Green Man, then took my place just behind the goal. After winning the penalty shootout and lifting a large steel hexagon, I travelled back to Southampton and met Harvey and Alice at for "last night at the Drummond" - a lock in! The jukebox was blasting Little Richard and everyone was in high spirits... after a good night's sleep our minds returned to a state of work.

I also got into uni - I found out i'd been accepted on the toilet at work. I have since sorted some acommodation in a mouse-infested building just off the Holloway road...

Before the next rehearsal, decisions had to be made on the setlist. "Farewell Yugoslavia" and "Back on The Drink" had both been slated for inclusion, both instrumentals and both featuring Harvey on trumpet; due to a lack of rehearsal time, they had to be dropped. A cover of 1910s music hall number "I'm Henry VIII" was briefly suggested by Tiago - we went as far as learning the chords and I even read up on the life and times of old Henry - but it never got very far. On the 17th, the boys gathered once more - not in the luxury of a rehearsal studio but in the crummy shed which has been the spiritual home of Four Blokes for MANY YEARS ALREADY! Popworld was rehearsed for the first time in nearly a year, and we ran through the entire set except Xylazine Addiction. The boys were nearing readiness, morale was consistently high...

On the 28th I arrived at Pure Rehearsal, only to find I was all alone. After a short wait, Tiago appeared... but the other two were missing! 78 minutes of scheduled and paid for rehearsal time passed by without a word before Reagon sprung to life in the groupchat - by this point me and Tiago had given up and gone for a puff. Oscar was a no-show, and Reagon arrived 2 hours late and incredibly hungover... but I wasn't going to let morale slip at this crucial moment! The rhythm section locked in, and the three of us played bloody great. 

Gig day snuck up on us - the morning of, I motored down to Portsmouth to take my practical driving test. Nervous, nervous... but I needn't have been, as I passed with 0 faults. The invigilator spent the whole test talking about Sheffield United, microbreweries in old cutlery factories, and how shit of a manager Ruben Selles is. I can describe him as nothing other than "A credit to the DVLA". I celebrated with a vegan steak bake from Greggs and returned home victorious to find my men waiting for me. Everything went off without a hitch, sheltering from the rain admist my childhood possessions, and the men made in-roads for the venue...

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"Public Flogging - Four Blokes rides again"

And here we are at our special feature article! Exciting times for the Blokes. Arrival at the gig was an absolute mess, on our end and the venues. This may be considered slander, but I doubt The Stage Door PLC will read the Four Blokes Newsletter avaliable only by subscription - THE SOUND GUY WAS FUCKING USELESS! No mics for any of the amps, no mics for the drums- literally the only thing he was doing was the level of the vocal. After we soundchecked for about 5 minutes, with basically the same level of amplification we have in my shed, M.U.G.A. went out to set up. I must say they not only were they great craic in the dressing room, but also great showmen - their song "Telephones" is bloody fantastic. Me and Tiago agreed they had come on leaps and bounds from their performance with us at the Hobbit, 364 days previously.

A highlight of the gig separate to any of the music was meeting various wonderful people - I was especially delighted to trade Pokémon cards with Ella. The one she gave me was gas.

Anyways, our stage time arrived. I say time... there was no set time, I was the highest authority at the gig and I wasn't arsed at all, I don't think I looked at a clock once all night. The previous band were finished so we ought to go on is what I meant. After scouring the stage for my keyboard cable and checking over the amps we were ready to rock. We opened with Murder of Crows - classic to open with an unreleased second album track a month after releasing your first - which I thought was a vast improvement on the previous rendition at Heartbreakers. Mango followed, in the "two-hole", the slot it has occupied on almost all 18 of its concert appearances. Heaven's Co-Ordinates was third up, also vastly improved since HB in April - at the very least, no strings snapped! I was very chuffed that the new songs were met with as much love and appreciation as the old "hits". I Can't Help Being A Lover and Party Drug closed out the first half, both good renditions of classics. 

5 songs in and everything was going swimmingly - then came my piano solo spot... definitely a dark cloud, but I can't say it didn't have a silver lining. A combination of things had me angry - for a start couldn't get the mic set up right so I was singing with my head down, hair covering my face... If I had been able to make eye contact with the audience I would have not only seen the people who were listening but maybe engaged with the people who had started chatting. The chatting was definitely amplified by the fact I was having a bit of an episode, it felt so so loud when I was stood there. On top of that I wasn't playing as well as I had in rehearsal and my voice was fucked from all the screaming and shouting in the first half of the set. I couldn't do the falsetto bit at the end of "You Still Believe in Me" at all, and I just snapped and pushed the table and the keyboard off the stage. I regret this completely now and realise how stupid it was - from a moral point of view it was completely wrong and a childish mismanagement of emotion - but if we are to look artistically it may have set up one hell of a second half? 

The comical melodies of Light of the Lord followed, and then the old opener Cara returned. My head was completely gone for this part of the show but I must say the boys carried me through. Could well have been the best performance of Torture - I hope the sizeable Emo element in the crowd enjoyed me screaming "I wanna be in my grave tonight" until my throat gave out. For a fleeting moment, were Four Blokes a Screamo band? Probably not. I look back on that second half and see an emotionally unstable man making a tit of himself but I did have a lot of people come up to me and say it was a great show... hopefully when they come and see a peaceful and emotionally regulated man next time it will also be a great show.

Popworld was the penultimate song, with the boys rotating back to their main instruments. As Tiago played that opening riff it was almost like 2022 again... I even had my shirt off, which I haven't done at a gig for over 2 years. A look into the past was followed by a look into the future, as we closed with Xylazine Addiction. Due to the improvisonal nature of the song, the version from Heartbreakers in April and this new performance bare almost no resemblance to each other. The biggest difference is likely the four additional musicians crouching around the edge of the stage, waiting for their que - "laced with tranq..." trailed off the opening verse, and a raised hand. In came trumpet, tambourine, woodblock, and a second guitar. EIGHT BLOKES! We were all committed to making the most bizzare and horrendous noise possible, pushing the bounds of music. Every chugged furiously away on their instruments as I screamed about the state of the American Pharmaceutical Industry - I think it would be hard to deny that for those few minutes Four Blokes was an industrial noise collective. As this cacophony concluded, we thanked the audience and meekly tidied up - I was shitting myself to be honest after the table incident. Still no verdict on that as I've been too frightened to draft an email. 

After working through some emotions - apologies and teary hugs with the amigos - we all went back to Tiago's house for a right knees up. Buckfast, bong hits, Beatles music videos... chatting about gender identity, Pokémon, and all the rest of it. I was playing Fifa with Ava but in my crossfaded state I had given up and decided to snuggle and cuddle instead.

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And thus, the Four Blokes Newsletter is over for another addition! What will September bring? WELL! 

• continued sessions for the second album, spread across Southampton and London - I'd like to think at least 3 recordings

• moving into my new flat in Islington

• freshers week

• possibly the release of a single from our second album?!!?!?

It's bound to be a big one. Until next time, I love you all so much 

Harry x