Diary

1/3/10 : Sea Monster

On Friday we had our first gig as a five-piece - Toby is now officially inaugurated as our melodica, glockenspiel, guitar and ukulele playing fifth member. And he sings some mean backing vocals too. The gig went well, thanks in no small part to Mike from Offline Club who organised the PA and mixed the sound for us and was generally brilliant (thanks again Mike!) and we played a new song called 'The Flood' as our final tune - where I get to play my new concertina.

We've got some good gigs coming up in March including White Heat and The Windmill, Brixton. White Heat kind of feels like the place that it all started. Half of the friends I know in London are via some kind of White Heat connection, including Toby in fact, and it was because of White Heat that I played drums in Wolfie and guitar in Fanfarlo. Oliver is the same I think - it's going to be good to play at White Heat with The Lost Cavalry!

And here's a drawing I did last night of a sea monster attacking a ship... no reason, just thought it would look cool...

Mark.x


12/1/10 : The Lost Cavalry Video Diary - Lonely on a cold balcony

We spent most of this evening feeling lonely on a cold balcony in Camden, fortunately we're the kind of people who like to make the most of things. It was cold though...

Don't worry Greg, we forgive you! :-)


03/01/2010 : Happy New Year

Well, it was a year ago now that I walked down the road in Dalston to pop to the shop for a can of coke after Boxing Day dinner, and first hummed the melody to 'Oh Sally' to myself. I'd just left Fanfarlo and already knew my plan for 2009 was to start a new band, and I knew who I wanted to ask to be in the band with me. Dave who I'd been in a band with years ago at school, Oliver who was playing in Xup along with me, and Nick who I had written songs with before as 'Meissner' and also in a band we had at university.

We practiced for a few months and things came together well. Since our first gig in May we've played some great shows and had a great year. I think our show at the Buffalo Bar for 'Basement Scam' was the highlight so far, loads of people, great sound and a nice venue. Our weirdest gig was an acoustic show in Beyond Retro, the same night as the Basement Scam gig. We played among the hats and fur coats to a load of guys dressed in Halloween costume and a bunch of confused shoppers.

So, it was a good first year - we have some good recordings, some cool live videos and everyone seemed to like our Christmas 'Stop The Cavalry' cover - I think we'll do more recording like that in future, it was a lot of fun to make. Happy 2010! Mark.x


24/8/09 : Acoustic And Under A Tree

We took a trip up the road to a park in Ealing and recorded a few songs while stood under a big old tree as the sun set. It was nice, and filmmaker Bryan O'Neil and his team videoed it for us. We also recorded some songs playing acoustic in my living room, They'll be posted up soon... in the mean time, here's some great photos of us at Notting Hill Arts Club taken by Underexposed.org.uk.


7/8/09 : The Lost Cavalry - Video Diary

Here's a video of us in the studio a few weeks ago...


4/7/09 : Recording

We're going into the studio to record some tracks next week with Paul from Stolen Recordings, who I recorded the Fanfarlo single 'Harold T. Wilkins' with last year and who has also just recorded and produced the debut My Sad Captains album. I'm excited to be working with him again, he has a great ear for capturing the life of a song and also some interesting techniques - including taping turkish flat bread to the drums to deaden the sound and get them sounding just right!

We're aiming to record a proper version of 'Secret Steps' as well as 'Oh Sally' and 'Up For Air', two of the songs that have been working well live. So expect some more mp3s to be available soon. Can't wait, it's going to be good to get back into recording.


26/6/09 : Red And Cyan and Booked Out

As well as singing, I recently seem to have become an actor. At the moment, I'm in the middle of filming a cool short film called Red & Cyan as 'Ross'. Red & Cyan is "A modern day tale of an innocent descending in a dark murky world where nothing makes sense". Filming has been going well and we have just one day of shooting to go.

I've also recently got the part of 'Jacob' in the indie feature film Booked Out due to start filming in September - I'm really looking forward to it, it's going to be good to spend a full month really getting to grips with the character.

In the mean time here are some photos from the filming of Red & Cyan...


24/6/09 : Krankenhouse

We played a gig last weekend at a place called Krankenhouse in Crouch End - it's a kind of legal (ish) squat that used to be a nursing home, now transformed into a centre holding things like drum workshops and life drawing classes. We took it over for the day for a Wonderland party and The Lost Cavalry played outside, our first acoustic gig.

We decided against playing up on the stage that had been constructed on the outside of the building as it seemed that playing down on the ground nearer to people might be a bit more fun. It went well! It's good to know that our songs work well stripped down, and it was good to re-work them with some accordion added and plenty of percussion... and it's always nice to just sing really loud :-)

Our next gig is acoustic too, at The Fellow in Kings Cross, for NoOneDied - it should be a good day. Hopefully we'll have a new song 'Only Forward' ready to play, we were working on it tonight and it was going well, it's about sailing away to an Island called Antillia...


20/6/09 : Sign Of Death

Every time I drive along the A40 at the moment I get a weird reminder of a day that I nearly died. Well, I could have died anyway... I certainly thought I might at the time.

I was on holiday after my a-levels with my friends and we took a day trip to Greece. There's a beach with a wrecked ship washed up on it that you can only get to by boat, so we had to swim from the boat to the beach. It didn't look too far and I'm an ok swimmer so I jumped in and swam from the boat - but about half way along realised that I was no where near as good a swimmer as I had thought.

I probably would have been ok, except that I thought I would probably be near enough to the beach to stand already, so tried to put my feet down... and instead went under. I remember really vividly opening my eyes under the water and seeing the floor still quite far below me, and knowing I was in trouble. I managed to get up to the surface again and shout for help, and keep afloat, but by that time I was knackered and had swallowed a load of water. Fortunately a guy from the main boat zipped out in a small dinghy and literally rescued me.

So now they've decided to use a photo of that beach on an advert for holidays to Greece - so every time I drive into town I have to pass a huge picture of it. But at least it makes me remember it's good to be alive!


29/5/09 : Xup in Manchester

I've been playing live drums at gigs for my friend's solo project 'Xup' for a while now - we used to be in Wolfie together and it's good to keep up with playing the drums - I think out of every instrument I've had a go at, drumming is the most fun - it's kinda like dancing while sitting down. Actually, singing might be more fun, but drumming is a close second. Anyway, this weekend we went up to Manchester for a gig.

Ms Xup herself and Oliver (guitar player in Xup) had headed up the day before, so I caught the coach and slept most of the way as I always seem to on coaches and trains. The venue was a bit dingy but outside the streets of Manchester were sunny, loud, vibrant and predominantly full of gay men drinking and (for some reason) line dancing. I had a wander and a drink, Manchester is nice and though I've played there three or four times now I never seem to recognise where I am. In an effort not to get lost I was wandering around trying to follow my sat nav... I felt a bit stupid but it did seem to work. I met up with Oliver and we had a drink and a chat in the sun. He's a really good guy.

Down into the darkness and extreme smelliness of Retro Bar we played our set, which went ok, though the sound on stage was terrible. Also the drum kit was HUGE... a crazy over-sized one kindly lent by the headliners 'Elvis In Disguise', who turned out to be absolutely great - Elvis covers complete with lip-curling and knicker-throwing. Then there was more drinking, then there was dancing and eventually there was going back to someone's hotel for even more drinking. The next morning I staggered into the sunlight and tried to eat some fried eggs, then Oliver picked me up and drove me back to London. It was a good trip and I met some great people.



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Contact:

For any project, big or small - or to ask any questions at all, please contact me:

  mark@mixedcasesspaces.co.uk