The Lost Cavalry's Diary

15/2/12 : Africa

We took a bit of time out in January as I was off to Africa for a month with some of the Wonderland Crew (we run a club night in London Bridge together). Nine of us took a trip to the little village of Madina Salaam in The Gambia, down in the south-west corner of the country. This is where Wonder Years is based - the charity that the Wonderland club night has been raising money for over the last few years, and the charity to which all our profit goes directly. We paid for our own flights and spending money but took with us the thousands of pounds that has been raised thanks to people buying tickets to our events. We then spent this money via the charity on a number of important projects including paying entirely for the foundations and lower walls of a new school building and the completion of building of staff houses for the teachers to live in. We also bought materials for us to repaint the existing school buildings, build paths, run jewelry making workshops and other craft workshops and set up and start a self-sustaining necklace making business.

We also of course got to help out with other things (we made some teaching aids for the school, fixed some old laptops for their office, took new photos of the teachers, and my friend Ian even gave a few English lessons!) and meet the villagers and staff - we met so many great people and made loads of new friends. Oh, and we found time to go to the beach and swim in the ocean of course too ;-)

It was an amazing trip, and it really made me realise how the money raised by the club night does make a big difference. And of course, if anyone else wants to take a trip to the village, we highly recommend it! Email me if you are interested and I'll try to persuade you to go!

You may also be please to know that while I was there I avoided re-writing all the band's songs to include bongos, though I did write a new song with lyrics based around campfires - I recorded a demo of it last week but we've not worked on it as a band yet. I think it might be a good one though!

So now it's 2012 and we're all back to rehearsals - we're going to concentrate on writing and recording this year and aim to get an album written. We have four new songs we've started recording and six or so new songs we're in the process of writing. We're excited about them - can't wait to get them recorded and ready to play to people. Mark.x

29/11/11 : Keston Cobblers' Club Orchestra Part 2

Here's the second song by Keston Cobblers' Club which Nick, Derek and I joined in with when they did their Club Orchestra earlier in the month... this tune is called 'Parade'.

24/11/11 : Keston Cobblers' Club Orchestra

A couple of weeks ago some of The Lost Cavalry took part in the Keston Cobblers' Club Orchestra - where 55 friends and fans got together and performed a couple of their songs. It was a great day and a really inspiring idea! Here's the video of the first song...

And a week before that, we headed down to their house and played one of our songs with them in their half-finished conservatory! And here it is...

20/11/11 : Wirefresh Interview - Snow City Radio

I was asked by tech blog Wirefresh to write some words about how I went about making the video for Snow City Radio - you can read it here: www.wirefresh.com/heres-how-to-make-a-fantastic-professional-music-video-for-under-50-80.