The Lost Cavalry's 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.