4th March 2010 - An Email from Snips

There now follows a record of the first conversation of the five members of Roger's Trout Farm since Snips's wedding in 2002. As you will see, we look back on our own youth with wonder and awe.

Email sent to James, Steve, Paul and Fraser
Hi, this is a first I am sending the first ever email intended for the whole of Roger's trout Farm.

So I had my 39th birthday this Monday wow! Only one more year of pretending I'm not already over the hill.

It still seems strange that we have all agreed to do a gig for my 40th, its not something that I ever thought would happen.

Listening back to some of the tapes makes me realize again what fun we had, certainly on the tapes the fun is so apparent, its crammed full of energy. I think listening now is the first time I can really appreciate how much was going on and how confusing that must have been for some listeners.

So with a year left before we do this thing, I thought we could write some lists, find out what we can remember and what we'd rather forget! Song suggestions, just originals or covers too, are there any we just can't bear to do, what would be great to play again? and logistically how are we going to rehearse?

Can't wait to hear back from my fellow Trouts

A Reply From Fraser
I'm ridiculously excited to be able to do this. James is right, we were amazing. Sometimes we were properly amazing amazing, sometimes were were painfully amazing, in a bizarre and perhaps not-always-amazing sort of a way. But the drive and turnover of stuff and commitment to every last daft thought is what made it what it is.

I don't know what it is, of course, but I know that's what makes it that.

With that in mind, and bearing in mind that I was the first to leave, can I say that I've no qualms with learning songs you lot did in the transition from RTF to Supersaurus, or even stepping back and letting the four of you handle those songs.

I'd be glad to just be there, with my old friends, playing some music and talking some bollocks.

A Reply From Paul
Hello!

I'm pretty excited about all of this. It has been an eternity since we all played together and a lot has happened since but I think this will be great fun. The key thing here is that we've got a whole year of notice which we are going to need!

A Reply From James Agnew
We should probably make a documentary about reforming, as the Blur one was quite well received. ours would probably be more like the Ramones rockumentary, have you seen that? Johnny Ramone on not going to Joey's funeral: "well, I didn't like the guy when he was alive." and if he had any respect for Joey at all: "well, I suppose he was in the Ramones" mind you, they were in their first band together for 31 years.

I'm not usually a fan of nostalgia, but I think it would be intriguing to get back together. turns out I have an (I think) comprehensive library of Trout Farm/Supersaurus studio and 4track recordings, sometime over the next er.. year I'll digitise the tracks, and get them off of easily lost/damaged cassettes that no-one can play, as due to our advanced age we are the victims of a redundant format.

We were a lot better than we thought we were, and we had funny high pitched voices.

A Reply From Steve
Hey rest of former band!

Sorry I haven’t been to and from on the old email today – it has been a busy day of much busyness. Still, I am very excited by the prospect of this RTF re-union – many many great memories of formative childhood musical mayhem are starting to flood back.

I actually don’t have any of our material (RTF or Supersaurus) at all – I’m generally not in the habit of keeping stuff and usually more rubbish than most at documenting things. It would be ace to hear it all again – James, if you can digitise some or even all I would love to have a copy.

A Reply From Paul

So the key is to decide what we are going to play early on then brush up individually before we get there. We might have to tune to E as well!

A Reply From Snips
I thought we tuned to F?

A Reply From Paul
Exactly - why on earth did we do that? We may well be advanced enough to re-learn things in the right tuning by now.

A Reply From Fraser
All these years I thought this was standard 'working with saxophones and other wind instruments' practise...

Not that I mind, of course. It's only you and Steve that have to re-learn things. Me and Snips just retune and we're away.

A Reply From Steve
I haven't a clue why we did that re-tuning thing - the blissful ignorance of youth! We'll have to learn everything from scratch anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.

A Reply From Snips
It all goes back to a rehearsal with, "The Silent Zones" (what a name!) Andy Phillips worked it out.

He got it wrong and to compensate once we became Phobia (eeehh! another terrible name) we tuned to F and we just stuck to it. Strikes me that tuning to E might help reaching some of the higher notes, maybe we should go for D?

And with that, the game is afoot!