This old chart...

I’ve been going through my folders of charts. For me a chart for a bass or guitar playing gig in a band is a single sheet of paper, with the chords and general structure jotted out on it. All the rest – riffs, tempo, general style – it’s all from memory. Or made up as we go along.

Mostly they end up memorised and put aside. I’ve got an archive of charts that have been learned and knocked off the song list, or that have been learnt for a special occasion never to be played again. I’ve got a heap of duplicates in there also, where I’ve trusted myself to know the chart before a gig and left it behind – only to have a last minute Crap… How does it go? moment and a hastily copied chart from someone else. I got out of that habit in the last band, too. The guitarist and I worked well enough together for him to just turn and show me where he was going if I was lost.

But back to organising the charts. The only projects on the go at the moment are acoustic duos, which demand mostly a different repertoire to the disco/funk/blues cover bands I’ve been in recently. So I decided to consolidate all the charts I’m not using into one folder, obsessively arranged into alphabetical order. The only ones I’m keeping out are the ones currently in use.

In going through these handwritten pieces of paper I’ve come across so many memories, so many laughs and moments to treasure.

One example is Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love. Learnt one-off for a bridal waltz. Nothing special, but the wedding itself was of two cousins. The entire do was packed out with family and they all looked the same. Lovely people, but it was all a little creepy.

Another one I came across was Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor. This actually has a bassline that I really enjoy playing and there’s not too much wrong with the song. But the chart itself – it was written out at a time where I had to copy a whole heap of charts from the guitarist before a rehearsal. He already had them, so all I had to do was write my own copies, instead of work out my own at home. Since there was a heap, the singer decided to help me. Here’s where it truly is a funny chart to see. Take someone who has no idea of the meaning of all these symbols and get them to produce a copy of them. See, to a guitarist a letter, followed by a hash symbol, followed by a triangle and a number in superscript means one thing as a whole. A group of four notes with a specific meaning. To a singer, well… That’s four separate things to be made pretty. It’s a really cute chart, but not the most coherent you’ll see.

There’s a few charts for a fun cheesy covers band from years ago. It raised it’s head once for a muso’s club showcase and then disappeared entirely. Hell it was fun. We had acoustic bass, twelve string guitar, two singers, a squeezebox and a guy playing the spoons. And we played AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long, with the guitar solo on the accordion. It was tongue in cheek at it’s best, and we called ourselves Slippery Kitty. It was fine until it became apparent that the muso’s club publicity guy had misheard our name. We were advertised as Slippery Titties.

Then we have some charts that I have memorised to the point that I know them so instintively I could fall asleep playing them. In fact I have, at one horror gig where I'd worked long hours all week and then knocked into a few beers. I sat on a speaker and kept on waking up midway through the songs.

Another autopilot chart is Dancing in the Street. The entire verse can be played without using the left hand, so I go nuts. It's my muck about song. I can skull a beer during the first verse while I'm using my right hand to keep playing. Then I can light a cigarette in the next verse...

There's always going to be pieces of paper holding these memories for me. I write new ones all the time. Some you just laugh at, some make you smile. Some make you think - hell, that's right. What a crap gig! - but they all hold something.

Sometimes it's the little stuff you hold on to.