Well, we are under starter’s orders and off and running onto the live circuit at long last!! It's seemed like ages that we've been rehearsing and rehearsing and... you've guessed it, rehearsing!! It's like they always say though, practice makes perfect and although we are never going to pretend we are ever going to be perfect, at least we have 'burned' our chosen songs into our psyche.

It's a strange thing though, performing live. I like most, if not all, get nervous, excited, and even worried about performing live in front of people. Yet when I am on stage I really enjoy the experience and want to put on as good a show, as to the best of my ability and my fellow band mates are of the exact same thinking. This is only possible through practicing to such an extent that the songs are played on what I describe as 'auto pilot'. Just that you know instinctively where you should be at any given moment in a song.

Now I don't know about any other musicians out there, but I tend to learn through 'patterns'. It's not something that I've done deliberately but just somehow evolved over time, but I learn songs in sections and arrangements and know that my fingers should be here or there either on strings or keys depending on the arrangement section of the song. By that I mean verse, chorus, middle eight etc. I'm sure this is completely dull to most of you but I thought that you might as well know a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes when actually learning a song.

Speaking of behind the scenes, I also wanted to chat a little about the equipment involved in these gigs. Not so much what we actually have, but what is actually involved in getting it all there!! Our rehearsal space is on a mezzanine floor which is accessed by two flights of stairs. The floor space itself is large and allows us to leave everything set up on a week by week basis so that when we turn up it's all there ready to go, just plug in baby and away!! (so to speak :) that's for any Muse fans reading this! :))

However, when a gig is looming the scenario is somewhat different! We generally do some rehearsing first, a few fine tweaks here and there and then we have to strip everything down and piece by piece get everything loaded into the van. Not forgetting that we have to carry everything down two flights of stairs!! We now have a pretty accurate time of one hour to do this. When we arrive at the venue, providing we can unload nearby, it takes another hour just to empty the van and get everything onto the stage. Where it then takes another hour to set everything up before we can even think about sound checking! Phew! By this time everyone has gone home and there's no-one left to play to!! Only joking! ;)

Then the show takes place, typically 2 hrs and when it's all been said and done the whole thing is done in reverse! Yep, you guessed it, an hour to strip down, hour to load van, arrive back at base, hour to unload and carry everything back up two flights of stairs and then a further hour to re-set back up for rehearsals the following week! EEEk! So you see, as an audience member you have it easy! All you have to do is turn up, enjoy the show, drink lots of fine ale, wine or spirits (whatever your tipple) and then go home and hopefully tell everyone how fantastic Final Cut were that night, so good in fact that you now want to see every single show that they do in the future!

So although it may be a bit of a pain for us to advertise our shows on our website and on FB on a regular basis and offer reminders and keep asking for people to come to the shows, it's quite important to us to get as many people to come to each and every show so that the amount of effort we have expended in practicing and heaving all the equipment there AND back was actually worth the trouble. I hope you can see where we are coming from on that front. One day when we're rich and famous we'll have roadies carting everything about for us and turn up and just play, but until then, we'll do our best not to put our backs out, slice our fingers, rupture our spleens, trap our fingers or indeed just fall apart in general!

So if you can spare the time at all to come and see us, we'd love to entertain you. Please tell your friends and ask them to mention us to their friends and before you know it, it'll be like Jamie Oliver's degrees of separation and the entire country will be flocking to see us! Yeah, right!! ;) Anyway, see you at the next show?!

On a final (cut-groan!) note, we are looking for one or two youngsters who would be interested in helping out with lifting, sound engineering and lighting controls at our shows. We will pay in beer and curry/pizza/etc and teach you what we know and you will have unprecedented behind the scenes access to one of Derby's best Rock Covers bands on the circuit today. That would be Final Cut in case you were wondering!!!! If you know of anybody or are interested yourself then please get in touch via the website contact form with your name, age and mobile number and we'll take it from there. Would suit a couple of friends maybe who like loud music and want to learn more about the industry or are even studying sound engineering at Uni or College. This is a serious request so get in touch if interested please. Strong women considered :) Saturday afternoons/evenings mainly with occasional Friday evenings too. Check our listings for details.

See you on the next Blog! TTFN

- Simon