Sparrows Take-over 2015

February 6 2015. It's Takeover Two for Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows. Here's where we see who can count to four and make it count, and who can't count!

It's mostly Chloe, making buns and counting to four.There seems to be as much chatting as usual; Bex and I play a bit more than usual and Chloe holds up colours. Sparrows are Chloe, Millie, Millie, Ash, Georgia, Claudia, Naomi with new Sparrows: Kirsten and Lucy. We are rehearsing our five tunes for Music For Youth.

What is good about Music For Youth is that it makes you refine and polish a small set. You concentrate for a while on the same numbers, and let go of the casual play-with-feeling and conviction. What's bad is that you can get bored of these five tunes, and boredom is never the point of running a band.

Anyway I am all for a bit of refined polishing every so spring, and Bex and I are playing with and listening to some of the greatest players. Just the greatest. Sparrows. And |I have been playing for 34 years and listening to other bands for 25 years. I know a good one when I hear it! And Sparrows is it!

Sparrows TakeOver

Leeds Council invited us all to take part in Takeover Day. I put it to the older Sparrows, and so it was that on 22 November 2013, six-formers: Millie C, Chloe and Peter arrived with a completely new fully-written out Under the Sea, two tins of home-made buns iced with Leeds Silver Steel Sparrows Takeover Day and musical signs, and a fully planned session.







Peter turned up in suit and tie, Chloe put her hair up in a bun. Millie C . . well, jeans and a hoody since you ask.








We did Le Onde, and thanks to Chloe's patience and pace, and I have just about learnt the bass line for it. At very long last.





Peter produced a completely new fully arranged version of the Disney sea tune, and we learnt the first half, with a promise that we can finish it. They were patient with the newcomers, without neglecting the more experienced, and brought one more tune than we had time to do. In paticular they didn't just run through numbers, but took songs line by line, even bar by bar.





The buns were as delicious as they were beautiful, but we had to work for our break. At the end, Millie S [longest-serving Sparrow, but is actually still in Year 11] who had decided against taking part in the teaching, tidied all the songsheets up. Which after all is invaluable if you want to find all the tunes again.







I was so proud, and also so moved that they had thought about it, taken the experience seriously, collaborated with each other, without consulting Bart or me, and in particlar, carried their plan out so meticulously. After the Albert Hall, the Festival of Britain, and alongside the Music For Youth concerts, and Helen and Amy bringing Chasing Cars half-worked out, this was one of the great highlights of fourteen years of Sparrows.