WAGS out on the town!

Saturday night saw Joelle's Hen Do parade around Central London in a double decker bus, complete with sunglasses, willy straws and a list of dares. Anna and Tash plus the Layers' WAGS (I didn't even come up with that one!) were there to celebrate Joelle's upcoming wedding to Toby, which takes place in under two weeks' time!!!

As this is a band blog and not a personal one, this post will be short. But just a quick message to the Layers' other halves: thank you all so much for the support you have and do give us all. Looking forward to seeing you all on Sunday, and it feels great to know you're behind us!

Much love, see you soon!

x

The Layers on Muzu

There’s nothing quite as cringe-worthy as watching yourself on video. Well perhaps hearing your speaking voice recorded. That one always gets me.

The Live and Unsigned people have put our video clip from the last round onto a music video website, Muzu. It is very helpful to see yourself, to see what you’re doing wrong, to improve for next time. On a more positive note, we can also see what we did right. At the time, I was completely in another world. I was trying to make sure I:

a. Performed
b. Remembered what we’d practised
c. Enjoyed it

But the reality was that those 3.5 minutes went by in a complete blur. After we came off the stage I could not have told you if I had sung in tune, or remembered the words, or if I’d even sung at all! It was a very strange almost out of body experience, so to see that I did, in fact, sing the song as planned, was a huge relief.

The bar has now been set. We need to raise this for the next round, and we’re all super keen to do a lot better. I think we’ll use this to work out what needs improving, from the actual music, to the performance, to our styling.

Check out the video, and leave a (nice please!) comment!
Layers on Facebook
Big Love,
The Layers

Our first practice for the next round of Live and Unsigned began last night. Having got through to the area finals (which take place on 2nd May), we now have to prepare another 3.5 minute piece, half of which should be our own song and the other half a cover of our choice.

Hannah wasn’t able to make practice, but even with one short, six people is still a lot of opinions! We first decided which of our own songs we would choose. We shortlisted it to Do the Walk and Don’t Stop Now with James and I preferring the former and everybody else choosing the latter. Luckily we’re a very polite (most of the time) bunch, and in the end we all agreed on Don’t Stop Now.

The second part was harder – deciding on a cover. Should we choose something completely un-us, as we did in the Regional Finals when we chose to cover Franz Ferdinand? Or was one of the judge’s comments about us being maybe ‘too unique’ something we should take note of?
Thanks to the magic i-phone, we youtubed a few songs, including Ne-yo’s Closer, Arctic Monkeys’ Bet that you look good on the dancefloor, Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and even that classic, S Club’s Don’t Stop Moving.

What’s wrong with a bit of cheer? Really, sometimes those boys are just too short-sighted for their own good! ;P

We still plan to try some of the above on Sunday’s rehearsal. However, in the meantime we came up with something that sounded tight pretty quickly and that we all felt excited about. Shy FX’s Shake Your Body links in lyrically, as it is about dance, and the original is such a banger. We’ll see on Sunday if we keep it or go for S Club after all...

Layers play The Bedford, Balham

Last week we were offered the headlining spot at The Bedford in Balham, thanks to a recommendation by the Rocket Number 9 boys.

The Bedford is well known for promoting new talent, and showcases bands four nights a week. It has hosted and helped acts such as Paulo Nutini, James Morrison and KT Tunstall before they really made it. With a great reputation and being notoriously difficult to get a slot in, we jumped at the chance to play a set at the Bedford, even though we only had two days' notice!

The room we played in was the Shakespeare Globe, which boasts a huge disco ball in the middle. The gig was streamed live on the internet, and the acoustics were fabulous. It's always a treat to play somewhere that has a good soundman!

As our first gig since Sunday's Live and Unsigned, we were all still buzzing, and from the energy we produced on stage, I'd guess it showed. Being the first day of the public holidays, the pub was pretty full and we had a good crowd to play to. Though much of the audience were seated, there was some good chair dancing (!) and the reactions we got were really gratifying.

Anyone looking for a good night out in South London should head to The Bedford, and we would definitely recommend the Balham Burger!