Active Set guitarist Johnty Thompson once told an exciting story of his youth in England via chat. This inspired the poetry that is the second-to-last song on 11, Orchard.
"So I grew up in the country, it was green and awesome.
It was safe and my friends and I could tool around on our bikes and get muddy and stuff, play football and the like.
One Easter weekend we dug a den. it was 6' deep and it was hidden in a patch of forest.
My friend's dad had some corrugated steel and a trap door, we used that as a roof and covered it with dirt and threw old plants on the top. They seeded and we had a completely camouflaged den. awesome when you're 11!
My friends and I weren't very smart at the time. At least when it came to explosives. We tried to blow up the den to make it deeper. but we had only seen things like James bond so we figured a petrol bomb would do the trick.
When the petrol bomb didn't explode and just decided to smoke like crazy our cover was blown, the den was exposed for the village to see. Smoke signals were high in the sky.
We ran from the den and my friend cut his leg up jumping over the barbed wire fence. We lied to a neighbour and told him it was dust. He didn't buy it.
We rode our bikes away and decided we'd get in to more trouble. We went to play football some more (this is after we handled the smokey petrol bomb) and the local bar was completely vacant with a window open.
My friend who had a bleeding leg decided that it would be a good idea to jump through the window and grab a few beers. I was absolutely terrified.
Even more so when the alarm sounded an he was still inside. He got out with no beer and we bolted away on our bikes. We wanted to avoid the main road so we wouldn't be seen so our only option was to cross a field with about 5-6 cows and a bull.
The field was huge and we had bikes that we could only carry across. The bull didn't notice us but it was one of the most terrifying experiences ever.
By the time we cleared the field (and being the cocky lads we were) we decided to ride around the local bar 'to inspect what the alarm was.'
You could hear it so far away. We played it off and decided not to pull a stunt like that again.
The story goes on, I think it was a 3 or 4 day holiday so there was plenty of mischief. I may have been 13 come to think of it. I must have been in high school..
Yeah basically, then I grew up and things weren't ever as exciting as that weekend."
http://theactiveset.bandcamp.com/track/orchard;
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Some demo that I put together and will be developing for a solo record that I am going to write. This will give you a vague idea of where I'm going...
4 months ago