Kal’s trip to Denmark Street

November 3rd, 2009 | By Kal

As you’ll know if you’ve read a few of the blogs on here, we recently completed our first two day studio session;  Monday and Tuesday last week to be precise.  You can hear the fruits of our labours in the songs section on the website.  As you will hear, they consist of a Piano recordings and Rob’s and my guide vocals, and our next task is to add some flesh to the bones, by way of guitar and bass.

You folk may or may not know that in my last and only “band”, as well as backing vocalist, I was employed as bassist.  At first I didn’t have a bass, but after a short while I bought the bullet and bought a rather nice looking Fender Jazz Bass which you will be able to see in most of the pictures that I feature in, within our Back in the day photo album.

Enough rambling, what’s this got to do with the title, Denmark Street? I’m getting there.

I bought this bass from a kind fellow from the Rayner’s Lane area.  I’d driven for 2 hours at *ahem* exactly 70MPH down the M40 from my day job to get there, so when it was missing a screw I wasn’t exactly going to turn my nose up at it and drive home.  I bought it, but to this day I’m ashamed to say, I never got around to replacing that screw.

But this is Mubla 2.0.  Everything needs to be in top condition and so tonight, I bit the bullet and waded through thousands of crazed Peter Andre fans awaiting the Christmas lights on Oxford Street as I headed to Denmark Street.

For those of you who don’t know, Denmark Street is a quaint side-street in Central London, not far from Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square or Soho itself. On this street are dozens of Music shops, each with its own very slight niche.  Briefly, I went into a shop with what must have had about one thousand basses inside, but as with my conversations with many of the shopkeepers on that road, they didn’t have what I was looking for.

You’d be surprised at how hard it was to find a screw, but I was more surprised to hear late into the evening, every person I speak to who could not help me suggest another business on the street.  It was almost as if these old fashioned small businesses has banded together to rival the most ranging music super store.

These people love music.  Why else would they all be open at 7pm on a cold Tuesday?  If Denmark Street is not famous anymore, it should be.  True to form I found what I was looking for.  Tucked behind one of the tightly packed shops, up two flights of fairly steep and jaunty stairs was a man surrounded by amp and guitar parts, still working on a guitar.  He had it.

So when you listen to the next versions of our tracks complete with bass lines, if you hear any high notes that don’t twang horribly, the screw will have done it’s job and Denmark Street will have played its part in Mubla 2.0.  I’m thinking about buying a Spanish guitar in the not too distant future, two guesses on where I’ll be going – just don’t expect a blog!