by Phil Planet

Created on: April 22, 2008

The Magic Wardrobe

April 15th 1969 2:45pm Manchester (UK)

We were all at our drummers house that day, Sat around on the floor of our purpose made rehearsal room or "The Magic Wardrobe" as we used to call it, It was about 18 x 25ft and including the two air spaces and various other layers the walls were around 14inches thick, To aid this soundproofing measure there was not one window in the entire structure, literally the only way in or out was through the door at one end, Actually it was not one door but two, The outer door looked entirely normal apart from the fact that it was about 6 inches thick, The inner door was in fact an old oak wardrobe from which the back had been smashed out and then the rest had been grafted on to end wall, The idea behind this was to create a kind of air lock, The whole effect was surreal, Just a long room with an oak wardrobe at one end, If you sat in there on your own it could be quite disconcerting as the only sound you could hear was the sound of silence.

The days rehearsals had not gone to well really, Both myself and the rest of the band were struggling to bring the new song I had wrote to life, It was not for the want of trying, new material often refused to be born without a fight, It was was a literal breath of fresh air when John's Mum walked out of the wardrobe holding the customary 3pm tray, It always had an array of various sandwiches, cakes, biscuits and of course the four piping hot mugs of tea, Her interventions were always welcome as these breaks often resulted in a more productive second half.

We all sat down to tuck in to the goodies John's Mum had brought, She never stayed long, only to say the same things She always said "Right, there we are boys have a break and get some food inside you", and then "My word your all as thin as whippet's" after that she would always turn around and finally disappear back into the wardrobe from whence she came muttering something like, "Its not good for you cooped up in here, ain't no windows, sun or air, it's a wonder y'all don't choke to death, all that funny smellin smoke n'all, She always left the doors open for that reason but one of us would always get up and close them again, We liked to keep the smoke inside the room.

Food and tea finished we would then go on to desert, out came the beer and smoke, what followed was a discussion on what to do to bring the new song to life, Our Bass player was a guy called Brian, he was a good friend of mine going way back to junior school,

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