or… what to do when a favourite band splits up.

Last Fri­day morn­ing I finalised plans with friends for the evening’s jaunt out to Twick­en­ham to see The Bed­room Hour per­form in a local pub. Then came a phone call out of the blue from one of the mem­bers, inform­ing me that the band had decid­ed to call it a day and – in fact – would­n’t be per­form­ing that night.

On a scale of the mis­eries that life can throw at us, a beloved band split­ting up is, let’s face it, not exact­ly at the top of the list. That space is reserved for the death of loved ones, can­cer – the bleak side of life that lurks under the sur­face. One has to retain a sense of pro­por­tion in all this. But music that speaks to you, and the act of fol­low­ing a band you love, watch­ing them progress and devel­op, is very much one of life’s spe­cial plea­sures. Make that dou­bly so when you get to know the musi­cians, and feel part of some­thing like a big fam­i­ly. So their demise is quite right­ly some­thing akin to a small death.

The Bed­room Hour came to my atten­tion by way of a tweet from the band. Before even hear­ing their music, I was fair­ly tak­en with the name. The Bed­room Hour. Whoo, classy and sexy sound­ing, not eas­i­ly for­got­ten. Being grabbed by their music – a love-at-first-track moment – was a dou­ble plus. So I tweet­ed back, entered into a Twit­ter con­vo of sorts, and before long was off to see them live for the first time.

I’m still shift­ing from one emo­tion to anoth­er as time pass­es and the real­i­ty of their dis­band­ing sinks in. Dis­be­lief at first, and sor­row over a band who seemed on the face of it to be mak­ing strides musi­cal­ly – strong song­writ­ing skills, reg­u­lar live per­for­mances, adept at social media, band brand­ing and mer­chan­dise. Then there was their suc­cess­ful crowd­fund­ing ven­ture to put out album Hin­ter­land. Add to that the heart­felt, soar­ing vocals of Stu Drum­mond, a vocal­ist and front man gift­ed with a com­mu­nica­tive ease whether on stage or with the band’s many fans. Not all the emo­tions swim­ming around in my brain have been so benev­o­lent. I’m less proud of feel­ing a touch petu­lant, let down: how dare The Bed­room Hour not exist any more for my lis­ten­ing pleasure.

Zoom­ing out and away from the raw­ness of this present moment, musi­cians mov­ing on and com­ing togeth­er in dif­fer­ent for­ma­tions is part of the cre­ative process, and always will be. Stag­na­tion is no place for cre­ative tal­ent to thrive. New acts will come to fill the void in their fans’ lives. But the musi­cal tal­ents of Stu, Mark, Rob, Andy and Lewis are still there and will, in time, find a new place – I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of them. All that remains to be said is to send The Bed­room Hour thanks for giv­ing us such won­der­ful music, and we’ll be all ears to see what devel­ops in the future.

 

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