Yesterday I was in the IMA barn in studio B, checking ProTools out to see if it was behaving. It was! and in the process I found this Fanny rehearsal track, me Jean Alice & Nicky working at Fanny Hill, super-early days. I mean, the bridge wasn't even written! The first comp was somewhat cobbled together for a backing track for my audiobook - still in progress - of "Land of a 1,000 Bridges" and the second is as is. You know, if I were to give us a grade I'd say we were in the Third Grade (I almost put us in first!), busy trying stuff out. You can hear Jean working through bass parts, me working through guitar ideas - ok, I'm practically in kindergarten! - Alice has a lotta stuff going on (she's so *good*!) and Nicky's busy comp'ing away. By that I mean, playing the simplest chords/groove over and over again; it could be boring, but I don't know that she'd ever had that job before (I never asked), and we were all just trying to improve individually, and as a band, as fast as we could.

I almost censored myself from putting this together but thought, I always talk about how much we played - fooling around and rehearsing, I don't mean performing and recording - some folks might find this really interesting. And they like us, they'll forgive our boo-boos!

So, please enjoy. Most of the photos are from the Linda Wolf stash, some you've seen before but I discovered some new outtakes ... and maybe six photos were taken by Bob Riegler, our pal the Vietnam vet who returned to LA and managed to discover and hang out with us. Lucky guy! The main thing was: stay out of our way, and don't bother to talk too much. Too busy, you know? It all worked out, and he left me the negatives.

What a trip to hear this again. Memories ...
xx

June Millington
Artistic Dir., IMA
www.ima.org