being in a band, the wrong way

Teknikov, (not even) Norwich's premier "new-wave rockers" have a gig of more than moderate importance approaching. It's on the 17th of December in the main room at Norwich Arts centre, as part of local promoters/cabbalistic clique Wombatwombat's Christmas do. Aside from my concerns about whether this get-together will take on the character of an office party and end up with Chad replicating his arse on the NAC photocopier, I'm worried about how the immanence of this performance has reawoken my least favourite Teknikov tendency. See, we do nothing for ages, then get together when we've got a gig on the horizon, rush-write a couple of new songs and have one or two practices. I'm utterly convinced that this is the wrong way. In my head, when you're in a band you're supposed to congregate round one of the band member's houses, drink until your head's about to fall off, listen to a load of records and occasionally keep hold of the instruments for long enough to scratch out the bare bones of what will hopefully become another valediction of your group's individualistic, instinctive wondefulness. That's always sounded like a lot of fun to me. But no, it's the workhouse ethic, staying-sober-and-doing-the-gig-properly, not really thinking about it, producing for the sake of fulfilling quota-ed requirements, booking the taxis to get us to the rehearsal room on time. All this and more rubbish. Everyone should fall in love with it a little more.