There were three line-up changes among the 'newbies' before we had our rehearsal. Something lucrative came up for sax player Martin Hathaway - not surprising as he's a very well-known and respected player of long standing - so he dropped out, to be replaced by Harrison Perkins, another of the young crowd from the Guildhall. And for various reasons, Cody Moss (keys) was replaced by Will Inscoe and Tom Potter (drums) by Simon Spies - all Guildhall chaps.
Most importantly though, the rehearsal went really well, and although as it turned out nobody was required to step in for the recording, I've every confidence that any one of them could easily dep for us in the future. Many thanks to all of them.
As a curious side note for anoraks interested in this kind of thing, this is the first time we've had a Perfect Stranger band with a name duplication (Wills Gibson and Inscoe), which is actually fairly extraordinary for a 10-piece outfit. We came close when Tom Mason played bass for us, but on that occasion our regular trombonist Tom Green was unavailable so Oli Rath took his place - so just the one Tom!