Vive le 'Vive Le Rock'

Issue 12 of the always-worth-getting 'Vive Le Rock' magazine is about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting general public - this edition features a 4 page piece on Ruts D.C. as well as a rave review of our (our!) new album. As I say the mag is always worth a read but obviously this one is pretty special for me - I'm still trying to work out how I feel about seeing my name in the same publication as articles on Wilko Johnson, Iggy And The Stooges, The Adverts, Bruce Springsteen, The Godfathers and many more. I'll let you know if I ever come up with anything... and talking of Ruts D.C. we (we!) are playing at The Brook in Southampton this coming Thursday 25th April before an appearance the next night at The Great British Alternative Music Festival in Minehead. That should be something to write home (or indeed to write here) about...

Back to basics this weekend with two local pub gigs - The Upper Cut in Uxbridge at The Dolphin on Friday and Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks (you know, that name sounds madder and madder every time that I type it!) at The Rowan Arms in West Drayton on Saturday. Friday's show took a while to get going - we'd had a rehearsal at RnR Studios on Wednesday evening at which we ran through quite a few potential new numbers, most of which we decided to try at the gig. Maybe we tried too many or maybe it had just been a bit too long since we last played a show - either way our first set was all a bit scrappy, although that said it went down well with the audience. The second set was a different matter entirely - the band hit top gear from the first song, and with the extremely rare sight of Noel the guv'nor dancing we finished well after time due to the audience literally not letting us stop playing. In the end the second half more than cancelled out the first, but it was all a bit odd there for a while. Saturday on the other hand went very well indeed, especially considering that it was a short notice show - I'd not been to the venue before but anywhere that has a wall of photographs of glam rock heroes The Sweet is alright by me! - with everyone playing on top form and a great reaction from both the punters and the pub guv'nor. The Blistering Buicks is turning out to be a really good band to be in, and I'm already looking forward to our next show on May 3rd at The Swan in Iver. And that show falls between the first two gigs from Back To Zero - but more about them next time.