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Well - there you have it. It's all too rare that something lives up to it's promise quite as much as the weekend just gone, but I'm very pleased to say that this one did. It's good when that happens isn't it? Two Ruts D.C. shows supporting Stiff Little Fingers would be an exciting enough prospect at the best of times, but these really were great events to be part of. Friday night we supported them at The Academy in Dublin where our breathless 40 minute support set saw an amazing if unexpected amount of audience participation - we regularly see audience members singing along with songs like 'In A Rut' and 'Babylon's Burning', but to see the people joining in with 'Music Must Destroy' and 'Kill The Pain' really was a sight to behold. It set us up for an extraordinary night in Belfast where SLF celebrated their 40th anniversary with an open air show in Custom House Square. The Stranglers and The Outcasts were also on the bill, and with Terri Hooley of Good Vibrations Records DJ-ing it was an unforgettable evening all round. Well I say unforgettable - with poteen on the menu and our good friends Paranoid Visions on hand to help us, erm, celebrate the occasion things got a little hazy by the end. Still judging by the conversations we had with people at the airport on the way home we definitely did something right. Several people went as far as to say that it was the best night of live music that they had ever attended, and from what I saw and indeed felt I'm certainly not going to tell them that they were wrong.
Having played mostly festivals and support shows in the last few months we now set out on a series of headline gigs starting in Exeter on Thursday and Bristol on Friday - more shows have been added since this poster was produced (and indeed are still being added) so keep your eye on the Ruts D.C. Facebook page for more information. Sadly the Islington Academy show on September 2nd has been postponed until next year (!) but there is still plenty to look forward to. Well I'm certainly looking forward to it - if you're coming to a show then please say hello, and as always I'll be updating my Facebook page as regularly as possible as we wend our merry way up, down and around the length and breadth of Britain. See you up there, as someone once said...
Since last we spoke Ruts DC have played shows in Hull and North London - both good gigs, with more to come as we shall see. Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks have also been out and about at The Farmers Boy in St. Albans (I'd not been there before, a great little venue) The General Eliott in Uxbridge (a suitably raucous local gig which got so hot that Al had to go outside for some air halfway through the second set) and Ye Olde Swan in Burnham (with fellow six-stringer Pete elsewhere I had to play his parts - I didn't realise that I had so much skin on my teeth) all of which reminded me how much fun it is to play with the band.
Back to Ruts DC - the Hull show took place last Saturday in the wonderfully-named Zebedee's Yard, which I believe is a car park when it's not a venue. We travelled up by train and arrived to find everything ready for soundcheck. There was just time to say hello to The Stranglers before running through a few songs then heading back to our hotel for some much needed food. We returned to find The Black Delta Movement on stage and the venue filling up nicely despite the rain, which thankfully stopped just before we went on stage. With only 45 minutes to play with we stuck more-or-less to the set we'd been playing on the Stranglers tour, with the addition of 'Suffragette City' which we dedicated to for local legends The Spiders From Mars. Although the rain had stopped it was still quite windy meaning that the sound on stage was a bit variable - we weren't sure if we'd played well but thankfully the audience reaction suggested that we had. We saw about half of the Big Country show (I hadn't seen them since back in the day and they sounded great - mind you, they usually did) before deciding to take our instruments and gear back to the hotel - we'd intended to return to see The Stranglers but somehow ended up drinking in the bar until 2 am. Well - it had started raining again, and we were thirsty... talking of which, last night we played at Urban Voodoo Machine drummer Gary 50th birthday party at Bones And Pearl Studios (another great name!) in Seven Sisters. 'Twas an evening of great jollity as you might well imagine - indeed it might be better if I leave the details to your imagination... go on, try imagining what went on... you're probably correct... but we played well, and that's the main thing. It only ever is.
This week we travel to Ireland for two shows with Stiff Little Fingers - as a long time fan I've been looking forward to these gigs since they were first announced. We're in Dublin on Friday before travelling up to Belfast for an open air show to celebrate SLF's 40th anniversary; The Stranglers (yep, them again!) and The Outcasts are also on the bill and with Terri Hooley of Good Vibrations Records DJ-ing the scene is set for a classic event. And after that we set out to play some shows of our own - but more about that next time.
Monday 7th August, 3.17 pm
As I write this, in shaky Biro in a reporter's notebook in the back of the bus somewhere on the Southbound M40 there is much to reflect upon. The Rebellion Festival is invariably a great thing to be part of and this year has certainly been no exception, but somehow this gathering seemed to go further than most. Ruts D.C. played two shows - an all-guns-blazing Saturday night electric set and an emotional performance to close the acoustic stage last night as well as nipping across to Hebden Bridge on Friday evening for a gig at The Trades Club where we were joined by Baz Warne of The Stranglers for two songs. I also spent a fair bit of time behind the Cadiz Music merchandise stall with Richard and Blaise as well as catching some great performances from T.V. Smith and The Skids among others. There were the usual unwisely late night drinking sessions (it was getting light as I stumbled through Blackpool on the way back to my hotel on Saturday night / Sunday morning) but that's just about par for the course - all things considered I don't feel too bad (it feels as though I rarely got to eat anything more substantial than sandwiches) although I suspect that I'm heading for an uncommonly early night tonight.
Our Saturday show on the outdoor Casbah stage was preceded by a suitably energetic Neville Staple show and was followed by a wonderful performance from Misty In Roots - I'm sure that I wasn't the only person excited to see the words 'Ruts' and 'Misty' on the same bill again after all these years. Earlier in the day we were interviewed by a BBC film crew for an upcoming documentary on the festival - as always it was Dave and Segs that they really wanted to hear from but I managed a few words here and there. They also filmed a fair bit of our show - I wonder how much if any of it will make it into the finished programme? There were a few fraught moments here and there - I got locked out of our dressing room ten minutes before the show and only just made it to the stage in time having had to run up and down gawd knows how many flights of stairs to get the key and then get changed. Maybe this meant that I didn't have time to get nervous - either way our performance was, even though I say so myself, a stormer. We'd played well the night before but this one really took off, with the middle section of 'In A Rut' featuring the riff from 'Interstellar Overdrive', a cover of 'Suffragette City' (which began life as an impromptu run through at Monday's rehearsal and which then somehow made it onto the stage) and the final song 'Psychic Attack' provoking a near riot. In contrast last night's acoustic show in a very full bar (possibly dangerously so) took everything back to basics, with rarely performed songs from 'Music Must Destroy' rubbing shoulders with Ruts and Ruts D.C. classics and grown men being moved to tears on several occasions. And that was just on the stage.
This coming Saturday we're playing at the splendidly - named Zebedee's Yard in Hull with The Stranglers and Big Country - The Spiders From Mars were from there so maybe 'Suffragette City' will make it to the stage again. In the meantime there is much to reflect upon. I've always been somewhat over-romantic (some might say pretentious, and let's face it, they may well have a point!) about the power of music, how it brings people together, the emotions that it can evoke and how something as seemingly insignificant as a mere pop song can sometimes mean everything to the listener - well I've seen all of that and more proved time and time again over the past few days. I feel as though I've shook hundreds of hands and been in almost as many photographs with people who wanted to say how much they enjoyed the shows, what a song or songs means to them, even to ask how I get a particular guitar sound - we stopped at a service station a few minutes ago and a couple come over to say how much they liked the acoustic gig. You can't buy moments like that, even if you wanted to. Suddenly the road home feels more like the road back to the real world, whatever that is. It's an amazing feeling to be told that you make a difference (however small) to people's lives, maybe even that you contribute to making life a bit more bearable when it all gets too much. That's something to be proud of don't you think? Well, I think that it is.
So - now what? More gigs, including some Irish shows with Stiff Little Fingers later this month. Oh, and we're talking about the next album. Of course we are. The road home goes on forever...
Tuesday 8th August, 7.52 pm
Ah! The usual post - Rebellion ramblings that seem to say very little but that somehow say everything about the previous few days. I bet that I said almost the same thing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that...
It's that time again... Ruts D.C. return to The Rebellion Festival this week - we're playing The Casbah on Saturday night, closing the Almost Acoustic stage on Sunday and will be absent with leave for a gig in Hebden Bridge on Friday night. I'll also be putting in a couple of stints on the Cadiz Music merchandise stall (and I suspect, behind our band's stall too!) as well as stumbling from venue to venue and indeed bar to bar for the rest of the festival so if you're going along I'll see you there. I'll also be attempting to update my Facebook page as regularly as possible so expect the usual blurry pictures and semi-incoherent rambling - a bit like this blog I guess. Which reminds me...
It was my birthday last Monday. Some people don't like birthdays but I'm rather fond of them... the day began with the journey home from Nottingham where the previous night we had given a spirited performance at the nearby Deerstock Festival amid scenes of muddy madness that wouldn't have been out of place at Glastonbury or indeed Woodstock. There was a hole in the roof right above my side of the stage - I know this because rainwater landed down the back of my shirt neck as I played the opening riff to 'No Time To Kill', which resulted in a, shall we say, less-than-accurate rendition. Let's hope that never makes it onto YouTube... back at the hotel the bar was closed but we had much of our rider to work our way through, although enough of it survived for Segs to hand me a paper cup full of Vodka and tonic at 11 o'clock the next morning. I wouldn't usually indulge that early in the day (honest!) but it would have been rude not too wouldn't it? At we neared Beaconsfield Services on the M40 someone (oh ok, me!) remembered that there was a pub on the site - The Hope And Champion serves White Riot pale ale and is highly recommended if you're not driving... details of the afternoon are at best sketchy, but in the evening I accompanied Big Al and Pete from the band to the jam night at The Three Wishes in Edgware - I'd not attended such an event for quite some time (I got somewhat disillusioned with many of the rather childish goings-on) but I don't mind admitting that I thoroughly enjoyed myself, although I'm not sure how or indeed why. As I say, I like birthdays... oh and The Upper Cut gig at The Dolphin in Uxbridge a few days earlier went well, which was something of a relief given that our recent performances have been a bit rough to say the least. All in all a very good weekend. I think.
Right - time to gather my things and go, as T.V. Smith once (almost) sang...
