The rough with the smooth

As Thatchermania grips the country (I'm with Brian Reade and Morrissey myself, as you might well imagine) here's a look back at the last couple of weeks in mad-guitar-land :-


Back To Zero have continued their Sunday morning rehearsal schedule (bloomin' tiring if you've done a gig the night before I can tell you!) to great effect - today's session at Soundlab Studios in Loughton carried on where the previous week's one at Southend's Mushroom Studios left off, with the band sounding better and better each time we get together. (Yes, I know that's what supposed to happen - but it doesn't always work like that, believe me!) Next month's gigs are getting closer...

As I wasn't gigging this Saturday evening I took the opportunity to see Steve Conte and The Crazy Truth at The 100 Club. (Yes, I know I should have had an early night but, well, I should do a lot of things but I don't!) I loved Conte's playing in The New York Dolls so a chance to catch him with his band was definitely not to be missed, and I'm pleased to say that it was an absolutely storming show. Most of the debut album was played alongside a new song or two, and some splendid guest appearances from various members of The Jim Jones Revue and The Urban Voodoo Machine pushed things to even greater heights. A cracking night.

Big Al earlier today,
contemplating his latest career move.

Gig-wise your humble narrator has worked with the always-excellent Big Al Reed three times over the last week-and-a-bit, twice with The Blistering Buicks (yes, he really has called the band that!) and once as a duo. Last weekend's band gigs (with Big Al on vocals, guitar and saxophone, Chris on keyboards, Terry on bass and Dave on drums) were actually quite different from each other, in that odd way that consecutive shows sometimes are. The Friday night show (the 5th if you're taking notes... incidentally if you are taking notes, why are you taking notes?!?) was at Hayes Working Men's Club, where I depped for The Good Old Boys back in February. That was the first time that I'd played there - it's very easy to be cynical about a gig like this (you'd be surprised what people say to you when you tell them that you're playing at a 'working men's club' - it brings out snobbery, spite and more) and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to having the odd 'bloody hell, this time last week I was playing 'Babylon's Burning' with Ruts D.C.' moment but overall the gig went well despite us being worried that we didn't have enough material to fill 3 x 40 minute sets. We featured quite a bit of slower, laid back material as befitted the venue, so you won't be very surprised to hear that I for one preferred the next night at The Dolphin in Uxbridge when the show was more uptempo (again as befitted the venue) and therefore a bit more fun from my point of view. (That's not to knock the other songs but.. oh, you know what I mean!) With Dave away gigging elsewhere Bob Pearce made a fine job of depping on drums, and for the second show in a row I found myself on the same side of the stage as Chris and was therefore able to hear his playing clearer than on previous gigs. It reminded me what a very fine musician he is although having said that everyone played well on both shows. And I have just - just! - got home from an afternoon duo show with Al at The Feathers in Chalfont St Giles. After initial hilarity from Al when he saw that he was billed with a meat raffle (I was somewhat relieved to have not been billed at all!) we loaded in, set up and then set off in search of food. Suitably fortified we returned to play a good humoured show where we were once again joined by Ekkie on saxophone for a few numbers (he always seems to be there!) and which went down well with all concerned. And in case you're wondering, Al presented the meat raffle too!

This week The Upper Cut return to The Dolphin on Friday 19th, and then it's time for some Ruts D.C. gigs - more about that next time, but before then it's that funeral on Wednesday. If like me you think that the money that it's costing would be far better spent in any number of ways then why not protest by reviving the ancient English custom of Rough Music. No, I hadn't heard of it either, but I don't mind admitting that now I have I rather like the sound of it - follow this link for the plan!

The Evil Dead

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died earlier today. I expect you've seen or heard about it on the news. I must say that I'd never wish anybody dead (not even her!) but as someone who remembers only too well the horrors of her evil reign of terror back in the Eighties and Nineties - the poll tax and the subsequent riots, the miners' strike, the Falklands War, the list goes on and on - and who has a dim recollection of the 'milk snatcher' from back in the Seventies, I for one won't be grieving too much. But lots of people will - I've just seen some bloated sycophant praising her 'warmth and kindness' (!) on one channel and then turned over to see that there's a tribute programme on another - so I guess that means we've got days, weeks, maybe even months of fellow Conservatives like Jeffery Archer (a convicted criminal remember) bleating on and on about her and what a great leader she was. Oh well, one can only hope that there will also be room for a more realistic view of things... and you never know, we might all get a day off for the funeral - after all, she gave all those three million or so unemployed working class people lots of days off while she was in power didn't she?

I'm sure that there'll be more ill-considered attempts at sarcasm from me on the subject another time, but until then here is some music. Enjoy.

His-tory repeating

I was stumbling around first thing on Thursday morning attempting to wake up when an item on Breakfast TV caught my (half open) eye. It seems that some local ladies had led a protest outside a cinema in Chesterfield that was showing 'The Iron Lady' - they were angry at the film's portrayal of Margaret Thatcher as some sort of feminist icon rather than as the inhuman monster that she so obviously is. They had one of the protesters in the studio, along with a film critic - the protester admitted that she hadn't seen the film which unfortunately weakened her argument somewhat, but the item raised some interesting points about the re-writing of history that seems to be happening around the dark days of the '80s. I must say that I haven't seen the film either (mostly because the clips that I have seen show Meryl Streep's performance to be such an uncannily accurate recreation of the harridan herself that I wouldn't be able to watch it without breaking something) but in my not-so-humble opinion the Conservative government of the time all but destroyed this country, and any attempt at recasting the leader of that government as a hero has to be spoken out against. Chesterfield was very badly effected (and indeed continues to be effected) by the closure of the coal mines in the mid-'80s, hence the protest there - it'll be interesting to see if there are any other protests along similar lines anywhere else.

Time for the first Uppercut gig of 2012, and it's at a new venue for us, The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham. It's one of those pubs that seems to reveal a new part of it every time you turn a corner (if you know what I mean) and from our point of view the show was very definitely a game of two halves. We began uneventfully enough with '(Sittin' On) Dock Of The Bay' (we find that it's often a good idea to start with a relatively laid back song, especially at somewhere that we've not played at before) but during 'Under My Thumb' some very strange noises started coming from the P.A. system. And no, I don't mean my backing vocals - more like a high pitched foghorn which we assumed was feedback and which had at least one audience member putting his fingers in his ears. It got so bad that we had to abandon our third song 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' to try to find out what was causing it - by a process of elimination (plugging and unplugging things!) it revealed itself to be coming from my microphone. Bah! We unplugged it, re-started the song and played the rest of our first set without incident to the increasing approval of those present. Good.

In the interval I decided to put some music over the P.A. for a bit of atmosphere - when I plugged my phone into the same channel that my microphone had been in the high-pitched foghorn noise re-appeared. So it wasn't feedback... time for a visit to the repairman then!

The second set went better than the first, helped by the boisterous presence of a bunch of lads who sang along lustily at every opportunity (often into Terry's microphone) and a fair bit of dancing from the locals. We even played a request of 'Johnny B. Goode' as a second encore which we don't normally play but managed to get through without too many problems. A good gig - in the end.

And it was definitely a good gig last night, when The Good Old Boys returned to The General Elliot in Uxbridge for the second time in less than a month. The show before Christmas was enjoyable but this one really was excellent - Nick Simper returned on bass meaning that 'Hush' was back in the set, and the whole band were on top form throughout the show. Alan, Pete and myself have a couple of upcoming gigs for our acoustic trio The Rikardo Brothers which I'm really looking forward to; various rehearsal dates and perspective new songs were discussed before myself and East joined Hud at the bar for a few drinks and a discussion that went on well past my bedtime - details are sketchy but East's declaration of intent to form a band called Ned's Acoustic Dustbin to play a song called 'Kill Your Tunnel Vision' shows that the producers of 'The Iron Lady' may not be alone in rewriting the history of the 1980s...