100 punks rule

No gigs for your humble narrator last weekend - bah! - but there's a potential classic coming up this Saturday, at The 100 Club with the mighty T.V. Smith. It's the first time I've ever gigged at the 100 Club - I've always wanted to play there, and what better night to be part of as The Sex Pistols Experience are headlining with Johnny Thunders tribute band L.A.M.F. UK and original punksters Shag Nasty also on the bill. It'll be my first gig of 2011 with T.V. Smith and I've just - just! - got back from rehearsing with him; we'll be playing several songs from his excellent new album 'Coming In To Land' alongside earlier solo songs and a few Adverts classics. It should be a great night, so come on down...

Talking of The Adverts an amazing bit of footage from Sussex University near Brighton back in 1977 has surfaced on YouTube - click here to see the band in all their glory roaring through 'New Church' and 'Bored Teenagers'. Great stuff - and here are The Damned, here are The Slits and here, here and here are The Clash at the same venue - how much more of this astonishing footage is hidden away somewhere? I said in the last posting that life is all questions sometime, but that is one question that I for one would love to get an answer to!

Caravan club

Just one gig this weekend, on Friday at The Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. They don't normally let people like me into places like that...

It being Friday afternoon I set off in good time to get to the venue for a 4.30 soundcheck, although I also set off early to give myself time to visit (a) the H.M.V. shop on Oxford Street (I've still got some vouchers left from Christmas) and (b) Sister Ray in Berwick Street - unsurprisingly (b) turned out to be a far more interesting option, with your humble narrator heroically resisting various Sex Pistols live recordings (not all of them entirely legal methinks - excellent!) in favour of a 'Punk: Attitude' DVD (for only £3.99! I got one for myself last time I was there, this one's for Dave at the shop) and a CD of the legendary 'Nuggets' album which I've got as a double album on vinyl but have been meaning to get on CD for ages. Great stuff. From there it was down to Green Park on the Victoria line to meet up with everyone in the hotel ballroom, where we're playing at Caravan Diamond Ball charity event. Matt returns as Jake, Tracy's back for the first time this year on backing vocals, Chris is on keyboards and Ian's on saxophone - other than that it's the usual faces in the usual places. Also on the bill are Carwash - I spoke to their guitarist Simon the night before who very kindly let me use his Mesa Boogie Mark V combo, and very fine it sounded too. We've got The Hartford Suite to use as a dressing room, it looks out across Park Lane and it takes a bit of finding but we get there in the end.

We're not on until 10.30 and food is at 8 o'clock so Squirrel, Chris and myself decided that we were actually tourists and that we'd walk down to The Hard Rock Cafe for a visit to The Vault. The first time I visited I chanced upon it when we were playing at one of the other hotels in the area and I managed to have a go on some very rare guitars - these days they're all in cabinets but it's still great to see them. From there we walk to The Kings Arms for a drink or two before returning to the hotel at the allotted time for food in The Harvest Suite - coleslaw sandwiches for me (no vegetarian option! How much does it cost to stay at this hotel?!?) with chicken curry for everyone else. Mine doesn't take quite as long to eat as everybody else's (!) so I decide to take the lift to the 28th floor to visit the Galvin at Windows restaurant (I wonder if there was a veggie option on the menu?) where you can see out across town - it's a clear night and it has to be said that the view is pretty extraordinary. From then on it's 'hurry-up-and-wait' time - it often is at these sort of events - there's a dance troupe on before us, a similar type of thing to 'Stomp' which seems to warm some of the audience up and intimidate others, at least judging by the looks on their faces. We play a short (45 minutes) set which goes down very well, with a fair amount of dancing and a breathless encore of 'Jailhouse Rock'. Simon and myself spent a large amount of time discussing Eric Clapton's guitar sound (he's thinking about bidding for the 1980's Soldano set-up in this Wednesday's 'Crossroads' auction! Good man!) through the ages, Matt spotted Phil Tufnell in the bar and we finished in time for me to get the last train home - a good night all round.

Wipe the windscreen, wipe your nose...

As your humble narrator stumbled his world-weary way through the white double doors that led to the backstage area of Centre Stage at Butlins in Skegness while carrying 2 guitars and a case of leads (why do the bloody things always open outwards?) his bleary eyes focused on the above sign - some things just have to be reproduced in these hallowed pages and this, my friends, was definitely one of them...

A show at a brass band weekend might seem an unlikely first gig of 2010 for The Chicago Blues Brothers but it turned out to be a highly enjoyable start to this year's (and indeed this decade's) campaign. A 'mostly-A-Team' line-up (Squirrel on bass, Marc on drums, Richard on Saxophone and myself) was joined by Steve on trumpet (he books the entertainment at the camp) and Steve (hope this isn't getting too confusing!) on keyboards (he's the resident keyboardist) with Pete making yet another comeback to show business as Jake next to Mike as Elwood; sad to say I didn't see much of Boobs And Brass but they sounded very good to me (then again my knowledge of all-female brass bands is limited to say the least!) although they did have the obligatory 'big-bloke-dressed-as-a-woman' (you just KNEW that they would didn't you?!?) who terrified everyone backstage before terrifying everyone in the audience. 'Tits And Trumpets' are on next' said Mike as their show drew to a close. Sadly he was wrong!

With the curtains drawn and the stage clear it's our turn to set up- amplifiers were provided by the venue and for Squirrel and myself it was our first chance to hear how they sound. His Ashdown bass gear sounded excellent, my Marshall MG50 combo sounded a bit 'rock' for what we do but not too bad all the same. Marc had been befriended by Louis who'd been working backstage and was now playing tambourine and bongoes with us (strange but true!) and the stage crew worked hard to give us what we wanted in our monitors. After our first number there were already quite a few people on the dancefloor (I spotted one guy in a 'Sex Panther' t-shirt- hope he got it from Balcony Shirts!) and the stage invasion during 'Mustang Sally' was enough to send the security staff into a health-and-safety-powered frenzy. A good start to our year.

And it was a good night on Friday when myself and Price bassman Huggy went to The 100 Club to see Eddie And The Hot Rods supported by The Radio Stars. Huggy decided to drive us up there, a somewhat controversial plan (have you ever tried to park in the Oxford Street area?!?) which was almost immediately thwarted when the windscreen wipers on his van stopped working, preferring instead to make a worrying vibrating noise. 'This is a new one on me' said Huggy as he considered the situation; he carefully selected a spanner which he proceeded to hit the offending items with, an action which incredibly did nothing to solve the problem. Plan B was hatched almost immediately- get a tube train instead. An eventful drive to West Ruislip Station followed with your humble narrator having to get out ever couple of hundred yards or so to manually move the wipers across the windscreen. (I'm not making this up honest! I'm not sure that I could make this up!!)

We spent most of the (thankfully uneventful) train journey into town discussing ideas for upcoming '25 years of The Price' celebrations (official announcement coming shortly- watch this space!) before arriving at The 100 Club just as The Radio Stars took to the stage. They were good if a little loose in places- I don't think they were exactly over-rehearsed- but 'Nervous Wreck' sounded as good as I remember it sounding and they went down well with the rapidly arriving audience. Just as their last song ended I developed a nosebleed which was no reflection of their performance but was suitably punky if you think about it.

Opening with 'I Might Be Lying' (I remember buying the single when it came out- fantastic!) The Hot Rods delivered a blistering set which caused a near riot more-or-less from the word go. Highlights were many but I must mention a wondrous version of 'The Power And The Glory' alongside the inevitable 'Do Anything You Wanna Do', and the encores of 'Gloria' and 'Get Out Of Denver' sounded every bit as energetic as the recordings from the 'Live At The Marquee' EP (I bought that when it came out too!) A brilliant gig which sent myself and Huggy on our way back to the Central Line in such a state of euphoric inspiration that we all but forgot about the windscreen wiper problem that awaited us...