Electronic sound

So - the mystery of the thing-on-top-of-the-speaker-cabinet is solved thanks to Ruts DC fan / friend and electronics engineer Nigel who tells me that he's 'pretty sure it's an old-style electronic counter' and sent me this link to prove it. Thanks Nigel!

I've just watched a rough cut of the 'Music Must Destroy' video and I'm pleased to say that it's looking excellent - the single is out next Friday 9th September with the album released the following week so it should be finished and available for general viewing then. Exciting times!  

In the meantime it's been back to the bar gigs for your humble narrator, starting with a short notice Upper Cut show at The Dolphin in Uxbridge last Friday. Roger was elsewhere so Geoff Nicholls did his customarily excellent job depping on drums, and with a party of people down from Oop North for the Rugby League Cup Final the next day a suitably lively evening ensued. 
The next night Big Al and The Blistering Buicks journeyed to Broxbourne for an interesting show at The Rushymeade Club, a venue so obscure that most of the band got lost trying to find it because none of the locals that they asked for directions had ever heard of it. It was actually a clubhouse on a caravan park, and turned out to be a great little venue with very friendly people. It took a while to get going, but by our second set the dance floor was full and with a bit of luck we'll be back in Broxbourne again before too long. 
Sunday saw an early evening (7 pm start) gig at The Queens Arms in Colnbrook. Our friends Pimp My Jazz were playing an afternoon show down the road (literally!) at Ye Olde George so we got there early to catch a few songs before heading off to the venue to set up. Bank Holiday weekend shows are often a bit odd - you get people who go out early and leave early, people who go out early and stay out late and all points in between. This often results in an audience that can range in size from a few people to a packed room and back again within a couple of songs. This indeed was the case here, where we started playing to virtually no one and ended with a full and noisy room and a punky - looking chap with a mohican haircut dancing wildly to 'Suspicious Minds'. A good gig.

And yesterday myself, my brother and my Dad went to the Muhammad Ali exhibition at The O2 Arena in Greenwich. I've always been a big fan of the man as both a sportsman and a World figure and this event did nothing to change my mind - the term 'greatest' will never be more apt. 

This week among other things I'll be playing a few songs at The 100 Club with Department S on Saturday night. Now that's something to really look forward to!

The director's cut

I was saddened by the news that Ken Russell has died, aged 84. Always a controversial figure, he turned the already reasonably bonkers story of 'Tommy' into one of the maddest films any of us are ever likely to see; mind you most of his films managed to annoy people in one way or another, but it always seemed to me that said people either wanted to be annoyed, or indeed deserved to be annoyed by them. In these days of mediocrity we are sadly unlikely to see his like again, which is a great shame.

On a lighter note I had an absolutely splendid time on Music Scene Investigation last night - Tom, Ian and Rich were all on good form and I managed to ramble on about all sorts of things for what seemed like ages. If you'd like to see the show then click here but be warned - I've got those big headphones on again, and I still can't hear the bass... I could definitely hear the bass at The Load Of Hay where I managed to catch the last few numbers from Pimp My Jazz who feature Terry from The Uppercut on said instrument - you can always hear him! From what I saw an heard the band sounded tighter and more together than their first show there back in June (which was their debut gig) and it'll be interesting to see where they go from here. It's The Undersound this Sunday 4th, then The Uppercut on December 18th - come on down, as someone once said...

Time for another Ruts D.C. gig supporting The Alabama 3, this one on Saturday at The Academy in Bristol. The Static Jacks started the evening, and from what I saw of them they started it very well indeed; they certainly got the energy level up and got a lot of attention in the rapidly-filling venue. We walked out onto the stage to a fair amount of applause (and at least one shout for 'Babylon's Burning' - we finished the show with it) and played a tighter set than in Manchester, with audience reaction building up to the extent that we probably could have done an encore. It's good when that happens! Both Dave and Segs seemed to be pleased by the way things went for us, which bodes well for this week's shows in Bournemouth and London. And I managed to see most of the Alabama 3's set, and very good it was too.

It was my first Uppercut gig for what feels like ages on Friday, at The Half Moon in Harrow. The gig was originally supposed to feature Awaken who have since broken up in the interim period between booking the gig and now leaving guitarist Pete (who deps for me in The Uppercut when I'm elsewhere) with a gig but no band. Rather splendidly he suggested that we could do the show, which I'm pleased to say that our new friend Hetty (who books the gigs at the venue - she's Ginger Baker's daughter! Really!) thought was a good idea. To repay Pete's generosity in putting us up for the gig we invited him to come along to play a few songs with us, and with this in mind he and I got together on Thursday evening to see what songs would sound good with two guitars rather than one. In no time at all we'd written ten or so songs on a piece of paper - at which point we decided that we'd done enough work and went down the pub. It could all have gone tragically wrong at this point, but it actually went very right indeed (I wouldn't have been writing about it here if it had been terrible!) with Pete ending up playing with us for most of the evening, dep drummer Geoff excelling himself and Hetty offering us three gigs in the new year. As I said earlier, it's good when that happens!

More gigs this week, then it all get worryingly quiet...

'Well begun is half done'

This guitar-lark is a very strange job sometimes. Thursday night I'm with Ruts DC, Sunday afternoon I'm at the Village Hall in Lockerley, Hampshire with The Briefcase Blues Brothers. The event was a 'combined 100th birthday party', a concept that I hadn't previously encountered although it's apparently becoming quite popular. Well, the BBB band had played one before... anyway the idea is that the couple in question (Sue and James) are aged 51 and 49 - a total of 100. Clever huh? Well I though it was! We were to be a surprise to all apart from the couple's 4 daughters and so were secreted in The Reading Room until it was time for us to go on - judging by the looks that I saw as the curtains opened at 2.15 pm and we swung into 'I Can't Turn You Loose' (probably best described as ranging from bemusement to horror) I think we'd certainly remained a secret... our first set actually went down very well all things considered, with a bit of dancing and not too many people leaving the room with their fingers in their ears. We returned to The Reading Room for the interval to be met by the daughters telling us that we were 'really brilliant' but everyone was going home now as they weren't expecting the event to go on past 3 o'clock so we might as well not do our second set. We'd had plenty to eat, been looked after really well, they'd all been really nice people - oh well, off home then! In the meantime Adam the drummer told me that I should try crunchy nut cornflakes with banana for breakfast ('with a cup of coffee it's like banoffee pie!' I tried it - he's right!) and everyone realised that several hours in an area where there's no mobile phone signal for anyone happens very rarely these days.

I was expecting to have to rush home and then on to the Load of Hay for the Steve Simpson gig, but sadly Steve had to cancel the show due to illness. Let's hope he's ok and we can get him to play in the new year. In the meantime it's Pimp My Jazz this coming Sunday (27th) evening, which I'll be late for as I'm making my second appearance on Music Scene Investigation. Full details can be found on the MSI website, and it all starts at 9 pm; they're currently having a poll to find the 'best guest of 2011' in the MSI awards - if you feel like voting for me (or indeed anyone else) then you can do so here Excellent!

Last night myself and the long-suffering Shirley attending the 2011 Prince's Trust Rock Gala at The Royal Albert Hall - not the type of event that your humble narrator would normally attend (you'll see why in a minute!) but the lure of a solo performance from Pete Townshend proved too much for me to resist. The man himself was on good form, playing a 5 song set (since you've asked - 'I'm One', 'The Acid Queen', 'Corrina Corrina', 'Drowned' and 'Won't Get Fooled Again') and sounding great to my admittedly rather biased ears. He seemed to be in a good mood too (for once!) explaining the meanings behind the songs more than he normally does, and previewing his version of 'Corrina Corrina' which is due to be released next year on an Amnesty International benefit CD collection of Bob Dylan songs. The rest of the evening was a (mostly) enjoyable mixture of stuff from a suitably eclectic mixture of performers - I must admit I'm normally not really a fan of this type of thing as there's far too much fawning to the Royal Family for me, but that was minimal here. And Shirley had a good time, and I liked a lot more than I thought I would... I think I'd better stop now before I start slagging off some of the other acts... there, I've stopped. Trust me, it's for the best. No really, it is.

'Come on up for the rising...'

It's a funny old life sometimes isn't it? One minute you're on stage with a songwriting genius, the next you're selling flip flops emblazoned with the image of a snooker legend. Or maybe that should be snooker giant? - after all Bill Werbeniuk was a big lad... that's Scott taking the photograph with Dave just visible behind the 'portable white background' that is actually the back of a sign that needs to go up on the front of the shop one day. And it will go up on the front of the shop, just as soon as one of us works out the best way to hang it. It's advertising the fact that we're now stocking more and more musical instruments and accessories, and to this end Chris and myself travelled up to Yorkshire last week to attend the John Hornby Skewes trade show - we met Mr. Skewes (it seems that's what everyone calls him!) and managing director Dennis Drumm, and I briefly met acoustic guitar maestro Gordon Giltrap as well as spending 20 minutes or so talking to Trevor Wilkinson, designer of Vintage and Fret King Guitars as well as various pieces of guitar hardware. We also ordered a fair amount of stuff from Dave the rep - it'll be very interesting to see how the next few months at the shop goes.

In the meantime there's more sad news with the death of Clarence Clemons. I saw him play with Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street Band on several occasions - the first time was in 1981 at The Wembley Arena on their tour to promote 'The River' album which remains probably the greatest rock performance I've ever seen and indeed am ever likely to see. (I've considered writing a piece on it here several times but never feel as though I can put into words what the evening did for for me. Maybe it's time I got on with it!) As well as being a fine musician he always seemed to be a great character - the sight of him and Springsteen together on stage is one of the iconic images of rock music don't you think? - and it's sad to see him go. First Danny Federici, now The Big Man - these are bad times for The Boss and his band.

Last Friday Awaken played at The Dolphin. I arrived just as their first set was ending to find the place full of people - normally a good sign from a band point of view, but since most of those present had spent the day at Royal Ascot and were therefore both over-dressed and overflowing with alcohol it made for a rather strange evening. There was much dancing and general merriment although it all reminded me of those corporate events that I sometimes find myself playing at - you just know that they're not actually taking very much notice of the music and will forget that you even played virtually as soon as the show finishes, the lads being more concerned with looking down the front of the ladies' dresses and the ladies being more concerned with whether or not they liked the lad that was doing the looking. The band played well but nowhere near as good as they can - it all looked a bit too much like hard work. Maybe it was?

Sunday evening it was time for Pimp My Jazz at The Load of Hay. Now I must admit that since seeing 'Jazz Club' on 'The Fast Show' I often find it hard to keep a straight face when I hear jazz musicians (and indeed fans) talking - it all gets far too serious (not to mention pretentious) for me. Then again most of the musicians involved are much better players and a great deal more successful than I am so what do I know? Anyway Pimp My Jazz are based around the songwriting talents of Gavin Sparkes and Kay Shelly, both of whom I first met when I was working in The Music Shack in Uxbridge back in the late 1990s; the shop was run by Terry Peaker who in addition to playing fretless bass in Pimp My Jazz is also in The Uppercut with your humble narrator. Small World eh? Their two set show included most of the songs from their self-titled debut album alongside a few standards ('Fly Me To The Moon', 'Autumn Leaves' etc) and if nothing else they made me realise that no, I don't know enough about the style of music involved and no, I probably never will. Still they went down well with the jazz fans and that's what matters. Nice!

Incidentally Sunday 10th July sees Blyth Power main man Joseph Porter and acoustic troubadour Wob visit the Load of Hay - it should be an amazing evening!

And the last few days in Balcony Shirts have mostly been spent unpacking and displaying (and indeed selling) the musical merchandise that we bought last week - as I say, it'll be interesting to see how the next few months go...

Operation Ivy

Towards the end of our (ahem) illustrious career myself and my buddies in The Price did a few gigs with a band called Blue Wail. They were very good - a bit rockier than us, very much aimed at the American market. They were often joined on backing vocals by their producer, a bearded gentleman who'd previously produced quite a few other bands including Dr. Feelgood, The Stranglers and The Buzzcocks. As you might imagine I found Martin Rushent to be a very interesting person, and he was also a very nice chap so it was sad to see that he'd died last week.

Meanwhile The Flying Squad supported Treason at Tropic At Ruislip on Friday night. We were a bit under-rehearsed (the gig came in at short notice and it was a chance for us to give new drummer Andy a run out) but our set that went down well with the audience although I felt we were a bit too loose to deserve such a good reaction. Still the customer is always right so I'll stop moaning (for once!) and just say that I'm really looking forward to our gig there next month (the 15th since you've asked) supporting The Small Fakers. I hadn't seen Stuart Monks (or 'Stuart the guitar repair man' as he's often known in these hallowed pages) for a while and he was on good form as ever, and I bumped into Chris from The Members at the bar who said some very complimentary things about our band so maybe it was a good gig after all? I don't know enough about the type of music Treason play to be able to say whether they're good at it or not and it was all a bit heavy for me, but there was a fair amount of headbanging going on down the front so I guess they must have been doing something right.

Saturday saw The Upper Cut made their first appearance at The Uxbridge Ivy Leaf Club. It was one of those strange gigs where you're seemingly ignored all night then 4 numbers from the end people start dancing, demand encores even when you're packing your gear away then tell you that you're the best band that's ever played there and offer you another gig. Weird. We hadn't played together since the Dolphin gig last month so were a bit shaky to begin with but got it all together in the end. As we arrived there were three police cars outside, with a young man clearly the worse for wear having trouble standing up and several people hanging around and talking to the policemen; as I carried my amp through them they were wrapping the young man in that silver foil that you see marathon runners being wrapped in at the end of the race. Like I say, it was all a bit weird. Oh and Stu turned up again - none for ages and then two come along at once, as the old saying goes.

There's a T.V. Smith gig to look forward to this week, on Thursday at The 12 Bar Club (T.V. gigs are always events to look forward to in my little world, but I've not played the venue before so that's another reason to look forward to it) and Awaken are playing at The Dolphin on Friday. Oh and we've got Pimp My Jazz at The Load Of Hay on Sunday. Come on down, as another old saying goes...