Love Sculpture

As the Stranglers / Ruts DC tour grows ever nearer I seem to be spending rather a lot of my time changing strings, checking leads, working out how many stage clothes I need (where the hell am I going to keep my hats?!?) and of course making sure that I've got enough t-shirts, underpants and socks for our jaunt. It's all glamour this rock 'n' roll lark I can tell you... meanwhile the always - well - worth - reading Aural Sculptors blog has just published an interview with, of all people, me. Hilarious - I never for one minute thought that anyone would ever want to interview me. Me! You can find out what I think about, ooh, all sorts of things - it's even got a picture of me with hair! Me me me it's all about me! You can have a read of it here if you like, and there are also some downloadable live recordings of a Price gig from way back in the 1980s and a show T.V. Smith and myself played at The 12 Bar Club in 2012 (get them here and here - go on, you know you want to!) for your (ahem!) listening pleasure. Great stuff - thanks Adrian!

Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks played three shows last weekend, at The Sunningdale Lounge in Sunningdale, The Dashwood Arms near High Wycombe and The Riverside Club in Staines. The latter was notable for the fact that Al all but lost his voice in the first set which involved some fairly drastic rethinking of the set list although it all went well in the end. It was also notable for featuring the great John Sorrell AKA Johnny Squirrel on bass guitar as Dave was gigging elsewhere - it's always great to see Squirrel, and his playing was effortlessly excellent as ever. 

This week The Upper Cut return to Ye Olde George in Colnbrook on Sunday, which in hindsight I perhaps should have turned down as it's getting very close to tour - time. Ah well, I'm sure it'll all be ok - after all, you can only spend so much time counting t-shirts, underpants and socks...

How much?!?

Well some things in life are worth waiting for, and from what I've seen of it the upcoming book 'Love In Vain - The Story Of The Ruts and Ruts D.C.' by Roland Link will definitely be one of them. It's been a while in the making but it's now due out this Spring, and to this end a PledgeMusic campaign has been launched to help fund it's independent release. All sorts of things are on offer (potentially including a guitar lesson with me! Oo-er!) so if you'd like to get involved then head over to the Ruts D.C. section of PledgeMusic here and see what you can see, and get Segs's thoughts on this subject and more here. Give generously my friends - you know you want to!

In the meantime this has been the first gig-free week for your humble narrator for quite a while, and I've spent what feels like far too much of it trying to put my accounts in order. This roughly translates to 'emptying out the contents of the carrier bag full of receipts and bank statements then attempting to make them all make sense'. I fear there's still a bit of work to do (not least writing the damn stuff up!) but I'm a lot closer to it all getting done than I was this time last week. One day I'll do this stuff as I'm going along throughout the year rather than every so often in this rather inefficient manner. Probably. Still with no gigs of my own I've had chance to catch a couple of excellent live shows, beginning with Who tribute band Who's Who at Tropic At Ruislip on Friday evening. A near-capacity audience - always a good thing to see don't you think? - saw a set that included relatively obscure tracks like 'Water' alongside the expected hits, and everyone there seemed to enjoy the band's efforts. The next night I returned to The 100 Club (I feel as though I've spent half of my life there recently - mind you, I guess that I have!) to see Eddie And The Hot Rods supported by The Guitar Gangsters. I remember the latter band from back in the late 1980s when I think The Price played with them although I can't for the life of me remember where. (Maybe at a weekend festival at The Sir George Robey in Finsbury Park, but maybe not. I really should have written all that stuff down you know...) Their agreeably noisy set warmed the audience up for Barrie and the boys who gave a suitably thunderous performance to the enthusiastic approval of all concerned. And it was good to catch up with guitarist Richard Holgarth and dep bass player Adam Smith (he also plays with The Newtown Neurotics who'll be appearing at The 100 Club on February 6th; The Price used to play with them in the 1980s too) after the show, both of whom are involved in running The Square in Harlow and both of whom were interested in The Price and indeed Ruts D.C. appearing at said venue sometime this year. This year it's (gulp!) 30 years since the first Price gig, and it would be great to mark that (ahem!) momentous occasion by returning to one of our favourite ever venues - so let's hope that we do!

And last night The London Sewage Company rehearsed in anticipation of a gig this weekend at the 'new' 12 Bar Club - following the sad demise of the Denmark Street venue no time has been wasted in securing new premises at Phibbers in Holloway, and it's there that we'll be supporting the legends that are King Kurt this coming Saturday 24th January. It should be a great night - I wonder if King Kurt still behave in the unhinged manner that they used to back in the day? Hmmm... an interesting evening is in prospect...  

Titanic days

I've not seen or heard the news much lately, and so have only just heard that Mick Farren died last month after collapsing on stage at The Borderline in London during a gig with The Deviants. I remember reading his work in The New Musical Express back in the day, and 'The Titanic Sails At Dawn' remains a classic piece of pre-punk angst that rails against the complacency then rife among the successful rock bands and artists of the day. Reading it now it still seems to me as though it could have been written yesterday - nothing ever really changes does it? And Mel Smith has died - I loved 'Not The Nine O'Clock News' in the late '70s / early '80s with it's all-too-accurate parodies and outrageous (for the time) portrayals of the politicians of the day. We could do with a show like that now don't you think?

Meanwhile Music Ruined My Life has continued posting old Price material. It's strange in some ways to see it there, and yet some of the comments left by readers show that people do still seem to enjoy our work. If only there had been more of them when we were together! You can find our second single and mini-album alongside this compilation album (which I must admit I'd all but forgotten about - it's very good though!) on there now - once again have a look and a listen and see what you think.

Only one gig for your humble narrator since the last posting but it certainly qualifies as a good one. Utter Madness had been booked to play an outdoor show at Cliveden House last July, but the show was cancelled due to the ground being waterlogged. The band were promised a rebooking this year, and that promise came good this weekend when we played there as part of the 'Cliveden Rocks' weekend. Paul from The Lettuceheads is on drums, Richard is back on keyboards with Ian on saxophone, Jon on bass and Tony as our surrogate Suggs, and we're on first with Queen B topping the bill. There was an odd moment during our soundcheck when it was raining to the left of the stage but dry and sunny to the right - fortunately the weather stayed good all evening other than that. By the time we started our show at 7 o'clock there were apparently around 2,000 people in attendance, and they saw a good-going-on-great-in-places set of Madness and ska classics. Having said that I made a terrible job of 'It Must Be Love' (I think that it's always better to admit it when it's your fault!) and there was the odd moment of madness (if you see what I mean) here and there but overall it was the best of our three shows this year, and it went down very well with the assembled multitude which is only ever the main thing. Queen B certainly went down well too - I'll never be the World's biggest Queen fan (now that my friends just might be the understatement of the year so far!) but what they did they did very well.

And the local paper liked them and indeed us, as you can see from this review...

And it's time (at last!) for some more Ruts D.C. gigs, beginning with The Rebellion Festival in Blackpool this coming weekend. We're on at midnight on Saturday (yeah alright, I know that means that we're actually playing first thing on Sunday morning - stop being so pedantic!) on The Bizarre Bazaar stage, and I have just - just! - got in from rehearsing all day for the show. It should be a great weekend - if you're going then I'll see you there...

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.