Turning Japanese / Hong Kong Garden

Well let's start 2018 as we mean to go on - with some ridiculously good news! Well it's certainly ridiculously good news from my point of view - the first three Ruts D.C. gigs of the year have been announced, and they're all in previously uncharted territory for your humble narrator. We're playing two shows in Tokyo - yes, that's right, Tokyo - on the 27th and 28th of January followed by a show in Hong Kong on the last day of the month. 

You know that bit in these postings where I put something like 'I can hardly believe what I type here sometimes'? Well here it is again - I can hardly believe what I type here sometimes. Seriously though, one of the first live albums I remember hearing was 'Made In Japan' by Deep Purple - it would have been a couple of years after it was originally released, and for whatever reason it made a big impression on me. I think that it was due to a number of factors - Ritchie Blackmore's still-incredible guitar playing, the power that the band played with, the songs, the sound... strange, because I didn't really like very much music like that at the time. Come to think of it, I still don't... anyway it loomed large in my mid-1970s listening, and as a result Japan attained a somewhat mythical status in my teenage mind. I've not been there or to Hong Kong before, and I genuinely cannot wait to do these shows. I'm very lucky to do what I do. I say that a fair bit too don't I? 

We then travel to New Zealand and Australia for the previously - mentioned shows with The Stranglers. I can hardly believe what I type here sometimes. But you know that already.

'Let me tell you how it will be, it's one for you nineteen for me...'

First things first - the always-excellent Aural Sculptors blog has posted a review of the forthcoming Ruts D.C. album 'Live On Stage', which you can read here. Thanks Adrian - that's another drink I owe you!

Anyway it's Sunday afternoon and as I sit here typing I can still detect the faint but unmistakable smell of soldering... I was minding my own business on Friday night during a Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks show at The Brushwood Inn in Hillingdon when my trusty Telecaster (well it had been trusty up until that point!) suddenly and very abruptly stopped working. Fortunately I had a spare guitar with me (a Stratocaster in case you were wondering) so I finished the show with that; today has been the first chance I've had to open it up and see if anything obviously wrong, and as I lifted the control panel up it was obvious that a couple of wires had become detached from the pick-up selector switch. I've re-soldered them and it's working again but it's making a rather worrying buzzing - maybe it's not earthed or something? A job for Stuart the guitar repairman methinks... 

Meanwhile in the midst of the past posting's death - fest (!) I omitted to mention that I'd been to a couple of gigs last week. 

On Thursday The Good Old Boys played at The Sunningdale Lounge in Sunningdale. I always find it interesting to see someone else play at a venue that I have played a few times (yes, I know, I should get out more, or make some friends, or something!) and this time was no exception - it being near to the Bank Holiday weekend there were less people about than perhaps there might have been, but the boys still put on a good show. Mind you, they normally do... Nick Simper greeted me with the words 'I thought of you the other day' (now there's something that I never thought that I'd hear a former member of Deep Purple say!) and went on to say that he'd recently guested with The Rapiers at a Johnny Kidd tribute event. He thought that they'd made a good job of things, and as these two clips show, he was correct!

The next night Simon and Hud from The GOBs joined bassist Bill in The Ali Mac Band at The Red Lion in Feltham. I'd not seen them play for what seems like ages, and they sounded good particularly vocally with some excellent harmonies from everybody in the band. I believe that The Red Lion has just started putting live music on, which has got to be a good sign in these days of venues disappearing left right and centre. Let's hope it's a successful venture. 

And for the second weekend running I saw Dave Ruffy depping in a band, this time with The Montecristos at The Islington in (you've guessed it!) Islington last night. With Sigue Sigue Sputnik guitarist Neal X at the helm they roared through a very enjoyable hour or so of rockabilly-charged rocking and rolling, with the young ladies on double bass, trumpet and saxophone drawing many-an admiring look from all concerned. And I hadn't been to The Islington before but will certainly look out for gigs there in the future, as it's an excellent little (with the emphasis on the word 'little'!) venue.

Right - a quiet-ish week this week, with just an Upper Cut private party show on Saturday. Time I got that bloody tax return finished then...

Flight of the rat

It's Monday evening and I'm tired - methinks it's time for an early night. Still it's been a busy few days in mad-guitar-land :-

Sometime mid-afternoon on Wednesday I received a phone call from Upper Cut drummer Roger asking me if I'd like to go with him to see Deep Purple at The Roundhouse. Roger used to roadie for the band back in the day - I thought about it for a good second or two before saying yes... we arrived just in time to get a couple of drinks before classical music played over the P.A. system, the lights went down and the band started with what I assume was a new song. 'Into The Fire' and 'Hard Lovin' Man' followed - I last saw them play something like 20 years ago, they sounded great then and they sounded great now. I said a couple of postings ago that I was always a fan of the band, and for me there's something about Deep Purple that I always thought set them apart from many of their contemporaries. They were always amazing musicians, and time certainly hasn't dimmed their powers - I'd not seen Steve Morse before and his fabled alternate picking really was something to behold. I found it impossible not to enjoy 'Lazy', 'Space Truckin'', 'Perfect Strangers' - and let's face it, 'Smoke On the Water' really does have one of the ultimate guitar riffs doesn't it? And it was great to have a word with Roger Glover afterwards - I've told so many people the story of him playing at The Dolphin with us a couple of weeks ago!

Thursday it was off to The Purcell Room on London's South Bank to see Viv Albertine. Arguably it would be hard to find a greater contrast to the previous evening's entertainment - but I've never been one for only liking one type of music, or not liking something because I like something else if you know what I mean. Ms. Albertine certainly looked great (as this clip shows!) and with a band that included two violinists (!) she ran though a compelling set of songs that had the audience - and indeed me - enthralled throughout. Great stuff.

Ruts D.C. played their last show until the Damned tour support in November and December on Friday evening, at The Exchange in Bristol. A raucous performance was bought to an abrupt halt a few seconds into 'Staring At The Rude Boys' when Segs was hit in the face by his microphone. We restarted the song a few seconds later and the same thing happened again - 'once is a mistake, twice is a choice' as the old saying goes, and Segsy wasn't happy, even getting into the audience to try to find the person or persons responsible. I remember things like this happening all too often back in punkier times, and I guess it could then have been put down to youthful exuberance (or immaturity!) but with at least some of the audience being old enough to be grandparents it's a real shame that it still happens now. It certainly soured an otherwise enjoyable show, but with the afore-mentioned Damned dates on the horizon the band is in an optimistic mood and is not about to let something as daft as this change that. Well, I'm certainly not!

Me on guitar,
Rat Scabies on drums.
Oh yes!

I got home around 4am; 5 hours later I was in Balcony Shirts saying things like 'this is the sort of day that takeaway coffee was invented for'. No time to worry about that now though, as it's off to Wealdstone Football Club (better known to many as Tropic At Ruislip) for the 6th Annual Paul Fox Social Club. With both the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines off due to 'planned engineering works' numbers were down a bit on last year's gathering, but there were more than enough people there to make the evening work. I made a guest appearance with The Members - playing 'The Sound Of The Suburbs' with Rat Scabies on drums was certainly something for me to remember - and I'm told that the evening raised several thousand pounds for The Michael Sobell Hospice, which can only be good news if you think about it.

The next morning I was at RnR Studios by 10am for a Back To Zero rehearsal. We'd not played together for several months, and with a show coming up at The Railway Hotel in Southend next month a get-together was definitely overdue - pleasingly it only took a couple of songs for us to get back into the swing of things, which was good news as we are obliged to play two sets at the gig and so are adding several cover versions to our repertoire alongside a new song or two. We've got another rehearsal booked before the Southend appearance as well as a planned recording session so hopefully we should be on good form for the gig. 
I don't mind admitting that I was flagging a bit by the end of the session, and when I got home went back to bed for a couple of hours. I'm sure I didn't have to do that when I was younger! Ah well... still I was sufficiently revitalised to return to Tropic At Ruislip for a blues evening that featured Big Dez and Storm Warning - both bands played well but once again there wasn't much in the way of audience numbers which was a real shame. I guess people aren't too keen on 'rail replacement buses'? 

I've got no shows this week so I suppose there will be plenty of time to catch up on some other things... whatever they are...

Purple patches, purple prose, purple passages...

Well as you might well imagine the news that Ruts D.C. were to support Wilko Johnson at Koko this coming Monday created something of a stir in my little world. The possibility first arose while we were out in Germany last month, and there have been more than a few 'will we? / won't we?' moments over the interim period until the show was finally confirmed. Under normal circumstances this would be easily the most exciting musical event in this posting - it's still probably the winner in that particular chart but last Friday's Upper Cut gig at The Dolphin in Uxbridge runs it surprisingly close...

One of my favourite pre-punk bands were (and indeed still are) the mighty Deep Purple, whose 'Made In Japan' live double album received many-a spin on my record player back in the day. Upper Cut drummer Roger was a roadie for the band in the 1970s, and as we were on our way to the gig he said that 'Roger' might be coming to the show. Ah - that'll be Roger Glover then. Oo-er... well not only did he come to our gig but he also joined Roger, Terry and myself to play 'Rock Me Baby' and 'Goin' Down' to the incredulity of much of the audience and, if I'm honest, me. It was really him, the bloke out of Deep Purple, playing with us. Amazing. And maybe most importantly he was a really nice chap, without a hint of the sort of arrogance or pretension that I've so often had to listen to over the years from ain't-never-been local musicians who bang on about themselves endlessly and never even ask how you are let alone how your music is going. I'll stop now before I start ranting... but in a celebrity-packed evening we also had ex - Keith Moon chauffeur Peter 'Dougal' Butler, Ali McKenzie of The Birds and the guru of the practice drum kit Bill Sanders in the audience. Strange but true, and definitely a night to remember.

On Thursday Ruts D.C. found themselves back at The Music Complex in Deptford for the first time in a while - with the Koko gig coming up we decided to get together to run through some new song ideas and to work out a set for Monday's show. We spent the first half of the session working a potential new song ides based on a riff from Segs and then floundered for a while as we attempted to put a 40 minute support show together; after stopping for coffee we returned to put a set together in no time and then played through it from start to finish with no breaks and no mistakes. Isn't caffeine amazing?!? Unfortunately during the session I discovered a crack in the back of the headstock on my Les Paul - I guess it received a knock at some point during the previous few days or weeks? Either way I dropped it off to Stuart the guitar repair man on the way back from the rehearsal, and he's just bought it round to me looking (almost) as good as new. Top man!

Friday night Big Al Reed and the Blistering Buicks returned to The Three Mariners in Bagshot. As I picked my guitar up to start the first set it felt like ages since I'd last played with the band although it was actually only at the start of September - mind you a lot has happened since then... my good friend Pete Kerr has been depping for me in the meantime and doing a fine job by all accounts - he played with us on Friday, which was fortuitous from my point of view as I felt as though I'd forgotten most of the set! Mac Poole kept it all together depping for Dave on drums, and the show went sufficiently well for us to be offered two more gigs including next Christmas Eve (!) so perhaps I didn't play too badly after all?

Right - I'm off to Camden Town to see tonight's Wilko gig. We're playing with him tomorrow night you know...

The utter madness of the good old (sinner)boys...

So in my post - Stooges delirium what better way to spend my first Friday night off in a while than watching top Rory Gallagher tribute band Sinnerboy at Tropic At Ruislip? There could have, indeed should have been more people in attendance but the band didn't let that bother them (or if they did then they didn't show it) as they powered their way through two sets of the mighty Mr. G's finest work. Given the renowned excellence of Rory Gallagher as a live act (and if you don't know much about the man have a look at this astonishing performance of 'Shadow Play' from The Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979 - I saw him play around this time and he was absolutely incredible) it almost goes without saying that attempting to recreate his stage sound is a big ask, but the band made a great job of it. I was always a big Gallagher fan, and I must admit that I hadn't heard some of the songs for absolutely ages - time to dig out 'Irish Tour '74' methinks... and indeed it was a good day all round, as I spent the afternoon working on some potentially new song ideas for Ruts D.C. with Dave Ruffy. Yes that's right, new song ideas for Ruts D.C. - how cool is that?

Saturday evening Utter Madness played at a party in a Wandsworth back garden. I'd not met Paul the drummer before - he played with the band many years ago and was making his first appearance with them for a very long time, although you'd have been hard pushed to notice as he did an absolutely splendid job. Talking to him in the pub before the show he revealed himself to be an old mate of the afore-mentioned Mr. Ruffy; he also has played for the likes of The Alarm and Then Jericho which gives you some idea of the high standard of his playing. The show itself was a 75 minute long blast of Madness hits and assorted ska favourites which went excellently well, with everyone on top form and much audience merriment throughout. A good night's work - and it was a good afternoon's work yesterday when I depped with The Good Old Boys at another garden party, this time in Sunbury. Our two sets seemed to last no time at all - always a good sign - and while I was aware of a few mistakes on my part the rest of the band seemed to be pleased with my efforts, which can only be a good thing. Oh and I got to play 'Pick Up The Pieces' with Richard Hudson of Hudson Ford and 'Hush' with Nick Simper of Deep Purple. Excellent!

This coming Saturday Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks visit The Dolphin in Uxbridge; they're also out gigging the night before but my good friend Pete is stepping in for me as I'm depping in The Repertoire Dogs. I haven't played with them since last February, and the last time I did I was violently sick after the show. Hope that doesn't happen this time...

Can you (afford to) see the real me?

The Who have finally announced British and European dates for the 'Quadrophenia' show that they're currently touring America with, and unlike the Wilko Johnson farewell shows tickets seem to be reasonably easy to obtain - well they are as long as you join the fan club on the band's official website. And it's even easier to obtain a V.I.P. package although with standard ticket prices edging ever nearer to the £100 mark I dread to think how much these would be. Actually I could just brave looking them up couldn't I? Hang on... oo-er - the Emerald Package is £245, the Ultimate Fan Experience £375 and the Signature Fan Experience £495. Am I the only person that thinks that this has all gone too far? 'Quadrophenia' is one of my all-time favourite albums and I guess I'll be at one or more of the shows, but it's all getting far too corporate for me. Maybe that's just how things are going these days, but I for one don't like it. Then again perhaps I should cheer up and go along and enjoy the music? It is the mighty 'Quadrophenia' after all...

Friday's Good Old Boys gig at Hayes Working Men's Club turned out to be a highly enjoyable affair on several levels. It was a rather longer evening than I for one was expecting, with three 40 minute sets meaning more than a few 'we-haven't-done-this-one-for-a-while' songs appeared among the expected material. This of course made little difference to me as I didn't know any of them! I played a few numbers with the band back in 199-something at a birthday party for ex-Episode Six drummer John Kerrison and did a show around 2003 in a very big house out in the sticks but other than that I was, as I think the saying goes, 'flying by the seat of my pants'. Simon was very helpful, Hud made all the endings slightly more obvious than usual, Alan was as authoritative as ever out the front, and Nick - well, standing a few feet from him I was all too aware that this really was the bloke out of Johnny Kidd And The Pirates, Deep Purple and all those other bands. I'd not really met him before bar a quick hello here and there but he was a thoroughly nice chap with some amazing stories as you might well imagine. We played 'Shaking All Over' (shame we didn't play 'Hush'!) and as the solo approached Simon gestured over at me with a smile - at the end of the song Nick said something like 'Johnny Kidd would have been proud of that solo'. I have rarely stopped smiling since.

The Upper Cut returned to The Half Moon in Harrow on Saturday evening for a show that was definitely a game of two halves. Terry vocal microphone wasn't working properly from the word go - the P.A. amplifier had just come back from Roger the amplifier repair man so we knew that was (hopefully!) working properly so it had to be a mic problem. It's a radio mic so he changed the batteries but with no improvement he used my mic for the first set, which was a somewhat scrappy affair - maybe we were a bit unnerved but a couple of songs went wrong and the whole thing was a bit of an uphill struggle. During the interval Terry discovered that the output level in the transmitter was set lower than usual - thankfully turning it up cured the problem and we went on to play a second set that was the polar opposite of the first, with everything falling into place and an encore of 'Route 66' bringing the proverbial house down. We're back at The Dolphin in Uxbridge this Saturday for a birthday party - hopefully we'll carry on where the second set left off.

Sunday saw the first Back To Zero get-together, in which Sam, Andy and myself ran through arrangements for eight songs which should make it into the live set at our upcoming Mods Mayday show. Using the 'It's All Relative' album as a reference (it features Sam and original singer Brian in home studio mode with programmed drums and overdubs a-plenty) we split guitar parts between myself and Sam while Andy, who is actually the drummer in the band, played along on bass. It all sounded pretty good to me, and another meeting is planned to run through the rest of the proposed set before full rehearsals with a bassist and keyboard player in the not-too-distant future. There's lots to look forward too here, and there is already talk of more gigs and possible recording sessions. Excellent!

And last night it was up to The 12 Bar Club with Esso and Nigel from GLM (and previously The Lurkers of course; incidentally there's a great article on the Nuzz Prowling Wolf blog about GLM which you can read here) and their mate Scottish Stuart to catch a solo show from Tug Wilson. When I was a lad Tug was in a band local to us called The Injections, and these days he plays with Nigel in Pack Of Lies. His 35 minute set showed that he's not lost the knack of writing good songs (I saw The Injections a couple of times back in the day including a support slot to Wild Horses at Brunel University, the band's material was mostly written by him and very good it was too) and it all went well especially considering it was as far as I know his first solo gig. Also on the bill were Alpha Earth Light and Boss Caine - the former are a Austrian guitar and drums duo (now there's something that you don't find yourself writing every day!) which made a fearsome sound for a two piece while the latter (on this occasion a chap called Daniel Lucas, although I think there is a band line up too) had the chap next to me calling him a 'British Tom Waits' which isn't a bad thing if you think about it. In the meantime much drinking and jollity ensued - a good evening all round.

This week there's the afore-mentioned Upper Cut gig along with Big Al and co. at The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham on Friday - and then things start to get very interesting indeed. More about that next time.

(Deep) Purple Hayes

So there I was, minding my own business sometime around twelve hours ago, when my phone rang - it was Alan Barratt, lead singer with local rock 'n' roll legends The Good Old Boys. The conversation went something like this :-

ALAN - 'Are you working tomorrow night?'
LEIGH - 'Er, no.'
ALAN - 'You are now.'

- which means that I'm playing at Hayes Working Mens Club with The Good Old Boys tonight. Original Deep Purple member Nick Simper is on bass, Richard 'Hud' Hudson from The Strawbs, Hudson Ford and all those other famous bands is on drums, amazing country rock guitar comes from ex - Renaissance man Simon Bishop and the afore-mentioned Alan (ex - Jo Jo Gunne) is on vocals. Their usual guitarist Pete Parks isn't well - he played in Warhorse with Nick. Do you ever get the feeling that you could be out of your depth? Oh and I don't know any of their material. Attempts to point this out to Alan received a response along the lines of 'it's easy, it's just rock ' n roll'. I've got their album 'Live At The Deep Purple Convention' playing in the background as I type this - what they're doing doesn't sound too 'easy' to me. Still, I'm not going to learn any of it by sitting here typing am I? Better get the guitar out - this should be a very interesting evening...

Do you remember rock 'n' roll radio?

It's been far too long since The Ramones have featured in these hallowed pages, and with The Rebellion Festival happening in Blackpool this coming weekend it seems to me to be a good time to feature one of the greatest punk rock bands of them all again - so here they are in Lego form. The more cynical among us may see items such as this as proof that some people have too much time on their hands, but it made me smile so I thought I'd include it here. And since I do this blogging lark maybe I'm one of the people with too much time on their hands? Hmm... Rebellion-wise I'm playing with both Ruts D.C. and T.V. Smith on the Saturday night (thankfully the venues are within walking distance of each other!) with Public Image Ltd headlining. Sounds good doesn't it? It goes without saying that I'm really looking forward to it (but I've said it anyway - see what I mean about time on my hands?) and I'll no doubt write some hopelessly over-emotional piece on it here sometime around this time next week, but in the meantime if for some unfathomable reason you don't get the 'Hey! Ho! Lego!' gag then here is a fabulous clip of  'Blitzkrieg Bop' (and quite a few other songs too) at The Rainbow in 1977. Great stuff. And talking of Ruts D.C. I received an unexpected (and almost definitely unintentional!) birthday present on Tuesday when Steve Lamacq played 'Mighty Soldier' on his Radio 6music show. Excellent! 


In the midst of last week's Croatian adventure I heard the sad news that Jon Lord of Deep Purple had died. I think 'Black Night' must have been the first thing I heard by the band as a youngster, but like many people it was their live album 'Made In Japan' that really did it for me. Yes the songs were a bit too long (well it was the early Seventies maaan!) but the standard of playing was so exceptionally high that it somehow didn't matter. The sound of Lord duelling with Ritchie Blackmore sounded incredible to me (it still does!) although by the time I heard it that line-up of the band had split up - I eventually saw them in late 1993 just before Blackmore left the band for the last time, and although tensions were obvious the band gave a tremendous performance. Here is a clip of the man himself demonstrating his mighty Hammond Organ sound - he was indeed a great musician who leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of work.


Last Friday saw The Upper Cut play The Dolphin in Uxbridge. When I realised that we were playing on the same evening as the Olympic Games opening ceremony I suggested to Noel the landlord that we should perhaps change the date of our show, but he was confident that not everybody would be watching the ceremony on television, and indeed there would be people actively looking to avoid it and would therefore come out to watch a band. I wasn't so sure myself, but it turned out that he was absolutely correct (good!) and there was indeed a good sized audience. I could see the ceremony on the television above the pub fireplace - by the time we got to our second set the teams were arriving in the stadium, which created the slightly unsettling feeing that they were marching to our music. Well, that was how it looked to me... it was our first gig for a while so there were inevitably a couple of mad moments here and there but overall we played well and those present seemed to love it, and after encores a-plenty I finally got to have a couple of belated birthday beers, during which our drummer Roger's wife Jill told me that a fella had just said to her 'that guitarist should be on the stage'. Let's hope he was right! A top evening.
There were more than a few mad moments the next night with Big Al Reed at The Kings Arms in Harefield, where myself and Upper Cut bassist Terry joined Dave on drums and Chris on keyboards (both of whom play with Big Al in Midnight) to form a band labelled by Al as The Cardiac Arrests. Al gave us all a perspective setlist and some CDs to work from, and with no rehearsal it was a case of turning up and seeing what happened... considering how difficult some of the material was (have you any idea how many chords there are in 'Born To Run'?!?) we made a good job of things, and the audience seemed prepared to forgive the bits where it went wrong. Probably the worst aspect of the evening was Al's Egnater guitar amplifier going wrong; his and Terry's amps went off for a second or two (presumably there was a power failure to the back wall where they were both plugged in) and while Terry's came back on Al's sadly didn't. There were no nasty burning smells (!) so hopefully it's something simple like an internal fuse. Overall however it was a good enough show to have us all considering looking for some other gigs for the band, which can't be a bad thing if you think about it.


In the meantime I've just returned for rehearsing with T.V. Smith, and am rehearsing with Ruts D.C. tomorrow. Time to set the controls for next weekend then - and that's not a bad thing if you think about it either.