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.

Seasons in the sun

It's been a lovely day today - sunny, warm and looking like summer is here early this year. It wasn't perhaps the most appropriate day to hear a busker playing the jazz standard 'Autumn Leaves' on an accordion - but there he was this morning outside Poundland, being all but ignored by pretty much everyone except a man in a light-coloured suit that appeared to be trying to talk to him while he was playing. When I walked by a bit later the man in the light-coloured suit was still there and was still attempting some form of conversation with the busker, who by now had moved on to 'Hava Nagila' and was still showing no sign of replying. It was rather quiet in the shop today although overall it's been a busy few days with plenty of custom orders as well as new shirts like this one needing website copy from your humble narrator, and with a bit of luck it should get even busier over the next few weeks.

Music-wise it's back to basics after the two best gigs I've seen in ages - Friday night it was down to The Dolphin in Uxbridge for the first time in a while to see Awaken. When East and myself arrived they were halfway through 'Come Together' which is never an easy song to play but they were making a very good job of it. Guitarist Pete cajoled me into making a 3 song appearance during their second set ('Play That Funky Music', 'Sweet Home Chicago' and 'Hard To Handle' in case you were wondering; incidentally he didn't have to try too hard - I even took my own guitar this time!) in what was overall an excellent performance that easily wiped out the memory of last month's rather peculiar evening in Ickenham.

For the first Upper Cut show since February we journeyed to Richmond on Saturday evening for a gig at The Fox and Duck (you have to be very careful how you say that haven't you?!?) With Roger busy elsewhere Geoff 'Rockschool' Nicholls returned on drums for a show that was understandably a bit loose in places but which overall went very well. Pete from Awaken turned up with his wife Elaine, Big Al Reed joined us for 'Hoochie Coochie Man' and 'Sweet Home Chicago' and the landlady celebrated both her own birthday and 5 years of live music in the pub - a fine night all round.

And on Sunday The Duplicates made a very welcome visit to the Load of Hay; featuring the drumming talents of Dave Ruffy alongside Seamus Beaghen on Hammond Organ and Matt Percival on guitar they gave a fabulous show that featured an amazing selection of material ranging from the theme tune to 'The Dave Allen Show' (do you know the title? Answers on a postcard please, usual address) to the Jimmy Smith classic 'The Cat' with a healthy amount of Booker T. and The M.G's thrown in for good measure - all witnessed by something like 20 people. Ok so it was Mother's Day - but I don't mind admitting that it's starting to get difficult to keep up the enthusiasm for putting shows on when so few people turn up for a band that's as good as this one. Then again look at the two gigs I saw last week - both The New York Dolls and The Adverts faced adversity, even hostility from an audience, yet both came good by keeping going - after all they'd have got nowhere if they'd have just given up would they? Hmm... life is all questions sometimes isn't it? See - there's another one...

As I was walking home from the shop I saw the man in the light-coloured suit, looking a bit lost. There was no sign of the busker.

'Vinyl Rules!' Episode One - The Chairs

Proof (were it needed) that I've had far too much time on my hands this week comes with the news that I've bought myself one of those turntables that allows you to convert records into mp3's which you can then make into CD's, put on an iPod and probably do lots of other things with that I'm not clever or indeed young enough to know about. I've been thinking about getting one for a while, as there are quite a few records in my collection that are sadly unlikely to ever emerge on CD and this seemed to be an obvious way for me to transfer them across to the digital world. It's also a chance for me to re-discover some of these recordings, and in doing so it occurred to me that it would be fun to write about them here. So let's start with a band that could have been, and indeed were contenders - I refer of course to The Chairs.

I think I first saw The Chairs at the late and much-lamented Fulham Greyhound (well it's certainly lamented by me although I can't find much on the Internet about it!) sometime in 1988. I guess they were supporting someone but I can't for the life of me remember who, a fact which amply sums up the impact that they had on the evening. They were simply tremendous. I'd been a huge fan of much missed Medway magicians The Prisoners who I'd seen many times and who I always thought should have been massively successful, but here was a band who had all their best elements (great songs, loads of energy and a Hammond Organ that sounded like the loudest and therefore greatest thing on Earth) but who somehow seemed to be an altogether more commercial proposition. They looked good, sounded great and such was their overall brilliance that I somehow overcame my innate shyness and struck up a conversation with one of them, who directed me to their larger-than-life manager Jim - I left for home that night with a copy of their first single and a masterplan that somehow meant that The Chairs and The Price were somehow going to take over the World together. I may have been a little drunk...
The next morning (afternoon?!?) I played the single - the A-side 'The Likes Of You' was brilliant, the b-side 'Something's Happening' was if anything even better, and the band were clearly as wondrous as I'd decided they were the previous evening. By the time their second single came out (the magnificent 'Size 10 Girlfriend' / 'Cut 'n' Dried', probably my favourite of their releases) they'd established themselves as a popular live act and were in hot pursuit of a record contract. Over the next couple of years this became something of an obsession within the band, as there always seemed to be a label or labels interested but no one would bite the bullet and sign them. I remember singer / guitarist / songwriter Paul Sullivan once saying to me words to the effect of 'all that matters is us getting a record contract, we can work everything else out from there', which is a measure of how much it meant to him. Their third single 'Honey I Need A Girl Of A Different Stripe' / 'I Can't Say I'm Sorry' kept up the pressure, as did their live shows which continued to be superb although by their fourth and last single 'Crestfallen' / 'Sometimes It Takes A Hammer' I remember thinking that the atmosphere in the band had changed - the music was still excellent but the mood seemed somehow darker. And then, suddenly, they were gone, leaving just 4 singles and an almost limitless amount of potential that appeared to evaporate almost overnight. Paul went on to play with The Crowd Scene and The Liberty Takers as well as making some solo acoustic appearances but I'm not sure what he (or indeed the rest of the band and their mercurial manager Jim) gets up to these days. I hope they're all still involved in music, but in the meantime there are any number of unreleased songs that remain in the memory banks from live shows - 'Boys From Slumberland', 'Brave Little Soldier', 'All I Need To Know' (inspired by Albert Goldman's controversial book 'The Lives Of John Lennon' - Paul's a huge Lennon fan, and judging by this song is not too enthusiastic about the book) and 'Neck Of The Woods' among them as well as a cover of Elvis Costello's 'Beaten To The Punch', all doubtless destined to remain unheard unless a retrospective compilation magically appears.

Well I've made my compilation from the singles and I've hardly stopped playing it since - 20-odd years on they sound as great as ever. It's good when that happens. Sit on that music!