'We're opening a branch of cycling shops in The Channel Islands...'

No gigs this coming weekend for your humble narrator, a situation that would usually have me moaning and groaning (imagine that!) but since I've been lucky enough to be part of some great shows lately I'll use this posting to cover some other subjects that have been rattling around in my warped mind lately.

It's been all go at Balcony Shirts, and with good reason as the new website has finally been launched. It's been a long time coming but the hard work has definitely been worth it as you can see if you click here; there have been new shirts designs appearing alongside things like vinyl coasters and condiment crayons (I'm not making this up, honest!) and to this end your humble narrator has been busy writing website copy for the newer items and beyond. And that's not all - Scott has penned another Q.P.R.-centric song, this time in honour of recent signing Ji-Sung Park. It's on YouTube even as we speak - that's me on the multi-tracked guitar solos!

Ruts guitarist Paul Fox died five years ago this month. Five years! Where does the time go?!? The annual tribute gig is being held at Ruislip Social Club (home of course to the excellent Tropic At Ruislip club) on Saturday 27th October. There is also a benefit CD (the event is always in aid of The Michael Sobell Hospice) featuring various artists, many of which had a direct connection to Paul. To this end The Price have contributed 'So What About Love?' which was one side of a single (the other side was 'Between The Lies' in case you were wondering) that Paul produced for us way back in 1989. Full details on both the CD and the show can be found at www.foxyswebsite.com, and it promises to be a very special evening - I might even go along myself... and talking of Paul's old band these three clips from last weekend's Ruts D.C Birmingham show have surfaced on YouTube, and we're playing Fibbers in York this coming Saturday which I'm really looking forward to.

50 years ago The Beatles released their first single 'Love Me Do' on the same day that the first James Bond film 'Dr. No' premiered in London. The twin worlds of popular music and film would never be quite the same again. Listening to 'Love Me Do' now it sounds basic, simplistic even - were this band really going to release 'Revolver' less than four years later? Yes, incredibly, they were. And then there's Mr. Bond - the hard drinking, womanising one-man army saving the World from the bad guys while delivering punchlines that most stand up comedians would be proud of. And didn't people used to smoke a lot in those days?
I don't remember either events happening (it was not long after my first birthday) but I do remember both Bond and The Beatles being for want of a better word 'omnipresent' during my early schooldays and beyond. And incredibly they still are - there's a new Bond film 'Skyfall' on the horizon, and the ever-controversial 'Magical Mystery Tour' has finally been officially released on DVD. It seems we still can't get enough of the Fab Four and whoever-it-is-that-plays-Bond-these-days - and I for one doubt that we ever will.

And what better to way to end this posting than with something that I haven't done for a while - yes, it's the return of the caption competition. Here's a photo that I took while away in Guernsey back in August. That looks a bicycle in that tree doesn't it? That's because it is! If you can think of a caption for it then please leave it as a comment. There are no prizes (as usual!) but it might be a laugh...

Celluloid heroes

With the cancellation of Thursday's Cool Britannia show at The Beck Theatre in Hayes (it was the nearest one to me, shame that one had to go) I took the opportunity to catch a very interesting looking show at The 100 Club. Billed as 'Scabies and James play ''Damned Damned Damned''' it not surprisingly featured founder members of The Damned Rat Scabies and Brian James playing the band's first album and other material from around that time. The audience was something of a punk-spotter's paradise, with T.V Smith deep in conversation with Rat Scabies, Tony James looking as though he wanted to be recognised, members of The Members (if you see what I mean) talking to all and sundry and Gaye Advert and Brian James both having their photos taken with what seemed like half the audience. Anticipation was high as showtime came around, and as 'Neat Neat Neat' roared out from the stage it seemed as though a good if rather noisy show was in prospect. Vocalist Texas Terri and a bassist who's name I sadly didn't catch (he was very good though) gave it everything, and Scabies and James sounded terrific. The Damned are all too often dismissed as 'cartoon punks' but in my not-so-humble opinion they've released some brilliant records, and their first album remains one of the all-time great punk albums and indeed one of the most influential albums ever. From lesser-known tracks to the inevitable encore of 'New Rose' this performance did nothing to lessen that legacy. Great stuff.


Friday should have seen a Cool Britannia gig at The Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage (it's a nice theatre, shame that one had to go) which left your humble narrator with something of a dilemma. The Upper Cut had a gig at The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham, which as I thought I was busy I had asked Pete to do in my place - however I had become available, so what happens now? I know musicians who would have for want of a better term 'taken the gig back' but I found the thought of that to be uncomfortable to say the least. On the other hand as it's 'my' gig it could be argued that I should play it. See what I mean - tricky isn't it? As it happens it was Pete who came up with the solution by suggesting that we both do the show. With no rehearsal possible we managed a few minutes discussion just before we started - I did a few numbers on my own then he joined in for the rest of the evening. As you might expect there was the odd mad moment here and there but overall I thought it worked very well. Audience requests included 'Whiskey In The Jar' and 'Bargain' (obviously we played neither) and a chap who had something of a resemblance to Michael Jackson seemed intent on talking to Terry throughout most our second set, despite the fact that he was singing for much of it. He seemed happy enough which I guess is the main thing?


Cool Britannia were due to be in Croydon on Saturday night (The Fairfield Halls! Shame... ) so I decided to go up to The 12 Bar Club to see T.V. Smith - it'd be nice to see him play rather than to be standing next to him while he's doing it! Balcony Shirts was suitably busy despite the rain and I wasn't feeling too good when I got home - when I woke up at nearly 8 o'clock I realised that I wasn't going to the gig. Bah! Oh well, time to revise some songs for the next evening's performance at The Millfield Theatre in Edmonton where a Cool Britannia gig had managed to survive the maelstrom of cancellations and postponements. It was a good show overall although personally didn't think I played very well; in my defence your honour the chronically out-of-tune solo at the start of the show was due to what seemed to be one of those annoying little flies that you get at this time of year zipping across my field of view and then landing on my hand as I went to play. And my chronically out-of-tune backing vocals in the next song were due to me having a coughing fit just prior to singing which I fear was caused by the same fly - urgh! That aside I feel it was the best show that we've done so far - if only we had a few more...


Yesterday evening I journeyed across town to The Queen Elizabeth Hall on The South Bank for a night of music entitled 'London On Film'. Hosted by noted film critic Mark Kermode and featuring The BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Robert Ziegler it may not seem to be the most obvious evening for me to find myself at, but the news that Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck would be joining the orchestra meant that I had to attend. 
It had been ages since I last saw an orchestral concert, and I'd all but forgotten what an extraordinary experience it is to be in a room with so many musical instruments. Amazing. Something as familiar as 'The James Bond Theme' suddenly becomes a living, breathing art form before your very eyes. Well, I think it does anyway. Over-emotional? Maybe - but one of the reasons that I like music so much is that even after all the years of watching and listening, and all the fantastic shows that I've been lucky enough to be part of (both as a performer and as an audience member) it still has the ability to catch you out when you least expect it.
During the interval I realised that there were rather more Who t-shirts in the audience than I had at first thought - I hadn't for one minute thought that I'd be the only fan there, but there certainly weren't as many in the foyer earlier. (Ok ok, I can hear you - 'they've taken their jumpers off you silly old fool'...) There was definitely an air of mounting excitement as the evening progressed, and as Kermode introduced the final selection of the evening electric guitars appeared on stage the intensity level leapt. Townshend and Beck emerged from the side of the stage and the polite, reverential applause of the rest of the evening gave way to the hoots and hollers of a rock concert audience, to the obvious disquiet of the more regular patrons on the venue. Mobile phones captured the Kermode / Townshend interview for prosperity, before PT announced the two pieces to be played - 'Quadrophenia' ('in a sense, the overture') and 'Love Reign O'er Me'. For the first the rockers sat slightly awkwardly in front of small amplifiers (a Vox for Beck and I think a Lazy J for Townshend) with their guitar on their laps, listening intently, waiting for the opening piano chords of the second tune... suddenly Beck's playing the melody as only he can play a melody as Townshend impatiently fiddles with his amplifier before joining in with the descending lines in the chorus. The Who t-shirts are leaning forward, willing the music to get louder as the orchestra turns the synthesizer lines of the original recording into the string sounds that I for one had always imagined them to be. It sounds incredible as it builds and builds and builds, and we realise that we'll all remember these few minutes for ever. Then, suddenly, it's all over - the last chord prompts a few flourishes from Townshend and hysteria from the Who t-shirts. The audience - all of them - goes crazy. An extraordinary, magnificent performance.


And it's all on YouTube already!

10 years gone

I guess you know that you're old when you find yourself saying things like 'when I was a lad...'

When I was a lad I used to really like football. It used to be good didn't it? I was a Liverpool fan then, and I'm a Liverpool fan now, although I don't think I really care too much about the game these days - and not just because the Red Army aren't the team that they once were. After the Wayne Rooney 'is-he-isn't-he' transfer debacle last year my Dad, who began watching the sport since the 1940s said to me that the game was 'finished' - with Liverpool buying Andy Carroll from Newcastle for £35 million and then selling Fernando Torres to Chelsea for £50 million it's hard not to agree with him. There are homeless people living on the streets within a few hundred yards of the grounds of all the afore-mentioned clubs while mind-boggling sums of money are thrown in the general direction of players who have worse haircuts than the down-and-outs. Even if they don't score all season they will still be paid more each day than most people in this country earn in a year. I could rant on (and on) here, but instead will direct you to this classic appraisal of the situation courtesy of the ever-excellent Daily Mash - many a true word spoken in jest, as the old saying goes.

From the ridiculous to the sublime - I'm a big fan of Stanley Unwin. You remember Stanley Unwin don't you? Of course you do, he was the old chap who spoke in that wonderfully mad way that, as my Dad will recall, I literally fell off the settee laughing at as a youngster. He sadly died a few years ago but now he's back - sort of... an anonymous blogger has started where the great man left off, and if you click here you can join him 'from the grale beyonders, sprinkly wise worms in the earlodes of the human specie'. He's also on Twitter which has to be read to be believed. Deep joy!

Meanwhile the occasional ongoing obituaries continue - John Barry died last week. He might not have written The James Bond Theme' (or did he?) but he wrote some fantastic music for most of the other Bond films and many more besides. And back in January Gerry Rafferty died, as did Mick Karn - sad losses all. I've got the same birth date as Mick Karn, and I'm 50 this year - it doesn't seem 40-something years since I was falling off the settee laughing at Stanley Unwin, but it is. Time flies as they say. Another old saying, also true.

My mum died of Motor Neurone Disease 10 years ago tomorrow. It doesn't seem like 10 years. It doesn't seem any time at all. A year to the day after she left the building I somehow found myself alone in the house; at 2.50 p.m. (the time that she died) I stood in the front room where her motorised chair used to be, trying to work out how I felt. I remember feeling sad, lonely, and yet oddly relieved that her terrible suffering had been finally bought to an end. I looked out into the back garden where me and my brother used to play as kids, and remembered an able-bodied woman out in the sunshine with her family. A good memory. A better memory.

Suddenly the phone rang. Back to the real World Leigh...

'Hello'

'Hi! Is mum there?'

I nearly fainted.

'Erm...'

'Are you ok? I just called to talk to mum, is she there?'

'I think you've got the wrong number'

'Oh Sorry!'

If my phone rings at the same time tomorrow, I'm not going to answer it!

Reversing into tomorrow

Behold the above photograph of 'miscreants watching The Shout at The Bull And Gate' in Kentish Town, sometime around 1989 - recognise anyone? That's Simon from Vicious Kiss on the far left, and Gary (usually seen with his brother Colin so I suspect that's him just out of shot) on the far right. And the bloke to Gary's right holding the worryingly red looking drink is me. Really. I've just shown it to Shirley who tells me that I 'still stand the same'. I still dress the same too. Excellent! This and lots of other splendid artefacts can be found on this Facebook site, and very good stuff it all is too, not least this flyer advertising gigs at The Opera On The Green in Shepherds Bush. There we are, bottom of the flier, bottom of the bill - t'was ever thus... and look at the other bands playing at the venue around the same time - some we gigged with, some we drank with and some went on to bigger (sometimes much bigger!) and better things. Ah, memories - some good, some bad, some best remembered and some best forgotten; nostalgia ain't what it used to be is it?

Then again, maybe it is. It's been 40 years since the original release of 'Live At Leeds' by The Who, and there's an excellent article in the current edition of Record Collector magazine detailing it's amazing journey from the 30-odd minute vinyl album to the 2-and-a-bit hour double CD version that's currently available. Reading it prompted me to get my copy (maybe that should be 'copies' as I've got pretty much every version including a bootleg of the whole show with no edits!) out and give it a listen for the first time in a while. It's often thought of as one of the best live albums released by any rock band, and as such is an absolutely vital document of what for many were the ultimate live act. Listening again now I have to say that if there has ever been a group of rock musicians that were more sympathetic to each other's playing then I've yet to hear them. OK, I'm biased (as regular readers of these hallowed pages will of course already know - assuming I have any regular readers of course...) but for an example of this just listen to 'Young Man Blues' (or indeed watch this version from The Isle Of Wight Festival a few months after the Leeds gig) and tell me the name of another band that sounds like that. Incredible.

And the England (maybe that should be 'En-Grrrrr-land'?) football team have finally managed to remember how to string more than two passes together (just!) and so are through to the next round of The World Cup where, somewhat inevitably, they meet Germany. No doubt by the time the match comes around on Sunday we'll all have seen the hallowed 1966 footage enough to be heartily sick of it, but I for one always enjoy seeing film of pretty much anything from that time. Think about it - Swinging London was swinging, 'Revolver', 'Blonde On Blonde' and 'A Quick One' were in the album charts with Hendrix waiting in the wings, Bond, 'Blowup' and 'Batman' were on at the pictures (and the latter was on the telly too!) alongside an air of optimism in society that's rarely been seen before or since; it's not hard to see why those who were young at the time talk about 'the sixties' with such reverence is it? Anyway I'm sure the newspapers will have stoked up the rivalry between the two teams to a previously unimagined level by the time kick-off comes around - let's hope nostalgia IS what it used to be after all...

Oddjobbing

A couple of interesting (hopefully!) gigs to report on but first things first - Thursday night The Godfathers played a 25th anniversary show (everybody's doing it!) at The 100 Club. When I first saw them back in 1986 the dual guitar attack of Mike Gibson and Kris Dollimore was truly something to behold - these days they feature original Sid Presley Experience guitarist Del Bartle alongside the Coyne brothers (Peter on vocals, Chris on bass) and drummer Grant Nicholas. New songs like 'I Can't Sleep Tonight' and 'Back Into The Future' sat well alongside classics like 'I Want Everything' and the inevitable 'Birth School Work Death', and the audience went suitably mad throughout; they still make a wonderful rock 'n' roll racket although if I've got a criticism then it's that it was all sounding a bit 'samey' by the end, possibly due to the lack of the second guitar - maybe I should put myself up for a job with them?!?

Friday night saw The Chicago Blues Brothers travel down to the wilds of West Sussex for a outdoor show at Wakehurst Place. We were due on stage just as the England vs. Algeria game was starting, a fact which perplexed a few of the band members (not least because we thought that we wouldn't have much of an audience!) although given the nature of England's performance it seems as though we got off lightly by not being able to watch the match. Jeff's in for Marc on drums and Pete's partnering Matt in the hats 'n' glasses but other than that it's the A-team all the way; we're on first with The Magic Of Motown following us, and it's all part of the first Wakehurst Music Festival. Arrangements on site were strict - we were allowed to drive to the backstage area to unload our gear then take our cars back out amid dire warnings of fines if any grass was damaged (£250!) and a 5 m.p.h. speed limit at all times. It's the first outdoor gig for us for a while, and I'm using my Fender Blues DeVille rather than the usual Blues Junior - it sounds great but I'm too loud onstage so I have to turn it down. Bah! After soundcheck it's over to the mess hall for some food (bangers and mash, or in my case, mash as the vegetarian option was cauliflower cheese. Urgh!) before returning backstage to get ready for the show. By the time we go on there's a good crowd gathering although it starts raining just as we start to play - there's no sign of Tracy who's been rehearsing with Boy George all day and has fallen foul of the M25 in all it's glory. She eventually arrives 10 minutes or so into what turns out to be a good, well received show (albeit one that we had to cut short as we ran out of time) which given the adverse weather conditions is something of a relief all round. Ah, the British summer - it's the middle of June and it's freezing cold and raining. Global warming anyone?

And it was time for your humble narrator to do some depping on Saturday, with The F.B.I. Band at Stoke Park. We're in Blues Brothers mode, and there are some familiar faces among the band members (F.B.I. regular saxman Ian is joined by CBB stalwart Dave on trumpet; Carl, Mark and Richard are on bass, drums and keyboards with Tom playing the role of Elwood) but with Tony away the role of Jake is taken by Stuart who hasn't worked with the band before... actually he's not worked with any band before as he usually sings over backing tracks. We're playing at a party (something to do with this I think) that's being held in a marquee that's adjacent to the main building - as everyone arrives they're not ready for us yet so there's time for tea in The Orangery (how middle class is that? Needless to say I gave it a miss!) before the stage is set up and soundchecking can commence. Stuart knows a few songs that the band haven't played for a while ('Messing With The Kid' and 'Hey Bartender' among them) and needs some of the other songs to be in lower keys than usual - after running through a verse and chorus of each everyone seems to be happy. There's time to go out for a look at the site of an extremely famous film scene (this one to be precise) before we go to our allocated room to await further instructions from the very helpful Nicola. Before long some food had arrived - in direct contrast to the previous night I had an enormous bowl of tagliatelle - and with the evening running late (as usual!) our 2 x 45 minute sets became 1 x 75 minute set starting at 10.30. Nicola was a bit worried that no one would take much notice of us (it happens!) but the dancefloor was full by the time we started our third number and stayed that way for the rest of our show. Stuart did well under the circumstances and although there were a few odd moments from our point of view nobody in the audience seemed to be too worried about them which I guess is the main thing.

No gigs this coming week - what will I do with myself?