Scotland Calling

Time for a quick progress report from North Of The Border, written at the times and in the places indicated, a little garbled here and there but left unedited...

Thursday 14th, 10.56 am, Room 52 at The Bothwell Bridge Hotel in Glasgow.

I like Scotland. It's a great country isn't it? and it's always a great place to play. We've got five shows in five days here this week - excellent. 
We - Ruts D.C. (Dave, Segs and myself) with our sound man Bob and merch girl Rhiannon - travelled up to Glasgow yesterday on the 12.30 pm train from Euston Station while our 'new' driver Harry (I don't mean that he's never driven before, it's just the first time that we've worked with him!) had made the epic journey North in his bus with all our equipment, stopping off to see family and friends on the way. He'd also dropped my ailing amp off at the Marshall factory on the way - it stopped working a few songs into our performance at The Undercover Festival in Margate last Saturday. Bugger! I'm hopeful that there's not much wrong with it as the lights were still on but there was definitely no one home... thankfully there was a spare amp available so the show continued (rather well as it happens) but it's obviously something that has got to be sorted out. 
Last night's gig at The Audio sold out - not bad for a Wednesday night eh? Ok, it's not the biggest venue in the World, but a sell out is a sell out... although I'm currently hampered by a deaf right ear (Earwax! Bah!) I think we played well - tonight we're in Dundee where we've played a couple of times before. I remember the first time being a great night while the second one was a slightly odd evening which wasn't too well attended (not much promotion apparently) and the support band played 'Staring At The Rude Boys'. Strange. Let's see what happens this time.

Friday 15th, 11.10 am leaving Dundee.

'It's all glamour this rock 'n' roll lark' thought Leigh as he helped Harry carry a speaker cabinet up the seemingly endless flights of stairs. As he stumbled breathlessly through the double doors leading into the venue he thanked gawd that the cabinet was on wheels while The Lurkers looked down on him from the wall near the bar. My heart's in the shadow - well it feels as though it's going to burst through my shirt to be honest. It's great to be in show business... there's a statue of Desperate Dan a few hundred yards away in the town centre - we could perhaps do with him here now. 
Five-and-a-bit hours later my heart once again felt as though it might burst through my shirt, only this time for a very different reason. We'd just played an excellent (even though I say so myself!) set at a very appreciative audience and all was right with the world. We added 'Tears On Fire' to the set, a tricky song to play but I thought that we did it well - we'd ran through it during a sound check that also included 'Suffragette City' and a new song called 'Innocent' which isn't finished yet but is showing great promise. The Beat Generator turned out to be a great venue (it'd be even better if it had a bloomin' lift!) and the riskily - named Invercarse Hotel was a nice hotel. It would have been good to have spent a bit more time there but the road to Aberdeen beckons. Get in the van Leigh - it's all glamour, this rock 'n' roll lark...

Saturday 15th, 10.42 am Room 217 at The Douglas Hotel in Aberdeen.

Victory from the jaws of defeat. That's quite a saying isn't it? I wonder where it comes from? It was used more than a few times last night, and not without reason - Drummonds is a good venue for any number of reasons (not least the girls behind the bar) but sadly the P.A. system isn't one of them. Bob is something of a wizard in my not-so-humble-opinion, and he needed all of his magical powers last night - a fraught sound check nearly fell apart when Segs uttered the immortal words 'we might as well just all get pissed, I can't hear a thing'. Not the best thought to have. 
Fast forward three hours and the place is packed  - The Media Whores are on stage and the sound is... ok... much better than earlier anyway. That's a relief. I wonder how we'll get on? 
Two hours later I'm wringing my shirt out in the dressing room. A great gig. A really great gig. Audience fantastic. Band sounded great. Thank Christ for that. From the jaws of defeat indeed. 

Sunday 16th, 11.31 am Room 304 at The Holiday Inn in Edinburgh.

It's our last day and indeed night in Scotland. Shame. These have been great gigs, with some wonderful moments.If you'd have been at La Belle Angele last night you'd have seen a brave attempt at '20th Century Boy' (Marc Bolan had died 40 years ago to the day) during an eventful rendition of 'In A Rut' which also the stage being plunged into total (and I mean total) darkness when the stage lights failed. Apparently there was a problem with the lighting desk - they also went off during  'Love In Vain' which resulted in more than a few, erm, jazz chords from your humble narrator. Let's hope that never makes it onto YouTube... the sound check also featured an unexpected incident when Psychic Investor Mark (during the PledgeMusic campaign for 'Music Must Destroy' you could become a Psychic Investor which meant that you could come to sound checks) responded to Segs's question 'any requests?' with the words 'Out Of Order' - I reckon that song was last played sometime in 1980 when the band was still The Ruts. We had a go. That's all I'm saying! We also had another go at 'Innocent' which I'm hoping will turn out to be a really good song; it might even make it to the stage sometime in this batch of gigs. Then again it might not - we played an 18 song set with a 3 song encore so it might be more of a case of 'what do we leave out?' rather than 'when do we play it?' Still that's not a bad problem to have. Maybe it's not a problem at all? 
Tonight we play in Falkirk. I've never been there before. We leave at midday so I'd better get my gear together.

Monday 18th, 12.35 pm on the train home.

Well that was a funny old night. It was an odd show to end on - we played well but the audience seemed rather subdued resulting in us thinking that we weren't going down very well. However as so often happens this wasn't the case - when we spoke to people afterwards many said that it was the best show that they'd ever seen at The Warehouse. And one person went further, observing that 'this is Sunday night in Scotland - everybody's been drinking since Friday afternoon'. Oh and The Bay City Rollers were apparently also playing in Falkirk last night, although I for one am not sure how that effected things. But however you look at it, it's been a pleasure to be in Scotland - but as previously discussed, it usually is.

So - was the Falkirk show any good? Click here to find out!

Island life

First things first, and after much deliberation (certainly on my part) those loveable funsters The Price are reforming for a show at The Crown And Treaty in Uxbridge this coming Saturday 22nd September. Support comes from The Chilterns, D.J. Chris is spinning some discs (all of these people can be found in Balcony Shirts on a regular basis) and the whole thing starts at around 8.30pm with our group due on at quarter to ten for an hour-and-a-bit; the pub is open until 4am so you can always have too much to drink after we've been and gone. As always with The Price this could turn out to be our last ever show (!) so if you can make it along it'll be good to see you.

And talking of things that may well prove to be a mistake I have done the thing that no right-minded person should ever do - yes, that's right, like an idiot I've started a Facebook page. I've resisted this up until this point, not least because from what I've seen of it in the past I'll need to have at least half of my brain removed to fit in with the general level of intelligence that people seem to exhibit when leaving messages on it, but I guess we'll see how it goes. You can find me by clicking here - I don't know how long it'll be there for, but it's there as I type this...

Marc Bolan died 35 years ago last Sunday. I've been playing some T.Rex albums in the last few days, and they still sound like no other band - some of it is inevitably dated, but the best tracks are timeless examples of just how good pop music can be. 'Metal Guru' was the first record that I ever bought (as opposed to received as a present) and it still sounds fantastic - literally 'the stuff of fantasy' - to me. I remember that as a would-be punk rocker the news of his death hit me surprisingly hard; the scorched-earth policy that 'everything before Johnny and Joe didn't matter' was clearly a generalisation, and Bolan remains one of my favourite artists of all time.

After over 23 years there has finally been an independent enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster, and the findings have revealed what many suspected all along - lies, deception, tampering with evidence, more lies, more deception and even more lies by officials, police officers, the ambulance service and maybe (maybe!) even the government of the time. It's emerged that 164 witness statements were altered and up to 41 fans could have lived if help had been given - let's hope that this is only the end of the beginning, and now those responsible for covering up the truth will finally be bought to justice at last. 

In the meantime the latest Ruts D.C. show saw the band play at The Fermain Tavern on Guernsey on Saturday as part of The Guernsey Literary Festival with Linton Kwesi Johnson and Attila The Stockbroker.
After my antics on the way to our show in Croatia back in July I decided to leave myself plenty of time to get to Gatwick Airport for our flight to the island. With this in mind the long-suffering Shirley dropped me at Hillingdon tube station just after 7.40am. By 7.45am I was walking up to strangers and asking if I could borrow their mobile phone - yes, you've guessed it, I'd left mine behind... given this inauspicious start the rest of my journey went without too much incident, although finding the Gatwick train at St Pancras International wasn't as easy as it might have been - if there were any signs I couldn't see them, and doesn't anyone work at train stations anymore?
I arrived at the Aurigny Airways check in just as Dave and Molara were reaching the front of the queue - at which point I realised that I'd forgotten to print off my boarding passes for the flights. Bugger! 'Don't worry, they'll print one for you' said Dave cheerily - fortunately they weren't one of the airlines that charges you for this sort of things these days!
We went through security before deciding on breakfast at Cafe Rouge where Seamus soon joined us; the rest of our party (Segs, Pablo and Rob) were in The Flying Horse enjoying a different type of breakfast... initial 'oh my gawd the plane's got propellers' worries turned out to thankfully unfounded, and the short flight passed without incident. At Guernsey Airport we were met by Rob and Hayley who took us to The Les Douvres Hotel - whereupon checking through my gear I discovered that I'd forgotten my slide. This was getting silly! I try to leave a slide with each guitar, but had only decided to use to my Lemon Drop the night before and for some reason the case was slide-less. Bah! 
The rest of the band and crew went off for food but I was still full from breakfast (and still feeling the effects of an upset stomach a day or so before) and so stayed at the hotel to catch up on a bit of sleep, play some guitar and get a bit of fresh air. Rock 'n' roll eh?
Half past four and it's off to the venue (via Kendall Guitars to buy a slide - at least I can leave it in the Lemon Drop's case! Incidentally this is an excellent shop, and there was a poster in the window advertising a gig by a G'n'R tribute band called Guerns 'n' Roses...) for soundcheck. The Fermain Tavern certainly seems to be a popular venue, with pictures of Wilko Johnson and Nine Below Zero on the walls (excellent!) and a good stage and P.A. system. We've bought Rob with us to do our sound, he's bought a Roland Space Echo with him for the dubbier parts of our set which takes a while to get working to his satisfaction. I've got a Fender Twin Reverb which would normally have me rejoicing but n this case took a bit of getting used to - a bit trebley compared to some that I've used, or maybe I haven't used The Lemon Drop much lately? Dave was perturbed to find mould on the cymbals provided for him to use - apparently they came from a rehearsal studio situated in an old German bunker and 'it can get a bit damp in there'...
I'd not met Linton Kwesi Johnson before - I think I last saw him back in the 1980s, and he seemed to be a very nice if rather quiet chap; Attila was of course as irrepressible as ever, a very nice if not-at-all quiet chap!
With everything sounding good it's back to the hotel for some food and to get changed before returning to the venue to catch most of Attila's and all of Linton's performances, both of which were excellent but both of which highlighted an interesting audience dynamic - what you might call the 'bookish' part of the crowd consistently appealed for quiet from the 'rock' element who were warming up with beer and often rather loud conversation. Things got a bit heated on more than one occasion - eventually an uneasy calm was reached when the rockers moved towards the back of the room.
10.45 and Attila introduces us as a band that he first saw on the back of a flat bed truck at a Rock Against Racism rally, going on to say that things have changed a lot for the band since then. They have indeed... the show proved to be interesting for a number of reasons. The reggae-based material saw a full dancefloor and went down very well, whereas the punkier songs (like 'Back Biter') saw a more raucous response, mostly from the people who had moved to the back of the venue earlier in the evening. There was a bit of heckling here and there (Segs saw them off with ease!) and the show went well enough for us to play an encore ('H-Eyes' in case you were wondering) and to receive many compliments after the gig.
Sunday started earlier than I for one would have liked, as breakfast ended at half past nine and checkout was at 11 o'clock. At least that's when I thought that it was - the phone went in my room at 10.50 to remind me that checkout was at 10.30. I'd more-or-less got all my stuff together, but since we weren't due to leave for the airport until one o'clock that left quite a while to fill. I decided to have a walk around the area, which turned out to be interesting if a little perilous at times - the roads were often only just wide enough for two cars which meant some very careful manoeuvring by drivers (and often some very careful reversing if the road wasn't wide enough for both cars) and the occasional jumping out of the way by pedestrians (i.e.me!)
At the airport we meet LKJ in the queue, who tells us we 'mashed them last night'. This pleases us greatly! The man behind the counter tells me that I can walk my guitar on to the plane, but when I take my pedalboard to outsize baggage I'm told the guitar has to go too. Oh well. At security Molara gets stopped and has to empty all her bag out, which as you can imagine she's not too pleased about. I'm wandering about in the duty free shop looking at nothing in particular when I hear my name read out over the tannoy. This has never happened to me before but as I heard it I felt my nerves jangle - why do they want me to 'report to gate 4 immediately'? When I get there I'm asked if I'm carrying an outsized item onto the plane - as I was about to answer I looked out of the window to see my guitar being loaded onto the aircraft. Confusion reigns for a few seconds but everything seems to be ok in the end.
On the plane LKJ asks Segs where he buys his hats as the girl across the aisle from them comments on how cool they both look and a couple of seats from me a nun looks on quizzically. A good moment - or maybe that should be a God moment?  
As we wait at Gatwick Segs and myself wonder whether our instruments will be in the outsize section or will just appear on baggage carousel number 1 with everything else. As we debate their fate my pedalboard is one of the first things to emerge on the belt, followed by Segs's bass guitar. What feels like hours later the belt is empty and all our fellow passengers have gone on to bigger and better things but there's still no sign of my instrument - after a bit of deliberation I go to baggage enquiries with Pablo while Segs and Rob stay by the carousel in case it appears. The men behind the glass are helpful but resigned to filling in the large number of forms that are being liberated from a filing cabinet as they tell me that it's 'very unusual for anything to go missing from The Channel Islands'. This information is clearly intended to be reassuring but doesn't really make me feel any better. Suddenly Pablo's phone rings - Segs has got my guitar. It appeared on the belt just before the next aircraft's baggage emerged.
As I opened the case to check that it was still all in one piece I thought about the nun on the plane - she'd bought an enormous bottle of gin when they bought the duty free around. At that moment I felt as though she'd got the right idea.