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...

Music ruined my life - it's official!

Now here's a funny thing - the always-excellent Music Ruined My Life blog has posted a piece on the first single from me and my old buddies The Price - I must admit it's a bit of an inside job as I sent him the information when he requested it but it's still amazing to see it there all of (gulp!) 25 years since it was released. Have a look and indeed a listen here and see what you think.

On Wednesdays your humble narrator journeyed across London to Back To Zero Headquarters (hereinafter referred to as 'BTZ HQ') to spray some hot guitar (oooh I wish I'd thought of that line! Sadly I didn't - but there's 10 points for you if you know who did! I'll give you the answer at the end of this posting...) new album. Yes that's right, our new album. It's been the best part of ten years since songwriting wizard Sam and erstwhile singer Brian put together 'It's All Relative', and it has been decided that a tenth anniversary re-recording by the band is in order. Sam and Andy have already recorded their guitar and drum parts respectively so it's time for myself and Squirrel to add our guitar and bass contributions. With optimism in the air we got off to a flying start and progress was swift, until my trusty (well it had been trusty up until this point!) Fender Telecaster cut out when I changed from the bridge to the neck pick up. It came back on, cut out again... after attempting an emergency repair (hitting it then swearing rather a lot - well, it usually works!) it came back on, and was fine as long as I only wanted to use the bridge pick up, which, somewhat fortuitously, was the one that I wanted to use for much of proceedings. I just got it working again when Squirrel's bass started making some rather odd crackling noises - he changed the battery (it's got active pick ups) but to no avail, and so used Andy's bass for the rest of the day. Somehow despite these setbacks we got a remarkable amount of work done, and have resolved to get back together in the next couple of weeks (after we've got our instruments repaired perhaps!?!) to complete our parts. More news as and when I have it, but I for one think that the album is going to sound great. Oh yes!

And last night I saw The Good Old Boys at The Eel Pie Club in Twickenham. I hadn't been to the club for quite some time (it's at The Cabbage Patch public house) but if the audience for this show was anything to go by it's a thriving venue which is always a good thing to see in these troubled times. And the GOBs (another abbreviated band name eh?) were absolutely excellent - mind you, they usually are.

Better go - I have a gig with Utter Madness tomorrow at no lesser venue than Cliveden House (you know, the Profumo Affair and all that) and I've got songs to revise. After that,  it's time for the return of Ruts D.C. - but more about that next time.

And the answer to the 'hot guitar' question - it is of course the great Robert Fripp, who has variously referred to spraying 'hot' and 'burning' guitar several times over the years. Good man!

What is a 'booking fee' anyway?

Well - the Wilko Johnson farewell gigs have taken over the World! Ok so that's probably a bit of an overstatement, but the March 6th show at Koko in Camden sold out in no time as did an added date on the 10th and indeed the rest of the shows. It's sad in a way as obviously the increased interest is due to his illness, but also great to see such support for the man. That said there are quite a few tickets on eBay and less reputable agencies for vastly inflated prices which is a great shame - as usual the 'real' fans either miss the shows or are obliged to pay whatever price the ticket touts decide is 'reasonable'. Surely more can be done to stop this from happening - there are stories on Wilko's Facebook page about people able to buy as many as twenty tickets when the limit should theoretically have been eight. Very poor. I managed to get tickets for both of the London shows - I'm sure I'm not the only person who considered giving them a miss and remembering him as I do now, but in the end couldn't resist seeing him just a couple more times. In the meantime Wilko gave an excellent interview on BBC Radio 4 this week in which he demonstrates his fabled guitar technique, reminisces about his career and tells of how his cancer diagnosis made him feel 'vividly alive'. It's inspirational stuff, as you can hear here -  these are going be very emotional shows.

On a (much) lighter note the excellent Music Ruined My Life blog currently has last December's 12 Bar Club show from myself and T.V Smith (joined for a few numbers by Pascal Briggs) available to download - you can read my story of the evening here if you'd like to, and can download our hour-ish long set here. I must have a listen to it myself! Blogmeister Jeffen is promising 'more of this under-appreciated figure's accomplishments' very soon. Amazingly I think he means me! Oo-er!

Two very different gigs this weekend, during the course of which I played over 50 different songs. On Friday Big Al Reed and The Cardiac Arrests (I wonder if I'm the only band member who thinks that we could do with a better name? I must ask them next time!) visited The Swan in Iver. Al and myself generally attend the first-Sunday-of-the-month open mic night there (indeed we'll hopefully be there this coming Sunday) but this was the first gig for the band, and it generally went well especially considering that we hadn't played together since back in December. I still think we could do with some rockier material to balance out the slow stuff, but there's no denying Al's ability to sing a ballad. Overall a good gig, as was Saturday's show depping for Mr. Tibbs at Tropic At Ruislip. The venue usually puts on shows on Friday nights, so this was something of an experimental evening for the club. It was rather experimental from my point of view too, as I only had one rehearsal with the band and had to get to grips with material from the likes of INXS, Duran Duran and Simple Minds among (many) others, none of which I'd played before. In the event the evening exceeded expectations both in terms of the number of people in the audience and the band's performance - I thought that I'd made any number of wrong turns during the show, but talking to people afterwards everyone seemed to think that it sounded great - and I for one wasn't about to tell them that they were wrong.

Sunday night I appeared on the Music Scene Investigation podcast for the first time in several months - I initially had problems hearing the tracks to be reviewed (fortunately I decided to check that they were working before the broadcast began!) and there were a few issues with Tom's video signal during the show, but generally this was probably the most enjoyable MSI show that I've been involved with. The three songs were all of such a high standard that it was very difficult to decide which one came should come out on top, and somehow I ended up with the casting vote which I don't mind admitting was quite nerve racking. You can check out the three artists concerned via these links - Garrett Harbison, Athena Creese and World5 - and watch the show here - see if you think we (or indeed I) made the correct decision.

And last night myself and the two Terry's from The Upper Cut (Roger couldn't make it sadly) got together to discuss ideas for new songs, getting more gigs and general band stuff - we're at The Half Moon in Harrow this coming Saturday for the first time in ages which should be a good night, although I remember last time the venue had problems with neighbours who thought that the bands were playing too loud. An interesting evening in prospect then...