'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...

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...