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So there we were - Dave, Segs and myself - in Dave's car on our way to Southend Airport on Friday afternoon when his phone rang. Nothing too unusual there as it rings all the time - as he was driving he had it plumbed into one of those new-fangled hands-free speakerphone thingys that let you answer the phone while you're at the wheel. It was Steve Beatty, head honcho at Plastic Head Distribution and Westworld Records. 'D'you want the good news or the bad news?' asked he. 'The bad news' answered Ruts DC as one man. 'You've missed out being in the indie charts by one sale' Various derisive noises were emitted by all concerned before he asked if we'd like the good news. Of course we would. 'You're number 25 in the Rock And Metal Album Chart' said he cheerily - if he said anything else it was drowned out by our whooping and hollering and the inevitable 'time for a drink then' from your humble narrator. And as this photo shows, it was all true - there we are between Pink Floyd and Guns N' Roses. And we're a couple of places above Lordi - you remember, that mad mob that won The Eurovision Song Contest a few years ago dressed as giant lizards, or something. Hilarious!
We were en route to France for an appearance at Fiesta La Mass in Rennes the next evening - for reasons unknown (possibly flight availability?) we were travelling out the night before which meant that we got to the festival site in time to see The Angelic Upstarts roar through their set before retiring to The Hotel Voltaire for some much needed sleep. Being there a day early meant that we had time to look around town the next morning with the help of Vincent the promoter's daughter Alice - I'd not been to Rennes before so it was good to get a bit of a feel for the place and indeed to have a splendid lunch before going back to the hotel for a couple of hours. After an interview with the Punks Not Dead radio station (shouldn't that have an apostrophe?!?) we headed
back to the festival site where things were in full swing with local heroes Banane Metalik going down a storm. We met the Italian band Klasse Kriminale backstage, they're all big Ruts fans and very nice chaps to boot. We were due on at midnight although an issue with Dave's monitor meant that we actually started our set a few minutes late. I thought we played well although the onstage sound was a bit, for want of a better word, nasal which meant that it hard to hear each other sometimes - and as we started late we got the almost inevitable 'ONE SONG' instruction sign when we had two left to play. Halfway through 'In A Rut' Segs stopped the band with the words 'we didn't come all this way not to play ''Babylon's Burning'' did we?' He was correct - we didn't so we played it! A good show but maybe not a great one, especially compared to the previous week's gig, but that happens from time to time. We're up in Newcastle for North East Calling this Saturday so let's see how that one goes. And I wonder where (or indeed if) we will be in the charts this week?
As I mentioned in the post-before-last the first Ruts D.C. album 'Animal Now' is about to be re-issued - indeed the Plastic Head edition of the album marks it's first appearance on CD. I bought the album when it was first released in 1981, along with the 'Different View' / 'Formula Eyes' single that if I remember rightly pre-dated it by a couple of months; I loved them both then, and you won't be surprised to hear that I love them both now - except that these days I'm playing in the band which is currently getting ready to play some gigs that will include songs from the album. It seems that truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes... our two rehearsals on Wednesday and Thursday this week saw us running through songs from all parts of the band's recorded history, from early Ruts numbers to material that hasn't been released yet. Molara couldn't make last week's session but joined us (Segs on bass, Dave on drums, Seamus on keyboards and myself on guitar) on vocals and percussion for both of these - even though I say so myself the band sounded great, and to say that I'm looking forward to the upcoming shows redefines the word 'understatement'. In addition to me attempting to get used to some new-ish guitar effect pedals that I've bought to replace the ones that I lost back in November Segs bought along an old Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble that Paul Fox used with the band; it gave exactly - make that exactly - the guitar sound of the afore-mentioned album (which I suppose it would if you think about it!) although I don't think I'll use for the shows as it's mains-powered and as it hasn't been used for many years I think it needs checking over electrically! Still it was weird to be playing Paul's riffs through it - I'm still not sure how I feel about it several days later.
It was something of a rehearsal marathon for your humble narrator on Wednesday, when after the Ruts D.C. session I travelled across town from Deptford to Shepherds Bush to meet up with The Upper Cut at Bush Studios for a 'let's-learn-a-couple-of-new songs' evening. In the event the band was in an industrious mood, not only running through several songs new to us but also tightening up a few of our less-played songs with a view to bringing them back into the act. Everything we rehearsed was played at The Dolphin in Uxbridge on Friday evening at a show which started slowly (both Roger and myself agreed that we took a while to get going, possibly because the place was unusually empty when we started playing although it filled up later) but that ended with a suitably raucous display from both band and audience. I suppose that there can't be that many bands who include 'Sha-La-La-La Lee' and 'Black Night' as new numbers on a set that also features 'Monkey Man' and 'Hold Back The Night', but I for one am glad that we do. A good gig - we're back there on July 27th, which is perilously close to my birthday. Excellent!
In the meantime I'm typing this on a Saturday evening that feels like it should be a gig night, but isn't. Bah! Still there's a Cool Britannia rehearsal this week followed by two gigs next weekend - let's hope these don't get cancelled...
