'The better it gets, the better it gets...'

It's six years last week since Wiz from The Mega City Four died, and by way of a tribute Louder than War have posted an interview that the band did with the much-missed 'Sounds' magazine from June 1989. I saw them play many times (and indeed The Price played quite a few shows supporting them) and at their best they were one of the most uplifting bands that I've ever seen. I can't pretend to have been Wiz's best mate or anything like that but I did know him quite well around that time, and I last saw him at an Ipanema gig many years later when he'd lost none of his enthusiasm for playing music. You can read the interview here; it's good to see him being remembered by tributes such as this - and we could really do with a band as passionate and exciting as The Mega City Four these days couldn't we?

And Patrick Moore and Huw Lloyd-Langton have both died - both travellers in outer space!

Two good gigs for your humble narrator last weekend :-

My name's on the poster! Yeah!

Friday saw the much-looked-forward-to (by me at least) show at The 12 Bar Club with T.V. Smith. Also on the bill were The Lost Cherrees, Root Awakening featuring Pascal Briggs, Louise Distras, The Crows and Texas Terri, and although I didn't manage to see any of the acts all the way through from what I did see everybody played really well. I saw Dermot from The Charred Hearts for the first time since The Rebellion Festival back in August (he was present when I somehow managed to knock a parasol over in the backstage catering area!) and also bumped into Attila The Stockbroker who was supporting The Men They Couldn't Hang over at The Borderline; by the time we went on at 10.45 pm the place was absolutely packed - it's only small but it's a great place to play, and with Pascal joining us for the last few numbers of our set (these three clips give you a good idea of how it all looked and sounded - that's Pascal in the middle) and us encoring with 'Runaway Train Driver' to an incredible reaction it has to be one of my favourite gigs of 2012. I'd loved to have stayed around afterwards to talk to some people but I had to leave to get the tube home; after I'd missed the last train because I had to go back to the club to get my bag which I'd forgotten due to rushing to get out I of course had time to talk all night... bugger! In the end I got home via two night buses which put a bit of a dampener on things, but let's face it, that's not the worst thing that will ever happen!
Saturday saw The Upper Cut visit The Armoury in Wandsworth for the first time. Sadly Roger was unable to make the show due to illness so Geoff 'Rockschool' Nicholls once again depped on drums, for a show that went well despite a rather low turnout - when we started there were only a handful of people in the building, although it did fill out a bit as the evening went on. Terry the bass introduced me to Pete from The Atlantic Soul Machine - I'm depping with them (Terry plays with them all the time) on Christmas Eve at The Bulls Head in Barnes so it was good to meet him. Geoff played well - actually we all played well - and Paul the landlord said that he'd like us back next year, so it was definitely a good night all round.

And it was definitely a good night all round at The Load Of Hay in Uxbridge on Sunday, when Steve Simpson (ably aided and abetted by his brother Bruce on mandolin and guitar and Bob Pearce on drums) played a superb show. I've not been involved in putting on gigs there for a while - to be honest I got a bit disillusioned with audience apathy - but this event reminded me why I did it in the first place. That said there could have been more people there (lots of folk said they'd come along, few actually did) but those who were there saw three superb musicians playing at the top of their game. A fine evening.

And I have just - just! - returned from rehearsing with The Flying Squad; we're supporting Dr. Feelgood at Tropic At Ruislip this coming Friday 14th December, which really should be a night to remember...

None more black

Is it just me or do the baby's eyes
follow you around the room?

Christmas is coming (I just thought I'd mention that in case you hadn't noticed) and what better way to usher in the festive season than to spend Thursday evening attending the opening night of an art exhibition. (Go with me on this, it does get better!) 'Black Xmas' is at The Signal Gallery until December 21st; it's curated by Gaye Black and as you can no doubt tell from the flyer it's a rather darker gathering than many at this time of year. I arrived just in time to get one of the last bottles of lager (thereby avoiding the somewhat scary-looking cocktails) from the bar and to bump into punk promotess Sarah Pink just as she was leaving. 'Lovely to see you dahling!' said she (as only she can) as she disappeared up the stairs and into the night. After saying a quick hello to Gaye (not an easy task, she's very popular!) I saw Ian from Damaged Goods Records who I last spoke to at The Rebellion Festival back in August. 'You remember this chap don't you?' said he, smiling broadly as Neil from Shelly's Children put his right hand out in my general direction. Yes, indeed I do, but I hadn't seen him for, oooh, nearly 20 years. He's not playing anymore - a shame since they were a great band who The Price played quite a few shows with back in the day. Still it was good to see him again.
Meanwhile The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing ('grammatically incorrect but historically accurate') took to the stage. They're a Steampunk band ('don't worry if you haven't heard of it, it isn't anything...') with a fine line in top hats and handlebar moustaches; if you've ever found yourself thinking along the lines of 'there should be more bands singing songs about Charles Darwin, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the 1832 General Election' then these boys could be just what you're looking for. Very noisy in places, very entertaining pretty much all the time and definitely worth keeping an eye out for, although I'm not really sure why.
As things drew to a close we did the decent thing and went to the pub next door. 'It's not cheap in here is it?' said a rather rueful Mark (a.k.a. Barnet, boss of The 12 Bar Club) as he returned from the bar. No, no it's not. Still the atmosphere is good, and when a chap called Tom comes over and joins our conversation we both agree that we know each other from somewhere... ah, of course, he used to be in Big Boy Tomato, another band that The Price used to play with all those years ago. It was that kind of evening...

In a vague attempt at continuity this seems like a good opportunity to mention that Gaye has designed the front cover of a tribute CD to Paul Fox which has just been released - 'See You On The Other Side' features 24 tracks, and all proceeds are going to The Michael Sobell Hospice where Paul received treatment towards the end of his life. You can find out all about it and indeed order a copy on Foxy's Website - it's well worth getting, both as a musical artifact and as a way of supporting a very worthy cause. And continuing the continuity (!) I'm playing at The 12 Bar Club next Friday 7th December with the mighty T.V. Smith, on an extraordinary bill that also features Texas Terri (she was at 'Black Xmas'  too) Louise Distras, Pascal Briggs, The Crows and probably some other people as well. It promises to be a fine if rather long evening, but I guess that's what the night buses are for. Excellent!

I'd thought about going up to The Half Moon in Putney on Friday night to see Slim Chance (incidentally the excellent Steve Simpson from said band is playing at The Load Of Hay in Uxbridge on Sunday 9th December) but instead found myself at The Admiral Nelson in Twickenham on witnessing a performance by Midnight. Big Al Reed played a mean saxophone and Terry from The Upper Cut did a good job depping on bass but to be honest it wasn't the best performance I'd ever seen from the band, although it went down well so perhaps it was me rather than them if you know what I mean. 
Things were far better on Saturday though, when The Upper Cut played at The Dolphin in Uxbridge at a party for Noel and Bridie's 25th anniversary as landlord and landlady. Geoff 'Rockschool' Nicholls depped on drums (Roger was away gigging with Lee Ryder) for the first time in a while and was as great as ever, and with the place absolutely packed it was a suitably raucous evening. Pete from The Cane Toads joined us for a few songs, Noel and Bridie were very pleased with our efforts and the party was still going strong when we left sometime after 1 am; I suspect there were more than a few sore heads on Sunday, a condition which for once I managed to avoid. Good! 
And Sunday evening saw the last open mic night of the year at The Swan in Iver. Confusion reigned over when proceedings had to finish - having been told that things had to end at 9 o'clock we were then told to 'play for as long as you like' by the landlady. Myself, Pete and Big Al (I'm really getting the hang of this continuity lark aren't I?) joined Tony on bass and Bob on drums to play four songs, the last of which was an ambitious-for-a-jam-night attempt at 'Born To Run' - I don't think we'll worry The E-Street Band too much but considering how difficult to song is we didn't do a bad job. Well, I don't think we did anyway.

Right- time to revise some T.V. Smith songs. I'm really looking forward to Friday night...

The director's cut

I was saddened by the news that Ken Russell has died, aged 84. Always a controversial figure, he turned the already reasonably bonkers story of 'Tommy' into one of the maddest films any of us are ever likely to see; mind you most of his films managed to annoy people in one way or another, but it always seemed to me that said people either wanted to be annoyed, or indeed deserved to be annoyed by them. In these days of mediocrity we are sadly unlikely to see his like again, which is a great shame.

On a lighter note I had an absolutely splendid time on Music Scene Investigation last night - Tom, Ian and Rich were all on good form and I managed to ramble on about all sorts of things for what seemed like ages. If you'd like to see the show then click here but be warned - I've got those big headphones on again, and I still can't hear the bass... I could definitely hear the bass at The Load Of Hay where I managed to catch the last few numbers from Pimp My Jazz who feature Terry from The Uppercut on said instrument - you can always hear him! From what I saw an heard the band sounded tighter and more together than their first show there back in June (which was their debut gig) and it'll be interesting to see where they go from here. It's The Undersound this Sunday 4th, then The Uppercut on December 18th - come on down, as someone once said...

Time for another Ruts D.C. gig supporting The Alabama 3, this one on Saturday at The Academy in Bristol. The Static Jacks started the evening, and from what I saw of them they started it very well indeed; they certainly got the energy level up and got a lot of attention in the rapidly-filling venue. We walked out onto the stage to a fair amount of applause (and at least one shout for 'Babylon's Burning' - we finished the show with it) and played a tighter set than in Manchester, with audience reaction building up to the extent that we probably could have done an encore. It's good when that happens! Both Dave and Segs seemed to be pleased by the way things went for us, which bodes well for this week's shows in Bournemouth and London. And I managed to see most of the Alabama 3's set, and very good it was too.

It was my first Uppercut gig for what feels like ages on Friday, at The Half Moon in Harrow. The gig was originally supposed to feature Awaken who have since broken up in the interim period between booking the gig and now leaving guitarist Pete (who deps for me in The Uppercut when I'm elsewhere) with a gig but no band. Rather splendidly he suggested that we could do the show, which I'm pleased to say that our new friend Hetty (who books the gigs at the venue - she's Ginger Baker's daughter! Really!) thought was a good idea. To repay Pete's generosity in putting us up for the gig we invited him to come along to play a few songs with us, and with this in mind he and I got together on Thursday evening to see what songs would sound good with two guitars rather than one. In no time at all we'd written ten or so songs on a piece of paper - at which point we decided that we'd done enough work and went down the pub. It could all have gone tragically wrong at this point, but it actually went very right indeed (I wouldn't have been writing about it here if it had been terrible!) with Pete ending up playing with us for most of the evening, dep drummer Geoff excelling himself and Hetty offering us three gigs in the new year. As I said earlier, it's good when that happens!

More gigs this week, then it all get worryingly quiet...

Seasons in the sun

It's been a lovely day today - sunny, warm and looking like summer is here early this year. It wasn't perhaps the most appropriate day to hear a busker playing the jazz standard 'Autumn Leaves' on an accordion - but there he was this morning outside Poundland, being all but ignored by pretty much everyone except a man in a light-coloured suit that appeared to be trying to talk to him while he was playing. When I walked by a bit later the man in the light-coloured suit was still there and was still attempting some form of conversation with the busker, who by now had moved on to 'Hava Nagila' and was still showing no sign of replying. It was rather quiet in the shop today although overall it's been a busy few days with plenty of custom orders as well as new shirts like this one needing website copy from your humble narrator, and with a bit of luck it should get even busier over the next few weeks.

Music-wise it's back to basics after the two best gigs I've seen in ages - Friday night it was down to The Dolphin in Uxbridge for the first time in a while to see Awaken. When East and myself arrived they were halfway through 'Come Together' which is never an easy song to play but they were making a very good job of it. Guitarist Pete cajoled me into making a 3 song appearance during their second set ('Play That Funky Music', 'Sweet Home Chicago' and 'Hard To Handle' in case you were wondering; incidentally he didn't have to try too hard - I even took my own guitar this time!) in what was overall an excellent performance that easily wiped out the memory of last month's rather peculiar evening in Ickenham.

For the first Upper Cut show since February we journeyed to Richmond on Saturday evening for a gig at The Fox and Duck (you have to be very careful how you say that haven't you?!?) With Roger busy elsewhere Geoff 'Rockschool' Nicholls returned on drums for a show that was understandably a bit loose in places but which overall went very well. Pete from Awaken turned up with his wife Elaine, Big Al Reed joined us for 'Hoochie Coochie Man' and 'Sweet Home Chicago' and the landlady celebrated both her own birthday and 5 years of live music in the pub - a fine night all round.

And on Sunday The Duplicates made a very welcome visit to the Load of Hay; featuring the drumming talents of Dave Ruffy alongside Seamus Beaghen on Hammond Organ and Matt Percival on guitar they gave a fabulous show that featured an amazing selection of material ranging from the theme tune to 'The Dave Allen Show' (do you know the title? Answers on a postcard please, usual address) to the Jimmy Smith classic 'The Cat' with a healthy amount of Booker T. and The M.G's thrown in for good measure - all witnessed by something like 20 people. Ok so it was Mother's Day - but I don't mind admitting that it's starting to get difficult to keep up the enthusiasm for putting shows on when so few people turn up for a band that's as good as this one. Then again look at the two gigs I saw last week - both The New York Dolls and The Adverts faced adversity, even hostility from an audience, yet both came good by keeping going - after all they'd have got nowhere if they'd have just given up would they? Hmm... life is all questions sometimes isn't it? See - there's another one...

As I was walking home from the shop I saw the man in the light-coloured suit, looking a bit lost. There was no sign of the busker.

The week after the weekend before

Well what I actually did on Monday evening was answer phone calls and e-mails from people saying how much they'd enjoyed the show(s) then watch an episode of 'C.S.I. New York' (which featured the band Train amid the usual blood and guts, and very good they sounded too) before having a relatively early night - only to wake up around 4 o'clock in the morning wondering about what songs The Price should play at next month's Ruislip gig. I really must learn to switch off sometimes.

Tuesday evening saw the first Flying Squad rehearsal for a while - we're playing at (you've guessed it!) The Load Of Hay this coming Saturday (3rd April if you fancy coming along) and with Mike away Huggy is depping on bass. We last gigged back in February so there was lots for Andy, Dave and myself to remember as well as a fair but for Huggy to learn; we'll have another get together before the gig which should do the trick.

Wednesday I heard that Jim Marshall had died - no, not the boss of the well-known guitar amplifier manufacturers, but the photographer who's amazing images of the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who seem to me to sum up the 1960's rock music 'scene' in many ways - have a look at his website and see how many you recognise...

Thursday it was up to 'We Will Rock You' to service the guitars before Stuart the guitar repairman and myself walked across town for the latest in our occasional visits to 'The Jersey Boys'. When we arrived chaos reigned as an understudy rehearsal was taking place; we re-strung a couple of Telecasters before checking how much has to be done when we return next Thursday - rather a lot as it happens!

It was a busy Balcony day on Friday, including a visit from Attendants (and indeed Cane Toads) bass player Ken who came in to order some t-shirts (unsurprisingly!) for their upcoming round of re-union gigs (everybody's doing it!) including the one with us supporting The Members. I'll heroically resist re-promoting it here... oh, go on then - all the details and links are at the end of the previous posting. Hurrah!

Yesterday evening it was time to point an electric guitar at an audience again (at last!) as Youngblood played at The Mermaid in St.Albans. With Roger away drumming for The Lee Ryder Band myself and the two Terry's were joined by the excellent Geoff Nicholls on drums, who people like me remember from the 'Rockschool' T.V. programme back in the 1980's. When we arrived we found the pub to be reasonably busy with no obvious place for a band to play - when we told them we were the band the bar staff simply moved the people from the area where the bands play. I thought this would annoy the people concerned, but they just moved as asked and carried on chatting as if nothing had happened. I suppose the locals know that they're sitting where the bands play and don't mind moving when the time comes? After a quick rehearsal (a.k.a. 'talk-through the set with Geoff') we went on to play 2 sets to an ever-more appreciative audience, with Geoff doing a fine job behind the kit and Terry as excellent as ever on vocals-and-walking-up-to-members-of-the-audience-and-getting-them-to-sing-along - how does he do that without getting insulted? Or worse?! A good gig although rather less euphoric than the previous weekend's shows - back to work in more ways than one...