Flight of the rat

It's Monday evening and I'm tired - methinks it's time for an early night. Still it's been a busy few days in mad-guitar-land :-

Sometime mid-afternoon on Wednesday I received a phone call from Upper Cut drummer Roger asking me if I'd like to go with him to see Deep Purple at The Roundhouse. Roger used to roadie for the band back in the day - I thought about it for a good second or two before saying yes... we arrived just in time to get a couple of drinks before classical music played over the P.A. system, the lights went down and the band started with what I assume was a new song. 'Into The Fire' and 'Hard Lovin' Man' followed - I last saw them play something like 20 years ago, they sounded great then and they sounded great now. I said a couple of postings ago that I was always a fan of the band, and for me there's something about Deep Purple that I always thought set them apart from many of their contemporaries. They were always amazing musicians, and time certainly hasn't dimmed their powers - I'd not seen Steve Morse before and his fabled alternate picking really was something to behold. I found it impossible not to enjoy 'Lazy', 'Space Truckin'', 'Perfect Strangers' - and let's face it, 'Smoke On the Water' really does have one of the ultimate guitar riffs doesn't it? And it was great to have a word with Roger Glover afterwards - I've told so many people the story of him playing at The Dolphin with us a couple of weeks ago!

Thursday it was off to The Purcell Room on London's South Bank to see Viv Albertine. Arguably it would be hard to find a greater contrast to the previous evening's entertainment - but I've never been one for only liking one type of music, or not liking something because I like something else if you know what I mean. Ms. Albertine certainly looked great (as this clip shows!) and with a band that included two violinists (!) she ran though a compelling set of songs that had the audience - and indeed me - enthralled throughout. Great stuff.

Ruts D.C. played their last show until the Damned tour support in November and December on Friday evening, at The Exchange in Bristol. A raucous performance was bought to an abrupt halt a few seconds into 'Staring At The Rude Boys' when Segs was hit in the face by his microphone. We restarted the song a few seconds later and the same thing happened again - 'once is a mistake, twice is a choice' as the old saying goes, and Segsy wasn't happy, even getting into the audience to try to find the person or persons responsible. I remember things like this happening all too often back in punkier times, and I guess it could then have been put down to youthful exuberance (or immaturity!) but with at least some of the audience being old enough to be grandparents it's a real shame that it still happens now. It certainly soured an otherwise enjoyable show, but with the afore-mentioned Damned dates on the horizon the band is in an optimistic mood and is not about to let something as daft as this change that. Well, I'm certainly not!

Me on guitar,
Rat Scabies on drums.
Oh yes!

I got home around 4am; 5 hours later I was in Balcony Shirts saying things like 'this is the sort of day that takeaway coffee was invented for'. No time to worry about that now though, as it's off to Wealdstone Football Club (better known to many as Tropic At Ruislip) for the 6th Annual Paul Fox Social Club. With both the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines off due to 'planned engineering works' numbers were down a bit on last year's gathering, but there were more than enough people there to make the evening work. I made a guest appearance with The Members - playing 'The Sound Of The Suburbs' with Rat Scabies on drums was certainly something for me to remember - and I'm told that the evening raised several thousand pounds for The Michael Sobell Hospice, which can only be good news if you think about it.

The next morning I was at RnR Studios by 10am for a Back To Zero rehearsal. We'd not played together for several months, and with a show coming up at The Railway Hotel in Southend next month a get-together was definitely overdue - pleasingly it only took a couple of songs for us to get back into the swing of things, which was good news as we are obliged to play two sets at the gig and so are adding several cover versions to our repertoire alongside a new song or two. We've got another rehearsal booked before the Southend appearance as well as a planned recording session so hopefully we should be on good form for the gig. 
I don't mind admitting that I was flagging a bit by the end of the session, and when I got home went back to bed for a couple of hours. I'm sure I didn't have to do that when I was younger! Ah well... still I was sufficiently revitalised to return to Tropic At Ruislip for a blues evening that featured Big Dez and Storm Warning - both bands played well but once again there wasn't much in the way of audience numbers which was a real shame. I guess people aren't too keen on 'rail replacement buses'? 

I've got no shows this week so I suppose there will be plenty of time to catch up on some other things... whatever they are...

Purple patches, purple prose, purple passages...

Well as you might well imagine the news that Ruts D.C. were to support Wilko Johnson at Koko this coming Monday created something of a stir in my little world. The possibility first arose while we were out in Germany last month, and there have been more than a few 'will we? / won't we?' moments over the interim period until the show was finally confirmed. Under normal circumstances this would be easily the most exciting musical event in this posting - it's still probably the winner in that particular chart but last Friday's Upper Cut gig at The Dolphin in Uxbridge runs it surprisingly close...

One of my favourite pre-punk bands were (and indeed still are) the mighty Deep Purple, whose 'Made In Japan' live double album received many-a spin on my record player back in the day. Upper Cut drummer Roger was a roadie for the band in the 1970s, and as we were on our way to the gig he said that 'Roger' might be coming to the show. Ah - that'll be Roger Glover then. Oo-er... well not only did he come to our gig but he also joined Roger, Terry and myself to play 'Rock Me Baby' and 'Goin' Down' to the incredulity of much of the audience and, if I'm honest, me. It was really him, the bloke out of Deep Purple, playing with us. Amazing. And maybe most importantly he was a really nice chap, without a hint of the sort of arrogance or pretension that I've so often had to listen to over the years from ain't-never-been local musicians who bang on about themselves endlessly and never even ask how you are let alone how your music is going. I'll stop now before I start ranting... but in a celebrity-packed evening we also had ex - Keith Moon chauffeur Peter 'Dougal' Butler, Ali McKenzie of The Birds and the guru of the practice drum kit Bill Sanders in the audience. Strange but true, and definitely a night to remember.

On Thursday Ruts D.C. found themselves back at The Music Complex in Deptford for the first time in a while - with the Koko gig coming up we decided to get together to run through some new song ideas and to work out a set for Monday's show. We spent the first half of the session working a potential new song ides based on a riff from Segs and then floundered for a while as we attempted to put a 40 minute support show together; after stopping for coffee we returned to put a set together in no time and then played through it from start to finish with no breaks and no mistakes. Isn't caffeine amazing?!? Unfortunately during the session I discovered a crack in the back of the headstock on my Les Paul - I guess it received a knock at some point during the previous few days or weeks? Either way I dropped it off to Stuart the guitar repair man on the way back from the rehearsal, and he's just bought it round to me looking (almost) as good as new. Top man!

Friday night Big Al Reed and the Blistering Buicks returned to The Three Mariners in Bagshot. As I picked my guitar up to start the first set it felt like ages since I'd last played with the band although it was actually only at the start of September - mind you a lot has happened since then... my good friend Pete Kerr has been depping for me in the meantime and doing a fine job by all accounts - he played with us on Friday, which was fortuitous from my point of view as I felt as though I'd forgotten most of the set! Mac Poole kept it all together depping for Dave on drums, and the show went sufficiently well for us to be offered two more gigs including next Christmas Eve (!) so perhaps I didn't play too badly after all?

Right - I'm off to Camden Town to see tonight's Wilko gig. We're playing with him tomorrow night you know...