'I've got dreams to remember...'

So - how do I describe the last few days? 

Well yesterday is reasonably straightforward to get to grips with - I got up, did my washing, caught up on phone calls and went to see a great gig by The Razors at The Feathers in Rickmansworth. Easy. It's the previous few days that's a bit trickier to put into words.
Here, in essence, is what happened -

Wednesday - rehearsed with Ruts D.C. during the day and The London Sewage Company in the evening.

Thursday - travelled to Paris with Ruts D.C., where we stayed in Montreuil in anticipation of playing a show there the following evening.

Friday - Ruts D.C. played said show at Cafe La Peche, part of which was filmed for inclusion in 'Tracks', a long-running Arte television show.

Saturday - travelled back to London where I played at The Shepherd's Bush Empire with The London Sewage Company and The Water Rats in King's Cross with Neck.

And that, in simple terms is what happened. But there was more, so much more to it all than that.

When you're a kid trying to learn to play the guitar, you dream a lot. Well I certainly did. I've realised that some musicians are more career-orientated from the word go when it comes to what they want out of playing music. Some want money, some want fame, some want sex, some want drugs, some want all of the above and more - and some of course get all of the above and more. I realise now that I was much more naive than that - maybe that's why I don't get very much of any of the above? On the other hand I get to do the things that I do - and that's alright. 

So what were my dreams about? Well as I say, I was pretty naive; I wanted to play music here, abroad, on television, in big venues, in bands that people had heard of - and I did all of those things in the last few days. Pretty good huh? Well I think it is - maybe one day I'll get some of the other things too? 

Blackpool Tower looks different
at this time of year...

The gigs themselves were great. Really great. Ruts D.C. last played a show way back in January at The 100 Club and rehearsals since then have mostly involved working on new material, so this week's get together was to revise our live show. And revise it we did - alongside the new song 'Secondhand Child' we also added a version of 'Brand New Cadillac' which Segs had sung at last month's Joe Strummer film gig; I'm not sure how long it'll stay in our set but it's certainly good fun to play and it made a good encore song. A film crew from the French and German television show 'Tracks' filmed part of our performance and an interview with Dave and Segs; they also filmed us at the Le Rond Point bar which has been our virtual home for the duration of our visit. We were staying next door at The Hotel de Belfort and had gone there shortly after our arrival on Thursday evening - Segs used to live in Paris and his astonishing command of the French language (or more specifically Parisian French, which I'm told is quite different) meant that we were accepted almost immediately, and indeed were in there until closing time. Despite our headaches we returned there the next day for lunch (which I missed as I decided to be a tourist and head for Place de la Concorde for some sightseeing) and for some food before the show. If I was to say that Segs was presented with a large bottle of red wine by Omar the owner as we were leaving for London on Saturday morning then you'll realise how well he was thought of in said establishment. The presence of the TV film crew also shows how well The Ruts and indeed Ruts D.C. are thought of in France - the 'Chorus' footage remains the best visual record of the original band playing live, and anticipation of our show was high. I don't think I'm being big headed when I say that we delivered the goods - you know when you've played a good show in the same way that you know when you've played a bad one, and this was definitely a good one. Our next gig is in Bedford on April 25th with The Neville Staple Band, and I'm looking forward to that being a good one too. Well you have to think like that don't you?

And then there was Saturday. After our Eurostar journey (isn't The Channel Tunnel an amazing thing?) I got something to eat before heading to Shepherd's Bush where I was playing at The Empire with The London Sewage Company supporting The Men They Couldn't Hang. The Empire. I've seen so many great gigs there over the years - The Who, The Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop... and then there are those OGWT gigs from back on the seventies that I used to watch in between dreams - Rory Gallagher, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton... I'd not played there before and it has always been a place that I hoped that I'd play at one

Your humble narrator on stage
at The Shepherds Bush Empire.
Or is it a dream?

day. Things like this have a habit of being something of an anti-climax, and I was all too aware that this could happen here - thankfully our breathless 30 minute set was all that I hoped that it would be. And it was impossible to look out from the stage and think of the other people who had stood where I was now standing. I get far too romantic about this stuff sometimes don't I? Or maybe I don't get romantic enough? I should perhaps had stayed there all evening, watched main support band Merry Hell and headliners TMTCH, had a few drinks, talked to anybody that wanted to talk - but no, I had work to do. Neck were headlining an Easter Rising Commemoration gig at The Water Rats at 10.30, and as I left The SBE just after nine I'd be lying if I didn't say that part of me wished I was staying - but the other part of me was looking forward to playing at another venue that had previously eluded me on my (ahem!) musical journey through the venues of the World. Two name London venues in the same night - well, why not? And the Neck show was great too - it's good when that happens. Then again The Metropolitan Line was closed so I had a long and circuitous journey home - I don't remember that being in any of the dreams... 

Yeah I know, this piece is all a bit garbled - you should see the stuff I've left out!!

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...

New York

Well I may not have played any gigs myself last weekend but I did manage to get out to see a couple of very-different-from-each-other shows...

Friday night was punk night at The Peel in Kingston courtesy of Rat Scabies and Brian James playing 'Damned Damned Damned'. I saw them at The 100 Club back in June which was a great night but this show was if anything even better, despite James breaking a string a couple of songs in and his replacement guitar having what sounded like a problem with the jack socket. None of this stopped his playing sounding like an air raid - which brings me to the ever-amazing Mr. Scabies, who battered the hell out of his kit as he only ever does, and distinguished himself by counting as least one song in with the words 'one-two-three-GO!' Texas Terri handled the vocals well, Austin made a good job of the bass parts (and I managed to find his name this time, when I bumped into him outside!) and the audience loved every minute of it, as did I. Great stuff - and they're playing at the upcoming Paul Fox tribute night as mentioned in last week's posting, which should be one to remember.

On Saturday evening I ventured across to Tropic At Ruislip to see Irish guitar hero Pat McManus. As I arrived support band The Southern Rogues were roaring through 'Walking By Myself' - they played material by the likes of Thin Lizzy and Rory Gallagher but also had a few of their own songs which is always a good thing to see. And Pat McManus was as good (actually thinking about it he was probably even better) as when I saw him at the same venue two Octobers ago, still a bit 'rock' for my tastes but he's an undeniably excellent musician and one that I'm glad that I made the effort to see again. His band are pretty good too!

Only one gig for me this weekend, but what a gig it was, with Ruts D.C. at Fibbers in York.

We had a rehearsal at The Music Complex in Deptford on Friday afternoon - Segs had just flown in from America (he'd been back in Britain about five hours when we started at midday) and Dave had been away on holiday so it took a while to get going; that said we ran through our hour-and-a-bit's worth of live material as well as trying 'Dope For Guns' as a perspective addition to the show so we didn't do too badly. 
The journey up to York from London took us about five hours including a couple of coffee stops. We had a splendid eleven seat bus which gave me plenty of space to change my guitar strings on the way up (I really must be more organised mustn't I?!?) and for everyone to have a bit of room to themselves meaning that when we arrived at Fibbers the mood was good and spirits were high. 
We pulled up at the backstage area and those of us who hadn't been there before (including me) were immediately confused by there being two venues right next to each other. To the left it's Fibbers while to the right it's The Duchess which was playing host to Hazel O'Connor - a bit of a shame that the two acts were playing on the same night don't you think? Segs was just telling me that they'd played together at The Nashville Rooms (apparently the evening was interrupted by nazi skinheads) when Hazel herself came over and recounted the same story, adding that she'd got the part in 'Breaking Glass' after her performance that night. Interesting!
With everything soundchecked it was off to The Golden Fleece with Matt from The Chicago Blues Brothers (he lives nearby) for a pre-gig drink before going back to the venue to meet up with Jennie from The Rebellion Festival and Pascal Briggs and to see a few numbers from the support band Copasetics who sounded good, with some excellent trumpet work complementing their ska sound well.
9.15 and it's showtime - we sound very different with some people in the room (some venues are like that, I'm not really sure why) and it takes a song or two for us to adjust to things. Well, it certainly took me a while to get used to it...  by the time we got to 'Staring At The Rude Boys' (roughly the halfway point of the set) things were really taking off - as we left the stage after 'Babylon's Burning' the place was going wild, and we encored with the afore-mentioned 'Dope For Guns' before finishing with 'In A Rut'. It was maybe not quite as euphoric a performance as the Birmingham show earlier this month, but the comments from people afterwards made me realise just how much the songs mean to people, and how excited people are to see Ruts D.C. back on the stage.
From there it was back to London (amid much jollity including Dave showing us how a monkey peels a banana - really!) where we met the long-suffering Shirley at South Mimms Services around 3.30am (it's been a while since myself and herself been there at that sort of time!) and I spent much of today asleep. Rock 'n' Roll eh?

Ships in the night

This posting was written more-or-less as soon as I arrived home, and it's somewhat disjointed structure reflects my tiredness at the time. I've thought about re-writing it but it seems to sum the previous 2 days up for me. See what you think...

Arriving at an airport at 6.45 on a Wednesday morning isn't always an enjoyable thing to do; on this occasion it wasn't too painful, and as I picked my way through several gangs of holidaying lads I half expected them all to wearing t-shirts that we'd printed in the shop. (We've been doing rather a lot of that lately!) I was just paying a small fortune for a thimble full of coffee and a plastic croissant from The Stansted Landslide (that's what it said it was called on the till, honest! You may know it better as this...) when a text message arrived from Pete - 'How are you doing mate?' was the cheery question; my reply of 'bored, tired, fed up - usual Wednesday morning, except I'm at Stansted Airport' seemed to go down well. I was sat attempting to drink coffee that was hotter than the surface of the sun when Pete, his wife Jayne and P.R. man Paul arrived. When we checked in with B.M.I. Baby I received the surprising news that I was allowed to carry my guitar on to the aircraft as hand luggage. I don't recall ever being able to do that before, although it may have had something to do with the fact that there were only 30 or so people on the flight. The flight to Belfast passed quickly due in no small part to the latest copy of 'Vive Le Rock!' magazine, and it was strange to walk straight out through arrivals without having to look for outsize baggage. A short taxi ride later we were checking in at The Stormont Hotel - I'm sharing room 234 with Matt who's arrived on another flight, and we've got everything from Them Crooked Vultures and Howlin' Wolf playing on the iPod dock in our room before very long. We're here for a showcase performance of 'White Star', a new musical based on the story of The Titanic. Pete and Paul are involved in promoting this and another show called 'Celtic Dreams' which is also being showcased at the same event at The Andrews Memorial Hall in nearby Comber. The music for the show has been written by Sam Davidson and John Wilson, both of whom play in the reformed version of Rory Gallagher's old band Taste. (John is the original drummer in the band.) I met Sam when we played in Belfast a couple of years ago (click here for the story) and had been given some demo recordings to learn the songs from as well as talking to him a couple of times on the phone. I spent much of the afternoon with Sam at Holywood Studios (which he and John run) going through the multi-track recording of 'The Road To Paradise' deciding which guitar parts we would play live and which ones would be left on the backing track. He also played me some recent Taste recordings - they're about to change their name to WMD and release a new album which judging by what I heard should be well worth hearing.

After returning to the hotel and catching up on some phone calls we all went to The Ganges Indian restaurant in Holywood where my vegetable masala was both very red and very nice. Myself and Matt then spent a couple of hours in the hotel bar (oh yes!) before retiring to our room for some cans of lager (Matt bought them earlier - good boy!) and to watch an excellent live set from Beady Eye on the television.

Hay fever meant that I woke up on Thursday morning with sinus-induced deafness. Matt bellowing 'BREAKFAST FINISHES IN 15 MINUTES!' finally got through to me and a stumble down to the restaurant more-or-less woke me up. A lazy morning followed (good!) with punk rock on the iPod and tennis on the telly before Walter the driver took Matt and myself to The Andrews Memorial Hall for our allotted 3 o'clock arrival time. As we arrived 'Celtic Dreams' were running through their part of the evening so I walked down to the shops to get something to eat. Back at the venue everything's set up and ready to go - we're D.I.-ing into the P.A. rather than using amplifiers and after a couple of run throughs 'The Road To Paradise' is sounding good.

The evening's event lasted about an hour; I was on stage for around 4 minutes, by far the shortest performance I've ever been part of. Pete gave a short introduction during which he referred to the show as 'Maiden Voyage' - looks like he's changed the title? - before leaving the stage. He walks past us with the words 'listen out for the seagulls'; on our cue we walk out on to the stage, pick up our instruments and await the start of the track. As it begins we exchange anxious looks when we realise that our guitars aren't audible - they finally come on during the second verse to our collective relief. Our harmonised solo goes well, and then suddenly the song is over and we've completed our part of proceedings. As we walk around to the front of the hall we smile and shake hands - it went well. Good. With an audience largely consisting of potential investors it was a night to give a good performance, and from what I saw and heard everyone did.

Back at our hotel there's food and drink a-plenty; I'm given a bowl of something that's supposed to be a vegetarian meal although it looks and smells a bit fishy (literally!) to me. I end up with a few roast potatoes, a dollop of coleslaw and, since there's no cutlery left, a teaspoon. Sitting in a roomful of millionaires (well, that's what I decided that they were!) I felt angry, sad, depressed - eventually I retired hurt to room 234 where Pete came and found me, asking if I was alright, looking really worried... yes I'm alright, just want to be on my own for a while. I laid on the bed gazing absentmindedly at an episode of 'The Mentalist' on the T.V. - I reflected on the previous day or so, mostly spent in a very expensive hotel for a few minutes on stage followed by a plate of lukewarm spuds. What was all that about? And why hadn't I noticed how good looking the woman that plays the head detective in 'The Mentalist' is before now?

Matt arrived back in the room and snapped me out of my introspection with the suggestion that we go for a drink. Good man.

As I fought to switch my alarm off at 5.15 this morning I realised that it probably hadn't been a particularly good idea to finish working your way through several pints of Guinness less than 4 hours before you're due to leave for the airport to catch your flight home. Oh well. I shook myself awake and decided that with a flight this early it doesn't matter what time I'd gone to bed, I'd still be tired. Probably. We weren't quite so successful at getting my guitar to qualify as hand luggage this time, although that may have something to do with the flight being nearly full. One of the check-in girls tell me that they can walk it on for me and if there's a spare seat then it can go in that, otherwise it will have to go in the hold. Hmm... I once read somewhere that B.B. King always buys an airline ticket for his guitar in the name of Lucille King and sits next to it during the flight - when I was asked if I'd like to move from my seat in row 19 to sit next to my guitar in row 3 I jumped at the chance. Childish? Me? Yeah, right... as I fastened the seatbelt around it I thought about asking the stewardess to take a picture of me and my guitar for a laugh but instead contented myself with a bleary smile. It's a simple life sometimes.

Just before 8 a.m. I was back at The Stansted Landslide (why on Earth is it called that?!?) paying a small fortune for a thimble full of coffee and a plastic croissant; I then sat in the same seat that I'd been sitting in when I met up with Pete, Jayne and Paul just over 2 days earlier. And so it goes.

I got home just after 10 a.m. - I'll let you know what happens with the projected production of 'White Star' (or whatever it ends up being called) as soon as there's any news...

All fingers and thumbs

In addition to beginning the long road to Balcony Guitars (the lads there want to open a shop called 'Leigh's Mad World Of Guitars'! Really!) the first 'no-gigs-this-week' week for a while included myself and Scott losing the keys to the shop on Saturday (if I told you where we found them you'd never believe me) and a Sunday evening viewing by East, Big Tel and myself of a DVD of the Madness musical 'Our House' (if I told you why we watched it you'd definitely never believe me!) I also had chance to catch the ever-amazing Kris Dollimore at The Crown in Leyhill last Thursday where he was as fabulous as ever, with a remarkable version of 'Castles Made Of Sand' standing out among an evening of standout performances.

The gap in gigging has given me a bit of time to do something that I actually don't get chance to do very often - practice (as opposed to play) the guitar. I've been promising myself that I'd spend some time with my acoustic guitar working on my fingerpicking and slide playing for quite a while now - Mr. Dollimore is something of a master of these styles, and when I mumbled to him something like 'I must get around to practicing some of that stuff' he replied enthusiastically 'yes, you must!' After discovering that we're both big fans of Rory Gallagher (especially this number) he went on to advise that I listen to John Fahey (a master of solo, or as he himself called it, 'primitive' guitar) among others. So sometime in the last few days I dug out my copy of 'Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes' (now THERE'S an album title!) along with '6 and 12 String Guitar' by Leo Kottke and 'Folk, Blues and Beyond' by Davy Graham (I'm ambitious if nothing else!) and got to work.

An hour or so later and your humble narrator was getting frustrated and not a little annoyed. I'm normally quite good at working out how to play things from recordings, but this stuff - well I couldn't get anywhere with it. It's not that I couldn't hear what was happening, it's more that I couldn't work out how to play what is often 2 or even 3 independent rhythms and melodies at the same time. And if that's not bad enough all of these players sing at the same bloody time. Bah! Still, no-one ever got anywhere by giving up so I kept playing... and playing... and playing... and eventually hit upon the idea that transcriptions of this music must be out there on the Internet somewhere (yeah, I know it's second nature to most people these days to 'google it', but I'm really old ok?!) and so launched myself into cyberspace in search of some help. It turned out that there's acres of transcriptions including some on the afore-mentioned player's websites. Excellent!

Well I've all but worn out a set of strings but I'm still not much nearer to being able to play anything other than a faltering version of 'Anji' and I could already play that! (If you don't know the tune or you've never heard it before then here it is; if you want some more from Davey Graham then try this and indeed this - Jimmy Page was listening carefully at the time wasn't he?!?) Still I'm making some headway with John Fahey's 'Some Summer Day' and have, since I stumbled upon something that sounded a bit like the opening riff, attempted to put together a solo version of 'Every Little Thing' by The Beatles. Like I say, nothing if not ambitious... but in addition to it becoming increasingly clear to me that the term 'primitive' is highly subjective I fear a career as an acoustic troubadour specialising in fingerbusting fingerpicking will always elude me although it's something that I'd like to develop in the future if only for the practice at playing something different. Then again, perhaps I should just stick to this sort of thing... and I haven't got around to trying any slide stuff yet. But I will. Probably. After all, did I really think I'd master an entire style in a few days?

I've got a gig this weekend. Good.