Weekend warriors

What follows was indeed written when it says that it was written - it appears here unedited except for a bit of tidying up here and there, especially the bits where I couldn't read my handwriting...

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Hello from the 11.36 train from Glasgow to London. It's Sunday 7th July and I've got a headache. And I feel like going back to sleep. I won't though - not for a while anyway - as I'm going to write up my memories of the last two weekends of Ruts D.C. gigs for the blog page that I keep saying that I must get around to writing more for, but never actually do... here we go then - stop me if you've heard this one before...

Friday 28th June, Greenwich 

Hot in every sense of the word, both physically and emotionally. Like an idiot I decided to wear a jacket for the first couple of songs - when I tried to take it off I discovered that it had stuck to me. Ah well. I knew I'd be a fashion victim in the end. And nothing had prepared me for (a) seeing a t-shirt with my face on it (Dave and Segs are on it too, but I think you know what I mean) and (b) people not only buying it but wearing it too. 

The show itself was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 'Babylon's Burning' single being released - since we were unable to ascertain a definite date for this we chose one that it had been in the singles chart on four decades earlier. Any excuse eh? The Pelton Arms in Greenwich is a splendid pub, and it was suitably packed for our show which we streamed live on the band's Facebook page (ooh - for a minute there I sounded almost like I knew what I was talking about didn't I? Anyway here is the footage if you'd like to see it) and which went fantastically well. People travelled far and wide to see us, which was a very humbling experience from our point of view. We really must do an acoustic album one day mustn't we?

Saturday 29th June, Glasgow

Rain of near-biblical proportions held off right until the moment that we got out of our taxi from the train station and discovered that we were at the wrong entrance to the park. Bugger! As the world-weary security guard put it, 'welcome to Glasgow boys'. You have to love somewhere that they leave a traffic cone on the head of a statue over the weekend as 'there's no point in taking it off until Monday, they just put it back up there if we do' though don't you? Still the Kelvingrove Bandstand is a remarkable venue, and it was great to see the familiar faces of the Stranglers road crew as we arrived for our soundcheck. At showtime the rain had stopped, the sun was shining and all was right with the world - until Segs sang the words 'thunder and lightning' in 'Jah War' and the proverbial heavens opened. Poncey English people (like me!) ran for cover while every Scots person just carried on watching - as one chap put it to me afterwards, 'I was more worried about my beer getting watered down'. A great gig, and The Stranglers were pretty good too. Mind you, they usually are.

Homeward bound we changed trains at Crewe where we spotted a rainbow t-shirt-wearing  Cliff Richard boarding our London train. Within seconds we were all texting each other with unrepeatable variations of his hit single song titles. Well, we couldn't say them out loud…

Friday 5th July, Caerphilly

Well I'm lucky enough to do some pretty amazing things with an electric guitar in my

hand, and playing at Caerphilly Castle is definitely among them. Possibly the most stunning venue I've ever been lucky enough to play in, our dressing room was up a seemingly endless stone spiral staircase - the word 'room' doesn't do it justice, it was a stone hall with, among other things, a tapestry of a hanging on one of the walls. And if that wasn't enough, The Tommy Cooper Walk Of Fame was across the road. Earlier we had a meal in the Volare Italian restaurant, where in addition to the magnificent food we were given complimentary limoncellos (being the heathen that I am I'd not had one before. I guess I need to get out more?) while fans came in off the street to ask for photographs with us. Our gig was even better than the previous week's show, with plenty of Ruts t-shirts in the crowd and smiling faces all round. Afterwards I went up onto the viewing area above the right hand side of the stage, where the unexpected excitement of audience members waving caused me to give what might best be described as a rather peculiar impression of The Pope. They went completely mad when Dave and Segs appeared. The Stranglers were excellent once again, but as I said last time, they usually are.

Saturday 6th July, Dunoon

After the C.C. show we drove to The Britannia Hotel in Bromsgrove in an attempt to break the near-astronomical distance that we had to travel to the next gig. On arrival sometime around 2 a.m. we were sternly informed that breakfast didn't start until 8 a.m. - when we arrived at the allotted time it looked as though it had been open for ages and was packed out. First world problems eh? A few hours of fitful sleep in the bus followed (aided and abetted by Mott The Hoople and The Tom Robinson Band on the headphones) before we eventually arrived at the ferry port to Dunoon. Our journey across was enlivened no end by Segs's tales of his adventures sailing in the area, and when we arrived in Dunoon it was impossible not the think of The Wicker Man. Well, it was impossible for me not to think of it anyway. As we drove to The Queens Hall for our show as part of The Punk On The Peninsula Festival the picturesque tranquillity of the surrounding area contrasted with the assorted multi-coloured mohawks and punky t-shirts - when we arrived Fire Exit sounded good, Ian the promotor has provided a large bag of haggis-flavoured crisps (not for me thank you!) and Jennie from Rebellion and her pal Jo were cheery and friendly to all concerned. We played to an audience which sounded as though they'd been drinking all day or indeed all weekend - either that or they liked us (no one left as far as I could see) but they couldn't be bothered clapping. They treated The Cockney Rejects in much the same way, which I would imagine is something that their doctors wouldn't necessarily recommend - we missed the end of their set as we had to leave to catch the 10 o'clock ferry. This was a shame as we also just missed T.V. Smith who was arriving for his show the next morning, but it was still light and the bay and surrounding area looked absolutely amazing. From there it was back to Glasgow for much merriment and a bottle of red wine (or two) in Dave's room with Reservoir Dogs on in the background. At least that goes some way towards explaining this morning's headache.

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So there you have it - four great shows. And we're looking forward to more next week when we play both electric and acoustic shows at The Rebellion Festival in Blackpool where I'll also be appearing with Alvin Gibbs and The Disobedient Servants among others. I will be attempting regular posts from the festival on my Facebook page, and if you're going I'll see y'all there...

Scotland Calling

Time for a quick progress report from North Of The Border, written at the times and in the places indicated, a little garbled here and there but left unedited...

Thursday 14th, 10.56 am, Room 52 at The Bothwell Bridge Hotel in Glasgow.

I like Scotland. It's a great country isn't it? and it's always a great place to play. We've got five shows in five days here this week - excellent. 
We - Ruts D.C. (Dave, Segs and myself) with our sound man Bob and merch girl Rhiannon - travelled up to Glasgow yesterday on the 12.30 pm train from Euston Station while our 'new' driver Harry (I don't mean that he's never driven before, it's just the first time that we've worked with him!) had made the epic journey North in his bus with all our equipment, stopping off to see family and friends on the way. He'd also dropped my ailing amp off at the Marshall factory on the way - it stopped working a few songs into our performance at The Undercover Festival in Margate last Saturday. Bugger! I'm hopeful that there's not much wrong with it as the lights were still on but there was definitely no one home... thankfully there was a spare amp available so the show continued (rather well as it happens) but it's obviously something that has got to be sorted out. 
Last night's gig at The Audio sold out - not bad for a Wednesday night eh? Ok, it's not the biggest venue in the World, but a sell out is a sell out... although I'm currently hampered by a deaf right ear (Earwax! Bah!) I think we played well - tonight we're in Dundee where we've played a couple of times before. I remember the first time being a great night while the second one was a slightly odd evening which wasn't too well attended (not much promotion apparently) and the support band played 'Staring At The Rude Boys'. Strange. Let's see what happens this time.

Friday 15th, 11.10 am leaving Dundee.

'It's all glamour this rock 'n' roll lark' thought Leigh as he helped Harry carry a speaker cabinet up the seemingly endless flights of stairs. As he stumbled breathlessly through the double doors leading into the venue he thanked gawd that the cabinet was on wheels while The Lurkers looked down on him from the wall near the bar. My heart's in the shadow - well it feels as though it's going to burst through my shirt to be honest. It's great to be in show business... there's a statue of Desperate Dan a few hundred yards away in the town centre - we could perhaps do with him here now. 
Five-and-a-bit hours later my heart once again felt as though it might burst through my shirt, only this time for a very different reason. We'd just played an excellent (even though I say so myself!) set at a very appreciative audience and all was right with the world. We added 'Tears On Fire' to the set, a tricky song to play but I thought that we did it well - we'd ran through it during a sound check that also included 'Suffragette City' and a new song called 'Innocent' which isn't finished yet but is showing great promise. The Beat Generator turned out to be a great venue (it'd be even better if it had a bloomin' lift!) and the riskily - named Invercarse Hotel was a nice hotel. It would have been good to have spent a bit more time there but the road to Aberdeen beckons. Get in the van Leigh - it's all glamour, this rock 'n' roll lark...

Saturday 15th, 10.42 am Room 217 at The Douglas Hotel in Aberdeen.

Victory from the jaws of defeat. That's quite a saying isn't it? I wonder where it comes from? It was used more than a few times last night, and not without reason - Drummonds is a good venue for any number of reasons (not least the girls behind the bar) but sadly the P.A. system isn't one of them. Bob is something of a wizard in my not-so-humble-opinion, and he needed all of his magical powers last night - a fraught sound check nearly fell apart when Segs uttered the immortal words 'we might as well just all get pissed, I can't hear a thing'. Not the best thought to have. 
Fast forward three hours and the place is packed  - The Media Whores are on stage and the sound is... ok... much better than earlier anyway. That's a relief. I wonder how we'll get on? 
Two hours later I'm wringing my shirt out in the dressing room. A great gig. A really great gig. Audience fantastic. Band sounded great. Thank Christ for that. From the jaws of defeat indeed. 

Sunday 16th, 11.31 am Room 304 at The Holiday Inn in Edinburgh.

It's our last day and indeed night in Scotland. Shame. These have been great gigs, with some wonderful moments.If you'd have been at La Belle Angele last night you'd have seen a brave attempt at '20th Century Boy' (Marc Bolan had died 40 years ago to the day) during an eventful rendition of 'In A Rut' which also the stage being plunged into total (and I mean total) darkness when the stage lights failed. Apparently there was a problem with the lighting desk - they also went off during  'Love In Vain' which resulted in more than a few, erm, jazz chords from your humble narrator. Let's hope that never makes it onto YouTube... the sound check also featured an unexpected incident when Psychic Investor Mark (during the PledgeMusic campaign for 'Music Must Destroy' you could become a Psychic Investor which meant that you could come to sound checks) responded to Segs's question 'any requests?' with the words 'Out Of Order' - I reckon that song was last played sometime in 1980 when the band was still The Ruts. We had a go. That's all I'm saying! We also had another go at 'Innocent' which I'm hoping will turn out to be a really good song; it might even make it to the stage sometime in this batch of gigs. Then again it might not - we played an 18 song set with a 3 song encore so it might be more of a case of 'what do we leave out?' rather than 'when do we play it?' Still that's not a bad problem to have. Maybe it's not a problem at all? 
Tonight we play in Falkirk. I've never been there before. We leave at midday so I'd better get my gear together.

Monday 18th, 12.35 pm on the train home.

Well that was a funny old night. It was an odd show to end on - we played well but the audience seemed rather subdued resulting in us thinking that we weren't going down very well. However as so often happens this wasn't the case - when we spoke to people afterwards many said that it was the best show that they'd ever seen at The Warehouse. And one person went further, observing that 'this is Sunday night in Scotland - everybody's been drinking since Friday afternoon'. Oh and The Bay City Rollers were apparently also playing in Falkirk last night, although I for one am not sure how that effected things. But however you look at it, it's been a pleasure to be in Scotland - but as previously discussed, it usually is.

So - was the Falkirk show any good? Click here to find out!

The new Ruts D.C. single 'Kill The Pain' is released today!

The new Ruts D.C. single 'Kill The Pain' comes out today on Westworld / Sosumi Records - it's certainly one of my favourite songs on 'Music Must Destroy' (incidentally Pete Sargeant has just published a splendid review of the album on Just Listen To This which you can read here - thanks Pete!) so I for one am well pleased that it's out in it's own right. And after what seems like an age of anticipation our tour with The Stranglers finally kicks off in Lincoln next Tuesday; it then winds it's way up and down England, Scotland and Wales (no Ireland sadly, but more about that in a minute) before finishing in Manchester on (gulp!) April 1st. It promises to be an absolute classic, and if you're coming along to a show then do please say hello. Blogging opportunities are likely to be few and far between but I will be attempting to update my Facebook page on a regular if not daily basis so if you're interested in following how it's all going that's the place to be.

And if you are interested in following how it's all going then you can find my Facebook page here. See you in Cyberspace!

As I say it's a great shame that we're not going to get over to Ireland this time - but we are playing with Stiff Little Fingers in Dublin on Friday 25th August before a very special show in Belfast the next night with SLF, The Stranglers and The Outcasts with Terri Hooley DJ-ing. Crikey! Did I really just type that? Yes, incredibly, I did. Hurrah! 

'Time and the devil is gonna bring me everything I need...'

Well it seems like ages since my last blog posting - probably because it is ages since my last blog posting. It turned out that it was a long two weeks, not one… it's been a busy, one might even say intense time since last we spoke - here, in no particular order, is what's been happening...

- Work has continued on the Ruts D.C. album 'Music Must Destroy'. 
Myself and Segs recorded some guitars at Jamm in Brixton and even though I say so myself, we made a pretty good job of it. There's still a way to go, but we'll get there in the end.

- I saw The Blockheads in Chelsea. 
I'd not been to Under The Bridge before - what an extraordinary venue. And what an extraordinary band The Blockheads were, are, and will continue to be. A great gig.

- Ruts D.C. rehearsed for and played at the 'Scotland Calling' festival.
A couple of short sessions at The Music Complex in Deptford set us up for a barnstorming 40 minute set at The ABC in Glasgow, which in turn set your humble narrator up for a barnstorming evening that saw much drinking, merriment and a fair bit of time spent in The Ramonas's' dressing room (no, I'm not quite sure how that happened either!) among the other many and varied highlights. Excellent!

- I worked many-a day at Balcony Shirts. 
It's a busy time in the shop so I've been helping out whenever I can.

- We made a promotional video for the new Ruts D.C. single 'Psychic Attack'. 
Filmed by Graham Trott and featuring noted actor Peter O'Connor, I've seen a rough cut and it looks bloody great. The single and indeed the video is out at the end of next week. Exciting stuff!

- Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks played at The Queen's Arms in Colnbrook.
It was Al's birthday, which went some way towards explaining the lightness of the mood - right up until the moment that someone shouted 'IT"S ALL KICKING OFF OUTSIDE' and virtually the whole pub ran to the windows or indeed went outside, presumably in the hope of witnessing said 'kicking off'. I always think that people who do things like that have never been unfortunate enough to have been caught in a violent incident, as anyone who has generally moves quickly in the other direction… incidentally it didn't all kick off outside, or indeed anywhere else for that matter. Good.

- I guested with Department S at The Fleece in Bristol supporting The U.K. Subs. 
I joined Dept. S for their last three songs and they sounded great with or without me; The Subs were of course as mighty as ever, and first band on Knock Off were pretty good too.

- Probably some other things as well.
It's hard to remember sometimes...

Obviously there's a lot to more to say about all of the above but, rather like the tale of The Giant Rat Of Sumatra, that's a story for which the world is not yet prepared. Or that I haven't got time to write up. Or something. 

More this week. Or next week. Or something.

A Farewell To Arms

First things first - the always-worth-reading Louder Than War website has reviewed the Ruts D.C. albums 'Live On Stage' and 'Rhythm Collision Volume 1'. You can read all about it here - thanks Ged!

Meanwhile Ruts D.C. have played four memorable shows in Scotland. I wrote a suitably over-verbose (and let's face it, overlong!) piece on proceedings in the bus on our epic journey home yesterday, but I haven't got time to type it up here before we leave for the next batch of shows on Thursday so it's gone into the same pile as all the other pieces that I write for these hallowed pages that never see the light of day. There isn't actually that many of them, but I thought that the last line sounded good... however this one and my account of our European tour back in September will hopefully get written up over the Christmas period or in the all-too-quiet-looking month of January. In the meantime Dave and Segs have been writing some excellent blogs which can be found on the band's website, and here are some heavily-edited highlights from my point of view :-

Thursday 13th - The Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh

A great venue and a great gig, with excellent support provided by The Fast Girls (splendid boy on guitar / girl on bass vocal harmonies) and Finger Halo who featured ex - Rezillos / Human League guitarist Jo Callis and who played 'Where Have All The Good Times Gone?' by The Kinks and 'The Supermen' by David Bowie, which has to be a good thing if you think about it. The Bow Bar a few doors along was the best post show drink for quite some time.

Friday 14th - Buskers, Dundee

Visited Hog's Head Records (after being invited there by Tim the boss who was at our gig the previous evening) and Guitar Guitar (in search of a Vox AC15 to try next to an AC30) in the morning before travelling to Dundee for a seemingly under-promoted but nevertheless very enjoyable show. As we arrived back from eating at the noisiest Wetherspoons pub that I've ever been in support band The Cherry Bombz played 'Staring At The Rude Boys' amongst their array of punk covers. Weird!

Saturday 15th - Audio, Glasgow

Saw my great mate John Barnson at the gig who presented me with a bottle of Valt Scottish vodka and a Government health warning. The Media Whores and Hateful provided superb support (the former being aided and abetted by an, er, exotic dancer and the latter finishing with a great version of the McGuinness Flint classic 'When I'm Dead And Gone') and Johnny the bagpipes player joined us for 'In A Rut'. Surreal! We attended The Alabama 3 aftershow party (they'd been playing at The ABC) with predictable results. Good job I hadn't opened the vodka.

Sunday 16th - The Moorings Bar, Aberdeen

Rapidly becoming one of our favourite venues, this was a suitably raucous end to our Scottish shows. On the way there we stopped at Ye May Gang Fair And Fare War, a fantastic service station like something from another time; before the show Segs used a fork to turn his broken glasses into a pair of what might best be described as 'punky - pince nez' (that's where the title of this posting comes from!) and we very didn't make it from the dressing room to the stage as we were laughing so much at each other's trombone impersonations. Really.

So there you have it - the full story another time. Probably. In the meantime we're in Leicester on Thursday, Leamington Spa on Friday and Derby on Saturday. See you there if you're going...

The boot is on the other foot

A record is always better than a CD isn't it?

So there we were, setting our gear up and getting ready to soundcheck, when a cardboard box with RUTS D.C. written on it in felt tip pen arrived. Was anyone expecting anything? No. We'd better have a look inside it then... ooh, it's a stack of Ruts bootleg albums and an accompanying letter to Segs and Dave that among other things suggests some rather creative accountancy... you can see one of the records and the letter in the above photograph - the album comes in four different vinyl colours (black, white, red and green - pretty punky huh?) and if you'd like one then they're available on the Ruts D.C. merchandise stall while stocks last. And once they're gone, they're gone, unless The Human Punk sends us some more... I must make sure that I get one for myself!

In the meantime we've just played three shows up in Scotland - Friday we were at Ivory Blacks in Glasgow, Saturday at The Windsor Hotel in Kirkcaldy and Sunday at The Moorings Bar in Aberdeen. It's been a great few days - the venues were excellent, the audiences were enthusiastic (to say the least!) and the band (with Seamus returning on keyboards alongside Molara, Dave, Segs and myself) all played well. You can't ask for much more than that can you? But since our driver Marc had to get home quickly today we had to make our way to Glasgow Airport after the Aberdeen show (we got there around 4am) then make our way back today - as I sit here typing this I'm almost beyond tired, which is why this posting is so short. I may write a longer piece on the last few days later in the week - if I can remember what happened... in the meantime it's back to basics for your humble narrator this week, as The Upper Cut visit one of their favourite haunts this Friday evening, when we'll be at The Dolphin in Uxbridge from 9pm. It feels as though we haven't played together in ages, so it'll be great to see the lads again. And there's a very exciting just-confirmed-a-few-minutes-ago Ruts D.C. support gig in London on the horizon - but more about that next time.