Poster Boy

Well the reaction to next year's Ruts D.C. '40 Years Of The Crack' tour has been little short of amazing. Shows have been added in Dublin and Belfast (oh yes!) and I'm told that tickets are already selling well - exciting times!

Your humble narrator next to
the frankly enormous poster.
Well it is, isn't it?

One of the venues on said tour is The Ritz in Manchester, scene of the first 'reformed - Ruts D.C.' show way back in November 2011. You can read how I felt about it at the time here if you like - we've come a long way since then but it's always a pleasure to return to The Ritz and indeed to Manchester, which we did a couple of Saturdays ago when we appeared at the North West Calling festival. Since we were on at the very civilised time of 5.30 pm and backline was provided we decided to travel up and back by train - somewhat inevitably the journey up involved a bottle of wine (or two!) meaning that when we arrived at The Ritz spirits were (literally!) high. We were pleased to discover that we were using a previously-unknown-to-us club under the stage as a dressing room area, which was a good deal cooler than the hotter-than-hell auditorium where Dirt Box Disco were roaring through their set to the approval of all concerned. With Penetration on before us there was a chance for me to say hello to a few people before returning backstage to get ready for our show. And what a show it was - despite the soaring temperature we played a powerful 45 minute set which went down splendidly well and which set us up for our return next year. After watching most of the Peter And The Test Tube Babies show it was time for our taxi back to the station just over 4 hours after we'd arrived - although there was time for your humble narrator to grab a quick pic next to the frankly enormous promotional poster for the afore-mentioned February gig. And talking of frankly enormous promotional items - click here to see a promo film for the tour on YouTube. As I say, exciting times.

Last Friday (July 6th if you're counting) I saw The Stranglers in the somewhat unlikely setting of Hampton Pool. Well, I say unlikely - it seems that they put gigs on there regularly throughout the summer, so hopefully we'll find ourselves there one day. Support came from Jawbone whose versions of songs by the likes of Little Feat and Stephen Stills were at home in the perhaps rather middle class surroundings of an outdoor swimming pool but seemed somewhat incongruous next to The Men In Black. Talking of whom - I guess that when you see a band play 20-odd nights in a row on tour but still want to go to a show they must be something special, and The Stranglers certainly fall into that category. Talking to them afterwards they seemed unhappy with their efforts but it all sounded good where I was.

The next night Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks played The Three Wishes in Edgware. It's a familiar haunt for the band but I hadn't been there for a while - as England had won their World Cup quarter final against Sweden only a couple of hours earlier we arrived to scenes of alcoholic devastation on a scale rarely witnessed; Chris returned on keyboards after being absent through illness, Bob depped for an ailing Dave on drums and you got the feeling that we could have played almost anything and most people there still wouldn't have noticed that we were on the same planet as them, let alone in the same room. Maybe we weren't? And last night the band journeyed up to St. Albans for a show at The Farmers Boy, an excellent little venue where with Howard Tibble on drums and my old mate Johnny Squirrel on bass we gave a spirited performance to an appreciative audience. I've not been able to play with the band much lately due to other things happening but will be out and about with them over the next couple of weeks. Our gig at The Three Steps in Cowley on the 21st July is the nearest one to my birthday - it is, shall we say, a 'lively' venue, so that should be a good night, as should tomorrow night when it's the Sounds Of The Suburbs record shop's second anniversary party - but more about that next time...

To Hull and back

Since last we spoke Ruts DC have played shows in Hull and North London - both good gigs, with more to come as we shall see. Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks have also been out and about at The Farmers Boy in St. Albans (I'd not been there before, a great little venue) The General Eliott in Uxbridge (a suitably raucous local gig which got so hot that Al had to go outside for some air halfway through the second set) and Ye Olde Swan in Burnham (with fellow six-stringer Pete elsewhere I had to play his parts - I didn't realise that I had so much skin on my teeth) all of which reminded me how much fun it is to play with the band.

Back to Ruts DC - the Hull show took place last Saturday in the wonderfully-named Zebedee's Yard, which I believe is a car park when it's not a venue. We travelled up by train and arrived to find everything ready for soundcheck. There was just time to say hello to The Stranglers before running through a few songs then heading back to our hotel for some much needed food. We returned to find The Black Delta Movement on stage and the venue filling up nicely despite the rain, which thankfully stopped just before we went on stage. With only 45 minutes to play with we stuck more-or-less to the set we'd been playing on the Stranglers tour, with the addition of 'Suffragette City' which we dedicated to for local legends The Spiders From Mars. Although the rain had stopped it was still quite windy meaning that the sound on stage was a bit variable - we weren't sure if we'd played well but thankfully the audience reaction suggested that we had. We saw about half of the Big Country show (I hadn't seen them since back in the day and they sounded great - mind you, they usually did) before deciding to take our instruments and gear back to the hotel - we'd intended to return to see The Stranglers but somehow ended up drinking in the bar until 2 am. Well - it had started raining again, and we were thirsty... talking of which, last night we played at Urban Voodoo Machine drummer Gary 50th birthday party at Bones And Pearl Studios (another great name!) in Seven Sisters. 'Twas an evening of great jollity as you might well imagine - indeed it might be better if I leave the details to your imagination... go on, try imagining what went on... you're probably correct... but we played well, and that's the main thing. It only ever is.

This week we travel to Ireland for two shows with Stiff Little Fingers - as a long time fan I've been looking forward to these gigs since they were first announced. We're in Dublin on Friday before travelling up to Belfast for an open air show to celebrate SLF's 40th anniversary; The Stranglers (yep, them again!) and The Outcasts are also on the bill and with Terri Hooley of Good Vibrations Records DJ-ing the scene is set for a classic event. And after that we set out to play some shows of our own - but more about that next time.

Everybody Hurts

It has been a long time since I rock 'n' rolled... well maybe not rock 'n' rolled exactly, but it's been a month since I last wrote anything here. That is quite a long time isn't it?

After the 'my computer's at the menders for ages' saga sometime near the end of last year I mused in these hallowed pages as to whether I might have, for want of a better term, lost the blogging habit. I'm beginning to think that I just might have done just that although I guess that the fact that this posting exists rather contradicts that thought. I've kept my Facebook page updated, but that's 'easier' to do isn't it? Maybe I don't have very much to say for myself at the moment? Perhaps I'm busier than I used to be? It's probably a bit of both... or maybe it's the post-tour crash that I didn't think was going to happen? On the surface at least I didn't think that it had effected me too much - I felt much more obviously upset by the catastrophic Upper Cut performance referred to in the last posting for example - but maybe I was just delaying the inevitable.

It's been very busy in Balcony Shirts, to such an extent that I've just worked 7 days in a row and am likely to be in there for a fair bit of this week too. There's nothing that puts 19 shows with The Stranglers into perspective quite like this sort of conversation :- 

'So d'you print t-shirts in here then?' 
'Yes, yes we do - we're a t-shirt printing shop.' 
'So can you print me one then?' 
'Well we can have a go. What would you like on it?' 
'I dunno - what do you think?'

As you might well imagine at that moment I've got more than a few ideas as to what they should have written on their chest, but I've been known to say something like 'well I'd have a picture of The Who (or whoever - it literally makes no difference who...) from sometime in the 1960s (or whenever - it literally makes no difference when...) but I doubt that's the sort of thing you'd like'. After that anything can happen.

Ruts DC have played a couple of shows since last we spoke - our performance at The Grand in Clitheroe was thought by us to be below par although thankfully many were they who assured us that it wasn't (it's better that it's that way round don't you think?) while a boisterous gig at The Zikenstock Festival near Lille in France saw much stage diving (they like that sort of thing out there!) and general jollity all round. Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks have been out and about too - highlights include a show at The White Swan in St. Albans which was curtailed after only 2 songs of the second set to allow those present to watch the Joshua / Klitschko boxing World title fight, while last weekend's 40th birthday party gig had your humble narrator musing to himself as to whether or not there might be some nice-looking young ladies present, then realising with some amusement that considering 40 years old to be 'young' meant that he / I am now officially 'old'. And it that all wasn't weird enough I saw Bob Dylan at The Bournemouth International Centre in (you've guessed it!) Bournemouth - his Bobness rarely if ever does what might be expected of him, and a set where he either played grand piano (often standing up) or wielded a straight mic stand in the slightly-disturbing manner of a not-very-good Rod Stewart tribute act without touching a guitar once wasn't necessarily what I for one would have predicted. Add to that the fact that the set mostly consisted of jazz standards (I believe he's just released an album of them) like 'Autumn Leaves' and 'That Old Black Magic' with the odd Bob classic thrown in here and there (often radically re-arranged - many didn't seem to recognise 'Tangled Up In Blue' until the title line, and I don't think many got 'Blowin' In The Wind' until it was all but over, if at all) and you had a show that more than a few audience members were none too happy with. Me? I loved it. Of course I did - he's a contrary old bugger, but all the better for it in my not-so-humble opinion.

I wouldn't mind ending up like that. Maybe I have ended up like that? Oh well - more whining self pity and non-crises again another time. Maybe even sometime soon...

'I wanted to look like one of The Flamin' Groovies...'

The new Ruts DC single 'Kill The Pain' comes out on Westworld Records on March 3rd just in time for our tour with The Stranglers - it's from our album 'Music Must Destroy' and features Jake Burns and Kirk Brandon on backing vocals. You can see the Graham Trott - directed promo video on YouTube by clicking here - excellent!

In the meantime I am once again currently in the grip of the dreaded ManFlu. Bah! I seem to have had it rather a lot lately, or it certainly feels as though I have - maybe I've not got rid of it properly, if you know what I mean. It's certainly getting a bit boring... since last we spoke I've cheered up a (little) bit - there have been gigs with The Upper Cut in Reading and with Big Al and the boys in St Albans, Burnham and Colnbrook, all of which passed without too much incident; I'm out and about with Al and co. this weekend although if I feel like I do now I fear that I won't be going anywhere. Time for some paracetamol and an early night - give me something to kill the pain, as someone once sang...