Ruts D.C. '40 Years Of The Crack' Tour starts tomorrow!

The game is afoot - after what seems like an age (it was announced last summer!) the Ruts D.C. '40 Years Of The Crack' Tour is finally upon us. We're playing 17 shows with The Professionals are special guests, during which we intend to play the first Ruts album 'The Crack' in it's entirety alongside other material from the band's illustrious history - I don't want to sound big-headed, but it's got all the makings of a great tour. As always I'll be attempting to update my Facebook page as often as possible, and if you're coming to a show then please say hello - after all, without an audience it's just like a rehearsal, only louder...

Ruts D.C. '40 Years Of The Crack' tour 2019

Over two - and - a - half months ago I mused in these hallowed pages as to whether or not I was getting lazy when it comes to writing on this here blog; if only I'd known then what I know now.... it's not that I've been lazy (honest!) it's just that I seem to be so bloody busy at the moment; gigs with Big Al and the boys, working in Balcony Shirts, trying to stop nosebleeds bought on by hay fever - it's been all go I can tell you. I've regularly looked at the pile of semi - legible notes that I've been making on the way to gigs, on the way home from gigs, in planes, trains and automobiles - there's a lot of 'em, and even I don't know what half of them are - and thought 'I really must get around to typing them up one day'... and I really must... however in the spirit of shameless self - publicity that this blog (and, I suspect, most blogs) were created in, I'm back - and with big, big news. 

2019 sees the 40th anniversary of, well, lots of things I'm sure, not least the release of 'The Crack' by The Ruts. I remember buying at the time - my copy still has the 'pay no more than £3.99' sticker on it - and spending endless hours sitting on the edge of my bed cradling an unplugged electric guitar trying to work out how to play the songs. Who'd have thought that nearly 4 decades later I'd still be spending endless hours sitting on the edge of my bed cradling an unplugged electric guitar trying to work out how to play the songs? Strange but true.

Next February Ruts D.C. set out on the first part of the '40 Years Of The Crack' tour - the plan is that we will be playing the whole album in it's entirety, along with other material old and new. And there's more good news - special guests The Professionals will be opening the shows (am I really going on after a Sex Pistol? How on Earth has this happened?!?) meaning that if all else fails you get to see two of the best drummers ever on the same stage. To say that I'm looking forward to this is from my point of view the understatement of the century so far, although I'm sure I can come up with something that beats it if you give me long enough. And you never know, I might even write it up here...

'There is no future in England's dreaming...'

So - we're leaving The European Union. Or are we? Forced to choose between the conceited opinions of podgy right-wing toff David Cameron and podgy right-wing toff Boris Johnson the Great British public chose the latter rather than the former, presumably because for some unfathomable reason they think that he's a 'character'. They even feel as though they can call refer to him by his first name. Why do people do that? It makes it sound as though he's their mate or something, and the last thing he is is their mate. Funny that. But there's nothing funny about what's happened since the referendum result was announced. It seems that all those promises made by the Vote Leave camp were not actually promises at all. Politicians lying? Who'd have thought it? All the people that voted for them and so presumably wanted to curb immigration, free up money for The National Health Service and whatever the hell else that they thought they were voting for weren't actually voting for those things at all. Anyone would think that it was all a load of - let's be polite here shall we? - nonsense wouldn't they? Why that 'nice' Mr. Farage (I assume the people that supported him thought that he was nice?) isn't even an MP is he? He like Johnson is often portrayed as a 'character' or even a figure of fun when in reality he's a part time politician and full time millionaire who somehow managed to galvanise the fears of millions of people into inadvertently voting for his cause and, since Cameron has taken the coward's way out and resigned, also voting for a new, presumably anti-EU Prime Minister. There's talk of another referendum, which would be unprecedented not least because the main reason given is that this one didn't go the way that some people think that it should have - but surely that makes a complete mockery of 'democracy'? As it happens I can think of quite a few General Elections that didn't go the way that I thought that they should have, but there was no talk of rerunning them… and if that wasn't bad enough the England football team has been knocked out of the European Championships by lowly Iceland. A bunch of multi millionaire prima donnas are beaten by a gang of unfancied part timers for the second time in a week. Oh dear.

Let's cheer up a bit shall we? GLM - the band formed by ex - Lurkers Pete Stride, Nigel Moore And Pete 'Manic Esso' Haynes and now renamed The Lurkers GLM - have released their second album 'The Future's Calling' and it's a cracker. It's popper than their debut 'Chemical Landslide' but no less powerful, with everyone on top form throughout. Full details of how to obtain a copy are on the band's website along with videos, downloads and more. Great stuff!

The Upper Cut played two private parties - cue 'none for ages and then two come along at once' gags - on Friday and Saturday. The first was at Terry the singer's workplace in London - literally, we played in one of the offices - and the second was a birthday party at The Dolphin in Uxbridge. The first show included a very pleasant but rather drunk young lady asking to have a go on the drums with the words 'I don't know how to work them but I like dancing' - she was correct, she didn't, and she did - while Geoff Nicholls depped for Roger on drums at the second show where repeated requests for 'Simply The Best' saw us managing to stagger through one verse and multiple choruses to scenes of audience hysteria and mayhem that wouldn't have been out of place at an actual Tina Turner gig and which took even the hardiest members of the band by surprise. 

Two ex - Sex Pistols were on the same stage (although sadly not at the same time) on Thursday night when The Rich Kids and The Professionals co-headlined The O2 Academy in Islington. Both band released underrated singles and albums back in the day, and as all of said records are big favourites of mine the evening was pretty much unmissable from my point of view. With Tom Spencer taking the place of the sadly absent Steve Jones The Professionals were on first - opening with 'Just Another Dream' they sounded strong from the word go, and by the time they finished with 'Silly Thing' it was clear that we'd just seen a great band play a fine show. The Rich Kids were excellent too although I thought that they took a couple of songs to get going - that said it was definitely a case of 'all's well that ends well' with the encore of 'Rich Kids' all but taking the roof off. Paul Cook was always a great drummer and Glen Matlock's a brilliant bass player - who were those fools who said that they couldn't play? - and it really was something to see both of their post - Pistols bands together. A cracking evening, although it did take me over four hours to get home. Well, it had been raining, so all the trains were off and the roads were jammed. That didn't used to happen when we were in The EU did it? 

Oh, hang on...

Not a bad day revisited

Back in May last year I wrote a typically over-emotional piece in these hallowed pages relating to 3 gigs in Yorkshire with T.V Smith. In it I recalled a moment during 'Borderline' at The New Roscoe in Leeds when I felt that it might have been the best piece of music that I'd ever been involved in. I wasn't relating to my or T.V.'s performance - it was the song my friends, the song. You remember songs don't you? They were things that people used to write, back in the days when people who had something to say for themselves chose to use 3 or 4 minutes of pop music to express their feelings. These days I'm not really sure what people do, but that's more my problem than yours, or indeed theirs. But I remembered that moment last night, on the stage at The 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street, next to the afore-mentioned T.V. Smith, playing the afore-mentioned 'Borderline'; as we swung into the first chorus and T.V. sang 'on the borderline, why don't you get on my side?' that feeling returned. You don't get moments like that very often, and I'm sitting here struggling to find a way to describe it. Again I looked out from the stage - there was a small oriental lady at the front, Gaye Advert behind her to the right, some punky lads in the shadows, all eyes on T.V. with the song building and building, bringing all the outsiders like me... you... us... together - '... it's not just you, sometimes I feel it too... look your enemy right in the eye, and say ''stay away 'cause I keep my monsters tied''... on the borderline, where the rules do not apply... you'd better steer wide...

I closed my eyes and played. And played. And played. And suddenly, everything - everything - was alright.

I'd not played at The 12 Bar Club before and I'd love to play there again as it's a great little venue, although the word 'little' is very important in this sentence. There are tables that are bigger that the stage, front rooms that are bigger than the audience area and I'd imagine that one person with flu could very easily infect everybody in the building with one sneeze. It's murky, dank, seedy - in other words, it's fantastic. I travelled up on the tube with Esso; as we arrived '1-2-3' by The Professionals was playing in the bar and club manager Barnet was anticipating a good evening. Esso went to The Angel to meet up with John King just before T.V. arrived; soundcheck was straightforward enough with John the sound man getting everything right in no time. I bumped into Brian from Wunjo Guitars as I walked around the corner to the Nunu takeaway (falafel and salad - excellent!) who I'd not seen for a while - when I said I'd been in a few times and he'd not been there he said he'd been 'working on his golf'. Business must be good then... after catching up on a few phone calls I met Esso and John for a drink then went back to the venue to catch a few songs from gig organiser Brandy Row - anyone who plays a Johnny Thunders song is alright by me - and to get ready for the gig. We were due on at 10.15 but went on a bit later than that, and 'No Time To Be 21' kicked off a set that for me surpassed the 100 Club show earlier this year in pretty much every way. I've dribbled on about 'Borderline' already, but there were more than a few 'can this get any better? Yes it can!' moments for me; that said I also played a couple of absolute howlers during my solo in '21', forgot the extra beat of silence in the last chorus of 'Worn Once', messed up a chord change or two in 'Bored Teenagers' - well, you don't get something for nothing do you? Our set ends with 'One Chord Wonders' and general audience mayhem, we encore with 'Good Times Are Back' and 'Runaway Train Driver' before T.V. sets up shop at the front of the stage and does a roaring trade. Excellent!

It's a late bar and people are everywhere, it would have been great to stay for a drink but Esso and myself have got a last train to catch. Oh well, maybe next time. As we're leaving a chap called Martin stops me to say that he still has his old Price singles and that it was great to see me playing, was the band still going, when was I playing with T.V. again, while we were talking a couple come over to ask the same questions- for a few seconds I think about taking up Esso's idea of getting a cab home later, but times are hard and it would cost too much. Oh well, maybe next time. And once again another one of those amazing songs says it all - it's expensive being poor, these days more expensive than ever. And you don't get something for nothing do you? But for evenings like this, it's all worth it, every time. See you on the borderline sometime...