Vive le 'Vive Le Rock'

Issue 12 of the always-worth-getting 'Vive Le Rock' magazine is about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting general public - this edition features a 4 page piece on Ruts D.C. as well as a rave review of our (our!) new album. As I say the mag is always worth a read but obviously this one is pretty special for me - I'm still trying to work out how I feel about seeing my name in the same publication as articles on Wilko Johnson, Iggy And The Stooges, The Adverts, Bruce Springsteen, The Godfathers and many more. I'll let you know if I ever come up with anything... and talking of Ruts D.C. we (we!) are playing at The Brook in Southampton this coming Thursday 25th April before an appearance the next night at The Great British Alternative Music Festival in Minehead. That should be something to write home (or indeed to write here) about...

Back to basics this weekend with two local pub gigs - The Upper Cut in Uxbridge at The Dolphin on Friday and Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks (you know, that name sounds madder and madder every time that I type it!) at The Rowan Arms in West Drayton on Saturday. Friday's show took a while to get going - we'd had a rehearsal at RnR Studios on Wednesday evening at which we ran through quite a few potential new numbers, most of which we decided to try at the gig. Maybe we tried too many or maybe it had just been a bit too long since we last played a show - either way our first set was all a bit scrappy, although that said it went down well with the audience. The second set was a different matter entirely - the band hit top gear from the first song, and with the extremely rare sight of Noel the guv'nor dancing we finished well after time due to the audience literally not letting us stop playing. In the end the second half more than cancelled out the first, but it was all a bit odd there for a while. Saturday on the other hand went very well indeed, especially considering that it was a short notice show - I'd not been to the venue before but anywhere that has a wall of photographs of glam rock heroes The Sweet is alright by me! - with everyone playing on top form and a great reaction from both the punters and the pub guv'nor. The Blistering Buicks is turning out to be a really good band to be in, and I'm already looking forward to our next show on May 3rd at The Swan in Iver. And that show falls between the first two gigs from Back To Zero - but more about them next time.

Carry that weight

When I was a lad - and believe it or not, I was once a lad - pop music was a lot more exciting than it is now. I sound really old don't I? Well - I am! But I genuinely think that it was - in my early teens the likes of T.Rex, Slade and The Sweet were topping the charts on a regular basis, and leaving aside the fact that I have absolutely no idea who is at number one as I type this (there's nothing like shouting your mouth off without knowing the facts now is there?) I very much doubt that it would sound anywhere near as exciting as any of these three tracks, all of which made it to the top of the pile. But here's a record (I still call them records, don't you?) that definitely deserves to be this year's Christmas number one - released this coming Monday 17th December 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' by The Justice Collective aims to raise money for The Hillsborough Justice Campaign which does stirling work for the victims of The Hillsborough Disaster. I'll spare you my usual ranting on the subject and just say that if that isn't a worthwhile cause then I for one don't know what is. Here's the story courtesy of The Liverpool Echo (which my Dad used to deliver when he was a lad, as he never tires of reminding me!) where you'll also find the promo video and links for downloading the single from iTunes and Amazon. The recording features the likes of Mick Jones and Shane MacGowan alongside Liverpool artists like Paul McCartney, Gerry Marsden and Melanie C.; at the very least it's a great song (here is the classic version by The Hollies just in case you've forgotten it) and let's face it, it's got to be better than the X Factor winner getting the Christmas number one spot hasn't it?

Radio friendly unit shifter

I have just - just! - returned from Hayes FM where Huggy and myself appeared on the Hughie Dixon show to talk about this week's upcoming Price gig. In an hour that went by all too quickly (we both agreed that we'd love to have been on for the whole two hours!) we chose tracks by The Lurkers, The Surfin' Lungs (good choice Hug - although one listener complained by e-mail that 'The Beach Boys weren't indie'!) and Mega City Four as well as Hughie airing 'The Six Teens' by The Sweet as he knew Huggy likes them. We also played 'Marching On' (Hughie thought the vocals 'sounded like Queen'; Malcolm sent a rude text message almost immediately!) and 'So What About Love?' (many-a mention of Paul Fox who produced our single) by The Price and talked about our past, our present and indeed our future - I'm not sure that it'll make a huge difference to the size of the audience on Friday or indeed our audience generally, but they seem to be a good bunch at the station (which is a project well worth supporting in my not-so-humble opinion) and we really enjoyed ourselves. Excellent!