ComEnts

AK's so slack he can't even be bothered to title his entries.

Was watching The Culture Show on BBC2 last night whilst eating the worst dinner I think I've ever made myself. I was too lazy to go to the shops or cook something decent... anyway. The Culture Show had an article about the Cream reunion gigs at the Royal Albert Hall. Their feature was all about why in classical music, or Jazz say, it was ok for performers to get older and carry on playing, in fact they respected their musicianship etc. even more but in rock'n'roll it seems that once you reach a certain age you are considered totally past it.

It was an interesting debate anyway, I know I've improved loads as a musician and musically in the last few years and I reckon I'll keep getting better. Luckily I don't care if people think I'm past it. Basically, if they're good enough they're young enough.

Just remember Dis'Guys.

I'm off to Scotland until Tuesday 10th May so you probably won't get any blog entries from me. There's loads of great gig stuff going on in between, next tuesday at Po Na Na, The Palestinians, Pete and the Pirates, Heartwear Process and Rebus is one of the best line-ups I've ever seen of local bands. Don't drink too much at the beer festival.

I'm going fishing this weekend - carp fishing in Yateley to be exact. Haven't wetted a rod in anger since I was about 12, but my two cousins (not my only cousins, but these two are more like brothers to me) are both well into it and we're off early Sat morning and coming back Sunday afternoon. I'm looking forward to sitting by a lake, camping out and leaving everything behind me for a couple of days.. I've got a monstrous month lined up for May, about 15 gigs, same number of rehearsals, having to learn/re-structure the vocals for AWU in the absence of Dave our singer for a gig on the 13th, two different CD's getting printed up at CD Mule, trying to get back into the studio with Red Antennae as well after a bit of an enforced lay-off, and various other bits and pieces to think about so I'm using this weekend to chill out and sort myself out mentally for the coming weeks.

Every time I've been down to spend some time with my two cuzzins by the water's edge it's been very relaxing, tranquil and serene. As a man who knows a thing or two about sedation, I'm looking forward to catching some sun and catching up on some zen-enhancing meditation: I will be turning the sound of one hand clapping up to full volume for several hours by the bank. I think anyone who spends any amount of time standing next to drum kits needs to balance it out with periods of absolute silence if they are to avoid any longterm ear damage, or even stay sane. Having said that, I'm taking my discman with me and a note pad and hopefully getting through the pile of reviews that has been hanging around for too long. The Off the Radar CD sounds good, and my good friend Jan Trefusis' band King Furnace are funking out in every way.

So, a weekend of relaxation and recuperation awaits me.. The calm before the storm, if you will. Need to be fully charged and champing at the bit by the time my first show rolls around on the 10th May; there are people out there, people who need rocking - it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it, etc.

Saw "The Velvet Revolver Story" on TV last night, brilliant. Everything from rock star hissy fits to Scott Weiland being "mysterious" and "enigmatic". Apparently, before they recorded their album they were auditioning for a singer and saw a bunch of wannabes and semi-famous types before Weiland left Stone Temple Pilots and wandered in for an audition with them. It worked, he got "on board" and they arranged a showcase to pitch a song to Hollywood film types to try and get it picked up on a soundtrack ("The Hulk", as it turned out). So, the band have a day to rehearse this one song with Scotty-boy before the showcase - does he turn up? Does he bollocks! Great footage of Slash sitting there in the rehearsal place looking philosophical and muttering "..singers, eh?", Matt Sorum trying to pass off minor anger attacks as good-humoured banter and Duff just looking worried. Now, I don’t know how much of this was staged - it was well done if it was - but apparently Scott turned up about 5 mins before the film industry types did (the next day), rocked out and they got the song on the soundtrack.

I'm not too impressed with Slash's lead playing on Contraband, but the songs are immense, "Fall to Pieces" is a classic track, and "Slither" was the riff that killed off Guns and Roses for me. Stone Temple Pilots' "Core" is another of my fave albums of all time, STP, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, are among my favourite bands. I'm still waiting for Jerry Cantrell to open auditions for a new band - I'd be in the queue for that, definitely. Apparently he's retired to his ranch, tho - fair play, he didn't exactly have the easiest time of it with Layne Staley, etc. Still, if you dance with the devil, etc.

Ah.. Friday; gotta love it. Especially if the weather is actually being quite charming like it is today. Had a great rehearsal with White Sunday last night, even though Dan Dan the Drumming Man is still off on tour - and rehearsals sans percussive are usually as much fun as DIY dentistry. Jimmy G has come up with another blinding tune, and I can’t wait to get stuck into May's gig schedule. James actually introduced the song to me by saying "Hope you're in a Led Zeppelin kind of mood" - which gave me a mini Y99er flashback for a second - but the tune turned out to be more like our usual fare of groovy Brit-rock, and didn’t even have a solo in! Well, there may be some fills and trills here and there, but not what your average scientifically-orientated music fan would class as Shreddus Magnus or even the sub-genus Tabidus Oris. Still getting some lovely sounds out of James' 72 Tele as well, it's a bugger to play but it makes some lovely electronic reproductions of magnetic field oscillations.

Speaking of Y99er, saw a fantastic shot of Camilla and a lupine companion in the Times Style Supplement - she volunteers at a wolf sanctuary, possibly a good training ground for someone looking for a career in music! (Reptile houses and leech farms prolly better!). There was a little blurb at the end about Y99er, etc. but mostly it was a very cool shot of Cams with a wolf on a leash. I keep reading reviews of the single, it's a mixed bag so far: they all say Henry has a good voice, etc. Wonder how long I should leave it to gather royalties before I bother making enquiries? Meh - I'll leave it until the album comes out, might be worth a few pennies to me - I'm reminded of Neil's last words to me on the subject - "Hopefully it'll be enough to sort you out with your own house." Hope is springing eternal! Andros also gave me a quality bit of management schpiel about how I was "gonna be a millionaire" too, which made me smile, but was taken with a pinch of salt. Still, stranger things have happened - if they make it huge in China and sell 2 billion CD's, well.. Rocket cars and solid gold houses here we come! I think it's instantly and automatically detrimental to the music-making process when you start thinking in terms of how much cash you could make, so I've always had an overblown fantasy attitude to it, if you start thinking "Hey! If I write a song in this style, or do this, or try and be that - then I could buy a Porsche with the publishing rights!" then you're not really making music, you’re just whoreing out your song writing skills. Bands always write their best stuff when they are skint and hungry and angry at the world. It's getting the first bit of cash that separates the men from the boys, proper artists will maintain integrity, etc. whilst the r n'b artists just sing about how much cash they have, how cool they are, etc. I know it's different from a Black perspective, but it shouldn’t be - it just is.

Following Alex Rebus' comment insinuating that perhaps my own love of sport may not find many receptive readers on what is primarily a musical blog, I'm not going to mention anything until the Lions Tests from now on.

Have a good weekend y'all - I'm playing the Madjeski Stadium on Sat night, have a potential dep guitarist coming down to check us out, see if he wants in, etc. so I'll be trying real hard on our jazz material, and will hopefully be clean and sober for the whole night. Bah! Boring..

May is going to be a very odd month, it's a Müf free month (Sam's wedding/honeymoon, my holiday to Scotland and AK's impending insane gig schedule with White Sunday kind of preclude that). We have a lead on the drummer issue that sounds extremely promising so maybe we can relaunch in June. Fingers crossed!

In the meantime I booked a rehearsal for Sonic Undermind last night! Sam expressed the mad thought that having SU play at his wedding would be a good idea. There is some other excellent musical entertainment on offer so the equipment will be all there and this made us think maybe we should rehearse! So a quick 2 hour rehearsal at Impact is secured for the weekend before the wedding. I'm really looking forward to it. Get drunk, try and remember some of our old songs and have a laugh. Woo! Nice to have something musical to do in the little Müf break.

This weekend I am going to London for a party and sneakily heading off to see Left Side Brain in Camden beforehand, then on Sunday hopefully I'm going to make it to The Spitz to see Pete and the Pirates and the Hot Silk Pockets. Woo!

Mike's post about Wrestling made me smile, I was only just this morning trying to track down pics of Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake, Hulk Hogan's one-time ally/enemy. Ah, the Golden Age of WWF, the ultimate commentary team of Jesse "The Body" Ventura and "Mean" Gene Okerlund (with ringside commentary from Gorilla Monsoon) - like The Heff says, it's a shame that they can’t find enough celebrities who are actually willing to go the whole hog and batter each other with steel chairs.

On a similar note, the people behind "Big Brother" are launching a new show in India called something like "Celebrity Bollywood Cricket Academy" where they take a bunch of Bollywood stars, chuck 'em in a cricket training camp and they have to play a game against a Cricket Stars XI (an ageing and semi-retired side of players, methinks). I reckon it could catch on, they're already doing "The Game" over here, and quite frankly Celebrity Rugby Academy could provide all the punch-ups and pugilistic entertainment that the public were so callously denied by the various Boxing councils who refused to sanction the celeb boxing. Did anyone see Sarries vs.Leicester over the weekend? Brilliant. The dirtiest off-the-ball game to be shown on TV since Wales vs. England in 1987 (Bill McLaren "All the trappings of a Bruno-Tyson fight..") or any England vs. France game from the 90's.

Martin Corry was lucky to get red-carded, if he'd been cited after the game they'd have had at least four incidents to talk to him about, the pick of the bunch being a sweet straight right hand to Hugh Vyvyan's jaw at the side of a maul. My own personal "take no shit" award goes to the Sarries sub flanker who landed a few on Martin Johnson after Johno tried to "assert himself". Payback of the day was dished out to Leicester 2nd row Louis Deacon; Sarries prop Kevin Yates was grabbing LD's jersey as he tried to sprint away from a line-out, so Louis administered a broken jaw courtesy of a glancing left hook. Sarries 2nd row Kris Chesney became an agent of righteous retribution by way of a well-timed - and well-aimed - bit of ruck clearing. Subsequent reports have stated that Louis is currently nursing a fractured nose, swelling, etc. I'm sure I saw Neil Back chin Chesney at some point after that, but you'd have to take a sledgehammer to Kris Chesney to make a dent. If Martin Johnson starts whingeing about foul play, you know it's veering towards the ethnic end of the cleansing scale. Great TV, a great advert for rugby too - Castagneide's searing break lit up the afternoon, and 16 men sorting things out amongst themselves without too many interuptions from the referee. I can't wait for Ice Hockey-style fight allowances, they should only stop them when someone hits the floor. Let them scrap it out properly before you send them to the sin bin to cool off for 10 mins.

Absinthe, the drink of champions. After considerable experimentation on Sat night, involving mixing large amounts of beer, whiskey, a shot of black sambuca and a vodka tonic, it was revealed by Kaupa Laboratories © that Absinthe is an excellent way to end an evening, as long as you want a very sudden, hazy and bizarre end to the evening. Aided by my respected scientific colleagues Ben Marwood, Charley, Andy from Impact, Tiki and Debbie from Kaldera, Paul Glover and Amy from Wire Jesus and a select handful of expert alcohol enthusiasts, several successful - and in-depth - studies were conducted into what has so far been a field reserved for amateur investigations. I'd like to thank Andy in particular for creating the test environment at his birthday bash, from which the base results of Stella and Jack Daniels were initially recorded.
Here is the final journal entry of Sat night/Sun morning, transcribed exactly as it was spoken:

"Mmm.. That Absinthe has woken me up a tre….*6hr time lapse*..at. What the? It's morning? And my head hurts?"

We are hoping that these tests will contain clues about time travel, as well as the hidden secrets of really bad headaches.

So, apparently this Celebrity Wrestling that's coming to ITV on Saturday won't actually involve the celebrities actually wrestling. Bah. I was hoping that we'd have our very own excellent version of 'sports entertainment'. We could have well scripted rivalries, love stories, revenge, dirty tricks. Who wouldn't want to see Kate Lawler distract the umpire so that Iwan Thomas could sneakily batter James Hewitt with a steel chair? I'm sure we couldn't do it as well as the WWE, surely only Americans could give us such a thing. The wrestling we used to get in the 80s but what if Giant Haystacks had been knocking off Big Daddy's missus and she was a wrestler too and... ok, so it wouldn't have worked.

Anyway the show is apparently basically going to be celebrities involved in Gladiators (AWOOGAH!) style contests. Bah. They are going to have wrestling style nicknames but I guess as they aren't doing any real wrestling they won't have their own special moves. There's so much potential. James Hewitt - will he be called Love Rat? - could do the People's Princess Elbow... ok so the rest of the celebs are so z list I don't know enough about them to think anything up. You lot go for it if you can be bothered.

So Dr Who it is. Woo!

Not that I'll actually see either on Saturday as I'm going to see Left Side Brain in Camden then to a party. C'est la vie.

I think I'll ask my dad if he wants to play drums for Müf - he plays in a Texarcana boogie/rhythm and blues band called The Prowlers, and I like the idea of having to ask my Dad to help us out. He's a big hero of mine, despite the obvious musical disability of him being a drummer. Oh well, you know what they say.. "sticks and stones" (what a great title for Charlie Watts' autobiography!).

I'm getting really pissed off with the Müf band situation, it's really frustrating seeing other bands going off doing exciting things and not being a full complete band.

We've auditioned 3 drummers so far and whilst all had their own plusses and minuses none really had that EUREKA! feeling where we'd found the right guy for us. It's a common problem for bands, I know we're certainly not the first band to go through this. Rebus have been through more drummers than Spinal Tap before getting the perfect guy for the job. Anyway it's all a bit demoralizing at the moment. I'm sure we'll find someone, and when we do things will kick start again. The Palestinians seemed to just surge forward once they got the right guy in the drumseat.

I think it's most annoying because we've got through the initial 'new band' thing where we were just trying to work out what kind of sound felt right and were starting to make some headway, I think all of us were pulled into new places musically.

The two drummers I've played with recently, Rob (now of Rebus) and Iain the old Müf drummer are both so good that I guess I've been slightly spoilt by their quality. Ah well. The search goes on...

For the Müf CD, Mike suggested we put the lyrics to the songs, which I thought had already been done before by others, and wanted to take a different tack. Besides, we could drive the punters in droves of 3 or 4 towards the website if they sought lyrical enlightenment. For me, this was a chance to be creative, individual, unique and possibly even cleverly amusing - I thought maybe we could have some cartoon "annual" style games and puzzles on there for our listeners/fan* to enjoy while on long car journeys (although not whilst driving, natch).

Other bands have featured ways to build a nuclear bomb on their inlay sleeves, I was hoping perhaps to use pop-up technology to create a 3-D version of the band rocking out, or a cut-out-and-keep Mikey face mask or something (we could do four differrent runs of inlay cards, and people could collect them all! I like the idea of kids doing "swapsies" in playgrounds.. "got, got, got, need!"). Mike pissed all over this particular bonfire though by pointing out that it was only our first demo CD, and not our second "developmental and experimental" CD on EMI. He's no fun. I think we'll be using the photos taken by long-time friend, confidante and co-collaborator Tokius Munkian on the sleeve instead.

Drummer auditions continue apace - we've met some cool guys, had fun jamming, etc. and hope to see many more before we make a decision. Mike had a great idea, one of the guys we've seen - Sheets - busted out some rhymes at the end of his audition, including flow about binary numbers. Mike said I should drum and Sheets should rap for us - now THAT sounds good to me, as long as every song we play sounds like "Walk this Way" or that J5 track that goes on about compounds and elements (my two token hip-hop drum beats).

Speaking of J5, I pick up my new guitar tuner tomorrow. I am christening it "Charlie". "The aristocrat, ghetto diplomat, and he's blessed with the gift of rap, it's like that! - They call him Mr. Antagonistic, drastic, coming from a place where the cops get their ass KICKED!"

Playing at the Madjeski stadium next Sat, wonder if John Madjeski will be there with his lovely female companion Cilla? Might have to learn "Step inside, love", just in case she fancies getting up and doing a number?


*We have one. www.grassrootsx.com says so.

So I found out last night that according to my housemate this blog is boring, and I got additional feedback from my girlfriend was that how boring it is is kind of irrelevent as I never add anything to it anyway. Bah. If they didn't have a point I'd be a bit cross. Yeah, it's not really been a priority recently. I'll try and get back into it.

Apparently I need to be more controversial. Hmmm... Does anyone else think The Palestinians would be good if they didn't have that stupid gurning lead guitarist?

Anyway I was only really posting 'cause I am listening to The Best of the Vapors and every time I listen to it I get really pissed off when it gets to track 6, interview with Dave Fenton. *YAWN* If this dull, mumbling, incoherent, moron - yeah, I know, sounds like me - is the representative of the band then maybe I hate them. In fact now that I've started writing about it I'm going to put another CD on. What are they doing putting an interview track in the middle of the CD anyway? I did at one point try and listen to the whole thing to see if it would even be interesting to really hard core Vapors fans... nope. The music builds up nicely, good catchy songs, why break it with an interview? Morons.

Apparently the SugarRush gig this friday has been recommended by NME... well I read that on berkshire live anyway, obviously haven't seen a copy but hey, good work. I suppose I'd better get there early.

Drummer audition again tonight for Müf, and I'm enjoying a nice discussion with AK about what text should go on the CD art. Our positions on which slightly reflect our guitaring styles, I want to go more minimalist and he wants to enhance my minimalist style with some more frilly stuff. I'm hoping to solve the argument, er, I mean the nice discussion, with some completely random solution like alphabetical order of surname.

Oh, the Vapors have been replaced by Mike Patton and Dillinger Escape Plan, Irony is a Dead Scene which is excellent. Is anything Mike Patton's done not excellent though? Didn't think so.

In answer to my learned colleague's suggestion that performing "quiet" concerts may be seen in some circles as being a bit lame, I've enjoyed a number of gigs that have been broadcast via the radio, and didn’t feel that I was missing out on any of the excitement just because my radio didn’t turn up to 110 decibels. To that extent, if - say - I were at Glastonbury, chilling on a rug on the floor, topping up my tan and my THC levels at the same time I would absolutely love it if I could have a pair of headphones to receive a high-quality broadcast of the band playing at the time, away from the crush of the moshpit, and the high volume levels, etc.

That's not to say that it would be preferable to actually being at the front having my ears blasted, but that if I had the option I could pick and choose at my discretion. It's more about not being able to be in two places at once - if Anthrax were Among the Living on stage 2 where I was, and I knew I wouldn’t make it over to stage 8 in time to see Ben Folds Five, I could just tune in on my headphones and listen to BF5 after Scott Ian and the lads were done, whilst sauntering over to a hot dog stall or summat, innit.

If Glasto organisers can figure out how to have each stage set at a different frequency on the transmitters, they could sell headphones for people to wander around with so they could listen to any stage they wanted to from any point in the festival grounds, and maybe even one day sell them around the globe so audiences of millions could tune in to listen London Electricity rinsing it out good and pwopah, or Steve Earle acousticing it up like the wild man he is. Glasto will sell out every year, but not everyone will be able to listen to the acts - that could change. A good thing, methinks.

Two links have recently caught my eye which are kind of related. Today on the BBC there is news of Josh Homme's Eagles of Death Metal playing a "quiet" concert, basically they are playing without amplification but concert goers can listen via mini radio recievers. Apparently it's designed to highlight the dangers to your hearing of loud music. The other one was about a silent late-night dance event at Glastonbury which is designed to get round complaints from locals about late night noise.

I find these developments pretty intriguing. Technically they are quite interesting but what would a concert be like through headphones? Wouldn't the sound be a bit crap? What happens if the crowd want to sing along? I can't help feeling it's pretty much against the spirit of live music. It's not very rock and roll is it. Can't imagine Motörhead thinking it's a good idea.

Is just turning it down a bit a silly suggestion?

Well, I haven't written anything on here for about a fortnight. That must be some kind of record. I am obviously being very boring.

I haven't had much to talk about. How crap. Auditioned another drummer for Müf last night, got one more to try out next week. CD stuff is nearly finished too. We just need to finish off the writing inside it etc.

Going to see Rebus again in London on Saturday, other than that I haven't really been doing much music stuff. Have hardly been to any gigs at all recently. Ah well! Bassza meg a jegasmedver.

I've had a sneak preview of my brother's band's new CD Pete and the Pirates Get Even and it's great. Getting 500 numbered copies printed and hand making the covers apparently. Cool.

A friend sent me this in an email a while back, and I thought it was so beautiful that I'd post it up here for you all to appreciate;

"Do you think I'm boring? I just like doing healthy stuff now - I still like going out and getting drunk and stuff but I also like looking after myself and I like little things like how the stars look when they're bright and how lovely the birds are when they're flying over the river. It's not very rock 'n' roll but it makes me smile."

I think it was Mike who wrote it, actually..

Ahh.. A nice quiet month, this month (hopefully). It's the calm before the storm though, as White Sunday have plenty of gigs booked in May, so once Dan the drummer gets back from his tour we can have a couple of rehearsals, polish off some new tunes and then go rock. We're playing Henley festival and Newbury festival this year (I saw Mike play Newbury festival last year - or was it the year before?- with Sonic Undermind. Well, I say "saw", what I mean is "turned up just in time to see them traipsing off stage") so hopefully White Sunday can enjoy some sunshine and rock out at this year's festival. We're playing at Po Na Na in Reading - as well as the customary Colorz appearance - and the Half Moon in Putney too. Need to try and sort out some more London gigs actually, I don’t want to play loads of gigs in May and then do nothing for the rest of the summer. Big up man like Mike Walton, big up man me like Luke, reeespect to Jimmy G, and one love to the nocturnal and entirely crazy Dan Lovegrove.

Auditions for the drum stool spot in Müf carry on apace, too - Mike's been getting some cool inquiries from people who sound as though we'd get on with them, just a case of getting them into Impact and road-testing them. Having the MP3 files really helps, it's probably scared off more people than it's attracted, but we're reassuring applicants that we don’t expect them - or anyone! - to re-produce Ian's crazy uber-technical wizadry, just to keep a rocking beat going! It'll be weird as hell playing the songs with a diferent drummer, but what can we do? Hopefully we'll just write a load of new material and be able to forget the current batch of songs.

Saw the Subways at the Fez on Friday - they were great! Hopefully there will be a review up on grassrootsx.com soon!