ComEnts

We've just been given the green light from the council for the Reading Fringe Festival 2005, so we'll hopefuly be able to confirm listings of events before too long!

There is much to do! If you want to help out in any capacity please get in touch via the website (link should be visible on here somehere!)

Things are rocking along incredibly fast with this Fringe Festival idea. The idea was mooted less than 2 weeks ago on Berkshire Live and our first meeting was less than a week ago. Since then loads of exciting stuff been kicked off.

Berkshire Live Aid was great to be involved with, but this is a very different situation. There although lots of people took part in the day there was a very small team of three of us who were basically organising everything. This time I don't have one of the major jobs (although everyones contribution is very important) but I'm still incredibly impressed with how much can be organised in so little time.

Putting on a 5 day fringe festival in two months is, frankly, a little bit insane. I think I was initially quite wary of trying to organise something too huge and complicated in the timescales. I didn't think we'd pull it off. Seeing what's been achieved in just a few days so far I've changed my mind. There are a lot of very enthusiastic people working very hard and more importantly people we are getting in touch with outside the josaka/berkshire live community are getting excited about the idea too.

Fingers crossed!

I have been talking with a friend of mine for years about putting a gig or series of gigs on in Reading. At first it was merely so that we could play at it with our band at the time 'cause there was practically nowhere in Reading to play. Recently as the gig scene has been picking up there are loads of promoters, loads of places to play and some really great gigs so we haven't had quite the drive to do it. It's still been on our minds and something that comes up regularly. Up until now we've never got anything off the ground. The main problem so far has been finding the right venue (with the right deal).

Between us we've been to and played at some great nights. The Catapult Club night in New Cross was one that inspired us hugely and challenged our perceptions of what a gig could and should be. Dance nights have also left an impression. As there is less to watch on the stage - a DJ can be quite a lonely boring figure on their own - they tend to be more audio visual treats.

The exact theme has changed over the years but in our minds this theoretical gig has always been more like a huge party with lights and colours and dancing and different people and sounds, the fact that the music is live just makes it even better.

It is finally looking like we are finally getting this gig off the ground. There are some other people organising it with us, and we've got a venue, we've started booking acts.

I am extremely excited. It's going to be called Screwball Cabaret.

Last night, in the downstairs part of the Outlook on Kings Rd (nr. Kwikfit/Prudential,etc.) saw the birth of the Reading Fringe festival 2005. Or rather, as Mikey says, the newest incarnation of the Fringe Festival after the Readipop one in 2000. I'm completely stoked by this, and look forward to trying to establish something that can be a regular feature in the local calendar. This year has seen bands from the area achieve a greater level of success and exposure than ever (I'm not sure if this is strictly true, I know there has been a steady trickle of bands from the area doing well and guys like The Cooper Temple Clause couldn’t really achieve much more success - but this is the first time that there has been such a major "buzz" as far as I know) so we need to strike while the iron is set to "man made fibres".

There is much to be done, although to be fair the hard work has already been carried out by the local promoters and bands, so all we need to do is try and get them wider exposure and coverage under a larger umbrella for the week running up to Reading Festival. I'm very aware that we are simply showcasing that which is already in existence, and trying to use it to promote, encourage and advertise further events and activities. We have some great people on board, and this isn’t rocket science so at the very least we will be able to enjoy more gigs and activities than usually happens around festival time.

Seems stupid to have the eyes of the nation turned on Reading every August for the bands that play at the festival and not point out that there is a thriving community of talent and artists located here for the other 11 months of the year as well. As I understand it, The Cooper Temple Clause played a handful of gigs in Reading before heading up the M4 to seek their fame - I suppose one of our goals is to be able to save other bands the petrol money in the future. Oxford has some good bands, Manchester and Liverpool have some good bands, I'd like to think that Reading has some good bands too: we just need to let the world know!

The Race have CD's in HMV, hopefully they'll start troubling the charts soon, Morning Runner are supporting Coldplay and appearing at Glastonbury this year - there are a smattering of signed acts in the area, not to mention ones that are being seriously looked at by guys with contracts - and I've started seeing bands actually move to Reading to try and further their careers, so it's all starting to snowball. Sounds like a good reason to have a fringe festival to me. In fact, hopefully soon we can lose the "fringe" term and just have Reading festival spread out to envelope the town itself and not just Richfield ave. Carling, please take note.

It must be just long enough since Berkshire Live Aid for me to have forgotten how much work that was because in the last week I seem to have gotten myself involved in two projects both of which are potentially taking place at just about the time I'm supposed to be moving house. I'm a fool. Nah, the more busy you are the more you can get done. It's better than staying in watching Big Brother... well... maybe.

The first, as AK mentioned, is the Reading Fringe Festival. There hasn't been a fringe festival since Readipop did one in 2000. I expect a lot of Reading gig goers have the Readipop CD from around then.

The other I'm going to keep quiet about for the moment, although I'm sure it'll all come out sooner or later. Personally I find this idea much, much more exciting. Something I've wanted to do for ages. I'm sure I'll reveal more about it here from time to time, but I want to maintain some air of mystery. Or, if it all goes tits up you might never hear about it again!

Wow - Berkslive has thrown up another chance to do something worthwhile for the local scene, there are rumblings and rumours of a new project to get involved with that should basically serve as a perfect excuse to organise some wicked nights for the good people of the Shires to come out and enjoy - hopefully I can at least be an extra bod to help lug stuff around, promote and I'm hoping even play at! There are so many good bands in the area now, all being given the chance to gig at nights and venues in the area by some seriously on-the-ball promoters - it's almost a shame to have to find a real reason to bring them all together under any sort of umbrella event. I look forward to future developments!

Wow. Seems crazy that things have grown and developed as far as they have since I started gigging again in Reading a few years back. BukandSkit are now putting on a festival at Abbey rugby club that has a better line up than most of the stages at the Carling weekender at the bottom of the hill, bands are going off and grabbing national exposure (hell, I even did some TV a couple of weeks back!), landing plush support slots and hopefully it won’t be long before they themselves are doing major tours. It's a strange old area to get going in, the music industry; It's not particularly "cool" to get a community of bands and artists all working together, helping each other out - exacerbated by how image-conscious bands and fans are - but people seem to be doing it anyway. I think the general mis-conception is that bands should all be rebelling against everything and each other, but that's come cos most artists who have "made it" have had rampant egos that clash, and it's better publicity to be fighting and hurling abuse at each other than it is to be seen to be lending each other bass amps, etc. when required.

People also seem to break off into different groups (sic) at times, and accusations of clique-ness get hurled around every now and again but all in all people seem to be making it work. Anyway, screw "cool" for the time being, I'm excited to play whatever part I can in a "scene". Every good band should be part of a scene, a movement, a philosophy or even an epoch. I dunno what's happening in Reading at the mo, but there's some great music being made by some crazy people, and a lot of other people seem to be paying attention right now. Talent always seems to find a way, and in this town there are plenty of people working hard to try and bring this through to a wider audience. How long has Reading suffered from having too many chain bars and pubs without any sort of entertainment beyond DJ's playing euro-shite dance remixes or Abba? And there's frontline talent being hidden away under everyone's noses? It'll always be there (I think it always has), but now it's primed and ready to become something else. Should be a good laugh getting there, and it seems like as good a way to expend my energies as any other.

Welcome to Radio T.I.C.K. - as in "Tick tock, baby - you know what time it is"
That's a sample from Alex Gopher's "Time" from his "You, my baby and I" CD (which is mostly brilliant).
Why you wanna start posting weird random stuff like that, Mikey? When did you start quoting French DJ's? Meh.. Whatever. Cool Müf rehearsal last night, good to get the ol' vocal chords out again and even better to have a drummer playing the drummist bits, too! Shame Sam couldn’t be there but Toki made an excellent stand-in dep.

Saw a snippet of a rockumentary the other day, it was about the band Living Colour and was saying how it was sad that they didn’t enjoy the success that their talent deserved - the fact that they were Black artists working in a predominantly white field (rock music) was mentioned, but how weird that they were being discussed as a band that "never made it" - they were huge at one point! They wrote some of the best rock tracks ever ("Cult of Personality", "Love Rears it's Ugly Head", "Solace of You", "Type") and had Vernon Reid shredding and riffing away with that FAT tone of his. They were all brilliant muso's, had a great image and I just wished I'd seen them live, so to hear that they felt that they never "made it" took me aback. I mean, maybe they never made the millions that a lot of bands make, but to hear someone say that they never "made it" is just a bit pants. Oh well maybe their lyrics to "Leave it Alone" were strangely prophetic:

"I'm not down with this one,
Their motives are much too severe
You know, I'll never be like that one
I don’t plan to make this a career"

HA! We seem to have a drummer. A good one who learnt the songs and can actually play them and has agreed to come back to more rehearsals etc.

It's like an inspiring rocket of creativity has been launched.

He hasn't actually met the other half of our rhythm section yet, he was stuck in Bournemouth with work.Luckily the Palestinians were rehearsing in the same room before us so we borrowed their bass player for the rehearsal which was great, he did an excellent job.

It feels like I'm in a band again. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

And it's sunny, and nearly Friday.

Tock

Had a rare and unexpected night off last night, was due to give some guitar lessons but that ended up being defenestrated so had time to recharge the batteries after a weekend of jet planes, bourbon and hotel rooms. After dosing up on current TV (Big Brother - sheesh. If people are so keen to look in on the lives of other people, why don’t they just lurk in bushes with binoculars like other common-or-garden voyeurs?) I went for a drive and listened to the White Sunday CD, which I hadn’t done for ages. I felt on top of the world; it's easy to lose sight of what your own music does for you. If you repeat a word over and over and over it loses all meaning - I think the same can happen when you rehearse and gig the same tunes over and over (no matter what order you put them in your set list!), so it's cool to distance yourself from all the hands-on elements of actually playing them and just sit there and listen.

I guess I'm usually so into the guitar parts (not to mention getting my groove on onstage) that the sum of the parts doesn’t add up to the sum of the whole - for me at least, but I saw the bigger picture again last night. I must remember to do that more often. I've stopped listening to what I've recorded as far as solo's go, seeing as I prefer to indulge my improvisational tastes whenever we gig (to a certain extent.. If a solo works then I try to stay within the same musical framework, but pick and choose different ideas to develop and work around; there's nothing I hate more than repeating parts parrot-fashion. Where's the fun in that?) but you have to keep sight of what the song is all about. If it's an uplifting track, there's no point in trying to do cerebellic, mathematical melodic progressions cos it's got to be all about the heart.

Usually I'd be wary of just flapping around inside pentatonic boxes (which is a kind of dumbed-down version of repeating things parrot fashion) but sometimes that's exactly what a song requires. Well, it's a useful tool to have at your disposal, as long as you pick and choose when and where to use it. I guess it would be nice to write a perfect lead line, one that was intricate but perfect and had to be played correctly every time (I'm thinking of the opening lead line of "Fade to Black" by Metallica here), but I try to deal with emotion and feel, which is a right bastard to pin down in a set series of notes and re-produce with the right feel every time. I find it's better for me to take all the adrenaline and energy of being on stage with Dan pounding away on the drums like the crazy rhythmic freak that he is, and try to channel this through the guitar. It's not good to impose rules and limits on yourself when you do this, much better to just open the throttle and see what happens, depending on my mood and environment. It keeps it honest.

So anyway, it was good to drive around listening to the White Sunday CD last night.

Monday, Monday (la laaaa, la-la-la-laa), so good to me.. All I hoped it would be, etc. Speaking of which, I could go for a ham sandwich right about now - but think I'll hold out for Angie, the bringer of mid-morning snacks. She should be here in a minute.

So, what a weekend. Managed the stupid o'clock start on Friday to fly up to Aberdeen without too many issues (apart from lack of sleep), and had a great time with the rest of All Wrapped Up as we flew/taxi'd it around to the hotel and the gig venue. It was a castle in Aberdeen that was a 4-star hotel and conference centre, so it was all pretty plush and accomodating, nice big stage to get all our gear on and still have room for a bit of a dance without tripping over anything (although apparently the stage wasn't that secure and I almost caused TonyI's keyboards to jump off their stand!). There was a bit of confusion as to whether or not the company - holding their annual summer barbecue - had hired the right band, they kept referring to us as being from Glasgow? So we wondered if they were expecting a traditional Scottish Celeidh band or something ("Would we get booed off stage for not playing sword-dancing music?") but they seemed to really enjoy the three sets we played, so I guess it wasn't a problem even if it was an issue! Very satisfying to see people rush up from their seats to join in on the dance floor - it was a mixed crowd in terms of age and taste, but I think we managed to get nearly everyone up and dancing at some point. The 50's rock and roll medley always seems to elicit the best response, which is cool for me as I love playing the guitar break in Bill Hailey's "rock around the clock" - it's so great to have people jitter-bugging through a guitar solo. Funnily enough, people never seem to jitter-bug during any of my other gigs! My grandparents used to win trophies for j-bugging back in the day - wish I could Michael J. Fox it back to the '40's and watch them throw themselves around while I knot my fingers together doing that jazzy, chromatic solo.

I set my personal best of 4 double Jack Daniels and coke before the set (as no-one was driving and the band had a free bar!) without it affecting my playing. I'm not generally one for getting drunk before a gig, but after the early start and journey up, I needed something to get me going! As I'm usually driving to gigs I don’t get the chance to get drunk, so I'll be using this as a benchmark. "Just 8 shots of JD for me please, I don’t want to over-do it.". It really warms my throat up for singing too, so there is a practical benefit to it. I had another three or four as the evening went on, without any adverse affects. It was good to have a few drinks as a band, we all had a blast doing the show and it was great to be flown up to a gig, have the hotels paid for, etc.

Took me and Tony Mac (drummer) about 10 hours to drive the van back down on Sat. We had to load it up at the venue 8am Sat morning, the others caught their flight back down at about 10am, but as I had to watch the Lion's first tour game, we had an hour or so in the hotel room supplied at the venue to wake up, drink coffee and watch the tourists do what was required against a Bay of Plenty team deprived of any Super 12 players. Gutted to see LBND end his tour with a fractured ankle, the All Blacks will be pleased to see him out of action, the Lions only have a really slim-to-non-existant chance of winning the series, and LBND was going to be a big part of that. OK, so Richard Hill will still be around (the same Richard Hill who single-handedly managed the entire All Black back row for 10 mins when Lozza and Neil Back were sin-binned when England beat them last time out) and I guess Martin Corry is capable of great things (possibly even Simon "Unfulfulled potential" Taylor), plus Michael Owen had a huge six nations, but Lozza would have been 1st choice. We shall see how the tour progresses.

But back to the weekend, the drive from Aberdeen to the Forth bridge took about 2 and a bit hours, the drive from Edinburgh to Carlisle took considerably longer but took in some of the most amazing countryside and views, ditto the drive through the Lake District, etc. Between us we managed to rustle up some quality CD's that helped make the drive pass pretty smoothly. Got back to Reading to unload the van at about 8.30pm, then I went over to Luke's (White Sunday bassist) for a barbecue/party which was great.

Sunday; caught up with my old housemate in town for a quick beer before a White Sunday rehearsal - I was pretty much dead on my feet as the last two days had caught up with me, but we nailed three new tunes so it was pretty productive. We have behind-the-scenes stuff happening too, so it's all good. We're getting a mix of good and bad reviews at the mo - we've learnt not to care too much as some people will really like what we do, some people will hate it, but the same goes for every band so all we can do it keep writing tunes that we love, that we think are valid musical statements, and everything else will unfold. We've got some beautiful melodies on the go, Mike has started sitting behind the keyboard again, he's such a talented bastard! We've all got a great creative dynamic now, we all listen to what everyone says and respect each other's opinions and viewpoints. I'm looking forward to seeing how we grow and develop, and what the future holds for us. John L Walters, writing in the Guardian, described us as "Third rate rock and roll", and Linda Serck at BBC Berkshire seems to enjoy watching me play guitar but has reservations about James' singing/performance. You can't please all of the people all of the time, I guess. As long as we keep playing gigs and getting reviewed in national media things will be fine by me. I keep thinking of biting and cutting retorts to bad reviews we get, but there's little point in rising to the bait. As long as I think that the reviewer is expressing an honest opinion in a professional way then I don’t have any problem, but some people seem to write in such a stupid way that I feel like I'm doing them a disservice by not pointing out their failings. Perhaps my problem is confounded by the fact that I think I'm a better writer/reviewer than half the people who write about us? At the end of the day I'd much rather be out there playing/writing/recording and being the subject of critical analysis than reporting on other people's efforts. Journalism is best reported by those who have actually walked the walk and are in a position to pass judgement/offer thoughts, so maybe in ten years time I'll be qualified to comment on other bands, etc. but for the time being I'll stick to my amateur scribblings as a part-time release from gigging, etc.

Müf have a rehearsal with another drum candidate this week, will be good to start thinking about Müffy things again, it's been a while!

Have a good week, y'all.

I should probably post to it occasionally.



Club Velocity was very entertaining on Friday. It was also insanely hot. Elle Milano weren't as good as when they played at the Sugarrush night the previous month (also with Rebus) which was a shame. Half Rabbit were pretty good. Lead guitar was much too loud in the mix and the drumming was a bit dicey but the songs had a lot of potential. Rebus played really well despite managing to break almost every bit of equipment they had. This led to a few impromptu jams whilst stuff was being fixed which was actually quite good.

Anyway. Blah, I'm not dead.