ComEnts

Holy physical and mental breakdown, Batman! Reading Fringe Festival 2005 seems to have been a bit of a success! We're still counting the number of injured and incapacitated after the Carling weekender, but it looks like we'll be able to hold a successful wrap party / 2006 launch party very soon!

Had a great time doing many things, but highlights of my Fringe festival this year:

Reading on Fire night at WaterRats theatre; top night out in the big smoke, followed by top night out in Reading when we returned, followed by top hangover on Sunday!

SixNationState at the 3B's: they had a brilliant opening band on the night but still played, danced and drank their hearts out entertaining a 3B's which was more packed than any Monday ever before.

Suitable Case for Treatment at Screwball cabaret: Oxford's finest fairytale/macabre/metal entertainers playing possibly the greatest alt rock gig ever witnessed in Reading outside of the festival proper.

Hanging out at Mike's place after the screwy cab night - late night hi-jinks with Pete Heff and Nikhil "Look what I've got for Reading fest!" whilst watching "Scum" on TV.

All the press coverage we got - Chronicle, Evening Post and Reading FC! Reading is on fire!

Now I'm looking forward to having some time off from running around.. Have to start thinking about doing some new EP's soon..! Have new White Sunday and Müf songs to commit to CD!

WOO! First gig for ages, other than the Sonic Undermind reunion gig a couple of months back that wasn't really a gig 'cause it was a wedding. Anyway, I can't wait. Although my entire body has seized up from moving house over the weekend.

The Fringe is going really well so far, apparently the Water Rats gig was a blinder and the local press has really got behind us. Big spreads in both the Chronicle and the Evening Post.

I say us, but really I've hardly done anything towards it. Everyone else has done a great job though.

Oh and Screwball Cabaret seems to be causing some excitement which is nice. I hope it goes half as well as it seems in my head.

Yaaaawwwnn.. *stretch, scratch* .. It's a beautiful sunny day here in the heart of the Thames Valley, workers from Slough all the way to Newbury are rueing the decision not to call in sick so they could watch the last day of what has been a magnificent Test match, including myself. I can feel a nasty cough coming on any minute now.. The Aussies have played well, the England team have played well - tho neither side has been on top form - and that's all any true sports fan has wanted, a tough, gritty battle for supremacy, not some poor, one-sided contest like the last 5 Ashes series! Let's hope the Aussies can run the final day close, if Hayden starts seeing the ball big he could rattle up a big score, but I hope it doesn't come down to 2 runs like the last one.. Not sure if I could stand the tension! There was a great article in one of the Sunday papers saying how the whole crowd applauded Shane Warne when he took his 600 wicket, how that would never happen in football, etc. if Van Nistelrooy scored his 100th premiership goal in an away game at Arsenal, he'd just get booed, etc. Not that football is likely to change in that respect (more's the pity), but it was nice to read of the Corinthian attitude of the Old Trafford cricket crowd, etc.

Had a good recording sesh up at Ant Farm studios Sat morning. Went out for a few drinks in the East End (a club called 93 Feet East, to be precise - well impressed) on Fri, crashed at Dancin' Danny G's studio floor and set about finishing some tracks once we were up and awake! Red Antennae are definitely changing our name to Fitzroy, as Red Antennae is actually the name of the label/stable that Dan looks after, so we just wanted to get a bit of distinction between the label and the band. Anyway, the CD we finished still needs a bit of mixing down and post-production but essentially it's great. I'm hoping to get them up on Arkade.com as soon as they've been completely polished off (at the moment one of the tracks has the loudest bass I've ever heard, nearly blew the speakers in my car.. Kinda cool in it's own right but perhaps not ideal?).

Fringe festival is only 5 days away now.. Have started distributing the programmes, even tho the printers seem to have taken a pretty "avante-garde" approach to doing what we asked for. Am trying to resolve issues, nothing serious (I hope) but nonetheless its our responsibility to clear them up.

Müf rehersal tonight, need to nail the last of the new songs we've written so we can play it at the 3B's next week. Am still praying for lyrical inspiration to fall out of the sky..

Who eeez theez "Mike"? I know not ov heeem, and weeesh heeem to be taken away vrom mihy blog.

Sorry, was reminded of one of my fave "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoons, where Calvin is wearing a Groucho Marx "disguise" (i.e. glasses and big plastic nose + tache) and is looking up at his mother saying "Who eeez theez "Calvin"?" - and I kinda segue'd it into a Borat impression while I was at it.

Man like Heff, him speak truth - Müf rehearsal was a goodie, just need to come up with some lyrics for our newer "new" song and we'll be away. Incidentally, in true "band" style, the newer "new" song is tentatively titled "New new song", and may well remain that way as a symbol of one of the universal musical truths permeating unsigned (and a lot of signed ones as well, I should imagine) band culture today. I'm particularly loving Lee Alloway's drumming at the mo, he does some beautiful reggae stuff, and I noticed on Monday that he uses a double bass pedal too! Granted, apparently he's been using it for all five or six of the practices that we've had so far, but quite frankly when you've lived life like I have, your short term memory is one of the first casualties. And I really love Lee's drumming too - very reggae in places *ahem*. I thought it would be hard to replace Iain - and it was. So I was right. *pats self on back* But Lee has just made the stool his own, if that's not an unfortunate turn of phrase. When we had Iain drumming, it was like we were just messing around and seeing what would happen, with Iain acting as our musical director. With Lee, it's like I feel obliged to not waste his time (I'm perfectly at ease with wasting Mike and Sam's time!), to knuckle down and apply myself rather than just fanny around and enjoy myself, so he's brought a real sense of purpose with him. Fair play to him. Hope he hangs around longer than our last drummer did. Don’t want Müf to turn into a Spinal Tap-esque drummer graveyard.

Must get round to getting those lyrics penned tho - the last song we wrote was inspired by the recent bombings/terrorist atrocities in London, which was kind of strange as I don’t usually do political songs. I feel pleased to have pushed myself a bit further though, and it's not like I wrote it for the sake of writing it, we had the music done and I was going to sob pathetically like some love-sick teenager over the top but then the bombings happened and before I knew it I had finished off a set of lyrics about politics, the government and all sorts. At first I felt a bit like Rik from the Young Ones, but once I understood that I actually believed the things I had written, I found my conviction and can quite happily sing them now, without feeling self-conscious, etc. I also came to the conclusion that "Semtex Backpack" would be a great band name if anyone had the cahones to use it.

White Sunday - cover your eyes/ears, Mike - played a stormer in the Half Moon in Putney last night, awesome stuff. Loads of people came down to see us including my team leader at work; it's a great venue with a great soundsystem and an engineer who knew exactly what he was doing (no arse/elbow confusions as is often the case) and a great time was had by all. Laughed like a drain for much of the way home, and was talking to a guy as we were packing up who said that he loved the band, thought we looked great and sounded better, and that he loved my "Satriani thing". I'm still deeply happy with that as I write this, it was more the way he said it than anything; I don’t play anything like Smokin' Jo, I like to think he was just saying "well played" in a way that he knew I would appreciate. People say all kindsa weird stuff to me about my playing, I take it all with a pinch of salt cos I know guys who can easily rinse me out in terms of shredding and theory and stuff, but if someone says something nice and they mean it, it doesn’t matter what or how I played, it's just deeply gratifying to think that someone enjoyed it apart from me. All the music I play I generally do because I love it - not to impress or further myself, just because I love it and that's all that matters to me. To realise that someone else thought it was cool as well just about boggles whatever mind I may have had to start with.

Fringe festival.. Nyaaargh! So much to do, so little time to do it in! I've already had to scrap plans for the hip-hop night I was so keen to get booked, and if I can’t get in touch with the assistant manager at Pavlov's Dog to confirm the acoustic all dayer I want to do then I'll have to flush that down the pan till next year as well!! I will be relieved when this year is over and we can start planning next year's properly, it seems like only one in every three things we've tried to arrange will happen and that makes me feel slightly crap as I had such big plans and feel a bit guilty about taking on the responsibility, knowing that I had a fairly full plate anyway. Oh well, as long as it gets better and better every year until it's the full-blown festival that everyone involved has been so excited about since we first started mooting the idea. But as I say, I still have a hundred things to try and do / sort out / investigate / book / fund!

It's good to be busy.

I don't know if any of you remember me. I used to write on this blog months and months and months ago.

Or it feels like that anyway.

There is a huge amount going on at the moment, I almost don't know what to talk about on here because there's so much.

Müf's return gig is less than two weeks away now, which is very exciting. Last night we had one of the greatest rehearsals Müf have ever had. I don't know why but it all just clicked. We've got two new songs to roll out at the gig. One of which is finished and one which is very nearly finished... I'm sure we'll get it sorted in our last rehearsal though. It's really good stuff I like it a lot. Having a few months off from the band was a bit shit and it's taken us a little while to find our feet a as, effectively, a new band. Things seem to be really going well now though. Musically we're continuing to develop our own sound I think, although we've been together for coming up to a year now we've really only had a couple of 3 month bursts of activity. I hope we can really push on for the rest of this year. Give us gigs! Oh and come see us, BBBs 22nd August with Six Nation State.

The Wednesday after that Screwball Cabaret kicks off. I'm also extremely excited about that. In many ways I wish someone else was organising it so I could just go as a fan and enjoy the evening not have to work!

Pete and the Pirates have their Reading CD launch this Saturday at the Rising Sun Arts Center, one of the Toilet Sessions to raise money for the second toilet. That's another one I'm looking forward to especially as I missed their real CD launch because I was in Budapest.

Reading Festival is coming up fast on the heels of Screwball too.

Oh and I'm moving house on the 19th so I'm busy as hell with that. Why are some months just totally crazy?

Alright, pop-pickers? Not 'arf.. *baaa daaa, daaa-daa-daaa-daaaaaaa*

So the Müf 4-track debut EP "We Could be Friends" CD has arrived, Sam, Lee, his Heffness and myself were cooing over the little bundle wrapped in bubble-wrap last night at rehe-arsals. They have their father's ears. Both band and instruments are doing very well. These should be available from the Josaka shop in the near future (I believe they are taking pre-orders.. *cough*) as well as at our gig at the 3B's on Monday 22nd August with SixNationState. I'm pleased to be gigging with them because as well as seeming like a top bunch of affable ne'er-do-wells over t'internet, Dazza from Three Litre said - about a year ago - that they reminded him of Corrosion of Conformity and I've been trying to catch them live ever since! However, the best - and prolly only - way for me to catch other bands is to play with them, so I'm kinda limited in my options.. Should be a good night anyway, SNS just got a review from when they were supporting Nine Black Alps saying that they blew the much-hyped Manc grungers out the water, I hope they don't put Müf in the shade on the 23rd, it would be a shame to have to beat them to death with their own guitars. *evil cackle*

White Sunday are playing at the Half Moon in Putney next Tuesday, one of my fave venues to play at; just hope we can get our mate Barry to drive the van for us, so that alcohol may be imbibed without risk to life or limb.

Fringe festival is still looking good - I still have a hundred and one things to do tho, so I'd better crack on.. I have a hip-hop night and an acoustic all-dayer to confirm with the respective venues, some tracks to include on the compilation CD and a rack of other things that I've thought of today; so I'll leave you with this thought from Stan Laurel:
"A horse can be brought to water, but a pencil has to be lead."