ComEnts

Greetings, grapple fans.. There is a curse, it says "May you live in interesting times" - things are certainly getting interesting for me right now, although as with anything there will have to be sacrifices and tough decisions to be made in order to attain that which certainly seems attainable. Certain parts of my life have moved on or gone completely, I'm in a state of flux to a certain extent. I like it - things will stay the same unless they change.

"There is no shame in failure; there is only shame in not trying."

I'm off snowboarding on 5th Feb. Guess how much I'm looking forward to that? Go on.. Now take the amount you thought of and multiply it by the amount that I have over-extended this illustrative point; now you're close. I'm under strict orders not to break any bones while I'm carving my way through tons of white powder (although frankly I'll have more chance of breaking bones while I'm snowboarding..) - Tim the Red Antennae drummer once broke his wrist snowboarding and we had to revert back to the laptop for the beats at a gig we played while he was in plaster.. I have a few gigs lined up upon my return so I'd better play it safe.

When I was about 11 I started skateboarding ALL THE TIME - I mean, it really was my life, and I carried on until I was about 15 (I was decidedly average; more of a street skater than a ramp skater) so I'm dying to turn my hand to snowboarding, which if not exactly like skateboarding is at least f*cking close. I haven't ski-ed before and looks like I would spend most of my week on the piste falling on my face (in which case, Müf fans, I would fall as hard as I can!) if I tried skiing, so I'm going to give it a miss and pretend to be a character (probably Psymon?) from SSX Tricky instead.

I just want to get into a halfpipe!!!! I know that I'll be putting myself in mortal danger, but every fibre of my being is straining to get down a halfpipe on a snowboard! I wouldn’t do anything elaborate, just the odd 180 / 360 turn (I may allow myself a few tweaked grabs too! Could never quite get a stalefish on a skateboard, wonder if a snowboard is any easier?) AAAAAARGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!! Only two more weeks..!

Like a close associate of mine said recently "Don’t try any über tricks!". SSX Tricky had an amazing soundtrack, Fatboy Slim had one on there which had a sample ".. and the sign said "long-haired freaky people need not apply" which was cool - think it was called "Don't let the man get you down"? Caesar's "Jerk it out" and also, as I'm bombing it - James Bond stylee - down a mountain I'll be thinking of Rahzel. "Uber me!"

"If *bompf!* your mother *wheeek!* only *bompf!* knew.."

Game soundtracks are the new hit-makers. Fifa (you can keep Pro Evo; it is much better in some respects but Fifa 2006 is amazing and I like to display brand loyalty: plus, who the hell are "Manchester Reds/Blues?" call yourself a footie game?? May as well have Melchester Rovers in there!) has always had some wicked tracks on there - the new one has a banging hard-beat reggae tune which goes "My style is the bomb to the bang.. diggy-diggy!" which is a ridiculous thing to sing at the best of times, but it's a wicked track! Games producers are obviously more clued up and style-conscious than the dickheads running the music industry, perhaps the future of music promotion lies in the hands of EA games/sports? I hope so, I have far more confidence in them than I do in those 50yr old ex hipsters working for major record labels, deciding what is "cool". I think that is my new goal for 2006 - get a tune on a game soundtrack! I worked with Rob Bloomfield (Rebus drummer and all-round production Jedi) on a tender for a game soundtrack that wasn't used but the rejection note said that it was the games producer's favourite submission. They were after something light and refreshing to sit in the background while the game was played, I think our submission probably outshone the game itself. As I recall it was a warp-speed metal guitar rendition of "The Can-Can".

I grow to love Lewis Taylor more with each passing day. "Stoned Pt1" is currently glued inside my car CD player, like a disk-shaped slice of blissful, melodic ecstasy. I have decided that I want to marry him and make him happy. Love sees no boundaries. Lewis, you've stoned me baby. And I don’t think I'll ever be coming down. Boo-dom bom-bom bom-bom ba-daa, etc. How you made a mess like this, I just don’t know. Did I crumble? Like a 10,000 year old apple bake, mate.

So, I've been feeling shit since Christmas, turns out I genuinely have some kind of throat infection that needs real drugs to cure. This is a good thing. When I do manage to venture to the Doctor's it's good to find out that I am genuinely sick.

Taking on a Screwball and a Müf gig when running at about 70% fitness probably wasn't the best idea. If I was a player in Championship Manager/Football Manager, I'd have needed to rest myself. It's possible this isn't making much sense. Perhaps I'm delirious? Too much to do to be ill, stupid body.

Possibly even better than anti-biotics are Three Litre. They played at Lu's birthday party gig at the After Dark last night. Now that Graham (the singer-songwriter-paisley tele playing frontman of said band) is living in Kent Three Litre gigs in Reading are rare occurences which is bad in a way but on the other hand it also means that all the local Three Litre fans go to them and they become a big singalong party. Great fun. Certainly put a big grin back on my totally sober, ill and extremely tired face.

Oh, and there was another Fringe Festival meeting last night. I think things are about to snowball with that again. I will talk more about that in the near future, if AK doesn't beat me to it.

Alright pop-pickers? Not 'arf..
*baa daa daa-daa-daa daaaaaaaaa! Baa daa da daaaaaa…*

So - Reading university on Monday night was good - quite a good turnout, not the most raucous atmosphere of all time but still a good headcount in the crowd. Sound check threw up a choice moment as well, we started setting up at about 6.30pm, students were still sitting around in the union - one of whom had obviously been locked in discourse with Auntie Stella for some time. Danny started going through his kit for the soundguy to set the levels, which prompted Mr. Pist to start shouting heckles at him; "Play something else!" and "You're not very good, are ya?". This constant trickle of inane, mindless "ribaldry" was wearing thin - Jim said he might have to hit the bloke, etc. but we all ignored him. After we ran through a tune, the guy was straight out of his seat, asking the soundman to turn Jim's mic up, and telling us how good we were, etc. It was satisfying in that respect, but more importantly it showed that you should never rise to the bait of ignorance. Gig was great, debuted our new song "bound for glory" which was well received, and also meant we were nice and tight for the next night's show in London.

Oh, before I move on to Tuesday night, I must mention this for posterity: I was wheeling my amp out of the student union after the show when I was accosted by 4 fairly inebriated young ladies who were after confirmation that I had been playing in the band. Once I had allayed their fears that I may have just been a roadie or something (I'd changed out of the clothes I was wearing on stage), they said that it would really make their night if I signed them. And when I say "them", I mean three pairs of fairly impressive breasticles and one butt cheek. "If only someone could see me now" I thought as I biro'd "If only my parents could see me now" and other pleasantries onto mounds of soft flesh. Bang on cue, the rest of the band walk round the corner to see me knelt down applying the final touches to the butt cheek of the fourth of the giggling gaggle of girls. I've always believed that refusing to sign autographs is rude and ungentlemanly - I'm still bemused that anyone should want mine, but I guess it comes with the territory. I was happy to put a smile on their faces, not to mention some biro on their boobs.

Tuesday saw White Sunday return to our home-away-from-home in Putney's Half Moon. This was our 4th appearance, this time supporting a very cool multi-cultural (there were Swiss accents, South African accents, American ones too I think..) band called Trackter who sounded like Jeff Buckley playing Dave Matthews songs. No CD player in the van meant that Danny Lovegroove and I had to travel down listening to Pearl Jam and old Smashing Pumpkins tunes (no great tragedy) but I was gutted cos I wanted to introduce Danny to the marvel that is Lewis Taylor. As it turned out, I managed to lose two of my three Lewis CD's at some point in the day. Will have to go and buy what will be my 4th copy of "Lewis Taylor" and pick up my 2nd copy of Ltd Edition 2004 (featuring current face track "Party".

The Half Moon is a wicked venue, we always get the same soundman - a very mellow Scottish bloke whose name escapes me at the moment.. But he's cool. Kinda like the roadie from Wayne's World 2/Withnail and I and and Willie Nelson mixed into one. I expect he's played/toured with anyone who's anyone, I keep meaning to ask him. But he's a wicked soundman, everything is bang on the money everytime; great stage sound, audience keep saying how good it sounds on the floor (the other bands always sound sweet), it just makes you play better if you feel you are in professional surroundings. And we did play pretty good, I even got a solo! Bonus! We had some people come up from Southampton to see us, including one girl who was "accomodatingly friendly" after the show - my mate Mark has just bought a house in Southampton, so I think I'll be heading down to the coast soon..

Had a South African guy come up to me afterwards and ask for a CD. He said that he could get us known in SA, and would we like to go on tour over there? I said "yeah, that'd be great" but I'd be shocked if we ever heard from him again. I didn’t have any change on me so he bought a CD for a fiver, that'll teach him for getting my hopes up for 0.00007 of a second.

No gigs with White Sunday for a while now, not until I return from snowboarding on 13th Feb anyway. Good job Müf have some shows! Hopefully some new songs to be showcased too, if I can just overcome my mortal fear of writing lyrics.

Cool Müf gig on Sat, thanks to all who came down on - nice to see Pete and the Pirates in full band mode after their drummer-less set at Screwball Cabaret, too. The ending to their set was brilliant, climactic and completely unexpected after the 30-50 mins that had gone before! Nice work, Piratical fellas! (although I believe that Pirates actually prefer to be referred to as "Gentlemen of fortune". Arrrr!)

Good to see my fellow White Sunday bandmate Dan Dan the Drumming Man (aka Danny Lovegroove) playing bass for Big Sleep on the same bill! If Reading is indeed "on fire" as many journalists are reporting it is because it is blessed with musical prodigies such as Danny, musicians who are keen to go out and play whatever music tickles their fancy in whatever way they deem fit, regardless of what "music industry" types would advise them to do / not do. I'd count myself in amongst that illustrious number of Reading based musicians who are playing and writing a load of different styles of music, but that would be really arrogant of me, so I'll leave it for others to do!

Lewis Taylor. I posted on his message board that I had written a review of his Jazz Café gig last Thursday, asking if anyone knew anywhere that may publish it as I thought that Josaka wouldn't be interested (not being a Berks artist or venue, etc. - but they like Lewis so they posted it anyway!) and instead of ingratiating myself amongst the forum regulars with a "hi! I'm new, could you help me out?" I managed to dis-engage my brain and write "Lewis proves that short-arsed, shaven-headed guitar gods are cool as f*ck!". Brilliant, Kaupa. *golf clap* Just go and call your new favourite musician a short-arse; that will win you new friends on his site. Hopefully the few people on there who know who I am may have seen the funny side, but my best bet is to hope that no-one actually read the post in the first place, it was kinda hidden away. Lucky for me I could edit the post and stick the Josaka link up there in it's place, but I fear the damage may have been done. Sometimes I manage to make Laurel and Hardy look like the SAS.

Well... I know you are all dying to know how Screwball went, it was fantastic! A great success. The first review of the night is extremely complimentary.

People seem to be loving the format which is great. It's really gratifying to work so hard at something and have people really enjoy themselves. Not only that but we didn't lose money!

Things mostly went really smoothly on the night. Everything went much more smoothly than last time. I'm even starting to learn some of the technical stuff.

Oh and the venue got some extra lights in from Martins Lights and they made the place look great. Hopefully someone somewhere has some pictures.

Well today's the big day. Everything's come together for Screwball now. I'm quite happy about everything. Just need people to come along to prevent my personal financial destitution.

And then we can start thinking about who to book for next time.

Yes I did, Brad - YES I DID!!! my mate Madeleine is a bit of a pool hustler - very good at giving it "Well, I don’t know much about pool but I think I remember which way round to hold the stick thingie.. Oh! Did I seven-ball you? Deary me! How did that happen..?" However Michael, my finely-tuned and overly sensitive sense of karmic balance struck back almost immediately when Mads said that she only played in her local darts team "to make up numbers". Spurred on by watching the darts on TV earlier that day, and emboldened by memories of playing with my college darts team, I challenged her to a contest. Little cow beat me 2-1. Grrrr! If only she wasn't so cute and forgiveable..

But what I'm really here to talk about is playing gigs without rehearsing: The Müfsters of the Universe are at Poptoys in Reading this Sat (as a last minute call-up to the bill) and we're not going to get a full rehearsal before then through Lee the drummist being wanted all over the country until about 6pm on Sat (when he's wanted for our soundcheck!). It's been a while since we played, but I believe that a band who have been together - and playing the same songs, essentially - for over a year should have the confidence to just get up and start thrashing away without worrying about the fine details. The live performance shouldn't be about faithfully reproducing the CD, it should be about a unique interpretation of the music, a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the audience (dare I say "fan"?) to see the band do something fresh and exciting, make up endings, improvise middle bits and generally extemporise like bee-hatches. It's what makes gigging so exciting, and it's what keeps the songs fresh and artistically valid. I'm in one band that play covers, the last thing in the world that I want is to start being in my own covers band, playing dead, lifeless versions of songs that we used to fill with passion until we got bored of them and started just playing them by rote. That's my idea of hell, that is.

White Sunday are at Reading uni's Mojo's bar on Monday, and we aren’t going to get a rehearsal either - we have one new choon we want to play that we'd all prefer to rehearse before we unveiled, but life doesn’t always work that way! We are using the uni gig as a rehearsal for our Half Moon gig on Tuesday, but more importantly - and this is my whole point, really - I'm hoping that the band (this goes for Müf on Sat too) take a huge amount of confidence from playing "cold" as it were and still doing really well. I mean, both bands will rock in their own completely different ways, and I hope that everyone finishes the shows with a new sense of nonchalance about playing live. After all, playing live is brilliant, and a piece of piss once you've written, learnt and rehearsed all the songs. It shouldn't be about playing all the right notes/chords in all the right places and keeping in time: it should be about playing the song as hard/beautifully as you can with as much force/aggression/emotion/finesse/passion as you can muster up to unleash upon the audience. You can’t do that when you are worrying about what everyone else is going to do at the end of the next bar.

That said, I bet I forget the lyrics on Sat. May do some sneaky swotting before Sat - 21 South St. is an amazing venue, great sound, big stage, good attendance levels, I don’t want to look or sound like a plum when I'm up there under the bright lights taking in the smell of the crowd and the roar of the greasepaint..

I have no idea! We went out to celebrate/commiserate the anniversaries of our respective births on Saturday. With a bunch of other people. A lot of pool was played, mostly doubles, but the details are hazy. I think that AK drafted in a female pool ninja to defeat me. Curse him.

I'll get you next time Kaupa.

So, I think I posted a bit about Screwball Cabaret a while back. I can't remember what I said but we're entering period which is probably familiar to all promoters, the "Oh my god what the hell are we doing" period. The looming reality of potential financial losses combined with the detail required to organise such a complicated night can be fairly stressful. What with load in times, soundchecks, left handed drummers, security, numbers, venue capacity, riders, visuals, kit share, bar staff, overflow rooms, tech specs, wireless mic frequency conflicts etc. etc. etc. On the plus side loads of people seem excited by the line-up and say they are coming which is great to hear.

It'll all come together on the night and it'll be great, but that doesn't mean you don't sometimes stress about things before hand. Last time we were pretty well prepared, we thought, but on the actual day everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. The bands all got stuck in festival traffic. Doors were at 8 and I think we didn't have a full band there until 6:30. Then the power amp for the main stage monitors broke about 45 minutes before doors. And various other things I won't bore you with. The problems and subsequent soundcheck pressures meant we ended up swapping the stage times around on the night several times. Luckily Paul from Plug'n'Play who was there on the night is an absolute legend who really knows his stuff and we got everything sorted. This time we've learnt from that and are/will be even more prepared. Plus we've learnt from what mistakes we made last time. Still. Best to worry in advance, sort things and have a stress free evening.

There are four of us organising this Screwball, Rob, Jim, Helen and Me. Rob and Jim are doing the sound on a stage each. Helen's in charge of the door and I'm the main stage roadie/stage manager and general backstage manager. Rob, Jim and Helen's roles basically tie them to fixed positions in the venue on the night so I'm normally the person who has to run around fixing any problems. I think I've covered everything I've thought of so far. So it's just all the things I haven't thought of or can't control I've got to worry about.

What I really love about working with those guys is that we're all really laid back easy going people who enjoy life and have a laugh together but when it comes down to it we're all prepared to absolutely work our arses off to get things sorted. Paul at Plug'n'Play was the same.

The irony is, if we all do our jobs well the audience will have absolutely no idea how hard we've all worked. It happened last time, we had so many disasters but to the crowd it was a lovely slick gig with loads of great music. Perfect. That's my aim again this time, to make it all look really easy and slick to the crowd and make it be comfortable, relaxed and a pleasure to play for the bands. Fingers crossed.

Oh and the review that I mentioned yesterday is up on josaka.

I don't know where AK gets these fanciful ideas from. I can't possibly be thirty.

Anyway, don't you think going out sucks these days reader? All that noise and smoke. You can hardly get any decent ale anywhere, it's all this tastless fizzy lager rubbish. I don't know about you but I'd much rather sit in of an evening with a lovely cup of tea watching Poirot. Oooh, speaking of which I think my girlfriend thought I was joking about Poirot when I was going on about it over Christmas. It's great though, I love Poirot. 4 new 2 hour episodes with David Suchet, and the first one last week was as good as hoped. The girl out of the BBC con artist show Hustle put on a slightly dicey American accent and got murdered on a train. No Hastings or Miss Lemon which was a shame but they compensated with two murderers!

Forget entrepreneurs, Poirot is the new rock and roll. Oh how quickly fashion changes. Does anyone know how to wax a moustache?

Would write more but I've been forced to write a review with AK for those bloody slave drivers at Josaka.

Happy birthday to youuu.. Happy birthday too-oo youuu!
Happy birthday, dear Michael, Happy Birthday to youuu!!!!!!

You are 30, going on 31 - baby it's time to think
Better beware, be canny and careful, baby you’re on the brink!

You know it doesn’t make much sense
There ought to be a law against
Anyone who takes offense
At a day in your celebration
cause we all know in our minds
That there ought to be a time
That we can set aside
To show just how much we love you
And I’m sure you would agree
It couldn’t fit more perfectly
Than to have a world party
on the day you came to be..
Happy birthday Michael, happy birthday!

*der der-der-der-der-der der-der*
You say it's your birthday
*der der-der-der-der-der der-der*
It was my birthday too, yeah! We're gonna have a good time, etc!

Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses: a toast to man like Mikey - a bon viveur, a connoiseur, an excellent judge of character and, most surprisingly, a fine rhythm guitarist.

May the first 30 years of your life be completely eclipsed by the success, acclaim, awards and general high-falutin'ness of the next 30.

Happy 2006 everybods peeps! Can I trust that everyone enjoyed themselves? Can I rest easy, knowing that the full recuperative benefits of the festive season were bestowed upon all and sundry? Yes / no? Good. Remember; peace on earth and goodwill to all men is for life - not just for Christmas.

This year was my first Christmas as an uncle, my parents' first as grandparents, grandparents as great-grandparents, etc. The new arrival (my bro's daughter) made it - Christmas is rubbish unless you are either a kid or own one / have easy access to one. Just picking out her present in the Early Learning Centre made everything seem magic again.. Shit, you can tell I just turned 29, can’t you? As one musical mukka of mine put it - "one year away from the first stage of old-gitdom". Ooops.. I'd better watch what I say, Mike is 30 on Thursday so he will probably be having one of those moments where you are forced to take a long, hard look into your own soul to try and understand how you feel about such a moment of realisation - the death of youth, the social stigma attached to age in a culture obsessed by youth, etc.

Wanna know what I think? OK - we had a cultural revolution in the 1950's and 60's that saw the birth of youth culture (i.e. the average age of a Hollywood male lead went from 40 to 20: Cary Grant was replaced by James Dean), and market forces have maintained the trend ever since (basically because each new wave of teenagers is larger than the last, thanks to the simple mathematics of the population growth, so the youth market will always remain the largest market. This is only affected by war, disease and famine really) so effectively we have a stagnant pool, where the same ideals (youth, beauty, etc.) are held up and repeated parrot-fashion. It won’t be long before another revolution is needed, the youth will be overthrown and held in special cells whilst the truly beautiful people (those of high moral standing and general benevolence/philanthropy) become recognised as the new demi-gods of culture and society. Mankind will veer away from economics and capitalism and come running back to the comforting apron-strings of mother nature and human kindness. Feats of individual success and achievement will be seen as intrinsically selfish and base, and Man's innate need to be measured against fellow Man will go through the social equivalent of decimalisation. Success and worth will not be measured in how much money you make but rather through how many lives you have improved, how much you are loved and/or appreciated. Society will return to a peaceful state of co-existence from the chaotic money-chasing of today, and leaders will be in the form of benevolent dictatorships - just like the good old days. The world is shrinking, countries will no longer be able to invade other countries without suffering the wrath of the rest of the world (hopefully the rest of the world will stop taking shit from America, too) and soon we'll all learn to live in harmony with each other.

Or not - who knows? Still, it's best to assume that things will improve: the alternative suggests that we came down from the trees just to kill each other and that's not a reason to get out of bed in the morning. If you think it is only 50 years since racism was legally outlawed (perhaps even more recently than that in the case of South Africa), we've come a long way in a short time. If we carry on like this, I reckon by 2050 we'll be doing OK.

2006 is going to be brilliant. I'm not sure how or why, but it will kick arse with both feet - I can feel it. All my horoscopes (taken once daily with a pinch of salt) tell me it will be great, and I have no reason to doubt them. I'm going snow-boarding in Feb, I suspect that this alone will make the year for me.

If anyone is in Reading this Sat come and join the Alex / Mikey joint birthday party, probably kicking off at the Brewery Tap (Castle Street) at 4pm for some pool and beer.