Same as it ever was?

Monday 7th August, 3.17 pm

As I write this, in shaky Biro in a reporter's notebook in the back of the bus somewhere on the Southbound M40 there is much to reflect upon. The Rebellion Festival is invariably a great thing to be part of and this year has certainly been no exception, but somehow this gathering seemed to go further than most. Ruts D.C. played two shows - an all-guns-blazing Saturday night electric set and an emotional performance to close the acoustic stage last night as well as nipping across to Hebden Bridge on Friday evening for a gig at The Trades Club where we were joined by Baz Warne of The Stranglers for two songs. I also spent a fair bit of time behind the Cadiz Music merchandise stall with Richard and Blaise as well as catching some great performances from T.V. Smith and The Skids among others. There were the usual unwisely late night drinking sessions (it was getting light as I stumbled through Blackpool on the way back to my hotel on Saturday night / Sunday morning) but that's just about par for the course - all things considered I don't feel too bad (it feels as though I rarely got to eat anything more substantial than sandwiches) although I suspect that I'm heading for an uncommonly early night tonight.

Our Saturday show on the outdoor Casbah stage was preceded by a suitably energetic Neville Staple show and was followed by a wonderful performance from Misty In Roots - I'm sure that I wasn't the only person excited to see the words 'Ruts' and 'Misty' on the same bill again after all these years. Earlier in the day we were interviewed by a BBC film crew for an upcoming documentary on the festival - as always it was Dave and Segs that they really wanted to hear from but I managed a few words here and there. They also filmed a fair bit of our show - I wonder how much if any of it will make it into the finished programme? There were a few fraught moments here and there - I got locked out of our dressing room ten minutes before the show and only just made it to the stage in time having had to run up and down gawd knows how many flights of stairs to get the key and then get changed. Maybe this meant that I didn't have time to get nervous - either way our performance was, even though I say so myself, a stormer. We'd played well the night before but this one really took off, with the middle section of 'In A Rut' featuring the riff from 'Interstellar Overdrive', a cover of 'Suffragette City' (which began life as an impromptu run through at Monday's rehearsal and which then somehow made it onto the stage) and the final song 'Psychic Attack' provoking a near riot. In contrast last night's acoustic show in a very full bar (possibly dangerously so) took everything back to basics, with rarely performed songs from 'Music Must Destroy' rubbing shoulders with Ruts and Ruts D.C. classics and grown men being moved to tears on several occasions. And that was just on the stage.

This coming Saturday we're playing at the splendidly - named Zebedee's Yard in Hull with The Stranglers and Big Country - The Spiders From Mars were from there so maybe 'Suffragette City' will make it to the stage again. In the meantime there is much to reflect upon. I've always been somewhat over-romantic (some might say pretentious, and let's face it, they may well have a point!) about the power of music, how it brings people together, the emotions that it can evoke and how something as seemingly insignificant as a mere pop song can sometimes mean everything to the listener - well I've seen all of that and more proved time and time again over the past few days. I feel as though I've shook hundreds of hands and been in almost as many photographs with people who wanted to say how much they enjoyed the shows, what a song or songs means to them, even to ask how I get a particular guitar sound - we stopped at a service station a few minutes ago and a couple come over to say how much they liked the acoustic gig. You can't buy moments like that, even if you wanted to. Suddenly the road home feels more like the road back to the real world, whatever that is. It's an amazing feeling to be told that you make a difference (however small) to people's lives, maybe even that you contribute to making life a bit more bearable when it all gets too much. That's something to be proud of don't you think? Well, I think that it is. 

So - now what? More gigs, including some Irish shows with Stiff Little Fingers later this month. Oh, and we're talking about the next album. Of course we are. The road home goes on forever...

Tuesday 8th August, 7.52 pm 

Ah! The usual post - Rebellion ramblings that seem to say very little but that somehow say everything about the previous few days. I bet that I said almost the same thing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that...

21st Century Ruts D.C.

Last night, Thursday 17th November 2011, I played with Ruts D.C. at The Ritz in Manchester.

How the hell did that happen?

I last saw Ruts D.C. in 1981 and 1982. It was the same show as it was New Year's Eve (clever eh?) at The Fulham Greyhound. It was an incredible evening. Details are a bit sketchy here and there (you know why...) but I'm pretty sure the support band were Auntie And The Men From Uncle (very strange but oddly compulsive, with Esso on drums) followed by Captain Sensible, Segs and Rat Scabies giving an impromptu performance of 'What Do You Give The Man Who's Got Everything?' from the Captain's solo single 'This Is Your Captain Speaking' before Ruts D.C. came on. They were amazing. Amazing. AMAZING. As good as any band I've ever seen. I've got a signed setlist somewhere. And that was almost exactly 30 years ago. Amazing.

I was a fan. I'm still a fan. But now I'm playing in the band. How the hell did that happen?

I asked myself that very question as I sat in Frank's Cafe in Uxbridge Station at 9 o'clock yesterday morning. The waitress had just bought me some beans on toast. I'd asked for brown bread, but she'd bought white. It didn't matter.

'When I'm up North I like to spend a couple of hours in a Little Chef - you know, extra beans, do a crossword or two, let my food go down and then get stuck into the Arctic Roll, you know what I mean'.

We're on the M40 - Seamus is less-than-seriously planning the next few hours while attempting to make sense on the passenger seat climate control, Dave is behind the wheel being highly amused by Seamus's comments and I'm sitting behind Dave reading the latest edition of Guitar and Bass magazine. Manchester is around 3 hours away; it's a lovely bright afternoon, we've got the soundtrack to 'Pulp Fiction' on the CD player and the mood is good - and why not?

So how the hell did that happen? How the hell am I playing for a band that I used to follow 30 years ago? Well for a start there was the rehearsal for the Paul Fox benefit show with Henry Rollins on vocals, when I discovered that all those hours playing along with 'The Crack' and 'Grin And Bear It' (and indeed 'Animal Now' and 'Rhythm Collision volume 1') meant that I could play the songs almost without thinking. I discovered I could do the same thing for the same reason with The Sex Pistols material when I depped with The Sex Pistols Experience and The Pistols. And The Commitments and Blues Brothers stuff wasn't hard either. Weird. Some people would call it wasted youth - but what do they know?

I used to talk to the band members at gigs. They were always friendly, always had a bit of time for the fans. I liked that. It stuck with me. I decided that if ever I was ever lucky enough to be in a band then I'd talk to anyone that ever wanted to talk to me. And I've been lucky enough to be in quite a few bands - I hope I've always been as friendly to people as Ruts D.C. (and indeed The Ruts) were to me.

Somewhere on the M6 Dave's car started playing up. A barrage of swearing from all concerned wouldn't make the dashboard light go off - 'they said that they'd fixed this' said Dave as we shuddered towards the hard shoulder, 'it's done this a few times, it might clear in a minute...' As he said that, it cleared. Good.

We arrived in Manchester just before 5 o'clock. We passed the Peace And Love Barbers (run by Mohammad Ali) and The Red Sea Coffee Shop; as we turned into Whitworth Street Dave gestured - 'The Hacienda - I remember it well'. After a bit of manoeuvring we parked on the double yellow lines outside the front doors of The Ritz to unload after which Dave went off to park the car as I ask Seamus if he'd played at the venue before - 'late '80s I think, with Iggy Pop'. I'd been watching The Stooges on DVD earlier - a good omen.

The Alabama 3 are soundchecking - a sample of Ray Winstone's voice booms out into the cavernous auditorium as I'm fixing the guitar strap in place. Segs is on bass, he makes a comment that it's 'time for the support band to have a go, after all we don't want any trouble from them now do we?' He smiles at me, a bit weakly, he looks as nervous as I fell i.e. a bit but not too bad.

We set up across the front of the stage. My amp is on the keyboard riser and I'm standing next to Steve the guitarist's pedalboard. London Transport still haven't found my pedalboard (and I fear they never will) so I've borrowed a Carbon Copy delay pedal from ex-Awaken guitarist Pete (thanks mate) and I've dug out a Bad Monkey overdrive pedal (which I have as a spare for the Tube Screamer that I use with the Blues Brothers shows) and a Micro Amp as a volume boost for solos. They sound good, but I really miss my old Boss Chorus pedal. If I don't get the board back, that's the one that I'm going to have to replace first.

I'm stage left (on the right as you look from the audience) with Molara in front of me - she suggests that I move a bit to the right so that people can see me, which I do. Segs is on my right, Dave is next to him and Seamus is way away from me on the other side of the drum kit. We're using loops on two tracks so Dave has his computer on a table to his left, after a bit of monitor adjustments it all sounds good. We also run through 'Babylon's Burning' with John Robb on vocals who's joining us for that number, it goes a bit wrong at the end with John saying that he was waiting for a guitar cue that's on the recording and Segs saying that I'm playing it just like the recording, we try to run through it again but there's no time as they're about to open the doors...

In the dressing room there are a few cans of coke and bottles of beer which go down well with all concerned. With Dave suggesting that we dress 'in suits, a bit gangster-ish' there are hats to try on, I settle on a flat cap which John describes as having 'an Andy Partridge look' - I thought he said Alan but cheer up when I realise he didn't.

Suddenly it's 7.30 and we're on stage - I'm sure they didn't used to go on that early when I used to watch them. It's a breathless 30-odd minute performance to a room that looked fairly full by the time we finished. We played well - there was a real 'first gig feel' about the show but it was still a great thing to be part of. Well it certainly was for me.

How did we sound? Click here to find out!

It would have been great to stick around, have a drink and a chat, see The Alabama 3 - but Dave had to get back so we had to leave promptly after the show. Shame. As we pulled away the touts were touting, the queue was queueing - oh well, there's always the Bristol show next week. I'll see them play then.

The dashboard light came on again on the way home but I must admit I'd dropped off to sleep at that point. During the course of our journey Dave and Seamus bought far too many pork pies (the sight of them scouring a service station for mustard was something to behold, particularly when they were advised to try W.H. Smith...) and I'd bought some chocolate that was on a special offer, then didn't eat any of it. Rock 'n' Roll eh? In the meantime an ecstatic Segs had roared his approval of the show to us all on the speakerphone and we all agreed that although our first show had indeed been a good one, the best is very definitely yet to come. And that's a really good feeling to have.

Well I'm still not sure how the hell it all happened. But I'm really glad that it has.

None for ages and then two come along at once

So - the News Of The World has been closed down by it's owner, who in doing so has once again shown a typically callous disregard for the men and women unfortunate enough to be in his employment. Presumably it's an attempt to avoid further scandal - rather ironic given the nature of said publication don't you think? - and to save his own (and no one else's) skin. However you look at it this is a sad state of affairs - each day a new revelation, a new victim, a new reason to never buy anything that Rupert Murdoch has anything to do with ever again. There's an old saying along the lines of 'you can't keep a good man down' - I fear it's even harder to keep a bad one down, which is why Mr. Murdoch will no doubt evade prosecution personally and re-emerge from the whole business completely spotless. Still, we can always hope that commonsense prevails and people stop supporting him and his empire. In the meantime here are a few words from Attila The Stockbroker (actually rather a lot of words, this is Attila after all!) on the subject - excellent!

Friday in Uxbridge saw The Good Old Boys playing at The General Elliot while Midnight were gigging across the road (literally!) at The Dolphin. This presented a situation that was too good not to take advantage of - your humble narrator (aided and abetted by Pete from Awaken, Roger from The Uppercut and the venerable East) journeyed back and forth between the two venues in an attempt to catch both bands, on a night perhaps best described as 'bass dep evening'. The Good Old Boys featured Bill on bass in place of Nick Simper while Midnight had Terry from The Uppercut on 4-string duties, and both bands sounded excellent to me, although how much of this had to do with the 'lets-have-a-quick-pint-here-and-then-go back-over-the-road' nature of the evening is difficult to ascertain. We finished up in The Dolphin where Simon and Darren of Ace! club fame were enjoying proceedings; Simon enjoyed it even more when I introduced him to Midnight keyboard player Chris Holmes who played in '60's cult heroes Timebox. Chris gave him a DVD of Timebox clips (I must get one of them myself!) as well as regaling us with tales of the likes of Mike Patto, Ollie Halsall and John Halsey. Great stuff.

Talking of depping I found myself in the wonderfully-named Preston Bagot (sounds like the name of a member of the House Of Lords that's just had his phone hacked doesn't it?) on Saturday evening for an Utter Madness gig. Tony's on vocals and Jon's on bass but aside from them it's deps all round - I'm on guitar (obviously!?!) while everyone else (Aaron on vocals and dancing, Dan on drums, Liz on saxophone and Dave on keyboards) are all from the ska covers band Big 10, and all of whom made a great job of what turned out to be a very enjoyable show. As Jon and myself pulled of junction 15 of the M40 Tony phoned to ask where we were; as I said 'just a few minutes away' the sat.nav. sent us off down the wrong road which we were unable to turn off for several miles.This was doubly unfortunate as we then were informed by Tony that we were supposed to be set up by 5.30 - we thought we had to arrive at 5.30 and were therefore late. Bugger! When we eventually arrived at The Crabmill we could set our gear up but were unable to soundcheck or rehearse anything as the guests were already arriving. It's a 50th birthday party for Andrew organised by his brother Steve - waitresses wearing t-shirts with the letters AFO and the words 'Alcohol Facilitation Operative' on them dispensed free drinks (always a dangerous thing with 2 1/2 hours to showtime!) and cheery smiles. Food on the other hand is thin on the ground for the band; eventually an AFO brings us several bags of very gratefully received crisps. Hot dogs appear not long before we're due on stage - when I look sad at the lack of a vegetarian option the crisp-bearing AFO brings me a spicy lentil sausage version. Excellent!

Andrew makes a short speech just before our set, explaining how an accident when he was 17 had left him confined to a wheelchair and how among the many things that it had affected in his life it made him realise that family and friends are more important than material processions and that it was 'great to see so many of you here tonight'. He handed over to us with the words 'Now let's get pissed!' - Tony was straight in with 'don't watch that...'

As we began 'One Step Beyond' I was suddenly aware that although I'd only done the show a few times that was a few times more than the majority of people on the stage. Situations like this can go either way - triumph and disaster are almost as likely as each other, and there's no telling which one you're heading for. This time it was the former rather than the latter, with everybody playing well and plenty of dancefloor action throughout. A chap repeatedly asked for 'Michael Caine' (sadly we didn't know it) but we managed 'Happy Birthday' at the start of our second set and judging by the comments we received in the interval and after the show it all went according to plan. A good gig all round.

And it was a good gig last night too, when The Load of Hay was host to Joseph Porter and Wob. I think I first met both gentlemen when The Price supported Blyth Power some 20-odd years ago - Joseph is the band's omnipresent songwriter and frontman and Wob was then playing guitar, a position that's held these days by Stephen Cooper who I met when I was gigging with T.V. Smith just before Christmas. It had been quite a hot sticky day which might have accounted for the low-ish (20 or so) audience turnout, but those who were there saw a fine show from both artists. They arrived just as I finished setting the P.A, system up which gave us plenty of time for soundchecking before Joseph asked the question 'do you know where I can buy some apples?' I directed him to a petrol station not far from the venue - he returned looking pleased with himself and with the words 'I can have these now so that I won't spend the gig burping into the microphone'. He's a brilliant songwriter although I don't recall having seen him play a solo show before - with some very funny and indeed thought provoking introductions the songs came over brilliantly in guitar-and-vocal format. Wob then gave a splendidly energetic performance which concluded with him walking around the audience singing 'Has Anybody Seen My Gal?' accompanying himself on a ukulele whilst attempting to cajole people into doing the Charleston. Strange but true. They then joined forces for a set of Joseph's songs to begin a highly enjoyable evening to a close. The only downside to the things were the 5 or 6 blokes at the bar who insisted on bellowing things like 'OOOH LOOK 'EE'S GOT 'IS BANJO AHT!' at every available opportunity. 'I see you've double booked the gig with a Mensa meeting' said East ruefully; I decided that they'd been drinking all day to mourn the loss of their favourite newspaper. Scandalous.

'Excuse me, I said... Shrewsbury!'

The occasional / ongoing obituary column continues with the news that Captain Beefheart has died. His influence on the likes of Joe Strummer and John Lydon (and therefore most if not all of the British punk bands, if only by proxy) has been well documented, and this is surely one of the great OGWT clips of them all. A great artist and a true outsider.

Talking of outsiders (sort of!) Vince Cable has been found guilty of having an opinion (declaring war on Rupert Murdoch is guaranteed to get you in the news, although a lot of people will be buying him a gun as a result!) as the cracks in the coalition government begin to show. Let's see how they decide to paper over them, as it looks like our old friend Jeremy Hunt is about to get involved... and then there's the weather. I've heard a lot of people say things like 'I don't know, a bit of snow and the country grinds to a halt' which may well be a fair point under normal circumstances - but this wasn't a 'bit' of snow. Saturday should have been a very busy day in the shop followed by an Upper Cut gig at The Halfway House in Rickmansworth, and it certainly began that way - but sometime after 10 a.m. it started snowing. By midday Windsor Street was buried under 6 inches of the stuff, and by 1 o'clock our gig had been cancelled. Oh well. Once it stopped actually snowing a few customers braved the Arctic conditions to pay us a visit and the till total at the end of the day wasn't a complete disaster, but for the Saturday before Christmas it should have been so much more. Mind you at one point it was snowing so heavily that you couldn't read the signs on the shops on the other side of the road. Still from the band's point of view Terry the singer has been instructed to call the venue in January for a rescheduled date so at least all is not lost there.

Sunday and with chaos on the roads and absolute insanity at the airports (Pete and Tony played a duo gig in Switzerland last Friday - they finally got back to Heathrow Airport on Wednesday afternoon!) The Chicago Blues Brothers are playing at a wedding reception at The Rowton Castle Hotel near Shrewsbury. (Yes, another castle - none for ages then 2 come along at once...) We'd originally thought the gig was in Roydon (that's apparently where the enquiry came from) which would have been a simpler journey for most of the band; I was travelling up with Big Tel and Dave were D.J.'ing at the event. I spoke to Big Tel on the phone around midday and suggested that it was probably not a good idea for him to bring to van to our house to pick me up as we're at the bottom of a hill amid several abandoned cars which couldn't get back up again. Instead we agreed to meet up on the main road (he lent me his amp and I carried the rest of my stuff) and by 2.10 we were on our way. Within 40 minutes we pulled in to Oxford Services on the M40 as we were out of windscreen washer fluid - a large bottle of screen wash, 3 very expensive takeaway coffees and several Mars bars ('for the journey' - Dave) later we discovered that the washers themselves had frozen. Bah! Still it's interesting to note that in sub-zero temperatures the water fountains outside the main building were still working. Hmm... progress was steady until we passed Bicester where things slowed somewhat due to weight of traffic (strange to see a SKID RISK SLOW DOWN warning next to a sign for Silverstone) although by the time we got to the M42 things were moving well. It started to get foggy near the venue, but the trusty sat. nav. got us there for 7 o'clock where we made our way to (dressing) room 12 to meet up with the rest of the troops. Mike and Mike (just flown in from gigging in Belfast) were in the hats and glasses, Squirrel and Marc are on bass and drums, Dave and Ian on trumpet and saxophone and Steve is on keyboards for the first time in ages, with Phil manning the sound. There are sandwiches and chips (excellent!) with the promise of hog roast later (not too good for us vegetarians!) and it's good to see everyone again for the first time in what feels like ages.

We're booked to play for (gulp!) 2 hours (at least it makes the journey worthwhile!) so soundcheck includes a few 'what other songs do we know?' moments, with 'Superstition' and 'Unchain My Heart' both making an appearance. They both make an appearance in the show too, which begins with the happy couple dancing to 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol (very appropriate!) then our epic performance being witnessed by at best the 20 or so guests that made it along, and at worst by Phil, Big Tel and Dave. Still we played well and did our job as best we could, which on a night such as this is the main thing.

And talking of epic performances Big Tel did a heroic job driving us home - we found ourselves back at Oxford Services over 13 hours after our first visit (the fountains were still working although it was even colder!) and I arrived home at 5.30 in the morning. Several people had told me that we were mad to go at all, and in many ways they were probably correct - but don't you think that it's ironic that I had a gig a few miles from home cancelled then did a 350+ mile round trip to play a gig the very next day?

Since then the shop picked up considerably as all the people who couldn't get in on Saturday found their way to us during the week; we finished for this year at 1 o'clock this afternoon (we're open again on Tuesday 4th January if you'd like to come along and spend all your Christmas money!) and then went down the pub. That's the way to do it... Happy Christmas y'all!