On Saturday morning, I had a strange moment where I absolutely had to listen to Whitney Houston. So I did.
Tonight we are playing in Cardiff at 10 Feet Tall. It represents a plethora of firsts: our first show outside of Bristol, our first show with a new drummer, our first show taking two vehicles as transport. Whilst some of us have done this before, it will be entirely new to half of the team.
The board didn’t quite give us a “transfer warchest” but we had enough in the bank for a Spring signing. Making his début tonight between the sticks will be Barny Carter. He’s a Glasgow Celtic fan so Ben will still have a choral partner with which to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. You might have heard his work on 6music, so his experience in big games is without question.
After this away game, we will be playing lots of home shows. Expect new stuff and fireworks. The Big Idea for the Summer: LV football shirts. We need some good Latin to go on the insignia.
It is a sobering thought, particularly when you’re halfway straight edge, to consider that I’ve been doing this for something like 8 years. At 23, I already feel old. That above quote is from Kicking & Screaming; the one that came out in 1995. It’s a common thing to compare your life’s failures to a public figure who died early but I prefer to compare my life to Tim Wheeler.
By 23, he’d spent 2 years getting to stand next to Charlotte Hatherley. That is an aspirational figure.
8 years sounds like a long time. You get to see what the machine is like during a period of time like that. And, ultimately, you see that the entire thing is stupid. Careers can be made on luck. The right person in the right place at the right time. There are the deserving and the undeserving and they can both get treated in exactly the same manner. I’m not sure which side we fall on yet but I know that The Naturals are the former.
I have another few paragraphs about serious thoughts on the industry in me but I can’t form concise sentences so here’s a boring status update instead:
MLH is leaving to become an auteur. There is no ill will, especially because his involvement got us going again.
We’re holding auditions for drummers again. Any sex, race or creed. Tell yr friends to call us.
I don’t know if we’re going to be able to play at the end of this month with The ‘Nats because of this precarious position but we’ll keep you updated.
I don’t know if it’s because people are more eager to please/network or less jaded and cynical and filled with bile at all the awful things you have to do in order to keep hold of the little semblance of success that you’ve been afforded, but bands on their first label-backed headline tour are normally very nice.
King Charles were one of those bands, much like Official Secrets Act and the then-called Cheeky Cheeky & The Nosebleeds before them. Happy to help out wherever they can, make jokes and compliments and generally be approachable to their support act(s). This is far more unusual than you would hope or imagine amongst the non-‘famous’ so thanks to them and I wish them every success. Their “Barbara Ann” song deserves to be big.
I’m sure we’ll be having a huge influx of visitors to our Internet presence due to our excellent performance so, as a welcome, here’s a selection of Fleetwood Mac songs that I am really enjoying at the moment - get them in for next year and I might come, Michael.
First, here is an amazing live version of Formula 1-classic “The Chain”. Lindsey Buckingham acts possessed during the second half of this. I particularly like when he turns from the microphone and struts around the stage.
And here’s Lindsey again from their comeback tour in 1997. The studio version of Big Love holds no affection with me but this solo acoustic performance is immense. You know when people say Cream sounded like more than a three-piece because they were so heavy but, really, they sound exactly like a three-piece? Well this actually sounds like far more than one dude playing amazingly well.
And, finally, here is Robot Stevie Nicks before she embraced cybernetics and became JC Denton. I think the guys from Phoenix talked about how they watched this every day of their tour last year. It is mesmerising.
My impassioned story seems to have done the trick, although the “music” section is no longer going to be in the magazine. Which seems an entirely worthless decision. Oh well, at least some people will keep their jobs and the populace can still read about which pub serves the best lunch.
The various shows may still be going ahead and we may still be playing our leg but, until there is more information, consider your Sunday free and enjoy watching the FA Cup quarter-finals.
Before enduring a boring/galling 45 minutes of football on Sunday, I spent 5 hours across two train journeys. Normally my train journeys exist as pockets in time where I run through RPGs from the 90s on a handheld console from 2005; Chrono Trigger was dispatched in such a manner on regular trips to Edinburgh, as Dragon Quest IV is soon to be. Every so often, however, the intrinsic stigma attached to playing video games and, furthermore, playing them in public becomes too much to bear and I read a book instead.
For a while, I have owned Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From The American Indie Underground, 1981 - 1991 but never particularly engaged with it. I tried last summer but could barely make it through the introduction, despite being fascinated by the majority of bands involved - I am not a reader.
But in the past few weeks, as anyone who reads Twitter accounts associated with us might have gathered, I have become obsessed with The Replacements. Such is the affection I feel towards them, I refuse to introduce them to you as a YouTube video embedded in the beginning of this. In a period when I don’t pirate music (and haven’t done for nearly a year), I’m trying to make a statement. This is serious.
Of the two chapters I read on that train journey, one was about Sonic Youth and the other was about The Replacements. Narrative veracity and bias aside, the one thing I found fairly illuminating about both of these bands was the disparity between their public image and work ethic. Early in their career, The Replacements got labelled as too drunk and too dumb by some local reviewer. Every mention of them since had fed off, and into, this perception.
That public perception, and the media’s role in shaping it, is a big thing.
Way back when in a former life, Venue Magazine published a print review of our self-released debut EP. Placed directly above a review of Snoop Dogg’s 2008 release Ego Trippin’, it represented a watershed moment and an immense source of personal pride. A physical version of a critical reaction to something self-created essentially marked a point where the band became ‘real’. That feeling cannot be understated at all.
And so, with that in mind, it was fairly terrible to hear of the news that Venue is soon to be closed indefinitely. The local “scene”, which I have been fairly critical of in the past, has shown a rare sense of community and organised various concerts to raise awareness and drive to save the magazine. We are very grateful to be playing at The Louisiana leg of this series.
PS. If you liked this extended piece, tune in next time for “Pavement And You: How Working Hard Means Playing Hard”, inspired by our recent showing at Start The Bus.
