Not quite the last of the last of the true believers.
Getting married is fun.
So is going on honeymoon. Especially if it’s to Tahiti. Highly recommended.
Preparation for the Electric Picnic continues apace. The rehearsals are going very, very well. Let’s just say we’re really excited about this.
Oh, and while I’m at it, it was really nice to come home to an email from a friend that noticed that we were mentioned on the Guardian blog. Funny how the planets seem to align from time to time. See for yourself:
We’re gonna play.
This summer, at the Electric Picnic festival just outside of Dublin. The festival runs August 29th – 31st. We don’t know when we’re playing yet, but there are no single day tickets, anyway. You’re in for the entire weekend.
Some other great bands have also been announced. This should be a real treat.
For more info, check out the Electric Picnic Site.
Sorry about the delays, kids.
I’m almost done with school this quarter, so hope to be able to contribute more regularly. In the meantime:
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Here’s the next track in the Mark Goodier session.
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You can all thank Kate for this (and the remainder of these that I post).
Mark Goodier show, live from Belfast. We were on fire, if I do say so myself. It was one of the best, if not the best radio performance I remember doing.
True story: at one point during a stage dive a necklace given to me by a very dear friend exploded. I didn’t realize until after the gig, at which point I jumped into the audience and started collecting pieces of the necklace.
Of course, being Petrols fans, a bunch of folks immediately cleared out a big circle, and four or five got down on their knees with me and picked up all the pieces. I still have the necklace to this day – my friend Victoria rebuilt it when I saw her next.
<sniff>
I <heart> you guys.
s.
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Okay, due to popular demand, the forum is now unmoderated.
I just did a sh*tload of work designed to confuse spambots, so with any luck we won’t be inundated with porn or ads for pills. However, if these measures don’t work, we’ll have to go back to moderated posts.
If anyone sees any crap in there, don’t worry – I get notified any time anything happens, so it won’t be there for long. Let’s hope the little spam counter at the bottom of the forum pages just quietly keeps incrementing…
Hey all –
Here’s a track that probably very few of you have or ever heard. It’s on a Beefheart tribute album called Fast & Bulbous that came out in ’88 (holy sh*t that sounds like a long time ago). It’s interesting for a number of reasons. First, it was recorded around the time of End of the Millenium, so we’re still messing around with samples and dance rhythms. Listen closely at the end, and you’ll hear the Ohio Players. That’s right, the Ohio Players. And it’s perfectly in tempo, and in the right key!
Then there’s also a “Big Flame-esque” section that we added to the song. It’s interesting as a historical artifact – it sounds a bit glued-in to my ears now – but taken on its own, it does sound “Beefheartian.” (I remember John O’Neill saying this about Circusville at our second or third gig at the Mean Fiddler in 1986) And it just goes to show the vast spectrum of music we were absorbing at the time – from Curtis Mayfield to Big Flame, Beefheart to Bambatta. It’s no wonder we encountered a few growing pains.
Anyhow, enjoy. I’m not sure whether to put this up as a podcast or a download – I guess for now I’ll put it up as an in-page player, and also as a link to download.
Oh – freakin’ far out. The PodPress plugin does it all automatically for you. Thanks, PodPress!
As some of you have noticed in the forum, it has been awhile since we’ve posted to the blog, and there are rumours a-flying, so let me take a moment to try and put things into perspective.
Things were moving along very well – maybe a little too well. As noted below, we were accepted for a SxSW slot, and we made progress with both UK and US agents, secured digital distribution for the back catalog (the part we owned, anyway), and a few other things. Once things got to this point, we had to make sure we could meet all the committments, since it was getting close to the time when we’d have to start signing bits of paper.
As it turns out, we couldn’t.
Putting a band (back) together in your 40s is quite a bit different than it is in your 20s. There are jobs, marriages, kids, and hundreds of other things to consider. The matrix gets even more complex when you try to align these elements across all the band members. When one person can get time off, the other has a deadline at work. Where one person needs X to pay the bills, another needs Y. Suffice it to say that it’s a far cry from “Get in the van! We’re going to France!”
So where does that leave us?
The folks at SxSW were very understanding, and invited us back whenever we’re ready. The agents understand that this is going to be tricky. Ditto for distribution, publicity, etc. Hell, we never officially announced that this site was up and running. A handful of you true believers have found it, and that’s heartening in itself. So fret not – we’re not going to be on the road this spring as originally thought. The fall is a possibility, as is spring 2009. It’s still too early to tell.
But definitely stay tuned. It takes a little longer for old guys like us to get a full head of steam going, but we’re definitely headed in the right direction.
Friday was a great, great day.
On Thursday, out of the blue, I got a message from Martin Tibbetts, our old agent. The timing was impeccable, since I’d been trying to track him down. How’d he find me? MySpace, of course. This inter-web thing sure is handy.
Anyhow, I filled him in on the rough plan, and he said he knew just the man we needed to be talking to. (Martin’s not in the booking biz anymore.) Brilliant. Hook us up, Martin!
Friday morning, I wake up to find an email waiting for me from the South by Southwest conference – they’ve accepted our application and have offered us a slot! B R I L L I A N T ! ! ! 1 1 1 ONE ONE ONE !!! For those of you who haven’t been to SxSW, imagine over a thousand bands playing in a small town over the course of four days. Almost every local club is involved, and thousands of people invade the town for the week. They close down some of the streets after dark, so it turns into one huge party. And all your musician friends are there!
Needless to say, I immediately do a jig with my fiancee, then swap partners and do a jig with my dog. The cat hides under a chair, otherwise I’d try to dance with her as well. Ah well, her loss.
I go to work, and about an hour later, the phone rings. It’s Neil O’Brien, a blast from the past, who used to work for the Mean Fiddler back in the day, and he wants to put together the UK/Europe dates together. We talk for about forty minutes, and it’s absolutely clear that he’s the man for us. He knows the band, remembers the gigs, and he just put together the Only Ones reunion tour. Hell, he put together a reunion tour for the Long Ryders! He’s *totally* psyched about the SxSW gig, and not only that, but he’s just about to send out his summer festival list, so the timing couldn’t be any better.
There’s no one to do a jig with, so I just stomp around the room awhile, acting the loon.
Damn it feels good.
It’s on.
Just saw Control the other night.
I loved it.
Not only was it beautiful to look at, (did we expect any less from Anton Corbijn?) but it was also a great portrayal of what it’s like to be in a band when you’re first starting out. And it was also great that they didn’t glamorize it at all – it was quite bleak, to be honest. And the pacing was quite slow. Some of the folks I went with thought it could have moved along a little quicker, but I thought it was perfect. And the fact that they played all the versions of the songs used in the film was even more impressive.
Definitely worth seeing.