Thursday 16 September 2010

My beef is buttered!

Oh I am a happy bunny. Two glowing write ups of our album. That’s a lot of nice words. I shall let it go to my head for a moment. But only a moment otherwise I shall become insufferable.

In addition to this glow I also have the additional pleasure of having set up Ronny Kong Studios MkII in the front bedroom. Everything is arranged neatly and there is a place for everything. I even have space to expand my setup. More metal boxes! More patch leads! More plugs! More dusting….

I am a bit of a technophile when it comes to recording equipment. The problem is I don’t have the spare cash to indulge myself. There are a multitude of things out there which I would love to order and possess and plug in. If only I could get away with not paying the rent for the month and not eating and not paying any bills, I would be able to satisfy my urges for at least a year. Oh well.

Two weeks until our first Death Tax Trouble extravaganza! I have been looking forward to rehearsal all week. Hopefully I will be able to get all the words to our 4, yes 4, new songs in the right place and in the right language. For those who are interested in such things our next set list will run thus:

1. Curtains
2. More
3. Facts
4. Wear & Replace
5. Lips Limbs Lungs
6. Brick
7. Being Boiled (yes, by the Human League!)
8. Dull Boy
9. Sanity Check

If you’ve acquired a copy of the album then you will notice that this set list does not include a substantial number of the songs on it. This is the inevitable result of progress! But new is good, and our new tunes are also good. Our direction of travel is now taking us from the Empirical to the Rational. If Removal Music is David Hume then this next phase is a bit more Rene Descartes. I reserve the right to retract that statement after I have thought about it a bit more. Anyhoo, maybe see you on the 25th of September.

Tuesday 14 September 2010

Dancing gulls all over the park

I have been moving house. I have been putting things in boxes, putting boxes in piles, piling boxes into a van, unloading a van, moving boxes into a house and then taking things out of boxes. Last night I filled a wardrobe with bass guitars. Tonight I will find a home for a legion of socks and pants.

Our first album is out and about and people seem to like it. Tony at Liverpool Bands gave us a very nice write up, which gave my ego a very pleasant burnish. Of course, now it is finished the only thing to do it make a new one. So far we have four songs, in various states of repair. The impact of moving house will become apparent when we start recording them since I will no longer be using the carpeted dining room of an end of terrace house, but the front bedroom of a mid terrace house which has bare floorboards. I am sure this will have massive ramifications for the sound. Colossal, gigantic, enormous.

We have booked the acts for our first regular night Death, Tax, Trouble in the basement under News from Nowhere on Bold Street. It’s on the 25th of September and I would encourage you to come along and bring a carrier bag of Buckfast with you, or maybe a bottle of Crème de Menthe.

Wednesday 1 September 2010

I embody the Will-to-Poop

I have been struggling with writing a press release for our new record. I have discovered that this is not an easy process. Firstly I’m not completely sure how you go about describing a record. What metaphors best sum up this thing:

It sounds like a muddy shoe
It sounds like a rotten peach
It sounds like a violent worm
It sounds like a lonely bucket
It sounds like a stranger’s car
It sounds like a badly executed perm
It sounds like a dumpy nun
It sounds like a boiled egg
It sounds like two boiled eggs
It sounds like a poo at a motorway service station
It sounds like Gene Wilder
It does not sound like Gene Wilder
It sounds like a presidential veto
It sounds like a fingerless glove

I don’t know. What I should have done is kept all those copies of Melody Maker I bought when I was a student and just cut out words from those. However, as far as I recall, the majority of the words would be “polemic”. They used that word a lot back then. I have never used it personally, apart from just then, but that is hardly using it, I simply displayed it, which is different from using it. Discuss.

Whilst I am writing this I am waiting for a response from Rocky after sending him the first draft. I hope he isn’t disappointed. Yesterday I left a message on his answer machine in what I had intended would be an Italian accent. However it came out more French than Italian. This is because, I realized, I can only do a convincing Italian accent when shouting and since I was at work at the time and the message contained the words “I will shoot you in the face” it was probably wise not to shout it. These are the things we artists have to struggle with you know.

We are playing in the shop window this Saturday. My mother is coming to see me. I am going to have to sing the words “I stink of semen” to her, as well as the rest of the street. I expect this will require some explanation afterwards, if not therapy for all concerned. These are the things we artists have to struggle with.