Tuesday 14 June 2011

Automatic Grape Foam

If, like me, you often find yourself having to come up with the name of a famous actor who you need to disguise yourself as you’ll probably have a couple of reliable names you can pluck out of the ether without much effort. Mine are Vincent Price and Sidney Poitier. You might have Hattie Jacques and John Le Mesurier, or Adam West and Marlon Brando. You can have whoever you like, there aren’t any rules. You can have more than two if you need them. It is up to you, I can’t tell you how to live your life and even I tried to I doubt you’d listen to a word I have to say even though I am always right about these things, like that time you were going to spend all that money on those expensive sausages because you were having your family round and your mother always complains about whatever you give them unless its sausages and even then if they aren’t excellent sausages from the butcher then she’ll go on and on and on and on and on about her old butcher when she was a child living in Chelmsford and how the butcher had sawdust on the floor and was really fat and you can’t trust a thin butcher, just like you can’t trust a bald barber.



Here's a picture of a fat butch... hang on
 
Do you remember what I said? That’s right, I told you to tell them to and fuck themselves. Of course, when your father died later that year and you were no longer in the will because they had disowned you, you tried to make out that it was my fault. Thing is, they had started to hate you a long time before that ever happened. They told me so that time I took them all out to the dog racing and made them put a grand on Lusty Veronica, who should have won really. I told you about that didn’t I? Never mind. And stop trying to set fire to my house. It’s pissing me off.


Anyway, I digress. Last Tuesday I was skulking around the local retail park trying to decide whether I wanted to buy myself:

• A tub of screenwipes.
• A bag of compost.
• 24 petrol blue carpet tiles.
• A Power Rangers duvet cover (reduced).
• 3 frames of ten-pin bowling for the price of 2.


I was stood on the corner weighing up the pros and cons and those things which seem like cons but, on closer inspection turn out to be pros, until you actually make the decision when they turn out to have been cons all along, when who should come out of the garden centre but a guitarist I had to fire from an old band. He had a length of hose under one arm and a bag of charcoal briquettes under the other and some kind of flowering shrub stuffed down the front of his trousers. Not wishing to be recognised and decided that if he saw me and tried to speak to me I would pretend to be the spirit of Vincent Price, tell him I was late for the bowling league and run off.

He didn’t see me though. I lurked around for a while longer, kind of hoping he would come back. He didn’t and it began to rain, so I went home for my dinner. I had fish fingers.

Meeting him, the guitarist, who I fired, from that band, back then, before, reminded me that he was the only person I have ever met who managed to make his musical instrument speak the language of his very soul. And it sounded like the death squawk of a terminally constipated goose lodged in the severed head of Janet Street-Porter, being fired from cannon at an orphan, on crutches, at Christmas, for ever and ever. This contributed to his departure from the band. In a strange twist of fortune this week I will be attempting to recreate this very sound for our new song Kompressor. I know I won’t be able to create anything as unpleasant because my soul is not a filthy motorway service station toilet, shellacked with the accumulated secretions of four decades worth of lonely truckers, onanists and perverts.


Why not have a go yourself? I know why.



Wednesday 8 June 2011

All day

Why I like Talk to Frank

There is a new (new to me at least) promoter about and they are called Talk to Frank. You might have heard of them.

We first played for them in the Bad Format club at the end of April. Our previous trip there had been a pretty bleak experience, so we were a little cautious about playing there. Ever the optimist I thought that it couldn’t be that bad again. Whilst the turnout was a bit sparse (our intrepid gang of middle-aged co-conspirators made up most of the audience) we had a grand time, played well and I left with a warm glow of satisfaction. A good deal of this warm glow was down to the Frank in Talk to Frank, Mr Frank Hedges.

You meet a lot of “cool” people in this line of work. You meet a lot of people who dam up their enthusiasm for some reason. I’m not much good at that especially when it comes to getting out and making music and as far as I can tell neither is Frank. I like him for this. I also like him because he always gets back to me. I have fired off messages to numerous promoters and I think that I would not be unfair in saying that Talk to Frank is the only one I would be perfectly confident of getting a reply back from, either from Frank himself or Joanne. Good manners cost nothing after all.

Friendly, enthusiastic and they reply to messages. Frank also got out of bed to come to our gig in Parr Street for the Smiles for Japan event. Friendly, enthusiastic, replies to messages and has good taste. If I had a Christmas card list they’d be on it.

Here’s what I suggest you do. If you’re in a band and you’re looking for a gig and you’re not the sort of person who dicks people around and has unreasonable demands (not that anyone like that would be reading this I am sure) then drop him a line and ask for a gig. If you would like to know what a Talk to Frank night is like then check out his facebook page for updates. If you want to know what a Talk to Frank promoted Mashemon gig at the Lomax is like, get your arse down there on the 20th of August. I think knicker throwing would be appropriate.

Friday 3 June 2011

Preparing Pre-Preventative Cultural Retardation Measures

Not had a gig for a whole 20 days and I have another 22 left to go before our evening in the social centre. That’s 42 days. So far this year I have had to wait 25 days at most between gigs and on average we have had a gig every 10 days. I’ll be including a full breakdown in the annual report.

Not that I have been lazy and sitting around in my dressing gown eating fondant fancies and filing my fingernails. Oh no no! There has been song writing and recording to be done. This has not been the easiest task though. The vocals and guitars for the first album were recorded in my dining room, which was quite a nice room to record in even if the rest of the house was cold and damp and horrible. Unfortunately, despite my new home being neither cold nor damp nor horrible, I now have to record in our spare bedroom. The atmosphere just hasn’t been right and I have been struggling to work out what the matter is and what I can do about it.

So I had a think and came to the conclusion that it was the fact that this house is a mid-terraced affair whereas our last place was at the end of the terrace. This meant that I could sing to my heart’s content safe in the knowledge that no one would be listening. This is not the case in our new place. I can hear our next-door neighbour’s telephone ringing most of the time, so they can definitely hear me bellowing away. And that bothers me. It makes me all shy and timid. So there was only one solution that I could think of.

Booze. Yes, a few glasses of anxiety inhibitor are definitely the answer. There’s a balance to be struck of course, I want to have the rosy glow and the inability to properly appreciate the consequences of my behaviour, but I don’t want to end up with the diction of Shane MacGowan. Don’t want anything too gassy either. Whilst my belches have a certain rich bass texture I find it quite hard to get them in tune and we don’t use any pitch adjusting techniques in Mashemon. We do a lot of other things, but that’s just not cricket.

So the recording is back on track. Our first single of the year will be a three track affair containing the following:

1. Lips Limbs Lungs
2. Dead Dog (Texas Sex Club Mix)
3. Note Left Unwritten

Should be ready for July. I am also pleased to announce that this single will feature live drums. Our rehearsals with Andy have been going extremely well, so well in fact that I have been making involuntary Rock Singer Exclamations. I have never been one to do that sort of thing, making those “woo” and “yeah” noises and letting out a bit of “huh” and “hoo” or maybe a little “ooooootakemetothebridge”. I’ve just never felt the urge. But I did the other day. We rocked like a mother. Fucker. And the R.S.E just slithered out. Not too many, I have standards, but a couple. I think my posture may have improved as well. And I definitely did more hair shaking. Whether these are welcome modifications I don’t know, you’ll have to come and watch us on the 25th of June and make your assessment then. I’m excited now and I’ve still got 22 days left to wait. By the time of the gig I’ll be so excited I won’t be able to get my trousers on.

Things are going to sound different, louder for a start. Here’s the set:

1. Guts
2. Kompressor
3. Frank Bloke
4. Another Man's Dirt
5. Sanity Check
6. Lips Limbs Lungs
7. Facts

Not 100% sure about the order yet, but that’s what we’ll be doing. Still confirming the other bands for the night, but it’ll be a grand old time. Come along and partake. If not I’ll be coming round yours and you won’t like that at all.