ratter

From The Beginning To The End

2012-01-16T22:10:00.009Z

I can say I knew him for many long months, but perhaps on reflection, and with the passing of an entire lifetime, I should say, a few short months. He was the most extraordinary musician I ever knew personally. His name was Roy Budd.

I can’t claim to have been his friend or confidant, but we talked often at the time, mostly by way of my putting questions to him and he replying and probably - in truth - with some reluctance.

I’m guessing here, but I was somewhere around 21/23 by the time in question, which would have meant that Roy would have been correspondingly around 12/14. Now that sounds improbable and also likely to have been an infringement of some law or other, but by then, he had already made his first television appearance and played London’s Coliseum theatre, so perhaps it’s not so extraordinary, at least for Roy Budd.

The venue was a rugby clubhouse, not, a clubhouse in the town of Rugby, but a clubhouse on a field of rugby, the game. I was never particularly interested in rugby myself but my friends at the time were, these would have been my early music associates to whom I have often referred. Many of them being rugby players, this may have been the reason we had arrived on that first evening to see the young Roy Budd. On the other hand - since I don’t recall exactly - we may equally have arrived at the club for reasons more to do with rugby and booze than to marvel at the talented piano player. I’m not now actually sure if we had gone to the venue knowing we were going to see the young Roy either, it was all so long ago. Anyway, by that time, he was still completely unknown, a wiry and spotty teenager.

Within less than a minute of witnessing the skill of Roy Budd for the first time, we - my friends and I - were completely mesmerized. He would sit at the piano with a glass of Coke and a pile of KitKat bars perched at one end of the keyboard.

At this young age, Roy was already a sensation by any yardstick, not in terms of fame but simply the fact of his astonishing ability, and it was as if he had the skill and experience of a mature professional of international repute.

We returned to the clubhouse many, many times to thrill at this boy’s talent. Being musicians of more modest accomplishment ourselves, we would throw challenges to him to play this or that number and even nursery rhymes to try and wrong-foot him, but undaunted he would immediately launch into a masterful rendition of said piece with astonishing complexity along with various key changes, time signatures and tempo changes. It was truly breathtaking. It’s difficult to comprehend now, that he was entirely self taught.

It is a sad fact of musical life that Roy isn’t really what you would call a household name, but he should be. Many of you reading this will probably have never heard of Roy Budd, however, it is unlikely that there are many of you that have never heard some of his music.

Although he soon established himself as a recording artist and popular performer as both soloist and ensemble player, the greatest body of his working life was as a writer, performer and director of movie music. Amongst some of his most notable works are his musical contributions to:

‘Get Carter’
‘Zeppelin’
‘Kidnapped’
‘Fear is the Key’
‘Steptoe & Son’
‘Man at the Top’
‘The Black Windmill’
‘The Wild Geese’

To mention only a few.

Roy has been compared to some of the all-time great Jazz giants like Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum and without doubt he was up there in that league, but he was also unique.

I was brought up in an age when jazz was far more popular and relevant that it is to-day and that was in part at least, because the wide spectrum of music styles we know to-day hadn’t yet evolved.

In the beginning, jazz followed a simple formula but evolved into an area of ever increasing complexity, far too complex for the masses and accordingly considered by many as ‘musicians’ music’. I, along with an army of deserters, lost interest in the way jazz was evolving. It all got too clever to retain my interest, much too clever for it’s own good. Perfectly fine for those that liked it and many did, and do, but I always felt that the essential element of melody got lost along the way; and so it was, that new trends of a pop and rock genre succeeded in attracting the attentions of former jazz audiences.

One of the defining elements of Roy’s mastery, was his ability to traverse all the technicalities of the jazz idiom whilst still retaining that - for me at least - essential integrant of melody. It was this all too rare ability that so endeared him to me.

Why or how Roy came to move into the arena of film music I don’t precisely know, but his first such score was completed as early as 1970 when he was a mere 23. His score for what is probably the most widely known movie with which he was associated (Get Carter) came the following year when he was just 24. During my own life in music I had an eye on Roy’s parallel and illustrious career. One which us mere mortals could only envy.

One day in 1993 I was in the London suburbs to attend a domestic birthday bash and it was suggested we might all go out for some entertainment. I got the job of organising something suitable.

When I scanned the papers for an eye on what was happening in town, I soon discovered that Roy Budd was appearing at the ‘Bulls Head’ at Barnes Bridge, less than four miles away. A noted venue on the jazz circuit and one he probably played hundreds of times over the expanse of his career.

Most of the party had never heard of Roy, nevertheless, they were not disappointed. The funny thing is that you don’t even have to be a jazz lover to enjoy a Roy Budd performance. Watching him work, is, was, a joy in itself. I think it was just three days later that I heard on the news that he had died suddenly aged a mere 46. What a great loss............

Check out ‘I’ll remember April’ at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H87qRznPN5I

jb/16th January 2012

Giants track by track

2012-01-13T14:05:00.007Z

Giants is nearly upon us and I thought I'd give you a few details about each of the album's tracks:

ANOTHER CAMDEN AFTERNOON This was originally inspired by an article JJ read about a mugging that took place in Camden where the assailants actually ran down a woman in their car to get her bag…we wrote the music then eventually shed the lyrics apart from some backing vocals…there’s a lot of guitar in this…very greasy…very British…

FREEDOM IS INSANE You should never throw anything away…this was an idea JJ had that was left over from the Suite XVI writing sessions. We rented a house in Cornwall for two months and wrote 30 songs…I came down one morning and he’d been up for hours staring at the sea and writing this…I think it’s one of his best vocal performances ever…

GIANTS A song about captains of industry and how the world we live in today was shaped…and it’s pitfalls…”I’m glad my fathers’ not here to see what happened to men like him”…great line that says it all…and a nice guitar riff too…

LOWLANDS This was inspired by the first acoustic tour we did with Neil Sparkes in Holland and Belgium in 2007, and one mad night in particular when we were driving back from a gig to the hotel we were using as a base. We had plenty of brandy and primo Dutch weed and started to record ourselves accapella making up a song. Dave was in the front singing the keyboard parts, I was singing bass parts, JJ was singing the melody and Sparkes was keeping time on a champagne bottle with a broken drumstick…our tour manager Gary Knighton was laughing so much he could hardly drive and was getting secondarily stoned…you had to be there really…very funny…

BOOM BOOM A different feel from anything the band has done before…a sort of Stonesy rhythm with a jangle and a bit of swagger… about a girl…well there had to be one didn’t there?

MY FICKLE RESOLVE Some lovely laid back brush work from Jet here and Dave doing his trippy Euro Female style thing…JJ played acoustic bass on this and as with most of the album we tried to keep it as stripped back as possible…I like the lyrics on this one too, and Daves’ solo at the end is sublime…

TIME WAS ONCE ON MY SIDE JJ sang the lyrics down the phone to me when he first wrote them and I knew we’d have to make a song out of them…great words and Neil Sparkes providing some tremendous conga work, especially at the end…one of those songs that just barrels along and feels great you know?

MERCURY RISING This song reminds me the most of mid 80’s period Stranglers with a bit of production and a lovely swirling keyboard riff…JJ provides a ‘motif’ bass line which keeps the whole thing together and I do my best Beefheart impression on the vocals and slide guitar…don’t know how to describe this one…wacky? One of my favourites so far…

ADIOS (TANGO) This a heavy metal tango sung in Spanish…no really…I love this…

15 STEPS We’ve spent, off and on, nearly three years down in Bath preparing, sifting, rejecting and writing these and many other songs…there are loads that didn’t make it, and at times it was gruelling and very difficult…On these occasions when I went upstairs to bed I found myself counting the number of steps to the landing…and there were 15…15 steps to heaven and the salvation of my room…This song is purely about the wonderful old house we lived in writing this album…and some of the things that occurred there…

I hope you like it, I'm sure you will...

BAZ/ 13th January 2012

Just for the record

2011-12-10T10:49:00.007Z

It was one of those questions which are what you might call perennial. So I guess the answer therefore, would have to be one of the most avidly anticipated, but I’m not sure why, maybe it’s some indication of the early beginnings of one’s musical journey, or maybe people just want to compare notes, who knows? It was that one about ‘the first record you ever bought’.

If you were there that weekend, you will recall that my colleagues had a better idea than I did. If I recall correctly, I blurted out something about records not having been invented during my childhood years.

Well it was in jest of course, the pleasurable platter has been around longer then I have, and cylindrical ones before that, though if you wanted to check that one out, you might need to visit a museum.

Nonetheless, there was at least a grain of truth in my impetuous retort. In a more considered moment, I should perhaps say, that the ‘record’ as we know it ‘to-day’ (or very recently at least) hadn’t been invented.

It was during my early life, that the black diskette of delight underwent a complete revolution, if not an actual metamorphosis. The format, known to all as the 78 by the time of my teen years, was a delicate and low-tech idea, although I believe it did improve slightly towards the end of it’s life.

Dropping one, was almost certain to result in a breaking or shattering of the piece, they really were quite brittle. The way they were intended to be played atop the musical counterpart record player, or ‘Gramophone’ as they were then called, necessitated the attachment of a stubby needle to a mechanical ‘sound’ arm, which were supposed to be replaced (the needles that is) with new ones every, or every other, play. The resulting sound reproduced, although probably the wonder of it’s day - was abysmal by later standards of the 20th century, never mind the 21st.

The whole purpose of the exercise, to deliver the recorded ‘event’ to the listener (for that was what it was, there was no ‘production’ in those days), again, would perhaps have been a wondrous event at the time, but quite sad in the light of our modern standards.

Suddenly, during the 50's, a number of truly major developments were to unfold within a historically short period of time:

* The coming of age and beginnings of a youth culture.

* The emergence of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

* The change from the rigid 78 to the more flexible ‘vinyl’, the new 45, extended play (EP) and 33⅓ rpm type long playing (LP) records.

* The establishment of pirate radio.

* The forward evolution of music recording and playback technologies.

Astonishingly, these ground breaking events were to begin during an epoch of roughly a decade and both youth culture and Rock ‘n’ Roll were to become joint bedfellows and the catalyst for a unique revolution.

Although there was obvious excitement at the time, and actual hysteria would not be an overstatement, I don’t think that many people even so, fully comprehended the enormity of it all. We were unwittingly witnessing the birth of an entirely new popular music culture and industry, the like of which had never previously existed.

It all happened during those formative and impressionable years of my life, and so will always remain an important and very significant influence on my contemporaries, as of myself.

By the end of the calamity that was WWII during 1939-1945, Britain was a broken country, deeply scarred and bankrupt. Indeed, so deeply, that the UK didn’t complete it’s final war loan repayments arrangement with the United States until the end of 2006 and so, very, very recently. (A staggering 61 years since the war, if you haven’t worked it out already).

That first post war decade was quite grim but at least everyone was cheered by the knowledge that it was all finally over. Times were tough for most people but somehow the nation just got on with it and made the most of what they had, which perhaps makes it easier to understand how the small mercies offered by the humble ‘record’ were so much appreciated. Records had played a big part in popularising many artists over the war years and had played a major role in boosting national morale.

Dismal in terms of sound quality, as they were, they sold in what today would be considered huge and enviable quantities. This in part, because there wasn’t an awful lot else to do by way of recreation. TV had begun it’s life by then but didn’t immediately have any meaningful presence because of the austerity following the war years, and then it took time to catch on as things tend to do.

A youth culture as we understand it to-day, didn’t really exist either prior to WWII. The buying of records, or indeed just music, wasn’t what you could really call a ‘youth’ activity. Youth by and large, were unpossessed of a disposable income. From my own memories, many were far more preoccupied with a sport which was known as ‘knocking on doors and running away’ or simply breaking windows, than engaging in such sissy-like activities as listening to music. Even less available, was anything of a musical nature to which the juvenile could be irresistibly attracted.

By way of a guess, I think perhaps people purchased records and the means to play them, more because they could afford to, rather than an actual zealous desire to play music, although the latter cannot be entirely discounted.

The kind of musical phenomenon which was eventually to turn the tables and transform the youth of the day, into the crazed teenagers, that so alarmed their superiors, arrived suddenly, in the 50's and with a very big bang indeed. It was of course the aforementioned Rock ‘n’ Roll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud_JZcC0tHI

Now people had something to get excited about, and they had the money to buy it, although I’ve never fully understood the mechanics of how that came about.

The musical focal point of many peoples’ lives during and up to the 50's was radio. Radio in the UK, was a BBC monopoly, and there was no British commercial radio and certainly no internet at the time. Perhaps the biggest draw would have been the cinema where both music and drama were a major attraction.

The BBC’s stranglehold on broadcasting was a comparatively new and expanding phenomenon. However, being a monopoly, they proceeded to do what all monopolies do. They please themselves first, everything else comes after that. Whereas in a competitive market, you need to offer a widely attractive service or product, in order to secure the most desirable level of success.

That the Beeb were always good at what they did, is beyond dispute, but it was ‘good’ within their terms of reference, or by their own standards.

Now I’m not anti BBC, I think they are a wonderful British institution, and some of the things they do, both then and now, they do better than anyone else. But back in the day, the corporation’s attitude towards music was painfully Dickensian. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century.

I still recall their drab, politically correct, and downright pompous approach to music and there was of course a place for that, but there was never any excitement from the other end of the spectrum. The truly radical and dangerous.

Jazz was quite widely regarded as an undesirable musical element, but attitudes were to change albeit ever so slowly. This was more a case of jazz - on the other side of the Atlantic - being seen as something that just could not be ignored, than being an art form that could be easily recognised for what it was, and so legitimised. For a long time though, jazz, in the eyes of stuffy British society, still had to be performed in evening dress to be respected by many. But in the end, it got there, even though by that time, it was R ‘n’ R that people wanted, rather than the then dated jazz formula.

There was in fact plenty of music to be found within the schedules of the ‘Radio Times’ but it was as though it had to be either stuffy or stupid to qualify for radio.

Not unlike the attitudes towards jazz, the Beeb’s foray into the area of the “pop” song, was often limited to the less attractive, safe, and at times embarrassingly ridiculous. I can only surmise that they thought it was all, ‘jolly good fun, what, what, what’.

Once again, through the wonder of the internet, I have been able to locate a few examples of the kind of torture that my generation were subjected to from time to time.

I must warn you that you won’t be able to stand more then a few seconds of this, but from these links you can find some examples of the sounds the listener had to endure during the age about which I write. From 1952......(you may need to skip the ad), (if not the song itself!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AkLE4X-bbU

and it gets worse......in 1955.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M_erqf0dN0

Even making allowances for the idea that this may have been fashionable at the time, implausible though that seems, it is difficult to comprehend how the corporation could have justified some of these choices and yet ignored real musical excitement for as long as they did, when so much else was available.

I’m sure you’re not going to need much more of that, but there was plenty more. On the whole though, it wasn’t quite so stupid as that, it was very often infantile but also stuffy and pompous and ever so British.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZANKFxrcKU

That one Dates from the 30's, but they were still playing it in the 40's & 50's. Then we had the Beeb’s retinue of regulars. One of the prime examples was the great Victor Silvester, the ‘Strictly’ star of his day. A dance champion and band leader.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCoPdguD7H4

Victor had the distinction and trademark of sameness. Every song was almost identical save for the actual melody line. He maintained a long career on the back of this, he was regularly on, and rarely off the radio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUpW4wNhdU&feature=related

Another BBC stalwart was the great Edmundo Ross. He was a mega star of his era and enjoyed a long life until his death in 2011. But Edmundo occupied the more sensible side of the Beeb’s regular output and possessed great charm. His style was much more than the token Latin presence in the UK, he was THE Latin exponent par excellence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMZ3joAyh54&feature=related

But apart from music of this type and there was plenty of it, it’s not too difficult to see that it was never orientated towards a youth audience. Perhaps I should say, why would they? The kids had no money. However, at pretty much the same time as the music abruptly and dramatically, shifted from dour and staid, to pounding and provocative, the kids had suddenly, somehow, acquired spending money. Were that not so, who knows what would have happened.

So is it any wonder that the youth of the western world went apeshit - en masse - when R ‘n’ R finally arrived!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM

and from the movie....those famous balls.....!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFOCdHMSR-8&feature=related

and again the great man himself............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFQDqcDZ_FM&feature=related

Music is such a fascinating subject. It is also a very personal thing. No matter how many people there are that love any one piece, there is always someone who hates it.

There are comparatively few notes available to the aural spectrum of the human ear and yet there seems to be no limit to the number of combinations that can be assembled with these musical building blocks.

I often wonder if anyone has yet set about the task of running this through a computer to see if there is actually a limit to the number of possible combinations. Surely there must be, it can’t be infinite?

There are certainly combinations of notes that just don’t work together, for pertinent musical reasons, that’s why you need to have some idea about how you might want to combine a series of notes. And there must be millions of such combinations. Yet in spite of all that, there still appear to be millions and millions of possible combinations left that do work. I find that quite fascinating.

Perhaps it’s just that the number of possible songs or compositions, is so incredibly vast, that by the time we get around to where it all started, so-to-speak, the next generation have forgotten all about those previous ones, and wouldn’t want to listen to them anyway because of their un-fashionable credentials.

By now, the number of identifiable genre within the spectrum of music must also be quite vast. Hundreds? Thousands? Who can answer that one?

To-day, we are free to explore and enjoy whatever genre we like, but there was a time within my own life, when one was limited by the choices of others. That also, I believe, is why such furore was occasioned when the musical floodgates were finally thrown open in the 50's, and thank god for that.

The next milestone of note, was perhaps the change in the type of music that pervaded the airwaves, and it was famously, the radio pirates who started the move away from the deeply entrenched and dull broadcasting format of the Beeb. There was now a new and exciting style of music and by and large, the BBC weren’t playing it. The pirates, seized the moment and seemed to just appear out of nowhere. The word went around like wildfire.

Until around this time, music was largely a serious business. To secure a career in music, usually required a ‘proper’ musical training. Holding down a music job would have required the ability to play anything placed in front of you, and with supreme confidence and ability. Anyone playing music below those sorts of standards were not widely considered ‘proper’ musicians. But then came the day when people who couldn’t read or write musical notation were demonstrating that it could be done without the constraints of musical academia.

The internal mentality at the Beeb meant in turn, that a large part of it’s output was of an ‘orchestral’ nature, both classical, semi-classical and indeed contemporary, such as it was.

So, when Britain’s airwaves were suddenly invaded by a new breed of music enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, from off-shore locations atop various ships, ex-maritime sea forts, and foreign shores, the chips were well and truly down. Auntie Beeb was dealt a massive and well aimed boot to her posterior. Listeners deserted the Beeb in droves as the new illegitimate radio stations forced her to succumb to, and rethink, her position within the new commercial world of music. This was yet another revolution and an instant one at that.

And it’s not as though the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis had suddenly torn up the rule book, it’s more likely he/they never saw it in the first place. The new music offered a new kind of freedom, freedom to play whatever you liked and without any rules.

What this new breed understood, so very clearly, and so also did it’s audiences, was excitement. Any such excitement within the hallowed walls of the BBC at the time, would doubtless have induced a corporate heart attack.

Eventually, in defence of the Beeb’s inability to reform itself and compete within a free market, (albeit illegal at the time on the commercial side of it), the government was moved to devise a method of preventing these pirates from enjoying the financial rewards of their newly developed commercial radio stations, from business resources within these shores. The BBC couldn’t beat them, so they joined them. They employed many of the once pirate DJ’s, many of whom went on to become household names. This brief period was a major milestone in the history of British entertainment, and ought perhaps to be known as the British Radio Renaissance.

Whereas the initial push towards the mass commercialisation and expansion of pop music culture was largely American driven, by the 60's it had become focussed around the English port city of Liverpool as most people know.

The business of ‘records’ had come of age too and the record business had moved from an obscure genesis amongst a handful of enthusiastic small-time pioneers, into mega-rich multi-national corporations.

The record, was now challenging every other form of entertainment for the enviable position of being, the most popular.

No-one new it at the time, but by the 80's/90's the ‘record’ was moribund. I remember around that stage, I was sitting in the New York offices of the CBS giant, on the umpteenth floor of the massive black clad edifice of the building known locally as ‘The Rock’. One of the top brass was eager to play me his new copy of the latest wonder product of the musical age. It was - so they said - indestructible, would literally last forever, and possessed sound qualities unsurpassed in the entire history of music. Little did he know it, nor did I, that it was also going to completely wipe-out his balance sheet within a few short years. This was the arrival of the CD.

To-day, all three, vinyl, CD and now DVD are widely considered obsolete technologies. Indeed the very idea of placing music on a disk seems positively ancient when all you need is a bit of digital memory space. Job done!

So what are the consequences of all this? The record, which played such a big part of my, and indeed most peoples lives, has gone. It’s not completely extinct yet, we are ourselves about to launch yet another one upon you, being one of the few remaining entities who are still able to, but the proverbial end is looking very, very nigh indeed.

This is all rather sad;........nay;........very, very sad. It’s always sad when something has to die. Is this the day the music died too?

If I can try and be positive about this, my feeling is that sooner or later, music, as we used to know it, and loved it, will eventually - one way or another - resurface and reinvigorate the enjoyment of our lives. It is just too uplifting and emotive within the human experience to remain eternally damned. Fete, will surely find a way?

But why is this happening at all? It’s difficult to face up to, but it’s also a fact of life that nothing lasts forever. Nothing.
The plain fact of the matter, is that the listener, not all of them, but enough, at some point, discovered that it had suddenly become possible to copy music - without any loss of quality - through the facility of digital music, and copy it, and copy it, and copy it, they did.

That that had become possible in the first place, was simply a result of the path that the evolution of music and it’s associated technologies had taken.

Many music lovers are still wondering when their favourite bands are going to release their next record. Well, in all probability, they ain’t going to. Who in their right mind is going to spend a fortune making a record, and then giving it away? Well, some have done so, but they’re not going to repeat that too often, if at all and that’s just the way it is now.

So, what’s next? Well, in my opinion we have already got the ‘what’s next’, it’s the Cowell empire!

Now, I’m not going to jump on the ‘I hate Simon Cowell’ bandwagon. Love him or hate him, he is just a businessman, doing what businessmen do. They make money. That’s their job. The real problem as I see it, is not Mr Cowell per se, businessmen will always grab as much as they are able. It’s that he has been allowed to create yet another virtual monopoly, and that shouldn’t be allowed and there is no meaningful alternative to it. Anyone with wall to wall TV coverage, could sell sand to Arabs and you wouldn’t need any talent to achieve it. How can anyone compete against that kind of dissemination.

So we as a nation, are no longer able to enjoy the wide and varied creations of the worlds finest artists, because their work would simply be stolen, but we are able to be battered and brainwashed with an avalanche of repetitive mediocrity for weeks if not months on end, created, not by artists of extraordinary vision and ability, but by businessmen who’s abilities are not derived from the creative music processes, but rather, the manipulation of the balance sheet. That just cannot be right.

It should not be so surprising, that programmes emanating from the newly constituted music industry format, bespoken by a new breed of muso-magnates, have succeeded in supplanting a thriving and vibrant musical industry, with a chain of mindless repetition, reliant on endless overstatement of it’s participating stars’ abilities and alleged sales achievements and aspirations, rather than any self evident and/or stunning display of inherent creative ability, has succeeded in it’s quest so to do, by way of it’s unchallenged monopoly of the supreme marketing podia of television, whilst it’s defeated former music industry would-be competitors’ resources, have been stolen, thereby rendering them impotent. Nice one Simon!

At the very least, there ought to be a level playing field upon which those that choose to buy into the creations of the businessman, can do so, but alongside those who would choose that of the artist.

The tool that facilitates this biassed marketplace against fair competition, is of course the talent show. The talent show is nothing new, it’s been around as long as I’ve been watching TV. The basic principles remain the same. You watch a series of competitors vying to be chosen as the ‘best’ of the entrants.

In other words, it’s all about watching people learning how to do something. Become professional singers, in the case of the largest of the genre.

Then there’s another show about learning how to become a variety act, or a novelty act. Then there’s a show about learning how to survive in a jungle.

Followed by another about learning how to become a dancer. And yet another about how to become a cook.

It’s all so ridiculous. What’s actually happened, is that we have gone from watching the craftsman, to watching the apprentice! And as if you needed any confirmation about that, we even have one CALLED ‘The Apprentice’, which is about watching people who want to learn how to become business people!

Now we are no longer watching great performers, we are reduced to watching learners. In any event, the majority of contestants are failures by definition since there can only be one winner! So we are in effect, watching a bunch of no-hopers showing us how bad they are. Admittedly, some are actually so bad they inadvertently become quite funny, but that’s not the point.

Have we all gone completely mad to stand for this nonsense? This surely, if nothing else is, is something up with which, we most vehemently should not have to put! Where are the crusaders when you need them? Why is no-one shouting from the rooftops?

Of course Mr Cowell’s end product is still exposed to the worst wild-west like activities of the internet, like everyone else, but he has the overwhelming advantage of massive and biassed broadcasted marketing facilities whilst the rest of the industry can go to hell, and has largely done so.

Are we all now, those of us still surviving within the industry of music, actually occupying the position once experienced by our beloved Beeb? Do we need to become as radical as did they back in the 60's and face the music of the 10's by joining those in the vanguard, if it can be so described, even if we were able?

But perhaps I’ve got this all wrong. Is it a question of that lexicon of notes about which I previously speculated, having finally reached the end of the road? Is it just that we have now used-up all the possible combinations of notes and genre within the pantheon of music? Has the last song now been written? Is that the reason that music has plummeted down to where it now is? Are we now back at the proverbial square one?

Do we now have to regress to the point where it all started scores of, maybe even hundreds of, years ago, and start all over again? If that is so, then we had all better find something else to do until we get back to where we were in the 50's/60's and once again marvel at the excitement of music.

Of course if that is the case, it won’t in fact be us enjoying it, but rather some distant relatives of ours, if they in turn succeed in surviving through the dangerous world we now inhabit. Oh dear, it all now looks rather depressing, but I needed to get it off my chest................................just for the record.

jb/10th December 2011
© Jet Black 2011

Weekendinblack!

2011-11-21T12:28:00.004Z

Well, that was a memorable weekend! 4 sets featuring band members (5 if you include JJ & Polyphonic Size), a huge cast of guest supports and some amazing other events. And a venue packed with the best fans in the world!!!

We had: JJ cooking, Dave remembering (!), Baz singing his heart out, Jet thundering away, Sparky bongoing, John Robb enthusing, 6 new tracks and lots of old ones, a £3350 bass in auction, a guy in a black & white suit, Chiswick Charlie and a Finchley Boy recalling and the world's hardest pub quiz... All packed into one weekend.

We got: Bitching, Lowlands, The Raven, Unbroken, Swine, In The Shadows, Don't Bring Harry, Freedom Is Insane, Rise Of The Robots, Bless You, Genetix, Boom Boom, Mean To Me, Do The European, Giants and Shut Up...

Many, many people to thank but here's just a few of them: the band, the crew, the management, Neil Sparkes, the legendary John Robb, Goldblade, Mike Peters, Gus & Fin, Polyphonc Size, the Wilko Johnson band, Al Hillier, Garry Coward-Williams, Chris Twomey, Ava Rave, the Butts Brewery crowd, the Mamstore girls, the Music Glue girls, the Maidman sisters, Phil Johnson, Rab & Tracy for trophies, the venue & security staff and last and most importantly the fans... Thanks to everyone!

We'd like to throw this open to comments and feedback from you. Please let us know what you think-you never know, there may be a next time...

ratter
21st November 2011

2011 so far...

2011-10-14T20:37:00.004+01:00

As seems to be customary when doing a retrospective of a given period of time, and looking back on the events that have happened in past months, it never fails to amaze you at what you’ve actually achieved...when you put your mind to it.
　
This year started for me on January 2nd when I travelled down to Bath to continue the writing for the forthcoming album, and to start rehearsals for the Black and Blue tour in March. We’d had our Christmas and new year break and were raring to go...I got there, just, when the weather closed in and I spent the first week of the new year alone and snowbound before anyone else could get to me...which was actually very nice after the hustle and bustle of a typical Warne family Christmas I have to say.
　
We spent a month or more writing more material and honing what we had before we headed out in March on tour for what was one of our best in recent years. We’d toiled long and hard to pick a set that would please everybody (yeah right) and were very satisfied with the reactions and reviews we received. It could have all gone so wrong at the third gig in Edinburgh when I lacerated my hand after breaking a shower door at our hotel an hour before stage time, but with luck, and a trained medic on the team, we prevailed and the rest of the tour went off without a hitch...I think.
　
It was then back to Bath for more song writing sessions during late spring and into early summer, interrupted only by the odd jaunt out to play festivals, including the legendary Benicassim , Spain’s biggest music festival, in July...where we really enjoyed Elbow, but were bemused by the attention lavished on the Strokes...who struck us as a not very good Television...horses for courses...
　
As I write this now we’re just about to reconvene after a short break to resume work on the record and, with 5 tracks down, works well and truly in progress, it’s looking good for next year...
　
We’re all looking forward to the convention in November very much too, and it’ll be nice to do something different and see some old and new friends. There’ll be surprises aplenty and it’ll be good to play with our mate Neil Sparkes again for the acoustic show, as well as Mike Peters, Glen Matlock and our old pals Goldblade, led as always by John Robb, who’s also compere for the whole event.
　
Then of course the touring starts again in March next year,and runs through into April in Europe, followed by more festivals during the summer...and beyond that...is, as always, a mystery...
　
Hope to see you all there...

Baz/14th October 2011

When a friend calls you up and asks a favour, you step up...

2011-09-01T21:35:00.008+01:00

When Roger Marc Vandervoorde reformed Polyphonic Size a couple of years ago he saw it as a fun way of bonding with his two teenage daughters, one of whom is a very talented musician and is a student at the Brussels conservatory. The occasional gig allows him to mobilise old friends and re-jig old tunes.

After they supported the Stranglers at two acoustic gigs this year in Belgium I suggested that they might be able to improve their sound if they got a professional sound mixer. I found their sound not altogether great. They were then offered the Brussels Summer Festival if I would join them. Of course, I agreed although this year has been seriously busy and I've had a few distractions of the personal kind to contend with.

Louie Nicastro, the Stranglers outfront sound man and also our studio engineer/co-producer agreed to come along to help. He came by Eurostar.

This was a good opportunity to ride the 'Tiger' to Brussels (the Tiger is 1050cc Triumph kicking 118 horses and is all black). No rain predicted for the day I set off to have one evening's rehearsals with the current line-up. I was to sing five songs, Do the European (from Euroman Cometh), European Female, Winston and Julia, Je t'ai toujours aime and Walking Everywhere. From London it took me four and a half hours to get to Roger's front door. This included 35 minutes on the Shuttle. I got up to 137mph on the bike. Should have got much more, however traffic kept getting in the way.

Next day there was a warm up gig in the same rehearsal studio (Studio DaDa) in front of about 130 people invited through social media.

Day of the main gig and the weather had changed. In fact it was catastrophic for an open air concert. The Polyphonics were supporting Karl Bartos, a former member of Kraftwerk who I've previously met when he came to a Stranglers gig in Hamburg. It rained and it rained. Freak weather, even by Belgian standards. Down the road at a festival only 40 minutes from Brussels, in Hasselt, at Pukkelpop the weather had a disastrous effect when a stage collapsed killing five people. We heard about this just before going on stage.Nevertheless the gig went on in front of a damp but enthusiastic crowd of several hundred and not the eight thousand expected.

Polyphonic Size will be appearing at the Stranglers' Convention in November with Louie on the mixing desk and featuring an old friend on vocals.

Next day the sun shone and I rode back to London. With a hangover.

Do The European at Studio DaDa on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEzO1yyRHkE

Slideshow of photos from the Brussels gig http://www.slide.com/r/LIGk0UIOwD98Q9JY6bJwnS6jblC5c_1Q?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

Photos courtesy of Fabienne Cresens http://www.picturelle.be/

JJB/1st September 2011

Jet gets technical...

2011-07-22T22:04:00.005+01:00

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by drummo’s, is how do you play ‘Genetix’? Without being behind a drum kit, it’s not very easy to explain. However, in an attempt to do just that, many years ago, I came up with the following piece. It was featured in an early edition of ‘Strangled’ magazine in 1982, an astonishing 29 years ago! God, how time flies.

Anyway, at that time, I had been asked to explain the drum track on ‘Genetix’. For those who are interested, here with notation, is the piece from that feature.

'It took me some considerable time to devise a drum pattern to accompany the technically strange ‘Genetix’. No conventional rhythm seemed appropriate, and after much trial and error, I eventually arrived at the arrangement you are questioning. As you will see from the following notation, there are three fundamentally distinctive patterns. The first revolves around the triplet. What makes the rhythm unusual, is not the rhythm per se, but more the way it is deployed around the drums. You may have experienced some difficulty in deciphering the rhythm from listening to the record, for it sounds simple and actually it is, but the comparatively rapid execution of the rhythm tends to conceal it’s chemistry. Pattern 1, calls for polished independent co-ordination. No two drums are ever played at any one moment. So, unless the technique of playing say, a triplet, or paradiddle or ruff, each note on different drums has been mastered, then the accurate execution of the 'Genetix’ rhythm will be impossible. Pattern 2, is a slight variation on pattern 1, and is simply triplets played on drums only. The final pattern, is an easily decipherable rock lilt of conventional nature with the occasional cymbal fill.

Here is the notation, and if you play it absurdly slow until it sinks in, you will soon get it sussed - and that goes for the other patterns too'.

Jet Black/July 2011

Back into the studio...

2011-06-27T20:20:00.006+01:00

We finally felt ready to start the recording process.

Quite a few ideas had been rejected, others had been kept on the back boiler not quite complete but not totally disposable.

Are these lyrics naff or are they saying something? Is this just a fourth form rant or is it meaningful? Does this melody remind you of anything or anyone? What rhythm can we hang this melody on? Is this song at the right tempo? Does this piece sound like prog rock? Is there enough space in this one?

Well, the first four pieces are underway. Their titles are Freedom is Insane (which many of you wll have heard during the tour earlier this year), Giants , Time Was Once On My Side and Boom Boom (not the John Lee Hooker song).

Watch this space...

JJB/27th June 2011

Tucker's Grave RIP

2011-06-04T10:13:00.015+01:00

And so it goes...the legendary Somerset cider house that is/was Tuckers Grave finally closed it’s doors for the last time on Tuesday 31st May. A barbecue was held the Sunday before in the lovely back garden where I’ve/we’ve spent many an idyllic summers evening drinking the rough and shooting the breeze, and I volunteered my services to go down there and play to whoever turned up...which turned out to be around 300 people...word had got around ...

I first went there about 6 months after joining the Stranglers in summer 2000 with Sil Willcox and probably Bruce Gooding. Immediately I was drawn to the place, the people, the history, the vibe...and my fate was sealed a couple of weeks later when I got into an impromptu game of skittles with some of the locals one Sunday evening whilst waiting for my flight home a couple of days later...and drank 7 pints of ‘farmyard fanta’...We only discovered it was 7 pints when Sil went down to pay the bill and Glenda, the famous landlady said she’d been marking off who was drinking what, and I’d had 7...I was ill for 2 days, missed my flight, and have never done it again...although I did have 5 at the gig...doesn’t really sound much does it? But you try it...it’s done for a lot of better men than me...

Since then we’ve become honourary members of a very exclusive little slice of west country life, and made many friends over the years. I remember one very memorable afternoon when the whole band was there crowded around a little table in the garden, Jet declaring his love for the place after every mouthful of cider and Paul Roberts acting the goat for some kids that were there with their parents...being indoctrinated at a very early age...The sessions for Norfolk Coast were fuelled there, as JJ, Dave and I lived at Sils’ farm up the road for 8 months...and inevitably we immortalised it in song...much to the delight of it’s punters and management... For years after the albums’ release we’d go there for a pint and Glenda would tell us of another pilgrimage of Stranglers' fans who’d visited, hoping to see us there, or just simply soak up the very unique atmosphere and read the history which was there for all to see on the old mantelpiece in the living room.

I’m actually writing this in the very room where Edward Tucker hanged himself on June 5th 1747 which is at Sil's Farm about a mile up the track. Suicides were not permitted to be buried on hallowed ground, and so , after an open inquest with the Kings Coroner, Tucker was buried in an unmarked grave at the crossroads where the pub stands. In 1827 the pub first opened it’s doors to the public, although it’s almost certain than communal drinking had been taking place there for many years before that...

If you never visited Tuckers Grave you missed out on a truly amazing little place, where mobile phones didn’t work, there was no jukebox, not even a bar for that matter...and if you didn’t enjoy striking up very interesting and sometimes very surreal conversations with complete strangers, who would in time become very dear friends, Tuckers was never going to be your kind of place. I lived in the West country for 4 years and visited at least twice a week and after 10 years of drinking there i’m going to miss it immeasurably...and I know I’m far from the only one...

Videos from Baz's farewell to Tuckers are here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwjXb5dKFmo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wpZJ_Oa4Oqo

Baz/4th June 2011

Thanks to Roger Bonsall for additional information and to Dave Edwards and Corrine Laver for the photographs...

For all the wrong reasons...

2011-05-14T09:05:00.023+01:00

From a gig in the past near a ship with a mast to a barn and the troubles I knew.

There were crimes at the time in a town near mine and a trip to the calaboose too.

oooooOooooo

I often wondered why it is, that you remember some things, and not others. Perhaps - to put it into a modern context - it’s something like the bad sectors that develop on a hard drive. Maybe it’s a physical thing, maybe it’s about space, limited space. My gut feeling though, is that it’s more about priorities, significance, importance of the event or statistic. On the other hand, there have certainly been times when I have forgotten important stuff while remembering the trivial minutiae. It’s a bit of a puzzle that one.

Perhaps one of you brainier types will write in, with the benefit of your academic knowledge on matters of the mind, and put that one to rest for me. Meanwhile, there seems to be some appetite amongst you for matters related to, and stored within my cerebral hard drive.

While this isn’t - the much anticipated by some - jb autobiography, and I’m not sure it ever will be, it is going to be autobiographical in nature.

I thought this time I’d write about memory, stored memory, at least insofar as it revolves around the event we are ALL interested in, the gig, and the memories some of them hold for me personally.

Now I couldn’t put an exact number on it - I couldn’t find that in the memory bank - but I must by now have clocked-up gigs numbered in the low thousands since the dawn of my giglife in the distant 50's.

When I look back over the decades, I see that a few are firmly lodged at the front of the archive, as being especially memorable, historic, unforgettable, even notorious, while others, have left no trace or recollection whatsoever. Why is that? It’s as if some had been erased from the record.

I guess that in itself, isn’t so significant, I’m sure we all know that happens, it just seems to be the way we were designed.

However, whilst I can’t ascribe an exact chronology to the first three gigs I ever did, that detail does seem to be lost, I can remember all of them, almost as if they were yesterday. That’s 100%, and that surely is significant!

There is almost certainly no other set of three consecutive gigs in my lifetime, which - for whatever reason - could be considered especially memorable or outstandingly significant and permanently carved into my memory, and, as it turns out, mostly for all the wrong reasons!

AND SO TO GIG NUMBER 1

Way, way, way back in the late fifties, I suddenly moved from being a amateur gigist, into semi-professionalism. The first gig in that category was above a pub in Stratford Broadway in east London. It was a Cockney wedding bash, very close to where the new Olympics of 2012 are to be held.

I remember it well. It was just me and my piano player pal Bernard Dessoy, just piano and drums. We were real novices.

{{I fondly recall in subsequent times how Bernie used to boast to his ‘day job’ workmates, and he told me about it, that the reason he was the top salesman for his then employer - an oil company - was because he had "esso" in the middle of his name!}}

I went on to do scores of gigs with Bernie over the years and this first one, was primarily memorable by dint of it’s early position in the litany that had then just begun. But perhaps it was also memorable because of our uncertainty, inexperience, and perhaps a bit of trepidation too.

It was for me, the beginnings of a very long journey, at the time, my having no idea that it had actually started, never mind where it might eventually end up. It was certainly memorable, for those reasons alone.

I had been booked through channels I had by then become aware of, which in those days amounted to a telephone network through which information was disseminated and exchanged between available musicians and vacant gig opportunities.

For the most part, the band’s with which I found this semi-pro work, weren’t usually a band as we would know it today. In other words 3/4/5 guys working together most of the time. Very often, you had never met some or all of the other band members. You would just turn-up and play pretty much the same stuff as the next band. Churning out what used to be called ‘standards’.

Being involved in music was perhaps even more precarious in those days than it is today, if that’s at all possible. It was more difficult to maintain an entity you could call a band, and hold it together for very long.
But of the gig, I recall the room that day, which was on a first floor and roughly what it looked like. I also remember the upright piano and a certain feeling of satisfaction in what I was doing. I can remember feeling appreciated. Yes, it was all so new and memorable, and jovial, not in any way sensational, at least not that one.

AND SO TO GIG NUMBER 2

The next one, was a different kettle of fish altogether.

The pub was called ‘The Pride of the Isle’. The isle in question, being the Isle of Dogs. These days, that, for the benefit of those who don’t already know, is the loop shape which forms part of the river Thames that you can see on your tv screens, as the opening sequence to the ‘EastEnders’ soap opera begins to roll.

Back in my day, that area was usually referred to as Limehouse/Poplar, or just "the isle", whereas today it’s more usually known as Tower Hamlets/Docklands. I think the authorities would rather forget it’s past associations.

Now totally transformed, it’s currently the site of the huge Canary Wharf complex, one of London’s newest prestige business locations.

Just across the river today stands the o2 Arena, formerly known as the Millennium Dome, close to the magnificent tri-masted clipper the ‘Cutty Sark’ and in fact, the centre of the world, the Prime Meridian, zero degrees at the Greeenwich Observatory. Yes, the Isle has always been a major landmark but today, a very different one from the days of my youth.

I didn’t know it back in the day, least not at first, but the ‘Pride’, was notorious. Situated in what was at that time, one of the most seedy areas in the whole of Britain, if not downright dangerous. The word sleazy, is probably an understatement. I believe you could then get or do, anything you wanted there, at a price. At the heart of London’s docks, it was a truly sordid gateway to the world. The pub was featured in the film 'Sparrows can't sing' and can be seen in the link below:

http://www.reelstreets.com/index.php?option=com_films_online&task=view&id=943

Today of course, the docks have long gone in an easterly direction and it’s barely recognisable from the days of my youth.

You could find almost every nationality in ‘The Pride’. Dockers, sailors, mariners, seafarers, engineers, stevedores, everything to do with the sea, and some locals too, but few were entirely unconnected with the maritime world.

I have played in many pubs, many times, but I think I only did the ‘Pride’ a couple of times. Anyway, this one was a revelation. The other band members were new to me and I went on to work with all of them again many times subsequently. It was exceptionally packed out on the night I describe. It was ‘heaving’ in fact. It was also obvious that vast quantities of grog had been consumed by the time we hit the stage.

I soon learned that there was going to be a cabaret act, although I don’t think I quite knew what a cabaret was. I was still a teenager, and very green.

The cabaret act was a fan dancer. Today of course, a fan dancer would scarcely impress anyone, such is the nature of modern sexuality. But in the 50's it was a very different thing. A fan dancer basically being a naked lady dancing around a stage whilst covering the naughty bits with fans covered with huge ostrich feathers. The ‘bits’ only visible to anyone behind her, like a drummer!

The scene soon descended into a maelstrom of riotous and lecherous debauchery. I imagine anyone not suitably imbibed, may have viewed the events as quite disgraceful. It was as if I was in a 1920's speakeasy, but worse.

The raucous behaviour escalated into a crescendo which caused the - until that moment - plain clothed police officers who were present and unidentified, to leap into action and bring the hilarity to a sudden conclusion. It was a raid. Just as you all will have seen in Billy Wilder’s 1959 classic, ‘Some Like It Hot’.

Those were the days! I think the landlord was hauled before his local court to account for his house of ill repute, and the police did a sterling job of crushing the exuberance of the severely inebriated clientele. As I recall, there was no comeback for myself and the rest of the band, and I don’t know what happened to the dancer. But within a few months, the word was out that the ‘Pride’ was being closed down, and it finally met it’s end when it was demolished in the 60's.

So I could hardly forget that one!!

AND SO TO GIG NUMBER 3

As for the third gig in this tale, it’s not so much that it was a sensational gig, certainly not in the ‘Pride’ sense. No, this was to be very tame, extremely so, but it remains memorable nonetheless and for entirely different reasons.

Even so, it’s not actually the gig itself which was so memorable, although I would probably have remembered it anyway as it was certainly unique, but as you will see, it has become memorable for associated subsequent events which have ensured it remains permanently anchored, not just in my personal mnemonic, but in historical infamy.

Those of you who return to these pages from time to time will know by now that I was born and brought up in and around Ilford, Essex, on the east side of London.

The ‘Ranch House Club’ was situated no more than about a mile from home. It was strangely, even incongruously located in the midst of a middle class housing area. How planning permission was ever granted for this is a mystery. Today I’m sure, it would have no chance. But, I’m talking about the end of the 50's here, and less than 15 years after the end of the second world war. I guess everything was much more relaxed, if not completely chaotic at the time.

The club was the brainchild of one Bob Patience. I don’t know where Bob came from or much about him really, but he was apparently an ex RAF pilot and I think at some stage, a timber merchant. The story goes that he had returned from a tour of the USA and Canada, with a burning desire to create a ‘club’ in the western ‘log cabin’ style.

In this Bob was successful. He seems to have been a successful man all round, but you couldn’t say he was lucky. He must have been a man of some resource too, to have accomplished his tour of north America and brought his log cabin dream to fruition, but his luck ran out, more than once.

I can’t remember how I got to hear about it, but I was of course very close by, and perhaps word of mouth had arrived.

Physically, the club was actually very well put together. Countless tons of timber had been shipped from north America if I recall correctly, along with further tonnage of wrinkly bark to finish off the impressive interior. It was virtually all timber.

I remember arriving to talk to the proprietor about a ‘band’ requirement at the club as the final nails were being hammered into the interior ‘logs’. Bob didn’t have a particularly clear idea about what he wanted musically, I guess he wasn’t particularly musical but he knew he wanted a band to play in his ‘calaboose’ (jail) located on what today might be called a mezzanine floor.

The deal was done and I and my ‘band’ (Bernie again, and his guitar player brother Ernie) got the gig. I remember playing maybe a handful of evenings. The series didn’t last too long and I don’t recall why or how it all ended as far as we were concerned.

Actually, it all seemed rather daft really because we were practically invisible to the clientele below who could only just get a glimpse of us if they bothered to strain their necks and looked upwards. The ‘calaboose’ was ridiculously small for the job also and ill conceived from a musical perspective, but what did we know? Bugger all.

It’s at this point, that I pause to divert to, and extol one of the great virtues of the internet, which at the best of times is both sinner and saint in all our lives. I want to refer you to my ‘Viking’ discovery of last year.

As in that case, I have again discovered footage of this actual club about which I speak, filmed just around the time of the events I describe. I think this is really quite astonishing. It certainly goes a long way towards dispelling the beliefs of the few remaining nay sayers who still believe I make all this stuff up! I never thought I would ever see the club again, not in my wildest dreams. [Link below]

RANCH HOUSE

Your browser does not support iframes.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=179

The film presumably forms the basis of Bob’s launching publicity campaign. In those days of course, there was no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. No Internet either, not even commercial radio or television as I recall. This then must have been shown at cinemas to promote the new business venture.

Today, it all looks a bit puerile and faintly amusing though I suspect it will in fact bring the hint of a smile to your lips. However, it probably wasn’t so bad back then and if you consider; that most of the country was still bathing in a pool of adulation and envy of America and it’s wealth and culture, long before any signs of antipathy towards our American cousins ever emerged; it is easier to comprehend.

As I recall, there was hardly a week that went by when a new western wasn’t screened at the local flea pit. The ‘cowboy’ for the most part, was still a much loved movie genre.

The movie, or should I say advert, clearly shows the club, Bob Patience, his brother, the calaboose and even sight of the middle class housing in some of the background shots. I’m truly amazed. It’s part of my youth, it was probably shot over fifty years ago, it carries the issue date 16/06/1958.

Well, all this adds up to quite a memorable gig. But this is not the real issue. There was a murder!

It all happened some time after we had been and gone from our engagement at the club. Not that same night, it was many weeks later. One night a fight had broken out in the car park outside.

It was the 23rd December 1960. The 50's had just ended. This was the era of the Teddy Boy, and the pedular fashion accessory which became known as the ‘winklepicker’ was widely popular with the Edwardites.

Although initially mis-reported by many as a kicking to death by winklepickers - a sure fire headline grabber if ever I heard one - it later emerged that the poor unfortunate Ronald Coomber had been stamped upon his throat by the said footwear as he lay injured on the ground. This was a major and shocking scandal in a mildly affluent and normally placid neighbourhood.

At this period, I wasn’t actually involved at the club any longer, but it is the reason the gig will probably remain at the front of my gig memories, and yes, for all the wrong reasons.

This wasn’t just fatal for Ronald Coomber, it spelt the end for the club too. I don’t remember precisely what happened thereafter, I had moved on, but the occurrence of such a grizzly crime in the neighbourhood was not going to be tolerated by the locals, and it wasn’t too long after, that the Ranch House bit the dust, as had the ‘Pride’ just before it. It was soon wiped from history and replaced with new housing on it’s foundations at the end of Ashurst Road. Someone today, is probably and unknowingly, dining or relaxing on the very spot where a man was done to death by winklepicker.

And there, might have ended a memorable, if grizzly story, were it not for a second murder!

Of course by that time, it could be argued that it was unrelated to my gig at the start of the Ranch House Club story, and so it was.

However, there is continuity, in that by then, the unfortunate Bob Patience, had to face a new drama, thereby re-establishing a tenuous link with my gig experience and so nevertheless, a contributory factor - and the principal one as it turned out - in the reasons why the Ranch House was and will sadly remain so memorable.

At the time, I had no idea what had subsequently happened to Bob Patience. It was soon all forgotten. But one day I had the tv news on, and the words "Bob Patience" leapt to my ears.

In a second, it was all rushing back to me. The hard drive was in overload.

Bob had moved on too. He was now in Braintree, further to the east of Ilford and the proprietor of a new and by then well established venture, The Barn Restaurant.

Events at The Barn, were to become known as ‘The Barn Murder’. Now famously lodged in the annals of British criminal history.

It started in the early hours of 5th November 1972. After lying in wait in fields adjacent to the restaurant for the moment to pounce, two miscreants broke through a window of Bob’s house - just yards from the restaurant. No-one was home. They awaited the return of the Patience family from their day’s work at the restaurant.

Eventually they did, and to cut a long story to a minimum, Bob’s wife Muriel sustained a fatal gunshot wound while he and his daughter Beverley were also shot but survived. The attackers had resolved that they would relieve Bob of the thousands of pounds they believed must be on the premises.

As it turned out, they escaped with just £900, hardly a fair price for a life, to be dispassionate for a moment. (It should also be mentioned that some reports put this figure at just £90, which if true, would make the crime even more appalling). Curiously though, the inept felons failed to make any attempt at disguise and so police were initially hopeful of a quick i.d. and arrest.

After some considerable confusion, the prime suspect was identified as one George Ince. For awhile, Ince was nowhere to be found, but soon made the decision to give himself up as he knew he was entirely unconnected with the crime.

The police didn’t see it the same way. Ince claimed to have had the perfect alibi in that he had spent the critical moments with his then mistress a Mrs Doris Grey. It later transpired that she was in fact the wife of the - at the time - jailed, Charlie Kray, also familiar to many by way of his better known twin siblings, Ronnie and Reggie.

There were lengthy proceedings and Ince had to endure no less than two trials, before he was proved beyond doubt to have been entirely innocent of the crime. However, he was not what you could easily describe as an innocent man. He was well known to the police and suspected of involvement in many events from riotous behaviour to bullion robbery. This knowledge, you could understand, would hardly have failed to cloud the judgement of some officials.

But the case of Ince’s innocence of the Barn murder was conclusively proved in due course and he was freed. The real villains turned out to be John Brook and Nicholas Johnson.

Police came upon Brook by a stroke of luck after he had apparently boasted of his involvement in the shooting to someone and his undoing was the possession of what was proved to be the fatal weapon. However, although he had the gun, it was not proven that it was he who had pulled the trigger. Then, in the end, a court found Brook was guilty of the murder and he was sentenced to three life terms in prison. Johnson was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years in jail.

Doris, the former wife of Charlie Kray, and lover to the once suspected George Ince, won a divorce from her husband after his release from prison in 1974 and then went on to marry George Ince in 1977, just as The Stranglers were releasing ‘Rattus Norvegicus’. I don’t know what became of Bob.

Jet Black/14th May 2011

A little bit of magic, a whole lotta noise

2011-04-01T00:48:00.009+01:00

Not a huge tour, for sure, but a very different one. I've not seen anything like it since the heady days of the late seventies. Yes, I was there! It's as though our boys have stepped back into history by a factor of some three decades or more. The energy coming off that stage each night was breathtaking to behold. And yet the band are regularly criticized for being over the hill. Don't you believe a word of it.

I was asked if I could put a few words together if I was able to find anything 'special' or different on this one. Well, for one thing, there were a lot of young new faces. I can't help but feeling this is not entirely unrelated to the growing multitude of 'clone' pretty boy bands and their like, that aren't really bands at all but manufactured, coached and packaged products created by corporate interests possessed of mass production skills as opposed to uniquely talented individuals. But that's the world we now live in. Give me the old wrinklies any day, old enough to know what the hell they're doing.

Mike Marlin was a breath of fresh air. Here was a new face delivering something new and interesting. Then the irrepressible Wilko Johnson with Norman Watt Roy and Dylan Howe, what a powerhouse! And the MIB, what a package!! Wow!!!

As for special or different, well, there was that special moment on the last night in Manchester when a rather well known duo of bass and guitar talents bared ALL in their, end-of-tour prank, before the highly amused Mancunian audience. Well, I don't think I will have to go into too much detail about that one as I'm sure it will soon, or more probably already has, appeared all over the internet by now!

But the one 'special' I have chosen, is someone known to thousands of you. Not in all probability, his face or his name, but the sheer sound of him. He is known to all the band and crew as 'Big Voice'. He is, Dave 'Big Voice' Horton. He hails from Tenby and by day he's a mild mannered Estate Manager. By night, he slips into a telephone booth and transforms himself into the persona of the man we have all grown to love and cherish. He is a veteran of over 50-60 gigs, 4 of which were on this most recent outing. Big Voice is well known to you by his trademark sounding...........

stranglargghhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!! 　

.............yelp he emits regularly prior to the band taking to the stage.

Big Voice, can be heard back in the dressing rooms as clear as if he was in the room himself. The minute he is heard, everyone says, "HE'S HERE". In fact, band sound boss Nick Astro said, "if he gets any louder, we are going to have to tape up all the windows to stop them shattering"! Asked if he had any thoughts about Big Voice, Jet said, "I think his gift is wasted, someone, maybe NATO, should sign him up and ship him off to somewhere like Tripoli, where he could be used to scare the shit out of that nasty man with the silly hats!" 　

Ava Rave/ 1st April 2011

Photo credit Ava Rave

Lyrical controversy

2011-03-17T10:20:00.007Z

We recently received an email from someone concerned that the band had chosen to play a seemingly racist song 'I feel like a wog' on the Black and Blue tour.

We asked Jet to respond to this accusation and to set the record straight about the song's lyrics.

Here is his reply:

'I feel like a Wog' is an anti-racist song.

It is written in the first person from the perspective of a repressed racial minority figure, who, from his point of view, is put upon, and put down, by the white majority.

It was always intended as a lament to the privations of the racial minorities. A sympathy with their interminable adversity.

There have been a few criticisms of the song over the past quarter of a century, but usually as a result of a misunderstanding of it's message. We feel that that message is as valid today as it ever was. There is a need for someone, who can, to speak up for those concomitant with their fortuity of birth.

I feel like a wog people giving me the eye
But I was born here just like you
I feel like a wog
Got all the dirty shitty jobs
But everybody's got to have something to do with their time

I feel like a wog I don't wanna go home
I've got a lot of life to run through
I feel like a wog
I don't mean you no harm
Just don't ask me to shine your shoes

Golly gee Golly gosh
Don't call me your Golly Wog
Golly gee Golly gosh
Don't call me your Golly Wog

Let me tell you about Pimpo
We met him down at the After Eight
He wanted to sell us some limbo
But we said mister
You've just got to wait
You've got to wait
You've got to wait
You've got to wait

He wanted to take us down to St Pauli
But we said mister
We ain't got no bread
I tried to make him laugh
But he didn't get the joke
And then he said I wasn't right in the head
And then he made me
And then he made me
And then he made me feel
And then he made me feel like
And then he made me feel like
And then he made me feel like
You know I feel like
You know I feel like
You know I feel like
You know I feel like a wog

Jet Black/17th March 2011

Working in the West Country

2011-02-09T17:34:00.007Z

The whole thing started for me on Jan 2nd when I travelled down to Bath. I've been here ever since, only managing one trip home in mid-Jan. We have a house here that we rent and live and work in and it's fabulous...very isolated but also within easy reach of the city and of course the ubiquitous local pub where we've eaten our way around the menu and have become mates with the landlord and lady...they seem to like the collection of reprobates who drop in from time to time and who get animated in the corner about the music they're writing...

Bath is a great place to drink and eat...some of the old pubs that only the locals know are superb and hark back to simpler times where you just sit and strike up a conversation in a real bar with whoever happens to be there, without crap music or annoying children with names like Cassius and Amelia running around...and of course our beloved Tuckers Grave is only few miles away too...I even went to the rugby too...not my thing but a great day out...oh man... The view of the city from the top of the hill where we are is breathtaking and the local wildlife make their presence felt with owls,foxes and deer paying visits from time to time...I even heard a Nightjar the other night..(anyone know what one of them is?)

It's a lovely place and very conducive to work, which is just as well because we have masses to do... We're currently writing for a new album which will be released next year...we're also rehearsing for the Black and Blue tour in March...and next week our old mate Neil Sparkes from The Temple of Sound is coming to stay with us for a week to rehearse for some acoustic dates we have in Holland and Belgium in April...busy times...

The original stuff we're coming up with is,in our opinion,some of the best ever and there's a chance some of it will be aired live in March...it's an oft forgotten process of playing new songs before they're recorded,and we're keen to develop some of the stuff in the good old fashioned way if we can...by road testing it...keeps you on your toes too...As always things can change so don't quote me on it,but if we feel like it we'll do it...

The set for the March tour is proving to be a total joy and we'll hopefully moisten a few eyes (and maybe other things too...)with our choice of songs...we've had a blast rehearsing it all and as ever expect the unexpected...saying no more about it except I'm really looking forward to meeting Wilko and just being on the road again...see you all very soon...

Baz/9th February '11

Jet's festive follow-up

2010-12-29T18:36:00.002Z

Hi - Anderlar the Scripter

Firstly, many thanks for your kind contribution towards the topical discussion.

If I may submit my own surrejoinder, nowhere, have I ever - so far as I can recall - claimed any expertise for myself, in the craft of article construction, academic style or substance. So you could be right.

By my own asseveration, I left school illiterate. Comprehensively so, save for one discipline, namely, ‘banging things’. To-day, with the benefit of a little self help, I guess I can say I get by but thank you anyway, for bringing that to the fore, I probably ought to have recounted my inadequacies from the outset.

Moving on, the piece wasn’t really supposed to be about my beliefs, but my, "well known aversion for Christmas", so again, I guess I failed miserably here too if it all sounded like an essay on my beliefs, of which I hope I have none.

Then you get down to the real ‘nitty-gritty’. Science. Science, is not a "view". In fact the whole point of science, is that it is a systematically organised body of knowledge, not a view, or faith, or belief. Scientists will have a theory, or hunch about a subject and will then test it until proved, until then it remains just that, a theory. If proved, it then forms part of the body of knowledge.

The essential point of all this, is that you don’t need to put your "faith" in science, because tested theory, is fact. Or in other words, true.

On the other hand, you do need faith for religion, because it deals with a large amount of untested, or untestable theory. Or in other words, it’s unproven, some would say fiction.

Perhaps the most appalling aspect of recent revelations about priestly infractions of the church’s own moral code, not to mention civil and criminal law, is the newly exposed knowledge and acquiescence of it’s hierarchy at all levels. Systemic moral depravity and cover-up are now known to have been pandemic across decades and probably centuries.

In those circumstances, it is entirely appropriate to discuss these abuses notwithstanding similar malfeasance elsewhere, which is entirely beside the point. If it can be argued that it says nothing about philosophy or belief, it can’t be denied that it says a great deal about the people who would have you believe, or have faith, in their creed.

To reiterate an earlier point, you can’t contract out of a crime. So, whatever worldwide anti-poverty projects the church may have to it’s credit, and it undoubtedly has many, (but ironically also the reverse), that doesn’t abrogate the crimes of it’s priests, or bishops.

As for the implied inadequacies of the music industry, it very probably holds the world record for fundraising and charitable donation, but even if it doesn’t, it is unquestionably very near the top, for an industry. If you put your mind to it, you should have no trouble researching the point.

The sting in the tail of your seasonal thrust is redolent of an unseemly rancour for the industry in which my colleagues and I find ourselves.

My understanding is that music, as a pastime/entertainment, is officially rated as just about the best value for money available, but I wouldn’t want to be placed into the position of being held accountable for the entire industry.

We the band, are writers, recorders and performers of music. We are not a record company and do not sell recorded and published music, at least not on an industrial scale. That is the preserve of specialist record and publishing companies. Their commercial and trading policies are not and have never been subject to us in particular, and recording artists in general.

By way of my own footnote on the topic, many of the aforementioned companies - household names in most cases - who perhaps more appropriately might have been expected to defend themselves against the views you have expressed, are in fact, virtually, if not actually bankrupt at the present time.

This resulting, from the free and illegal distribution of their copyrighted investments in the music industry by way of modern electronic communications technology, the internet, both simultaneously, the marvel and scourge of the age.

All this without doubt, the causal basis for the demise of investment in new music talent which in turn forms the fundamental cause of much of to-day’s anodyne new music.

I wouldn’t wish to become spokesman for the trade and policy decisions of companies for which I have no authority to speak. On the other hand, I could hazard a guess as to the likely response from such companies, to your opinions about their commercial decisions. It would not make for very comfortable reading.

I’m glad to hear you had a good weekend and you’re looking after the kids. Yes, I was OK on the 25th but no coal though. We’re all electric here, boring, but there you go.

You are of course very welcome to any show, and keep them coming. We like to hear and share all opinions, that after all, is what these pages are for.

Regards

Jet Black/28th December 2010

Jet's festive message

2010-12-24T23:30:00.008Z

So it’s that time of the year again, and I’ve been asked to write about my well known aversion for Christmas. True enough, I don’t look forward to the season of good will, which isn’t to say I’m ill disposed to good will or seasonal merriment. My aversion is more for the notion, the presumption, the brouhaha of it all.

Whatever else it has become, Christmas is essentially a celebration of the birth of Christ and many of course, do just that, but clearly the majority don’t, and I’m one of them. Meanwhile the commercial world doesn’t give a corporate damn about Christmas. They can barely wait for one to end before they’re promoting the next, but they’re only interested in the profit, and why wouldn’t they be, that’s what companies are there for.

So on the one hand you have a comparative few, the faithful, celebrating the famous birth, and the rest of us, what are we celebrating? Well apparently, nothing!

Sometimes I wonder if we were able to take the ‘Christmas’ out of Christmas, then perhaps it would all become more bearable, but then business wouldn’t give up it’s ride on the gravy train. Instead of selling us ‘Christmas’ presents, they’d be selling us ‘nothing’ presents. Well at least, they would then be showing their true colours.

So what’s so wrong with making the distinction? If I wanted to throw a party, I wouldn’t call it an Easter party, or a Resurrection party. So why pretend I’m celebrating Christmas, when I’m not!

I’m not piqued about New Year celebrations though, so I concur with Scottish traditions on that one. That really is an excuse for a party but it’s also just an unencumbered fact, all years come to an end. It doesn’t have the same clamour, though if there were no Christmas, it probably would.

I hate that one, when you’re out and about and you get asked, "have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?". Oh yuk!.......that is so irritating. Of course I also get viewed very much in that Dickensian ‘humbug’ sense which I really don’t mind at all, and it’s often assumed that I must therefore, be suffused with all the characteristics of Dickens’ miserly Yuletide character, because I have the nerve to manifest my dislike of all that is Christmas. It just isn’t so. Christmas has become vulgar and frenzied and I wish I could just switch it off, but I do approve of festivity.

Now, even to me, that sounds like a monumental contradiction, but somehow there is that social presumption of acquiescence in the notion of the frolicsome festivities that is so offensive. Why do we have to conform because everyone else does?

It seems to me that most of those who are into Christmas, aren’t really Christians anyway, but rather have been swept up in a lifelong tradition without ever stopping to think, why am I doing this? It’s like, London taxis still being required by law - so I’m told - to carry a bale of hay for the horse! Whether true or not, it makes the point nicely. There was a time when it seemed like a good idea, now, it’s pure nonsense.

The more I hear about Christmas and biblical stories in general - the actual rationale behind it - the more implausible it all becomes. Science for it’s part, is slowly, one by one, uncovering more tenable explanations for the pre-historical diegesis we were all brought up to believe. Not, as far as I know, that they are doing so in order to contradict established views, but that is it’s inevitable consequence. Unless of course you are a Christian and a believer, when you would of necessity, have to live in denial of the obvious. The fossil record doesn’t lie, but many people are still preaching the ‘young Earth’ theory as derived from scriptural sources.

Inevitably, that’s another source of vexation for me, belief. Why would anyone want to believe? We live in a world of inexactitude, and we can barely believe a word we hear or read. Our very security is dependant on truth, you can’t believe you’re secure, you need to know. Try and borrow some money - or lend it - without security....huh, it’s an omnipresent necessity. Oh, there’s plenty of truth out there, but it becomes true when it is shown, or known, to be so, and yet, in spite of all that,religion requires belief as a fundamental principle!

If I should ever find myself within the shadow of the Pearly Gates, and in need of an explanation for my life’s endeavours, the obvious question from me would have to be, ‘why on earth would you place people in a world where truth is one of the rarest of qualities, and then expect them to believe in an unbelievable doctrine?’

Of course we often use the word ‘believe’ more as a figure of speech rather than an actual expression of conviction. So it is primarily the religions which instil the efficacy of belief. And they need to, simply because most of their doctrine, is beyond belief.

As you view those TV debates on the great moral issues of the day, that are aired from time-to-time, you will notice that there’s always a church representative present to guide our thoughts, as if the Church of Rome - mired in scandal as it is - were somehow arbiters of moral rectitude.

The church has always had it’s own canon law to enforce it’s power over the people, ranging these days only - mercifully - from prayer to excommunication. At least for the laity that is, for the clergy on the other hand, there is a completely different rule book. The offending priest, or bishop can expect to be moved to a new and comfortable, if inconspicuous location and away from the embarrassing scrutiny of the secular world. Essentially free to continue with their grubby misdemeanour's lest they should ever be publicly exposed.

But it hasn’t always been that way. You only have to make a brief study of the history of the Church of Rome to see the full extent of that, of which it is capable. They have committed just about every crime in the book, although of course, legitimised by themselves. Today’s landslide of revelations about the buggery of the innocents, seems like a vicar’s tea party compared with the murder and torture of earlier times, not to delve too far into the infamy of the Inquisition.

Of course no-one makes too much of it these days, as though it had never happened, has everyone forgotten? Perhaps it was all so long ago for most people, but as the lawyers put it, you can’t contract out of a crime.

One of the early giants of mathematics and astronomy was Galileo Galilei, and one of the first to peer into the newly invented telescope. He discovered that the holy doctrine preached by the church was wrong. The Earth goes around the Sun, not the other way around.

For making his discovery public, he was arrested and tried for heresy, jailed, and forced to recant, but mercifully released in the end. His contemporary, Giordano Bruno, was not so lucky, they burned him alive at the stake for his views on the subject. If that leads to any kind of conclusion at all, it must surely be, that the church has a greater proclivity towards murder, than to the truth and these crimes are no less repugnant by way of their antiquity.

I think Galileo has to be one of my heroes. He is credited with some inspiring statements.

"The bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go"

and,

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

The man was imbued with a profound sense of wisdom and humanity, though it is said he was tactless to the point of jeopardy.

So where does all this fit into the Christmas landscape? Very much, for one thing. Without the church of Christ, it surely wouldn’t exist. So how can you discuss Christmas without reference to the church? Unfortunately, I can’t find much to endear me to the notion that the story of the nativity is likely to be true, and you can’t have a lot of faith in the people who want us to believe it. Three wise men, the virgin birth, the son of God, no room at the inn, the Emperor’s new clothes spring to mind here.

Hans Andersen in his ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, recorded one of the all-time great literary observations when he crafted his tale of the corrupt weavers and their ‘invisible’ clothes. It so aptly encapsulates the notion of belief in that which is imperceptible.

Religions, have the remarkable ability to devise words to rationalize their unbelievable doctrines. Galileo’s alleged crime was called heresy, a rubric ‘catch-all’ to enable the powerful to exact terrors worse than those of the accused. Widely used and abused to extirpate political enemies. Another gem, transubstantiation, the theological wonder word to explain the conversion of Eucharistic bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during consecration and the central act of the Christmas Mass.

Since the modern imposition of drink/driving laws around the world, there have been a number of arrests of priests who were found to have exceeded alcohol limits through conducting a sequential series of Masses, thereby pushing their alcohol levels above legal limits.

But wasn’t that wine supposed to have been turned into blood? Oh dear, that rather let’s the cat out of the bag! Surely that reduces the sanctity of the sacramental wine to the realms of, ‘perks of the job’. But even if it were true, who in their right mind would want to consume the bodily remains of a 2,000 year old corpse?

"Oh, it’s for the kids", they’ll say when challenged about the efficacy of Christmas. Well it may be, but it doesn’t have to be wrapped-up in the nexus of Christmas lore. If you want to give the kids a good time, then give them a good time, you don’t need the allegory of the non-existent Santa. It’s completely untrue and most children are confused about it anyway. But more importantly, why would it be a good idea to begin a child’s young odyssey with a lie?

If only religion could find a way, through honesty and truth, instead of fairy tales and mendacious rhetoric, the world would doubtless be a better place. It’s well to remember that those pompous men of the cloth, in their ridiculous, if finely bespoken frocks and their opulent palaces of God are after all, only mere human beings, and we are all flawed.

For those of you who want to celebrate Christmas, I wish you a merry one. For the rest of us, tired of the antiquated and improbable tale of a mortal, if, supposedly, virginal birth, the purpose and logic of which defies reason, please allow us to eschew the seasonal conventions and forge ahead with our celebration of the other 364 days, for no reason at all.

One year on...

2010-12-09T07:36:00.004Z

Amazingly, it is now a whole year since we took over the running of the band’s site. Time has flown by, as there’s always been a lot to write about owing to the band’s hectic 2010.

The reason for this first non-band member ratter is two fold. Firstly, to thank all the people who helped us during the set up period and first year of the new site. Secondly, to ask you, the ‘consumers’ of the site, what you think of it so far…

Firstly then, we would like to thank a whole load of people who have generally aided and abetted since the changeover from Adrian Liggins’ Rat’s Lair last winter.

Unsurprisingly, the band members are top of the list. They have been wholeheartedly supportive, providing help, advice, knowledge and encouragement. In addition, they have all contributed greatly to both the site and the ratter blog.

Secondly, Sil Willcox and Al Hale, the band’s management for providing valuable and current information when time is of the essence. They have also gracefully tolerated numerous chasing phone calls and pestering emails.

Next is the band’s ever present and helpful tour manager Gary Knighton, who has given detailed information to fill in any gaps. Special mention should also go to roving reporter Ava who has provided some brilliant unseen photos, many from behind the scenes.

We’d also like to pass on our thanks to the many fans out there who have contributed to the site or given support and encouragement. Last, and by no means least, to our respective families who have put up with the additional workload in our already busy daily lives…

Thanks to all of you for making this first year so memorable.

Finally, we’re really interested to know what you, the readers, think of the site. Web stats give encouraging signs of rebirth for the site but it’s better to hear from real people. Constructive criticism, suggestions and general feedback are more than welcome. Please can you reply to this ratter, as you would to a band member’s one, or alternatively email direct to the site. Thanks.

Looking forward to 2011

Stranglers’ Official Site (S.O.S)
Formerly the Rat’s Lair

O&D/9th December 2010

Dave's Onstage Equipment

2010-10-02T14:23:00.015+01:00

Here's one for any keyboard buffs out there. Dave has kindly supplied us with full details of the keyboard setup he uses for gigs:

Here's a complete list of my current gear.

KEYS AND SYNTHS

3 x Yamaha CS1X Controller synths (see pic on right)

1 x CME UF5 Controller keyboard (Yamaha don't do a CSX1 4 octave keyboard)

2 x Roland Phantom XR (one for backup)

2 x Novation A station Version 1 (one for backup)

EFFECTS AND CONTROLLERS

Boss phaser pedal

Bespoke on/off midi pedal

Boss volume pedal

Cry Baby Wah Wah pedal (only used on Dag Dave)

MIDI, MONITORING AND PATCHING

1 x Midi solutions 4 way midi merger

1 x Yamaha O1v96 v2 Digital mixer

1 x Boss EQ Pedal (also used as gain booster)

2 x Passive rack of 4 DI

2 x Mackie SRM 450 Active Monitor Loudspeakers

Dave G/3rd October 2010

Triumph Live pic by Mark Hill

Dave's setup at Hammersmith 2010 pics by Dom P

Once Upon A Time In The West Country...

2010-08-26T19:56:00.011+01:00

I look out from my window at the rain,relentless and unforgiving. The very low clouds seem to have the magical property of shielding me from the sun which I know is out there because this summer of 2010 we have been blessed with it. I get a deep sense of autumnal melancholy. Was it only three weeks ago that we were bemoaning the fact that the grass was not the colour that it should be, A and E departments were complaining about the number of adults being admitted for barbecue and cooking oil burns to uncovered bodies and this was the year that Glastonbury came really good? It already seems a lifetime away. As I wish my memories of Wyefest were.

It all started out so well. We would fly into Heathrow from Poland and then be flown by helicopter to somewhere near Hereford on the Welsh borders where we would play in a field on a scorching July evening. However, due to some skullduggery involving local farmers and town councils and licences being revoked, it was put off and rescheduled for late August.

As a band we hadn't played for a few weeks so we decided to rehearse in the west country on the day before we were due to play, a striking distance from the field in Herefordshire. It rained and it rained. And it rained some more. But ever the optimist I thought that tomorrow would be another day. It was. Another day of yet more rain. For a few hours, long enough for Dave, Baz and myself to walk around Hereford town centre on a Saturday afternoon playing "spot the SAS man" without getting wet, our hopes were raised sufficiently to believe that Mr Raincloud might hold off for a little while longer thereby confirming what many people already know that when the Stranglers are involved there are "powers" at work.

Apparently a limousine was going to take the band to the site. When it duly arrived we took one look at each other and insisted that Gary ,our tour manager, should take us himself in his motor. There are limousines and there are limousines. The Stranglers were not going on a hen night, nor were we attending our school "proms" as they are so-called these days. These vehicles are very silly. I thought they were silly in LA but around the English/Welsh countryside even sillier. This one was the longest I'd ever seen and even had the dot com address on the side.It was also white. There was lots of it.

Our crew had had to be towed by tractor earlier in the day when their truck got stuck in the mud. There was a lot of mud. Usually festivals have contingency plans for when there is rain 'cos in the UK it does occasionally rain in the summer. Metallic tracks help ease traffic over muddy fields where the majority of festivals seem to be held. Here there were none.

In fact there wasn't much of anything but there were a few very hardy people out in the field. I wouldn't say many but they were noisy. Normally the change over between bands takes about 30 minutes . Here due to the, erm, inexperienced local crew our Stranglers crew had to take command. We were due to go on at 10.30pm with a midnight curfew. We didn't get on till 10.55pm. Third number in Dave's Moog packed up. Since the show had been rescheduled our usual keyboards tech wasn't available and this sure was a baptism of fire for the new guy. Dave explained that we had to drop eight numbers. Well that wasn't going to be so much of a problem since time was running out anyway!

New keys tech somehow managed to supply Dave with a new keyboard after about five songs and just as we launched into "Grip" some guy jumped up over the barrier, slipped in the mud ,avoided the non-existent security and started jumping about on stage only to lose what appeared to be a front bridge containing a tooth or two, right beside me. Without breaking my rhythm I nudged the bridge with my DM towards the guy and saw him disappear off the side of the stage whilst inserting said apparatus back into his mouth.

I don't know why I found this funny but I did. Actually we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves because the whole thing was absurd. We also played well that night but not as long as we had hoped. I have never had so much mud on my clothes. Not even when I've mud wrestled with my clothes on. But that's another story.

To those who were there, and braved what were awful conditions and yet despite that knew how to have a good time, I salute you.

The Grip denture incident can be viewed here

JJB 26th August 2010

Pics by Ava Rave

Glastonbury weekend

2010-07-24T15:18:00.005+01:00

Well, what a varied weekend. We started on the Thursday at the Cheese & Grain in Somerset as a warm-up gig. It went well enough but we had a lot of problems with the sound on stage & (for us) it was hard going. After the show it was back to a local hotel to sleep.

The next day we started fairly early, dropped off most of the cars at the farm & travelled down to Glastonbury. What a massive site. It took a while to get our initial passes & get to the backstage area, then longer to get our dressing room passes & meal tickets, then it was the normal wait in sweltering conditions. At least (for once) it wasn’t chucking it down. On to the stage. At least it wasn’t as hot up there. It seemed to be full up & the audience appeared to enjoy the show as much as we did. I saw at least one raven flag in the audience. At last we’ve played Glastonbury & I hope we’ll do it again pretty soon. What a great time.

After we’d had some food & drink it was back to the farm to pick up the cars & then straight to Gatwick for a few drinks & a couple of hours kip.

The next morning I’m still trying to forget. We had to check in at about 4.00 am for our flight to Krakow, Poland. After the flight it was about 1½ hrs drive to Borek then some rest before a late show at the Easy Rider festival. We were on stage quite late & didn’t get back to the hotel ‘till the early hours on Sun.

Another early start in the morning to get back to Krakow then home. We got back at around 2.00pm & Baz & I drove up & played a charity gig in my village (both feeling pretty knackered).

As I said at the beginning, 4 totally different gigs, but what a weekend. I hope those of you who were at any of the shows enjoyed yourselves as much as we did.

Watch Peaches from Glastonbury here

Dave G/24th July 2010

Steadman gallery pics Ava Rave

Glasto crowd pic Sil W

A Busy Month: Festival Season

2010-07-21T13:36:00.010+01:00

I’m just home and chilling now after a crazy few weeks in the black tourbus…

The whole thing started for me on June 21st when I did a radio interview for Glastonbury radio at 11am then drove the 325 miles to Somerset, arriving early evening. We rehearsed the sets for the up and coming gigs the next day and after the ubiquitous visit to Tuckers Grave I had an early night ready for a bit of messing about with a new effects board I have the next day.

Wednesday out of the way we then headed in to Frome for a soundcheck at the Cheese and Grain on Thursday afternoon, and to lend our support to a project involving legendary English satirical cartoonist Ralph Steadman. The idea behind it all is that he produces a piece of art and then selected people who see it compose a musical framework for it according to how it makes them feel…and we’re among the judges. He also ‘defaced’ a photo of us in his own inimitable style which was interesting, and after a bottle of the local cider we headed across to the venue which was literally next door.

It’s always bittersweet for me personally going back to Frome as I lived there for 4 years and have many memories of the place. As we approached the gig there were a few flying around my brain but they were soon wiped away as we started to soundcheck and get the feel of the place…The stage was rickety, the P.A.was too small and everything was so loud it was hard to distinguish practically anything. Generally when the crowd gets in the sound smoothes out with the effect of all the bodies in there, but this gig (sold out for months)proved to be very hard work and none of us were pleased with it to say the least…personally it’s probably the roughest show I’ve done since becoming a 4 piece again in 2006,but all the travelling fans were once again in great form and as always gave us great heart...and I guess it served it’s purpose in ironing out then wrinkles for what was to come…

The next day was one of those days that you don’t want to end. As we approached the site at Glastonbury I was told it would be some spectacle and I wasn’t disappointed. As a ‘Glasters virgin’ it was something to behold, resembling a medium sized town with the biggest fence you’ve ever seen around it…and with flags flying, masts and thousands of tents it could have been a medieval siege. After the rigmarole of checking in (which involves a girl personally reaching into the car and placing a wristband on everybody present)and being directed to the correct area, we settled down to wait, literally not knowing what to expect. The weather was a perfect English summers day and we were told there were a few folk out front who’d turned out to see us…we weren’t expecting the roar of the 70,000 who were waiting when we walked out to the Waltz. After that everything was just a blur and before we knew it, our hour was up and we were leaving the stage, sweaty and very happy…I can’t recall too much about it apart from the fact that we all played really well, Jet particularly being on great form and seemingly the whole field joining in on the chorus of Always the Sun. We’d have loved to have hung around to soak up some of the post gig shenanigans and catch up with a couple of other bands but alas we had to leave to drive to Gatwick for a 6 o’clock flight the next morning to a gig in Krakow, Poland…up at 3.30…oh man that was a leveller.

Back from an ok show in Poland I have 1 day at home to get ready for the next jaunt.

This journey starts for me on Tuesday the 6th July as I fly down to Stansted in the evening for a Wednesday afternoon flight to Bratislava in Slovakia for a festival date on Thurs the 8th.

The Pohoda Festival is a relatively new gig and is attracting a lot of interest and bands year by year as it grows. The promoter for this gig has re-arranged everything a day early especially for us to play…he’s a big fan…

It’s in a beautiful part of Europe roughly an hour from Vienna and is an area I’m not familiar with, never having been here before. Around 6 o’clock JJ and myself go out for a stroll and find ourselves on top of a hill in a bar overlooking the town of Trencin, which is about 100km from Bratislava itself…and what a beautiful place it is…a huge castle surrounded by rolling hills and small mountains with steep cobbled streets .We have a light ale and take in the vista…beautiful.

We arrive at the gig around 10.30 being the headliners on this particular day, and are pleasantly surprised to find 10,000 kids in a field going absolutely nuts for a band many of them won’t have heard of, but they treat us very well and a great time is had by all…The stage is lovely and the sound and lighting systems are great…We hear that western music and many other cultural movements have only been allowed to this part of the old Czechoslovak Republic in the relatively recent past…around 10/15 years ago…no the wonder everyone’s enjoying themselves…

A funny aside to all this occurs when the band who are on before us, a local band who themselves have been around for 30 years, decide to play ‘Hanging Around’ in their set which features one Dave Greenfield on keyboards…Dave had gone down to the gig ahead of the rest of us and had been asked onstage to play…apparently the crew heard the song, recognised the keys, went down to the stage and there Dave was with a brandy and a shit eating grin…and they said it was weird to see him onstage with another band…I’ll bet it was…(You can watch the video here )

We get back to the hotel and retire early ready for the flight to Dublin the next morning which, of course, is an early flight…I’m amazed to see the amount of people who want to fly to Dublin from Bratislava at 9 o’clock on a Friday morning…the plane is packed but it’s a relatively short flight and we’re in the sanctuary of our hotel by noon UK time…After a siesta we have a few beers in the bar with the crew in the evening and head to bed.

The next day we’re opening proceedings on the main stage at Oxegen which is held at Punchestown Racecourse, about 45 mins drive from the city. The weather is not playing the game today and it’s pissing down as we arrive onsite. We played here 2 years ago and I start to remember the layout as we approach the dressing room/catering/artist area which is in the main grandstand building.

It truly is an awful day and as we wait behind the stage at 2 o’clock to start we literally do wonder if anyone will be there. We’re pleasantly surprised to find a good few hundred wet punters on the barrier, and as we start we can see hundreds more streaming across the fields like little columns of ants to see us…We end a pretty good set 45 minutes later in front of around 10,000 which makes us happy, and after a bite in the catering area (the food here is fantastic…it was the last time too) JJ and I do a radio interview with a guy who’s patiently waited for us to finish eating, and it turns out to be one of the highlights of the day…the guy is seriously funny and asks intelligent, humorous questions with little regard for radio etiquette, effing and blinding all over the place and taking the piss out of the powers that be who are all milling around watching and listening…he begs us to try to get back and play Ireland more often and we say we’ll try…top man…Then we drive to Dublin airport and get an early evening flight to Edinburgh ready for tomorrows’ appearance at T in the Park.

Jet’s joining us for this one, not having made the trips to Slovakia and Dublin, and he’s the first person I see as I step out the hotel in Edinburgh on Sunday morning…he’s looking fresh and well up for it and we head off to the site, which again is about 45 mins drive, in a convoy. Again the weather is dreadful and as we sit in our cabin we can hear the rain bouncing off the roof…here we go again.

In the next cabin are Skunk Anasie, and Mark the drummer is an old mate of mine from the days when he was with rock band Little Angels and I was still with Smalltown Heroes…I haven’t seen him for about 15 years so we shoot the breeze for a while and then it’s time to play…This time the crowd is much bigger from the off and we play to around 20,000 which, for a Sunday morning in the pissing rain, is quite an achievement…and the most surreal moment I can remember for as long time happens when we play Always the Sun…as if on cue, right at the 1st chorus, like someone switching a light on, with 20,000 punters singing with us…the clouds parted and the sun came out…and the roar from the crowd made all 4 of us grin like Cheshire cats…truly bizarre but amazing.

I thought about that a lot on my way home on the train back to Newcastle the next day…a fitting end to a couple of weeks of madness…as always thanks must go to our intrepid crew who made the impossible possible and Gary our TM who kept us all sane…thanks boys…see you all soon.

BAZ / 21st July 2010

All pics Ava Rave

Triumphs that pass in the night

2010-06-12T14:45:00.007+01:00

I was on the Triumph Scrambler, on my way to see my son Jeremy's band for the first time. He's the drummer and the band are called Console Wars. I turn left off Marylebone road up towards Swiss Cottage. Just as I turn another Triumph, this time a black Bonneville, turns also and we both stop at the next set of traffic lights. We both look at each others' bikes and the rider of the Bonnie who is not wearing a full face helmet, unlike myself, says "Nice bike mate". I reply something like "Yours too mate".

The lights change and we move on. I think I know that face and by the next set of traffic lights think I know who it is. We stop and I turn to him and say "Is your name Paul?"

He says "Yes?" a bit enquiringly.

"Paul Simonon?"

"Yes"

"Jean-jacques Burnel"

" I know you!"

"Yes indeed. I'm glad to see you are riding a Triumph" I say.

He says "Yeah but I preferred it when they had kickstarts"

I say "Yes, but they are more reliable now".

We shake hands and then the traffic lights change and we're off, he toward Primrose Hill and me towards Finsbury park.

It's taken us 34 years to shake hands.

JJB 12th June 2010

Bottom photo Dom P

MOJO Awards 2010

2010-06-12T08:58:00.007+01:00

I met Julien Temple last night at the Mojo Awards. I was asked to present him and Wilko Johnson with an award for "Oil City Confidential", a documentary that he made on Dr Feelgood. I have to say I had the the chance to see this film a few weeks ago on BBC4 and I found it amazing. It was equally amazing to meet up with Wilko after so many years.

I shared a flat with him in 1977 and had an amazing time but our stay there ended when a girl who also rented a room there got raped by five men. We suddenly felt it was inappropriate to stay any longer and the place was then taken up by Billy Idol and Steve Strange and then Motorhead. This was the basis for the song 5 minutes. For a few seconds Wilko and I were completely oblivious to the large crowd whilst we hugged like the long lost friends we were. I thought it rather appropriate that Wilko was there on that day, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Howlin Wolf. When the Feelgoods were in their prime we called their music RnB. Rhythm and blues. Nothing like what they are calling by the same name now.

On the same table as me was Peter Hamill who was at the Rainbow gigs in Hugh's absence. Also Jean-Michel Jarre who was very courteous and complimentary about the Stranglers. Although he was also complimentary about my French, I was woefully aware that I have an English accent when I speak it! Opposite me on the table was a geezer called Jarvis Cocker who blanked me for the whole dinner and to my right a bloke from the US, Anthony Hegarty who is a singer in a band called Anthony and the Johnsons and who introduced me to his friend, Mervyn. He seemed to attract people such as Rufus Wainwright and Marc Almond who is a guy who once moved hotels when he learned we were staying in the same hotel because we were scary!

Funnily enough when I was backstage being photographed with Mr Temple he informed me that he had been at the same school as Hugh Cornwell, and they used to squirt ink at him because he was a prefect and, apparently, a real c**t. I said nothing........

JJB 11th June 2010

Photos of JJ on the night can be found here

Some more have also been posted here

The Daphne Du Maurier Festival of Arts & Literature

2010-05-29T09:35:00.018+01:00

To continue with my nautical theme, if ever so slightly, a word about the Fowey outing, (the locals call it "Foy"). Although it is no more then a stone’s throw or two from the sea on one side, it is more famously perched on the banks of the river Fowey, as it begins meandering from what is actually the English Channel; but for a few score miles to the west where it becomes the full blown Atlantic; and then on northwards towards Bodmin Moor, petering out at the foot of Brown Willy, the famously desolate peak which itself forms one of the most prominent features of that mystical plateau. Almost exactly due east from it’s summit, you can see ‘Jamaica Inn’, of book and movie fame, on a clear day.

About thirty miles west of Fowey, on the Helford river, is Frenchman’s Creek, the location and title of another novel and movie.

Some three miles west of Fowey lies ‘Menabilly’, re-created in her novel ‘Rebecca’, as ‘Manderley’, (surely, far more romantic) this fine and ancient house was once the home of Daphne Du Maurier. In 1969, she moved a mile or so into another house named ‘Kilmarth’ where she spent the rest of her life and which characteristically she went on to immortalize in another novel, ‘The House on the Strand’.
This then, with all of it’s geographical detail, is clearly DDM territory. Drawing on early inspiration, DDM went on to create a host of characters and placed them in and around the surrounding countryside -she knew and loved - as she famously penned her way into international literary stardom.

No small wonder then, that this highly regarded festival of art and literature is so named. Mis-described by some, as both "highbrow" and "stuffy", it has surely now been wrested from it’s sometime reputation by the appearance of my colleagues and I. Not that this appearance should have been anything other than enlightening to a DDM Fest audience, but anyone reading this is probably only too well aware of our own vicissitudes.

This was the one, NOT, to be missed. Not only the preserve of British art and culture at some of it’s very best, but at it’s location on that particular day, Friday 21st May 2010, it was at it’s Mediterranean-like finest. With an unusually warm if not, scorching hot day, the charm of one of England’s most delightful regions - at any time of the year - and the sub-tropical fauna which is able to survive in the area due to it’s un-British-like weather, it was for us, more akin to leisure than work.

Probably not the place however, for those who prefer the dark sudor of the pub or night club, or the more typical and often bland and even vulgar at times, British seaside resort. This was a well organized, attended, and interesting festival, distinguished from most by it’s uniqueness. The gig itself was as kick-ass as any you might expect from your MIB and it had the added feature of excellent acoustics within the "tent" erected for the occasion. Situated atop the western side of the Fowey gorge, views from the venue, with it’s vistas of the town, are truly awesome as are those - from a suitable vantage point - of the nearby ports of Polperro and Mevagissey to the near east and west, all steeped in the culture of the rich Cornish fishing tradition.

Yes, this was a great day out, the best in the west since the demise of the Cornish Colosseum, and a rare opportunity for the locals to get some Strangling in, but at least they can sleep at night secure in the knowledge that if they haven’t got us or you, most of the time, they do at least have Cornwall, or as Baz put it, Paradise!

Jet Black - May 2010

All photos copyright Ava Rave 2010

Book talk

2010-04-07T17:17:00.000+01:00

Hi Mark - you are right that an update for the book is perhaps overdue. Dr D B has certainly been considering this for some time now and my understanding, is that he needs to decide what exactly he wants to write, and then do a deal with a publisher etc., etc. More than that, I can’t reliably say. Like all these things, I won’t have any real news, until I have some real news! Which brings me to some further ‘book’ news. There are a number of book projects in the pipeline at present, but like the one you are writing about, I won’t have any real news, until I have some real news! So, what more can I say but watch these pages where you will find the real story, as soon as it becomes available. I hope this will tide your interest over until that moment. Cheers - jb

Paris and Leuven

2010-04-07T12:28:00.005+01:00

Hi folks...
just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the fun that was had in Paris and Leuven...the Wonky bus never fails eh? I was very surprised to have almost the entire audience at the Bataclan sing happy birthday to me (at the instigation of the Brits of course), and at the reception you all gave me when i came out later for the pics...never been hoisted on the shoulders of a crowd before...felt like Bobby Moore! Thanks to you all for making it a laugh and there's nowhere else i'd have rather been for my birthday but Paree...save for an absent friend or two it was perfect...
The next day in Leuven was probably most memorable for the stage invasion at the end of the gig...some people never grow up...and more power to 'em...We've almost always turned a blind eye to the antics of the possessed, but when it interferes with what we do directly that's a different matter and the whole thing was marred, for me anyway, by the guy that grabbed my mikestand and smacked me in the teeth...i think the you tube footage shows it clearly, and he got a couple of good kicks for his trouble which i regret, but get too close and that's what you get...you know who you are, and i do apologise, but believe me i'd do it again in a heartbeat...these teeth weren't cheap...Hope to see you all in Cornwall...keep smiling...

2010-04-04T17:53:00.002+01:00

Hi DT and anyone else interested in the subject. No, I personally haven't been able to find myself in the vid. I think it might be difficult even with a lot more footage 'cos there were so many on the beach that day, but, a free choc ice to anyone who spots me!! cheers - jb

2010-04-04T17:46:00.001+01:00

Hi Mark

Yes he is indeed a doctor. Not the medical kind, I believe I'm right in saying that he was the first, or certainly one of the first, people in the UK to get a degree in Pop Music! cheers - jb

2010-04-04T13:12:00.001+01:00

Hi Rich - Sorry this took so long, been a bit busy! That does make sense about the ravens, I can't think of a better solution. - cheers jb

Baz's technical info

2010-03-30T14:17:00.004+01:00

Baz recently gave us technical details of what set-up he uses on stage and we thought it may be of interest to any guitarists out there. Here's what he said:

I use 2 Marshall half stacks...a JCM 800 which i run clean(ish) and a JCM 900 which i run dirty...the settings change from time to time but the only constant is plenty of bottom end and not too much top on each amp...playing a Fender Telecaster you don't want it to sound too thin. The pedals i use are all Boss,with the exception of the overdrive which is a custom made thing that a guy up in the north east makes for me...the Boss pedals are; reverb/delay/tremolo/chorus/phaser and are all powered by a Boss Tu2 tuner which mutes the signal so you can tune in silence.And that's it really...no magic tricks or gizmos just a couple of amps,a bunch of old pedals and a couple of Telecasters(a '76 and a '77)...

Jet Black's Raven Recollections

2010-02-22T11:19:00.007Z

I have an idea that this might just prove to be the oldest Ratter of them all. To date for sure, but possibly the future too.

It's not just the senescence of the author - which is sadly beyond doubt - that forms the qualifying factor here, but the subject matter, which can be traced back to an incident in 449 AD.

In June of that year, Hengist and his brother Hersa with fellow mercenaries, departed from Jutland and crossed the North Sea in their longships to set foot on the shores of Kent at Ebbsfleet (near Ramsgate) and established the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom and what most historians consider the beginning of English history.

So what, I hear you say, has all this got to do with The Stranglers?

Many of you will already know part of this tale because it was touched upon within the pages of Dr David Buckley's book 'No Mercy'. I am of course referring to the Viking ship 'Hugin' which appears on the cover/sleeve of the 'Raven' album.

In 1949, a re-staging of the 'invasion', with a newly constructed exact replica of Hengist's ship, was organised to commemorate the 1500th anniversary of that historic landing.

The occasion was considered by the authorities at the time, to be of sufficient educational and historical importance to warrant the mass attendance of every school within a certain distance of the site chosen for the re-enactment, Broadstairs, in Kent.

Now, it so happens that some 18 months of my formative years were spent at a school in Broadstairs. I had been sent there for health reasons. At the time, I was a chronic Asthmatic, and medical opinion in the 40's held that a 'fresh air' environment was the most suitable locale for children with the condition, and so I was sent to the Holy Cross school which stood on top of the cliffs overlooking Broadstairs, and within view of the French coast on a clear day.

This also meant that on the allotted day, I was bussed into the town and onto the beach along with thousands of other school kids. I was within a few feet of the 'Hugin' as it swept onto the shore line and the fearsome looking (at the time) Vikings came ashore.

Of course, this may be of little interest to some of you, maybe none to others, but what makes it slightly more interesting nonetheless, is news - discovered by our percussionist pal, Neil Sparkes (a near resident) - that someone has found the actual footage of the event and posted it on You Tube!

There are two links here. One takes you to footage of the arrival on shore of the 'Hugin' on 29th June 1949, and the other covers the dedication ceremony, attended by HH Prince Georg of Denmark, at a later date (at which I was not present) when the great ship was erected on concrete pillars at Pegwell Bay near Ramsgate, where it still stands today. It can be viewed free of charge at the roadside off Pegwell Bay.

Readers following this story, who may have wondered how the 'Hugin' came to be on the 'Raven' album, will now know. As for why, that relates to the original concept behind the album and the title track. Inspired by the Norse sagas, 'The Raven' recounts the Viking quest with their inseparable longships. They are said to have taken ravens on board their longships to go ahead and seek out land. Quite how they might have conveyed that information to their masters, I can't imagine.

As I said in my interview with Dr David Buckley, I had no idea in June 1949, that one day I would stand inside this ship and that it would feature on the cover of a Rock 'n' Roll album.

How could I, Rock 'n' Roll hadn't been invented!

Jet Black

The videos:
Arrival on shore of the 'Hugin' on 29th June 1949

The dedication ceremony, attended by HH Prince Georg of Denmark

Baz Warne blogs for Blighty!

2010-02-05T13:58:00.000Z

Hello people…and welcome to 2010!

These blogs will be a regular feature of the new look site and I’ve been asked by the team to write the 1st one…an honour indeed!

So first off a big thanks to Owen and the squad for their efforts in making the site so pleasing on the eye and brain…cheers…and also thanks to Ade and Christina Liggins for all their efforts and friendship over the years…good luck guys…

Well, here we are again at the start of what hopefully will be another good year for us all…the March tour is shaping up nicely and we’re looking forward to getting out and seeing you lot again, my favourite part of the machine…

Thanks for all your feedback on the new song Retro Rockets too…written during a 2 month stint in Bath and 1 of about 8 songs written during that time…hopefully we can get some more out in the not too distant future to titillate you all with…

The Greek dates were great and it was nice to see some Brits taking the trouble to travel…always amazes me to see the effort put in to see us abroad and it’s always appreciated…there was an earthquake while we were there too…5.2 on the Richter…enough to make the earth move…would like to say we caused it but apparently the plates moved somewhere out under the Aegean Sea…

I was in a basement bar and didn’t feel it but the crew tell me it was pretty impressive…maybe next time…

We’re in rehearsals for the tour at the moment too, so as always expect the unexpected…the black jukebox is being dusted down as we speak…

I’m off to see my beloved Sunderland play tonight so I thought I’d write this today before I get too suicidal to do it in the week…!

Look forward to seeing you all soon…keep smiling if you can…

Baz / 1st Feb 2010