Flow Machines have a FREE remix ep available from their site featuring remixes by Akira The Don, Cian SFA, Mark West (ex Fanfarlo), Three Men in A Dub and Me, yours truly, mememememe.
It’s ace actually. GO GET IT!
Coming soon, new feature!
Drum roll, drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ( well how do you spell the noise a drum roll makes?)
I ask interesting people of my acquaintance ten questions and they give us the benefit of their immutable wisdom.
Not necessarily famous people either.
Each one will come complete with illustration of said sage, by me.
Upcoming interrogatees include
Alan McGee
Mogwai
Akira The Don
My Mum (I haven’t actually asked her yet)
Adam from Swervedriver
My mate Jeres
and many more..
I’ll probably do it every two weeks.
The panoramic function on my phone (LG Renoir) is pretty cool is it not? Just roll your eyes and say ‘Yes Martin’, indulge me.
Yes Martin
Good, now; I was going to write about what I’ve been up to the past week but I can’t get it in any kind of order so I’ll just start writing and see where I end up. It’s 7.01am and I’ve been up for a couple of hours now, rendering the vocals that Mary and I recorded for Akira the Don’s new album, ‘The Life Equation’, last night. He had wanted a huge rabble rousing chorus but as it was only Mary and I with a baby upstairs in bed, snoring his chubby little face off, he wasn’t going to get that; so we sang a sixteen bar vocal arrangement that I hope he fits in somewhere.
When Mary was overdue with Sonny, she booked three sessions at the local chinese herbal place. they reckoned that they would relax her enough for him to pop out without us having to go to hospital for an induction (he was born at home, in a pool). I like that, ‘Induction’, like there’s a guy waiting with a clipboard when he’s born, showing him where the photocopier is and how to smoke a fag without dropping his pint. Anyway, after the second session she went into labour and we haven’t slept or washed since. I was in Music Box studios when she rang me. I panicked and bought eight caramel Freddoes, just in case the gas and air didn’t show up.
So we were owed one session and Mary booked it one for me yesterday because I’ve been run down and I’ve been suffering from bad headaches and mouth ulcers and all manners of coughs and colds. I pretty sure that I would be much healthier if I could sleep for more than three hours at a time, I have no concept of day or night any more. Sometimes I’ll go to bed at nine and be up again at half two, wondering where everybody is. I’ve given up drinking coffee though and immediately I’ve felt much, much better.
I had a brief consultation where it was solemnly announced that I was not going to die, then taken upstairs for acupuncture (head and ankle) and a full body massage which was nowhere near as sexy as it sounds, quite the opposite. All my bad ghosts and shitty-ass chi were brusquely ushered out from my body in a frenzied series of slaps and rubs. It was like being patted down by a drunk Rhino.
I felt better after anyway, pathetically grateful for the lie down more than anything. Then I came home and mopped the floor, the roar of the Ninian Park crowd, gone now, never to return, keeping me company. Mary and Sonny were at Ikea, again! I’m sure they’re both having an affair, she’s meeting up with some big Swedish bloke who isn’t tired and fat all the time while he gets thrown up in the air and has his little big tum tickled by another dad who, again, isn’t fat and tired all the time. I mean, how many times can you go to the same shop? What are they selling? Crack?
The artwork for ‘Ye Gods’ is being done this week, I spent a few hours sifting through photographs from last year earlier in the week. We have literally thousands of photographs from last year alone. The ones I took on our trip to Norfolk last April are my favourites. It was such a beautiful week, Mary was pregnant, the weather was gorgeous and everywhere we went we listened to the Fleet Foxes album. Actually it couldn’t have been April because the European Championships would be on when we got back to the house where we would cook dinner with fresh foodstuffs we had bought and I would drink Leffe and play my guitar and read about William Blake. The whole place was really, I dunno, seventeenth century, which is right up my alley. I know I took photographs when we were recording the album but I can’t find them anywhere. Hmmm.
I’m working on a Flow Machines remix this week, a track from their excellent first album which you can cop here. I’m getting behind on the Black Serpent Choir album but there are more urgent things I need to get sorted first.
Sonny spent the night in hospital last Monday. He developed croup very quickly early on in the evening. We thought it might be an asthma attack, Mary suffers from asthma, and took him in. It was scary seeing him in there with all those machines, especially as he was born at home and we’d never seen him in a hospital. He’s fine now, it’s 9.04am now. Since I started writing this he’s been up, had his nappy changed, eaten his breakfast and has gone back to bed for a bit. HE IS ME IN 1996!
Ok, will upload more music soon. Love y’all.
Ok, I’m back. Sorry about the delay in transmission. A million excuses; all of them rubbish, all of them true..
We had our child on October 17th, seems like ten years ago now. He’s a boy, Sonny, and he’s beautiful.
Ok, enough. Since Christmas I’ve recorded most of what will be the second Black Serpent Choir album. (I can’t access this myspace page anymore. I can’t remember the login details, any ideas?) I recorded the first one three years ago when Akira the Don and I were talking about making an album together (we still talk about making an album together). I recorded these tracks that for reasons I can’t recall (I think we were both busy with our own records) were never used.
One Saturday evening, not long after, Mary left for work and I was left here with the long evening stretching invitingly before me. I always felt like a teenager on a Saturday evening. Mary would be at work for five hours and all that time was my very own to do with what I wished. Sometimes I would go and sit in the bar (she worked in the local arts cinema which is also where we used to drink) and get drunk while waiting for her, other times I would smoke or take mushrooms, read, record, photoshop or play GTA. When you are a creative person you are never bored. I love to make something out of nothing. This night, however, I had been looking at bands profiles on Myspace and decided I would use the discarded tracks and form a band. I thought of a name, The Black Serpent Choir, and made the page, inviting everyone I knew to join me. I tried to keep my identity a secret but quite a few people guessed immediately either because of the music or just the images and influences that I used.
The tracks were very popular and were picked up and played on Bethan Elfyn’s and Adam Walton’s radio shows. I did a session for Adam Walton and was asked to play at Cardiff’s Buffalo bar. I still hadn’t told anybody the band was my doing and I vehemently denied all involvment whenever asked. For the gig I roped in two mates who are performance artists and taught them basic laptop skills and we spent a week rehearsing the set. For the gig they wore masks and alter boy gowns and Mary made some amazing BSC logo’d laptop covers. When I walked in tthat night I finally convinced everyone that I was not in the band (people had assumed that it was me under beneath one of the costumes the band were wearing on stage). It would have been perfect if one of the laptops hadn’t malfunctioned. Of course I had to go up and help them out.
They were still ace though and it is bizarre watching yourself play, I wholly recommend it.
Anyway, I got into other things and forgot about The Black Serpent Choir for awhile until I had recorded the Martin Carr album (out soon!). I love the album but I missed making an electronic racket and decided that I would now make records under two banners to satisfy myself and my needs.
The first album will be available very soon from the shop that will appear here sometime in the next couple of months. Here you’ll be able to buy most of the bravecaptain releases, the Martin Carr album and The Black Serpent Choir album.
These will all be released on my own label, Sonny Boy Records and distributed digitally through The State 51 Conspiracy. There will be no physical copies available at first. I know, that sucks.
So keep coming back for udates on that. I’ll also drop the odd download link to stuff I’m working on. Don’t believe me, eh? OK, follow this link and grab an early version of a track I’m working on for the second Black Serpent Choir album - Six White Horses.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/odyzht
Don’t forget to leave a comment!
Love
Martin
The new Akira the Don mixtape is out this week and awesome it is too. Mixes, bangers, stompers and samplers, it’s all done with the unmistakable swagger of a man who has to stand on his tip toes to look out the window. I love him, Mary loves him and one day the world will stand and cheer. Until then though, grab it FREE from his website or give him money for a copy that sounds good on something other than your phone. He’s even done a version of ‘Goldrush ‘49, how cool is that?
Go, go get it..
Akira the Don - A Lonesome Town
So last Thursday I took my new ‘I only drink wine like a grown up’ experiment to the Conway Pub in Pontcanna. With the beautiful Marylou on my arm, I strolled up the rain sodden streets full of confidence in my new found ability to drink responsibly and looking forward to meeting our friends, Jo and Danny, Carl, Ashli, Dickie Jim and Bronwen and The Civil War Bear (who has shaved his beard off! Oh cruel, twisted fate!). I approached the bar, asked for a large glass of red wine and waited to be tarred and feathered. To my amazement, a rather drinkable number was placed in front of me with nary a mocking whisper. I settled in my seat and engaged in my usual erudite meanderings, sounding and looking for all the world like some cerebral academic like Bertrand Russell or Basil Brush; time passed as has become it’s habit (except when Mark Ronson is on and then it just stops and even starts going slightly backwards) and I was snuggled smugly in the snug, snagged on a line of wine and fine conversation. Booting out time is when things started going awry. Instead of going home I decided that I wanted another adult glass of grown up drink and ended up at a friends house drinking wine until it ran out, then beer, then brandy with a spliff chaser. So I ended up, once more on the kitchen floor with little Chickpea telling me what a disgrace I was. And she was right.
It’s a good plan, it just needs refining.
I had a bit of a meltdown at the start of the week, the enormity of what I’m trying to do coupled with the thousand plus miles I’d driven the week before caught up with me and sapped my energy completely. I would write an email, have a bit of a cry and then write another one and so on, soon passed though and by Wednesday I was fighting fit once more. We started swimming again this week which helped enormously. I love swimming and I love our pool which isn’t one of those horrible chlorine efforts, it’s a swish hydroelasticatedclockwork jobbie and you can drink pints of it while swimming without being sick, result! On Wednesday we stepped out of the exit at around ten pm and walked into Paul fucking Daniels!* Eh?
Maybe i should stop drinking so much pool water.
I’ve been listening to Marvin’s album this week, ‘Devil in the Distance’. I did a few gigs with Marvin when we were both playing with Akira the Don a couple of years ago. It’s a great album, with none of the tiresome cliches and studied machismo that much of Hip Hop is ridden with nowadays. As all good first albums do, it deals with schooldays, parents and the environment that he grew up in (Brixton). It’s funny and it’s ace, just like Marvin. Check it!
Mary and I were on Adam Walton’s BBC radio show last night. Adam has been a constant supporter of my music for longer than either of us care to remember (we’re actually too old to remember much of anything) and we love being on his show. He’s the funniest man we know and has us in stitches for most of the time we’re off air (and sometimes on). He’s also a rather ace writer and photographer as you can see on his blog.
We performed ‘Bear Lake’ and ‘Darwin’s Tree’ and I waffled, rather badly Marylou tells me, about Bandstocks for a bit. Anyway, you can hear the whole thing here. He also plays some ace music, he always does.
Afterwards we had a quick glass of grown up wine in Chapter with our friends Fionna the Lady Adventurer, Tom, Chill and Bethan. Afterwards we stood outside and chatted, the party was split into two camps. The girls talked about babies, responsibility and the universal, lifelong struggle of sisterhood while us blokes enthused about computer games. We’re a simple breed but lovable in a waggy dog kinda way.
This morning the chimney sweep came round and stuck his big brush up me dirty chimney pipe. I don’t see anything funny about that, it was really exciting. Look!
And, yes, it is a beautiful, blue sky day.
*true!
Marylou and I spent thursday morning at Akira’s house singing and playing guitar on this big song he has called ‘The Answer to the Anti-life Equation’ a composition that veers from melancholic introspection to big beat hip hop and a strange bit that I haven’t got me head round yet. Sounds like something off ‘OK Computer’ which is not what you’d expect from Adam which is always what you can expect from Adam. Jeres came round to work on his Son of King Rebel album and we sang harmonies on ‘I Don’t Love Jesus No More’ which has an ace chorus, I can’t wait to hear the finished thing. Adam works hard, I think he had three or four sessions going on that day. Respect. I made everyone breakfast and Adam poured scalding coffee all over his hand and cooker. Sweet. 
Then Mary and I drove over to Clapton to see Stacey and he kids and show them the DVD we got from the 4D scan place which freaked the kids out and bored me to tears. When Penny told us she had seventeen minutes of footage what she meant was that she had three minutes of footage repeated six times. Poor. He’s a lovely wee orange blob though, I think we’re going to like him. I’ve known Stacey’s kids since the day they were born and I love them even though Betsi is always trying to get me involved in dollhouse games and Hank doesn’t appear to own any clothes.
Cait and Pete are away so a couple of her younger siblings threw a party which was still going when we got up the next morning. It was full of Cambridge nobs and the music was intensely bad. If you’re trying to sleep at four in the morning and the Stereophonics are grating away at punishing volumes then pray there is no shotgun in the house because if there is somebody is going down. Nobody died and the police didn’t come so it wasn’t really a party, more of a debate with booze. There was a serious amount of alcohol being consumed, they are that age where it doesn’t touch the sides. I get giddy on a couple of Kronies nowadays so hats off to ‘em. Apparently Jimmy, Cait’s teenage brother, got his fruity little leather satchel on at 7am, announced he was an important banker and set off down the hill towards Crouch End. Now that’s class. Jimmy is studying Theology at Cambridge and has spent his whole summer holidays studying the Bible so a breakdown was deffo on the cards. He calls me ‘lad’. When he’s speaking to me I can never work out if he thinks that I’m his Grandad or if he thinks that he’s my Grandad.
I was up until three doing this weeks illustration for the Times which involved a Tory MP seated at a kitchen table with his family with his head blown off in front of a depiction of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus (ahh) in her arms only I’d put Thatchers face on her and Cameron’s face on him. There is no way they’re going to accept it but I submitted it anyway because I’m a curly haired sleepy rebel.
So after not much sleep I had to climb into the back of a BBC cab which picked it’s way through the morning traffic before arriving at White City and the home of the British Broadcasting Company where I was to talk about Bandstocks on Radio 5’s Victoria Derbyshire’s show. I was there early and I had downed two huge coffees by the time I, Bandstocks founder, Andrew Lewis and fellow Bandstocks artist, Jersey Budd were ushered into the studio a good half an hour after we were due on. We then had to listen to the news, weather, sport and traffic before being introduced. With precious little time left to explain something relatively simple but new (new is hard to explain to most people it seems) we were interrupted almost immediately by Derbyshire reading out the breaking news story that was this year contestants on Strictly Come Dancing. After she had read it out she asked me why I had had my head in my hands throughout. What I wanted to say was that in doing what she had just done, interrupted a discussion on a new way of presenting music that benefits both the Artist and the music lover to read out a list of low rent ‘celebrities’ that are appearing on some reality tv show she had shone a light on what is so badly wrong with our culture, or lack therof, today. But I didn’t. I dunno, maybe I bottled it, maybe I didn’t want to waste precious time arguing but I mumbled something about not recognising most of the names (not true) and holding a torch for Cherie Lunghi (I’m afraid that is true).
So finally we were on, I don’t remember much about it. They played a couple of Boo Radleys songs which was absurd and some woman texted in to say that good music will always win through and why should she pay for our recording costs. I don’t know who she thinks pays for recording costs now but it sure ain’t the bands or the labels. That one question worried me, are people really that dumb? Are they happy to fund record company execs coke habits rather than be a part of the whole experience. She’s happy to pay a tenner for a record that won’t make money for her or the band but won’t countenance paying a tenner for a record where both she and the band could make money, where owning the record and having her name on the sleeve is the very least she could expect. i don’t want to get evangelical about this, that was never my attention but complacency and fear of the unknown are two things I cannot abide so I might have to start standing on mountaintops wrapped in a sheet, wielding a mighty shitty stick and chucking about lightening bolts of righteous fury. I’ll need to rethink my hair though, it’s not being taken seriously for the artistic statement that it immutably is.
Afterwards, still angry, which surprised me, I met up with Marylou. Her embrace chased my dark thoughts down Great Portland Street and kicked the shit out of them in some dark alley full of cardboard boxes and fire escapes. Then we met up with my old friend Keefo and his lovely wife Jen. We had lunch in the Clachan where Keefo and I have been going since the mid nineties. We talked about babies (they have a young boy named Hamish who, at the advanced age of two, is a sturdy and handsome wee chap) and Joy Division and Bandstocks and Queen and Fleet Foxes and the Creation book (not the Bible) and babies again. Once home I checked my mail and my illustration had been accepted without further comment which saved me some time which we used by passing out cold on the bed for a couple of hours.
Then to Hackney for dinner at a friend’s house. Nicki is an interior designer and a friend of Mary’s from Cardiff. She cooked a lovely meal and we met some ace people and I’m afraid I got drunk and had to be taken home and put to bed. Amen.
Would you look at that. That l’il fella there looks just like my gran, except she wasn’t orange. Well, she had a tinge when she overdid it on the Vitamin C tablets but mainly she was Gran coloured. Aww, I miss my Gran, she’s been dead for twenty five years but I remember her laugh and her tablets and her bunions. Wouldn’t it be great if we saw each other when I died. Ah well, I’ll settle for an eternity of decent kip, that will be sweet.
Marylou and I paid for one of those fancy 4D scans and it was worth every penny. You only get two scans during the whole nine months and in both of them it looks like you’ve sired a flump (this is for people without kids obviously) so for peace of mind and a healthy dose of future shock, a 4 Dimensional scan is the business. The machines were invented by, wait for it, PIXAR! Yep, Buzz Lightyear shows you into a small room, slaps jelly over your bump (not mine of course, although it looked like fun) and points his magic bellyscope at your baby and there he is, swimming around in glue and shite, throwing gang signs and sticking his foot in his mouth. it’s ace! It wasn’t really Buzz (had you guessed?), it was the most enthusiastic lady in the world and her name was Penny. Fuck me, you’d think it was the first time she’d seen a baby. Of course, her performance helps you decide which pack you’ll buy. I don’t fall for such tricks of course, I’ve been around the block a fair few times. We bought the Bumper Gold Premium Pack with an extra DVD of Polly screaming ‘IT’S GOT A HEAD! OH MY GOD! IT’S GOT FEET!
Look! he’s sucking his thumb. What a baby..
Thanks for all the advice about animation, all of it completely useless. I’ve sorted it now with my big brain.
Tomorrow we go see my old pal Akira the Don. Mary is singing on one of his new epic Hip-Prog tracks, can’t wait. If you don’t know him, check him out. He is a beautiful and clever man and he’s going to save us all (he tells me). He’s going to start by eating properly and pulling his trousers up. Watch his space.
This week I’m going to sign the contract with Bandstocks. Thanks to all those who responded with advice, warnings, love and threats, it will all be taken on board. I think I would regret it if I didn’t do it, if I signed with another label and went through all the same old shit once more. For those who don’t know what I’m on about it’s all here. I will post a F.A.Q about it soon. I’ve never done one before, do I wait until they are F.A.Q’s or do I second guess what people will want to know and put them up first? I’m leaning towards the latter.
So, two months to earn fifty grand. Two months to raise more money than I’ve managed in ten years. I guess it’s down to whether or not people are as tired of the industry ’system’ as the people involved in Bandstocks are and if so, whether they are prepared to commit to and contribute towards some kind of change or are happy merely download their music for free. I have never worried too much about illegal downloading, I’ve nabbed the odd thing or two myself when my patience won’t countenance a two day wait from Amazon, Eil or Ebay. I’m not proud and I make sure to buy whatever it is if I like it but that’s a whole other issue and I’ll write about it some other time. For me, personally, it’s an ideal setup. Everything is transparent, you know exactly, down to the last penny, where your money has gone and hopefully you may even make it back whereas I get to continue making music without having to go cap in hand to the suits. I can release stuff on vinyl, include handwritten lyric sheets, include artwork etc so that when you buy an album from me you won’t feel ripped off. I sound like a bloody door to door salesman now don’t I? I was one once, for two dismal weeks in back in the late eighties when I was about eighteen. I was unemployed, unemployable, and answered an ad in the paper for one of those ‘Travel the country and earn £100 a week’ (a fortune then) ads. There was nothing happening jobwise, Sice and I would go to the job centre regularly and stare at the solitary card on the wall advertising a post for a panel beater at something like ten grand a day (or so it seemed). We resolved to find out what the hell a panel beater was and how we would go about becoming one but always ended up back in on of our bedrooms, trying to work out the chords to ‘Jean’s Not Happening’ by The Pale Fountains.
I got an interview for the job, it was in Southport. My dad drove me up there and I said I’d see him back home the following day (the company were putting us up in a hotel, things were looking good). My interview lasted about five minutes, I think they just wanted to see if I could speak English and I was given a room that I was to share with three or four other lads. That night they took us to a nightclub and got us hammered, it was the best job I’d ever had and I still didn’t know what it was. The next day though, instead of going home we were driven to Banbury near Oxford and given an intensive training course in door to door sales or, as it turned out, bullying old women and pressurising the vulnerable into buying our smoke alarms. I was useless, utterly useless. I would knock at a door, after seven hours of traipsing the freezing streets of Oxford, some old dear would answer and I could smell dinner cooking and hear Coronation St starting somewhere behind her and I would feel dreadfully homesick. I’d give some half hearted pitch and then be on my way down the path before she could say ‘Sorry son, I can’t afford…’. I hated myself for even asking. I sold two in two weeks, to a couple of insane people who would have bought whatever it was I had in my pocket.
We stayed in a small compound in Banbury, after the first week we were told that our £100 pounds would be minus the cost of the Southport Hotel, the Banbury rooms, food and kit leaving us with practically nothing. We had to shoplift food the week after and I had had enough. A few of us were planning on doing a runner but they caught wind of it, finally agreeing to drive us back to Liverpool where they dropped us as far away from the city centre as they could and that was that. I arrived home, skint and depressed, the future seemed so bleak back then. I borrowed a couple of quid from my brother, Calum, called at Sice’s and went to the pub.
I think I’m doing alright at the Times. Last week they rang and asked me illustrate Ken Russell’s column which will appear tomorrow and when Caitlin went on holiday they asked me to illustrate her replacements column. This week she wrote about the English and their bicycles. 
I’m trying to animate a video for one of the songs from the album but I’m absolutely clueless. I’m trying animate photoshop layers in Premiere. Any ideas?
Marylou and I are moving back to Cardiff this week. We haven’t been able to find somewhere to live that we really like and we’re desperate for some time alone and so going to have the baby in our lovely house in Canton. We’ve been so lucky here, living with Cait and her family and we’re going to miss them very much. We’re putting the Cardiff house up for sale at Christmas and hopefully we’ll be back in London as soon as possible. Mary is well and full of energy, she’s working on a new website at the minute. It was a mistake to try and combine our business site with my music one so all of this will be far less confusing within the next few weeks.
I’ve been reading Adam Ant’s biography over the last couple of days. I’m astounded by how driven that man was. As a kid I loved his records from ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ onwards. I might be meeting him to talk about songwriting soon. Even if nothing comes of it, and I’ve never met anyone who I’ve wanted to write with before (except Akira the Don), at least I’ll be able to talk about music for an hour or so with somebody who was a big part of my childhood.
Spent Friday night in the house with Marylou, Pete and Cait and our old friend Ben and his lovely wife Robyn. I’ve known Ben since the mid-nineties when he signed a band I loved, 60ft Dolls and some crap that I didn’t love at all. He’s a very funny man and it was very late when I stumbled into my room. I was in no fit state to drive to Cardiff the following day so Mary had to. We stopped at Reading services and I bought enough food to feed a family of ten (elephants) all of which I scoffed. I don’t know what is going on with me at the moment. I’m supposed to be getting myself cleaned up for when the baby gatecrashes my do-what-I-fucking-like life but I’m drinking and eating and smoking like it was my last year on earth.
We rehearsed at the new Music Box in Cardiff with the band. there are six of us; Me, Marylou, Big P on bass, Rhodri on organ/guitar/pedal steel, Bernie on drums and Danny who I’d asked to help out for a couple of gigs on guitar/vocals. After rehearsals we had a drink or two at our old local, Chapter Arts Centre, with Tom (aka ZWOLF) who was also on the bill in Cardiff.
I think we’re going to have to move back to Cardiff to have the baby which is disappointing but with seven weeks to go before the birth we need to settle and prepare. We’re putting the house up for sale and hopefully we’ll be back in London early next year.
The gig at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff was ace. It’s seven or eight years since I first played there and I’ve done solo gigs, bravecaptain band gigs, electronic gigs and dj’d more times than I care to remember. I used to regularly DJ there about five years ago with my friend James (We were called PopAssHeadSets after a line in a Kool Keith song) where we would play anything that was stupidly loud, from Kid 606 to the Velvets. I’ve been kicked out, passed out, fucked up and knocked down in every room on every floor. When I first moved to Cardiff after my marriage broke up I was there very night drinking gallons of vodka and Red Bull and never sleeping. I’ve seen some of the best gigs I’ve ever seen there and I’ll always be fond of the place.
The setlist for the gig was;
The Dead of Winter
Darwin’s Tree
Bear Lake
Running
Why You Gotta Bring Me All This Rain?
Orpheus Lament
Pontcanna Stone
Tired and Broke and Black and Blue
Goldrush ‘49
The space was very cramped and the vocals weren’t too clear through he monitors but soundman, Ben, was very helpful and we did ok. The place was pretty packed although, as is the case in Cardiff, some people were at the gig to talk very loudly to their friends while the bands played. The supports were both great if completely different. The MeMeMes played tuneful downbeat pop with songs about sorrow and the frustration inherent in fancying people who turn out to be gay. ZWOLF on the other hand wields a laptop, bass and guitar and propels darkness and distort into the crowd. I think I filmed some of their sets, I’ll have a look and upload if I have.
After the gig we met up with old friends and drank until the wee hours (Not Mary of course). We were supposed to be having an early night because I had a meeting in Chiswick (London) the next morning but, as usual, the drinking won and we arrived home at around three.
The meeting was with a publishing company who are interested in my writing songs for other people. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years but never really had the opportunity so I’m hoping that it comes together. Afterwards we crawled up the snailpaced horror that is the North Circular and arrived home to help Eavie celebrate her fifth birthday. Her talented mother had made the most incredible Dalek cake which is still repeating on me two days later. We grabbed a couple of hours sleep then tubed it over to the West End for soundcheck. We were playing at The Social, another venue I’ve spent quite a bit of time at over the years. I’ve never stood on the stage though and couldn’t believe that I was contemplating playing with the band. There was just enough room for Marylou and I but the sound was fantastic. We chatted with Huw Stephens who I’ve known since he was a teenager and we met up with some more old friends (Steve Wood who designed all the Boo’s sleeves, Mark and Dick from Wichita, Keith Cameron and Akira the Don) and then it was time to play. We played almost all the songs we had done the night before, Goldrush ‘49 doesn’t sound that great with just the two of us. The place was packed and the first few songs we performed to absolute silence which really makes a difference.
I went for a quiet drink with Keith at another pub and then met Mary back at the gig. We had a couple of drinks with Akira and Charlotte and then caught the bus back home.
