We have the CDs of the new album. The UPS man delivered them this morning just as we were starting one of our whacky rehearsals, trying to figure out how to play the new tracks live.
I had it all worked out – we were going to film the delivery man coming up the path – ‘No love, cut, cut CUT – could we just take that again and could you just try to look a little more like, you know, like a delivery man…’
It reminds me of the time my dad called to see what I was up to and I told him I’d formed a group called The Len Bright Combo and we were about to release an album called The Len Bright Combo Present The Len Bright Combo By The Len Bright Combo. There was a silence on the other end of the line and then my dad’s disapproving voice – ‘I sometimes think you live in a fantasy.’
I probably do just that for a good half of the time but we’ve managed to turn the fantasy of yet another album into a reality and I’m very happy about that.
And if you happen to be in New York City we'll see you tomorrow night (September 7th) at Bowery Electric. Here's a ticket link: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=4715595
Sorry about the hard sell.
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Wednesday, 1 August 2012
Monday, 30 July 2012
One Dover Soul
We started recording at my house in Norfolk back in 2005. Alan was much enamoured with my Bungalow Hi album and hoped to make his version – as Alan might say (and probably did) my Satanic Majesties to your Sergeant Pepper's... An impossible undertaking, I assured him of that but I think we might just have achieved it.
In the absence of a recording budget, and because it was a labour of love, I chipped away at it in our studio in France between sessions for the first Eric & Amy album, between Rotifer sessions and Two-Way Family Favourites. I interpreted Clayson cassette demos and deciphered chord charts which he sent to me in triple-sealed anti-plagerism envelopes. I slowly constructed backing tracks.for the songs which he then came over and sang, once in an August heatwave and again during a freezing January when we almost willfully ran out of heating oil in honour of his visit.
I say interpret and decipher because a typical Clayson demo might start out as a cassette of him singing and playing his slightly out of tune upright piano, which he transfers to a second cassette player with him playing an orchestral keyboard line, possibly on the keyboard he found in a rubbish skip back in nineteen eighty something. The differing speeds of the cassette players put the end result into questionable key signatures. And there was always the matter of what I came to know as Clayson Time – a weird amalgam, somewhere between four/four or two/four with bars that stretch just ever so slightly and chords that change just before or just after a beat somewhere within the bar...
Alan is a unique individual. Fools might find him easy to laugh at – I've done gigs with him where audiences tittered nervously - I don't know why you're laughing, I haven't said anything funny. Yet... I've sat transfixed in my corner, the sole member of The Alan Clayson Orchestra, clutching my guitar as Alan further bamboozled an already puzzled audience with tales of insane record collectors – and I'm not just talking about obsession as in someone who might name their cats Jerry, Lee and Lewis... show-biz sleaze - you could hear the dandruff falling from her hair... an intergalactic extravaganza with audio visual aids made from Shredded Wheat Packets and readings from The Readers Digest Atlas Of The Universe – I don't know how Eric proposes to extricate himself from this psychedelic maelstrom but I'm going to achieve this by simply switching everything off at the main socket...
Very hard to translate to an album if it weren't for the fantastical world that his songs inhabit. People meet in buffet queues, they go to soirees, young men lurk outside village halls befriending rodent vermin in the half light. A DJ with a catch phrase (I bet that scared yer!) plays death discs until it's time to go home and mow the lawn, and who knows what mad things patrol the moors in a previous century – racing clouds at evetide down and Cressida clad in the season's gown...
Joe Meek and Screaming Lord Sutch, matching guitars, matching stage suits - stained but shiny - grease paint, Russ Conway and Brickwoods Pale Ale - a world of cardboard suitcases and squalid trysts in boarding houses in Margate and Weston Super Mare - a madman controlled by voices on a homebound commuter train – not a modern day train - this one's doubtless a swaying Southern Region job packed with bowler-hatted extras from Tony Hancocks The Rebel - the train is howling like a wounded beast... and he stumps off leaving God knows what devastation in his wake, and then we're by the seaside where pram-pushing housewives brave networks of queues and their brats sometimes scream and see visions, though they bawl and catcall under sepia skies far from the Old Dover Road.
I want everyone to hear this album, to own a copy. Not to make me and Alan rich - that's probably not going to happen though Alan has at times phoned me with the news that he thinks he might have a hit record on his hands. The last one was Ug The Caveman included on this album - just right for Ed Stewpot and Junior Choice.
Everyone should get a glimpse of the world from the Clayson perspective.
You can buy the album from my site: wrecklesseric.com/shop or from Alan's site where you'll find out all manner of interesting stuff about him... http://www.alanclayson.com/
Hope I don't appear to be pushy - I'm doing this for your own good!
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Lol Coxhill
I was sad to hear of the passing of Lol Coxhill. I first became aware of him back in 1969. I was fifteen and he was a member of Kevin Ayers & The Whole World. I heard Clarence In Wonderland on John Peel's Top Gear programme and I was transfixed. I've been a fan of both Kevin Ayers and Lol Coxhill ever since.
Later on Lol Coxhill teamed up with David Bedford as The Coxhill/Bedford Duo. They recorded a 45, Pretty Little Girl, for John Peel's Dandelion label. It was a jolly little ditty – possibly subversive for its apparent lack of any kind of subversion.
I was lucky enough to see them at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in either 1972 or 73. I was a student at the art college in Bristol at the time. The concert, billed as An Evening With Lol Coxhill & David Bedford, had a profound effect on me - haunting instrumentals silly songs, free improvisation and outright slapstick comedy. Lol Coxhill's impersonation of Frank Sinatra was extremely accurate and for that all the more bizarre visually.
He also impersonated Kevin Ayers – more wine David? Oh I appear to have spilt it.
He pirouetted in a grey boiler suit, they rubbed party balloons on the piano strings and burst them with evident relish. They were weird, freaky and baroque - disturbingly middle-aged to the eighteen year old me. Lol told us that he didn't know why he was always billed as a busker because he'd only ever done it once. He also mentioned that Pretty Little Girl had only sold nine copies. Apparently there was a warehouse full of them somewhere. I wish I'd been able able to find one.
The Arnolfini crowd was artsy and older. Rich bohemian chic. I don't know what they thought but I left the place irreparably altered. I was already into free jazz but I'd never witnessed such an irreverent presentation.
I don't see him play live again until some time in the nineties when he played in Brighton with The Melody Four. In 1978 he appeared on the second Damned album and that was a mystery to me – produced by Nick Mason of the Pinkfloyd - a guest appearance from Lol Coxhill – it was everything that The Damned were supposedly against at the time. I thought Lol was an inspired choice but Nick Mason was an idiocy – that was probably Dave Robinson's idea.
A friend of mine saw Lol Coxhill play in Rotterdam. He was evidently being treated disrespectfully by the organisers. He came on the stage, unpacked his soprano, announced to the audience that he was contracted to play for forty minutes, set an alarm clock and played until it went off.
I met him once - not in my capacity as a minor celeb – I was just a fan bothering him after the show. He seemed very kind.
Later on Lol Coxhill teamed up with David Bedford as The Coxhill/Bedford Duo. They recorded a 45, Pretty Little Girl, for John Peel's Dandelion label. It was a jolly little ditty – possibly subversive for its apparent lack of any kind of subversion.
I was lucky enough to see them at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in either 1972 or 73. I was a student at the art college in Bristol at the time. The concert, billed as An Evening With Lol Coxhill & David Bedford, had a profound effect on me - haunting instrumentals silly songs, free improvisation and outright slapstick comedy. Lol Coxhill's impersonation of Frank Sinatra was extremely accurate and for that all the more bizarre visually.
He also impersonated Kevin Ayers – more wine David? Oh I appear to have spilt it.
He pirouetted in a grey boiler suit, they rubbed party balloons on the piano strings and burst them with evident relish. They were weird, freaky and baroque - disturbingly middle-aged to the eighteen year old me. Lol told us that he didn't know why he was always billed as a busker because he'd only ever done it once. He also mentioned that Pretty Little Girl had only sold nine copies. Apparently there was a warehouse full of them somewhere. I wish I'd been able able to find one.
The Arnolfini crowd was artsy and older. Rich bohemian chic. I don't know what they thought but I left the place irreparably altered. I was already into free jazz but I'd never witnessed such an irreverent presentation.
I don't see him play live again until some time in the nineties when he played in Brighton with The Melody Four. In 1978 he appeared on the second Damned album and that was a mystery to me – produced by Nick Mason of the Pinkfloyd - a guest appearance from Lol Coxhill – it was everything that The Damned were supposedly against at the time. I thought Lol was an inspired choice but Nick Mason was an idiocy – that was probably Dave Robinson's idea.
A friend of mine saw Lol Coxhill play in Rotterdam. He was evidently being treated disrespectfully by the organisers. He came on the stage, unpacked his soprano, announced to the audience that he was contracted to play for forty minutes, set an alarm clock and played until it went off.
I met him once - not in my capacity as a minor celeb – I was just a fan bothering him after the show. He seemed very kind.
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
The Clio incident, more dog shit, glamorous hotels...
This is a slightly fragmented report from the UK tour though I suppose eight dates in England and a jaunt to Frankfurt isn't really much of a UK tour. You could argue that the inclusion of Frankfurt makes it a European tour but that sounds pretentious and that would never do. Before I get started (well, cut and paste actually) I should plug our Kickstarter project: Widget embedment is apparently against the rules so here's a link that'll take you to what's in the picture (if that's where you want to go)...
Brighton was good. I was a bit distracted by a mass onslaught of the Moore family. Will Moore does the booking at the Prince Albert. He used to run the Free Butt, Brighton's premier dogshit pub. The Moore family are very proud of Will's being in my piece about dogshit pubs. I didn't mention Will by name because it didn't seem fair to name and shame, and anyway I'm done with being indiscrete – it's got me in too much trouble in the past. But noiw it can be revealed – Will Moore booker at the Albert is the deep-frying ex-manager of the dreadful and magnificent dogshit pub standing four square in a puddle of mud and dereliction on the site of Tamplins Brewery in Brighton.
There were people from Newhaven, there were people from Kent and some who even travelled down from London, and it was quite full. We played well and laughed a lot and the man whose Clio I wrecked before the show didn't show up seeking retribution.
I couldn't help wrecking the Clio – he shouldn't have pulled up on the zebra crossing zig-zags as I was backing out on to the street. He shouldn't have jumped out of his car and run down the street clutching a phone to his face, but it's just as well he did because he wasn't in his car when I backed into it, smashing the wing mirror and stoving in the passenger door. When he came back and I tried to explain myself he was completely unaware of what I'd done.
I thought the best way was to front it out so I started in with 'due to you parking illegally on a zebra crossing as I was reversing into the road I appear to have smashed your door in.'
He didn't want to know.
'What are you saying?' he asked in an irritated voice and carried on speaking into his phone.
'As a result of you parking illegaly...'
'What do you want? Is it money?'
'No, I just wanted to point out that because you're parked illegally...'
'Parking?!!? Where do you want to park? What exactly do you want from me?'
'I don't want a fucking thing from you mate'
I scurried off to the van, drove off and parked up a few streets away. You just can't help some people. Luckily there was no damage to our hire van.
From the upstairs room at the Albert we could see him yacking on his phone, oblivious to the newly inverted contour of the shiny Clio door, the smashed wing mirror strewn all over the road. Eventually he drove off. Mirror – signal – manouvre...I imagine that at some point he noticed the lack of a wing mirror.
I should talk about the London show at Milfords but there really isn't much to say. If you were there you'll know it was a good one. If you weren't I don't know how to explain the miracle of a tired upstairs function room complete with tiled floor, redundant bar and wall lights turning itself into a great venue. Everything was against it and it's a credit to Martin Dowsing of The Hungry Dog Brand that he pulled it together, filled it with people and made it work. We had a great time, and for once I actually liked the opening act, Jack Hayter.
Bristol was fairly horrible – the venue smelled of vomit and disinfectant. A dogshit pub with punk highlights.
And Winchester was a surprise. It always rains in Winchester and we've learned not to expect too much – seventeen advance sales and who would want to come out on a wet Thursday night. But they did. The promoter was very pleased but they still left us to load out in the rain with no help.
'We've done very well, a lot more people than we thought. You've got twenty minutes to pack up and get out.'
Thanks very fucking much.
A night in a Travel Lodge pretending to sleep , my head balanced on a pillow filled with chunky foam off-cuts, and then the seven hour drive to Malton in North Yorkshire. That was a surprise – it was sold out in advance. And then a triumphant return to Hull.
We exchanged the horrible Enterprise Car Hire Doblo for a light blue Volkswagon Golf and somehow managed to get all the gear into it, and then I drove it through the night at a hundred miles an hour across Belgium and through Germany to Frankfurt. That sounds much too heroic – in truth we stopped of in the Belgian town of Hasselt and got a room in an Ibis hotel and in the morning it was full of adenoidal Belgian athletes wearing sandals with socks. We strolled around Hasselt and found a coffee place that did a great espresso. The we carried on to Frankfurt.
The Frankfurt hotel was too hot, the pillows were large but completely flat and the TV didn't work. For the first time in my life I found myself wanting to throw a TV out of a hotel window but I didn't. By five o'clock in the morning I wanted to throw myself out of the hotel window. The only thing stopping me was that I was hungry because we hadn't eaten very well the day before and I didn't want to miss breakfast. The early morning sun was streaming in through thin, cheap hotel curtains. 'At least it's a nice day,' she said. No it isn't' I replied, 'it'll never be a nice day again until we leave this disgusting hotel,' I have never felt so middle-aged.
Things improved and we spent another three nights there. We changed rooms and that seemed to help – I think something sinister must have happened in the first room, a murder or something.
We arrived at the festival site equipped with tubes of acrylic paint, cheap brushes and a lot of cardboard donated by my daughter Luci's mother. I think we were all enjoying the middle England notion that the Krauts might not have cardboard.
It put me in mind of the days when I first lived in France back in the eighties. I'd stand on the deck of the Newhaven / Dieppe ferry watching cars full of everything you need to survive in an unwelcoming holiday destination spewing forth from the bowels of the ship (I suppose I could just have said dis-embarking there but I wanted to be dramatic) – every last overloaded car had containers of salt and pepper on the parcel shelf. They had to put it on the parcel shelf because the back seat was always taken up with rolls of toilet paper. Well you never know do you...
I was worried that we'd signed up to destroy or mutilate a car but we set to with the acrylic paint and cardboard and pretty soon most of the metalic blueness was covered in signs advertising our services – Life Coaching (ten euros for ten minutes), Portraits While U Wait , Bespoke Cassettes... We had one taker for the life coaching – I told the guy to jack in his job and find something less stressful, something at Burger King or McDonalds, perhaps start having an affair. when I suggested that he should take his entire wardrobe to a charity shop and on the way home pop in H&M or the Gap and treat himself to a really nice outfit Amy looked as though she wanted to crawl into a hole and he told me it was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. But he also said I was a genius – I'd made him feel great about his life as it actually was and if we'd been charging by results he would have paid a lot more than ten euros.
We didn't get any takers for the portraits which was just as well because we were very busy making signs and recording bespoke cassettes. I thought the signs were very clear but we still kept having to explain it. The cassette was free, you just had to choose a song from the list and you paid for that. We did a few commisions too – A Day In The Life was the highlight of the entire festival (even though it was only witnessed by an audience of about twelve people). We did Good Times by Eric Burden & The Animals for someone's dad and that went well but I dread to think what the recorded cassette sounded like.
I enjoyed the painting hugely. I've been wanting to get back to painting (I spent four years in art colleges) but I could never find an excuse. I've decided to keep at it and my current excuse is our Kickstarter project to raise money for our new album. Here's a link so you can have a look at what's on offer and see a preview video of the album:
And here's a painting of a Rotosound string packet.
Friday, 8 June 2012
An Illusion Created By Tables And Chairs
photo by Amber Dodds
Tonight we're playing in London. Before we set off for the gig we're going to write our Kickstarter proposal. We've already made a promotional film - it looks like a K-Tel advert (but more low budget). By the end of the weekend it could well be up and running - a curious idiom - up and running - why not plugged in with the switch in the "on" position and the red light glowing? I sometimes wonder who thinks up these expressions. But anyway... you could be watching our film, pledging support and all that sort of stuff by the end of the weekend. Or at the beginning of next week.
If our Flip Camera Windows Movie Maker film doesn't turn us into successful video directors overnight (and of course we fully expect it will), and if the Kickstarter thing works, we'll be releasing our third album together sometime in August. We're calling it A Working Museum.
Now I've got to pilot a hire van to London without wrecking any more badly parked Renault Clios. But more about that later.
Friday, 1 June 2012
Hands Across The Ocean
I'm leaving America for the second time since I started living here last September. It's a bit of a shame because the weather's really good at the moment, hot, sunny and not unbearably humid. England might be having good weather but it's never as warm.
I'm worried that I might have gone native – I found myself completely unselfconsciously referring to trousers as pants the other day, something I never would have thought possible just a few months ago.. It's ridiculous, I was in a green grocers trying to buy tomatoes and almost stooped to some of these guys as a way round the absolutely terrifying termaydoe. Tomato... it's become a word I can hardly get my mouth around in any pronounciation.
You don't consider these details in the gung-ho moment (a moment that lasted about a year for us) of moving continents.
As I was saying - I'm slightly uneasy coming back to England in case I've mutated, into an American without noticing – speaking with a slight transatlantic twang, eating with just a fork and ignoring the knife, demanding service and air-conditioning, tipping everyone that moves, wearing a loud checked jacket which I'll refer to as a coat...
But take heart, I began this piece by talking about the weather – there's nothing more British than that. It's what we do best. Apart from negativity, cynicism and sarcasm. Americans don't talk about the weather the way we do, any more than American men signal fancying a girl by standing on one leg, flapping there arms and talking drivel in a panicky voice (a singularly British male trait).
We arrived at the airport three hours early because it was Memorial Day, the nearest thing in America to August Bank Holiday. The traffic on the New York State Thruway was approaching dreadful – on a par with a typical Sunday afternoon on the M1. For a while we were worried but we'd taken the precaution of leaving early and suddenly we were in New Jersey and New Jersey was deserted because all of New Jersey, apart from those unlucky enough to live in the city of Newark are, according to the car rental return guy, sitting on beaches between Asbury Park and Atlantic City until Tuesday afternoon.
Newark Liberty International Airport is in the middle of a makeover, or a facelift. Bits of the terminal appear to be boxed off with large sheets of white melamine plastered with notices that say Pardon Our Appearance While We Work To Give You A Better Flying Experience. They should have signs that say Pardon The Unbearable Stench Of Rotting Garbage. (Garbage??? I'm sorry but refuse, rubbish or ordure wouldn't make sense in the context. It's as well to be vigilant though.) The landfill stench that pervade parts of northern New Jersey seems to have permeated the hermetically sealed airport environment. It's the smell of chemical deoderisers hastilly applied to stale vomit. A strange smell for an airport.
We had thoughts of gatecrashing the first class lounge. I thought they might feel sorry for us or even be charmed by our shabby guitar cases and so on. I imagined claiming to be with Rod Stewart: Isn't he here yet?!!? That's so typically Rod. Mind if we come in and wait? Followed by unpleasantness and: ...when Rod gets here you'll be looking for a new job young lady. And an undignified exit.
But we didn't. We climbed a marble staircase and peered in at an imperious British Airways stewardess clutching a clipboard-load of elligible names. Our wouldn't have been on it and there was no sign of Rod so we went back down the stairs and bought some overpriced food at a coffee stand between Hudson Stationers and the duty-free perfume outlet which was doing nothing to mask the smell of landfill.
At least the plane was new. Though that was a mixed blessing. New means some designer who has never suffered the indignity of flying steerage class finds a way of ramming a few more rows of seats in. There was a great choice and films and so on but once the guy in front had reclined his seat as far as it would go the screen was so close I had to put on reading glasses to decipher the pixels. And when the dinner came – forget it – the height of the seat in relation to the table coupled with the in-the-face seat back made it almost impossible to eat without my head touching the touch-sensitive screen and changing the channels.
They say travelling broadens the mind but it doesn't - travelling turns people into monsters and socio-paths. People might seem jolly, friendly and likeable even, but give them seven hours stacked up diagonally on a crowded flight and they'll all but trample each other in their desperation to get off the thing. When I die I'd like to come back the person sitting in front of every inconsiderate seat recliner I've ever sat behind.
The Sheffield gig was a fine start to the tour. We were still jet-lagged so it came as no surprise to me to discover half an hour from Sheffield that I'd left my amplifier in a cupboard in Norfolk. The promoter borrowed an amp from the folk guitar player Martin Simpson. Just what a folk guitar player is doing with a Vox AC15 I don't know but it was very kind of him to lend it to me. Apparently he's really good – one of the organisers left me in no doubt of this. Now he really is a great player, with a tacit not like you in brackets. I found it slightly offensive. I'm a good guitar player too.
We're supposed to be launching a Kickstarter thing to raise money to put out our fabulous new album. To do this we have to edit a little introductory film so I suppose I should just post this dwindling jet-lagged ramble and get on with it.
Watch out for the Kickstarter thing.
I'm worried that I might have gone native – I found myself completely unselfconsciously referring to trousers as pants the other day, something I never would have thought possible just a few months ago.. It's ridiculous, I was in a green grocers trying to buy tomatoes and almost stooped to some of these guys as a way round the absolutely terrifying termaydoe. Tomato... it's become a word I can hardly get my mouth around in any pronounciation.
You don't consider these details in the gung-ho moment (a moment that lasted about a year for us) of moving continents.
As I was saying - I'm slightly uneasy coming back to England in case I've mutated, into an American without noticing – speaking with a slight transatlantic twang, eating with just a fork and ignoring the knife, demanding service and air-conditioning, tipping everyone that moves, wearing a loud checked jacket which I'll refer to as a coat...
But take heart, I began this piece by talking about the weather – there's nothing more British than that. It's what we do best. Apart from negativity, cynicism and sarcasm. Americans don't talk about the weather the way we do, any more than American men signal fancying a girl by standing on one leg, flapping there arms and talking drivel in a panicky voice (a singularly British male trait).
We arrived at the airport three hours early because it was Memorial Day, the nearest thing in America to August Bank Holiday. The traffic on the New York State Thruway was approaching dreadful – on a par with a typical Sunday afternoon on the M1. For a while we were worried but we'd taken the precaution of leaving early and suddenly we were in New Jersey and New Jersey was deserted because all of New Jersey, apart from those unlucky enough to live in the city of Newark are, according to the car rental return guy, sitting on beaches between Asbury Park and Atlantic City until Tuesday afternoon.
Newark Liberty International Airport is in the middle of a makeover, or a facelift. Bits of the terminal appear to be boxed off with large sheets of white melamine plastered with notices that say Pardon Our Appearance While We Work To Give You A Better Flying Experience. They should have signs that say Pardon The Unbearable Stench Of Rotting Garbage. (Garbage??? I'm sorry but refuse, rubbish or ordure wouldn't make sense in the context. It's as well to be vigilant though.) The landfill stench that pervade parts of northern New Jersey seems to have permeated the hermetically sealed airport environment. It's the smell of chemical deoderisers hastilly applied to stale vomit. A strange smell for an airport.
We had thoughts of gatecrashing the first class lounge. I thought they might feel sorry for us or even be charmed by our shabby guitar cases and so on. I imagined claiming to be with Rod Stewart: Isn't he here yet?!!? That's so typically Rod. Mind if we come in and wait? Followed by unpleasantness and: ...when Rod gets here you'll be looking for a new job young lady. And an undignified exit.
But we didn't. We climbed a marble staircase and peered in at an imperious British Airways stewardess clutching a clipboard-load of elligible names. Our wouldn't have been on it and there was no sign of Rod so we went back down the stairs and bought some overpriced food at a coffee stand between Hudson Stationers and the duty-free perfume outlet which was doing nothing to mask the smell of landfill.
At least the plane was new. Though that was a mixed blessing. New means some designer who has never suffered the indignity of flying steerage class finds a way of ramming a few more rows of seats in. There was a great choice and films and so on but once the guy in front had reclined his seat as far as it would go the screen was so close I had to put on reading glasses to decipher the pixels. And when the dinner came – forget it – the height of the seat in relation to the table coupled with the in-the-face seat back made it almost impossible to eat without my head touching the touch-sensitive screen and changing the channels.
They say travelling broadens the mind but it doesn't - travelling turns people into monsters and socio-paths. People might seem jolly, friendly and likeable even, but give them seven hours stacked up diagonally on a crowded flight and they'll all but trample each other in their desperation to get off the thing. When I die I'd like to come back the person sitting in front of every inconsiderate seat recliner I've ever sat behind.
The Sheffield gig was a fine start to the tour. We were still jet-lagged so it came as no surprise to me to discover half an hour from Sheffield that I'd left my amplifier in a cupboard in Norfolk. The promoter borrowed an amp from the folk guitar player Martin Simpson. Just what a folk guitar player is doing with a Vox AC15 I don't know but it was very kind of him to lend it to me. Apparently he's really good – one of the organisers left me in no doubt of this. Now he really is a great player, with a tacit not like you in brackets. I found it slightly offensive. I'm a good guitar player too.
We're supposed to be launching a Kickstarter thing to raise money to put out our fabulous new album. To do this we have to edit a little introductory film so I suppose I should just post this dwindling jet-lagged ramble and get on with it.
Watch out for the Kickstarter thing.
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