overlap

Over and over and over and over, watching the same band many, many times can pale a little over the years. So it's often the what's new this time angle that is the interesting stuff, and this is no different: with the departure of Andres Karu from drumming duties - and given the transatlantic distance between one band member and the others, it's perfectly understandable that it becomes difficult to combine the rest of your life around that - there's a new face on the drum stool.

First man onto the stage, Fuzz Townsend is not an unfamiliar face to some of us, partially hidden behind shades and under a hat though his face is. As a veteran of Pop Will Eat Itself, Fuzz is rather closer to The Wonder Stuff's history, so it's going to be interesting to see how that changes things. With an hour-long set in the support slot for the tour, the stories are largely cut out as hit follows hit. The story about Kirsty MacColl that introduces Welcome To The Cheap Seats still brings a chill, Mother And I is still a welcome recent return to the set, and Sing The Absurd is dedicated to those of us who've survived all those years is preferable to a number of other possibilities.

Hammered down into the condensed set format, this is verging on a fantastically tight performance, perhaps at the crucial point of just easing into a new routine and before actually hitting cruising level. The little bit of ongoing adjustment of Fuzz to everyone else looks like it'll settle down further as time ticks on, but it's definitely a great time to see The Wonder Stuff all the same.

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Levelling The Land album, headliners The Levellers split the two sides (remember that, kids?) of the album with a handful of associated b-side tracks, and the re-appearance of The Devil Went Down To Georgia is a pleasant surprise among them. With the balcony bouncing alarmingly and the wave of heat rising off a venue I've rarely seen this packed in all my previous visits - and this now my fourth most attended venue, it turns out - it's more a sensory experience than a spectacle to watch, and after Battle Of The Beanfield I made a sharp exit instead of hanging around to see what would happen in the encore, in the faint hope of getting home and not increasing my current sleep deficit by too much.

All that, and posters advertising a couple of gigs that I really want to see in the coming months that will drag me back out onto the motorway with the excitement of finally seeing a couple of acts that have been on my radar for variously a couple of months and a couple of decades. Here we go again.

Labels: gigs, Levellers, The Wonder Stuff

My pre-Christmas exploits headed some way north of home, firstly to the shiny new Birmingham Academy where The Wonder Stuff's second (and weakest of the first four*) album, Hup!, was perfromed in its entirety. * complaints to the usual address! Taking over all three stages in the venue meant for high scores of the value-for-money-ometer, and a bit of a festival vibe in the moving from one stage to another to see a bit of everything. Timothy Parkes still doesn't get me hugely excited but his song Looks Like Rain is definitely growing on me. Then it's off upstairs to catch a bit of Dirty Ray, and his song The Rain Song is also a highlight, in fact he makes a far better impression on me from the stage than he does on the Shared album, which is nice. Anyone spotting a weather theme coming through? I hadn't seen Dave Sharp since he scuttled off with his hood up, the only member of The Alarm not signing autographs for the people who'd stood around waiting for them after the show on a frozen Jaunary night. On this equally snowy of nights, Dave is busier telling stories than getting on with playing songs and it doesn't feel like a shame when I'm heading off for the main stage. Main support The Twang caused a bit of dissent when they were announced as the main support band, but bringing through representatives of a new generation to introduce them to tired old hasbeens like me is no bad thing. I was pretty impressed, and writing this up has reminded me that I've still to get their album despite making plans to do so when I was watching them. A quick trip back upstairs to see Jim Bob's solo acoustic renderings of Carter USM hits and his own Touchy Feely was well worth hanging around in a draughty doorway for, the room being rammed. Great stuff, but no surprises there. And so to the main event. The album Hup! is played through in a dfifferent order to its vinyl incarnation, with some explanation from Miles about how they got the running order wrong back in the day. Because the high tech venue refurbs mean it's pretty well aircon-cooled where I'm stood, I never really get warmed up and the fact the whole thing is going down on six or eight cameras for a later DVD release means it's a bit more of a performance than the slightly more appealing shambles it can sometimes be. The post-Hup! section of the gig goes on for some time, and while it's fantastic to hear Unfaithful and 30 Years In The Bathroom and Them Big Oak Trees again, there's a couple of songs I could happily never hear again. Whatever the moans, it was a worthy occasion and a better way to do a gig with all the other acts than the lesser event it would almost certainly have been otherwise. And having a room in the hotel at only a stone's throw away from the venue was definitely a big plus on a snowy night.

Labels: gigs, Jim Bob, The Twang, The Wonder Stuff

A certain lack of engagement in sweating my utmost for the company (that still can't decide whether to continue my employment or not, despite the very imminent deadline for a decision) means my conscience is pretty clear as I leave the office after less than a half a working day. Having not been to a gig in London for months, it's something of a refreshing reversion to normality to be on the motorway for half the afternoon, listening to England's first innings in the deciding Ashes Test as the wickets tumble. And a lesser experience that I couldn't face becoming a normality as I'm gradually working my way through the London traffic. 'Hold your nerve and hold your line' appears to be about the best approach, and is a decent line on the approach I'm taking in the face of my employer's unintentional brinksmanship. For a change, and yet not much of a change, I'm pleased to see a bunch of people I haven't seen in a few months, including someone who's taking my spare ticket off my hands. The cash for the spare ticket is quickly exchanged for the Shared album, and it's straight inside to watch one of the artists on it, Timothy Parkes. When I saw him last, I found myself mildly uncertain what to make of him but he's obviously got his own style and the acoustic guitar on his track Looks Like Rain sounds not unlike Fixer or something else by Vent414, so that's always going to be a bonus. Can't say I'm going to rush to travel for hours to see him on his own, but he's another to file under the category of support acts I intend to catch and keep an eye on. This many years on, anything I have to say about the experience of The Wonder Stuff live on stage is hardly objective, and likely to be more about the peripheral aspects of the gig-going experience. Nevertheless it's a solid show in a tiny venue, and with either the live sound mix or my position relative to the speakers making Mark McCarthy's bass sound more like a Ned's Atomic Dustbin style lead instrument than just some background thudding. The recent reinventions of both 'Mother And I' and 'The Animals And Me' sound splendid, and it's a pretty damn good gig that finishes only just after the 11pm curfew. Despite a brief tour of Mortlake as I miss a turning somewhere, the clear motorway sees me home before 2.15, which is also a welcome change. Apart from when I was slowed down by a burst of very heavy rain, this was one of those drives when I almost wish I had a CD player in the car, all the better to listen to the Shared album. The tracks by Wayne Hussey featured at the Shared show in Jaunary, so there's little new there, Timothy Parkes I've already mentioned, and the three new songs by Miles Hunt and Erica Nockalls are up to their normal high standard, and unsurprisingly would easily have fitted on the Catching More Than We Miss album. Dirty Ray is someone I'm not about to rush out in search of as the Tom Waits growl thing leaves me totally cold but you know, Waits has had a good enough career to manage without me and Dirty Ray shouldn't lose any sleep over my taste either. Which leaves the two new artists that impress me most on this album - Matthew Derrick's three tracks sound remarkably like early solo Miles Hunt, and could easily be outtakes from Hairy On The Inside. Better keep my eyes peeled for his name appearing in local listings, as I really want to hear more. Rob Dunsford's 'Millionaire' sounds inordinately like Liam Dullaghan's band The Have-Nots in the bittersweet blend of male and female vocals, but it's the slightly fuller sound of 'Dashboard Therapy', helped immensely by the accordion, which really catches my attention. There's someone else in there who he reminds me of a little, it may well be Rob from The Voluntary Butler Scheme, but that'll come to me in time. It's not as if I won't be listening to these tracks again, as a quick look at last.fm will tell you! So for two brand new artists I'd never encountered before, Shared (the album) represents excellent value. Cheers, Milo! * is a line from Rob Dunsford's magnificent 'Dashboard Therapy'. Setlist ------- Red Berry Joy Town A Wish Away It's Yer Money Here Comes Everyone On The Ropes Caught In My Shadow Circlesquare Mission Drive Size Of A Cow Donation Golden Green Animals And Me Don't Let Me Down, Gently Radio Ass Kiss Give Unbearable Ten Trenches --- Cartoon Boyfriend Mother And I Ruby Horse Poison

Labels: gigs, Matthew Derrick, Rob Dunsford, Shared, The Wonder Stuff

Going to see the same band dozens of times invites questions about why keep on going, and in many cases it's the different songs, different inter-song anecdotes, different venues and different support bands that keep things from becoming routine. In this case it's a trip to the Midlands back to a venue I've been to a few times now, and including a trip to a nearby out of town shopping centre that allows me to make a start on replacing all the stuff lost in an airport somewhere in Asia. It's not just not having the stuff, it's the research it takes to find out what is currently available and what my realistic options are that makes life difficult. Bearing in mind that some of this stuff absolutely has to be replaced before I'm out of the country again inside the the next month, I don't have too much time to spare and getting on with buying replacement items feels rather more like taking some control of the situation than just waiting for an airline and an insurance company to do something. I manage only to buy more or less what I'd planned, and leave without yet another new handbag, so that's progress on two fronts! Unusually there are few people at this gig that I know, and the ones I do know are working, either selling t-shirts and CDs, or on the stage. Which means I'm free to take in the support band with all my attention. The first track is a nice enough piece of brass-flavoured pop, and if that makes you think of the Zutons you are somewhere along the right lines. This is no preparation for the second track, when the seven musicians and singers are joined on stage by a vision in red and grey gloves. Check out the picture! For anyone who, like me, is not aware that there is a significant visual element to Misty's Big Adventure, this is something of a surprise! Not an unwelcome one, but one that threatens to distract from the music, though happily the band are obviously used to this and it rapidly becomes just their kind of normal. There's a risk of accusations of novelty act, of stuntmanship and of cheap attention-seeking but for me it's pretty straightforward that Erotic Volvo (made-up name!) is both an integral part of the MBA performance and something that elevates MBA from being just another band. Their laid-back, jazz-tinged and laconic pop is a welcome tonic in the bland age, and I'm happy to appreciate them for what they are rather than what they're not, and what they are is great fun. It's a refreshing change for The Wonder Stuff set to switch closer to a greatest hits set rather than performing the entire Eight Legged Groove Machine album as we've seen recently, and Radio Ass Kiss and Piece Of Sky dedicated to Swells both hit the spot. I'm hardly in any position to pass unbiased comment, but I had a great time. * Great Adventure is a song by classic Midlands hard rock band Magnum, who have recently released another new album. Misty's Big Adventure are also from the Midlands, and great!

Labels: gigs, Misty's Big Adventure, The Wonder Stuff

I'm sure that I said I had certain misgivings about the recreation of a whole album during the first shows of this type last year. While those misgivings were blown away by the freshness of how it sounded, it's not for no reason that there is the odd song from most albums that gets lost along the way. There's a couple of singles I'd happily add to that category too, though possibly not the ones you might immediately imagine. But it's not every day I get to go out in vintage clothing - see above! Support on this tour is The Men They Couldn't Hang, peddling their new album Devil On The Wind to a bunch of people who possibly aren't so familiar with TMTCH as they have been with previous tour supports. No matter, their folk-rock meets traditional songwriting meets agit-pop approach warms up the crowd a treat as they fill the stage with musicians and tunes. A very good start to any evening. Possibly the pivotal album in my life, The Eight Legged Groove Machine comes from a time when singles existed on vinyl and had PO Box numbers or postal addresses on the back, and came with b-sides and bonus tracks that were often as good or better than stuff on the associated album. It seems a very long time ago from a world where an album is now only a notional concept, but the first songs sound like long lost friends coming back from years out of the picture. If I never hear Like A Merry Go Round live again it'll be a shame, but it's great to be reminded I should listen to it perhaps more frequently than I ordinarily do. The real reward (part one) of making the effort to get to the two more convenient gigs on this tour is the tracks that weren't on the original album. Goodbye Fatman, Astley In The Noose and Song Without An End is a trilogy of stone cold classics, despite what anyone say about the Astley lyrics. There follows a short hits set, lamentably including Golden Green which is a song I could happily never hear again, but all the same it's a cracking show even from a band I've seen more times than I'm tempted to admit. The real reward (part two) in paying the extra few quid for the VIP ticket to the London show is a final short set of the other three tracks from the original Wonderful Day ep, which I am pretty certain I have never heard live before, or if I have it's not in the last twenty years. The thrill of witnessing these few songs is jaw-dropping, and worth the trouble and the travel on its own. If we do go through the same routine for the second album Hup!, I'm already excited about hearing It Was Me live again for the first time in a couple of decades, what a great excuse to Get Together! * 'Over and over and over and over' is from Who Wants To Be The Disco King?, another single from the ELGM time, and for a band who it currently turns out have been at one gig in every nine I've seen over the past twenty-odd years, there's a certain resonance there too!

Labels: gigs, The Men They Couldn't Hang, The Wonder Stuff

Since the rise of the Don’t Look Back series of shows featuring people doing so-called classic albums in their entirety, the idea seems to have expanded a little. Playing all the album’s songs live is one thing but re-recording the album and associated tracks twenty years down the line is quite another, and my initial reaction to the idea was hardly one of embracing the idea. I really wasn’t expecting a new version could add much to the original, which just goes to show how wrong you can be. The Eight Legged Groove Machine is a pivotal album in my life, I remember very well the circumstances in which I came to buy my first copy on its original release, on the day I banked a grant cheque. I’m not sure whether buying it on cassette or with a grant dates it more, but there has been an awful lot of water under a lot of bridges in the meantime. Fast forward to years later, and a couple of gigs to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the album. Following a remarkably cold night, the requirement to move the car revealed that the overnight temperatures have finished off an aged battery, though luckily I found that out a little before I was due to leave. A telephone conversation with my car mechanic produces the remote diagnosis that the battery had had it, and that I shouldn’t go anywhere without getting a new battery put in. So what else was I going to do but stick the battery charger on for an hour, and go to the gig anyway? With a couple of hours driving to top the battery up, I parked on a slight slope to give me an extra chance of getting going again after the gig, and headed off to the venue via an unintentional wander around the city. I think I’ve got it now, but I still find it a horrible city to drive in. Support band Jesus Jones took the stage in uniform white shirts, as per It Bites, and from the opening words of Who? Where? Why? through to the final blast of Info Freako, it was guitar and sample excitement all the way. Talking with someone else about the shared experience of not expecting to know much of their set and then turning out to know seven out of nine songs, it’s a good sign of how much familiar material Jesus Jones have, and even if I don’t listen to them much I have grown to really enjoy them over half a dozen support slots. I listened to the original ELGM in its original order a couple of times before the gig, and the advent of mp3s and random play functions has pretty much brought an end to that as usual practice too. There is little on the album that has never been done live, and yet somehow the running order isn’t so firmly ingrained in my mind as it once was, so among the live favourites of yore it turns out quite refreshing to hear, in particular, Like A Merry Go Round and The Animals And Me again. With an album that doesn’t make forty minutes, there is plenty of room for what could turn out to be padding, but hearing Goodbye Fatman (I think the first time it’s been played since Martin Gilks died), Ooh She Said, Astley In the Noose and Song Without An End makes for a thoroughly worthy endeavour. A further mini set, consisting predominantly of other early tracks as well as Here Comes Everyone, Mission Drive and On The Ropes drags us through to a thunderous Ten Trenches Deep to round off a great show. So much so that I bought the 2008 Legged Groove Machine anyway, and after a few words with people I hadn’t seen for a while I headed for the car. Which happily started first time, and I got home around 2.30. It should surprise nobody that the car battery didn't get replaced till I'd repeated the exercise to get to the London gig the following day!

Labels: gigs, Jesus Jones, The Wonder Stuff

After the Blissfields Festival got cancelled at a fairly late stage, it was possible that the warm-up gig would have been cancelled, though happily it all went ahead as something else got found to fill in the Blissfields date. There's always something about the first show of more than one, in this case the first of three, though I was only going to make it two. Running into people I've not seen for a while, catching up on what's going on in other people's lives, and getting a decent gig on top is a good way to spend an evening. For non-locals, a gig on a boat is an additional novelty, for a guitarist who has spent some time without picking up a guitar on account of getting on with the more important business of fatherhood, it's a pleasant change even with a troubled hand and with an early start for an early curfew for a club night to follow, there was an outside chance I'd get an earlyish night, but as it happened... In what seems to be an ongoing routine of support bands with questionable names, I sat through The Weary Band because I like support bands, and I don't want to miss something I might like. Starting off like the more bouncy jangly indie of The Candyskins, we sort of lost our way a bit by the end of the set. Nothing outstanding either way, but you never know when a band is going to write the next great song. The Wonder Stuff romped through nearly ninety minutes of a set comprising a predictable selection of songs, all of them hit at full speed, with Donation in particular rocking the boat. The curfew meant that it was a pretty focused set, hit after hit after classic album track, and the set finished a mere twenty five minutes after the arbitrary curfew. Somehow the early night turned into getting home at 1.30 via some late night shopping in the 24 hour supermarket, but then I did have the next day off. Four hours of the afternoon were spent enjoying the motorways between here and the East Midlands, and the rarity value of not driving to and from the gig meant itself somehow combined with half a bottle of wine. For unknown support bands with iffy names, at least The Weary Band is understandable from the stage. But perfect diction and audio clarity (or a glut of flyers!) is required to understand what The Fideal Efect are called. The guitarist looks like Lofty Holloway re-styled by Radiohead, the singer has armfuls of star tattoos and a certain presence but even now while I'm listening to them on myspace, I'm struggling to pin them down. It's a bit like a slowed down Bennet with more of those horrible RadioFerdinandPatrol held down chord shapes strummed relentlessly than any band really needs, ie some, but it'll be interesting to see if they can come up with any more memorable songs from this vaguely promising start. The headline set was marginally less loud but noticeably hotter, and it is a funny little place for a gig. Not quite hitting the previous night's heights, possibly down to needing a little more ventilation or cool air movement, but still a more than proficient way to race through nearly ninety minutes of great songs. Somehow I never tire of Mission Drive, or Disco King, or Blah Blah La di Dah, or On The Ropes for that matter. And even getting back out to the motorway wasn't that tricky, despite the less than circular nature of Derby's ring road! * "I'm just two legs of the groove machine" is from Radio Ass Kiss

Labels: gigs, The Wonder Stuff

This is a rubbish picture of Martin Gilks, drumming for my favourite band. He died on monday - he was 41. There really isn't much to say to that.

Labels: Martin Gilks, The Wonder Stuff

I'm led to believe that 'But you saw them last night, why do you need to go again tonight?' is a familiar domestic refrain in some parts, and today I have something of an answer.

Every show is slightly different and has something to make it stand out from all the others - sunday as the first night I made on this tour and a return to a city I haven't visited in a very long time, on which note more in the next week or so. Wednesday was a cracking show, in another city I've not been to in ages, and extra memorable for the unusually ambitious drive home.

Tuesday will stand out as the one where I found myself in that little bit of extra unfamiliar territory; sure, I've been on guestlists, and in soundchecks, I've been backstage and in dressing rooms, and I reckon I've got a pretty good idea how the whole thing fits together outside of the hours on the stage itself.

And if you take the four main players in the three bands on this tour, I've seen getting on for 120 performances of ten different incarnations of bands involving these people, so I know them a bit, they know me a bit but that's just a function of the amount of time we've spent in the same places, it doesn't make me any kind of special.

On tuesday night I was backstage before the doors opened, and I was pleased to find I've not lost the childish enthusiasm that stops the whole thing becoming no more than habit, and for a brief moment I touched a guitar which was later used for one song only that night, one of my favourites.

Still my guitar hero indeed!

Labels: Amsterdam, Dolittle, gigs, music, The Wonder Stuff

Nobody would be fooled were I not to post this, so the bare facts are as follows: left Manchester at 11pm, passed midnight giggling at a rather poor attempt at intimidatory and aggressive driving just south of Stoke, at 1 am I was singing along with MC Solaar and after three and half hours and 190 miles, I stepped out of my car at home.

There will be a post or several to follow, but at a time when that doesn't stand between me and my bed. It was a good night though!

Labels: Amsterdam, Dolittle, gigs, music, The Wonder Stuff

There's nothing quite like the first show of a tour. Even if in the web-enabled age, news is reported before it's finished happening, and the surprises tend to lose a little something in the process, but despite having a good idea what to expect, it's always nice to be reminded why dusting down a few familiar old songs was going to be a good idea.

Great to see a few friends of mine, and two of my favourite bands, and with the third one joining the tour in a couple of days, throat lurgy willing, I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks. But in the meantime, it's bedtime - all rock and no sleep makes too many broken cliches turn into a mumbling mess, and I have to be at work in not many hours.

Labels: Amsterdam, gigs, music, The Wonder Stuff

Well, I feel pretty good considering. Being at my desk means I'm just about getting over the disorienting what-time-is-it-where-am-I? feeling, the sun's out (sort of) and everything's good.

Sunday night was a very late night, for frustrating technological reasons, monday was an earlier start than normal so I could drive to work and then drive away in the afternoon. I spent some of the afternoon on a train, heading off to watch a half-hour live acoustic set in a branch of a major high street music retailer.

There's always something special about the day a new album comes out, whether or not it's the first chance to hear new songs as intended rather than as scratchy live versions, and though I've already been listening to the new album for a couple of weeks it's still a pleasure to see it finally turn up on the shelves of what old-fashioned stick-in-the-muds like me can't help calling 'record shops'.

So, a 5pm performance saw us queued up outside HMV like we were waiting for the Beatles, and after some time catching up* with mates of mine who I rarely see from one tour to the next, I was on a train out of New Street station by 7pm and home for 9.30 - not the sort of time I would normally get home from gigs in the Midlands!

* and arranging who's going where on the forthcoming tour, natch!

Labels: gigs, The Wonder Stuff