Paul’s been beavering away over the Easter break battling with discog.com and last.fm to get some info and music content available on those two sites. The Sink & K-Line pages at last.fm are looking pretty good and worth a visit if you’re a last.fm user. Actually, thinking about it, there isn’t currently a lot of K-Line music available on this site so might be worth a visit to last.fm if you want to fill your boots.

More soon about our ongoing efforts getting the back catalogue available on last.fm and documented via discog.com

Aston Stephens from Boss Tuneage just got in touch via email with news of the Stupids re-issues collection that he’s been co-ordinating since 2005…yep, it’s been a long road, but we thank him for his endeavours

The set will finally be released on 30th June 2008. James Sherry (ex-K-Line drummer and star HC journo) is doing all the liner notes, which is a good thing I think. The other interesting thing is that Sanctuary - who bought the rights to the early Stupids releases from Trojan/Clay who had originally bought them from Manic Ears who bought them from C.O.R….no-one said this was going to make sense!!! - were recently themselves bought by Universal. This means that Aston is licensing all the C.O.R. era releases from Universal! Hah! The Stupids finally make it onto a major…sort of.

I haven’t heard at lot of this stuff for 20 years and I honestly can’t remember half of the songs that the band released on Vinyl Solution so I’m looking forward to the trip down memory lane. Tom has been closely involved with Aston during the time it’s taken to get the stuff put together, so I think it’ll be a really great collection with all boxes ticked. Highlights for me will be hearing the Peel sessions again and also the original Frankfurter 4-track which I definitely remember as being ‘a good thing’.

Packaging-wise CDs will be digipacks with 16 page booklets and “vinyl effect” CDs, the vinyl will be 12″ gatefold sleeves on coloured vinyl. Anyway, here are some headlines about the releases. More details and (hopefully) artwork nearer the time. 
 
Release #1:  
VIOLENT NUN - as an 12″ LP with the extra Leave Your Ears Behind tracks - CD Version also includes the entire FAT DRUNK AND STUPID demo (26 tracks total)
 
Release # 2: 
PERUVIAN VACATION - 12″ LP as per original album, CD has Mr Adult and the Jan 85 demos on it plus 3 Coolest Retards tracks (33 tracks total)
 
Release # 3:
RETARD PICNIC - 12″ LP as per original album , CD has Retard Picnic outtakes and “stupids Flexi”, plus the Washington DC 14-1-87 live show with Stu Hill on bass (42 tracks)
 
Release # 4:
COMPLETE PEEL SESSIONS - containing the three STUPIDS Peel sessions and FRANKFURTER peel session; 12″ LP and CD with new cover art from Chris Shary (20 tracks)
 
Release # 5: 
VAN STUPID / FRANKFURTER -  12″ LP like the French version (ie Van Stupid less Stoopie Boys on one side/Eat EP on the other) - CD has the Frankfurter Jim P demo as bonus tracks - Jim P supplied me a CDR of it (23 tracks total)
 
Release # 6: 
JESUS MEETS THE STUPIDS - 12″ LP like original album, CD curently has the 5 track 7″ as bonus tracks - plus ”Live To Rock” and “Buttum”.

More details to follow, but John Ruscoe and I are playing an acoustic gig in Cambridge in April. We haven’t worked out a set yet, but suspect it’ll be a mix of Sink and Big Ray numbers with the odd cover and maybe a new song or two. Hoping this will be the start of us doing it as a regular partnership, but we’re both really busy so it’ll be patchy at best. Looking forward to it though. Will post more info as I get it from the guys putting it on.

UPDATE: The promoters have a website at  www.ciarafest.co.uk and tickets are on sale here.