The Billy No Mates gigs for the start of April have been confirmed. Still waiting for details on which other bands will be on the bills, but I thought I’d get this up ASAP so you could all book the dates in your diaries

2 April - Gillingham, The Beacon Court Tavern
3 April - Brighton, Hobgoblin
4 April - Cambridge, Portland Arms
5 April - London, Thw Windmill (Brixton)

Duncan from Billy No Mates called me last night to ask if I was interested in joining him, Wes & Steve on 2nd guitar. He’s had a spell as front man over the last year or 2, but has decided to return to his traditional spot behind the kit & that left a vacancy on guitar. I reckon it will be a lot of fun so I signed up straight away. We’ve not actually practised or anything so there’s definitely time yet for something to go horribly wrong.

There are a couple of gigs in the pipeline, so assuming I don’t mess up in rehearsal it looks like I’ll be playing punk rock again from time to time around the UK & possibly Europe. Hurrah! The one confirmed date so far is at the start of April….somewhat inveitably at The Portland in Cambridge. That will make it 3 out of the 4 gigs I’ve played in the last 12 months. Weird.

Duncan’s trying to arrange a London gig & possibly a Canterbury one around the same time, so obviously more on that front & any other related Billy No Mates news over the next few weeks.

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet Archive I stumbled across a load of old content from some of my bands’ original websites (lovingly maintained by me using Notepad). If there’s anything worthwhile to be mined from that particular creaky old cupboard I’ll be sure to post it here. A decent starter for 10 is this old Chocolate bio. All the text is original; I’ve updated some of the links.

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Chocolate was formed in the long-hot summer of 1993 by Ed Wenn (guitar & vocals), Wolfie Retard (bass) & John Ruscoe (drums & vocals). Bored of playing “adult” music in their other bands, they decided to spice things up a bit and re-visit their punk roots. A mini-album - Substitute For Sex - was released through Dirter Promotions soon after in October 1993 and, with Brian Running (vocals & stupid dances) added to the line-up, the band headed off to tour Europe with their favourite popular beat combo, The Dambuilders, from Boston USA. On returning to the UK, Brian left the band after a final show and due to his departure an LP, planned for the summer of ‘94 was put on hold. The other three had business with their other bands (Big Ray, Yardman & Love Junk) and Chocolate was put on the back burner for a few months.

New Year’s Day 1995: John wakes up on the floor after a party at El Bell’s house (Domino Records head honcho) and finds himself having a conversation with the guy that slept next to him on the floor.
“Are you the bloke from that band Chocolate?”
“Yeah…who are you?”
“My name’s Russell. I’m thinking of starting up my own label and I’d love to your next record.”
It had to be the drugs talking. No-one means what they say after one of those parties and so John thought no more of it until a few weeks later when he mentioned the conversation to Ed.
“So call the guy back. See if he’s serious. Who knows….this could be the start of something beautiful.”

In the meantime Russell had already started to set up his label, Out Of Step Records, and when John called him back he confirmed that he was definitely serious about becoming our Sugar-Daddy. Mindful of the fact that Rus could easily wake up to reality and bottle out, the boys immediately hit the studio and recorded a slew of tracks with the aid of new front man, “Sizeable” Simon Finbow. So as not to break the Chocolate tradition, Simon was also in another band - Ipswich’s premier black-clad industrial metal noise merchants, Optimum Wound Profile.

As Rus and the band shared the opinion that there was too much poppy, MOR punk rock about, the Chocolate sound got noticeably heavier from the moment they sold their souls to the man with the bad Sid Vicious tattoo! The first release on Out Of Step was the awesome thrash anthem Dead Skin (May 1995) which was quickly followed by the slightly more poppy surge of Blue Streak. The next release was supposed to be the band’s first full-length album. Artwork was ready, test-pressings had been given the thumbs up and the Out Of Step sales machine was about to roll into action when we suddenly found we had a problem with a sample we’d used from a Rage Against The Machine song. After a couple of months spent chasing their publishers for an answer, we were finally informed that the band had refused us permission to use it. Very nice of them. The offending track, Break The Mould, had to be re-edited and the whole album had to be re-mastered.

But while all that had been happening the band had not been idle. Five 1000mph thrash tracks were recorded in October ‘95 and appeared on the Volume organization’s compilation of the finest loud music around, “Metallurgy”. Also featured on the CD are rock heavyweights such as Faith No More, Sepultura & Helmet. But its Chocolate who steal the show with 5 of the 15 tracks….and just over 4 minutes of the total playing time!! For more info on the “Metallurgy” CD and the 120-page magazine that goes along with it feel free to email the good people at Volume.

With the album still on hold it was decided to push ahead with what would have been the next release. The 5 Volume tracks plus 7 more recorded at the same time make up the latest Chocolate release, Slow & Low, a 12 song 7″ single that marks the end of the second phase of the band’s development. And, yes, the title is a nod to our fave popsters the Beastie Boys. Released on March 26th 1996 it is the last record to feature Wolfie and Simon. Slow & Low is the logical place to step off the thrash merry-go-round and aim for something different. We couldn’t really have gotten anymore extreme and we probably wouldn’t have wanted to if we could.

In the meantime, Hung, Gifted & Slack - the album we had so much trouble with - has now finally been released (and reviewed - but that’s for when we get the press section up and running). Guess what? It’s actually selling pretty damn well too. The album mixes the frantic and the laid-back and will change the way people look at 5th-hand-retro-punk for ever!

With the new approach came 2 new faces. Clive Watling (formerly of Elmerhassel) took over lead vocal and rhythm guitar duties whilst John’s brother Andrew was draughted in to play bass. With a few seriously groovy shows under their belt the new line-up had its first studio outing in July ‘96 to record the follow-up to the album. The now classic, Sale Copy Only - Not For Review was released on 6th December, but it was to be the final release featuring the mad drumming of Wild Johnny Ruscoe as he left in the same month to play guitar in a London-based pop outfit with a stupid name and girl backing singers. Good luck from us to him.

This left Ed as the only original member and a drumming vacancy…Step up Pete Walkden - former drummer w/ Clive’s band Elmerhassel and man-about-town DJ extraordinaire to fill in at very short notice. A few more shows under our belts with the latest line-up and we were ready to get back into the studio to record 4 or 5 tracks that will be bundled on a CD release of the last two singles (making it a 21 track punk rock extravaganza that should not be missed). The songs have been laid down (clown)….

The future’s brown…the future’s Chocolate!

Liquid Man was together for 3 days in October 2004. Liquid Man was Damion Rice on bass, Sid on drums, Ed on vocals & guitars & John Ruscoe on lead guitar. The songs were written and rehearsed in one evening at Unit 9 in Balham and then recorded the next day by John Hannon at No Recording Studio in Rayleigh. They were mixed 2 weeks later. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Eat My FCUK - MP3 (3.4MB) download or play

December Grey  - MP3 (5.4MB) download or play

Everything We’ve Lost - MP3 (3.0MB) download or play

EAT MY FCUK

You’ve got us telling your cheap joke
You’ve got us doing your advertising
The filth and fury hits the high streets
You’ve even got us paying for it.
You always talk about profit
Always talk about driving demand
Never talk about the broken lives
Or the real cost of production

Eat my FCUK
Why don’t you eat my FCUK

I never felt this so clearly.
Never felt this fear before.
I never felt so stupid and ugly
Looking down on us from above
So be a good customer.
Get a shiny new upgrade
‘Cos nothing here is built to last
But it says a lot about you.

DECEMBER GREY

I’m tired again. I’m  writing bullshit down.
‘Cos it’s cheaper than therapy and I’m a cheapskate rich kid these days.
With no self-worth, but still an arrogant little fuck.
Work that one out for me.

No more stupidity. No more lying down for me.
I’ve got to start to try.
Pull the trigger. Fire the gun.
Kill off feeling bad for fun.
Kill off hating everyone & start to try.

This thing is physical. Maybe intellectual
But right now, it’s fuck all use to me.
Like I need some more confusion in my life.
What the fuck…”Hello, confusion.
Work this one out for me.”

Wake up soaked-through
And shaking tired again today.
Light inching through my window.
Some more December grey.

EVERYTHING WE’VE LOST

I feel it in the morning and in my bones all day
I taste it in the evening when the sun’s gone away.
I sleep on it at night and wake to find it next to me.
This sense of helplessness. This sense of loss

It’s sick you can’t deny it.
I’m scared but I’m still trying.
I’m sick and tired of missing everything we’ve lost.
So turn your backs and hide
Find comfort in lies
I hope you like it on the other side.
I’m scared but I’m still trying.

Maybe it’s too easy looking back from where we are.
But I swear we saw it coming; hard to miss a dying star.
So turn your backs for safety. Get used to never saying, “No”.
But don’t be surprised when there’s nowhere left to go.

So turn your backs.
Get used to never saying “No”.
But when you want to leave don’t be surprised when there’s nowhere left to go.

Slideshow of some photos that Damion took while we were recording the Liquid Man songs.

There were a couple of versions of K-Line that knocked around in rehearsal rooms in various parts of London before the line-up that most of you know about got together and starting gigging and recording. The very first one featured me on guitar & vocals with Scott Stewart on drums and Micha Meisterling on bass. 1 or 2 rehearsals in, Scott (who was playing guitar in the VERY mighty, Dead Inside), enlisted Paul Symes - also from Dead Inside - to come in on 2nd guitar. Soon after that Micha announced he was moving back to Germany for work reasons and so I asked my old partner in crime, Paul Duncan, to join on bass.

This line-up of Paul, Paul, Scott and me was together for maybe 6 months. We wrote a bunch of songs and rehearsed sporadically. There was even talk of where to play our first show. After a while though it became apparent that Paul & Scott were getting too busy touring with Dead Inside to play in K-Line too so we decided to bring a 4-track along to the next rehearsal and record what we had for posterity. I added the vocals later at home. The songs below are the result of that exercise.

 

 Layers: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Stay Poor: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Start To Try (December Grey): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Manifest Destiny: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Days of Empire: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Where's Evolution?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Fragile: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Ed Wenn - Vocals & guitar
• Paul Duncan - Bass
• Scott Stewart - Drums
• Paul Symes - Guitar

All in all they are a bunch of promising, but very rough and mostly unfinished songs; a glimpse if you like into where this line-up may have headed had we tightened up and started playing. They’re a bit noodly in places and not direct enough, but this was all pretty embryonic stuff. At the time I was gutted that Paul & Scott left, but then I wasn’t to know that James, Zac and later Rich, were just around the corner. Looking back on it now I’m honoured to have played with Paul & Scott bearing in mind where Dead Inside & later Bullet Union went; 2 very talented men.

If you’re a K-Line fan you’ll recognise Stay Poor, but nothing else. If you’re a Liquidman fan you’ll have worked out that the lyric to Start To Try is almost identical to December Grey. I still wished we’d worked on Layers (one of my fave songs) and possibly Fragile with the final K-Line line-up, but Zac didn’t want to sing any of my lyrics for whatever reason and so Stay Poor remains the only song from this first incarnation that we took further.