I’m pleased to announce that Liquidman will be supporting Leatherface at The Portland Arms in Cambridge on Thursday 24th June. Sweet.

I’ve not posted anything here for a while and I haven’t got any gigs coming up, but I have been reasonably busy. In the interests of brevity, here’s a quick roundup of what’s happened so far in 2010.

• I played guitar on a couple of tracks from the new Billy No Mates album, which I think is going to be called “Duck, Duck, Goose“. The album’s not mixed yet, but I’ve heard a rough mix of all the songs and it’s really good. Definitely one to look out for. I’ll update here when it’s finally released.
• Unfortunately the planned Billy No Mates tour in Germany fell victim to a bit of punk rock organisation and is no more.
• My new punk band, Liquidman, had a couple of really good reherasals with our new bassist, Damion Rice (formerly of The Killerest Expression). Rich switched from bass to lead guitar and it’s sounding great. We had a few potentials on the gig front, but they all faded away…then we all got busy and now it’s mid-May. Hmmm. Maybe things will pick up later in the year? Maybe I should schmooze more and go to gigs?
• The biggest news though is the fact that I’ve started work on a new Big Ray album. Yep, you heard that correctly. Let’s face it….the history of rock’n'roll is littered with pointless gestures, so what’s the problem with one more? The idea is to plug away and get it all finished by the end of the year. Over and above that there are no plans, but hopefully the process will get me off my arse and out there playing more acoustic gigs in 2011. I’m recording the acoustic guitar & vocal backing tracks with Rich Matthews in his studio in London and will then get the rest of the cast to add their material on top either in person or via the wonders of the Internet. So far lined up to play on the songs are Big Ray regulars Reado (drums), Paul Duncan (bass) and possibly John Ruscoe (guitar). In addition two of my favourite musicians, Michael Hampton and Dave Derby, both from New York will be continuing their Big Ray associations by sprinkling their own brands of fairy dust over the music from their respective home studios in the Big Apple. Michael in particular had a huge impact on “Business Class” so expect more of the same from him. Additionally I hope to rope in Mickey Trenter, Clive Watling, Li’l Lost Lou, James Allen and possibly some others to round things off. I’ll probably post odds and sods from the recordings as we go along before making the final thing available here for free as always once it’s done. In that spirit here’s a very ‘early days’ version of one of the new songs, “Shimmy“. Check it out now and then wait to compare it with the finished version in early 2011.

 

 Shimmy (work in progress): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Down Around

Concert footage from a K-Line gig at Dingwalls, London edited by Matt & Sophie Elmy to fit reasonably closely with the audio of “Down Around” taken from the 2nd K-Line EP. Filmed by Matt Elmy & Graham Pryor.

Link in case the embed code fails: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1t4ak0Ml1Y

Stay Poor

A very low-fi video of “Stay Poor” a song taken from K-Line’s first E.P. “In The Red”. Filmed and edited by Roop Coulson (who also recorded & mixed the song).

Link in case the embed code fails: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAp_qiHSrV4

Bikini Black Alpha (instrumental version)

Filmed by a load of different people. There’s a version of this somewhere with vocals on it.Link in case the embed code fails: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxffK19GKKQ

Sink did a big 9 week, joint-headline tour of Europe (including dates in the UK) with our bestest buddies from Washington DC, Shudder To Think. They had just released Tenspot on Dischord and would record Funeral At The Movies at Southern in London directly after the tour. Shudder were my favourite band at the time and I think I got to see them 53 times that summer. Wonderful stuff. The line-up of Craig Wedren, Chris Matthews, Stuart Hill & Mike Russell will always be my favourite version of Shudder and it was cool watching them every night and seeing them write and develop some of the Funeral songs as the tour progressed.

As for Sink; we had just released Old Man Snake & The Fat, Black Pig on Decoy and were excited to be back in Europe and on tour. Outside of the UK you were expected to play longer sets and so we embraced this with our own fairly eclectic take on “life after hardcore”. A few chuggy, Fugazi-inspred numbers, some poppy, Replacements nods, as few fast ones as we could get away with and some covers we couldn’t really play. No two nights were the same and we had a lot of our own material and plenty of covers to choose from. This was probably the height of our embracing of The Blues and in that I hope you’ll be indulgent with us. Everyone should spend a couple of years looking into where the whole of  popular music came from and discovering the Blues greats. We did and we thoroughly enjoyed it…it was just unfortunate for our audience that we tended to play a lot of what we were listening to at the time. So on this tour we ‘gifted’ the crowd with dodgy, post-punk versions of white-boy blues that we loved, but which looking back, probably aren’t even 10% as good as we thought at the time. Fuck it, we had a ball.

We always enjoyed playing at the AJZ, a squat in Bielefeld, and Bobo, the booker there, was a great guy who seemed to like the band and helped us out a fair bit. Also on hand was our very good friend, Alfred Bradford, who took these great photos. Incidentally, Alfred had brought along US band The Dambuilders who were also touring at the time. We said hi to each other on the night, but didn’t really hang out. Ironic then that 3 years later, Chocolate, would tour Europe supporting The Dambuildes on their Islington Porn Tapes tour and that their drummer, Kevin March, would end up playing for the final line-up of Shudder To Think. Small world.

Anyway, what follows is the whole gig. It’s very much warts and all. If you’re a Sink fan then you’ll probably enjoy it, if you’ve not heard Sink before then I wouldn’t recommend this as your introdution to the band; there are bum notes aplenty and the mix isn’t always great (the sound man seems to like his reverb and his delay effects). That said, the versions of Angel Turns Blue and Big Red Car are pretty damn good

• Ed Wenn - Vocal & guitar
• John Ruscoe - Guitar & backing vocals
• Paul Duncan - Bass & backing vocals
• James Kermack - Drums & backing vocals

 

 Boogie Man: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Buddha #1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Talking At The Evening: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Buddha #4: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Mr Passion: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 This Time: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Amanush & Squirrels: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Pepper: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Angel Turns Blue: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Won't Sell My Guitar: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Letter (The Box Tops): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 For What It's Worth (The Buffalo Springfield): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Seams: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 On The Tracks: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Buddha #3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Echo: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Big Red Car: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Ticket Office Blues: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Paint It Black (Rolling Stones): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zepellin): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Daddy Cool (Boney M): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Points of interest:

• * This was the only time we ever played The Letter (a huge 60’s hit for The Box Tops).
• * Boogie Man and Ticket Office Blues were written by us, but were never released.
• * Amanush was recorded on a Peel session and came out on Aston’s first Boss Tuneage compliation, Floor 81, but it really should have been on Vega-Tables. It was Paul’s song in the main, but was ‘a bit punk’ for where I wanted the band to be at the time (and I was a Nazi) so it got left off the album. These days I like it a lot.
• * Craig from Shudder jumped up onstage and sang Whole Lotta Love with us…we should have got him to do it every night because he had the voice for it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d be interested and I hadn’t made the connection at that point between his voice and the classic rock singers like Robert Plant.

 

 Seams (live): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Squirrels (live): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Our good friend and former K-Line drummer, James Sherry, was on hand at the Bird’s Nest gig last week to take some pictures and record a few minutes of video. Turns out the room was too dark for you to see anything on the video, but the sound quality was decent enough, so I cut that out and have uploaded the 2 songs as audio only. Squirrels cuts off a few seconds from the end, but you get the whole of Seams. I’ve also included a few of James’ snaps from the gig too.