Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Life begins at forty?

'Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols' was released 40 years ago last Saturday, on October 28th 1977. Many thousands, maybe even millions of words have been written about it, how knows how many bands formed on the back of hearing it, and it's visceral rock 'n' roll power remains undiminished four decades on. Or does it? Every so often I hear somebody repeating the tired old cliches like 'they couldn't play' and 'they were invented by their manager weren't they?' - all absolute nonsense of course, as one listen to the album proves. I played it on Saturday afternoon and it sounded magnificent. Mind you, it usually does.

And talking of magnificent albums 'Power In The Darkness' by The Tom Robinson Band is in my not-so-humble opinion one of the best records (I still think of them as records, don't you?) of all time. To celebrate it's 40th anniversary (hang on - wasn't it released in 1978?!?) Tom has been out and about over the last few weeks with his current band playing it in it's entirety - I was lucky enough to catch a performance by them at The 100 Club last Thursday evening, not least because the band were joined by the original TRB guitarist Danny Kustow for the last two songs ('Motorway' and 'Don't Take No For An Answer' - check out these wonderful vintage clips to see the band back in the day) of the evening. Kustow is one of my all-time favourite players, and it was fabulous to see him on stage again - I even managed a few words with him after the show (I'm shy at the best of times so talking to a genuine guitar hero took a lot of doing!) which meant a lot to me. The best part of a week later, it still does.  

When last we spoke The Upper Cut were about to play their last ever show - and what better place for us to play it at than The Dolphin in Uxbridge. To say that I had and indeed have mixed feelings about this is something of an understatement; I think a lot of the people I play music with, and whilst it's obvious that nothing can last for ever the band has had some great times over the last few years so it'll be sad to see it go - if indeed it does go. Considering we didn't have a chance to rehearse the band played well and there were no awkward moments - well at least there weren't until Noel the guv'nor checked that we were still going to be playing he and Bridie's wedding anniversary party in December. Hmm.. it seems we will be appearing there again next month... the next night Big Al Reed and The Blistering Buicks played a short notice (I got a text about the show during the Upper Cut's interval!) gig across the road at The General Elliot, a raucous evening which saw much dancing and merriment throughout a boisterous performance. The band played two good shows last weekend (in Burnham and Shepperton since you were wondering) and have plenty more where they came from in the new few weeks so there's lots to be going on with. 

This weekend it's time for some more Ruts D.C. gigs - we're in Norwich on Friday, Wolverhampton on Saturday and Wakefield on Sunday. We've been rehearsing today and in addition to running though our current set we've been looking at some ideas for new songs which hopefully will be recorded for a new album sometime next year. And that's not the only exciting thing that's hopefully on the horizon - but more about that another time... in the meantime I've got the rest of the night off so I think that it's time to play the Pistols album again. I've been playing it rather a lot since last Saturday - maybe you have too?

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