Tour Van

As S.c.u.m are starting tour with the horrors tomorrow (!) , i've not packed my bag but i have decided what i'm going to read when the vans asleep and i cant, what i can listen to when in the middle of Denmark and we've overplayed the BJM and Our Phil Good is out of Phil Good Tapes.. So I thought i'd share with you what i'm going to be reading and listening to in the next 2 weeks...

What i'll be listening to...Recently we took a trip to Milan to do a gig for a festival called Bats Over Milan. I only realised when we got there that we'd be supporting Section 25 and The Fall. An adequate laxative. We barely had a soundcheck and we popped out and went and ate some ugly pizza and walked around the San Siro. When we got back the venue was empty so we subsequently ended up playing to 15 people. Backstage we sat in for the most part of the evening talking about all kindsa shit until we heard a familiar voice on stage. The fall had started. We watched the whole gig from behind the drummer, played nothing we recognised but everything was recieved with goosebumps in part when he'd come up and remove the kick drum mic or turn the bass amp off.



Overjoyed after the gig tom and i went into their dressing room and introduced ourselves to his wife and said we admired her synthesizer and mark e had us kicked out by his skinhead bass player with a good riddance kids on the way out. Completely overwhelmed and really excited, the fall impressions came out and sent the rest of the band to bed for the rest of the night. When back in England i realised how little of the fall i actually knew, other than the collective 50, 000 fall fans can't be wrong. I went and bought bend sinister from soho and this 10 inch 'Slates'. What a record! i sat in my room mouth wide open for the whole duration of the first and second side.

My first love of music was through British Punk, i went into the dying Minus Zeros record shop recently and spoke with the Left Bill about the first few times i came in and rinsed repeatedly the punk box behind the counter, endless days off school trawling through strange band shot sleeves and slimey, snotty, two fingers up nazi saluting, snivelling shit hundred pound out of reach singles spending lunch money i'd managed to save (what a horrible shame the best record shop in london will become a fucking l'occitane or a pound tat shop). Honestly go there before they shut in april you won't regret it don't leave it too late

MINUS ZERO 2 Blenheim Crescent London W11 1NN UK Tel/Fax: (020) 7229 5424 Fri,Sat only 10.00-6.00pm



But back to the fall, i've never felt this strongly about a punk record, every song to the uninspiring drab music fan may sound like monotonous fall back catalogue, but to me, it has been everything i've been looking for in a Punk record. My favourite fall is the peel sessions and the really rough recording they present in the early stuff although the introduction of the 'blinky blonky space invaders' through out their career is as good and filled with the same creativity, dry humour, bitterness and spontanaiety as the first few fall albums like this... (Jules holland is a wanker)





fucking brilliant, fuck jools holland. A friend of mine told me that the fall actually had it written into there contract that the fall would appear if Jools Holland didn't play Boogy Woogy Piano with them. excellent

But what is so fascinating about Slates is it's energy and often quite disconcerting strange sounds that suits the voice of Smith so well. I mean in 1981 music had changed a lot to the original sound of 'Punk rock music' and it had taken brilliant new influences and gone places of profound influence so perhaps the fall were living on with the same sound they had had since '76... Bollocks, that's the beauty of it, it's an uncompromising aural biography of Mark E Smith and the many members who have stood behind him from '76 to today. Most people either love it or hate it, but it's your fault if you take notice of it and don't like it and have to tell everyone your ignorant opinion on them, so shaddap... i fucking bet you dj totally wired don't you.


Mark E in the red corner



and whatshisface in the blue corner



P.s how many of you actually forgot you were watching the football scores and thought you were listening to the fall, i certainly did

Here is a link for downloading slates via http://rarepunk.blogspot.com/2007/11/fall-slates.html Buy the 10 inch on ebay it's only 20 quid and it's on rough trade!
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Love this record, This'll be a 3 in the morning job riding across Scandanavian Countryside!


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For what i will be reading

The other day i picked up a great paperback book in the post, it was a brilliant copy of one of my favourite films Saturday Night Sunday Morning. Recently I've been keeping log of all films i've been watching and writing small bits on what i liked about them, and i've found i can't write about film at all, i just find it visually exciting and can't articulate what i feel very well at all. So this will remain a music blog... Usually i can't read anything, i start a book a day and most often than not i dont pass the travelling chapter which is the bus to rehearsals. I got collecting paperback books from my old man, our house when i was younger was either filled with old sixties and seventies paperbacks or furniture he'd picked up from around Camberwell, so i naturally became really interested in a lot of it. He'd also written the beginning of what i thought was a really fascinating book on the subject that i found under my bed when i was clearing out my room, i'll publish it one day, some how but That's what got me into collecting them and this is what will probably end up under the seat or in a hostel in Aarhus. (i tried to find a picture of the book but the one i have isnt on google images and i dont have a scanner)...