Matthew North's Blogger

2012-01-08T16:50:00.000-08:00

Paint The Picture - Fallen off the easel for now

Well as you may have seen we have had a line up change with Secrets For September, this also means that our début album ‘Paint The Picture’ will no longer be coming out. It was almost finished during the summer, we were just waiting for a time slot to re do some vocals, and a bit of additional mixing and it was finished.

Most of the artwork ideas were put down. And it had a Catalogue number and everything.

So had the album been released it would have been thus.

Secrets for September – Paint The Picture
Label – Dangernoise
Cat No DN225
Distributed by PHD in the UK Via Resurrection

Track Listing :
To Behold (North)
Traces (North / O’Shea)
Upside Down (North / O’Shea)
Paint The Picture (North / O’Shea)
Right Here (North / O’Shea)
Hold Your Peace (North / O’Shea)
Needing (North / O’Shea)
Got To Give Up The Ghost (North / O’Shea)

Line up –
Marina O’Shea – Vocals
Matthew North – Guitar / Keyboards
Mike Soundy – Drums
Dave Holwill – Bass

With Guest Roger O’Donnell – Moog solo on Upside Down and To Behold.
There was also plan to have Steve Potter on Violin for Needing this has of yet not been recorded.

(Above the Artwork for the Promo CD)

So what will happen now? Most of this material will now sit. Some tunes may be re vamped with new lyrics, but with anything its usually best to move on and write new songs. Maybe one day this album will be looked out and finished, but not at the moment where tensions are running a little high!

2012-01-06T05:26:00.000-08:00

First gig of 2012 Exeter Picturehouse 5th Jan 2012

Well last night it felt like I hadn’t played a solo set for years, was probably a good 4 or 5 months. Most of my solo gigs will be based on All Living Fear material in preparation to the shows that we will do in the autumn. So the set went.

Fortunes Light

All Living Fear

Blue Sky

Breaking The Fire

Love is a A Spirit (Not an ALF song but a tune I intend to play on the tour)

Then Ellie Taylor joined me for a couple numbers, they were

Letting Go (A new song that we wrote with Lee-anne)

To Behold (in which I introduced the stylophone !!)

Was a pretty fun set to play Roger and a few others turned up always a pleasure to play the Picturehouse.

Above Falling Trees

Ben, Padders, Ellie Ben will be playing on some new Secrets tracks that we are in the process of writing.

2012-01-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

Top 5 of 2011

1) Upside Down

So I started putting together the new band, ‘Secrets for September’ though I put the plan in place in 2009, this year I got it all together, Gumtree and lemonrock found Dave and Marina (As I had Mike on board in a preliminary way) and the first track that we got together was Upside Down. And with a bit of Roger’s Moog magic chucked in for good measure this was almost as perfect track as I could have ever been involved it. They say the proof in the pudding is the eating, well in music its more in the how many wish to put their money where there mouth is, and though you could and still can listen to the track for free on the bands web sites, myspace, soundcloud etc we still managed to sell enough downloads to get to No 2 in the Amazon rock chart and No 1 in the ‘Hot New Releases in Rock’ on Amazon. This was completely overwhelming to me having never seen such a reaction to something new so quickly. By far my proudest musical achievement in my 20 year career.

Secrets For September - Upside Down

2) Arthur Brown

On the 12th may, Arthur Brown visited to drop off some tapes for me to look after and transfer, it just so happened on that night I was also down to play a solo gig at the Picturehouse, Arthur came along as we met at the venue before travelling to my place after, and while we were there we decided to do a couple numbers, we went through the arrangements that evening, then after my set we did 2 Numbers, Devils Grip and That’s How Strong My Love it. It was a pretty faultless performance, and to play with my favourite singer of all time whom happens to be one of my best friends in front of many of the closest people to me was just a perfect moment.

3) The Wall

Anyone that knows me knows my love of everything to do with Pink Floyd, The Wall has been a major part of my life for the last 30 years, I have listened to pretty much every bootleg of the floyd’s 30 odd shows many times, and know the lp backwards, so to witness the show, for the first time stood on the barrier at the very front was just stunning. Amazing show, a million times better than I could ever describe. This added to it being in Dublin making it our big holiday of the year was really fab. First time me and Lee-Anne had ever been on an aeroplane together.

4) Bestival

This year saw 2 of my friends both re join the bands that made them both huge names in music, the first was Roger re joining the Cure, I kind of sussed it was going to happen a few months prior, but by the time that Bestival came about it was almost common knowledge that he was back for good. So to be invited to go to the gig to be part of the atmosphere and to stuff Pizza on Robert was just an immense thing. The band were on amazing form, this is amplified by the CD that was just released of that top gig. The Cure are in a great place right now.

5) The Mission

Ditto the above, seeing Simon back in his job was great too, The mission were a massive influence on what I did for a number of years, some gigs they did were stunning, but some were pretty awful too, Bristol and London were different, something I’d never witnessed was the original line up, it was much more raw that the more polished later era of the band, being that Brixton was Martins 50th Birthday meant that we had to pull the stops out, we nearly never went but in the end all came good and we had a great time.

I experienced so many other great things in 2011 Secrets for September in everything I have done stands head and shoulders above it all what will 2012 bring ? well who knows, I will give my old Goth band All living Fear one more blast for its 20th Anniversary but more importantly focus on Secrets.

2011-12-06T07:55:00.000-08:00

Three more Secrets.....

The last few gigs have been a real Tour-De-Force for the band but ended up a massive success.

25th Nov – Exeter Cavern

The Cavern club is where I started to learn my craft so to speak, I played my first cavern gig over 18 years ago, and whatever I do I tend to always play there. This was Secrets first billed electric gig I had to cancel our last one there as I went to the Isle of White with Roger and his mates. We were supporting a band from London called La Nuit. Started off that the main band didn’t have a drum kit, so the venue scrabbled around for bits to put one together for them, this took a while and the sound checks over ran a little. Our soundcheck wasn’t great, was all too loud on stage, and as a result the gig wasn’t great, Marina could hardly hear herself, all I could hear was the acoustic guitar. It all got a bit messy in the middle, but we muddled through, the out front sound was pretty good though and we had a few in to see us.

To Behold
Traces
Upside Down
Needing
Got To Give Up The Ghost

The day after we played an acoustic set on Riviera FM in torbay inc a video you can see and hear it all here

Here is the link for the Radio Interview

Secrets For September - Riviera FM 26-11-11 Interview & Live Session

1st Dec - Exeter Picturehouse

After this we had a more quieter show at the Picturehouse, this is where we first performed together, our first full gig was in April and we return a lot more polished and confident than we were back then. We played

Hold Your Peace
To Behold
Upside Down
Traces
Right Here
Got To Give Up The Ghost

Its fair to day we were all a little nervous as the last gig being a little fraught but we had nothing to far this time, crystal cleat sound and by far the tightest set we have ever played a success all round we felt.

5th Dec - Falmouth Princess Pavilion (Supporting the Magic band)

Then a few days later it was off to the Princess Pavilion in Falmouth, now I have wanted to play here for years it’s a lovely venue and the sound is always really good. As It was I turned up about 20 minutes late, the drums and Bass had already had their sound check and it didn’t lake long to set up my kit, its funny but even though it a far more complex rig it takes far less time to set up than it did in the old bands days.
The soundcheck went really well, everything worked and like the picturehouse we had crystal clear sound everywhere.
After some good back stage banter including a rousing rendition of the theme tune of Auf Weidersein Pet just for JP we hit the stage at 8.30 pm. The room was starting to fill up a lot more than at our last big gig at the Islington Academy, and apart from a guitar gremlin we had a faultless set, the audience really appreciated it so much so it was our best audience reaction so far as well as being our biggest. We Played

Right Here
Traces (Matthew played Acoustic Guitar)
Upside Down
Needing (Extending out the end jam to include the ‘Black Night’ riff!)
Got To Give Up The Ghost

Pre gig warm up

Marina giving us the 80s :)

This is what playing music is all about and I really loved it as did the rest of us, this was the best gig I have ever played.

2011-11-12T19:49:00.000-08:00

South West Music Awards 2011 Exeter Corn Exchange

So tonight was the South West Music Awards. I really did not know what to think about this, we were given a couple of tickets as Secrets had been nominated for best indie act. The web site for the event was a little on the basic side, with very little info on it.

Turned up walked in, was not too many people there, saw a few old faces, bumped into Fred the promoter who after I said hello told me everything was going shit, oops that doesn’t bode well.

Me and Mike were sat at a table with some people from the band Loose Cannons who were all jolly good people, and the banter started up. We were presented with a goodie bag, this consisted of a load of CD-rs of people you have never heard of, a few flyers one party popper and one very small bag of malteasers.

So the event finally starts, there is some taiko drummers then John Robb comes on, from the start he starts to rip the piss out of the event, including making comments on who actually voted for any of the awards and who some of the bands are.

It starts to go into a Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox does the BPI Awards where he calls up someone to present an award, wrong person who didn’t have a clue what she was presenting then it all went silent, and it was rather awkward for about 5-10 minutes.

Joss Stone was there, she is one of the most down to earth people in the room, no ego, she came over to our table and asked if she could have a chair, no big minders or any of that rubbish.

So the awards started to flow, Phil Beer got best folk act for show of hands. There there was another band on, few more awards, We didn’t win but we never though we would.

There was then a juggler, quite what this was about I have no idea, anyhow, a bit of banter came along, and someone that was suppose to have been the ex Drummer of Wang (Dance hall days) Chung. Anyhow this guy walks on to the stage, and starts calling the juggler through the PA a C**T and starts threatening him. Now the first question is, where was the security, as I didn’t see ANY there at all. The evening then starts to drag, long break in the middle, a band sound checks for AGES, finally we get more taiko drums, the john robb pops on, and we get another band few more awards the another band, who deadicat a song to the short angry man, he then gets up to have a go at him, this time I film it, not as funny as the first time, but still good. Joss stone gets an award then she legs it as fast as she can.

Its all painfully slow and over running now, most have left, few more awards to go then it’s the aftershow at Mama Stones.

The Aftersow, was suppose to be free entry to people with wristbands, I still got charged a fiver because the doorman said it was only free if you got there after 1 am, when it was only about 12.

Well was there for a bit saw Simon Hall from work, and chatted to John Robb, hes a good chap.

Looking back, this could be a really good event, It was all a little un professional, and many had paid 15 quid to get in one of the acts that won even complained on stage that they paid 15 quid and didn’t even get a free drink on arrival!!!

I did hope more would have turned up, so there could be a bit more musical networking, but as Phil Beer pointed out most bands are gigging on a Saturday night, this should have been early to mid week.

Either way, I had a great time, and I would go again!

2011-10-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

Here is a Rundown of the charts.

Well Secrets for September got to no 56 in the Amazon Rock Chart on the day traces was released, when you look at the fact that there is a LOT of new and old stuff out at the moment no least re releases from the likes of Pink Floyd and Nirvana I reckon we did pretty well.

If you have not bought our single you can get it from Amazon and ITunes Follow the links on http://secretsforseptember.co.uk

And while we are about it here is the video

2011-10-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

(Me and Marina Post gig)

What a weekend.

In 19 years of being in bands, and 18 years since I first played in London (At the Islington Powerhaus!) I don’t think I have ever played a gig that has ran so smoothly as this weekend just gone.
Back in about Febuary of this year I was talking to Frank of Flag promotions about gigs, My Girlfriend had very successfully arranged a show of her own band and the Chameleons at the Islington Academy through Frank and I was inspired that this would have been a great venue for Balaam and the Angel to play. So I spoke to Frank and introduced him to Des and Jim and the gig was on. I also thought that the most obvious band in the world to support would be Claytown Troupe another band whom I’m rather pleased to say I was instrumental in getting them back together in 2004.
Anyhow I put the bands name forward and again that was all sorted out. Thinking this would make a great gig, I left it at that, but then I thought? Well Balaam still owe me a gig from the one that got cancelled in 2008 because of Des breaking his foot, so I thought sod it and I put Secrets for September forward as opener, as this unlike most of franks gigs WASN’T a goth scene gig I knew musically we could get away with it.
It took a little bit of persuasion but as the whole event was my Idea he couldn’t argue haha!

So on the day of the gig, Picked up martin and drove in, didn’t hit much traffic and we arrived only 15 minutes after the time I had hoped to get there, Got unloaded and parked up, One thing I like about Islington on a Saturday afternoon is plenty of free parking in the side streets. Balaam hadn’t started to do a sound check as Jim had some hassles with the hotels for the families that had come down (remember Balaam are 3 brothers so everyone inc Mum and Dad all come down).
So we toddled off to the Lloyds bar for some lunch. Met up with Milton and Graham they were both doing stills photos for us, Graham is Andy from ALFs brother and Milton is a friend of mine via work, both had chuffing big camera setups never been so use to this pro thing haha. Got back and set up some of the camera gear and watched Claytown sound check had I not been playing I would have been part of there crew.
We then set up, which was dead easy as CTT were using Mikes drums and JPs bass amp so all I had to do was set up my kit. The in house crew as usual were tip top professionals and we were up and running in no time. My guitar was sounding really sweet and having the new EQ Pre amp on the Fishman bridge made all the difference to the acoustic sound, the sound guy though it was one of the most convincing acoustic sounds he had heard in a long time. Once we were all done it was back to the dressing room to get ready.

Come to stage time and bang on 6.30pm we start, as soon as Mike hits the 4 beat count in of To Behold everything fits into place perfectly, I have not had such good on stage sound for a VERY long time. The set was 40 minutes and was over far too quickly. I fluffed one note BADLY in the solo of traces, and had a tuning malfunction during got to give up the ghost, other than that it was a great set and we had a very appreciative audience was also really cool to see all of Balaam watching our set, seldom does a headline band even stand in the same room as a support band let alone watch the entire set.

The rest of the night was great, Claytown and Balaam both did faultless sets. I filmed all of it, and I have put a bit of Balaam on YouTube and will put some other bits up later. It was also really cool that at the end of Balaams set Both Mark and Jim thanked me for putting the gig together. So was smiles all round. After the gig some of us popped over to the slimelight for an hour, well Martin wanted to go we were all knackered! Then Sunday travelled home via the New Forest for lunch at The Fighting Cocks in Godshill the best pub in the Forest.

Sunday evening, I played another gig, and literally only just made it. I did a similer set to the picturehouse gig the week before, it was a charity gig for Bands for Land a worthy cause, it was a shame that the Venue View2 in Plymouth wasn’t to charitable. The turn out was low and they forced the gig to end early, they also had the most horrendous drinks prices of any bar I have ever been to, £2 for soda water out of the tap? £3 for a half of Diet coke? Never going there again!!! Great weekend so very happy with it all. Now roll on Wednesday for the release of the new single!

2011-09-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

Just a Reel of tape?

Apart from the spools my Dad had I have never seen any R.T.C. tape anywhere like to know more info on this brand if anyone knows.

Well this was a strange thing, it was almost like the nearest thing that I will ever experience to a ghost, not that ghosts exist you understand.

I was over at Mums today, and I dug out an old reel of tape that was Dads, It had some classical music on it, and I wanted to see if it was any BBC stuff that he recorded off the radio as I knew that some of it was. Anyhow I dug it out and played it into my PC. I though it must have been BBC as it had an announcement someone reading off the sleeve notes of the LP before the album began remember in the late 60s you didn’t have flat bed scanners!

On closer listen to this announcer I realised it wasn’t a BBC continuity announcer but it was my Dad. I literally had to sit down after this, it was 12 years since I heard his voice, and much as I can remember his voice to hear it again after such a long time was quite mind blowing to hear it again.

I thought Id share this as though it doesn’t mean much to anyone other than me, it is an event that I want to document.

Above the rear of the Box

The Voice of Mike North by Matthew North

2011-09-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

Copyright?

A little observation from a thread on facebook where someone is not happy that the copyright laws have been extended because he wants to fileshare stuff he doesnt own.

When a piece of music is made:-

When the artist has an idea – No Payment
When Artist writes lyrics – No Payment
When Artist makes demo – No Payment – Though Artist has to make Demo and their expense
When Artist records track – No Payment – Again artist may have to pay for this too
When Track is released – No Payment
If the track sells after the labels ‘Expences’ – Appx 10% is paid to the Artist as a whole

Promotion for song – Artist foots the bill

Playing live – at most gigs the person that normally doesn’t get paid is the artist, specifically if they are on say a support tour they are paying the headline act to be the support to get the exposure.

Advertising to promote the product – All gets taken out of any royalties made.

The Gamble is that if a song has longevity then over time this will create an income for the artist in other words this is a very LONG TERM investment made by artist.

When a House is built ;-

Artist makes a sketch – Get Paid
Architect makes plans – gets Paid
Builder starts work – Gets Paid
Building suppliers – Gets Paid
House is finished and electricians / gas fitters come in - All get paid

2011-08-29T04:42:00.001-07:00

In a field of freedom?

So on Saturday Secrets For September headlined the Freedom Fields festival in Plymouth, this is a much small affair than the one they have in June that boasts an audience of about 3000 odd people.
We got there, saw there was a tent which was a plus as the weather has been pretty rubbish the last few days. A Small Pa and an audience of people. As some of you know Dave is unable to perform live with the band due to other commitments and we have a new guy JP playing for us, though he has only been practicing for about 2 weeks with us. Also we were without Mike as he was on holiday, so we played this gig as an acoustic set, which in hindsight was exactly the right thing to do as it was a much more laid back type of gig.

We played a 35 minute set that had

Hold Your Peace
To Behold
Wandering Minds
Upside Down
Right Here
Traces
Got To Give Up The Ghost

Our on stage sound was great, we could hear everything crystal clear. The people watching really enjoyed it and I felt we were making real progress as a band, Hats off to JP as well for learning the set so quickly.

Shame the weather put off a few people, but that didn’t dampen the spirits at all was a good day.

2011-08-12T04:09:00.000-07:00

Secrets For September at the Passage House Festival 7th August 2011

Last Sunday was the second day of the Topsham Ferrymans weekend. Take a nice little pub by the side of the river, put up a stage with a small PA fill the place with people and hey presto you have a festival.

I wasn’t there for the Saturday, but I hear it was all good fun. Arrived on Sunday, there was a band playing when I got there not knowing what the PA situation would be I was pleased to hear they had a good sound balance. So once unloaded (And managed to bash my head on the scaffolding!) Parked up and managed to relax a bit before the gig. Saw a good few friends there Simon, Deb and Jackson, Vic who I do the radio show with who I haven’t seen for ages (were back on air first week of September btw) Kal and Ant a good mix. As we are still bass player less at the moment I played the bass with my feet. I recently bought a set of Roland Bass Pedals here is a little video from out practice the other day.

Before our set there was an entertainer on that did fire juggling and a whole manor of other tricks. The sun came out and we played out set this wasn’t an Acoustic set, or an electric set but something in between.

Hold your Peace
To Behold
Wandering Minds
Upside Down
Traces
Right Here
Got To Give Up The Ghost

I had a few issues with playing the bass at the same time, but I had only owned the pedals a week playing the tape of the gig back it sounded pretty good mix.

After we finished it started to rain so we finished just in time. Thanks to Martin for putting us on It was a fun show.

2011-08-10T16:23:00.001-07:00

Toots and the Maytals – An utter disappointment

I was delighted to find out that one of the greats of reggae Toots and the Maytals were to play the Phoenix in Exeter and I was also lucky to have been one of the last to get tickets for this event direct from the Exeter Phoenix box office.

We arrived around 8.45 ish thinking the doors were open and the support act were probably already on stage as the times of the gig were 8-11. When we got there the doors were still locked, so we were sat outside listening to some great reggae tunes, I was well excited to hear House of the rising Dub by International Observer being played too. Time went on, and on and on, before we knew it it was 10pm door still not open. We started to get a bit worried about this. Eventually the doors opened at 10.30 thinking well if he goes on now then we will get to see most of the set before we have to go home. But no, it had got to about 10.50 and still no sign of any live music. So we decided to ask for a refund then go home.

This is where it got messy. We asked the box office whom we bought the tickets from if they could refund the money to our card. They said they couldn’t because they had already paid the promoter and we would have to get the money from the promoter. I questioned this is it was the point of sale that I bought the tickets last Friday. I asked if the promoter was around they said he wasn’t. I then asked to see a manager, by this time there was over 20 people that wanted refunds and it was building. Eventually the promoter turned up. He said that Toots wanted and extra hour in bed and that’s why the gig was running over 2 hours late. I asked him if we could have a refund, he said no. many others were getting annoyed by this, and the promoter called over a security guard. He then went on to say that he had to pay the band in advance, 5 minutes later he was changing his story and said that the phoenix had all the money and were paying Toots a cut directly and when they do that he would be able to refund people that had to leave without seeing any of the show.

We left our phone number and had to go by just after 11 the band without Toots started up and apparently toots took to the stage about 11.15. I would estimate a good 60-70 people had to leave before Toots took to the stage. Hopefully we will get a refund but this was a very annoying incident for us, I also felt very uncomfortable when the security guard was shouting at some ladies that were asking for a refund, when they were just saying that they could not stay because they had to go home and his excuse was ‘Well I got to get up at 5 am tomorrow you know’ someone replied ‘Yes but your getting paid tonight’ he then got very shirty and started waving the ticket in their face going on about the terms and conditions in the small print on the back of the ticket. I had my camera phone ready in case anything mad kicked off thankfully there wasn’t.

Anyhow got home well after midnight having seen no music at all, what a waste of a night. I hope we get a refund tomorrow.

As a Follow up I have just spoken to the Phoenix Box Office and they have promised a full refund on return of the tickets. Still upset I never got to see the band.

2011-07-25T04:42:00.000-07:00

Last week was another busy one.

Thursday it was Andrew Padders birthday, and for it a load of us formed a Cure covers band, we did 8 songs, and considering that we only had one rehearsal I think we played pretty well. I also did a solo set when I also played an improvised number, haven’t done anything like that for ages.

Solo Set:-

Natures Land (Never done solo before)
Tres Desole (Again never done solo before)
Improvisation
I See You (New song, only second live outing different arrangement to last time)
Love Is A Spirit

Live Improvisation 21st July 2011 by Matthew North

Friday during the day went to Tiverton to record drums with mike, this is actually the last session we needed so all the bass and drums are recorded now. And 75% of the vocals are done and about the same in guitars so all good to go soon.

Friday evening we went to an old school indie night, all the stuff you liked to hear at clubs before Britpop came along and killed it all, Stone Roses, Smiths, Ride etc great night at the kings, they are going to have another one in about a months time.

Saturday was my mate Bernard’s birthday, I have known him since I was 8 years old, and we played music when we were kids, we did 2 gigs one in 87 and one in 88 and never played in public since, until Saturday night where I played about 6 songs with his covers band inc Route 66 a song that we did back in 87 / 88.

The Fabulous Thorvertones & Matthew North - Route 66 (Live Bootleg Recording) by Matthew North

Yesterday was a day at home ending up watching Rainbow DVDs are reading that Rod, Jane and Freddie were in a love triangle!

2011-07-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

Strumming in the Street
Well on Tuesday I think it was Marina email me about an event in Exeter called the ‘Exeter Street Performers Festival’ and asked me if I wanted to take part, the idea was that there would be 16 or so acts from all over performing in the Princesshay area of Exeter. I was game and so was Dave, Mike alas was teaching so alas couldn’t do it.

The first set we did was in the wrong place, we found the person that was on before us and just assumed that was where we were playing, though it turned out he was some sort of pro busker and that was his normal spot! So we played a set of our songs acoustically outside some shoe shop! Marina gave it 110% though, and it was quite a fun thing to do, and had a fair few watching us, was the first time that I had ever played in the street.

Marina at the first set

The second set was in a much nicer area, outside some old building with gothic arches it was also quieter so we could hear each other play. The set was quite tight actually and we did every song that we have written its kind of cool that you can do this, mark of a good song and all.

After the second set

Once this was over we had a break for a bit and Dave had to go off to play another gig. There was a kind of an after show thing at Oddfellows bar, so we then played another set, though this time there was a PA. My mate Levin Winsor from work was about and offered to play some percussion, and I did have my bongo drums with me, as it turned out we had a great sound with looped guitars and bongos made a good end to a good day of live music.

Oddfellows set

There was more to come though as after we headed off to Padders place for a rehearsal of ‘the Unholy Hour’ a one off Cure covers band that will be playing in Exeter on the 21st July at the Picturehouse.

I was rather knackered by the time I got home!

2011-06-30T05:14:00.000-07:00

All Living Fear Re Releases Jessica

As we will be coming up to our 20th anniversary we will be re releasing via digital download all our CD albums.

One item that has never seen a digital release is the bands first ep Jessica. This was recorded in 1994 and is so far the only recording with a live drummer (John Macklin of the band Legend along with Steve Paine also of Legend on Keyboards whom also produced the EP).

You can now listen to in full and download the EP from here

http://alllivingfear.bandcamp.com/album/jessica-ep

Jessica EP by All Living Fear

2011-06-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

Sonic Rock and other tales

(I should have posted this blog last week)

Well this has been a rather extraordinary week music wise.

A few years ago I was at a musical crossroads, There was so much I wanted to do, but I never had the confidence to do what I wanted, this all changed on the 8th June 2009 when I did an open mic in Richmond at a place called the Watermans, this was the first time that I had ever sung in front of anyone and I got away with it from this point on I knew anything was possible, I just needed to find the direction.

The obvious one was for the band I was In, but that ended up in a mess, its one thing being in a band that isn’t that popular in its genre, but when there genre has little popularity in the world then you are on a loosing battle before you start. So I feel it was the best decision I have ever made to walk away from it as far as being a touring musician is concerned.

There has been one thing that I have always wanted to do, and that’s be a band on the festival scene, I have been to so many festivals with Arthur in recent years, and they have all been great, and I wanted a slice of that and the only way to do it was to start something new. Now you all know the story of how Secrets For September was started, but before we had the live band together properly I got the Sonic Rock solstice gig booked, even before we had a singer, the initial idea was to be a kind of Ozric Tentacles kind of dub instrumental prog / space rock band. And with this in mind the demos that I had recorded secured Secrets a slot at sonic rock.

So by the time the festival came round, Secrets was a totally different band, was I worried? No because I believe passionately in that this band has all the elements that a good band has, and we are all performing with a united front, something I never had with All Living Fear not in ANY line up with the possible exception of the time that it was me and Paul but again there were other issues that prevented the band from flourishing.

Me and Lee-Anne got there the night before, as we like camping, it was pouring with rain on the way up but it cleared enough for us to get the tent up and the kettle on the go. Sonic is not a massive festival but its very well run, there is good sound and lighting, and everyone we met was friendly. Didn’t seen many band on the Friday, but Alan Davey’s ‘Gunslinger’ were very good.

Saturday and it was the day of the gig. Setting up was a relaxed affair everyone else turned up on time, and we had a fun soundcheck, this was only our 4th gig and first ever gig using something more than a vocal PA, It was bliss to play a gig with proper monitors again. It was also the first time we played where Mike had his full drum kit.
The set was to include

Is Space Found
To Behold
Wandering Minds
Upside Down
Paint The Picture
Traces
Got To Give Up The Ghost

The set went down really well, I’ve not played anywhere for so many years where people have come up to me afterwards and told us how much they enjoyed the gig. Looking back over it all it was a great achievement, that with the Amazon chart success wrapped the week off nicely.

Me and Lee-Anne did intend to camp over for the Saturday as well but I wasn’t feel too great with all the muggy weather, and we decided to come home and have Sunday to relax.

Sonic Rock Solstice is a really fab event and long may it continue and grow.

2011-06-24T04:51:00.001-07:00

Un expected night at the Picturehouse 23rd June 2011

So last night we went to the Picturehouse to see Anthony Smith do his ep launch, and ended up playing a little set, with Andy B playing drums.

The night kicked off with the Morrisons doing a bass player less set, its bad to loose 1 bass palyer, they have mislaid 2 haha, still didn’t matter they played a fine set. Rupert Bath was on next another local singer songwriter was a good little set from him too.

Now the big news is that the Picture House now to Pizza’s they are top notch and I feel the Silent Whistle in Ashburton has some serious competition on its hands.

Last on officially was Ant himself, who has been planning his ep as long as its taken for the Olympic Stadium in London to be finished off, and finally its here. He played a set of 8 songs inc the ep naturally ably assisted by Andy B on the drums. After his set there was some time left, so the drummer of The Morrisons did a couple songs on guitar, then I was egged on by Andy B to do a couple numbers. Never been to a gig before where I didn’t have some much as a plectrum on me. So anyway in at the Deep end.

Wasn’t sure what to do but ended up doing this.

Love Is a Spirit
Close Down
(Here Comes the) Rain (Yes the Cult Song!)
Fortunes Light
Blues (Interesting tempo changes in this!!)
To Behold (With Kal playing Drums, not sung this song for almost 6 months!!)

Was a fun evening, as it always is at the Picturehouse.

Andy B on Ants Set

Myself and Kal

Above Anthony Smith

2011-05-30T15:16:00.001-07:00

Secrets For September - Crumlin 28th May 2011

So Wales it was,

We got asked to do a gig in Wales, well it was more the promoter put out a Facebook we need a band type post. The gig was billed as things, A Festival Camping, Vice Squad headlining and Family Friendly all for charity.

So in my mind was a field, a Marquee, Camp site, side shows and someone going round with a collection bucket.

What it was when we arrived was pub in the middle of a housing estate full of Hells Angles, all very polite and friendly but not exactly the mini Beautiful Days that I was expecting and no sign of a camp sight anywhere, there was a food wagon with nothing Vegetarian on it at all, Drink prices though, happy days a round for under a fiver!

Anyhow, this gig was initially going to be an acoustic show, at the time the gig was booked the band consisted of just Me, Naill and Mike. If you have not been aware, Secrets For September had a bit of a re think, the band is actually Me on Guitar, Dave on Bass, Mike on Drums and Marina is the singer. We only do 1 song from the last year + of the bands official existence everything else is new.

We were always down to being the first band on, this has a big advantage that we can sound check properly this was also our first show as an electric set.

The PA was well below what we had been promised, more or less a vocal pa with some sub standard monitor and no reverb. Still we managed to get something resembling a sound. It’s a totally different dynamic to rehearsing, and using the excellent facilities at Sound Gallery meant that we have made a lot of progress as a band in the last 6 -8 weeks.

So by the time of the set I was quietly confident that it would go ok. We did just over a half hour set, nothing technically went wrong, Mikes happy playing to the click now because we have keyboards on a backing track, everything else is totally live. There is some great interplay with Dave and Mike, they really hit it as a rhythm section. I was starting to feel a lot more comfortable playing this material, I mean it’s a real change from playing the best of ALF for the last god knows how many years. Marinas confidence is getting there too, she was nailing bits that that were a bit iffy at the last acoustic gig, so all in all the band is progressing well. The high point for me was the funk song we do called ‘Wandering Minds’ that was the best song we did for me. I think once were in a better venue with a decent pa then its just going to get better and better for us. And my now all analogue pedalboard was great and the Acoustic pick up on the Les Paul also worked well.

Here is a video of the gig with the sound from another of our new songs.

After the gig we all headed off our separate ways, Myself and Lee-Anne ended up eating Soup and Panini's at the Picturehouse was a good day.

2011-05-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

Radio Playlists..
Missed out on my recent things on the radio.

Friday 13th May Arthur Brown Special

As I had done that gig with Arthur I thought I would play some of his tracks as well as mention his South West shows later in the year.

Fire - Well it had to be played
There then was an Interview by Vic with Arthur
Devils Grip - Live at the Picturehouse
I Put a Spell On You

Friday 20th May - Bob Dylan's Birthday

I wanted ot talk about electric Dylan, the 65-66 era some of his best work IMO.

Maggies farm
Outlaw blues
Leapord Skin Pill Box Hat

2011-05-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

The Wall in Dublin 23rd May 2011

So we get to the 02 Arean Dublin, from the outside looks like an old factory. We were well early and I had the mishap of falling over a paving slab and hurting my finger, something Lee-Anne found highly amusing. There was only 1 pub nearby called the Green Room, total rip off, 10 euros for a coke and a cider! Still it passed the time, they were showing the bootleg DVD of floyds 87 hanger rehearsal.

We ended up right at the front of the queue, there are very few shows on the wall tour that have standing, so once we got in we were on the barrier. Very happy with this.

The wall is going to be massive, there is a mannequin on stage with Rogers coat on it, and I spot Dave Kilminster showing someone around the stage.
The show was delayed by 15 minutes, I guess because of the Obama visit. I’m not going to give away too many spoilers here but the opening was quite spectacular with amazing effects and fireworks. The sound was crystal clear and not too loud.

Roger looked happy, all the way through the gig he was saying that he was a miserable git 30 years ago and now hes very happy. Strange to think there are only 2 people on stage that played the original wall shows (Roger and the ever dependable Snowy White). The attention to detail was what impressed me the most, as a brig goes in an image appears on the brick. Some thought provoking images of people that have died in war, more were projected during the interval, Roger really has though long and hard about this show. Its NOT the show about the washed out rock start that the original show / film was about, its about now, its about Afghanistan and todays issues, this show could have been written today.

Its not all doom and gloom though, its about musicianship of the very top end, Dave Kilminster is every bit as good as David Gilmour, hes probably the best ‘NEW’ guitarist of the last 20 years to be honest.

Roger has schoolchildren on stage for the chorus of Another Brick in the Wall, how cool must have that been for them, this is something roger started at the Live Earth gig in 2007.

Second half was all about the projections, so magnificent, Comfortably numb has this amazing but where roger punches the wall. Then they all re group on stage for the Run Like hell / Waiting for the Worms section.

The the wall falls down, the security don’t want any hands over the barrier, I did want to punch a brick but couldn’t quite reach oh well!!

This is the best gig you will ever seen yes it really is.

2011-05-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

Its been a mad musical week this week.

Monday it was Secrets For September rehearsal in Exeter at Sound Gallary studios, this believe it or not is the first time that all 4 of us have practised as a band normally we have practised where someone is not in attendance, Marina has been busy with a show she has been working on that I saw last week, and now we all got together. Having a solid set of 8 songs now means that we have something concrete to work with, not band given that 4 months ago this band didn’t exist and only one of the 8 songs was written. It all went reasonably well few things to work on but nothing that isn’t going to be too much hassle.

Then on Thursday Arthur brown came to visit, he has given me all the Kingdom Come mater multitrack tapes inc some of the Puddletown sessions as well to get transferred and then to be archived in a digital format. Anyhow I had a gig at the picturehouse nothing new there, but Arthur came along as he was staying here. While I was getting ready, it was mentioned by a few people was Arthur going to perform so we ran through a couple of ideas and then decided to do some numbers.

Above Martin, Roger (The Cure), Lee-Anne, Simon (The Mission), Arthur and Me

So the set went like this.
Me Fortunes Light
Closedown
The Widow’s Blame (As Arthur had sang this on the last ALF Album)
All Living Fear (First time this had been done live since the early 90s)
Love is a Spirit (One of Arthurs songs he wanted me to sing it so he could hear me do it!!) I managed to cock up Love is a Spirit it was a bit of an ordeal to be honest!!

Me and Arthur
Devils Grip
That’s How Strong My Love Is

Arthur was magnificent I have never been to a picturehouse gig where every single person in the room stopped chatting and were fixed on watching every note that Arthur sang. And the audience wasn none too shabby either good turn out as it was Andy B’s from the Picturehouse’s birthday too.

After my set I went to jelly I have never done this is 20 years of gigging, and its not like it isn’t the first time I have played with Arthur no stage, I guess I wanted it to be perfect and apart from one note in the solo of Devils Grip it was. We had a relaxing rest of the evening with National Pastime finishing off the night, and then we were delighted to an impromptu rendition of Goth Detectives by the Superpunkmuffin.

A perfect way to end a perfect evening. The Friday I played Arthur some of the new music, he really liked the new Secrets For September stuff and I also played him the miserylab track which he also liked. He then met up with Vic Morgan from BBC radio and did an interview for the late show before heading back to Sussex. All in all a great few days.

Here is a video of Devils Grip

2011-05-05T07:25:00.000-07:00

All Living Fear 2011

'All Living Fear' was a song that I wrote back in 1993, It was on our second Demo tape a a new version that had almost the same arrangement was released on the Fifteen Years After CD, so here is a new working of the track more in keeping with how All Living Fear sound these days.

All Living Fear (2011) by All Living Fear

2011-05-04T02:48:00.001-07:00

Radio Plays of the last 2 week

Just remembered I haven't updated what I played / Talked about on Radio Devon for the last couple of weeks.

Friday 22nd April 2011

As its been announced The Quireboys are one of the Headline bands of Devon Rox festival at Powderham Castle I played a couple song from the classic debut 'A Bit of What You Fancy'

The Quireboys
7 O'Clock
Hey You

I also talked about Saxons Superb show at the Princess Pavilion the day before

Saxon - Strong Arm Of The Law

And for a bit of a change, I played the title track from Kate Bush's last album and talked a little about the Directors Cut CD that will be out soon.

Kate Bush - Aerial

Friday 29th April 2011

It was announced that Roger Daltry is to peform Tommy at Powderham Castle in Exeter, as I had been to the Albert Hall to see the same show a few weeks ago, I played a Live Tommy track from the Whos 1989 reunion album Join Together.

The Who - Christmas

Adam Ant had also announced 2 South west shows for the 17th and 18th June (Exeter and Falmouth)

Adam and the Ants - Ants Invasion

as it was the royal wedding, and people were going on about The Kiss, I thought id have something with the word kiss in the title and Siousxie follows on with many connection to Adam and the Ants

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Kiss them for me

Last of all was a band that I had wanted to play for ages, and also it was also for one of our listeners that lives in Chile

The Church - Under the Milky Way

2011-05-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

The Timepiece Exeter 29th April 2011

Its not everyday there is a royal wedding, and what a good event it was to see on television. While watching I get a text message from Garth, whom used to own the Hub in Exeter and is not the main promoter at Timepiece in Exeter asking me if I would play a short notice gig. Timepiece and me go back a long way, it was one of the first clubs proper I started going to when I was at the end of my Teens / Early 20s, the building has moved, but in essence its very much still the same place, I regard it with great fondness and I rate it as the best club I have ever been to and still do.

It's a club of great history, great character and it is cheap / free to get in and the drinks prices are very good too.
Anyhow I jumped at the opportunity to play there though I have not done a solo set in quite some time, so once I got there and got set up I had about 45 minutes to practice in the corner with nobody looking a half hour set. By the time
I got on stage the room had filled up quite nicely and good to see some friends there like Richard, Anthony and Kal there.

The set went like this
Improvised intro song
Fortunes Light
Close Down
Blue Sky
The Widow’s Blame
Love is a Spirit (Kingdom Come song)
Broken Dream

The set went down really well, I’d almost go to say it’s the best solo gig I have ever done. The recording I made was none too bad either, may post a track up to sound cloud later.

2011-04-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

Skin Rock The City DVD

Im just taking a break from working on some Secrets for September tracks, as I’m home this weekend where as every body else seams to be out in the sun.
Last night Myke Gray announced that Skins Rock City gig is finally going to be released on DVD. This was suppose to be have been Skins farewell as earlier in 2009 they had reformed to play main stage at Donnington Download festival. I had offered our services to film them as they had never had anything filmed before other than a few promos and some top of the pops appearances. And we followed them from rehearsal to Download and made a bloody good documentary called ‘Skin Reunited’.
In December of 2009 I had been on tour with my old band All Living Fear, I had lost a lot of money and decided to never go on tour again, about 2 weeks later Myself and Lee-Anne had gone to see the so called supergroup ‘Them Crooked Vultures’ and though it was the most tedious load of old pap that we had ever seen, and decided that we should go and see something to renew that not all rock music had gone down the pan. So we decided to go to Skins final gig at Rock City, and while we were there we may as well film it too.
I had ran out of tape on tour to film them to it was a mad dash to tescos to get enough Mini DV tapes, I also didn’t have enough cameras so I managed to borrow a couple. Rock City was the perfect venue to film it, no busybody’s getting in out way, plenty of places to put fixed cameras. Doug Hall was mixing the sound, so we knew that the 2 track out the desk would be as near to spot on as we could get.
The band set was amazing, the best that we had seen, on the summer the stand out gig was one on Wolverhampton, much as Download was suppose to be the big one, it was too big, no connection with the audience like you have with a Skin gig in its own right.
Rock City was packed, the set was storming.
When we looked through the tapes we though there was something really special here, so Lee-Anne edited one track sent it to Myke, he loved it, and so Lee-Anne edited the whole gig.

We though they were going to release it last year, but they didn’t, because they wanted to make a new album and play download again, We did shoot the second download gig, it had a better connection with the audience than the first one, though being in a big tent, it didn’t look as good, but it was OK, we did also pop along to the Ponty warm up show, that was great, a promo for the track I was Born to Rock and Roll was made out of this footage, though it was not without its problems, the final version that was released was partially edited by me, and then re edited by someone else. In hindsight this could have been done a lot better (It was a bit short on shots, could have done with shooting one more time at another gig) also sync was an issue as live it was a slightly different tempo and a different arrangement but that’s all history now.

Anyhow a couple of weeks ago I sent DV masters to Myke, and the DVD is currently having menus edited.
There are 2 edits made to the gig as we had to remove the 2 covers from the set, though here is one of them.

2011-04-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

Secrets for September and other music

Well I haven’t done a music blog for a while, been rather busy. Just quickly I have booked a big show for All Living Fears 20th anniversary next year, nothing will get announced until nearer the time but I’m sure you can probably guess where when and what day it will be on!

Getting on to more important stuff, it has been a busy week for Secrets for September, firstly in case you hadn’t guessed, Niall was unable to commit fully to the band, so has decided to leave, thankfully we have replaced him with the excellent Dave Holwill who made his debut with the band last Thursday.

The gig at the picture house went well and we had more than expected watching us live on the web stream too, I’m thinking this sort of technology is rather amazing, it was only 5 years ago that the who were web streaming some of there gigs and they were having to use a satellite to do it, where as we were doing it with a wifi connection and Roger O’Donnell’s Apple Mac! Anyhow for the moment the gig is still online at http://www.livestream.com/dangernoisetv the gig was a good experiment, as some of the songs worked really well in the acoustic style, where as others probably missed the keyboards. Still we are writing more and more material and are preparing to record with the prospect of an album being released in the autumn.

Then on Saturday we were to Stepcote Hill in Exeter for a photo shoot with photographer Mike Alsford and with him were Alex White and Andy Robinson and a dead pro team they are too, there was lights, reflectors everything, not had a location photo shoot in my life before! (Had a couple shoots in a studio in the 90s and had some pics of ALF done at a practice studio in london last year but thats it!) Anyhow some of the results are here

2011-04-08T09:01:00.001-07:00

BBC Radio In the South West Friday 1st April 2011

Little mixed bag this week featured tunes

The Cult - Born into This

Last Stop China Town - Erase

Mr So and So Bi-Polar

2011-03-31T00:35:00.000-07:00

Whitby Gothic Weekend April 2011

Well I haven’t blogged about Whitby for a long time so thought it was about time I did. These days I only go for the main 2 days, there has been a lot of problems with WGW not least due to people trying to put obstacles in the way of the official event, well the chickens came home to roost and the rivals proved they couldn’t organise a piss up in a pavilion, I pity anyone that’s made plans to go this weekend coming as a fear it will be rather empty.

Anyhow, as you may know I have been actually staying in Scarborough as its radically cheaper, like its 30 quid a night for a BnB where as your lucky to find anything on Whitby for less that 65 quid a night.

I got there Friday afternoon still on a buzz after seeing Roger Daltry and his band perform Tommy at the Albert Hall with special guest Pete Townshend. After checking in I popped down to the spa, this is where I noticed that there was far less of the usual Mr Ben Goths about, and I quickly realised there were quite a few faces there I had not seen for ages. I got my kit set up then it was time for the evening to start. Its also worth noting this is the first ever Whitby where every band had a drummer and most of the bands were 100% live with no sequenced backing.

Dutch Order This is a new band to me, and they played a very impressive set of Joy Division inspired melodic Post Punk, This genre is very popular these days, and this lot are right on the money looking forward to seeing them again.

Black Moth I’m a bit puzzled about this lot, they are playing on the Goth scene yet there an out and out Metal band, all well played and tight, but really the wrong sort of band for WGW IMO.

Dr Arthur Krause

This is my first pleasure of the evening, this is a Swedish old school gothic rock band, and are signed to M&A so it was really good to see Andreas there whom I haven’t seen for years, he was always a great friend to ALF in the old days. Anyhow Krause played an extended set as it was there 10th anniversary show, its great to see bands like this on the WGW stage, as I haven’t seen anyone like this for years, good stuff. Fuzzbox Another wildcard, in 1986 I saw them on whistle test doing Spirit in the sky in an arty / punk way, so I was kind of expecting this as what the band would be, what we got was hummm, well it was bubblegum pop, and they even did a cover of Ms pop muzik, they went down very well and they still did spirit well.

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry

Were pretty much the same as last time except that they also had Wolfie on guitar, a Classic guitar driven gothic rock band that didn’t disappoint. So after the bands did a bit of mingling, was very happy to have a few people come up to me and say the liked the new music that I was doing with both bands, this was really lovely as its something that seldom happened before! Met up with Lilly from Static magazine and a few old friend such as Plant, William Faith and Scary Lady Sarah. It was the people I didn’t know, you know the faces you see but you don’t know them, many were there this time that had not been there for some time. This ‘Split’ with Whitby where the rivals took on a separate weekend, has meant that the true spirit of the Whitby Gothic Weekend has returned, no poseurs just there to get there photos taken, it was a Gothic music festival for gothic music fans, and it worked just like it did in the 90s. A quick word about the DJs, Dj wolfman, Cyber Andy and SLS all played a great set of tunes, no EBM or bleep just proper Goth with the odd bit of 80s and post punk just what you want. On to Saturday Popped in and had a look at the stalls, and caught up with Gary and a few others there was a nice vibe, again didn’t see to many people with cameras getting in the way though I did see one pair that looked like the Paparazzi’s out of Come Fly with me. Oh I also listened to the world according to Maisey as well haha! Band wise, it was another great selection.

Pink Hearse

This was an all girl punk / gothabilly band from Blackpool, they had some catchy tunes and reminded me of a Canadian band I know called Machetes, they did a good set.

Luxury Stranger

Ok I gigged with this lot twice last year, and I got to say I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about, they were ok but nothing special to me so I thought id just be seeing the same. Not so this time, they have a new line up, now Chris Banshee I have always rated as a very good all round musician, and Neil is a very good drummer, added to what Simon does, we have one hot band, there is great interplay between the three of them, some really well crafted songs and a great performance. For me Luxury Stranger were the band of the weekend for me, and it goes to show that you have to see a band 2 or 3 times to really gauge them.

The Beauty Of Gemina

Well it doesn’t seam that long ago that they played before, I thought they were ok last time, this time they were a lot better, I think they had more faster songs too, again this style of Goth, that you had by the bucket load in the 90s you seldom see live these days, and thankfully Whitby had them, I wasn’t sure if l liked the couple of more ‘Dancy’ tracks, but the rest of the set was very good.

Frankenstein

American Gothabilly, again I have seen them before, and quite frankly I didn’t like them, this time, I dunno it grew on me more, they were good entertainers, very lively, well played and tight the finale William Faith and Pink Hearse joined them for a cover of I wanna be your Dog.

The Damned

Well the headliner have never delivered anything other than a spot on set, I had heard they were going to do Phantasmagoria in full, but they didn’t, they also didn’t do Grimly Fiendish or Eloise still cant have everything. Its like its come full circle, Whitby arrived when Goth gigs were few and far between and there were few places to meet people into Goth and Goth bands, and almost 20 year after the even we are at the same point in time, there are very few Goth gigs these days, and the internet is all very well but it’s a very special thing to get a large gathering of these likeminded people together, and through more hassle that I could imagine Whitby Jo has come up trumps this time and its been one of the best Whitbys ever for this reason. After hung out with the Rhombus lot and had some of Robs birthday cake, very nice it was too. I have put online a webcast of a track from every band, I’m very proud of this and I did it because I was so inspired on how great the weekend was. http://www.livestream.com/dangernoisetv its on the loop at the moment.

2011-03-11T15:42:00.000-08:00

BBC Radio in the South West

Friday 4th March 2011 - Eric Clapton
I did a pre record for this show and talked about my hero Mr Clapton

JJ Cale and Eric Clapton - album The road to escondido
Hard to Thrill
Eric Clapton and BB King - album Riding With The king
Worried life blues
Eric Clapton - album Blues
Furthur up on the road

Friday 11th March 2011 - Mixed bag this week, Pretties due to play Ashburton Festival and Thunder reforming

The Pretty Things - Album Rage Before Beauty
Passion of Love
Play With Fire

Thunder - Album The Best of Thunder
Dirty Live

Dream Disciples - Album In Amber
In Amber

2011-02-18T16:27:00.000-08:00

Playlist The Late Show 19th Feb 2011
BBC radio Devon / Cornwall / Channel Islands / Online

It was Folk Relief night for the Devon Air Ambulance and I played

Leadbelly - Where did you sleep last night?
Nick Pynn - The Correct Section of Gears
All About Eve – Gypsy Dance
New Model Army – Vagabonds
Pentangle – Open the Door

I will be doing some more folk relatet tunes next week.

2011-02-15T04:17:00.000-08:00

Upside Down - The Beginning of Secrets for September

OK so after Christmas I decided that I wanted to go for it with a new band. Niall and Michael were in already, and after putting out some downloads we bagged the Sonic Rock gig, I was very pleased with this as it was always a festival that I wanted to do. Anyhow I still wanted a singer for the band, so as I had music on-line I gave Gumtree a go, within a couple days I had 2 people interested. and straight away I had a gut feeling Marina was perfect for the job, we met her a few days later, the day after she sent me lyrics for 4 songs, 2 days later we rehearsed and the following week we did a gig.

Next thing was to record, I had the basic demo of the song recorded, and I went to Marinas house to record her vocals using a laptop and a USB mixer. The vocal sessions went very well. A few days later I popped over to my other studio and put some drums down off my Roland kit, they were only rough but gave the song a groove. I then did all the guitars.

Next thing I wanted to do was to add some synth lines, I did a solo that was good but I knew the Moog was better, so I went over to Roger's place and got him to do it, in about 25 minutes he cracked it, always the professional Roger is (All the strings and other keyboards were played by me using Wavestation and Mellotron plug ins).

I did edit what he did slightly, he did a long intro (because the intro was initially longer) I sliced it up and used bits for the verses just here and there.

Last thing was some proper drums, so off I went to Tiverton to the music shop where Mike teaches drums, I had just taken delivery that day of a new USB audio interface and this was its first job. and in about 4 takes we nailed all the drums pretty much perfectly. A very pleasing recording session all round.

So here is the song.

Secrets For September - Upside Down

And some photos of Mike!

2011-02-15T04:08:00.000-08:00

4th Feb 2011 - Calstock Tamar Inn

I find these days if I go for more than 2 weeks without playing a gig I suffer with musical cabin fever so I was asked to play some songs at an acoustic night in Cornwall at the Tamar Inn in a small village called Calstock. Neil the guy that runs it I have know for years as I work with him, and Colin and Simon from work do the sound.

I got there around 9.45 and by 10 I was on. I did a short sent as I had to dash off to the Radio station to do my show.

I played

Fortunes Light
Jessica
Blue Sky
To Behold

The songs went down very well, I was far more confident than when I played to the same audience a year ago.

2011-02-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

BBC radio 11th Feb 2011

Tonight was a Gary Moore Tribute night and I played
Gary Moore - Key To Love
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Warriors of the Wasteland (Attack mix with GM)
BBM - Waiting in the wings
Gary Moore and Phil Lynott - Out In the Fields
Gary Moore - Walking by Myself

2011-02-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

BBC Radio in the South West

4th February 2011

Tonight I talked about Roxy Music as they are currently on tour to celebrate 40 years together.

The songs I played

Virginia Plain
Edition Of You
In every dream home a heartache
Jealous Guy

2011-01-29T06:39:00.000-08:00

27th Jan 2011 at the Picturehouse and the run up to it.

Had a really interesting couple of weeks musically speaking. It all started about 3 weeks ago when I placed an ad on Gumtree for a singer for the new band. I had trie before but to no avail but after getting new material out there, I thought I would give it another shot. Anyhow as it turned out 2 people applied for the job, and I kind of went with the person that applied first. That person was Marina, and before we had even practiced we had already written one song together, and she has given me lyrics for 4 other songs, one of which I have written a riff for.
I had the idea that to see how things go that she would sing a song with me at my acoustic show I had booked for the 27th Jan. Well firstly Niall was available to play so it was already a duo Then we upped it from 1 song to adding the new one as well. We rehearsed it last Sunday, both electric and acoustic and both were really good. I knew from this point that my gut instinct was right (though after the initial rehearsal I offered Marina the job based on the fact she had a good voice and a really good work ethic) even at Sundays rehearsal she had learned all her lyrics.
So then I chatted on facebook with Mike who I have had on the back burner as our drummer, Mike was in a band I really rated called Mummysmack so I knew he was perfect for the job. I suggested that he play at the gig on some kind of hand drum, he was a little uncertain but he agreed anyway, so last Thursday not only did everybody meet for the first time, but we also played a gig.
I did go through the numbers with Mike outside the venue just to make sure everything was ok. Then it was how time.
Rosie Eade was on and shes someone I really rate, she did a set of mostly her own songs, though she did an amazing version of The Whos Behind Blue Eyes.
Until the day of the gig I forgot that I had actually meant to do a solo set as well, so I went through a few old favourites. Martin suggested a few songs to do so the set went.

Fortunes Light
Blue Sky
Jessica
The Widow’s Blame
Broken Dream

All were done with Niall playing electric Slide Guitar.

The it was the Secrets For September Set where we played

To Behold
Upside Down

I made a catastrophic boo boo in that I put the Capo on the wrong fret for Upside down, so we did it a semitone higher than it was meant to be, Niall quickly spotted it and amended accordingly, it didn’t faze Marina at all and she sang in brilliantly.

So all in all a very successful night all round, some even commented that I was also my best solo set that I have played, listening to the tape back, it was by far one of my best its almost like I have now mastered this singing lark!!

2011-01-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

BBC Radio Playlists

I will try to list what I play on the radio each week

28th Jan 2011
Tonight I was talking about Harvest Records and played
Third Ear Band - Earth
Bakerloo - Once Upon A Time
Quatermass - Up on the Ground
Pink Floyd - The Narrow Way

21st Jan 2011- Prog Rock Special
Gray Lady Down - Annabel
Mr So And So - The Circus
Secrets For September - Dub Matter What It Is
Pendragon - Master Of Illusion

14th Jan 2011 - The Move
Useless Information
Beautiful Daughter
California Man
+ One other that I Forgot

7th Jan 2011 - Bass Players that Passed Away Mick Karn and Phil Kennemore
Y & T - Shine On
Y& T - One Life
Japan - Visions Of China
Japan - Canton

2010-12-30T04:50:00.000-08:00

North and Parker Exeter Cavern 29th Dec 2010

About 2 weeks ago, I though, Hummm, I wonder who’s playing the Cavern in the next few weeks, and just by chance I sent Dave at the Cavern a text to see if there was any support slots going, and good as he is came back with a gig straight away Dave top man as ever.

Anyhow, on the day of the gig because of the snow we hadn’t had much chance to go through the set so we had to do it in the afternoon, we did a short set of about 26 minutes so we were able to run through the set a couple times. One thing that worried me was that I haven’t done an electric gig for so long, doing the acoustic stuff has been great and I’ve really got the hang of it, but the electric is still a little tricky and I’m mostly referring to the vocal side of things here.

So we pile in to the cavern and there is plenty of time to grab chips always a good thing to do. Dave even bought us a round of drinks, marvellous.

There were 3 bands on, sound checks all went pretty well, our stage time was 8.30 and it was good to see a good number of friends there. One thing I was aware of was that the vocal microphone was very loud, I did ask the sound guy to turn it down and it was booming at me on stage, the result was I tried to compensate for it, and that only means one thing for an in experienced singer like myself, it sounded wobbly!

As far as the other on stage sound aspects are concerned the mix was perfect, I could hear everything else, and myself and Niall played really tight, there was no bum notes to speak of, I have expanded a lot in some of the solos, mostly down to the influences of my guitar less with Reeves back along, and listening to the recording, I am very disappointed with the vocals, hopefully this will be rectified when I finally get a singer for Secrets for September.

So we played:

To Behold
Wait for Yesterday
Jessica
Destiny
Is Space Found?

Not a bad selection of songs, mostly new, with a brief visit to the past, The flanger on my Polychorus gave me probably the most will Goth guitar sound that I ever had!!!

Next band up were Morning Rush, a nice selection of quality acoustic guitars on stage I noticed, they have gone for the 90s acoustic almost indie sound, think that Deep Blue Something Breakfast at tiffanies song and you get the idea, they had a lot of fans, most were probably not born when I first played at the cavern, thus making me and my comrades feeling particularly old, to the point that Kal and co left early! Its always a much more mature audience at the Picturehouse you see.

Above Morning Rush

Once they did there bit The Quails came one, now this is a band I know of more by reputation than actually seeing them. 4 piece indie guitar rock band with a bit of synths here and there, very of the time band if you know what I mean, and they are doing very well though I wouldn’t have used Plymouth city centre as a backdeop for a music video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V06mqa-1VGw

One of the best bands I saw this year was Show of Hands the Exeter folk rock band that sell out the Royal Albert Hall every time they play, well the main mane Steve Knightly was in the audience (His nephew is in Morning Rush) and was watching our set, I was a little in aw of someone so top of there game being in the audience of a sat of ours that I felt was below par, under normal circumstances id have said hello, but best stay quiet on this.

So not the best performance, still plenty to learn from it but a good way to round off the year.

2010-12-24T06:52:00.000-08:00

23rd Dec 2010 another great night at the Picturehouse

Well last night was a really fun gig, by far the best one of the year I reckon. Started off a bit differently a friend of ours wanted to sing a song, so we did a cover of Stuck In the Middle with Ellie on vocals and Lee-Anne played bass, this went down very well indeed.
Ellie had never sung before in public and really enjoyed it.
Then it went to my set, I hadn’t really prepared the set just gone through a few songs at hope, as it turned out it was a varied set and went on for about an hour!

Set List:

Stuck in the Middle (with Ellie and Lee-Anne)
Fortunes Light (Played on a Mandolin)
Blue Sky
Feel
Don’t Look Back (Lloyd Cole song)
Crimson
Close Down
To Behold
Carnival Of Souls
Jessica
Love is a spirit (Arthur Brown song)
The Widow’s Blame (with a very extended guitar solo)

After the set we were treated to an encore of The mighty Super Punk Muffins Goth Detectives quality stuff, and a Quality night.

On the way home we went into Ali’s kebab shop in Newton for some food, and met a guy working there called Mehmet who played the Saz guitar, a wonderful sounding instrument I had a little go and it was very easy to make a tune up, but he was the master, was like our very own after show gig to go with out chips. Was a great gig, roll on Wednesday at the Cavern.

2010-12-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

Tres Desole at The Exeter Picturehouse 9th Dec 2010

So another trip to my second home the Picturehouse in Exeter, I was suppose to have been joined by Niall for this one but he was unable to attend so I did it on my tod.

Some variation in the set tonight, I added Into The Light, as the MK3 version of ALF’s songs seldom get a play these days, one of my friends Steve was there, and he requested a couple songs, and out of his list I picked Tres Desole. The set went like this

Fortunes Light
Feel
Blue Sky
Tres Desole
Into The Light
Broken Dream
To Behold

It was also the day that I released my Solo EP called Broken strings, if you would like to hear it use the played below, and you can also download it and set the price you wish to pay, if though you wish to have it for free I’d really appreciate it if you could post a link to it on your facebook profile, thanks.

2010-11-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

Gigs and Stuff at the weekend

This weekend was really a game of two halves. Up early on Saturday morning for a trip to London, and this time for a specific reason, I noticed on Kevin Armstrong’s website that Reeves Gabrels was doing a guitar master class in London.

Well this was something I have always wanted to do , learn some tricks from the master, I have always regarded him as one of the greatest guitar players in the world, so I had to do it.

So got into London ans went to Vintage And Rare guitars in Denmark St which was where it was happening. Now there were 2 other guitar students, both teenagers and both very good players.

I had flashbacks to working at Bills where every Saturday you would have some kids coming in that could whiz up and down the fret board at 100 mph! Anyhow, Reeves and Kevin were both really good, and I learned a lot, specifically about making the usual ‘Standard’ solo techniques more interesting, and to adding discords etc to it. It was all over far too quick.

So I had a solo show in London, I figured while I was in town id see if I could get a gig, I have only been doing this singing stuff for about a year, and though I did the ALF gig a few months ago, being up there on your own is a totally different ball game. I also had to take my own PA, this was actually a tip to the old days when ALF would tour with our own pa, some of the kit I was using I had not used since 1992!

Still it all worked, and It was nice that I had full control over the monitor!! I did a set of all sorts, the songs I played were

Fortunes Light
Feel
Blue Sky
Don’t Look Back (Lloyd Cole song)
Love is a Spirit (Arthur Brown Song)
Crimson
Twenty Nine Point Nine
Friends Forever (Where I also did a mid guitar change so I could do the solo on electric!)
Broken Dream
Close Down (Not played this one in a while and first time solo)
Jessica
To Behold

So there was my solo songs, some ALF and a bit of Secrets for September at the end. Listening to the recording not my best set, the vocals were a bit wobbly, but that can be sorted in time all of this is experience as far as I'm concerned, the nerves are nothing like they were though playing to mates being in the front row always puts on an added pressure.
It was a good night, and was really great to have a few friends there, even if my pal Roger turned up about 5 minute after the gig ended!!

Afterwards we headed off to some pub where a few mates were hanging out at some goffs party in the other room, we stayed in the main bar and talked about the old days, that might inspire me of digging out the Karate Party video.

Graham took a great set of photos here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wanderlustg/sets/72157625334540994/with/5156015574/

2010-11-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

40 Years of Atom Heart Mother

40 years ago my favourite album of all time was released ‘Atom Heart Mother’ by Pink Floyd.

It was the bands first UK No 1 lp and it took the band to a much higher lever than before. Its beautifully produced and has some terrific elements to it, yet the band and the fans don’t really like it.

The main port of the album is the title track, now Pink Floyd really worked at their material, so many bands no simple go from writing to recording then release it and tour it. Pink Floyd up to the animals album always played new material before they recorded it, Atom heart mother was first played live a good 9 months before the album was released. It was even shown on TV and played live on the Radio before it was released. The title track is a long instrumental in 6 parts, with Choir , Brass and of cores the band. The avant-garde composer Ron Geesen crafted the original piece (Known as The Amazing Pudding). It’s a stunning journey starting with a Brass drone (that sounds amazing on the quad mix), into a simple tune that is the theme for the whole piece, it goes through structures of ballad, blues, psychedelic oddness and back again, such a milestone of composition in 1970. Side 2 has IF, one of Roger waters best ever tunes, David Gilmour’s Fat old Sun another killer track, as is Rocks Summer 68, Both Roger and David have played their tracks on there solo tours, The ending is like a mini AHM called Alans Psychedelic Breakfast, sound effects link 3 different instrumental tracks, all very atmospheric. Add to that the cover, a great photo of a Cow and there you have it, to me the greatest album of all time. I was so very privileged to see it performed live, well side 1 of it a couple of years ago with Geesen and Gilmour.

Its well worth a listen if you like the idea of orchestrated rock music.

2010-11-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

Exeter Picturehouse 14th October 2010

So back to the picturehouse after about a month, this show was to be a little different to normal as unlike previous picturehouse shows, Niall was playing slide guitar and not bass.

Ben Tallamy went on first, years ago he was in a band called Parasol Star that supported ALF back around 2002 he also played at the Exmouth festival a few months ago, he’s a really talented singer songwriter and plays a variety of other instruments too inc. the flute.

We did a not too dissimilar set to last time, with the exception to the last song.

We were having a before hand strum and ended up going through Just Like Heaven by The Cure, thinking it was a good Idea, Andy the manager of the Picturehouse printed out the lyrics for me off the internet and we added it to the set. Lee-Anne joined me for this one.

Fortunes Light
Feel
Friends Forever
Drowning
Love is a Spirit
Broken Dream
Just Like Heaven

Afterwards came our pals Super Punk Muffins, who kicked off there Bonzos influenced set with Goth Detectives, Ben joined them on flute and they had a drummer to boot.

I handed me Guitar over to Simon whom used it for his set with Wayne at Whitby the following week. So a jolly good evening.

Our friends Marc and Steve

Niall and Simon

Ben

That be us

Lee-Anne

The Mighty Super Punk Muffin

2010-09-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

Two nights in Bristol 26th September 2010

So on a very nice Sunday afternoon I ventured up the M5 to Bristol to play 2 little gigs in the city.
The first one was at a place called The Rose Of Denmark, now I cant count how many times I have been plat this venue in the last 20 years going to various gigs in the City, but on this occasion I actually set foot in the place.
Was a bit odd when I got there as most of the pub was having a roast dinner, while a PA was being set up in the same room and soon after backline and drum kits were being piled in.

Still I was on first so bang on 4pm I took to the stage.

The first set consisted of

Fortunes Light

Feel

Friends Forever

Love is a Spirit

Broken Dream

The set went down OK and it was good to have some decent monitoring while playing.
So after the set we ventured into the main city centre, was very useful that a lot of street parking was free no a Sunday. Had a late lunch at a place called

Zerodegrees wasn’t bad there they did a good Pizza.

Then off to the Urban Wood, a nice small bar again with a good PA and they served decent coffee too. Played a longer set too.

Fortunes Light

Feel

Twenty Nine Point Nine

To Behold

Love Is A Spirit

Broken Dream

After the set I had to hang about as I had left my top at the previous venue, but the promoter was going to pop it over. We then headed to the James Street Vault to see Geoff Horsey’s set of Blues and Folk, this guy is an incredible Harmonica player.

By 12.30 pm collapsed into bed, was a good day out.

2010-09-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

The making of ‘To Behold’

Well this is a story that goes back to spring 2009, I was working on a few ideas and I came up with the basic riff and bass line, I added some keys and just jammed over it.
After the initial recording I took it home to work on and I did some work on the drum programming, then it sat for a good 6 months.
In the meantime I had written a chorus for it and some lyrics and I started playing it live at my solo gigs that I have been doing and in the spring I worked on the band recording put in the choruses and had a structure there.
I then went to my friend Roger O’Donnell’s house and asked him if he wouldn’t mind recording some Moog on it for me. His initial solos were great but he was using his trademark muted sound, and after much nagging I got him to open up the filters a but to make it sound a bit more rock, and what he recorded to my ears was amazing, exactly what I wanted. He did 3 takes and I edited some of it together to give some layers.

This song then sat fallow for a bit longer.
I had performed some embryonic versions live with my old band, and during this process Niall had worked out some more interesting bass lines to the ones that I had recorded on the original demo so we recorded the bass very much in an as live situation where we played guitar and bass together as if it were live, we did 3 takes of the bass and cut the best bits together. We took a DI out of an Ampeg SVT 3 and recorded it straight in and added a limiter. There was an EHX compressor in the fx chain.
The vocals were recorded in my flat using an electric condenser mic with a pop shield and no pets around! The last thing was the guitars. Now I re recorded all the guitar parts from the demo, the Acoustic is my Yamaha where I recorded the sound from the internal piclup to one channel and I also recorded the guitar at the same time using an electric condenser microphone, I used separate condenser mics and panned the guitars 75% L and R (Mic was left and transducer right I think!!).
The clean electric guitars were my Charvel 375 going through a Marshall DRP1 direct recording pre amp into the mixer then into the computer, all effects were added from plug ins. And the Lead guitar was done the same with the exception of also going through an original 70s EHX Big Muff pedal.

And there you go!

2010-09-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

20th September 2010 at the James Street Vault

Well first things first, I will start with Mondays gig at the James Street Vault. Now the JSV is a pub that is right in the middle of the University in Plymouth, but innless you know its there you would have no idea of its existence if you get my drift.

I played a short acoustic set down there a few weeks ago, and impressed Mark the promoter down there enough to give me a gig. Is a bit tricky for me at the moment not actually having a band for the first time in 18 years, but the ‘North and Parker’ concept is a very neat bridge as we can have a full sound and play whatever we like, new songs, old songs even the odd cover, and it can be electric or acoustic, and all the way it keeps the chops up and hopefully keeps the audience entertained as well.

So we got there about 8pm set up our kit, had to wait till 9 for the pa to set up but once arrived sound checking was a relatively easy and simple process. We made up a song on the spot called the Pizza song, based on what we had just eaten, I liked the chord sequence and as I had my Zoom box running I might got back to it and turn it into a proper song.

So we kicked off at about 10:20pm with the acoustic set

1. Fortunes Light
2. Feel
3. Friends Forever
4. Drowning
5. Love is A Spirit
6. Broken Dream

On the acoustic set Niall was playing slide guitar like we did at the Torquay show, it was a lot more fluid this time, and we settled into it much better. After a break of about 10 minutes, the lights went off the projectors came on as we did the electric set.

1. To Behold
2. Jessica
3. Wait For Yesterday
4. The Living
5. Destiny
6. Wait Here (For You)
7. Hey You
8. Crimson
9. Twenty Nine Point Nine
10. Is Space Found?

So the last song that I didn’t list on the Torquay set is ‘Is Space Found’ ? One of the new Secrets for September songs. But I wanted to keep it under wraps until the download was out.

So was smiles all round after, I enjoyed the gig and felt more comfortable as front man than at any other gig before now. Its not perfect far from it but getting better all the time.

2010-09-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

Acoustic set at the Pilgrim Inn Bristol 9th September 2010

So last night I ventured up to Bristol to play an acoustic night at the Pilgrim Inn run by Mark Venus whom puts on a lot of acoustic nights in Bristol. I only had a 20 minutes set so was a tricky choice of what to play, in the end I did

Fortunes light
Jessica
Love is a spirit
To behold

I didn’t intend on playing Jessica I blame it on not having a pen to write a set list, I was going to do either 29.9 or Broken dream.

Anyhow the set went down pretty well, looks like I will probably be playing some more stuff in Bristol in the not too distant future.

2010-09-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

North and Parker at Ryan's Bar Torquay 3rd September 2010

Last night was a bit of a special gig for us, really the first official post All Living Fear gig, billed as North and Parker and as we were the only band on the bill we had to extend the set, so the obvious thing is to play 2 sets one acoustic and one electric.

The acoustic set was made up of

Fortunes Light
Feel
Friend Forever
Drowning
Love is a Spirit (Arthur Brown Cover)
Broken Dream

What made this different to the normal acoustic sets that myself and Niall have done is that Niall was playing slide guitar rather than Bass, this had a great sound, especially as he was playing his guitar through a compressor and a memory man analogue delay pedal.

After a break of 5 minutes we then took to the stage for the electric set, there was only really 1 stable All Living Fear song in the set specifically Jessica, the rest was either song I have written in the past year as well as a few of my older tracks.

To Behold (With Synth solo)
Jessica
Wait for Yesterday
The Living
Destiny
Wait Here (For You)
Hey You (Cure Cover)
Twenty Nine Point Nine
The last song was a new one but I’m not listing it here as it might give the game away

There was a few more tracks in the set, but we cut the set a little shorter as my voice was flagging and we had gone on a little late.

All in all was a good gig, the PA at Ryan’s bar is very good and puts a lot of more well known club venues to shame.

2010-09-02T00:14:00.000-07:00

Torquay Ryans Bar Acoustic Gig 28th August 2010

Well last week I played a show for the very excellent charity Rowcroft Hospice. The show was at Ryans bar in Torquay, a special town to me, I was born there, I formed my first band proper with people from Torquay and played my first proper gig there. I had recently had a car accident and was temporally without transport, this meant 2 Cabs, 2 Trains and 2 Buses but I got there!

The venue is a great little pub, well its really 2 bars in one, the top bar where the gigs happen has a good atmosphere and an excellent PA that puts a lot of venues to shame.

A few old friends turned up which was great, the set that I played was

Fortunes Light
Feel
Drowning
Broken Dream
Love is a Spirit
To Behold
Twenty Nine Point Nine
Jessica

It was then a mad dash to the bus to get back and tomorrow I return to the venue this time with a full electric and acoustic set.

Above photo taken by Dee Ryans Bar landlady

2010-08-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Cure Rocket Reunion

So Last night was The Cure Rocket Reunion at the Railway in Crawley. When I got there found a pub full of 50% locals and 50% Goths mostly members of bands. Section 3 the other band that Steve was playing with tonight were setting up, complete with a vintage Lynn drum machine the sort of thing you only ever see in old episodes of Rock School.

Anyhow, the bands kicked off and Steves lot were on first, carrying on pretty much where Complicity left off about 12 year ago, good solid set. I started to get things together while Luxury Strangers were on stage, little practice in the beer garden and we were ready. This gig was a little odd as 2 members were missing, Niall and Nev were not there, still using a track with bass on pumped through a meaty bass amp gave it enough thud in the bass dept.

We did a 35 minute set that had

To Behold
Jessica
Wait For Yesterday
Crimson (First time in ages)
Hey You (well it IS the Cure festival after all)
Stranger To None
Twenty Nine Point Nine

Really enjoyed the gig, the audience were very warm to us, id co so far as to say is was the best reception that we have had so far with this era of the band.

2010-08-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

Some films

I’m not one for watching films, but recently I have watched quite a few, I’ve seen all the Hannibal films and a serial killer film called Copycat, though my real passion is documentaries and I’ve seen 2 very good ones this week.

It Might Get Loud

This is a film where you get 3 of the most important and influential guitarists of the last 50 years.
Jimmy page – for the Classic rock prospective and legendary riffs
The Edge – For the technology
Jack White – for the no frills back to basics raw guitar playing

The start of this film shows Jack white litrally building a 1 string guitar before your very eyes, the film then moves on to how the 3 respeticve guitarists got into playing, first guitar, what it isn’t a film about is just a biopic about the bands they formed.

Then they get into a room together, looking very uncomfortable at first, but they soon warm and start talking about their influences and do a little jamming of each others riffs, one of the best scenes is Jimmy Page playing whole lotta love and Edge and White just watching in awe. The high point of the film for me is seeing the three of them playing In My Time of Dying. A great film even if you not mad into guitars.

The Bridge

This is something quite shocking, The golden gate bridge in San Francisco is one of the most iconic bridges in the world. Its also the bridge where more people have committed suicide off than any other bridge in the world.

Cameras were set up over the whole of 2004 to observe what happens on the bridge, the film reveals 24 people died committing suicide off the bridge with several being stopped in the nick of time. Some of the stories are deeply moving, what also surprised me was that most of the people that died were men. The cinematography was amazing and the film was made with some of the highest production values that I have ever seen in broadcast.
Be warned the film shows people jumping form the very start.

2010-07-30T03:13:00.000-07:00

Exeter Picturehouse 29th July 2010

Last night was another trip up the A38 to the Picturehouse in Exeter.

I must have played there more than any other venue in the last 2 years, and it’s a great test bed for what I’m doing. Tonight I had put in some new songs, because I have been practicing singing every day weather with the band, recording or whatever the nerves factor isn’t kicking in like it was.

The first act on was Rosie Eade and a chap playing Piano, they were VERY good indeed, I think it was one of their first gigs too.

After her set I went on, was nice to have a gang of mates in the audience.

The set went like this

Fortunes Light
Feel
Drowning (A new song)
Broken Dream (A new ish song that will be explained in a few weeks time)
TO Behold
Love is a Spirit (Arthur Browns Kingdom Come song)
Twenty Nine Point Nine
Jessica

I decided to do Love is a spirit as a kind of last minute thing, I remembered the lyrics were on the Tantric Lover CD so I typed them out, played it through a couple of times on my lunch break then did it for real and really enjoyed playing it.

I think I played 2 bits of mission riffs every time I saw slink walk past to go outside for a fag ha ha !

After us was Super Punk Muffin whom played for about a hour, though only did 5 Songs with 10 minutes of chat in-between each song, Kal had some wicked effects coming out of his Roland cube bass amp, really good Auto Wah/envelope filter on those amps!

Was a great night, and looking forward to my next Picturehouse show.

2010-07-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

Well that was a surprise!

Last night my girlfriend went out for a drink with a friend and I was going to pick her up after work, I get a text from her around 10 pm saying to bring my guitar with me. It turned out that I had been booked a slot on an acoustic night at a venue called the James Street Vault. Id never been there before but its basically in the middle of the university, It’s a kind of a cross between the Dev in Camden and the Timepiece in Exeter. When I got there a Irish folk band were launching into full swing, then there was a French blues guitarist and after him it was me.

I did 3 songs in totally I should probably have done a few more but I didn’t want to over cook it. I did Fortunes Light, To Behold and 29.9 I was very pleased in how it all went down, I was quite nervous and I’m always nervous when it comes to using the loop pedal you only have to knock it out of time by a fraction and it sounds awful but I managed to get it spot on.

It’s a great little venue and I’d very much like to do it again.

Photos are on my facebook page http://www.facebook.com/matthewnorthmusic

2010-07-14T05:20:00.000-07:00

Update 14th July 2010

Hi all

Well I thought it was about time for an update, though I’m still rather excited by the news that last Saturday David Gilmour and Roger Waters performed again together, If you didn’t know they did a charity gig in Kidlington Oxfordshire for the HOPE for Palestine charity inc one generous audience member who paid 50 thousand quid for them to do an encore of Another Brick In The Wall.

You can read more about here here http://www.davidgilmour.com/

The photo was by Polly Sampson.

Anyhow

I have been writing and recording, I was looking at putting something out as a free download by the end of the month, I hope this to still be the plan, there are 2 songs almost finished, one called Drowning and the other called Feel that I have performed live a few times on my acoustic gigs.

Yes I am also going to do another All Living Fear download this like the last one will be free and will have maybe 2 or 3 tracks, and maybe an extended mix of one of the songs as well. There is a story behind the main track that will be explained when its released. I don’t have a definite time for it but I hope it may be ready for the gigs in August.

I’m still looking to do more gigs this year on my own, and also if the one in Plymouth goes well I might do some more as a duo with Niall, this isn’t a new band project its just something to keep the chops up for the time being.

2010-06-17T07:53:00.000-07:00

So that’s it ?

Yes I have finally laid the mantle All Living Fear to rest.

I always had a plan, the plan was simple, I was going to give All Living Fear one last shot over a 6 month Period.

I did this by firstly getting a new band together to play some shows and maybe write some songs.

The thing is for any band, if the line up isn’t anything to do with the bands last CD people are seldom going to want to see said band, as was the case with the Autumn tour. That’s why the non ‘Goth Scene’ gigs were great and the Goth Scene ones were awful.

Another thing I had to do was to do a one off gig with Paul just for the fun of it and Play Into The Light one more time, we did that in Torquay in February.

I also wanted to do one more gig in London, we did that at the Underworld that was a great gig and really should have been left there.

But there is a couple more commitments, one was in Cambridge and then we have the Cures rocket reunion thing in august that again will be a fun gig to do with some excellent other bands playing all for a worthy cause.

If I’m honest the last few years have been hard work in a number of ways, Booking gigs was always hard, we were too well known to get warm up slots with other bands, but not well known enough to headline (like we did a lot of in the 90s), resulting in finding it hard to get places to play. The whole Goth scene that we were involved in changed a lot and with all sub genres of the scene live gigs suffered badly with poor turn outs and it affected everyone so much so that bands just stopped touring like they did. Then there were internal problems with the band that I wont bore you with now, but so much time was wasted waiting around for people to be ready to do stuff then never were, and I could write a book of let downs and broken promises that I have had from people to do with this band.

So its time to get out now, all financial things were sorted last year with Andy, the Fifteen years after project in many ways and the DVD that followed was the wrap up of that era of the band, really the bands most important time 1994-2007 there was nothing left to say or do.

I do think now that things should have ended at the Whitby show of 2007 but with a new album out you just want to keep going don’t you?

So that’s it All Living Fear is over, I am now able to sing and play guitar in public to my hearts content, I have some mates that I can work with for a full band, though musically we are only just starting to get to know each other. I have a lot of musical ideas to work through so I’m not going to get bored any times soon.

2010-06-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

Hi all

Well it was a busy one this weekened

On friday I had rehearsal with Niall for the gig at the Underworld, practice was pretty good, then I had to go into work as we had a Cure Disintegration special on Radio Devon. This included an interview with Roger, 6 Music had the producer but I got a member of the band, well not that its especially difficult for me to do that haha! You can download it here.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8vnh8n

Saturday I went to the Exmouth festival, I had been booked to do a short acoustic set, when I set off it was raining and I figured nobody would be there, I could hear the gig on the radio as I was driving up and it sounded like it was reasonably busy, and the sun did come out.

There was a lot of quality acoustic acts there, and I was rather nervous about it to be honest, there was at least 1000 people there, still about an hour later than advertised I got on stage, and did just 2 songs

Fortunes light and a long version of To Behold.

It went down really well far better than I thought it would do. Afterwards it was off to Ashburton for the Ashburton Blues Festival, specifically to see Peter Green. Now I have seen him once before, and to be honest it was a rather disturbing show, he has been dragged out, hardly played a note, it was like the backing band were using him as a name to bring people in. This was a totally different gig, yes he walked on quietly and had to sit, but he also played with real emotion and intensity, the fact that he did Rattlesnake Shake was awesome to say the least, he opened the set with Key to the highway, and did bet part of 90 minutes set. His harmonica playing was also rather awesome. So all in all a great gig.

Sunday, this was the day of our gig at the Camden underworld, for some reason or another we got there early the traffic was very kind to us this time, Soundcheck went well and we had a reasonable stage time of 8pm. By the time we got on there was a reasonable number of people in and we played a 30 minute set. We did

To Behold

Jessica

Wait For Yesterday

Destiny

Hey You

Stranger To None

Twenty Nine Point Nine

The set was well received though we had really bad sound on stage and could hardly hear the drums let alone my vocals so It did go a little all over the place in the middle. But hey it was the underworld, and it’s a great venue and the out front sound was spot on.

There is a video made from the footage of this gig. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ4rpug-sHg

So a busy weekend, off to Cambridge next.

Here are a couple photos taken by Graham Racher there are more here http://www.flickr.com/photos/wanderlustg/4655140923/in/set-72157624171965630/

2010-05-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

All Living Fear - Twenty Nine Point Nine

is finally finished have a listen here, and PLEASE download it and spread the links to it wherever you can remember its all free.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://alllivingfear.bandcamp.com/album/twenty-nine-point-nine"&amp;amp;gt;Twenty Nine Point Nine by All Living Fear&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

2010-05-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

Exeter Picturehouse 20th May 2010

So I return to the Picturehouse, almost my second home gig wise these days. But it’s a good set up and its exactly the sort of regular gig that I need to get the old confidence up and to try new stuff. Was a bit quieter than usual I guess the film they were showing wasn’t too popular!

I played a similar set to last time.

Fortunes Light
Feel
Destiny
Friends Forever
Hey You
Tower of Strength (well the first 20 seconds of haha)
Twenty Nine Point Nine
To Behold
Jessica

I thought I made a fair few bluffs, but I was standing up and its sometimes tricky to play the loop pedal.

I got a few ideas for next time, I wanted to use my electronic percussion pad though Niall has it in his studio.

Was a good night though, and it was great to have the regular posse of Lee-Anne, Tony and Kal there.

2010-05-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

Gig at Exeter Havana 4th May

Ok so this is a new venue for me, the last time I went anywhere on the quay in Exeter was around 1995 / 1996, the whole place has changed a lot.

Havana is a recently done up bar, its very big, has a stage and does very good chips. There was 4 acts on tonight, 3 of them including myself well all one man and a guitar, and the night ended with a dup where one of them also played one of those boxes you sit on and play like a drum sounded very effective.

I felt much more confident performing tonight, for one thing the PA was good and I could hear everything crystal clear through the monitor, plus there was a healthy amount of claps from the audience that is always a good sign.

The Set List I played:

Fortunes Light
Feel
Friends Forever
Hey You (Yes the song by The Cure)
Destiny
Twenty Nine Point Nine
To Behold
Jessica

This was a solo show as Niall was not available and for once I was feeling comfortable doing it, roll on the next one which will be at the Picture House on the 20th

2010-04-26T05:31:00.000-07:00

All Living Fears London show 30th May 2010

OK dear readers, ticket sales have been a little low compared to more 'Goth Scene' friendly gigs that we have played, but this is probably your ONLY chance of seeing All Living Fear in the capital this year, so please come along, remember its a bank holiday the day after so you have no need to worry about it being on a work night :)

Post punk legends Punishment of Luxury return to London on Sunday the 30th May 2010

Full Line Up:

Punishment Of Luxury

Rubella Ballet

All Living Fear

Never a Hero

Zeropunk

Venue Address
174 Camden High Street
London
NW1 0NE

You can order tickets direct from us at the face value of 11 uk pounds with free postage and no booking fee.

More info

http://www.flagpromotions.com/
http://www.alllivingfear.co.uk/gigs.htm

2010-04-09T02:10:00.000-07:00

Exeter Picturehouse Gig 8th April 2010

Last night I played a solo set at the Picturehouse, It was Niall’s birthday, so he was off doing something, birthday ish.

I did 7 songs
Fortunes Light
Feel (New song first time live)
Friends Forever
Twenty Nine Point Nine (another new song first time live)
Destiny
To Behold
Jessica

I ended up going on last, or top of the bill depending on your POV. I felt more comfortable this time, haveing a monitor would have helped, I had been working on some of these songs, and re wrote some of the words so I had the lyrics on a stand, this in some ways was more of a hindrance than a help! Still it was good to have a few friends in the audience, as well as Lee-Anne & Twinpeeks was good to see Slink and Kal there too.

The PA also had the reverb turned up to 11, thats always good :)

Hopefully there will be another once soon as I do enjoy the Picturehouse gigs.

2010-04-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

Friends Forever By Matthew North

Some of you may have notices that I have changed a few words in this one

Friends Forever

He worked for 40 years, serving for his Queen
When he left his school was told it was his dream
Took some lives, he couldn’t forget
Praying on his mind, the lives ignored

What will we do, what will we say
What will change to give life some pride
What will we do, what will we say
To give this life to give this gravity

See The Poor Man Begging For His bread
Summers over, his brother was left for dead
Holding a cup lost respect he’s entitled to
Waiting for the charity that died long ago
The pride of a man that serves his guard
Turns his blind eye, the children laugh

What will we do, what will we say
What will change t give life some pride
What will we do, what will we say
To give this life to give this gravity

2010-04-05T07:55:00.000-07:00

Destiny

Im finding posting lyrics to here handy because its an easy way for me to find them. I hope you like them to and sing along at the next gig :) Matthew

The Statements a Matter of fact
Looking through the will
Take what’s yours and leave what’s mine
You will drink yourself so blind

Every Day,
Every Way
Is nothing to look deep inside?

Anyone’s there
And nobody cares
Wait for something isn’t there

(Chorus)
Beyond the edge
Beyond the trail
Nothings left
For you to tell

Everything that needed me
Has gone away for destiny

(Verse 2)
Give me summer give me rain
If I am ever back again
You will see
Nothings Left
Nothings for Free

Every Day
Every Way
Is nothing to look deep inside?

Anyone’s there
And nobody cares
Wait for something isn’t there

2010-03-11T04:54:00.001-08:00

Twenty Nine Point Nine
by Matthew North 11th March 2010

(Verse 1)
Everybody knows there’s something wrong
Take your time and listen to this song
Words of fortune, words of faith
Do what you can before it’s too late

The Man on the door offers you hope
You didn’t see the rate oh what a joke
Twenty nine point nine you’re unlucky number
Take your money you’re going under

(Chorus)
You Work all day and you work all night
He’s knocking at the door and you get such a fright
You signed on the line and you made it easy
Twenty nine years and you life is breezy

Working all day and working all night
You didn’t think the loan would take your life
Money is easy but work is hard
You better think twice when you take that card

(Verse 2)
Five years gone you are no better
You’re at the mercy of the debt collector
Robert Johnson sold his song
Nobody knew him till he was gone

Nothings worth getting this mess
Forget the car and save the stress
Kill the TV in the morning
Go outside enjoy the glory

2010-03-10T08:25:00.000-08:00

Here is some lyrics to one of my new songs.

Feel – 10-03-2010

Everybody that you see today
Wants to get there and is happy to pay
Doesn’t matter if you sing or dance
You just want to have the chance

Reality is a wonderful thing
It’s not your dreams that they want you to bring
Through the door with a broken heart
That’ll get you to the start

Dreams may come, and dreams may go
Nothing to win, if you get on the show
The only thing you can guarantee
Is you will loose you dignity

Money for something you cannot spend
They take your soul to the very end
There’s no short cut to be a star
Just open your heart and play your guitar

Everything you dream is not as it seams
Manufactured waste is your only scene
Think long and hard before you take the step
Or you’ll live in a life of debt

Come on through to the other side
Your soul and heart is so alive
Do the things you want to do
Don’t let the high trousers turn the screw

There’s no substitute for something that’s real
For something from the heart that you will feel

That you really feel
Can you really feel
Do you really feel
Can you really feel
Can you really feel

Feel, Feel, Feel
Can You Feel

2010-03-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

Torquay Reunion show 27th feb 2010

Well last Saturday night was our homecoming show at Ryans bar in Torquay. Many faces of old showed up inc people that I have known for over 25 year and even a couple that were at our first ever gig in 1992.

The set was split in half, the first set was Myself and Paul performing the ‘Into The Light’ album in full to add contrast I played the opening track Fortunes light on the Mandolin Here is a video clip.

After the main set we also did Morning Dew to finish off.

The after a break of about 20 minutes we did the electric set.

We had 2 new songs

The set went:-

1 To Behold
2 Each And Every Way
3 Jessica
4 Wait For Yesterday
5 Wait Here
6 The Living
7 Home Too Soon
8 Destiny
9 The Widows Blame
10 Tomorrow

And we did an encore of Jessica again.

To Behold we have played live acoustically but Destiny this was its first live outing.

Reception was very favourable to the new material so there will be more in the next set.

More photos on the bands Myspace and Facebook pages

2010-02-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

Camden Palace 5th Spt 1996

One of the shows that we will always remember is the day we played at the Camden Palace now called KOKO on the 5th of September the day before Matthews 24th Birthday.

Here is the flyer

This gig was filmed by 3 Cameras one was fixed the others were operated by David Milner who filmed the band right through the 90s and a fan called Mickey.

Up until recently this footage was forgotten about, and we have edited together a track from that gig, unfortunately there is no mixing desk audio, so we have dubbed on the sound being as faithful as possible to the sound that the band had on stage that night.

Enjoy some nostalgia

2010-02-06T06:31:00.001-08:00

Recent live acoustic shows

Well this week I played a couple last minute acoustic shows. The first was on Thursday at the Picture house in Exeter, this was due to the one we had booked on the 18th was cancelled as there is a comedy gig happening there that night. There was some good acts on, most notably my mate Chris Woods whom I’ve mentioned before.

Myself and Niall performed 5 Tracks, Fortunes Light, Jessica, To Behold, Home Too Soon and Tomorrow. I was very happy with how we played, I think in some ways it’s the best acoustic show thus far, not perfect by any means by getting there, this was also pointed out boy a few of the regulars that came to my Exeter gigs.

Then last night, I played a few songs on my own at an acoustic night in a pub called the Tamar Inn in a place called Calstock, now to get there the satellite navigation took us all over the place, down tiny little lanes up hills, and eventually we found the place, though there was hardly anywhere to park!

I did just 3 songs, Fortunes Light, To Behold and Jessica, There were some problems with the Pa howling a bit, and the microphone I was using was knackered. So not the best performance, but the people that watched enjoyed it.

I do think its worth doing these things once in a while just to keep the momentum going and to be able to play some new stuff too.

2010-01-28T00:35:00.000-08:00

All Living Fear Tour Video

I have put a compilation of the tour together as a video with the soundtrack being one of the new songs that I have written and that we performed on the tour.
This in many ways is a starting block for the Mk 4 version of the band. We have got a very big deal gig for the end of 2010 so we have something solid to work for.

Id also likes to point out that though I’m singing I’m not a singer, I’m a guitarist that happens to be singing at the moment.

2009-12-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

A moment of Skin

Yesterday was a slightly surreal moment. A while ago Myke Gray talked about me joining Skin for the encore at the London show on their UK tour. I thought great, however if I’m totally honest here, I’m so used to musicians saying one thing then conveniently forgetting than I kind of put it out my mind.

Anyway the day of the gig, well I did have a little strum before I left only because sometimes things amazing happen, and I have had some rather amazing moments since I get involved with the whole Skin thing.

The band sound checked, I decided to film the band as there was 2 new songs in the set and the odd number that wasn’t in the tour last time, and Skin are the most fun band I have ever filmed and its never a chore, Doug who is doing the sound is also Iron Maidens sound engineer and he’s right on the button, so much so that if I’m brutally frank I was shit scared of him, even though I had met him before. After a few little chats I found him much easier to talk to I guess I’m not really used to talking to people that are at the top in the industry.

Anyhow I went back stage and helped then to unwrap DVDs ready for signing as ALL the DVDs sold are fully autographed as are the new CD too. While down there Myke mentioned about the encore again, and I was quite knocked out, there was one stumble I was worried Nev might not be happy about it as I would be playing one of his gorgeous Strat’s, he did go a little quiet.

Just before the show I checked with Myke and he said that everything was cool, and I spoke to Nev’s brother Iain who was across it all and I tried on one of Nevs guitars just to make sure the strap wasn’t to long, It was a little but I could cope.

Anyhow the gig started and the band played a blinder it was as good as Wolverhampton earlier in the year if not more so, though Wolverhampton will always be a special moment.

I managed to do a swift camera tape change before the encore then I walked back and Iain handed me the guitar, I was slightly shitting myself, remember it was a full house and I has never strummed a note with the band before. Nev then introduces me and then also brings on Toby Jepson (form Little Angles / Gun who was also supporting).

Then its 1,2,3,4 Boff a very fast 4 minutes take place. Now the first thing that ran through my mind was not am I playing the right notes, because I knew I was, but it was bloody hell this is a REALLY nice guitar. And I almost forgot I was on stage! Then the second half I was more into it. I could hear every note I was playing unlike the vast majority of All Living Fear gigs. Then in a flash it was all over and I was back in the pit with my TV camera.

Afterwards when I said tad a to the guys Nev said something really nice to me about my playing, that really just rounded the night off perfectly for me.

What a night.

2009-12-03T02:22:00.001-08:00

Sunderland 1st Dec 2009

So after a good night in Glasgow it was off to the final show of the tour, Sunderland.

It was a relatively quick drive down the 175 miles to the hotel, It was nice to stay in an old fashioned Travelodge, the Glasgow one the night before was rubbish, though they did do an all you can eat breakfast for something like 7.50 and Tony made the most of it.

Once we got to the hotel I made my last blog then headed off to the venue, The Cruxshadows were still sound checking, they have a very slick slow, but they want to get things Just right, not that we were worried as time wasn’t pressing. We had a good sound check, I could hear everything clearly on stage, and I was still a bit put off after the monitors disappeared last night during one of the songs.

In the back stage area there was a mobile radio station set up, DJ Ghost presents a program on Local Radio up there every week and they did it live from the gig, which was rather cool.

Anyhow, we went to the local weatherspoons for dinner, they do a deluxe posh Veggie burger there now, I had that without Chips, which would have just been way too much.

When we got back we saw Aria had hit the stage, this was a singer, and keyboard player affaire, she was going down pretty well with the audience.

Then it was our turn, we rushed to get on as if we went on before time we could have a longer set, that being said, our set was 33 minutes, and we had a 30 minutes set, and by going on earlier we actually came off before time so that all worked out well.

Now the set list as promised.
\
the Full tour set was

Each and Every Way
Jessica
Home Too Soon
Wait for Yesterday (This had the working title of Power of Drums or Pod)
The Living
Wait Here (For You)
The Widow’s Blame
Tomorrow
Stranger To None

For Sunderland we dropped Each and Home, as well as the intro tape

The set went down well enough, and we then did an interview on Ghosts radio show. Got to see a little of the Cruxshadows set which ended up in chaos, basically they always drag people from the audience onto the stage, and they all have a jog around, except the security didn’t quite see it this way, and stormed boots in on stage and basically tried to stop it, this ended up in the set stopping, and really put a bit of a damper on what was a rather good gig. Still the people there enjoyed the show, just a shame it has to be ruined in this way.

So the day after, I overslept and it was time to go home, we spent in total about 13 hours traveling, as we had to comer to Devon via Huntingdon to drop Nev off, there was a nice garden center that we had as a drop off point, point of interest was they had some lovely parrots in there.

So we got home unloaded.

This tour has been a great deal of fun, performance started off a bit ropy got better, there is still a lot of work to be done before we really nail it to the table, but we made solid progress. It looks like everyone concerned wants to do it again, I think the next tour will be when the weather is a bit more warmer.

The gang consisted of

Matthew North – Guitar and Vocals
Nevla – Guitar
Niall Parker – Bass
Steve Williams – Guitar

Crew
Tony Twinpeeks – Merch and Crew
Lee-Anne Burgess – Filming

The Possy
Suzanne, Natalie and Ian

Cruxshadows on Stage

Oops look what I nabbed

Niall saying ta da to Aria at the Travelodge

At the Drop off point in Huntingdon

2009-12-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

Arrived in Sunderland

Hi all

We arrived in the North East in good time, Just at the hotel, I nabbed Suzanne's mobile and have uploaded a few live shots for you.

2009-12-01T02:05:00.000-08:00

Glasgow Rockers – 30th Nov 2009

Well last night was a great gig. Rockers is a proper live club venue, has loads of memorabilia all over the place, had a massive PA, and they even provide Marshall stacks as back line. That being said I still brought mine is, as we have ‘One guitarist too many’ !

Anyhow we were able to park directly outside the venue, and there was plenty of people to help. After a good sound check, the guy doing the PA happened to be Gun’s tour manager too boot, we went to the local weatherspoons for dinner and Iron Brew.

There were 2 support bands, I didn’t see much of the first band, as I was late back from food, the second band Cister Scalpal were good fun, they also dedicated a song to us, that’s always nice.

We went on stage and did our set, we went down VERY well with the audience, who were very much and younger audience, they really got into out stuff, I was actually feeling rather gob smacked by the reaction especially after talking to people afterwards.

On the way back from the gig Tony kept us all laughing our heads off with Jokes!

Well we will be shortly be leaving for Sunderland to support the Cruxshadows, Glasgow get 10/10 and we will be back sometime.

In the Travelodge

Cister Scaple

ALF in Weatherspoons

Steve Chilling

Drum skin signed by Jet Black and Rat Scabies

:)

2009-11-30T01:44:00.000-08:00

Stockport Clubhouse at the Bulls Head 29th Nov 2009

Now that’s more like it!

We had a leisurely drive to Stockport, as we were already on the M6 It didn’t take long at all. We stopped off on the way, and dug out the trusty camping stove, and in the rain I was determined to make coffee and not pay rip off Costa prices, I succeeded at that!

We eventually found the travelodge we were staying in it was behind a massive complex but didn’t have a specific address, so sat nav got a bit lost!.

Anyhow, we were all knackered after the previous night, so we had a few hours rest and recuperation, once done we were all ready for the challenge ahead.

Got to the venue in good time, It was a really nice place, they had converted the upstairs of the very nice bulls head pub into a venue, had decent enough PA and monitors, and lights. Special mention goes to Danny who runs it, he books the bands, and even does the PA as well. We did manage to use up Every single input to his desk nothing was too much trouble, I wish all sound engineers were like him.

Now this was a metal night, and we were on in the middle, I think the logic behind this was we were the unknown quantity. It was a good social occasion with a few various mates turning up. The set was 10,000 times better than last night, both in terms of our performance, which in my case last night was a but ropy, and audience appreciation, far higher than before too. There was an incident of a few drunken locals arseing around, but they soon calmed down. But all in all a good solid gig.

The main band I will make special mention, Incidium do the metal thing, but they do it VERY well really tight and solid, and excellent musicianship, even Lee-Anne who doesn’t do metal at all enjoyed them. I apologize for not watching the first band Apollyon but I was saving my ears for our set, I did see a couple of numbers and they were solid too.

After we loaded up we were about to go, when we saw that the pub was still open, and Niall had the brain wave of why don’t we go back in the pub, so we had a nice long social with lots of coffee back in there, proper chill out aftershow, was all very nice.

On the way back we were entertained with Jokes courtesy of mr Twinpeeks and Mr Williams.

Its now 9.43 am and soon we have to think about going to Glasgow.

Pre Gig Stage

Look we are on tour :)

Lee-Anne and Helen

Andi and Niall

Tony and Steve

Incidium

Outside the Bulls Head.

2009-11-29T03:25:00.000-08:00

Wolverhampton Giffard 28th Nov 2009

Lee-Anne and Nev Having a Strum

Tony the Merch

Matthew with Des from Balaam who helped out loading out (thanks mate)

Hi all

This is being written at the Travelodge in Stafford, the reason we are in Stafford is that the Travelodge we booked into was over sold, and they had to send us off to another one! Still its actually an advantage as it’s a lot quieter than if we had stayed in the city center

Anyhow I guess you want to know how last night went? Well as I said earlier, the sound check went very well and we popped to a pub up the road for some food.

The support band was Ted the promoters daughters band, and they were rather good, doing the modern indie pop things, they were very tight and for their first gig pretty amazing.

We went on stage at around 11.30 was a late show, we played out set, I’m not going to post the set list until after the tour.

There was in essence one major problem, the sound engineer had simply disappeared nowhere to be seen, so we did have a problem of constant feedback for most of the gig. This unfortunately put a bit of a damper on yours truly. Still were off to stockpot now for more rock and roll.

2009-11-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

New Voice Tour - Arrive in Wolverhampton

So hear I am in the Giffard Arms in Wolverhampton. The Drive up was good, we made a detour as part of the M5 was closed, however, this also saved is 10 miles in travel too.

Sound check was good, we did a little bit of tweaking to the overall sound just to get it right. They have great monitors here as good on stage sound is always good to have.

Funny thing in the room where the gig takes place we just did a really good rendition of Jessica acoustically with Nev on Guitar, Lee-Anne on Bass and me and Niall singing. Maybe ill post a video of it he he.

2009-11-27T16:22:00.001-08:00

Pre Tour Thoughts

This is a very nervous time for me, I haven’t done a tour for 11 years, and it didn’t help that my main music PC’s had drive decided to die today, fortunately most of my documents are on other drives, but still a pain in the arse!

Today was spent packing kit, double checking that I had everything, and doing more vocal practice, I feel I might be annoying people in the van singing Gug, Me, and La all the way up to Wolverhampton!!!

As the other half pointed out today, this is also a tour where I’m with a completely new team, unfortunately, Martin who is normally with me whatever band I’m in is unable to do the merchandise as he’s ill and the doctor has signed him off, fortunately our good friend Tony is doing his shift.

I am though very excited about the tour, and I hope to see a few old friends on the way and make many new ones too.

2009-11-25T04:26:00.000-08:00

All Living Fear - Tour Video

Here is a short video to promote our tour.

2009-11-23T08:18:00.000-08:00

All Living Fear - Terminal Studios London 22nd Nov 2009

So yesterday the 22nd November we ventured to London for the final All Living Fear rehearsal before the band goes on tour. Steve and Nev have known each other a little while but Niall had yet to meet either, though the night before it was a evening in Camden to celebrate Steve’s birthday and Niall came out as well, fortunately they hit it off well , and by Sunday a jolly time was had.

We got to terminal and had a fine drop of soup for the organic café round the corner, well recommend it if you are ever in the London bridge area.

So we set up and practiced in earnest, I got to say the first run through was a bit shabby none of us were getting it together, this was part not being able to suss the layout of the mixing desk, about half way through I had a fiddle and got thing s working better then we had a break for coffee, they have a reasonable cappuccino machine there. The last run through was great, could hear the drums properly and everything was much tighter. So all being well we are now finally all set to tour.

2009-11-07T13:33:00.001-08:00

Whitby Interview

Recently I did an interview for a semi official brochure for the Whitby Gothic Weekend festival that I have performed at many times over the years as well as being the festivals Videographer. Anyhow here is a scan of the interview click on the image to see it full Size.

2009-11-07T03:40:00.000-08:00

All Living Fear - Exeter Picturehouse 5th November 2009

Well it only seams like 5 minutes ago that I played at the picturehouse, this though was an All Living Fear show rather than just me.

There were some great acts on tonight, they do get some fabulous players, so I was a bit worried that what we were going to do might not be up to the mark.

When set time came I did 2 numbers on my own, then Niall joined me for the rest of the set. He has a great bass sound tonight, and I was feeling more confident, The Microphone stand kept falling down this was not ideal, after the first song it was sorted though.

The set Ran

Fortunes Light (That I have done a new arrangement of)
New Song Untitled

Then with Niall
Jessica
Home Too Soon
Each And Every Way
The Widow’s Blame
Stranger To None

I did feel we played Home too Soon WAY too fast, but other than that I felt that the set went ok.

Again monitoring wasn’t really there I think next time I will take my own wedge.

2009-11-07T03:33:00.000-08:00

Oxjam Exeter 25th October 2009

So I was asked to perform at the Oxjam Oxfam benefit gig in Exeter, this is where 6 venues are open for live music with a roving ticket for just a fiver with all monies going to Oxfam. I was playing at Cooling’s wine bar on the same bill as the legendary Frank Turner.

The set I performed was similar to what I have been doing acoustically recently however I was asked to do an encore and I just repeated Fortunes Light again.

The set

Fortunes Light
Each And Every Way
New song untitled
Jessica
The Widow’s Blame
Friends Forever
Stranger To None
Home Too Soon
Fortunes Light

The Venue was nice and the PA good, though not having any form of monitor made it very hard.

Thanks to Sue for taking the photo.

2009-10-09T02:03:00.000-07:00

Exeter Picturehouse Show 8th Oct 2009

Last night I performed a full length solo show at the Picturehouse in Exeter, I ended up being the headline act, for a long while now I’ve felt uncomfortable being the headliner, possible a lack of confidence thing harking back to the bands wilderness years of the late 90s, when things were not as good as they are now.

Anyhow, Niall was unable to perform at this show as it was his wedding anniversary so I did it on my own. I wasn’t sure what songs to pick, but as the Picturehouse is a chilled out venue so really I can get away with playing anything, and I thought id pop in a couple of my new songs that I did at the Watermans a couple moths ago.

So the set was

Fortunes Light
Each And Every Way
New Song without a title
Jessica
The Widow’s Blame
Friends Forever (Another new one working title)
Stranger To None
Encore: Home Too Soon

Was a great night, and made me very happy.

2009-09-30T00:37:00.001-07:00

Pedal Power to London

Well at the weekend I decided to get a couple new pedals, I’m finding that a compressor is more and more a vital part of my rig, for years Ive had an Arion pedal which is OK but nothing special, its also a bit on the noisy side. So I decided to upgrade my right with a couple pedals made by Electro Harmonix. Niall has a ‘Soul Preacher’ compressor that sounds amazing, so I thought about getting one, but then I saw the ‘White Finger’ and though yes! In the spirit of the thing I also purchased a ‘Poly Chorus’ these are 2 of the best pedals that I have ever owned and my board looks like this.

I got them both from my local guitar shop ‘Hartnolls Guitars’ they have excellent stock and good service and have just opened a shop in Torquay where Sound Pad was.

On Sunday we had a rehearsal in London at Terminal Studios, Niall was unable to attend so was just Nev, Steve and myself. This is the fist time the other guys have played together since Gotham, we did each song in the November / December set 2-3 times, then went through the whole set once. It really came together well, I have changed the key of Each And Every Way from B to D makes it a lot easier to sing, and give the song more dynamics.

Here is a photo of the three stooges after the session

2009-08-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

VST Sounds

Last night I did a bit of recording helping out another band with an idea, one of the things they wanted was a Hammond organ sound. As it so happens I had just downloaded a free vst plug in to do such a things.

Anyhow this lot http://www.dskmusic.com/blog/?page_id=3 are brilliant the mini drums gives you all the great 80s drum machines, but the B3x is a great Hammond sound go check it out.

2009-08-27T17:36:00.001-07:00

So tonight, I had another first. Thursday 27th August 2009

In 17 years as a professional musician, the one thing that I have never done is walked into a venue on my own with a guitar, got up on stage performed songs then got off stage. Tonight I did it.

The Junction is a reasonable sized pub on the end of Mutely Plane in Plymouth. They have it decked out with various album covers, most of which are LPs that I own, the nerves thing is what I’m doing these sort of gigs for because I don’t want to start performing with the band and start crapping myself on stage.

Anyhow I felt reasonably confident on stage tonight, there wasn’t a soul in there who knew me or knew who All Living Fear were, in a way that was a good thing. I did Each and Every Way, The Widow’s Blame and Jessica, I didn’t have my loop pedal so there was no looping to do solos, to be honest I was glad. I also did the gig standing up and to be honest I prefer that and it was good to have a mic rather than totally acoustic though a monitor would have been nice.

2009-08-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

Waterman's show 24th August 2009 + Session 26th August 2009

On Monday evening I performed 2 songs at the Waterman’s Pub Folk Club in Richmond Surrey. Both were new songs that I’m still working on, the second of which is one of the ones that I have recorded with Roger doing a Moog solo, stripped down it sounds pretty good too, some of the other musicians in the pub were joining in giving it a different dimension and texture.

Last night band practice turned into a bit of a recording session, I dug out a drum beat and keyboard riff that I had on the machine and stretched it out to about 14 minutes, I then plugged in Niall and myself to separate channels, one of the beauties of an 8 in 8 out sound port is being able to assign things, so we weren’t hearing ourselves feeding back. Anyhow, we recorded 3 passes of us jamming, and from it I got the ideas for the whole song. Its all there needs extracting and re recording properly, but will end up a decent tune.

In other news, here is a pedal board, its not very big but its my first pedal board I actually made it as part of my GCSE Craft Design and Technology course in 1989. It has a passive filter that I thought might give me a few extra points haha!.

2009-08-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Recording and Announcements.

Saturday was a good day, Me and Lee-Anne went to visit Roger while we were there I managed to get him to lay down a Moog solo for one of my new songs, there is something really organic and warm about the sound of a monophonic synthesizer and the Moog Voyager is probably the best in the world right now.

This is a great little film about to the Minimoog

Anyhow the band has made an official announcement about Andy leaving All Living Fear. You can read it at http://www.alllivingfear.co.uk/news.htm

I am also trying to book 2 shows for the end of November, as with all things this is rather tricky as everything seams booked up.

2009-08-14T04:30:00.001-07:00

All Living Fear Exeter Picturehouse 13th August 2009

Ok last night, well this was a really strange chain of events. We get there nice and early, they moved the stage area around at the picturehouse and now its in a much better position. Didn’t take long to set up, there were 4 acts, and as always the line up order bare no resemblance to what was on the poster. While we were setting up my pal Roger O’Donnell turned up I played half a bar of a Cure song to see his reaction haha! The sound check was fine, I had also found out that Les Paul had passed away, so thought about playing a bit of The World is waiting for The Sunrise.

Anyhow, out of the blue my other half turned up this was the surprise of the evening as she wasn’t due to be coming down, then Simon Hinkler from the Mission rolled in if you had said to me in 1992 when I started the band that I would be having members of the Cure and The Mission turning up at a gig Id never have believed you in a million years.

So as for the gig itself well we played.

Fortunes Light
Jessica
Home Too Soon
Each And Every Way
The Living (First time this has been played since April 1993)
Tomorrow
The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise (Instrumental Les Paul Cover)

This is the first time that I have ever fronted the band as a singer proper, and after spending a lot of time working at it, I think I got away with it, it was loads better than the Richmond and Twickenham folk clubs that I played, though I had a few memory blanks on the lyrics. Niall played well and he really enjoyed it, especially the not having to lug out stacks of amplification after a gig. I think it will be a good idea for us to do a few more of these shows, probably not advertised just turn up and play. One thing that was obvious is that I’m not a great fan of singing songs that weren’t written for me to sing, that’s why I would probably never like to play covers, I do have a lot of new songs in the bag, and more on the way this will be more of my focus for live gigs in this situation though for All Living Fear electric shows at the end of the year there will be more familiar songs in the set.

2009-08-12T22:32:00.001-07:00

Tonight’s The Night

Well last night we had our final rehearsal before we play our first show tonight, for those that haven’t caught on, Andrew left All Living Fear a couple of months ago, making Gotham his final gig, which to be fair was a damn fine show to go out on. Nevla and Steve are in the band for tours and gigs, though because they are both so far away they obviously won’t be performing tonight.
I have been working with Niall for the last 2 months and been discussing thing’s through a lot longer, we decided on 6 numbers to get ready for this show tonight and stuck with them, we did work on a cover, Badge by Cream but it never really worked, though who is to say that it wont some time later on. Anyway last night went pretty well every time that we have practiced its getting tighter and tighter, since I had my last bit of tuition I can see my vocals have been getting better still a lot more work to do on that score but I’m not in any rush. My guitar sounded better last night too amazing what putting on a new set of strings will do.

2009-08-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Blogger is Back

Yes after 3 years I have decided to start using this Blog again mostly for my music related posts.

2009-08-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

A sunday afternoon recording session

The weekend proved interesting, I received a new composition from my friend Roger O’Donnell to take a listen to. It was a nice piece with some of his trademark string and piano sounds, and a really nice sounding cello. After listening to the track Me and Lee-Anne thought we would ‘Cure it up’ a bit to see what it sounded like. The first thing that I did was work out the tempo and it worked out to be 80 bpm. We then added some drums for the second section to give it a beat, then Lee-Anne wrote a nice bass line in the style of Simon Gallup. I then added some acoustic guitar to give it some more flow and then added some fake Baritone guitar, this was done by re tuning the A string on my strat to a G and then adding some delay and flanger from my Lexicon wile playing the string with the plectrum as close to the bridge as possible you get that sound. To finish off Lee-Anne added a high end bass melody. There job done, I sent it back to Roger whom seamed a little less than impressed that we had filled it with guitars, think you can’t always mess with peoples art but was a fun thing to do for an afternoon.

2006-08-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

Symphony in Black The Talking Heads Southampton 20th August 2006

I arrived a little late so I missed the first band The Novelty Dolls bar the last few bars so I cant really comment though they looked good. The Torpedoes were on next, now this lot were in the old school goth / alt rock vein of the Godfathers mixed with a bit of Theatre of Hate, really good lively well played stuff, I was very impressed and I would go and see this band again without question, they were great.

Tracer were next, I didn’t know what to expect here I thought there were a bleep dance type band which in fact they were, but they have gone down the industrial metal route, Kiser the singer put a lot into his performance and had a strong stage presence.

Now where at most goth all dayers the band that hits the 6 pm slot normally doesn’t get an audience as everyone has buggered off for tea, so what they did here was have a break for an hour so people could get food, they even arranged for pizza to be delivered to the venue.

So the evening kicked off with the ever popular Voices of Masada now I first saw danny and co play in Plymouth, there was not a lot of people there, but they got just about everybody there dancing by the end of the set, and that’s no mean feat. Again they get most of the black clad moving on the floor, a good set from a hard working band.

D.U.S.T. now I’ve seen them a fair few times over the years, however most times they have played through a crap PA system, this time they played through a good one, so you could hear everyone for once, and what a difference it made, they have a crystal clear sound mix, Ben the guitar player was amazing, Mikey is a top front man who gives it 101% as does Nim on the bass, really they are an excellent band that know how to perform, this is something that a lot of new bands can’t do.

And we finish off with the Screaming Banshee Aircrew, Now SBA are very well known these days, hence being top of the bill. And it’s a real mix of personalaties, this is something that makes them stand out from the rest. Now watching Mr Ed peform was slightly scarey, this is in a good way, when I started ALF in 1992, we had a singer called Steve Howson, he was a drama student (I met him at college), was an amazing showman, running all over the place, more or less doing what Mr Ed did tonight, it did leave me thinking What if? Anyway…………

SBA played a great set, Im really getting to like there stuff, and that’s a rare comment from me to have found something NEW in goth that I like, the bass player, he’s a bit if a dark horse, on the chorus of the last song, he sang a couple of bars on his own, now this guy has got a voice, id like to hear him sing lead on a number, Jo was a star as always, playing violin as well this time round (as I don’t think she did last time I saw them). All in all a bloody good band.

I really enjoyed this gig, it was also great because Southampton has always had a good scene of people, and I always see people I know down there, so it was a great social occasion as well as a good gig, I feel quite proud of having spent the last 15 years as part of the Goth scene after last night.

2006-07-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

Paul Di'Anno - The Classics
The Maiden Years

OK, what we have here is the singer of the greatest heavy metal band of them all, singing all the key tracks that made that band great. The thing is has he pulled it of? Well quite frankly, yes and then some. The only criticism I would have is the track order, and that is because having listened to the first maiden album for the last 25 years you get used to what comes next (that’s a real bone of contention with cd remaster as they decided to shove sanctuary on as track 2 grrrr) . Still Paul is in fine voice, and has a variety of musicians that keep faithful to the maiden sound. Actually Paul has a very good way of getting backing bands, he just goes on tour with an Iron Maiden tribute bands as his backing band!

This CD is strictly limited and you can only get it from Paul’s web site, but if you are a fan at all of any of the early Maiden recordings then you should really grab a copy of this before Steve Harris comes running for the royalties! (As I notice his name is absent from the CD cover as is any copyright information!!!!)

http://www.pauldianno.com
http://www.myspace.com/diannothebest

2006-07-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Roger O'Donnell
The Truth In Me

The first thing to strike you about this cd is the stunning packageing and artwork much as roger has embraced the modern technology of things like I tunes he has also made the hard product something very unique to.

Roger was a member of 2 of the most important bands of my lifetime, that being The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and The Thompson twins, though he spent the last 20 odd years with the odd break for good behaviour as a member of The Cure.

So what we have here is a labour of love turned into a full album, he was commissioned to compose a piece if music for the Moog film that came out last year the while track was to be written and recorded using just a Moog (in this case a Moog Voyager) . The Moog is normally thought of as a lead instrument or used for fat bass sounds, roger has put in a lot of attention to detail and used it for not just melodies but has made percussive sounds and given you the impression t at your in a lab with about 4 boffins all in white coats pressing buttons (I am of course thinking of footage I’ve seen of Kraftwerk in the mid 70s). The album starts with My Days, this album really benefits from being played through a good hifi as It has a large sonic width, the bass notes are really deep and the high sweeps are well really high! You cound call this track sci fi music, its not a million miles away from an old John Keeting lp I have from the 70s (minus the orchestra).The next track is one of a couple that are graced with the vocals of Erin Lang, best way to describe her is in the post All About Eve Cranes/Slowdive style and is sung in a very percussive style, the whole album has a very percussive feel even though there isn’t any drums on it, this I guess this is another reason why its not a normal album, its fair to say that it’s a groundbreaker as Ive not ever heard of any album that’s been written entirely on I electronic instrument (other than zappas Synclavia) and its not like a midi workstation , every sound has to be set up to be just right before recording. Well it’s a winner as the title track shows an almost haunting track that would grace the closing credits of any good film as long as it has a meaningful end.

Not with out you, If you shoved drums and guitars could sound like one of Rogers former bands, it would be interesting to see this one in that situation. Listening to the next few tracks I can see the drum and bass brigade getting hold of this and turning it into dance tracks, it has all the elements for it, This Grey Morning is a rather Jazzy number again with a percussive bass line, knowing roger is a big fan of the likes of Jan hammer and Herbie Hancock it does come through on this one. Tired of all this another one graced with Erins vocals and is probably the most likely contender for a single release should there be one from this album, and Is one id really like to hear with maybe some light percussion added. Last track and so I close My eyes, is tipping his had to the boffins in Germany, and why not.

This is a really good album, If you like electronic, Ambient or even Goth music, then I think you are going to like this an awful lot.

http://www.rogerodonnell.com
http://www.myspace.com/rogerodonnell

2006-07-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

The Who Tour Review of 3 Dates

So first show of the season for me was Ashton Gate in Bristol, I have been to so many good gigs in this city over the years so was well up for this one. The first band to take the stage were Never The Bride, now you may remember the singer of this band appearing on the TV programme Faking It when a choir girl became a rock chick! Anyway there is no faulting this lot a tight bunch of seasoned pros doing basically Janis Joplin type rock music, they were very good, unlike the Zutons that followed, who basically bored me to tears, bar the last song an improvisation that was OK.

The Zutons

After the Zutons played I had a keen eye on the stage, and my mate Clinton popped on stage with his little camera making an item for points west (he did an item the day before on Rabbit with a very tenuous link to the south west in that he lives in Taunton! Lucky sod got to go to Bray Studios too grrrrrr :) )

Mr Clinton Rogers!

Now the big question was will they be as good as when I saw them at the Albert Hall in 2004 ? Answer no, they were better! Pino has really fitted in well, and Zak is just amazing. The Who played a set of hits as Pete felt it was better for the summer gigs rather than playing Wire and Glass (according to hid diary) a Pity as I really wanted to hear it, that being said we did get to hear 1 new song 'Mike Post' and its a real rocker, the story is basically that Mike Post wrote many a well known theme tune, and when you hear it its a kind of a reassuring feeling, a bit like when you hear Corrie or Emmerdale 'Everything all right' the highlight though for me was hearing The Seeker and a totally brilliant rendition of Lets See Action where it starts off as an acoustic number then the band join in.

The Who in Bristol 28th June 2006

The next Show is Hyde Park, where I also saw Roger Waters I will do a separate post for that.

So In Hyde Park its a VERY hot day, I bumped into my mate Simon who owns a local garage and is also a Drummer who once was in a band with Kirk Brandon of Spear of Destiny, I also walked past Liam Gallagher (well I’m 99% sure it was him!). Now the big question was what exactly was Jeremy Clarkson doing with a Crew shirt on carrying gear and pretending he knows what he is doing? I think it may appear on Top Gear soon!

Before the band com on I saw Ross Halfin on the stage, Ross is one of the best if not the best rock photographer in the world, he also did all the photos for the tour programme and has the best blog on the internet.

Mr Ross Halfin

The Who’s set was a corker, the atmosphere was brilliant too, loads of water being sloshed around as it was such a hot day, Pete did Drowned as his solo spot, great rendition, and the back projections, well they were something else. Here are some photos.

After last nights fantastic show it was off to the edge of the new forrest and to Beaulieu I haven't been here since I was a kid, I got there around 2 and had a look around, It cost £15 which I thought was a bit pricey to be honest. Saw some nice cars inc this one

I also got to wander past the back stage area, where they do In the Attic for www.thewholive.tv this is the van!

I said hello to some chap that looked official afterwards I did wonder if it was Bill Curbishley I also very briefly talked to Mikey Cuthbert who is part of the In The Attic team and I showed him one of the Hyde park photos he seamed impressed.

anyhow, they were kicking everyone out at 5pm then re opening the doors at 6 for the gig, I was wondering around when I heard some noises from the stage, so I had a look and the Who’s crew were testing the gear, I didn't think that the Who would be there as on the Newsnight feature ( I think) they said that there crew dies the sound check, but it was interesting to watch, and hear some of the loops too. so I left around 4.15 and went to the car, then what do I hear, only The Who going through Behind Blue Eyes, shit I though, how do I get back in? so I had an Idea, I did actually need to the loo, so I went back in with my receipt and asked if I could, they said yes, excellent and I legged it to the front of the stage where they were running though Who Are You (I think, I cant remember now !!!) I snapped this photo.

So on to the gig, I got to more or less the front of the queue and this time I was determined to get to the front, met some nice people from Southampton, though some jocks decided it would be ok to push in. as soon as my ticket was checked I legged it, and got the the front exactly where I wanted to be just in front of Pete.

Support was the Casbar Club, this is Simon Townshend, Bruce Foxton and Mark Brzezicki (Mark needs no introduction from me as being a member of Arthur’s band from time to time), Casbar rocked big time, real good 80s alt rock sound really enjoyed it here are some pics.

Right on to the main event, there was something really magical about tonight, you really had a fealing that you were part of it, maybe it was because I was so close and that I had been to 2 other shows. The Who came on and they did rock big time! Best if the 3 I reckon, Roger though had a problem and a valid one, he doesn’t get on with smoke/dry ice etc and has specified that it is not to be used, so the lighting people start pumping dry ice on the stage, he’s not happy and tells them so. He walks off and Pete has some banter with the audience over this.

Mr Kibblewhite was Pete and Rogers headmaster at school!

Anyhow Roger comes back and they blast through, great set, Pete's solo spot was 'Im One' tonight.

The rest of the photos go like this

And so came the end of a brilliant gig, but for me one more thing tipped off a brilliant few days, this man Alan Rogan

Was packing up Pete kit, and I called over and said can I have a Plectrum (as Pete dropped most of them) and after a bit of nagging he threw a few over and I got one, this just finished off the trip perfectly thanks Alan :)

To sum up the Who are the greatest live rock band in the world, nobody can even get close and I'm looking forward to maybe going to Americia around the time of my birthday to see them again.

Thank you Pete, Roger, Pino, Zak, Simon and John.

Matthew North 6th July 2006