I’m old.. I think I might have mentioned this before. If not, don’t worry, it’ll be a recurring theme. I started work a number of years before one of my current colleagues was even born! In fact, next month marks the 38th anniversary of starting my first job.
If you had told that 17 year-old Trainee Travel Clerk in the Co-op in Dartford that one day he would be the Communications Officer for a Diocese of the Church of England and that he would be spending his time trying to get good news stories heard and managing the impact of ‘naughty vicar’ stories, he (or I) would have looked at you as if you had landed from a spaceship and offered yourself up as proof of intelligent life on other planets!
But that’s where I was and that’s where I am – it’s been a long road from there to here and there were a few odd twists and turns along it but looking at the state of the travel industry today, I’m probably better off for the journey.
One of my new favourite artists has a strange backstory… much stranger than mine! His name is Kris Barras and is one of the best new blues guitarists to emerge over the last few years.
Kris is from the West Country and picked up his first guitar when he was five years old. He also took up martial arts when he was a kid. After playing in bands when he was a teenager (mind you he’s only in his 30’s now) and having a career that saw him touring the US and Europe as well as the UK, he became increasingly disillusioned with the inability to make any progress in the music business. He’d been competing in MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) contests at the same time and decided to give up music and become a fighter full-time. He had a successful 10 year professional career, which saw him compete and train in Las Vegas, Thailand and Singapore. When he retired in order to go back to music full time he had a record of 14 wins 2 losses and 1 draw.
In 2014 he formed the Kris Barras Band – with a sound described as ‘a high-energy hybrid of no-nonsense Rock, Blues and Country’. They released a self titled mini-album the following year and their first full length album ‘Lucky 13’ in 2016. This has been followed by ‘The Divine and Dirty’ at the beginning of 2018 and ‘Light It Up’ last week.
Kris has played at every Ramblin’ Man Fair, from the Rising Stage in 2015 via the Blues Stage to the Main Stage this year and it was at Ramblin’ Man Fair – the best Classic Rock festival in my opinion – where I first discovered him.
For Kris, it’s certainly been an odd route. Among his many tattoos are the words ‘Boom Boom’ inked across his knuckles – his nickname when he was fighting. I can just imagine the ring announcer… “And in the blue corner, from Torquay, England… Kris ‘Boom Boom’ Barras“
Judging by the volume it’s sung at gigs, this is one of Kris’ most popular songs – it’s certainly one of my favourites.
In honour of this most important event – after all it’s only once a year you’re encouraged to go around putting on your best Long John Silver voice – I’d like to present for your edification and entertainment a little (well not that little) ditty by Paul and Storm, purveyors of original comedy music.
The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing – Camden Rocks 2019
Recently I remembered that I used to have a blog about music I liked – and wondered if I could find it again. After racking my brain for its name, platform or password (or anything else that might help me locate something I hadn’t seen in years) I found it!
Now, I’m seriously rubbish at keeping up a blog and I wondered if anyone would notice that I hadn’t posted anything for 6 1/2 years… then I realised that no one follows it anyway!
So I’m back and I thought I might give the blog some new clothes and have another go at writing about music and bands I like. Like before it’ll be a mixture of all kinds of bands from those with a massive international following to those you might find playing in the back room of your local pub (assuming you have any local music venues left near you). I might also take the opportunity to talk about other things that are important to me, but probably not all that often!
In the last 6 1/2 years I’ve fallen in love with a lot more bands and fallen out of love with precisely none of them. Some things don’t change – Ginger Wildheart is still making music, both as part of The Wildhearts and with an amazing variety of solo projects from Country/folk to thrash and all points in between . Willie Dowling is back on the scene – Jackdaw4 came to an end but he and Random John Poole – sometime member of The Wildhearts, Cardiacs and Lifesigns among others – joined together with Givvi Flynn to form The Dowling Poole and basically carried on with the same kind of tunes as before – world-weary and ascerbic lyrics allied to deceptively cheerful tunes – the musical equivalent of a Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Bean!
I’ve discovered many new bands which have caused my music collection to expand in a number of different directions and seen many of them in action but I’ll talk more about these as we go along.
Probably the biggest live music things that have happened to me in the last 6 1/2 years couldn’t have been much different. In October 2017, at the age of 53, I finally saw Metallica live. To be honest, I’m a bit of a latecomer to Metallica – I didn’t get Thrash Metal when it first appeared, much like I didn’t (and still don’t) get Grunge, but a friend introduced me to Metallica and I grew to appreciate what an awesome band they are.
But the best live experience by far and the one that will stay with me for ‘the longest time’ (see what I did there?) was a 30th wedding anniversary trip to New York that took in seeing Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden.
Billy Joel has had a residency at ‘The Garden’ since January 2014 and in November 2019 he will play the 70th consecutive monthly show of that residency which will be his 116th show at the venue (this is a record). We were lucky enough to go to the 50th show and, whilst I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed that no special guests turned up (as has happened on other occasions) apart from a legendary player from the New York Rangers NHL team, I’ll always have the memory of being in that room as ‘New York State of Mind’ was sung by the entire audience.
(Excuse the quality it’s the only recording I could find on YouTube)
I’m likely to mention many other well known bands and artists as we go along but one of the main reasons for reactivating this blog was to talk about some of the bands that I’ve only discovered during that 6 1/2 year hiatus period…
But where to start…
I guess with a band that I first saw at Camden Rocks in 2015, where they were the first band playing in one of the smaller venues at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I only went to see them because their name was intriguing and I didn’t really manage to actually see much of them as I was at the back – but the music was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. By the time they played at Camden Rocks in 2016, they were in a much bigger venue – having been generally regarded as one of the hits of the previous year. Since then I’ve seen them on a few occasions… sadly, they don’t tour as often as their fans would like – judging by the responses on social media to even the slightest hint that a gig might be in the offing! Although it was great to see them make a triumphant return to Camden Rocks this year, playing the legendary venue The Underworld.
The name that so intrigued me was The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing (TMTWNBBFN or just ‘The Men…’) – Google it if you want to know where it comes from! They are a steampunk band from London (in fact they are the band that put the ‘punk’ in ‘steampunk’) and that’s all I’m going to say about them until after you’ve watched the video…
Entirely appropriate because in the last 6 1/2 years I’ve also discovered a taste for gin!
Not that many bands can boast a transvestite stand up comedian on lead guitar and a singer who also plays the musical saw but that’s just part of their appeal. They have an irreverent approach to history which works be familiar to anyone who has ever watched ‘Horrible Histories’… tell it like it was but make it funny (mostly).
One of the reasons that I like going to smaller venues for gigs is because you can often find yourself talking to a band member at the merch stall and this was what happened the first time I saw ‘The Men…’ playing a gig of their own. It was at the Forum in Tunbridge Wells and we’d already seen one of the members of the band in Zizzi having a meal before the gig. I didn’t interrupt him because that would have been rude – he was having dinner after all – but as he left he looked at my t-shirt of his band, grinned and said ‘I hear they’re quite good and they’re playing locally tonight’ and went on his way.
After the gig, I ended up having a long chat with that same band member (Andrew O’Neill – who is also an award winning stand up comedian) about music and how Setlist.fm was a great way of constructing a detailed history of all the gigs you’d ever been to. I also had to borrow a pen from the bass player to get him and rest of the band to autograph a lyric book I’d just bought.
That’s probably enough to be going on with for now But in the words of Def Leppard: ‘Next time… and there will be a next time’ I’ll tell you about other ‘Man’ related stuff like Ramblin’ Man Fair andMan V Fat Football.
Had a few days off from blogging – bet no-one even noticed!
So often today, pop stars are held up as role models for kids. I can’t think that can always be a good thing – after all, have you seen the amount of negative press Justin Bieber has had recently? There’s all the issues around body image and the idea that you have to be skinny and attractive to be successful in today’s charts… whether you’re male or female.
Luckily, those of us who are never going to be skinny or attractive have a role model of our own – Chris Birney of Bowling for Soup.
Bowling for Soup are a ‘pop punk’ band from Texas, who make some of the funniest videos around. They come across as a bunch of guys having a really good time with this whole rock and roll thing and hoping that we want to join them on the trip. They obviously like it in the UK as they seem to tour here every year (sometimes twice a year) and have released a live album/DVD recorded in Manchester.
It’s difficult to pick which of their videos is funniest, this one is my favourite but it could just as easily have been ‘Girl All The Bad Guys Want’, Punk Rock 101′ or ‘1985’
There are just some kinds of music you never get the hang of…
In my case it’s what’s now known as R&B. To me, R&B is Rhythm & Blues and not the ‘soul-lite’ that goes under the same initials today. But anyway, off my hobby horse and onto today’s TOTD.
It might surprise people to know that I’ve always liked ‘old-school’ rap and even some early Gangsta like Ice-T and NWA. Most modern rap leaves me cold but I do like Eminem though. So today’s TOTD is the first rap song I’ve featured, but it probably won’t be the last.
I’ve said before that I like music that makes me happy (I never did hold with all that introspective naval-gazing indie music), so what better than comic songs?
Paul & Storm
The first is a piece by US music/comedy duo Paul and Storm. The first time I heard this, it nearly made me fall off my chair with laughter. Whenever I’ve seen them perform it live I end up with huge grin and bruises where people are elbowing me to stop me joining in. After listening to it, you’ll understand that the best place I’ve heard it performed is in the Union Chapel in London.
When they had a show on Radio 2, Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie had a feature which they called ‘The Chain’. The idea was that all the songs had to be connected in some manner.
Today’s TOTD is connected to yesterday’s in some way, but I’m not going to tell you how. You can work it out for yourself though – it’s easy enough.
This is one of those songs that I always thought I knew the words to and would happily sing along, until one day I actually looked up the lyrics and discovered I’d been singing the wrong words to quite a lot of it all the time.
I grew up listening to artists like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Simon and Garfunkel among others.
Even after 1976/7 when my musical world changed forever with the advent of punk and new wave, followed by heavy metal I always still quite liked the sort of music my parents liked…especially Simon and Garfunkel.
Now I can sing – after a fashion – and I really admire people who can sing harmonies and make them seem effortless… especially Simon and Garfunkel.
Simon & Garfunkel – ‘Sound of Silence’
1966 live performance
and a live performance from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniversary concert in 2009. Both of them were pushing 70 and Art Garfunkel’s hair was weirder and his taste in shirts was questionable to say the least but the harmonies were still just as good.
Today, as promised, I present for your delectation and edification the second of my most favourite people on the planet who are unaware of my existence.
Willie Dowling is currently the driving force behind Jackdaw4 – one of the most shockingly under-rated and under-appreciated bands around. As well as a track record which includes a stint in The Wildhearts and the marvellous Honeycrack as well as an number of other bands, Willie has a successful parallel career as a composer of TV themes and incidental music and I think this is what enables him to keep JD4 going when he might otherwise have given it up as a bad job. It would be a terrible shame if they were to disappear, as their music is pretty unique.
Willie the only songwriter I have ever come across who can combine hook-laden tunes of the kind often called ‘Power pop’, with the most acerbic and world-weary lyrics possible all held together with the kind of harmonies that the Beach Boys used to be able to do before they got too old and started suing each other. There are hints of the Beatles and the aforementioned Beach Boys in their music, but I always think that the closest I’ve heard to JD4 is a band called Jellyfish.
See what you think and if you agree with me that JD4 shouldn’t be allowed to fade into obscurity, then bother Willie on Facebook or Twitter or via the band’s website.
Time to introduce you to two of my favourite people on this earth.
I don’t actually know either of them and in fact have only ever spoken to one of them, so I think it’s fair to say that neither of them know me either. But their music and their attitude lift them both above the everyday run-of-the-mill rock star into a league of their own. You might have heard of one of them (or at least the band he is most associated with) but chance are you won’t have heard of the other one unless you’ve spent more than half an hour in my company. The first is Ginger Wildheart and the second is Willie Dowling – about whom more tomorrow.
Ginger is best known for being the driving force behind The Wildhearts but, as his Wikipedia entry will confirm, he has been in many other bands (often for a very short period of time) and is currently pursuing a successful solo career. Never being more than occasional chart botherers, the Wildhearts, and Ginger personally, have attracted a very loyal following. My friend Paul first introduced me to the Wildhearts as I’d managed to miss them first time around and I soon became a confirmed fan.
Today’s tune is one of the ones that generally ends a Wildhearts or Ginger solo set and is probably the biggest fan favourite – judging by the audience participation and activity in the mosh pit.
"Just smile and wave..." 