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the 12 Bar Club

That was a good week. I really enjoyed the 12 Bar Club last Wednesday. Andre came along and we played some of the new things together. Andre played his Telecaster through a WEM Copicat. The Copicat broke down due to a faulty connection - usually the tape breaks but he’d found a packet of original WEM replacement tape loops dating back to when he last used it which was some time in the mid-seventies. For anyone who doesn’t know, the WEM Copicat is a tape echo device – some people might even call it an echo chamber although it hasn’t actually got a chamber, just a loop tape that goes round and round recording everything you play and relaying it back half a second or so after you actually played it.

We would have liked to have played the new single, Sweet Jane, but I prepared a subtle backing track (ancient Latin American beatbox on "mambo" setting and a few backwards organ chords that sweep across the stereo). but unfortunately because I did it late at night with the sound turned down extremely low so that I wouldn’t disturb the neighbours, the subtle bass synthesiser that I put on it which was supposed to gently throb behind the beatbox and make everybody feel warm and good about themselves, came out so loud that it was almost a physical presence when I turned the volume up the next day – in case there are any real audio reading this we’re talking about bass frequencies that tail off somewhere around 10Hz.

But we did play the B side, Continuity Girl. We also played three other new numbers: 33s & 45s, Same, and Local. They’ve all got very short titles but they make up for it with lots of words. The single should be with us in the next few days. You probably won’t be able to buy it in a shop but it’ll be available mail order through the site or at gigs. I think I’ve already mentioned that it’s a vinyl only 7" release but just in case I’ll say it again:

!!! it’s Vinyl !!!

So get your record players fixed and let’s have no moaning. We had a huge thrill the other day – Jonathan Ross and Andy Davies played it on the Saturday morning show on Radio 2. Andy said he wasn’t sure about it. He told me later that he was surprised it was a cover version – he was expecting an original so that threw him a bit. But Jonathan loved it and said so on the radio. I was nearly beside myself because I was worried that it was going to sound crap on the radio. It was strange hearing it in the rooms I recorded it in, almost as if Radio 2 had hit a problem, gone off air and they were broadcasting my bungalow instead.

HULL

I was in Hull yesterday doing some promotion for the tour. Hull is my spiritual hometown. It’s definitely my hometown gig, much more so than Brighton. I can play in Brighton and nobody notices but Hull’s different and I’m always amazed at how many roadies Addis & The Flip Tops had. There were so many of them that I evidently never got to meet them all at the time. Not a moment goes by in Hull without someone lurching up to me and saying, ‘do you remember me? – I used to roadie for Addis & The Flip Tops.’ Some of these people weren’t even born at the time. I take it as an accolade. At the time nobody liked us and I can’t say I blame them.
I stayed with my friends, Kathie Jenkins and Kevin Storch. Kathie was my art history tutor when I was at art school in Hull back in the seventies. Kevin was the nearest we ever had to a roadie. We used to commandeer him and Kathie’s Renault van and make him move our equipment from place to place.

They were real Addis fans – always there wherever we played. Quite often they were the only people in the building who didn’t want to kill us. They converted other people to the Flip Top faith. They moved to the posh area of Hull and threw a house-warming party. We were the band, playing in a amongst the rubble in their huge derelict kitchen made up of about three rooms knocked into one. We played all night it seemed, and the neighbours came round to complain - magistrates, councillors and all manner of eminent professional people in their pyjamas. They were invited in and were so charmed by Kathie and Kevin that they stayed and became Addis fans.

There’ll be a double page spread in the Hull Daily Mail on Friday – it’ll be the journalists version of my life story, misquoted with me portrayed as a loveable Cockney rogue – cor blimey guv these Stiff geezers has only gorn an’ given me a record deal etc… I don’t think it’ll be like that at all. He was a very nice man – intelligent too. But it’s as well to prepare for the worst…

The Minx Club

The Minx Club date has been moved. It was going to be on the 19^th December at the Minx Club in Stoke Newington. Unfortunately the owner hasn’t been paying attention to the finer details of club/bar/restaurant ownership - it seems he hasn’t actually got a music licence. The local authority popped round for a visit and then they found that his alcohol licence wasn’t quite in order either. I think he’s had to shut down for a while.
Andy and I had a talk about it and decided to put it on somewhere else – it is the Christmas date after all. It’s going to be at the Eve Club on Regent Street (I haven’t got the full address yet). The Eve Club is mentioned in MI5 and FBI files – Jack Profumo used to hang out there in the sixties and it’s where Christine Keeler took the Russian spy. It’s a decadent place with an ornate interior. It apparently has a secret entrance that was much used in the sixties by royals and other public figures and their floozies. We’re very lucky to get the place for one night because it’s normally very expensive to hire. We’re going to make it into a proper Christmas party and Andy’s going to DJ. I’ve been trying to persuade Ingrid to wear a Christmas Bunny Girl outfit but it looks like I’ll have to wear that or I’ll be accused of sexism, misogyny and all the rest of it. It’s a small price to pay.

A few people have been asking me how the book’s going. All I can say is that it’s inching towards completion. There’s an awful lot of it now and it’s beginning to feel like a real book. I’ve almost got a routine going with it at the moment but that won’t last long because I’ve got all these dates coming up. And I’m moving house again! Yes, I liked bungalow living so much that I decided to buy one and now I’m in hock to a mortgage company for the rest of my working life… I’ll see you all later – I’ve got a living to earn.

earning a living last week not quite earning a living 25 years ago the other week!!!

I’45rpm!!! We might even unveil the new single which should be available very soon. Yes really!!! It’s a seven inch 45rpm real proper single which is coming out on the Vibroscope label. One side is a cover of Sweet Jane by the Velvet Underground and the other side is a new one of mine called Continuity Girl. I recorded them in the bungalow with a bit of help from Andre. He played guitar on both sides and bass on Sweet Jane and sounded nothing like George. You’ve had fair warning so get your record players fixed!

As you can see, if you’re a regular visitor to the site, things are changing. We’ve got a new look – well, almost - we’re still working on it. People keep complaining that there’s too much reading on this site. I think that they can fuck off, or look at the pictures.

Apparently what this semi-literate planet wants now is little jerky mpegs that take hours to load up and play themselves back in kit-form. We’re about to supply a couple but in the meantime anybody who’s got difficulty can just look at the pictures – they’ll have to look elsewhere though because I can’t be bothered putting any on this page at the moment because I’m thoroughly disheartened by losing my the beautiful page I spent all morning constructing.

Eventually we’ll have the mysterious Anorak Page up and running. It’s a page for trainspotters and anoraks – it’ll be full of pictures of me from the age of five up to sometime last week, accompanied by biographical information and a discography. As you can imagine it’s a lot of work and that’s why we’ve been putting it off for about three years.

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I wrote some stuff about the Jazz Café gigs with the Blockheads but that seems to have disappeared as well. I’m really sorry there wasn’t any announcement of those dates but they sprung it on me at the last moment. It all went off quite well except that on the second night a lot of the audience talked through my solo set. It’s rude and fucking ignorant behaviour and I don’t understand it because a lot of the people gassing away through my set are the people that worship and adore me when I’m on with the Blockheads. I played some of the new stuff which went down really well but when it got to a quiet point in one of them I could hardly hear what I was playing. Next time, if anybody’s listening, please tell those arseholes to shut up. I did but they couldn’t hear me.