Back again! I seemed to have moved house three times in the space of a year – I thought I was feeling a bit frazzled. I didn’t really notice that I’d got into serial house moving until after it was all over – at least I think it’s all over. I’ve bought this place so I’m stuck with it for a while which is just as well because I really like it.

I’ve done loads of gigs and now I’ve gone into semi-retirement while I finish writing my book. The book is the reason that this site doesn’t get updated like it should but I’m sure it’ll all be worth it in the end. Here are some pictures of the gigs:

Cinema City with the Neutrinos was great because I only had to do twenty minutes so I just did four new numbers – Same, Continuity Girl, Local and 33s & 45s. Because it was a cinema we had the possibility of projecting stuff so we drove around my neighbourhood very slowly and Karen filmed endless houses and bungalows out of the car window. Then we slowed the footage down to a crawl, turned it backwards and fucked it up with a couple of vision mixers. I had the neighbourhood, twenty foot high, rolling past behind me as I played. I told the audience to give me a shout when we got to my house but they never did. I went down really well and we decided to do the Visually Enhanced show at Norwich Arts Centre.

The Eve Club was a strange affair. A lot of people didn’t show up and there was a funny vibe to the evening. The PA was a nightmare but Andy Davies did the best he could in the absence of a soundman and everything going through the DJ mixer. The support act were a pain in the arse. The décor could get on your nerves after a while but it looks quite pretty in the photos. They didn’t light up the dance floor until all the audience had fucked off home. I suppose it wouldn’t have made much difference because it was covered with chairs, tables and people.

The Musician in Leicester was a fine end to the season or whatever it was. I felt shagged out but I don’t look too bad for a middle-aged git:

And here's a picture of Eric in the Yardbirds…

No! Not that one (ha ha ha). Actually it’s me helping Alan Clayson support the Yardbirds at the Marquee which is a concrete box in a shopping centre in Islington. So much for Swinging London. Alan was in fine form, lurching from the truly appalling to the totally abysmal to the absolutely inspired.

Now I'm going to answer an email:

----- Original Message ----- From: Hugh Draper

To: wrecklesseric@wrecklesseric.com

Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 6:28 AM

Subject: first Stiff tour

Hello,

Has anything topped the first Stiff tour with Ian, Elvis, Larry and Nick.

Hugh.

It depends on your point of view - from the public point of view the line-up of Elvis Costello Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Larry Wallis and me, all for about forty pence admission is highly attractive even when you consider that none of us was anything like a household name back then. I think the biggest thrill was actually the first warm-up gig I did before the tour started - we played at Barbarella's in Birmingham supporting the Damned. I was amazed - the kids actually liked us and it was all much easier than I thought it was going to be.

When I think of gigs that have thrilled me I think immediately of playing to a packed house at the Concorde in Brighton - we did it three times in Southern Domestic - once with Elastica, once with the Blockheads and once with Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros. Each time was a thrill.

I also think of the tribute to Ian Dury at the Brixton Academy where we did a seven minute version of Sign Of The Chicken. Expectation was running very high - Chaz Jankel came off stage from doing a jazz set earlier on and said 'Everybody's shouting for you - you're the hot ticket tonight.' It didn't really bother us because we were out for a good time that night and we'd been up all night the night before playing a late gig at Gaz's Rockin' Blues. Anyway I think the hot ticket was the Blockheads.

When Le Beat Group Electrique came out in 1989 we did a festival in Leuven just outside Brussels. It was held in a market square with an audience of twelve thousand. We had second to top billing and we wouldn't go on until the sun went down because we wanted full benefit of the lights. We kept fabricating delays. It was like being in Led Zeppelin. When we finally went on the tension was running high and the crowd went bonkers. That definitely topped the Stiff Tour. We played really well that night.

There are three dates that we did with Ian Dury in 1998 and 99 that spring to mind: Blackheath Halls in South London, Northampton Roadmenders and a strange hall in Paris - I've forgotten the name of the venue our set is unforgettable for me.

This is all from a personal point of view of course - as a member of the public the first Stiff tour would be put in the shade if you decided a year later that you preferred Lene Lovich to Nick Lowe. if I lived in the distant past then nothing would ever top that first tour but I just don't think like that. Last month I did a new thing at the Norwich Arts Centre, Wreckless Eric Visually Enhanced. It was nearly all new material with live projections going on simultaneously. It was completely sold out and I felt absolutely confident in my own abilities as a performer, as a songwriter and as a musician. That kind of confidence comes of something like thirty years of one gig topping another - just trying to make it better. And you can't do that on a nostalgia ticket.

So here are some pictures of a man at the top of his game (with projections):

Karen took all the photos except this last lot with the projections which are taken from a film of the event shot by our good friend Suzanne Fossey. I'd like to thank Karen for downloading all the images and burning them all off to a million CDs which, of course, I mislaid time and time again in the move. Here's a picture of Karen in the act of actually creating the projections shown in the pictures. (Karen is the dark shape and the hand on the computer keyboard):

.

You're all going to have to be very patient with me while I play at being a tortured genius and finish writing my book. I've written a hundred thousand words so far and I'm nearly at the end of it and my tether. Non-existant updates to the site could go along the lines of 'I've written one thousand two hundred and thirty seven words today…' I have got some gigs coming up soon and I'm hoping to turn into a normal person very soon.

In the meantime there's an unofficial egroup which you can join:

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/TheEricGroup/

So far, apparently, there are 27 members and there have been 56 messages in 5 days.

I suppose I'd better mention the war. I'd propose a mass witholding of council tax, road tax, income tax and national insurance contributions but I don't think it would work because you wouldn't all join in - it'd just be me, in prison.

 © Eric Goulden, March, 2003