I’d never been to Leicester before today, I knew about the football club and their shock win of the Premier League in 2016, I knew about Family (the band) and Diesel Park West but hadn’t really clocked Showaddywaddy, Crazyhead, Black Widow and Engelbert Humperdinck, those are the names that came up throughout the evening. But what about Billy Nomates, Anthony Thistlethwaite (The Waterboys), Tony Kaye (Yes), Spring, The Apollinaires, Brian Davison (The Nice), Gypsy, Henry Lowther (trumpeter), John Deacon (Queen), Jon Lord (Deep Purple), Kasabian, Pick Withers and John Illsey (Dire Straits), Davy Graham, Chrome Molly, and of course Graham Chapman.

We made our usual stop at the coffee shop, killing time till we could check in to the hotel and then soundcheck. It was another Travelodge that seemed to be in better condition than the last one although the amount of fire doors made it hard work to get to our room which was at the end of a long corridor – one end in Leicester and the other in Nice which is how Kasper Schmeichel got there. The same smell lingered, what could it be? I projected that it was the cleaning fluids they used but Olivia thought it might be something worse.

We left for the soundcheck driving out of the garage (with the very low height limit) and through the rush hour to the venue. Unfamiliar streets, grey in the rain, and as we found out when we went to eat, the familiar site of an English high street with closed down shops and a once thriving Palais de Danse. Whilst we were walking, an argument across the street that ended with someone on the ground and speeding ambulances and police cars. A friendly falafel restaurant before the show but the streets felt like a struggle.

The venue was called The Musician and looked like an old house that Raff the barman told me was once a slum. A once old beautiful building next door lay in disrepair and Jeremy the manager told me it wasn’t the best part of town, you would only come here to see a specific gig. The venue was a good size for a small enthusiastic audience and Alan the soundman did a great job. All the soundmen have been really good on this tour. The gig was great, it makes such a difference performing with good sound.

I invited Diesel Park West guys to the show but they weren’t in town (I sang some backing vocals on Let It Melt, 2019). I wondered about how a new guitar band might find an audience here but then I wondered how a new guitar band might find an audience anywhere.

Music today has been one of my favourite unknown progressive albums, the debut by Leicester band Spring (1971). I have a second album by them too, although it doesn’t seem that they released it officially. The drummer was Pick Withers who found himself in Dire Straits some years later.

Music Of The Daze

It doesn’t matter where you are, what the weather is, the season, or the planet, even on Mars, Sunday always feels different to every other day of the week. After our house concert at Martin and Deb’s place we had a very short drive to Birmingham or was it Wolverhampton, Bilston or Dudley or Hollywood or Solihull or The Black Country or the Midlands, I know it’s the bit between London and Manchester, super folk and one of the most intimate gigs you can play. It’s not that dissimilar to Martin and Deb’s house except there’s no book, DVD and comic collection. It’s an L-shaped room so you have to face two directions at once as does the PA. The audience is very close to you so if you slip off your G string, they’ll know – that’s why I often begin the set by telling everyone not to be nervous (haha).

So with time to kill before we had to be at the soundcheck, we pulled into a motorway services and had a coffee or two, did some emailing and writing. There’s a limit to staying so we had to move on after two hours and found another coffee shop on the motorway, we pulled in, sat down looked out of the window and there was our hotel across the road. It looked like it had seen better days, boarded-up shops below it, a chicken place and a subway, a lot of water-stained outer walls, and as you often find in a place like this super friendly staff. We checked into our room, the smell was free and the burn marks on the carpet added a nice turn to the pattern. The internet didn’t work and when I opened the curtain to let in some fresh air I was greeted with a busy roundabout with constant traffic and the grey edifice of Sainsbury’s, across from the roundabout was a road and a sign: Welcome to Worcestershire, with rolling hills and green fields, the planet transformed in a few steps.

At the venue, a very helpful and cool sound guy, Mike, set us up and we had a long soundcheck trying to get it right in such a sonically challenging, naked, and intimate setting. Finding the balance between monitor box tone and PA positioning, figuring out where the sweet spot was for optimum sound, and where we might be the most comfortably able to deliver our best. By the time we were done, we were only half an hour away from the show start and as usual, had been unable to fit dinner in. Three doors down, an Indian restaurant, a nice man (Ali) agreed to take the order and delivery it to us at the venue at 10.45. Perfect, show, curry, pack up, back to the hotel.

The staff were great here, Maya and another young lad on the bar, Mike and the other staff sound guy Rob who was here last time we played. The two of them helped us load out and my thumbs were most grateful. The merch released another two Marty & Olivia shirts which means we now need to sell eleven more to break even. We have sold out of the MOAT – Poison Stream vinyl but have vinyl covers and CDs, I guess people are digging our version of Helpless You from that album. We only have four vinyl copies of the first MOAT album (it comes with a free CD), that’s the last of them in the world. Other vinyl and CDs are selling fast and we have eight more shows, sorry Edinburgh.

Music today has been Black Sabbath, Vol. 4 (1972), of course it has.

Music Of The Daze

Zooming down the motorway to Worcester or is it Bromsgrove or Brum or the Midlands or Wolverhampton or Solihull or West Bromwich? I’m totally lost in the area around Birmingham, I‘ve never quite got the geography right and I’ve only ever been to the area to play gigs, I’ve never stayed for longer than one night – although with the show at the Kitchen Garden Café in Birmingham tomorrow, it will be two, but I couldn’t tell you if it’s north, south, east, or west from the Premier Inn where I’m sitting right now. It’s apparently just twenty minutes away from Birmingham here, what’s the name of the main street? No idea, although I do recall New Street station. It’s the bands from here that I know.

Who’s from Birmingham? Black Sabbath, The Moody Blues, Judas Priest, The Move, ELO, Jeff Lynne, The Idle Race, Roy Wood, Wizzard, Robert Plant, Bonzo, Ocean Colour Scene, Duran Duran, Stephen Duffy, UB40, The Beat, General Public, Dexy’s, Napalm Death, Birdland, The Streets, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Hollywood Beyond, Traffic, Fine Young Cannibals, City Boy, Blackfoot Sue, Ian Campbell, Spencer Davis, Steel Pulse, Swans Way, Chicken Shack, Bachdenkel, Musical Youth, Broadcast, Pram, The Maisonettes, Godflesh, Editors, Slade.

The drive was going so well then suddenly we were stopped. We sat like that for about fifteen minutes and then we started moving towards a very bent central barrier and a car with its whole front smashed up, you could see the airbag. It was the aftermath, any ambulances were already gone, someone must have been pretty shaken up if they survived the impact. We’d drive for a while and then we’d hit downpours for ten minutes, then nothing, and then another one until by the time we arrived at Martin and Deb’s house for the show, it had completely stopped, kindly letting us load in.

A lovely, friendly, intimate crowd, we laughed, played, and chatted our way through our two sets. They all ate pizzas, I waited to eat Indian later. It’s amazing how good these little performances can be, it helps if you have someone that knows what he’s doing with a small PA system (enter Spot).

I seem to have lost my sunglasses already, I didn’t even get to a hotel yet and they are gone. My fingers are getting hard, my thumbs are up and down, my body is happiest asleep, my voice seems to be holding out after four shows in a row, we’ll see where we are at eight.

Music today was the first Move album, released in 1968. It featured two hits, Flowers in the Rain and Fire Brigade, all original songs were written by Roy Wood although they were sung mainly by Wood and Carl Wayne. The covers are horrible but the great Wood songs are really great.

Music Of The Daze

London calling, The Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell, and because we’re not new to this we left for London before midday – Friday afternoon traffic. It was nice when we left, the sun shining, blue sky between giant fluffy clouds we were soon on the M4 heading east. The clouds looked like Roman gods on the right of the motorway and on the left a creeping black virus that even the gods couldn’t stop from releasing a deluge that drenched the traffic. It was soon over and the blue and the gods fought back and shined the sunlight down again onto the grateful humans.

Then the eye migraine started on the right. Ok, migraine, for those that don’t suffer, they have no idea of the hell it can be but these days for me if it turns into a mild headache after the eye distortion, it’s generally ok. It cleared up without event, the eye, not the weather. But then it came back in waves on the left eye, it was like being in the surf in your head, fearing being dragged towards the rocks. After the bad years, losing the vision like this is frightening because it used to turn into bad, very bad. Happily, that wave went softly to the shore but I was feeling kinda sickly, and that wasn’t how I wanted it to be for this London gig. Lots of people, all putting the effort in to make it to Clerkenwell where generally you are not allowed through the borders if you are under thirty – there must have been a lot of fake IDs and fantastical stories.

My mate Gary rang from Switzerland as we were driving down Cromwell Road. Just checking in as he knew we were touring. We went to the same school, Woodchurch Sec, and worked in the same restaurant on The Wirral in the seventies. He speaks perfect (Swiss) German and has lived in Basel for 38 years. Nice one Gaz. Traffic was its usual chaos in central London but there was something about driving through Piccadilly Circus and up Shaftesbury Avenue in a car. We wound our way around, Boydie concentrating on the other white van drivers, the buses and all kinds of mechanical apparatuses coming at him from every side. Then there are the flashing lights, the cameras, the speed limits and perhaps most dangerous of all, the pedestrians.

We arrived at the gig, my left eye was still swimming but I helped load in. Having said that I’m trying not to overuse my thumbs so I can carry but not pick up. And…if you shake my hand these days, fist bump me because a hard handshake causes me pain. I did an interview at soundcheck with Ayisha from Post Punk Blog, pics with Anna and then we got into the soundcheck with sound man Q (yes, really) and then waited for the government to run in and confiscate my subversive guitar with the tape.

Sessioneer Brian was over with his family from Orlando, that was cool to see him out of context. Sessioneer Kadeem came from the deep south too – of London. Sessioneer Noel who has lent me the Tak 12 in D, Scrim the luthier, and partner Sharon. Biggles and Coleen who we always stay with in London and the man who produced Wheels Of Steel. A whole slew of fans and familiar faces, many of which have helped out with the cause but perhaps too many to mention here – but Mark and Vicky did bring me more magazines for The Archive and Deanne did bring me the green Burns double six 12-string which has returned to the fold after some years in her care. Chris Remington, bassist from The Buzzcocks, was there but the missing piece was Matt Piucci from The Rain Parade who was coming to play with me (I even had a spare guitar stand) but he got COVID and had to cancel, get better Matt…and next time.

The gig was great, thank you everyone for coming and packing out the room and filling it with your enthusiasm for this somewhat vague career retrospective. And thank you for buying the Marty & Olivia T-shirt, 14 to go to break even. We drove back to Bristol, the last of the long drives after shows. In bed at 4 AM.

Music today has been Rain Parade’s Crashing Dream (1985) although the dream of playing with Matt in London crashed.

Music Of The Daze

A great gig in Bristol tonight at The Crofters Rights. Plus we got to see Duncan who played flute on the Noctorum records, Ed who played drums on Noctorum, Space Summit, and MOAT albums, and Stuart who played drums on the Wild Swans album – and meet their partners for the first time, Hannah, Zoe, and Amy. Derek came along and filmed the show, Gabe did the sound and it was as intimate and as well a received gig as we’ve ever played. It’s nice to penetrate the hallowed wall of a classic grungy Bristol venue and saturate it with cascading arpeggios, plaintive violin, and evocative sorrow.

It was such a rush today after such a late night returning from Penzance. It seemed like every second was filled with blogs and showers and breakfasts and teeth cleanings and before you knew it we were back in the van heading to the gig for soundcheck. It rained and everything was grey, the sky, the road, the buildings, my hair, and my pants (I’ve gone American again). But once we had loaded in and connected with Gabe all went smoothly. We figured out how to get the tuner to register the guitar that was tuned down to D. We figured out how to get it to register a note and not a number and we also figured out what was wrong with the DI box, a dying battery that we didn’t know was in there. Teething problems that are slowly but surely sorting themselves out.

I guess this is not the best time of year to expect people to get a T-shirt, but we did manage to sell two tonight, including the first Marty & Olivia shirt ever sold. I suppose we might do better if we were selling Marty & Olivia woolly jumpers, umbrellas, or plastic macs. We have to sell about twenty to get back the investment – nineteen to go and by the way, summer is coming.

The venue had another band in a room on the other side but we pretty much managed to zone them out, just a distant rumbling now and again and the occasional forgotten open door that wasn’t exactly conducive to an audience of listeners and musicians playing 12-string acoustics and violins. But we make the place our own, create our own world, as Ed commented, music does that.

There was something I forgot to mention yesterday, as we came out of Wells on the side of the road as the town was turning into the countryside there was a long-bearded man playing the guitar like a busker. The problem was that there were no people, only cars passing by. All I could think of was don’t take the brown acid.

Music today has been Rain Parade – Explosions In The Glass Palace (1984), a five-track mini-album that followed Emergency Third Rail Power Trip (1983).

Music Of The Daze