superscape

Morning,

Well, it's been a funny old week. It's taken me a number of years to twig it, but I finally did - I'm really not made for the world of work. There's a war between companies with them all fighting for a chunk of the profits available to whoever can get away with paying their employees the least whilst producing the most. I'm a foot soldier in this war and I've realised that I don't much care who wins and I want out. Ah well.

I think it's times like this when I need to play a gig, just to get that frustration out. This is one of the main reasons I'm in this band, it's a kind of catharsis. It's time to get on the phone to some venues, I think.

r.


ps. What's on the stereo this week;

• "Veneer" - José Gonzáles
• "Endless Numbered Days" - Iron & Wine
• "Trinity Sessions" - Cowboy Junkies

...yep, its been an acousticky week for me.

Haven't done this in a while - for those of you who don't remember, we always used to include a 'what's on the stereo this week' section in our mail shots... especially when we were pushed for things to talk about! Still, it's kind of fun to find out what folks are listening to and maybe discovering something new... feel free to add your own lists.

This week I are mostly listening to...

• "Takk..." by Sigur Rós
• "Think Tank" by Blur
• "Know By Heart" - by American Analog Set

The first mess up happened when Andy, our regular van driver/roadie got stuck in traffic in Scarborough and couldn't make it back in time to help us get our kit from our rehearsal rooms to the Adelphi. After much panicking we managed to do it in a few runs in Rob B's car.

Soundcheck was pretty much par for the course, it's a familiar routine and a necessary evil nowadays. After that we were particularly rock and roll and went back to Paul's house and watched Blackadder. We managed to get back to the venue in time to catch Ade Webb's set. He's becoming a regular fixture with us and has started introducing himself as Superscape's pet support act. His set went well, with "Echos" being a firm favorite with me. First time I've seen Ade take a request from a member of the audience too! That's always a good sign.

We were slightly nervous about Thief - the second support act. We'd booked them without hearing them which is always risky. There was no need to be nervous, they were really good sounding a bit like an upbeat Wilco which is no bad thing. I was jealous of their guitars, little did I know at that stage how much more jealous I should have been.

Time came for our set - it felt a bit odd, there were a few faces from Superscape history in the audience including ex-drummer Jase Briggs and ex-Motorcade singer Rich Baker. It felt like five years ago. We set the kit up quickly and started out with the traditional opener "Waiting for Leon". Audience reaction was pretty good for the early part of the gig and all went smoothly. Smoothly until three songs from the end, anyway. During Save Yourself, something peculiar started to happen to my guitar. Some of you will know that an amplifier traditionally has a loud and a quiet setting. Whenever I switched to the loud setting it started switching on and off randomly - imagine Norman Collier's broken microphone sketch. This was not good.



First suspect was the guitar - I swiftly flung my guitar mid-song and picked up Matt's Fender Telecaster which was waiting in the wings for just such an occurrence. This seemed to fix the problem. However, at the exact moment I started to breathe a sigh of relief, the problem started again. Clearly the guitar wasn't the problem after all. I figured maybe it was the effects unit, so I bypassed that and plugged straight into the amp... remember this is all during the set and the rest of the band were doing an excellent job of improvising without me. Sadly the problem was still there.

Luckily by this time I had limped through two songs and got to Minotaur. By this stage, my equipment was pretty much useless, emitting random bursts of guitar and silence. By the final end of set wig-out, I figured I'd make the best of a bad situation and just hammer the guitar whilst leaning into the amplifier generating a random stuttering feedback - the kind of thing avant garde thing Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead does on purpose became the only thing I could do whether I liked it or not.

Mercifully the end of the song came and I flung the guitar into the wings and walked offstage, thoroughly expecting to be booed. But no. The crowd was going bonkers, *really* bonkers. They'd loved it - maybe its the same morbid curiosity that makes people rubberneck at traffic accidents, maybe we'd got away with it. The rest of the band joined me backstage and it became obvious that we weren't going to get away without an encore.

I didn't want to do the encore. I had no functioning equipment and was utterly exhausted through adrenaline, panic and stress. But we had no choice, the crowd was just getting louder. We came out and played Mote. I bluffed my way through the first half, but halfway through I realised my luck had run out. I'd tried every trick in the guitarist's book. I flung my guitar once more... well, okay, *Matt's* guitar (its amazing how gung-ho I can be with other people's kit!)... and walked off the front of the stage to make it clear that was the end of me for the night. Unfortunately, I received a bit of a friendly mobbing and was pushed back onto the stage, so I finished the track by 'playing' Rob's cymbals with my fists. Cymbals are made of metal and have hard, thin edges. My hands are made of soft, fleshy stuff. Yes, it did hurt.

We got off stage and it was a massive relief to me. It slowly began to dawn on me that we might just have got away with it. Whether it was the quality of the rest of the band who could fill in without me, or whether it was the rubber necking theory, or maybe the crowd was drunk enough that they enjoyed watching the dramatics. I can't say what it was but we seemed to have gone down well and just about got away with it. Phew.

I went home and drank numerous beers and watched The Polyphonic Spree live. I believe the rest of the band went on a bit of a bender. Good work.

Its now early afternoon the morning afterwards and Rob B's just rung to see if I'm okay. I ache, I'm dehydrated and my hands hurt but otherwise okay. Rob tells me his cymbals are relatively unscathed.

Next gig, we'll be returning Thief's favour and supporting them at The Piper Club. More details on that one later.

Bye for now,

r.

How come so many local bands are suddenly playing bad punk songs and dressing like extras from Oliver Twist? I don't understand it. I wouldn't mind so much if they did some comedy pick-pocketing antics on stage. See the recent press shot (below) of The Pudding Tins on tour.

Hiya. Just spent this evening fly-postering with Mr Pickersgill. I think it's finally kicked in that we're doing a gig next week after a long absence, with a new line-up and new material. It kind of feels like a first gig scenario - really exciting but a bit scary. I think we're sounding great and the new songs are some of the best stuff we've done... but will the audience... oooh, scary but fun.

Ummm... that's all.

r.

Beards are rubbish, aren't they? Except on wizards.

Evening all. Mr Stott here after several glasses of lovely booze. I can't quite remember why, but I went on a download frenzy gathering tracks by "The Postal Service". Remember when you were a kid and someone'd have a crap Casio keyboard and you'd spend ages trying to get a decent tune out of it (and fail miserabley)? Well, The Postal Service kind of sound like that tune you were aiming for. I'm still not sure whether I'll be mocked for liking them - they're patchy, but there's moments of genius in there (and a few moments of Casio crapness). Have a listen, see what you think.

If I ever lay my hands on Paul's Shakin' Stevens album (see his blog), it shall feel my wrath. There's irony and then there's insanity.

Oooh! Matt's raised the stakes in his blog by pretending to be able to read. Well, two can play at that game. I'm currently re-reading "Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain and "The Meaning of Things" by A C Grayling. I can heartily recommend them both.

Hi all, well, it looks like I'm the first one to write a blog entry. Do I win a prize? Nah, thought not. Anyway, the idea of these blogs is to give individual members of the band somewhere to have their say on whatever topic they like. You can also leave comments if you like. Be polite, it's only fair.

So, as a kick off, let's take the 'What's On The Stereo This Week" part of our newsletter online. For those of you who don't get the newsletter, the idea of this is to tell you what we're listening to at the moment. The idea is that maybe you'll hear about a band that's new to you and get into them, and also maybe it'll give you a clue as to what sort of stuff we'll be writing next. It's always been a one way thing though - we tell you what we're listening to.

However. now you have a chance to respond! Here's a list of what I've been listening to recently. Please feel free to add lists of your own by clicking the 'comments' link below.

This week I have been mostly listening to;

• Various live Sigur Ros recordings (after seeing them at Manchester Academy recently.
• "Feel Good Lost" - Broken Social Scene
• "Pet Sounds" - Beach Boys
• "Together We're Heavy" - Polyphonic Spree

Look forward to reading your lists!

r.