Oh don't worry - I can feel the noize.

So as I've mentioned recently I have started playing in a new band recently. It just seemed the logical thing to do - what with getting old, venues closing and the music I like getting less fashionable by the year. Yet despite my own confidence in the timing of this career move - I do seem to get a fairly standard set of questions after announcing the news to friends and acquaintances. Namely....

Q1: Aren't You too old?
A: Yes.

Q2: Is it a joke band?
A: All bands are joke bands.

Q3: Right - deep. So why the fuck are you doing it?

A: There are a few reasons but one of the main ones is over the past year I have become re-smitten with my first musical love - that being mid to late 70s rock. It was the first music I heard that blew my mind and kicked off that delirious and naive obsessiveness all music fans go through in their formative years. And there was no band that made me more giddily mental than Wolverhampton's finest, Slade.

Slade was my game changer - the moment all other music became frivolous and 2nd best. My colleagues at school listening to Cold Chisel and Australian Crawl could no longer be relied upon to share musical opinions with. Life became a rudderless, random search to discover more Slade albums and with there being no internets and me being stuck living in regional bumblefuck, collecting their entire discography was a long and drawn out process. The beauty of it was of course that any time I was leafing through the S section in a 2nd hand record bin there was the outside chance I would stumble upon a Slade album I'd never even heard of. How many times I cursed that fucking idiot Sade as I prematurely celebrated a new catch only to realise my excited state of anticipation had made me slightly dyslexic again.

Eventually I did track down their entire canon and what a canon it is. Obviously I'm quite biased but I've always been amazed at how marginalised Slade are when it comes to the perceived great rock bands in history. They were Beatles-esque with their chart topping alchemy in the early 70s and when punk rock arrived in the late 70s they got even better [They were one of the rare "establishment" bands that many first wave of English punk bands professed to still liking]. They continued making great no frills rock albums well into the 80s.

I loved their guitar sound, I loved their haircuts. I loved their tartan pants and mirrored hats. I loved their self depreciating sense of humour and their no frills working class manner. I looooved Noddy Holder's voice and the fact that my wife hates it is the single unresolved conflict in our marriage.

"Ok so Slade are kind of a big deal -what should I listen to" I hear you ask.

I'd start off with their raw as hell 70s hit album Slayed which contains early classics Gudbuy T Jane and Mama Weer All Crazee Now, some mellower pop numbers and the flat out rockers [and my personal faves] The whole World's Goin Crazee and Let The good Times Roll.

Then try What Ever Happened To Slade from their self aware commercial wilderness era. It's an insanely ignored album featuring IMO some of their best stuff including the twin epics of Big Apple Blues and The Soul The Roll and The Motion.

You should seek out a live album or two. Their early ep Slade Alive is a bit of a mixed bag of 60s hangover and absolutely mental proto punk rock and roll. There's also an awesome bootleg of Slade Live In London 75 which is sweeeeeeeeet. Their later live albums Slade Alive 2 and Slade On Stage  are noteworthy for playing all their old hits twice as fast and basically heralding their 2nd coming as a hard rock / new wave of Britsish heavy metal band.

Alternatively - if you're an iTunes cherry picker like my good self grab anything off this list...

Skweez Me Pleeze me
The Bangin' Man
Keep On Rockin [From Slade Alive]
Get Down And Get With It [Ditto]
Them Kind Of Monkeys Can't Swing
Just A Little Bit
We're Really Gonna Raise The Roof
When I'm Dancin I Aint Fightin [From Slade on Stage] 

And whatever you do - please take the time to feel the noize.

I was just resting my eyes!

Man have I left the old blog unattended for a while. God knows what mischief it's been up to whilst my attention was elsewehere - Running wild in the streets selling crack and listening to pop music is my reasoned guess.

My excuse is I have been super busy with the unexciting world of paid work. Sure it aint much to blog about but solid gold medallions featuring my own initials don't pay for themselves ya hippies. Of course thanks to the vampiric hours I keep I have sporadically managed to squeeze out some more artistically credible work [I use the phrase relatively] fit to light up the pages of blogsville. One such project is a new animated music video for my Stateside punk rock penpals The Lovesongs. It's still very much a work in progress but the wheels are in motion - as evidenced by the above pic of Craigums "spanking his plank" as they used to say in the 70s before innuendoists soiled that expression for ever.

I'm also feverishly working on the much talked about graphic novel "The Grave Shakers" in the hope of having something ready for Supanova in June. At this stage I think I'll probably have a couple of limited edition 22 page comics available to enthrall the ensemble of nerds and mouth breathers. After the jump behold a recent page in a timelapse slideshow of it's various stages of development.

Musk For Life.

Research has revealed that kids of today are screaming out for more bands consisting of 40 year old men homaging the uber fashionable sounds of Hush, Slade and The Ted Mulry Gang. And so the hard rocking, heavily scented musical stylings of Musk is born. Featuring a who's who of unsuccessful 90s punk rock has beens, Musk simply cannot fail. We're still in the embryonic stages but that hasn't stopped me busting out a website with a special orientation video to sizzle up the project. Keep your nose open for forthcoming Musk shows in your area.

The Cruelettes.

 

Part of the cast of thousands in the old graphic novel I'm currently tooling about with is an all-girl garage band called the Cruelettes. For a bigger version of the poster click hereski. I will explain how they fit in with the genetic scientist and his deformed sons all in good time. Later still,  the fictional Cruelettes band will be releasing a couple of very real songs on the Myspaces as an exciting cross promotional synergy boosting tie in with the graphic novel. My good lady wife Sniz will provide the vocals so fans of the studio version of Nancy Vandal's "Egg Sandwich" and "20th Century Romeo" will be stoked.

Recollections of the iNewsletter™ and the future of other things.

Back in the olden days when Nancy Vandal had just begun it's long and ultimately fruitless rock and roll journey we went to some lengths to disguise our inherent lack of ability with an array of smoke and mirrors publicity guff. The prime mover in our arsenal was a mailout newsletter called The Vandal's Voice which in time mutated into a zine/comic and more recently a DVD. In it's earliest incarnation it was a hand written labour of love, photocopied into mass existence, slotted into a pile of DL envelopes which were then carefully addressed by hand whilst referencing a list of names neatly written by JJ LaMoore in a small exercise book. People could also order NV cassettes which we would duplicate ourselves and mail out as well. Check out this blast from the past as a reminder of a time gone by.

Oh - What we would have given for some kind of automated database and a streamlined system that would easily enable publishing articles, news, comics and tour dates instantly and cheaply to the entire world. And imagine if those same people could access your music from the comfort of their own home without getting off their arse. These were but crazy dreams back in 1994 when coal powered guitar amps and moshpits consisting entirely of dinosaurs were the norm.