How The North Was Won

And so it came to pass that we once again ventured northwards to Inverness, to the Ironworks no less. I, personally, was ready to do battle; bloody murder if necessary, after our last visit to the place but thankfully it was not required. They had the same people working there, only this time they were much more helpful, almost cordial. When we asked for a wheelie bin full of ice and gaffa tape, it was brought without so much as a blink. It was actually a reasonably enjoyable experience and we do so love playing to the highlanders. And they adore us in return. Marvellous. On this occasion we brought Andrew Moore with us. Literally dragged him out of his bed on Saturday morning at nine o clock with no notice whatsoever and kidnapped him for two days. Two days in the highlands with the ten of us, poor bastard. He came through it with flying colours, a little worn, a little battered but definitely stronger.

We were preceded by the delightfully monikered The Leonard Jones Potential (?) who were great. Funktastic. They had our friend Hugh from Gecko Three on the kit, as their drummer broke his arm opening a bottle of Lucozade or something. After they finished we came on and blasted through a forty-five minute set to a respectable sized audience. It is a good-sized stage to play. Plenty of room to swing a cat. We have been really enjoying playing our new tune The Ballad of Lloyd Knibb of late. It has been in our starting ten for the last six gigs and is definitely a hit. Murray wrote it and it has some poignant lyrics. Poignant to me at least. If you want to understand then I suggest you listen close next time we play it. After we came off stage it was time for the outrageous Barry Peters. If you don’t know already, Barry Peters is an alter ego of one of The Cuban Brothers, and they are totally fucked. You can check it out at http://www.myspace.com/barrypeters, which also has some video of the Ironworks gig. Well dodgy. Mike Keats, who is the main instigator in both Barry Peters and The Cuban Brothers, was at primary school with our Vini, and he was telling us some hilarious stories about him and Vini, and Vini’s big brother that I’m not repeating here. Great show and we were delighted to take part.

We have been getting lots of hate mail recently, in the form of letters from demented stalkers claiming to be our fans threatening all kinds of crazy shit unless we get round to playing in Edinburgh soon. Here’s an example of the stuff we have to put up with;

Dear Bombskare,

What’s the problem you perverts. London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, Skegness, even Dunfermline are fine but Edinburgh is not good enough for you anymore. You guys suck! May all your brass instruments melt in the sun!

Yours truly

A Friend

Or how about this one;

Dear Bastards,

Sort a gig out in town or I’ll cut your fucking balls off. All twenty of them!

Love

Your number one fan

Pretty sick stuff. Of course we never have, and never will back down, or negotiate with, terrorists; but it just so happens that we actually want to play in Edinburgh quite soon anyway. As mentioned we have tracks ready, or almost ready, for our single. The artwork is done, just needs tweaked. So we will definitely be playing Edinburgh to promote it. My crystal ball and Ouija board tell me it will probably be at The Bongo Club and could be Friday the 20^th of June, but the spirits are uncertain. I wouldn’t put it in the diary just yet.

As for the rest of the album, our plan is to mix the tracks at the Sound Café, near Penicuik. My buddy Tim Young works there and will be mixing it, with the help of Gav and myself of course. It’s a much fancier studio, with lots of beautiful and expensive gear that make us sound really sexy. I could explain the whole process in more detail but frankly it’s not that interesting. The downside to working there is that it is expensive of course, but worth it in the end. I was down there recently working on a track and it sounds pretty damn sexy already, especially for ten pretty damn un-sexy guys.