Thursday 24 November 2016

If I'm Not Back Again This Time Tomorrow...


It is 25 years to the day that Freddie Mercury died. He would have been 70 this year – is the fact you will hear bandied around. If it’s possible for there to be a ‘greatest’ voice in music, then Freddie had it. The sound, power and style of delivery transcended mere talent, there was something divine about it; this is perhaps why it’s impossible for anyone to cover a song Freddie sang without their performance feeling lacking in some way. He was arguably the ‘greatest’ (again, if there is such a thing) front man of all time – he could certainly command a stadium of over 100,000 people better than anyone else. There is probably no other lead singer who is so universally adored either – and I know this because I have quite a few Freddie Mercury T-shirts and, no matter where I wear them or who’s around, someone always comments and says ‘great t-shirt, Freddie is such a legend’, or words to that effect. So, to celebrate Freddie (in a slightly weird way) here is an ill-advised picture of me with some – about half - of my Freddie T-shirts.


Channel 5 recently released a pretty poor - and markedly depressing - dramatized documentary, which basically just showed Freddie getting ill and dying. The best thing about it was JP Blunt playing Freddie, as he does at least look like Freddie. The rest of the cast was hysterically badly chosen, and as for their wigs… well, you just have to see them. Perhaps less depressing will be the long awaited Queen biopic, which begins shooting in 2017. The film, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, has taken a long time to get going, with different people cast or rumored to play Freddie. Rami Malek (off that Mr Robot show) has apparently now been cast in the role. From what I hear, it’s a film about the band rather than just about Freddie, but the success of the film will undoubtedly rely on how well the greatly missed luminary is portrayed. Lower your expectations to maximize chance of satisfaction. 

 

Friday 4 November 2016

"VICES WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOUR LIFE"


A mysterious 'Q' recently interviewed Screaming J from queer punk-noise band Screaming J Rule... and here it is... the interview:


Q: What’s your favourite band?

Screaming J: Ooh… I like quite a lot of different music. Erm… I tend to be a fan of songs more than of bands cause all bands tend to do something a bit shit at some point.

Q: That’s a very modern approach.

Screaming J: Yea… erm… I do love Blues Traveler.

Q: Is there any Blues Traveler influence in the Screaming J Rule sound?

Screaming J: We don’t have any harmonicas, which is a shame, but then I don’t think it’d work. Possibly some of the delivery in Vices is slightly John Popperesque.

Q: What’s your favourite song of yours and why?

Screaming J: I really like Nazi Smasher… cause I really don’t like Nazis and, you know, it’s just pretty cool, I reckon.

Q: Are you going to release any music at any point?

Screaming J: Yes. That is definitely definitely on the agenda because why be a band if we’re not going to do that? That seems insane!

Q: So what are we going to get? An album? An EP? A single? What’s it going to be?

Screaming J: I think probably an EP first, with a view to doing a full album afterwards.

Q: Are you going to play any gigs at any point?

Screaming J: If it kills me, we will play a gig at some point! Even if we just do it in the street!

Q: What would be your ideal venue in Liverpool?

Screaming J: Ideal venue? Currently I think Maguire's Pizza Bar would suit us really well because of the size. I think that’s the best bet at the moment; that’s sort of the most likely venue.

Q: Is punk music still relevant in 2016?

Screaming J: I think so. I think it should be, because everything’s horrible and punk is about fighting back against like… just sort of the horrific oppression of the monied people that are awful and terrible and just like to see people crushed beneath their heel. So I think it should be. And smashing… you know… their faces in would be… That’s possibly slightly too violent… or not… you choose.

Q: Who do you think will like Screaming J Rule?

Screaming J: All the cool people and all the sensible people and lots of people… Everybody should like us cause we are nice human beings with fun-good music that is also politically motivated to the smashing of Nazis and the putting of heads on spikes.

Q: Can you recommend a song we should go and listen to right now?

Screaming J: Yes, you should go and listen to Nazi Smasher on Youtube or Vices on Youtube… Vices will make you feel better about your life.

Q: Live versions?

Screaming J: Yes.

Saturday 5 September 2015

Grim's Gear Graveyard [Part 1]


Suzuki '50'
The first time I tried to play the guitar was in junior school, in an after- school guitar club. I had a 'model 50', a small classical guitar made by Suzuki Guitars, Japan. The neck was so thick I couldn’t get my fingers round it and I think the bridge broke off it before it even sang a tune. I hadn’t been particularly inspired and that was the end of my guitar-playing career for next 6 years.

Mini Grim & Tetra 'Foreign'
Following the sudden inspiration that hits most teens at one point or another, I found myself trying again. The first guitar I really tried to play was a 'Classic Foreign', made by Tetra, Czechoslovakia, an old classical guitar that belonged to one of my parents. It was the guitar my older brother used to use at that same guitar club in junior school and it was better than the little broken one I’d tried to play. By the time I got to it however it only had two strings – the bottom E and A. This suited me perfectly. I was able to play along to the songs in my CD collection, mostly just the bass lines or route notes of the chords. I did this for several hours a day and, I suspect out of pity, my mum eventually took me to buy some strings for it. Like so many classical guitars, the neck seemed huge and it wasn’t easy to learn chords on it. It was so unexciting having to work out where to put my fingers and then remember where they had been. I got very frustrated trying to make the chord shapes in my brother’s guitar tutorial book and just generally annoyed that I wasn't instantly able to play like the guitarists I admired. At that time I was reasonably determined I was going to save up and buy a bass. 

 One day, let’s say it was in the summer - hell if I can remember when it actually was - I visited my auntie in Bath. Not all that long before the visit she had bought a bass guitar. At the time I wasn’t especially fussy about whether I played bass or guitar and was very excited that I was going to be able to try her new bass. I remember the excitement when she finally asked if I’d like to see it. It wasn’t a make I was familiar with and was a slightly different shape from the basses I’d started obsessing over, but here it was, in my hands - the first time I’d even held a bass guitar. I was nervous, almost reluctant to play it, in case I found I was unable to, but my two-stringed guitar playing paid off and I was able to play the bass line for Design For Life, by Manic Street Preachers… or as much of it as I knew at the time anyway. This was a very encouraging experience and, when we left, I felt freshly determined as I sat in the back of my dad’s car, the opening track of Everything Must Go drifting in to my earphones, underscoring the passing motorway; I hear the ocean, a guitar… ‘Twenty foot high on Blackpool Promenade…’

Motorcycle Emptiness
Manics - Butt Naked (click for video)
I’ve been very into a lot of different bands but only ever completely obsessed with one. I had friends who were into Manic Street Preachers too and we would discuss them often, especially in lessons when we should have been learning something like what happens when you mix blah with blah and heat them up or something equally dull. I’m still talking about guitars, I promise, but this bit of the story is significant. Amongst our small cult of Manics maniacs we would exchange any information or magazine articles we’d come across. One of my friends had got hold of a videotape of various recordings of the Manics performing on TV and being interviewed. The tape was about 3 hours long and dated right back to the band's first album and ended with a gig, from the Holy Bible tour, which had been recorded on a camcorder. On that tape (I still have it) is the Manics playing live on a TV show called Butt Naked. They play about six or so songs, mostly off the Holy Bible, but also Motorcycle Emptiness. James Dean Bradfield is obviously a crazily good guitarist but never had that come across more so than in the footage of him playing on this show. And this was the moment, when he played Motorcycle Emptiness; I no longer wanted a bass, I was going to play the guitar.

Rockin' cake

Liverpool used to have a lot of guitar shops and I was becoming familiar with all of them. I knew what they stocked and I couldn’t afford any of it! Exciting as visiting the shops was, I was getting pretty desperate to own a guitar. I was watching people play them, trying my friends' ones, drawing guitars, talking about them, looking at them in magazines but I still couldn’t afford one. 
Guitar shops have kinda been killed by the internet but back then they would stock a lot of secondhand guitars. I remember the cheapest guitars started at around £100 and it took months for me to save up that much money. Years later, when I was working with young bands, I really hated the kids who’d been bought a brand new Gibson by their parents, just 'cause they’d shown a vague interest in owning one. It was a Gibson I wanted, of course; that extraordinary footage of James Dean Bradfield playing had never left my mind. The closest I was going to get to a Gibson would be a copy but not for one second did that dampen the excitement of finally getting my own electric guitar. 

Rushworth's on Hanover Street. The shop was downstairs, below street level. It was in there one day when I saw my guitar. A black, Les Paul-shaped guitar made by Hohner. I can remember the buzz of excitement I had when I saw it. I wanted to take it there and then, not to let it out of my sight. I was already recreating my identity around it. The guy went and got a horrible, old, thin, grey guitar bag for it and the transaction was complete. I’m fairly sure I sat in the back of my mum’s car on the way home, holding the guitar, just looking at it. This guitar was mine and that really meant something… more so than any object I’ve owned before or  since. The only thing I had to do now was to start learning to play it… oh, and to get an amp; I didn’t have an amp at that point.

Hohner Rockwood LX250G (The Hornet)


'The Hornet'

The guitar I think of as my first guitar was a Rockwood LX250G, made by Hohner. A black Les Paul- shaped guitar with a slim body, cream binding and a very slim, inlaid rosewood neck. I nicknamed this guitar ‘The Hornet’, after putting a rubbish sticker of a wasp on the headstock… I suppose I thought it was cool at the time. I gigged this guitar for a year, although it’s a small miracle it survived so long, considering the abuse I gave it. Thankfully, I eventually learned that a performance is made no better by smacking your guitar into the stage or throwing it at your amp at the end of every set and, by the skin of its teeth, it still survives to this day.

When I started writing this I looked online to see if there was any mention of this model of guitar. I was quite surprised that, not only was there plenty of information about it, but a lot of people had left comments on Harmony Central saying how much they liked theirs. One of the most common notes of praise for it was how robust it is; I can certainly attest to that.

Marshall Park G15RCD amp.


They called it 'Park' cause it was for kids playing - clever
This is a 15 watt, single channel, solid-state practice amp. There's a special input for your CD player - which, I suppose is where the 'CD' part of the product name comes from. I got this amp on my 16th Birthday. On the same birthday, my cake was a white Les Paul Custom – my Manics obsession was still in full swing! Unbelievably, I used this amp to gig for around 2 years before a friend gave me an old one of his.

 

 

 

End of part one... 

Friday 7 August 2015

Screaming J. Rule - from the Beginning...


The Story of Screaming J. Rule

[as told by Grim Outlook]



Ten years ago, in a pub car park (of all places), I was unceremoniously booted out of a band that had been my full-time life for five years, by friends I would have defended in conversation until that moment. I didn’t take it well. Worse things happened since, though and, as I approached 30, I was once again itching to form a band. Despite having written a bunch of songs in the intervening years, I had never had the confidence to get others to perform with me and was at a loss as how to get a band started.


Like a lot of people, I suffer from depression (bear with me, this isn’t about to get heavy) and for a while I only left the house when I needed another bottle of rum (bad idea) or to see friends (good idea). One fine day, I was having breakfast with two friends. My friend Jan Rule was telling us about how if anyone ever searched for her online they’d just get a load of results for the American rapper Ja Rule. ‘Screamin’ Ja Rule,’ said my other friend, quite out of the blue. ‘Fuck!’ I thought, joining the dots, ‘That’s so cool! That should be a band - Screaming J. Rule!’ They agreed and we talked about how good it would be, especially with Jan (Screaming J.) as the lead singer. We decided then and there to go to my studio across town and write some songs.


One thing I had noticed was the proliferation of sanitized, acoustic drivel spilling out of venues that once hosted unpredictable live jazz or wild punk bands blasting through songs, as they dodged the flying glass bottles. My only desire for starting a band was that it would make noise – to counteract the boys in Aran sweaters with engineered, rough voices and girls with thick-rimmed glasses and contrived regional singing accents. So it was that, with simplicity in mind, we wrote eight songs in five hours. We kept six of those songs and two weeks later we were playing our first gig.
 
In The Beginning... [04-08-2012]

It was my 30th birthday and I’d arranged a night of live performances. The night was mostly attended by our friends, most of whom knew we’d put together Screaming J. Rule. The theme of the night was rebirth. I had planned a performance that involved leaving behind any kind of life other than an artistic one – being reborn – part of which involved stripping entirely and appearing a little later ‘reborn’. Following this, I invited Screaming J. and the now self-titled F. King Kaos to join me and we played through our six songs.


That first gig was generally described as ‘exciting’. People could see we had something right away. At the risk of sounding like a twat, I already knew it would work. Screaming J. in a kilt and loud songs about simple themes – it was just right. Screaming J. told me afterwards that she’d been incredibly nervous, but I’d not doubted how the band would come across for a second - perhaps because I don’t really believe anything can really go wrong on stage, so long as you set things up honestly and correctly.

AffRonT! [16-11-13]

After this debut, we played four more times as a three-piece. Once, at a local performance night, with all kinds of acts who were trying out new material (we weren’t trying anything out though, we were just being us). The next gig was a spontaneous thing in someone’s back garden, on their 30th birthday. ‘You’ve made my guitar very happy,’ said its owner, after I’d beaten its strings to within an inch of their lives. Next, we played at another performance night I had arranged. It was part of a local queer arts festival. The other members of the band and I were all doing separate performances [on the theme of labelling] before we played as Screaming J. Rule. In the weeks leading up to it I’d been so focused on producing the night that my head was in totally the wrong space to perform - one night I had even collapsed in the street and King Kaos had to pick me up and help me back home. You can see, if you watch the video of it, my brain was so fried by the end of the night that I just stopped playing halfway through Nazi Smasher, I hardly knew where I was. It was an odd night that never really fulfilled its potential but, in a way, our set was still pretty cool. Finally, we played at a friend's 40th birthday (we’re a good party band). We were well-received as a kind of cabaret act and, although there’s an element of that to us, that’s not what I really see us as. I thought it was about time we played with a full line-up and decided not to perform again until we had one. 


To be continued...