Ginger Says – Happy new year!
By Ginger | December 24, 2001
What a year. A few things to remember, at worst; at best, some valuable lessons learned about re-visiting old haunts and the art of moving on. Some things worked and some didn’t, but all were attempted.
The Wildhearts: The biggest mistake of the year was to re-form The Wildhearts’ original line-up and think it would be any less disastrous than the time before. What a colossal fuck-up, and what a treat for the voyeurs out there.
SEE a man fall asleep in front of your very eyes. HEAR the band play the songs you love, in different keys to each other. WITNESS a band dead set on reviving the dormant spirit of UK rock ‘n’ roll, only to succumb to inter-band fighting and latching onto the oldest cliché in the book… drugs.
The Wildhearts will work again next year, as the fans are second to none and the money’s good. But don’t expect the old line-up unless you get off on seeing things fail spectacularly.
SilverGinger 5: We came, we saw… a few people clapped. The fate of SG5 is as shaky as an epileptic on crack. The album came out and didn’t even get reviewed by most of the magazines. How very insulting. It seems that the press don’t want to feature SG5 and no one knows the reason. Kerrang! have refused the band a feature, despite giving them loads of 5K reviews.
It’s not that the band are unpopular – the last London date proved that. OK, so the rest of the country didn’t respond as willingly as London as far as attendances are concerned. Perhaps they were still waiting for The Wildhearts to re-form, or maybe they just had to wash their hair that night; whatever the reasons for staying at home, staying at home is what people largely did. Amazing really, since the show that we took out was as spectacular as any you will ever see in a pub (see the Tour Diary).
I just hope that we can do it again. Maybe I’ll even stay sober for the tour, like I did on the last one. Let’s pray that next year is a little more favourable to SG5.
Singles Club / solo shows: The Singles Club started with every good intention and then slowed to an embarrassing halt. All excitement in the beginning seemed to fizzle out faster than the songs were recorded, but for a short while there, the band were on fire, learning and recording so many songs in such a short period of time. It was an intensely exciting period. I’m sure that all 12 singles will eventually come out next year, but you can safely forget having 12 singles in 12 months as promised.
More reassuring were the solo shows played at the end of the year. In January 2001, I gave myself the goal of playing all guitar and singing in my own three-piece band solo shows come December… and damn if it didn’t just happen!
So this time next year, I’d like to think we’ll be playing three-hour sets! Let’s just see, huh? Wouldn’t it be cool to play Wildhearts tracks, SG5 tracks and solo tracks all in the same set? Who knows how that one will pan out? One thing’s for sure, though, 2002 looks like an interesting year for musical developments. Watch this space.
Recording with Jason: Getting the chance to write and record a song with Jason Ringenberg (of Jason and the Scorchers fame) was one of my personal highlights of this past year (see feature). It was also the only recording of the re-formed Wildhearts as we acted as Jason’s backing band. The song is called One Less Heartache and features on his next solo album. Do you need any more reason to buy it?
Jason turned out to be the most honest and decent musician I have met since the late Mick Ronson (back in the Earth Vs days), armed with a voice to kill for and a gentle, good-natured disposition. It would be great to see Jason reap a little more of the fame that he rightfully deserves next year. He is a very special guy.
Grievous Acoustic Behaviour: The funniest, most drunken acoustic performance was captured on this live album of my first ever acoustic show. Warts, blemishes, scars, deformities and babbling were all intact in what must surely rank alongside the most live live albums ever released. To think originally I didn’t want to release this. Ironically, I inadvertently ended up with more good reviews than anything else I’ve done in a long time. If only Black Leather Mojo had received the same praise.
G.A.Y.: Another challenge met – a result of Barney Greenway singing on one of the Singles Club songs, The Dying Art Of The Chorus. When someone dared me to play a metal set in front of Napalm Death’s hardcore legion of fans, the idea seemed like fun. Once the adverts went up, it was a little more daunting. And come the day of the show, it was as nerve-wracking as a gig can get.
Fate intervened in the shape of a huge backdrop from the previous night’s gay themed club, with the letters G.A.Y. in big flashing lights. So we decided to name the band Ginger’s Angry Youth to utilise the backdrop. When the announcer introduced the band “Ginger’s… Angry… Youth!” the huge letters flashed up one at a time, to huge laughter from the audience. Surely the first time a Napalm Death audience had laughed a support band onto the stage and cheered through their set.
Jake: To see my lad growing up has been easily the most moving and essential thing to happen all year. He was even featured in a Kerrang! magazine photo shoot. He has proved to be the best company of anyone I know, and funnier than Eddie Izzard surgically transplanted onto the side of Bill Hicks. It’s official: kids make life really rewarding. Without them, this whole thing just seems a little too difficult and pointless.
Leaving Sanctuary Management: Without leaving this large – and largely successful – management company, I wouldn’t have done half of the things I have achieved in the past year. It’s a very daunting prospect to walk out of a big team like Sanctuary but the wheels of success move very slowly when they’re that large. I am not designed to move slowly, so it was inevitable that we part company. Pity. Managing yourself sucks Bin Laden’s dick.
The big month: Touring with three separate acts in one month was something I considered impossible. The brain can only concentrate so much, right? Wrong! If you can imagine it, then chances are it can happen.
The month of June began with acoustic shows featuring me, Random Jon Poole and Alex Kane. With AntiProduct in the support slot, the shows went by in a whirlwind of acoustic moshing, smiles and many drinks.
There was just enough time to unpack and re-pack before heading out with SG5. We had hardly any time to rehearse, but we still managed to play some new material, which found its way onto the bonus disk of the Black Leather Mojo UK release.
Then, without saying hello / goodbye to the missus and kissing the dog, The Wildhearts tour started up. The less said about that the better; suffice to say that it was a loaded month with a few surprises and disappointments thrown in.
Driving the band: I had always thought that driving the band to the show, getting up onstage to play the gig, and then driving home was pretty much the most hardcore thing to do in this business. I mean, how many things can you do in a day? Well, probably more than you are going to do! I thought driving to Bradford from London only to jump right onstage for soundcheck was quite rock ‘n’ roll. Next year, I have a feeling I’m going to do a lot of stupid things just because no one else does.
It’s also been a fucked up year, what with the bombing of the Twin Towers and the war in Afghanistan, anthrax scares, foot and mouth, and the deaths of Joey Ramone, George Harrison and Stuart Adamson. The last 12 months have seen more lows than highs, but at least there’s been music and lots of it. And next year will beat this one, if these tunes I’m sitting on in secret have anything to do with it.
Thanks for making this year mean so much to me. Thanks to everyone that was involved with the recording of 37 x The Pain (what a tremendous birthday gift). Thanks to everyone that turned up to any of the shows I played this year… be seeing you next year, I hope. It’s been a cool year but nothing that we can’t kick the ass of next year.
I’ll be having it hard but large next year, and I hope you are all with me. Happy new year.
Love and peace
Ginger
Ginger Says – Choices
By Ginger | November 19, 2001
What a fucking tour! It came and it went and, boy, did it go!
Highlights?
* Setting fire to Nottingham Rock City was pretty ROCK, not to mention very ROLL.
* Random Jon Poole reinventing himself as a cross between Keith Flint from the Prodigy and the bloke that your parents told you would pay you a visit if you didn’t behave yourself.
* Setting fire to guitars and then smashing all flaming Hell out of them. And the look on the security guards’ faces as they tried to be ‘cool’ about it happening behind them!
* Seeing familiar faces appearing at most (if not all – Trace) of the shows.
* New fans taking the chance to check it out and coming away excited, happy, and willing to part with cash for the album (OK, OK, apart from one miserable wretch at Manchester, but there’ll always be at least one pooper per party).
* Getting to use the entire pyro show at the Bristol Fleece & Firkin, which is made out of wood and is no bigger than our tour bus.
* Selling so many T-shirts that we all made a good few quid to take home, as well as being able to pay for the fireworks (thanks again, you lot).
* And writing the whole thing in diary form (that was an honest read, huh?), another thing that I always wanted to do.
But for me, the biggest highlight was seeing the whole tour through without a drink. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I did it. And now I can say that it can be done. The biggest hurdle is surmountable, and now the future is all a matter of choice. And here I am sitting at my computer at home, thinking all about choice. Choice.
Mind if I think aloud? Of course you don’t, you’ve heard all this shit before, anyway.
See, choices are there to test our intuition as well as our nerve. What’s the right thing to do? The right direction to go in? What the fuck is happiness anyway, and how do I get me some? Happiness is a tricky little puzzle, but in the end, it’s far easier than it looks. Happiness is usually measured on the successes of others – like levels of excellence, sums of money, amount of peer respect… none of which you’ve actually obtained to the degree where you’re satisfied with your lot.
So what’s our problem?
Well, apart from jealousy (based largely on guess work), we all have the same problem, whatever rung of the success steps we stand on. We are inconsistent. We make choices and then we re-think them; reinvent our game plan, modifying the choices. The only way to success is not changing the plan. The way to success and happiness is consistency, sticking with that instinctive decision that made sense to you back when you made it, even thought you’ve now forgotten why. Make the choice and see it through until it either succeeds or fails. Regret hurts a lot more than failure. And if you’re going to regret anything, you may as well regret something you did rather than something you didn’t do.
I’m coming to terms with the idea that the big money music industry won’t touch people like me, people with a bad reputation. It’s not because people with a bad reputation don’t get over it, and come out the other end good. It’s that people famous for having a bad reputation spend their life working to get rid of it until they become a paragon – someone like Iggy Pop. It doesn’t matter what you did, or what you don’t do now, you will carry that weight for a long time. Why? Because most ‘famous’ people in this business don’t make you want to do anything but make money. If it wasn’t for Iggy, then who would someone like me (or maybe you?) look to for inspiration, especially when the whole thing seems fruitless and unfair?
I would like to get famous, rich and massively influential for two reasons – to feed my family for the rest of their lives, and to let young musicians know that there are two ways to skin a very expensive cat. What’s the point of leading by example if that example isn’t, ‘take your message to the most people that you possibly can’? Anything else is failure. Success is measured in money, and money doesn’t mean anything but, ‘boy, you are doing really well’. It’s the business telling you that you shouldn’t be involved in their safe profit-making organisation, but you are. You must be smart.
There are plenty of anti-rockstars to teach you how not to make it big. I would like to teach young musicians how to make it big; how to affect things on a large scale and one day influence people themselves. And should it fail, they will escape with their life and their pride. And regret nothing. Again, failure doesn’t hurt as much as regret.
I would like to kill the legacy as unchanged since Kurt Cobain died.
I could do The Wildhearts for money (and nostalgia), and in between trips to the bank book solo shows to make some extra money. Nothing wrong in that. I worked hard to write those songs, and fuck you if you think I should be busking for pennies. But if I invest everything in SG5 and I win, I prove many things. I prove that people can move on. I prove that the hard life is the good life, and the good life is the long life. I prove that drinking is nothing more than an environmental virus, infinitely more contagious to those of a small imagination. I prove that if you can see it, you can change it. Even within yourself.
And if I don’t? Ah, what the fuck. I ain’t got nothing better to do.
It all involves starting small and doing the growth work. Every level is essential in the learning process. And that’s where I find myself, and you the listener / reader. And if I start to weaken and forget, please remind me that I wrote this shit, will you?
It’s important for a lot of reasons.
Ginger
Motorvatin’ – Silver Ginger 5 on the road
By Kris | November 16, 2001
November 2001 · Words by Ginger – Transcribed by Darren Stockford
Saturday 3 November – Glasgow Garage
First tour, first date, first time on the road clean and sober. Man, this is fucking weird!
The thing about being sober is that you notice everything! People getting drunk is really funny. The point between conversation and someone blasting wet words into your ear is quite startling and entirely unexpected… and really, really funny. I’m usually the worst culprit for drunken blathering, so the rest of the guys must be finding this as weird as I am.
The first show of any tour is usually a totally unplanned and unpredictable thing, and tonight was no exception, except that I had no hangover so therefore I had more energy than usual. In fact, the whole band shone with energy tonight. The playing was tight and we pretty much made up the set as we went along. Random Jon Poole became Johnny Rotten and we played the Sex Pistols’ Bodies, with Conny on bass. The first of the Singles Club singles (I’m A Lover Not A Fighter) had its first ever live airing. A brand new BC Rich guitar was thrown into the audience and a huge fight instantly broke out. It ended with the security guys dragging the guitar from the bloodied victor (but I did get the security to give it right back to the guy after the main set – Hell, he fought bravely for that thing!).
We weren’t allowed to use the whole pyro show, so we made do with just confetti cannons, but we were so fucking loud that no one would have heard the bombs going off anyway. Nitebob is doing our sound and he’s probably the loudest sound guy currently working in the business. He’s done sound for Aerosmith, New York Dolls and Kiss. It’s good to have legends on tour with you. And he’s given up cigarettes, too, so he’s a buddy in purgatory.
Jon Poole is giving new names to everyone. I’m Rob Dreyfus, Conny has become Chris Gates, and seeing as The Jellys are supporting on this tour and CJ is travelling with us, he’s become Errol Friedman. Since Jon is now Gavin Henderson, I think we got a good deal. And if being sober is this much fun for the whole tour, I’m staying off the drink for good! The bus is travelling to Newcastle at the moment and it’s like sitting in the monkey den of a zoo. Drunks are falling all over me and this brand new laptop, and if I can manage to keep this computer a red wine free zone I’ll be even happier.
I really think this could be the best tour I’ve ever been on. This band are great company and amazing players. Surely that must be some kind of record?
Glasgow, as usual, rocks like the proverbial fuck. We sold tons of tickets and T-shirts. And someone just gave me a tip worth passing on, in light of the country’s recent lenient attitude towards pot-smoking. Instead of burning your hash (and your fingers) and crumbling the pot into the spliff, try putting your hash into a pepper grinder. It grinds down to a perfect powder and makes the smoke much more consistent. And there’s no hot rocks.
It was Glasgow and it was Saturday, and for now there was nowhere else I’d rather have been.
Sunday 4 November – Newcastle University
For me, there’s something very strange about playing Newcastle. Expect the best and the show will undoubtedly fall miserably on its face. Expect an average reception and a Newcastle crowd will bring you to tears of emotion and remind you why you started doing this rock thing in the first place.
SG5 have never played my home town, and the last time I was here (with The Wildhearts) was probably the worst experience in all my years of playing the Toon. The advance ticket sales don’t fill me with an amazing sense of victory. The band are hungover and walking around the venue pre-soundcheck like Lucio Fulci was right and the Earth has spat out the dead. Still, it’s nothing to worry about this early in the afternoon. Hopefully their trips to the pub, and the Jack and Coke liveners during the day, will put smiles back on their faces. Anyway, Angie has turned up with Jake and my family so I’m happily getting lost in fatherhood bliss. The Chinese food for breakfast has stopped fighting to get out and I even manage to fit in a run. There’s something about finishing a jog that really makes you feel good – like, if everything else sucks during the day, at least you did something worthwhile. An entertaining interview kills some more time, and before I know it, the band are soundchecking without me… a good sign. It means that they’re raring to go, singer or no singer!
Johnny Zhivago are supposed to be playing tonight, but no one told the promoters or the agents, so unfortunately they don’t get a slot. It’s just as well, as there’s an early curfew (boy, these venues are tough with their weekend curfews), so The Jellys have to go on at exactly 7.30 pm. I make the big mistake of catching some of their set. Seeing the opening band play somehow makes me lose focus on my own gig a little. Always does. I don’t know why I do it. But I still do. I get two startling revelations when catching their set. One, Stidi is a fucking amazing drummer. I already know this, of course, but there’s something about watching someone giving 100 per cent dedication to their performance that fills the sails. He plays like it’s his last gig on this planet… and with that amount of energy it could well be. Revelation two is that there seems to be NO FUCKER HERE!!!!
I go back and sit in the dressing room to start getting ready for the gig. I try to gear myself up to do a great show in front of an empty hall. With my mother present. Great. Oh man, I just hope that the auto-pilot kicks in early and the evening goes by painlessly. Sometimes, the less you expect, the bigger the shock, right?
The set begins with bass problems, and the confetti cannons don’t all detonate. Great. But, from nowhere, there seems to be tons of people. The place looks great all of a sudden. There are heads and hands all the way to the back, and many to the sides. Where the fuck has everyone come from?
I start to really enjoy it. Then fucking love it. I feel like I’ve got wings. That run must have really been the ticket. But something isn’t gelling with the band tonight the way it did last night. A mixture of hangovers and tiredness is evident from the stage, or at least from where I’m standing. Aw, man, this is Newcastle and I’m having a really good gig… trust this to be the one where all the components don’t gel. Fucking Newcastle. I fucking love playing here but it doesn’t ever seem to just let me enjoy it. I feel a little down. Good to see Danny here tonight. I’ve missed the old fucker.
Hope that Manchester sees everyone at their very best tomorrow. In a way I’m glad that Newcastle is out of the way. I find out the same thing every time I play here. You can love somewhere too much.
Monday 5 November – Manchester University
It’s Bonfire Night and we can’t use the pyro! We can’t even use the confetti cannons as “the cleaners don’t want to clean it up afterwards.” And here’s me thinking that cleaners are employed to clean things up, y’know? And if the over-muscular confetti laws aren’t enough to threaten the evening’s festivities (I did hear that Less Than Jake were allowed confetti shots, but hey, whatever), there are no posters outside the venue, and inside we are seemingly the only band to ever play here without flyers splashed all over the interior of Manchester Academy. The only reason we’re given for this is that the promoter didn’t think it was worth flyposting Manchester.
Cool.
I mean, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Why even bother to do a job that you obviously don’t want to do? Give it to someone else who gives a shit… right? Wrong. It seems that the promoters are a big American company that are buying out all of the smaller promoters (this is what I’ve been told – I’m reporting). They’re the same people who are promoting the London show, and we got posters there so it doesn’t make any sense. But hey, this is the music business. The security guy even refuses to let Jon back in after he’s been for a piss. “But that’s the bass player,” someone shouts over for his information. “I don’t care who he is, he’s not getting in!” is the illogical reply.
What would a gig in Manchester be without the usual drama?
But fuck this shit. Tonight, the band are looking and feeling fresh and we want to destroy this place, sonically speaking of course. The Jellys’ van has broken down three times getting to Manchester, and it’s touch and go whether they’re going to make it or not. It’s a good thing that there’s a three band bill tonight. Butterfinger are not sure if they should risk waiting ’til later to play what looks increasingly like their main support slot, until The Jellys’ last minute arrival settles the matter. The crowd sound great for both opening bands. The atmosphere is already better than Newcastle on all levels. So we get up to play. And when we go into our opening song the monitors aren’t even on. But the crowd go nuts. Second song and still no monitors. And still the crowd go nuts. Guess it’s just going to be one of those nights. At one point, someone from the venue pulls out the plug from the monitors to see if that helps. This is hilarious. Pass me that guitar, I want to set it on fire and break the living shit out of it. And I do.
The audience are fantastic. The best of the tour. Hey, tonight I found out that with enough volume you don’t even need pyro. And for all the use we seem to be getting out of the pyro, I’m not exactly sure why we’re spending a fortune on it. Nitebob is sonic pyro in himself anyway. He even got busted for having a cigarette by someone who read on the site that he’d given up. Touring really does bring a lot of people closer together. The Internet helps too!
The band really gel tonight. This is a very special unit. One that deserves to go all the way. And with your help, we intend to do just that.
I miss Jake sooooooo badly today. All day. Thank fuck it’s a good show. Seeing him yesterday just makes me more determined to make this work. Yeah, I miss him. So bad that I’m going to bed, otherwise I’ll start drinking. And if I start drinking to forget I won’t remember to stop.
Tuesday 6 November – Norwich Waterfront
The first thing that greets us as we pull into Norwich Waterfront is a colour poster with the SG5 logo smiling out at us. Already today has a better vibe than Manchester. Promoters could really learn a thing or two from watching their competition at work. Me, Nitebob, CJ and Stidi take in an early morning shopping spree to further ingratiate ourselves with this lovely town. The people are friendly and the outdoor market rocks big time. They have hot pork shops here, too, reminding me and Stidi of being back home, where the emphasis is on tasty food as opposed to healthy food.
The venue is a great-looking place with a nice large stage, showers in the dressing room, and a really friendly production office. And posters. Even Q magazine phoned up to ask some questions.
I feel really down today for some reason. I can’t shake it. At times, I feel close to tears for no forthcoming reason. It can’t be because of some stupid comment that some mean-mouthed bitch came out with last night. Or even the fact that I’m starting to really crave alcohol. I’m missing Jake like I’ve never missed anything before. So much that it hurts. Like actual pain. Whatever the reasons behind the sudden attack of sadness, the brutal truth is that having a miserable bastard on tour is like having toothache during a dentists’ strike. Got to cheer up… can’t get drunk… this is tough.
Then, ten minutes before showtime, Random and Tom start laughing at nothing. It becomes infectious, and within minutes we’re reduced to choking, crying hysterics. It really is a special feeling when the guys you’re playing music with double up as mood enhancers.
The show is great. The audience are mostly here to size up this new band before they invest in the record. But they seem to want to like it; seem to want a new, great British rock band that openly, unashamedly, unapologetically ROCK. We’ve been trying different sets throughout the tour, adding songs and swapping the order, and I think we’ve ended up with a set that clicks really well. The sound on stage is clear (great fucking place, this!). Another guitar is torched and trashed. Random is inspirational tonight. He is truly born to be loved by many. Tom is hitting those drums harder every night, and for someone that hits drums hard as an affliction, that’s pretty hard. Conny insists afterwards that he didn’t personally have a great show, but with someone of his star quality, this is never apparent to anyone else, even the band.
Every day in every way, this band are getting tighter. As performers, as players, and as friends. As I type this, happier than I’ve been all day, the guys are upstairs shouting and laughing, drinking and dancing. The music is blasting so loud that the speakers in the upstairs lounge will surely end before the tour does.
It’s a day off tomorrow, and I really wish it wasn’t.
Thursday 8 November – Bristol Fleece And Firkin
Bev greets us as we walk into the Fleece And Firkin, all crazy-coloured dreads and huge smile. She is a representative from the promoter, and it seems that at this level, any attention from a promoter is as rare as a quiet night with Jon Poole around. Needless to say, the promoter himself doesn’t turn up. But what the hell, Bev more than makes up for his absence.
Tonight is the first venue to allow our pyro show to go ahead. It’s also the smallest venue on the curcuit. And made entirely out of wood. Typical, then, that the pyro guys miss cues, fail to detonate bombs, and generally have as lazy a show as possible. The guitar tech we’ve been using for the past two shows has been replaced by someone who’s not as sharp or dedicated to the job, so the ‘setting fire to the guitar’ segment of the show goes disastrously wrong when I turn to him and find that he hasn’t brought a lighter! Also, the spare guitar hasn’t had the strings changed, and there’s no battery in the tuner. For fuck’s sake, what else can go wrong?
We make the big mistake of letting a friend of CJ’s do the lights tonight. The guy swears he knows the songs back to front. No one suspects that he might not have the common sense to turn off the lights when the show starts. Genius. One verse into the first song and we completely blow the power. A mixture of severe volume and pyro smoke has woken the dormant security system, and so it decides to shut down. The band stay on stage and attempt to get a singalong going and hope that we don’t have to wait too long for the power to return. Eventually, after a lot of good-natured chanting from the crowd (who are on absolutely top form, the best crowd yet… Bristol absolutely ROCKS), the amps and PA fire back up and we start the set all over again. The monitors aren’t working, but hey ho, let’s go.
Conny plays a slide solo and gently throws the bottle into the waiting audience. It misses the hands of the waiting crowd and lands on the face of an unsuspecting fan, cutting her just below the eye. Fuck. After the show, we make sure that she’s well looked after. She’s been in the capable hands of the ever-impressive Bev, so things could be a lot worse. The cut isn’t as bad as we thought it might be. She (Hilary) is a lovely girl, and takes the mayhem well within her stride. Hilary, you are welcome to any show that I play for the rest of my life, babe, you are wonderful. If you can get in touch, then please do.
Thankfully, we eventually reach the end of the show. I’m pissed off and hyper, and that’s when things tend to go wrong with me. And just as I start to feel the safe hold of rationality slip from my possession, the guitar on Conny’s side of the stage suddenly gets louder. And as I turn around, during an inpromptu performance of 29 x The Pain, I see CJ smiling back at me as he pounds out the chords. I notice that CJ looks really comfortable on the stage with us, and a million thoughts run through my head, replacing the previous anger with ideas, plans and schemes. Something clicked, it has to be said.
It also has to be said that the girls in Bristol are fucking gorgeous. There’s one particularly stunning girl standing right in front of me, throwing the most radiantly dirty stares in my direction all night. Fuck, she looks good. It’s all I can do to force myself to look away in order to ensure that I have a family when I get home.
Back on the bus later, I’m really pissed off about the laid back attitude of some of the crew members. The band were thorough professionals in the face of tonight’s fuck ups, and I expect the same level of performance from everyone on the bus. I’m too angry to voice my displeasure without going over the top and putting a bad vibe on the entire bus, so I resort to getting stoned instead. It’s my first ‘buzz’ of the tour, and damn, it feels good.
Random Jon Poole is on top form as the bus entertainment for this evening (and every evening), being as random and as funny as a man has any right to be. I go to sleep to the sounds of Jon’s multi-purpose vocal effects and truly inspired lunacy. Every band should have a Jon Poole, and I’m very proud that we have ours. The guy is like gold. The band are world class. The crew need weeding.
Friday 9 November – Dudley JB’s
The last time I played Dudley JB’s, I experienced a first – swapping bass players mid song. Tonight, we swap guitar techs mid song – another first. Despite the fact that this is one of my favourite gigs to play, I sure seem to have bad luck playing here. Tonight’s disasters begin with the bombs not going off in exactly the same place as they didn’t go off yesterday. Maybe one of these days the pyro guys will actually listen to the album and learn the songs they are supposed to detonate bombs in.
Tonight, I set fire to my guitar myself, just to make sure that it gets done properly. And, oh my fuck, does it go up! Flaming like a bastard and taking a huge hunk of flesh out of my hand as it gets royally smashed to shit. The next song involves me turning to the guitar tech to get another, and I am handed one (I’ll give him that) but the strap is shorter than Jon Poole’s hair, and is of little use to me. Unless, of course, the thought of looking like a cunt suddenly came into my head as being a good idea.
A huge crowd has turned up tonight to watch this spectacle, which involves me singing songs with no guitar and endless gaps between songs while Conny waits for his guitar to be tuned. I’m fucked off, and so I throw my Les Paul against the back wall. Tom insists that I was aiming for him. But he’s wrong, because if I was aiming at him I would have hit him. In between two songs, I take a sip of water from a small water bottle and throw it away. It accidentally hits the guitar tech. He’s the singer in a band, and therefore a little highly strung. So this pisses him off and he walks out of the gig, leaving Jon and Conny (and me) standing without a guitar tech, and looking for all intents and purposes like the last three sailors left on-shore.
Like I said, crew leaving the venue in a strop is a new one on me. Axl Rose, yes. But crew? Tip for today? Don’t ever work with road crew if they are also in a band – finish off the set with Willie, who was the guitar tech for The Wildhearts for a long time. Thoroughly professional, totally dedicated, and unfortunately unavailable. I guess tomorrow we’ll be tuning and stringing our own guitars. I fucking hate the fact that we’re paying money for technicians that don’t understand the basics of the job. Gimme a guitar with the same length strap as the other one, the same gauge strings, and make sure that it’s in tune. Does that sound harsh?
If we went out on tour with no special effects, no legendary soundman flown in from New York, bad quality T-shirts, and carried our own gear on and off stage every night, the fans would still enjoy it… and we would walk away with pockets full of money. But instead, we want to put on a spectacle for people, something special that other bands of this level don’t bother doing. We want to be the best night out, and leave lingering memories. Even if it costs us money from our own pockets.
AND WE WANT THE SHIT TO FUCKING WORK!
Playing your favourite venues and having a shit gig is one of the biggest downers in this business. We’re having a bit of a bad run. The band are dynamite every night. We deserve to be at a bigger level than this, and with hard work we will achieve this. For now, though, we just have to buckle up and make it through. It’s called “paying your dues”.
And it sucks.
Saturday 10 November – Nottingham Rock City
What is it about Rock City that ensures that you never have a bad show? In all the years I’ve been playing this place, there has always been a warm welcome from Mole (sound engineer) and legendary madman Andy Copping. The Angels make sure that the show is run with strict professionalism, and the crowd are more often than not the loudest of the entire tour. And tonight is no exception. I fucking love this place. Best venue in Britain.
We have stand-in guitar tech Ant back with us after the previous two days’ worth of mishaps. The situation dictated that we employ someone whose main concern is the job at hand, and Ant is one of the best in the business, so it feels real good to have him back. Everyone seems happy, and there’s a quiet confidence in the air throughout soundcheck. Even with the early curfew, there’s still time in the day to go for a run and work out with the weights. I’m feeling really strong today. It’s a good sign. This is the one show of the tour that I’m dreading playing sober, as I’ve never done it before, as Rock City is legendary for party madness.
The Jellys get a great cheer from the audience, and before we know it, it’s show time and we’re waiting at the side of the stage until Random finishes his bleedin’ make-up. The stage sound is great and the band are tight. The explosions go off perfectly on time, and the crowd are fucking fantastic. Jesus, Rock City has some amazing-looking girls. I spot one extremely pretty young thing in the front row. It turns out that her name is Minty, and the crowd give her a special round of applause just for being cute. It’s that kind of show. Pretty girls, crazy audience, loud as fuck pyros, and flaming guitars being smashed up – the kind of thing that could safely be labelled as entertainment.
I mentioned in an interview earlier that ‘having a good time’ should be the easiest thing in the world to market. Let’s hope so, eh? Incidentally, the guy doing the interview met his (very pretty) girlfriend on a dancefloor grooving to Anyway But Maybe. It’s happening already – we’re putting people together for the sole purpose of fun and sex. That’s gotta be a good thing.
The show goes by without fault until the very last note of the very last song, where we have huge bombs going off either side of me. The cue is bang on time and the explosion is impressively large. So large, in fact, that it sets fire to the ceiling! The band are oblivious to the drama as guys leap on to the PA stacks in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Jon and Conny are standing in the backstage corridor as huge biker dudes run past with fire extingishers and a ladder. “Get out of the way, the place is on fire,” Jon and Conny are told… only to look at each other in shock, then smile and flick the devil horns, Beavis and Butthead style. It’s a perfect end to a perfect show. Of course, no one was hurt and a fantastic night was had by all. And of any show to set fire to, surely Rock City is the most rock ‘n’ roll by far.
Afterwards, everyone is in extremely high spirits as they begin the task of getting royally hammered. I really want to get drunk tonight, but can’t risk making the next show anything less than this. The audience deserve the best that we can give, and for me that means staying together for every gig. Large and small.
Much debauchery ensues in the dressing room, none of which could possibly be printed here without incrimination and arrest. Needless to say, everyone is arseholed by the end of the evening. Random’s ‘bus lunatic’ crown has been passed on to Tom for tonight. The diminutive Swede is as drunk as legs will allow. A friend of CJ’s gives me some prescription sleeping tablets that could floor an overweight Brontosaurus. The last thing I hear is Tom offering everyone on the bus a fight, as the warm embrace of sleep takes this happy, smiling Geordie away. As I drift, my parting thoughts are along the lines of ‘wouldn’t it be great if you could bus in fans from all over Britain and just play Nottingham Rock City every night?
ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Sunday 11 November – Sheffield Leadmill
Sunday, Sheffield, overcast and shut. There’s nowhere to get breakfast, unless microwave burgers whet your early morning appetite. The only sound floating in the cold air is the steady ‘BANG, BANG, BANG’ of a distant techno club still having it large from last night. We left Nottingham at 8am, when the party began to taper, and suddenly, it appears, we’re in Sheffield, slightly disorientated due to mild sleep deprivation. We’re awake, but it seems that Sheffield isn’t. The day looks likely to slink by with little occasion.
A surprise interview is hastily arranged for a local rock radio show – ‘surprise’ because I didn’t know anything about it, and the guy spends the entire interview answering his own questions.
“So, the influences on the album are Sweet, Slade and Status Quo, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Er, yes.”
“Good. And you used to live in Newcastle, but now you live in London, is that right?”
“Er, yes.”
“Good…,” etc, etc, etc.
This was the same guy that was spotted craftily filling his carrier bag with crisps and soft drinks from the buffet – the stuff we usually leave behind.
Johan from Backyard Babies turns up to see the show. Overend Watts from Mott The Hoople turned up to the Bristol show. Hey, those bass players can’t get enough, huh?
Come show time, the sound on stage is muddy, and the playing is loose for the first couple of numbers. But the pyro goes off perfectly on time again. After Nottingham, anything is going to come as a slight anticlimax. This would have ranked up there as one of the best, had last night not been so amazing. Tonight, the band play great, perform great, and the Sheffield crowd is abso-motherfucking-lutely nuts. It’s great to see a whole room with every single person clicking their fingers (a first on this tour), and generally giving every last drop of energy in the name of fun. The people in Sheffield really know how to have a good time, and it reflects right back on the band. The venue rep seems slightly nervous as she spends the entire day worrying about the safety of the pyro, but after the show she admits that she actually found the whole spectacle very entertaining.
Not a lot to report, then. Great show, great audience and pretty girls. There’s even some lesbian action down in the front row of the crowd. See what you miss when you stand at the back? Guess I’ll be seeing you all down the front in future, then?
Monday 12 November – London Electric Ballroom
London might as well be home, and playing your home town is a pain in the fucking ass. The phone rings constantly with people wanting to be on the guest list. There are people wanting to hang out in the dressing room before the show (only in London, I swear!), and there are people that walk around like they’ve just received the Nobel Peace Prize for curing cancer whilst instigating world peace. To us, it’s just another day on the road. To the venue owners and the council, it’s our lucky day. We’re playing the capital.
The audience in London are amazing, the loudest and most dedicated we’ve seen (although we’ve yet to see what the Irish SG5 fans are like). But other than that, playing in London is a big anticlimax, complete with egotistical asshole council members. One guy comes down to inspect the explosions – he must be around 50 fucking years old – and says that he doesn’t like flames (not that they’re against the law, but merely that he doesn’t like them), so we don’t get to use the flame-throwers. The venue owner says that we can’t use the loud bangs (maroon / concussion bombs – one of the best effects we do) in case the roof caves in. If the fucking roof was going to cave in, then how come it didn’t when we set off the test pyro? Un-be-fuckin-lieveable…
Jobsworths and assholes aside, the day passes by with gusto. I’m trying to avoid the phone and keeping guard on the dressing room, which has no lock on the door and is situated just off the street in plain sight of the public. The dressing room doubles up as a storage room for The Jellys’ drums and guitars, so what little space is left is occupied by our four fearless, tireless, sleepless men. I / we have been looking forward to this show for the whole tour, so it’s without surprise that it turns out to be less than climactic.
Everyone spends the day in the pub. Great. This is pissing me off more than the anti-pyro brigade on this tour – not the fact that everyone is down the pub most days, but the fact that I’m not! Still, I managed to drink nothing stronger than Red Bull at Nottingham, and if I can do that I can do anything. I even resist the inevitable partying after this show.
Going on stage in London is the strangest feeling. You personally know a large percentage of the audience. You are immediately made aware of the importance of your task by the flashing bulbs of the the photographers filling the pit (one of which is Angie, my girlfrend!). There’s a tangible ‘presence’ of journalists in review mode that feels akin to the ‘record’ button being pressed in a studio, or knowing that you’re being taped for a live album. In short, playing London is uncomfortable but fun.
The set whizzes by in seconds. I don’t even know if we’re playing well or not. Pyro goes off on time. Songs seem tight. Crowd are mental. Set ends. Encore. CJ gets up to play 29 x The Pain. Bombs either side of me signify the end of the set. I sit backstage as what sounds like the entire audience cram into the dressing room next door. There’s talk of partying at Bar Solo, or Bar Vinyl. Can’t go, can’t drink. Get taxi home with Angie. Pay babysitter. Jake is asleep. Sit in silence and wonder why on earth I feel so empty tonight.
I don’t like playing London, but I love it.
Wednesday 14 November – Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms
We had a day off after London. Days off can be disastrous to touring momentum. This one was no exception.
After the success of the London show, there is a tangible air of abandon flying about today, like the tour is over and it’s party time. I guess being sober makes me awkward company for a bunch of drunken rock ‘n’ rollers. Also, for me, the tour is not over, there are still two shows to play. I feel decidedly out of place and uncomfortable today. Everyone spends the afternoon drinking in the pub.
The effects of consumption are glaringly evident on our entourage as they pop in and out of the dressing room that I’ve planted myself in, as voices get louder and people irritatingly repeat themselves. I get the feeling that, to some people, today’s show is not as important as the alcohol, and this is starting to piss me off. Fans are paying money to see musical prowess and larger than normal production values. I don’t think they care how much the musicians can out-drink each other. To me, it makes sense that people reward themselves after the show, when the job has been done. This is why we’re here.
The Jellys sound messy, out of tune and chaotic. I’m just hoping that we can play better under the influence than they can. Come show time, it’s obvious that we can’t. The set is sloppy and careless. I get more and more angry at the stupid mistakes being made, especially after such an impresive tour. The ghost of The Wildhearts is in the house big style tonight. I can’t help remembering how we would always get close enough to smell success and then belligerently blow it. This is not the band that played in London and Nottingham. I get so pissed off that I lose my temper and push over the cymbals of the drum kit. Not exactly professional behaviour on my part, I have to admit.
Tempers flare and the mood becomes increasingly caustic. With the set done, a huge argument ensues in the dressing room before the encore. Blame is thrown in every direction but the bar. To me, it’s as plain as the rings on my fingers. The set sucks because of the fact that everyone is pissed.
To the band, it’s all just rock ‘n’ roll.
This feels like the fucking Bad News video we watched today on the bus. I’m fucking disgusted.
After the show, everyone’s anger peaks as insults are thrown around the room and fault is apportioned. I have my views and others have theirs, but a sober guy arguing with a drunken guy is like a Buddhist arguing with a gansta rapper – neither one is particularly right, but a common mutual point is unlikely to be made.
Back on the bus, everyone drinks some more, and more arguments ensue. Between who, I have no idea, as I retire to my bunk to try and get a handle on tonight’s revelations.
I don’t want to be in The Wildhearts… whatever name they’re going under.
Thursday 15 November – Cardiff Clwb Ifor Bach
Last day of the tour. It had to come. It was always going to be a mixed bag of emotions, but after last night’s show those emotions range from uncertainty (I hope we don’t suck like we did last night) and vulnerability (I don’t know if the band are still into this anymore… and seeing as they spend most of the day in bed with hangovers it’s impossible to tell; still, it means I get to soundcheck all the instruments!), to sadness (a two week tour is more frustrating than anything – just as you get comfortable with the daily routine, you’re going home).
I decide early on in the day to try to organise a Christmas solo tour – just me, Stidi and Random – and play all the songs I’ve written that people like, all the ones that have folk saying “why didn’t you play that one?” Touring sure makes you get used to sharing your thoughts and ideas with a bunch of relative strangers. Touring sober gives it a slightly more ‘essential’ quality. You descend upon people’s lives, armed with only your tunes as currency, in the hope of constructing a dialogue with the natives. And after giving every ounce of effort, you leave satisfied that you attempted communication to the best of your ability, and it was, mostly, successful.
There’s a girl doing on-stage monitor sound at the Clwb Ifor Bach for whom everything is a chore. She gets wind of the ‘burning guitar’ effect in the show and ‘helpfully’ lets us know that the security are going to use fire extinguishers to put out anything flaming more than an Embassy Regal. We shouldn’t have worried, though, as she spends the entire show with her head in her hands gazing away from the stage. She probably missed the flames completely.
The phone lines don’t work in this place, so I can’t use the computer to kill time. It’s impossible to recite the address over the phone as the street name is all in Welsh… and, I mean, what is English for Clwb Ifor Bach? I go for a walk around town and the scenery reminds me of the bad times I’ve had living in Cardiff with crazy Welsh girls, and psycho Welsh guys. I’m starting to think that anywhere would have been better to end the tour than Cardiff.
I needn’t have wasted my time thinking negative thoughts, however, as the gig is an absolute stormer! The crowd are the maddest, loudest, rockingest rollingest bunch of beauties of whole the tour. Fuck, do the Welsh know how to enjoy themselves!!! It’s been a while since I played Wales, and I definitely don’t remember it being this crazy. Made me forget everything for an hour and a half.
The band play great, too. Such a pity that the last two shows couldn’t have been testament to the fact that we rock every single time we play. I know it’s common to fuck up, but I also know it’s common for success to evade those that don’t need it the most. I managed to track down a computer earlier today to read the fans’ opinions of last night’s show, and it seems that those ticket buyers are as sharp as BC Rich guitar shapes. You just can’t appear to be average in front of them, unless you want to represent being average. It’s a sign that the plan is working and people have come to expect the very best in entertainment from this show. They want consistency. They want a movie. They noticed that the show yesterday was a let down.
Two final shows… one sucked, one rocked. 50/50. Great odds, huh?
I don’t know what I’m thinking today, or how I’m feeling. I have a drink after the show, the first of the tour. It tastes good but we run of alcohol pretty quick, so even that’s a bit of an anticlimax. And to top it off, tonight is the night that some people decide not to party, so I don’t get the big bash I’ve been looking forward to. So much for end of tour celebrations. It doesn’t really feel that we’ve tried hard enough to celebrate. We’ve shown a lazy side that doesn’t really deserve rewarding.
Am I being too hard on the band, or too hard on myself? Surely someone has to steer this ship? Or maybe it’s just more fun to have no one at the wheel. Crash and Burn? Rock ‘n’ roll? Maybe just play smaller shows to fewer people? All the hits rolled out for the nostalgia circuit?
FUCK THAT SHIT.
I decide that whatever the future brings, I prefer touring sober. At least it means someone tried their hardest.
Ginger Says – The Wildhearts was fun to do when I was younger and a lot more selfish, but I don’t want to be seen as a road accident any more
By Ginger | October 28, 2001
Is anyone looking forward to this tour as much as I am? Answer? No, not even close!
The response to tickets has been relatively good, apart from in Ireland. No one wants to admit to being responsible for those tickets being as easy to get hold of as Osama bin fucking Laden, but the truth of the matter is, SG5 sold hardly any tickets for Ireland. No tickets, no show.I’m told that ticket agencies didn’t even know about the show in Belfast. I’m told that there has been absolutely no promotion, posters or radio play to advertise the show. I guess that means we’ve got every telepathic rock fan in Northern Ireland already in on the secret, but they probably knew that no one else was going to turn up and it was gonna be cancelled anyway. I’m told a lot of things and I don’t believe 90 per cent of them. All I believe in is this band and the fans. And I’m sure that there isn’t a single poster advertising the American bands, or the bigger British bands, who are playing in Ireland either.
But this won’t stop this tour going ahead. Nothing will stop this tour going ahead, not even the people holding out for Wildhearts tickets to go on sale. Now, these people are most definitely not telepathic, just a little naive… and this is a real pity, as there’s fucking thousands of them. And most of them are not coming to see SG5 (a far superior band in every way), judging by the amount of tickets sold for the last Wildhearts tour compared to this one.
The last tour might have been a bit of a spectacle from the point of view of the morbid outsider, but for the band it was as much fun as a nailbomb enema. The notion of bands fighting each other, sticking things in their arms, sniffing tramlines of cocaine, and drinking enough alcohol to make Oasis look energetic onstage, is hopefully an old-fashioned concept that has been replaced by bands / artists being in good shape, attempting to look professional and being able to fucking play – y’know, worthy of the door charge and all that. This still matters, right?
The Wildhearts was fun to do when I was younger and a lot more selfish, but I don’t want to be seen as a road accident any more. I’d rather represent something a bit more positive for inscription on my gravestone one day – and I don’t plan on that day turning up for a fucking long time. Yeah, there was that Kerrang! article that reported on a visit to hospital for cocaine overuse. The trouble is, I’m hopeless at lying, especially to friends, even if they do work for Kerrang!. Anyway, it happened ages before the article went to print and I’ve been straight ever since. Straight, sober and as bored as all fuck.
Did I tell you how much I need this tour? Enough to stay sober in the middle of a fucking war. I’m a Geordie, for God’s sake… sobriety to a North Easterner is as welcome as an electricity bill laced with anthrax. But this tour is going to make up for any disappointment left over from the Wildhearts shows. For you and for me. We’re getting paid pennies and we’re still taking pyro out with us. How? Don’t ask me as I have no fucking idea!
Yeah, it was great to hear you singing the words back for The Wildhearts. Yeah, it was fun to have sold out shows and play big stages. We had a few great nights and saw some faces that haven’t been around for a few years. Been there, got the cheque. But there isn’t enough money in this business to be embarrassed for. And both the Newcastle and Dudley shows were fucking embarrassing. The rest we’re just a huge anti-climax. And as for the London, Camden Monarch show? I ain’t playing another show where only two members of the band turn up ever again, no matter how great the review. I guess this destroys the “only in it for the money” myth then, huh?
SilverGinger 5 are gonna start from the bottom, like any band starting out has to. It’s a humbling experience but it’s going to be real rewarding when we descend upon these small venues and thoroughly destroy every single last fucking one of them. You are never going to have seen or heard anything like this in your entire life. And the irony is that when we go up a level, ‘new rock’ people are going to insist that they came to see the band on that legendary first tour, back when the tickets were cheap, you didn’t have to queue for hours at the bar and you had enough space to check out every boy and girl in the room – even though those ‘new rock’ people stayed at home that night watching TV and making do with the self manipulation of their genitalia.
This tour will be an indication of just how popular the concept of partying is in this country at the moment. I get a feeling that the earnest misery of Nu Metal is no longer needed and that the world could do with a good fuck. The jury, however, is still out on whether or not the UK rock population is aware of this – or at least the UK ‘new rock’ population. I guess time will tell. Fingers crossed, eh?
Yeah, these are slightly trying times. It’s difficult for any new band to be taken seriously in this country. In the beginning, the world seems to be awfully full of people passing the blame instead of doing the work. If only the music magazines in this country got as excited about homegrown talent as they do about the next big American band / artist. Hey, I guess it makes us tougher, right?
Fuck it. Fuck all the bullshit, it’s driving me nuts. Just get me on that fucking stage so I can get rid of some of this pent up energy before I do something evil with it.
See you at the show. Wear the shirt with pride and get ready to shout someone’s fucking head off if they so much as look at that shirt with an attitude. Get ready because we are going to show the country how to party. We’re going to show this backward fucking place what real passion is; what it means to go to a show because you want to and not because you’ve been told it’s the right thing to do.
Party hard? We fucking invented it. And you know I’m right.
Come on, let’s fucking go.
Ginger
Ginger Says – Dance, drink, fuck and party like it was yesterday. Because yesterday we didn’t know how much it meant to us
By Ginger | September 20, 2001
How on Earth do you write a new intro when the world is about to go to war?
I can’t take music as seriously as I used to. The art of penning a few interesting lyrics and coupling them with a succession of well worn chords seems to reside on the silly side of art at the moment. Shit, it’s hard enough to even get excited about listening to anything new (even though the new Veruca Salt album, Resolver, urges me to advise you all to buy it forthwith).
My boy is to face a war unlike any that history can boast of winning. Biological and nuclear threats combine with a ‘gung-ho’ mentality with a zest unseen until Hollywood discovered computer graphics as a way of bolstering the movie hero’s buffed up screen presence. The enemy (who at present has still to admit involvement – sheesh, a villain that lacks balls) boasts of an army prepared to die, kamikaze-style, for a book. If they don’t care about saving their own lives you can bet that we haven’t seen the last of their plans to humiliate the ‘civilised’ world (‘civilised’, being the media’s term, not mine). The attacks on New York and Washington might eventually look like a warm-up. Imagine the talk in ten years’ time?
“… shit, at least they only took out thousands back then.”
Anyone will agree that the planning has taken years, and the war about to take place will take a lot longer, at the cost of millions of lives. Music seems a little trite in comparison. And musicians?
“… here’s a little ditty I composed when I was blah blah blah.”
Who fucking cares? Who cares about you or your little fucking tune, buddy?
No one. We need a release. We need to be taken out of our home, away from our fears and our anger, and shown a good time; to forget our sinister world for an evening, or at least put it to the back of our mind until tomorrow’s newspaper headlines drag us kicking and screaming back into reality.
Slap us around the face, put a drink in our hands and show us something amazing.
It’s time for the entertainers to entertain. Not impress. Not inspire. ENTERTAIN.
SilverGinger 5 can do that.
In November, we will take out our all singing, all dancing, all smashing, crashing, exploding, ear-splitting, genital-lubricating, libido-loosening, anguish-free monster of a show to as many fans as can squeeze into the modestly-sized venues that we are about to land upon.
Remember? Conny Bloom and his serpentine sex-like style of slinging a six-stringed sonic sabre, Tom Broman and his thunderous tubs of tutonic tribal torment…
… and Random Jon Poole.
I’m talking about entertainment, brothers and sisters. An almost disgracefully agreeable ticket price for an evening’s merriment in the company of fine, fine friends of the LiST (labelled for purposes of name-checking), most of whom you will not have seen for a good while, and will quite frankly have forgotten just how gorgeous they are.
These, my friends, are the good times, the memories to last you through the next instalment of war-related media feeding frenzy. You are cordially invited to get your dancing shoes out of the cupboard that has been locked since Limpkin Bizkorn and the rest of those whining, self-obsessed, little bastards convinced the media that screaming about how pissed off you are is ‘the next big thing’. Hah, they’re gonna look a little foolish when still trying to palm off ‘angst’ to a nation shattered by serious problems.
“… bwahhhh, my mommy didn’t love me enough, and my daddy beat me.”
So kiss them, you fucking pussy. You still can.
Musicians? It’s gonna take a long time before anyone takes them seriously. It’s a hobby. It’s stamp collecting, with an audience cheering your newly acquired Penny Black. Entertainment, on the other hand, is a service, and having fun is the requirement. Anyone not adhering to this request should be made to give up their instruments until the world needs a new problem. Right now, we have enough.
Dance, drink, fuck and party like it was yesterday. Because yesterday we didn’t know how much it meant to us.
Peace and love… and fucking huge pyro.
Ginger
Ginger Says – Sobriety And The Real 12 Steps
By Ginger | August 5, 2001
Anyone who’s given up anything that has become a constant in their life knows the pain of longing. Anyone who’s forced themselves to refrain from gorging on old habits due to health problems understands the day to day nature of the battle. Drugs, gambling, sex… shit, even TV, chocolate or coffee. All are serious enough to warrant a certain level of concern for the health of the protagonist. Mentally, usually more than physically.
But I’m gonna stick my neck out here and say that nothing is as hard to give up as alcohol. I know that Danny agrees with me on this, as would most junkies. The best way to get off junk? Move to somewhere that isn’t infested with it.
So, where do you move if you want to get away from British people that drink? Well, you stay at home and you don’t answer the phone. You stay in bed for four months and you live on health food. Yeah, right!
When I last afforded alcohol a healthy distance, for a sensible amount of time, I was living in LA (and believe me, if there’s a place on this planet that makes you want to drink it’s LA), and a friend of mine told me about AA, Alcoholics Anonymous (anonymous is a little far-fetched because people would join up to hang out with celebrities). The idea of sitting in a bright room, drinking coffee and smoking copious amounts of cigarettes (hey, hang on… isn’t there a cigarette ban in LA? Oh man! Told you it was a bad place to sober up) whilst listening to love-starved bottle blondes bleat on about how they know your pain – that appals and disgusts me. Public masturbation, anyone? Nah, didn’t think so. Designed by the weird for the weird if you know what I mean.
Y’see, I don’t care who’s giving up drinking, or why / where they come from or how bad they had it as a kid. James Hetfield goes to rehab? If you can afford rehab you ain’t got too much of a problem. If you can afford rehab you can afford six months in the Bahamas with a beautiful girl, so it looks like your problem is your imagination, not your liver. Losers and coffee vs pussy and sun? If alcohol has fucked your brain that much then you surely can’t string together a sentence as long as “hello, my name’s Ginger and I’m an alcoholic…”
In California, every ex-alcoholic I meet still does ‘bumps’ of coke in the toilets. Most of them still drink, “only not as much as I used to”. Scott Weiland stood and lectured me, one night at a club in Hollywood, about how hard it is being clean, but how rehab sure is the right thing to do – only to be spotted half an hour later emerging sweating, shaking and scratching from the toilets. People that go to rehab are usually so in love with their own legend of ‘fucked up-ness’ they should rename it ‘mehab’.
“Yeah, dude, that’s fucked up… but just listen to this fucked up thing that I did.”
And the confessional nature of rehab is so sinister that it’s no great mystery why at least 50% of people come straight out of there and into the warm, dark arms of a bar. Clapping and cheering at a stranger’s announcement that he / she has an alcohol problem? Surely they’re only there because they have no close mates? Otherwise they’d have known they had a problem long before they knew they had a problem, right? Friends would tell you, right? So how come the long suffering friends don’t get a round of applause instead? It’s those around the alcoholic that really suffer.
Self-imposed diseases are best cured by harsh and cruel reality. Don’t be a coward unless you want to live as one.
But surely the most banal aspect of the 12-step programme is the section that would, in any other culture, be termed as ‘humiliation’.
Living and coping with guilt is one thing, but humiliation doesn’t even work when training dogs. Taking someone so far away from themselves is surely guaranteed to distance the person from the real reasons for wanting to give up in the first place. Wanting to be a better person, more productive, more rational, more relaxed, more hygienic.
The Californian 12 steps have a stage in the programme where the ‘ex-alkie’ must telephone everyone they’ve offended in recent memory, get down on their knees and say something along the lines of “I am an alcoholic, please forgive me for my sins.” Regardless of the fact that the person they’re talking to has probably either forgotten all about the shameful incident or is just as much of a dick, with or without drink.
The 12-step programme has too much in common with the Moonies or the Branch Davidians to really gel with me. It offends my sense of individuality. It increases my growing exasperation with the gullible nature of humans, which was the main thing I intended to blot out with drink in the first place.
So I propose a slightly more realistic programme for those of you that are starting to feel a little tired of feeling tired, and shouting at people for very little, if any, reason… and repeating yourself… and waking up feeling like 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag… with violent mood swings… and debts piling up… and your life going nowhere… and repeating yourself… and smelling bad… and looking like a turd with a face… and puking regularly… with hiatus hernias… liver problems… and jaundice… and listening to boring fuckers who talk too loud while spitting at the side of your head.
Here, in no particular order, is the ‘Ginger 12-Step Programme (for the hopeful)’.
1 – DO NOT GIVE UP FOREVER
A sure-fire way of making you resent the clean life is saying “I am never going to drink again.” Remember that the clean life is very, very boring compared to the life that you are used to. Getting used to sobriety as a reality is one thing, but being imprisoned by it is another entirely. Anyway, nothing will make you appreciate your newfound ‘well-being’ than a gargantuan, head down the pan, family-sized hangover, the like of which you used to nurse every single day of your life. Falling off the wagon every now and again is normal just as long as it’s for one night only.
2 – DO NOT SMOKE POT
Cruel, I know, but true. Pot makes you as thirsty as Hell, and all drinkers know that nothing kills a thirst better than a cold beer. You will go through every soft drink known to man to kill that thirst, and each time will carry a small picture of a can of beer around in your head. In your stoned state this will make so much sense that eventually you won’t be able to argue with yourself due to the fact that you will have forgotten the argument and only remember the ‘beer’ part (in which case see step one). Pot makes you lazy whilst thinking that you are not, simply replacing one denial with another. Pot also makes one find a perverse solace in the determined picking of one’s nose. You are an adult. You should maybe think about stopping this activity too. Pot also makes you eat copiously, and ‘eaters’ are just as sexually attractive as ‘drinkers’ (Oh, so you aren’t giving up because of your falling looks, huh? Stop lying, you bastard.)
3 – STOP LYING YOU BASTARD
Just ‘cos no one can see you, it doesn’t make it right (see ‘nose picking’ section of last step). If you lie to yourself, you will never believe that you can do this. Remember you are doing this yourself, for yourself, because of something you got into by yourself. Also remember, people are quite easy to lie to.
4 – DON’T EXPECT HELP
Or pity or understanding. While your world comes crashing down around your feet, the world, according to others, goes on untouched. Your frustration will turn into exasperation if you try and get someone to understand what you are going through. And this goes for other people in your position. Do not seek solace in the pain of another. Reformed alcoholics, or reformed junkies, are the worst company in the world. Don’t join them or you’ll end up the loneliest clean person to grace this filthy planet, with only ex-alcoholics and ex-junkies as friends. You will talk endlessly about drink and drugs and how great it is that you are ‘off’ the ‘shit’. You will eventually get so tired of talking about ‘it’ you will fall naturally and hopelessly back into ‘it’. (In emergency, see step one.)
5 – LISTEN TO MUSIC
Behold how long albums actually last. Behold how a beautiful melody can now render you a blubbering, soggy mess and open the doorway to the repressed emotions that you have been harbouring all these years. Behold how utterly shit most of your record collection really is.
6 – EAT GOOD FOOD
That £20 price tag on that lobster in that fancy restaurant is nothing compared to the £15 a day that you used to spend on vodka, the £15+ a day on beer, and the few hundred a month you spunked on coke. The feeling that someone is secretly putting money into your bank is natural and will fade as any new buzz naturally does. The moral? If you don’t spend money it doesn’t go anywhere. The solution? Spend as quickly and as zestfully as possible. Do not worry, you will get bored of the sensation in due time. And if not, you will become a shopaholic. And then you will truly know that you are rubbish and will more than likely start drinking again. (See step one.)
7 – WATCH GOOD MOVIES
Whereas good music has been largely made by people excessively drinking and consuming drugs, movies, on the other hand, take much longer, and cost a lot more to make, than records . Therefore someone is at the wheel of the production with a mind as clear as yours. In these first stages of your cleanliness, you may find no better role model than a great director; a leader of men, a true visionary in a sea of blind optimism. A man, much like yourself, with a goal and a path not obvious to the outside world, oblivious to the inner strength that motivates him. And let’s face it, 24 hours is a fuck of a long time to kill every day.
8 – READ
Simple, really. In fact, it’s something that you probably thought you were already doing, right? Well, kind of… except, instead of getting through another novel, you will find yourself devouring the written word. You will feed your mind and starve your ignorance, propelling you to a higher level of confidence in your task. You will not only open yourself up to new information and experiences, but will unlock the years of suppressed knowledge that has been dormant due to effective block-out caused by alcohol and its effects on your short-term memory. Reading is your very own brain work-out and is one hell of a lot easier than exercise. In the event that you are not a ‘reader’ you could always join a gym.
9 – JOIN A GYM
Expensive, humbling and very, very boring. Those people that actually enjoy the atmosphere of a gym were never really alcoholics in the first place anyway, the two environments being entire worlds apart. Like nuns worrying about the dangers of contracting HIV, the testosterone-fuelled ambience of a weights room could not conflict more with the smoke-filled comfort of the local snug. Alcoholics hate discipline and the gym insists on it. Try it by all means, you may be one of the few that actually gets one of these so-called ‘endorphin highs’ that some people rave about. The truth of the matter is that ‘endorphin junkies’ have, as a rule, never tried freebase. Go, see what all the fuss is about, stay for a month, leave, and argue (with absolute confidence) that it’s not for you when another ex-whatever starts giving you the ‘body and mind’ speech that they learned from rehab.
10 – SMOKE CIGARETTES
Woe betide the inexperienced ‘clean-living person’ that does not smoke. That temper that was the main reason you quit drinking in the first place? You are still David Bruce Banner, mate. The Hulk appears when driving on a motorway surrounded by cars driven by maniacs whose sole mission on this planet is to stop you getting to your destination by killing you. That smug-voiced little shit from the bank that just called about your overdraft? That red letter that comes through your door informing you that your [insert essential amenity here] is going to be cut off due to unpaid bills from the time you were drunk and ‘forgot all about it’? That girlfriend that now takes great pleasure in reminding you how much of a dick you were way back when you drank, usually with exact dates and times? That ‘friend’ that urges you to go out for a drink, but it’s OK because it’s only a beer? The sheer shock value of settling into a reality that you had otherwise been unaware had actually existed? When in doubt, go for the snout. It’ll save you and the rest of the world a brand new problem to deal with. And if you don’t smoke? Then you’re on yer own, pal.
11 – FUCK
One of the few legal, and generally acceptable, things to do to kill boredom of all kinds. The new ‘logical yet needy’ you will accept sex as the equivalent of drugs and drink. In fact, the one thing that begins to envelop all other senses is the closeness and satisfaction that sexual intercourse brings. OK, so it’s not as much fun when not wired to the gills on good quality cocaine, but it sure beats reading books, watching movies or any of the other shit written down here.
12 – IMPROVISE
There is no better way to give up drinking than to do it your way. You didn’t drink because someone told you how, so why should it make sense to give up that way? Make your own rules up. Do it your own way. That way you can hold up your finger with pride. Everyone knows how hard this is… that’s why everyone doesn’t give up.
Happy living.
Mine’s a fucking bastard mineral water.
Ginger
Ginger Says – I swear to you that you know the future of The Wildhearts as well as I do
By Ginger | July 13, 2001
Well, where do we start? Trying to put the last couple of months into perspective is kinda like feeding a camel through the eye of a needle. You could eventually do it but it’d be really messy and take a helluva long time. And would it even be worth it? Probably not.
The Wildhearts started off proceedings in fine style, and then the much-documented drama saw the disintegration of something designed to self-combust in the first place. Was the reunion a bad idea? I think so, yes. That’s not to say that bad ideas don’t work themselves out.
Naturally (despite certain magazine-sponsored rumours), I didn’t see the problems clearly enough until they were on top of me. Blind faith or just a love of ‘bad boy rock ‘n’ roll’? Maybe both. Thinking things out never really came naturally to me. I prefer the ‘chaos of improbability’ method. If it’s gonna blow, let’s get the marshmallows out. Enough has been written about the problems to make encyclopaedias look wafer thin, but enough to last a lifetime? Nahhh, I’m still perversely curious about where this could go from here. And I swear to you that you know the future of The Wildhearts as well as I do.
Favourite rumour? “Ginger bought Danny a bag of smack when the band reformed as a kind of welcome.” That’s so good I almost wish it were true.
Favourite bit of blatant bullshit? “Ginger, the man regarded by many as the person responsible for Danny McCormack’s problems.”
I just want to know how you can make someone take drugs for ten years? Even when you’re not in their lives? God can’t control people as well as that. I dunno, maybe it’s a compliment of sorts?
The first release of the singles club came and went in a blur of apathy. Admittedly, the original idea for this little club was to let the fans hear some material that didn’t fit in with The Wildhearts or SG5. The result? Many people complaining that it didn’t sound like The Wildhearts or SG5!
The production was supposed to be ‘garagey’, ‘raw’ and ‘quick’. The main point of concern? The production. I never attended the mix due to the fact that my son was sick, and I also didn’t want too much of my ‘stamp’ on the sound, preferring to let other people show me how they think it should sound. A wrong move, perhaps? Like the feathers at the Astoria, it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. But hey, we lived through that too, remember? Let’s look forward and not dwell too much on criticism.
Don’t forget, criticism is as sexy as Y-fronts.
I know I haven’t made things easy for myself. I realise how good my past records have sounded and how good your taste is. Just please, please, don’t go into this expecting rock anthems or punk / rock n’ roll harmonies and riffs. It’s not meant to sound like anything else, that’s the whole point. Let’s see what you think in 12 months’ time and we’ll compare notes then, OK?
SilverGinger 5 are releasing the new version of Black Leather Mojo in October (complete with an extra CD of live stuff and rare demos, including the barnstorming Walk Like A Motherfucker), with a tour of Britain to follow in November. The good news for everyone that shelled out a fortune on import copies is that the version you hold in your hands right now will become an instant collectors item, deleted in Japan and with a different running order, different artwork and extra tracks not available on the UK version. Keep hold of that sucker, it’s only gonna go up in value.
The Sonic Shake video will be ready to view on this very site soon and it’s a live extravaganza featuring all the highlights of last Christmas’s London Astoria show – a treat for anyone that wasn’t there, and a hint of what to expect in November.
So, June came and went. The impossible got done and no one died. Three different tours with three different outfits, during which I saw a disturbing side of some fans / listees / friends that I was shocked and disappointed with – the criticism that stemmed from watching something stumble and have to regain its posture in public.
Don’t let criticism get in the way of your enjoyment of this thing we’ve got going. We do things. We dream. Not many people do that, but it seems that there are thousands of critics on every block, anywhere you go. I really hope that we don’t turn this into something that anyone else could simply do. If this thing stops being special I’m outta here. The last couple of months have shown me a face of some people that I would happily kick into mush.
You are running this thing. You can make anything of it that you want. It’s your ball. I’m just a guy trying my best, y’know. If that’s good enough to live with then I’m right with ya all the way. If not, then good luck finding something else out there to believe in.
Trust me, you got it good.
Stay cool, throughout.
Love…
Ginger
Won’t You Take Me With You When You Go…
By Kris | June 8, 2001
Ginger and AntiProduct, unplugged · Diary by Darren Stockford
A Ginger gig? In South Shields? Complete with an instore mini-set at the
new, improved Changes One? Followed by another gig in London? Aw, s’gotta be
done, right?!
It was. Well and truly.
Thursday 7th June
We came, we saw, we ate some Jaffa Cakes.
5.15 am: My watch alarm starts bleeping like it had been rudely awakened by some idiot who wanted to get up at an hour that doesn’t usually exist. One hour 25 and a coupla pieces of toast later, we’re ready to rock.
6.40 am: And so begins the two-hour battle to get fellow Listees Jason and Trudi’s VW Beetle (the cutest car ever made) out of London.
8.40-ish am: We’re free! Fly pretty bird! Fly towards the north! Take us up to the paradise city, where the grass is smoked and the girls are witty (well, “our Trace” always makes us laff, anyway).
2 pm: Three service station loos later, we arrive in South Shields. Necks are craned in time-honoured “OK, where do we go now?” fashion. We’ve only been in town for a couple of minutes when we find ourselves driving down Fowler Street. And there it is: the legendary Changes One. We park up, grab our equipment (tight pants and the back seats of Beetles don’t really mix), and stroll on in.
2.15 pm: Suddenly, a shopkeeper appears. We say hello to Ian “Tunny” Tunstall, purveyor of the finest rock ‘n’ roll records money can buy. We would browse the racks, but the shop’s full of Ginger fans. Oh, look, it’s Wayne from Amsterdam! Wayne’s hiring a bus for the Wildhearts tour to ferry fans from gig to gig. Who said the age of heroes was dead?
3 pm: Ian steps up on stage and grabs one of the mics to introduce the Reverend Steve Cope, a Changes One regular who’s come up from Hull today to bless the new shop. Ian gives him a great intro, quoting from the beginning of the Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime (“And you may find yourself…”). When the Rev asks us to bow our heads to pray, Ian splutters loudly. But hands are duly pressed together and the blessing is completed with a round of amens.
3.05 pm: Ginger’s still on his way up from London, so AntiProduct take to the stage for a totally awesome support set. Alex has opted for an acoustic guitar, and Simon is taking a couple of layers of skin off his hands by playing a pair of bongos, but Toshi, Milena and Clare are all plugged in. The sound is full and clear, and Alex is on fine form, sharing heaps of banter with both the crowd and his bandmates – most of which is too rude to print on a family web site like this (Alex keeps apologising to the Reverend). Some young kids appear at the window, pressing their noses to the glass. Simon teaches them ‘devil horns’ signs. They’re fast learners.
4.20 pm: It’s the end of the ‘Product’s set, and me and my buddies have fallen completely, and hopelessly, in love (no, not with each other, you filthy fuggers… sorry – Alex’s sense of humour is kind of infectious). Cheesecore will take over the world. It can’t fail. Listen to Goin’ All The Way and you’ll understand. Alex makes a passionate speech about rock ‘n’ roll and fans and vans that brings a wee lump to my throat. (Ya soft southern jessie
– Ed.)
5.05 pm: Ginger arrives with Angie and Jake (as far as I know, this is the little guy’s first public outing) and Jon Poole (it’s definitely not his).
5.15 pm: The Tunster introduces Ginger. It’s acoustic guitars all the way, with Jon and Alex providing (im)moral and musical support. Alex is obviously winging it (there was apparently a rehearsal, but it ended after three songs with copious amounts of vomit), but he picks things up real quick. When some joker shouts for Sky Babies, Jon looks at Ginger, Ginger looks at Jon, and, amazingly, they start to play it. We expect it to fall apart after a verse or two – surely they’re just teasing us, right? – but it doesn’t. It goes on… and on… and on. And it’s fan-fuggin-tastic. How do you top that, eh? Well, a heartfelt (solo) version of Steve Earle’s My Old Friend The Blues is a damned good start.
Here’s the Changes One set in full (in the correct order, too, ‘cos I had a pen handy):
She’s So Taboo
Sky Babies
Weekend
Unlucky In Love (dedicated to Trace, but it falls apart before the finish
because Ginger “just got bored”)
Nita Nitro (just the intro – Jon starts playing the EastEnders theme after the
drum bit)
Beautiful Me, Beautiful You
Nite Songs
My Old Friend The Blues
Geordie In Wonderland
Prince Charming (the Adam Ant song – it’s Jon’s idea!)
Inside Out
6-ish pm: Must… find… food… so we head to our hotel, freshen up, and ask the Little Chef to prepare something nice. He does, but forgets the onion rings.
7.45 pm: Must… find… alcohol… so we phone for a cab and jump in. The driver has heard of neither The Office, The Vic, or Victoria Road. Instead of looking it up in the A-Z that’s lying in his dash, though, he drives us around town on the off-chance that we might see it. Luckily, we do. That’ll be £6.80 please. Could’ve been a lot worse, I s’pose.
8 pm: A tip: never ask for “two Newcastle Browns” in South Shields. You will look like a tourist. The correct request is: “two brown ales”. Ah well, there’s always next time.
8.30 pm: AntiProduct do it all over again. “Goin’ all the way, we’re goin’ all the way tonight…” Damn their infectious choruses! They very nearly bring the house down… literally. The pub’s function room, where the gig is held, is upstairs. When a couple of hundred boozed-up rock ‘n’ roll fans start bouncing up and down, so does the floor… and the stage… and, unless it’s an optical illusion, the walls appear to be moving, too. I feel weightless at one point. Mummy, I’m scared.
9.30 pm: Ginger wanders out to rapturous applause. He sits on a stool in the middle of the stage and starts playing Geordie In Wonderland. Wow. Here I am, in a South Shields pub, with a pint of Newca… I mean brown ale in my hand, watching Ginger. How much better does it get? At the song’s close, Ginger’s joined by Jon and Alex. Simon from AntiProduct stands at the side of the stage banging a tambourine. “Monday comes crashing in…” Ginger’s stool almost topples forward into the crowd. He couldn’t have picked a better line for it to happen on if he’d planned it.
The set list this time (not in exact order) runs:
Geordie In Wonderland
Inside Out
Sonic Shake
Anyway But Maybe
Sky Babies
Nita Nitro (intro – the EastEnders joke again)
She’s So Taboo
Bad Time To Be Having A Bad Time
Stand And Deliver (another Ants classic from Jon)
Purple Vein (the irony being that Prince would probably have loved it, the
perv)
Purple Haze (a bit of it, anyway)
Since You’ve Been Gone / Down Under / and a bit of another song I can’t
remember that can be sung to those chords
Weekend
There’s Always Someone More Fucked Up Than You
One Before The Lights Go Out
I Wanna Go Where The People Go
My Baby Is A Headfuck
Towards the end, Toshi and Simon are invited on to have a crack at some Wildhearts songs. They’re both massive ‘Hearts fans and can apparently play pretty much anything. Someone shouts for I Wanna Go, Toshi nods, and we’re off.
Jon dives into the crowd and manages a magnificent surf. When he makes it back to the stage, he reaches up to see if he can clamber to the ceiling. Luckily, he decides that it’s a tad too fragile to support his weight and gives up.
Alex, meanwhile, is helping Simon out on drums. At least, I think that’s what he’s doing back there. To be honest, I’m too busy looking around for somewhere safe to dive if the floor collapses to take much notice. Ginger says that they’ve been complaining downstairs. This makes everyone bounce even harder. A couple of roadies hang on to the PA to stop it toppling into the crowd. Hmm, if the floor goes, I think I’ll grab on to the stage curtain. That’s attached to the ceiling. It’s a crazy plan, but it just might work.
11 pm: Hey, what the fug happened there? Everyone I speak to can’t quite believe what they’ve just seen: an acoustic gig that very nearly destroyed the venue. Jeezus, what’s the Wildhearts tour gonna be like?!
12 midnight: We finally get the cab we’d been promised (“I’ll wait outside” obviously being a euphemism for “I’ll nick someone else’s cab ‘cos I can’t be arsed to wait for 30 minutes like you told me” – ya swines!). The driver is surprised to see us all putting on seatbelts. “Aw, I’m not that bad,” he says, before racing over the next six roundabouts at 60 mph and screeching to a halt outside our hotel in a cloud of dust.
1 am: Must… drink… tea… and sleep. Yeah, sleep would be good.
Wednesday 6th June
3 pm: We’re back in Changes One for the Dan Baird / Darrell Bath instore. I have no idea that Ginger is even here until a voice at the back shouts for Battleship Chains. Ian shoves Ginger up on stage, introducing him as being “from the Jon Poole Band”. Ginger sings his own, rather rude, versions of the verses (I don’t recall the original lyric including the line “to fuck nobody but you”). Dan and Darrell join in for the chorus, gathering round the same mic. Three of my all-time fave musicians doing that rock ‘n’ roll thang together? This trip is getting more surreal by the hour.
4.15 pm: Spend the best part of 50 quid on CDs. Ginger’s very sensibly told Ian not to let him buy anything, no matter how hard he begs. He knows that once he starts, it’ll be very difficult to stop. Still, he eyes up a Proclaimers album which is taunting him from the racks.
Thursday 7th June
9.30 am: We load up the car and set off for the long journey back to London.
5.30 pm: Home at last. There’s just enough time to grab something to eat before we have to jump on a train to Victoria for Ginger’s Borderline bash.
8.15 pm: Bloody hell, it’s dark in ‘ere, innit? What’s happened to the lights in the venue? Have they not paid the bill or something? When my eyes become accustomed to the gloom, I spy Wayne and Trace and the London regulars. Those limited edition Listee T-shirts are everywhere.
8.45 pm: Our third dose of AntiProduct in as many days, and we’re still not tired of ’em. I’m gonna miss these guys tomorrow. Alex spies Jason and recognises him from the Shields gigs. He gets the crowd to chant “give Alex back his fiver”.
9.30 pm: Ginger, Jon and Alex head stageward. The crowd are fired up and in fine voice, a lot of folk even managing to follow Sky Babies’ twists and turns word for word (and if you can do that, you’re a better man than I). Ginger brings up Stidi to sing backing vocals and shake some tambourine on Don’t Let Me Die Lonely, the first public airing of one of his new solo songs. My Old Friend The Blues is dedicated to Listee (and fellow Steve Earle fan) Sarah Aspden. Ginger and Alex sing a quick snatch of Cheap Trick’s Voices. Toshi and Simon resume their rhythm section positions, and Alex is ousted by CJ for Love U Til I Don’t and Greetings From Shitsville. Jon goes surfing again – wahey! Much bouncing abounds, but thankfully, this time round, the floor stays firmly on the ground. My only worry is that Alex is going to poke my eyes out with the uncut ends of his guitar strings.
11 pm: I wander into the loos for a final pee and see traveller Wayne standing at the urinal with his head leaning against the wall and his eyes shut. Is he asleep? No, he’s just very, very drunk. He zips up, looks up, and flashes a smile of pissed recognition at me. He says nothing, but he doesn’t need to. His face says it all: “sh’abitbloodygoodereinnit?”
Quite.
Next stop, SilverGinger 5.
[Note: Most times are approximate. I was there to rock ‘n’ roll, not to watch the bloody clock!]
Pray For Me Mama (I’m A Geordie Now)
By Kris | May 30, 2001
In the studio with Jason Ringenberg and The Wildhearts · Words by Darren Stockford
It’s like something from a movie. Perhaps a fantasy sequence in High Fidelity?
The camera (in a low shot) glides through the studio door. On the floor lies Danny McCormack, curled up in the foetal position, purring like a cat. Pan up over a table strewn with empty beer cans (Special Brew, Guinness, Tennents Super, K, Becks). Nearby, there’s a tray of stewed coffee and a stack of unused mugs.
Tilt up to see Ginger sitting in the producer’s chair, with the engineer they call Fully at his side. They’re both rocking backwards and forwards in an excited fashion. Pan right. Stidi is sitting forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He’s bouncing up and down like someone just lit a firework near his arse. All eyes face forward.
Cut to the recording room, where a man with the voice of reckless country soul and the goatee of an especially hairy goat is singing Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Blue Yodel like someone had told him it was the last song he was ever gonna be allowed to sing. Intercut with close-ups of hairs standing to attention on all arms in the immediate vicinity. On the soundtrack, Stidi admits to having “a semi”. When the song crashes to its thunderous close, there’s a cut to the singer as he pokes his head around the control room door and a round of applause breaks out.
Ginger: “Oh, man, that was fucking superb!”
That, ladies and gentlemen, was Jason Ringenberg, the man who back in 1981 formed the Nashville Scorchers, welded country with a dash of punk and a whole heap of rock ‘n’ roll, and went on to become a living legend among music lovers with an ear for good, honest, down-to-earth passion and an eye for a barnstorming live show; the man who just happens to have penned (and co-penned) some of the greatest country songs ever written. The weird thing is, this is no film. This is reality. Though none of us can quite believe it.
Jason and Ginger embrace.
“That’s going on my album!” says Ginger. “I can’t believe it!” (See, I told ya.)
“Aw, man, that was fun!” says Jason with a grin the size of Nashville. “That’s rock ‘n’ roll, brothers!”
Jason Ringenberg and The Wildhearts? Together? How? Why? When?
Our tale begins in November 1996, when The Wildhearts played an unannounced support slot at a Jason And The Scorchers gig at London’s Mean Fiddler. Ginger, a long-time Scorchers fan, was honoured to be playing with Jason at last, and friendships were forged.
Fast-forward to early 2001, when Jason and Ginger started emailing each other with a view to working together. As Jason was planning to tour the UK in May, the pair figured it would be the ideal time to book a day in the studio. So, the date was set – Sunday the 20th. All Ginger had to do now was write a song. As anyone who knows anything about Ginger will tell you, that was never gonna be a problem. He demoed a song called One Less Heartache. Jason loved it. The rest is history in the making.
We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, though.
A couple of days before the session, on 18 May, Ginger showed up, along with the rest of The Wildhearts, at Jason’s London Borderline show. It was a superb night, with Jason rockin’ up his usual storm (seriously – he’s the most energetic and rockin’ performer I’ve ever seen play acoustically; there’s no stool and there’s absolutely no snooze; and man, those songs!). As his set neared the end, Jason called for Ginger and Stidi to join him on stage. They appeared genuinely surprised – Ginger, particularly, had a magnificent “oh, shit!” look etched on his face, though this might just have been because the pair were having trouble finding their way to the stage. If you’ve ever been in the Borderline (capacity 275) you’ll appreciate why this moment managed to out-Tap Spinal Tap!
When they eventually found the stage, Stidi stood at the back and clapped out a beat as Ginger picked up Jason’s guitar and launched into White Lies. Jason sang, spinning around like a twister and sharing the mic with Ginger for the choruses. Stid somehow managed to escape immediately afterwards, but Ginger wasn’t allowed to leave until he’d yodelled his way through Jimmie Rodgers’ Last Blue Yodel, one of the tracks from the Scorchers’ debut Reckless Country Soul EP (though it’s a Jimmie Rodgers original, fact fans). It damn near brought the house down.
And two days later, they get to do it all again.
“I can honestly say, boys, I’ve never had a beer that tasted as good as this one.”
I never thought I’d hear Tennents Super being described as the finest beer known to Man (after all, in the words of Ginger, “it’s what the winos drink”), but it seems to be doing the trick for Jason. He’s preparing to add a harp (harmonica) solo to Jimmie Rodgers…, and he hasn’t touched a drop all day ’til now, and even then he only has one glass. Unlike The Wildhearts, who’ve spent the day drinking as much booze as they can find in the fridge, and smoking as much dope as CJ’s improvised pipe (made from an empty can of K cider) will hold.
It’s a bit of a contrast to the last time Ginger invited us to the studio. When he was recording Black Leather Mojo, he was high on nowt stronger than coffee. But, of course, this being The Wildhearts, sobriety is not an option. After Jason’s Borderline gig, I caught ’em slamming down tequilas. Today, snakebites seem a popular choice. Not long after pouring himself a glass of the student’s favourite, Danny conks out for a couple of hours.
“How long will he be like this?” ask Jason after the first 90 minutes of snooze time have elapsed.
“About 40 years,” says Ginger.
Only a combination of Stidi wafting a slice of warm pizza under his nose and much shouting from his band-mates manages to rouse him. Danny munches the pizza down, still half-asleep. When he finally wakes up and stands up, he lets out the highest pitched squeaker of a fart I’ve ever heard.
“Oops.”
It’s generally agreed that Danny is turning into Albert Steptoe.
It doesn’t take long for him to hit his stride, though. When Jason, Ginger, CJ and Stidi start recording gang harmony vocals for One Less Heartache, Danny shouts into the control room mic, “aw, it sounds like fuckin’ Band Aid! It’s
not very punk rock, lads.”
When Stidi returns, Danny congratulates him on a fine performance: “You sing like birds…”
Pause for timing.
“… a bunch of lasses!”
It’s not just Danny who’s on top form. CJ and Ginger crank out some superb, and totally improvised, guitar solos. Jimmie Rodgers… is classic Headfuck-style Wildhearts, complete with OTT rock ‘n’ roll ending (Jason to CJ: “That’s good shit!”). While for One Less Heartache, Ginger goes for a “Carlos Sultana” vibe.
“It needs to be slower,” says CJ. “Less runs, more Carlos.”
Everyone’s chuffed to bits with the final result, which CJ reckons has “a Dinosaur Jr feel to it.”
“I couldn’t be more pleased,” says Jason. “I came to London on Friday with nothing and I’m leaving on Sunday with a song.”
And what a beautiful song it is. I can see why Jason fell in love with it. It has that timeless Scorchers feel to it, yet you can also hear The Wildhearts at work, both in the melody (particularly the verse) and the arrangement (though it still has to be mixed). Ginger says that he’d love to bring more country music to a Wildhearts audience, and to my ears this track definitely has potential in that direction. It’ll be included on Jason’s next album. I, for one, can’t wait.
Right now, though, there’s still that harp solo on Jimmie Rodgers… to nail. As Jason gives it some welly (again, totally improvised), getting the feel of the song, Ginger turns to engineer Fully and asks him to add some distortion. The EQ is bumped up and up. Jason blows his harp a couple of times and says through the mic, in a voice resembling a malfunctioning Dalek: “Sounds pretty distorted to me.”
The result is the loudest, rudest, most rock ‘n’ roll slice of country rawk any of us have heard in far too long. Jason looks so pleased I’m worried that he’s about to burst. He says that, working on his own for the past year, he’s
missed the band vibe. He also says that he hasn’t heard a band cook up such a glorious racket in years. Everyone in the room beams with pride. The finished track will be appearing on Ginger’s country album, which he’s hoping to sink his pearly new gnashers into at some point in the not-too distant.
So, there we have it, folks, the first Wildhearts recording session in four years. And it just happens to be with the mighty Jason Ringenberg on vocals. I could natter on for another few paragraphs about how Jason’s one of the nicest guys I’m ever likely to meet (‘genuine’ is the word that springs to mind), and how lickle baby Jake shows up and turns a bunch of hardened rock ‘n’ rollers (plus myself and Tara) into baby-talking loons (he has li’l skull & crossbones booties and an SG5 jacket on, and big, big eyes – ‘sweet’ just doesn’t do him justice!). But, hey, you get the idea.
Man, it’s been a hell of a day. I wake up the next morning wondering whether I’d dreamt it all. For reassurance, I put the question to Ginger.
“Until I just spoke to Jason this morning on the phone I was asking myself the same thing. That’s what’s termed ‘a grand day out’, I think!”
Photos by Darren Stockford (studio) and Tara Stockford (live)
Thanks to Jason for the pizza, and the heckler at the Borderline for the headline!
Ginger Says – Nothing ever changes but the news
By Ginger | May 19, 2001
And so, on the first day of Wildhearts rehearsal I OD’d on anti-depressants, CJ had a fight in a pub with a gay Muslim nutcase and Danny was taken to prison for possession of a knife.
All’s well on the Wildhearted front. Rehearsals sound big, the riffs are huge, the ambition and sheer workload is gargantuan and the hangovers are / were leviathan. Only one week in and there’s already a set list that would make Aerosmith blush. We’re plundering the earliest stuff to give proceedings an authentic feel. The line-up is working like a dream.
CJ is, and must have always been, one of the best guitar players I have ever heard. Danny is louder than I remember… and I remember his volume so well I lost half of the hearing in my left ear because of it. Stidi has to be the most underrated drummer breathing air at the moment. The playing is muscular and lean. The vibe is pure electricity. The neighbours are complaining… it’s all good.
The biggest shock to all of us was just how difficult these old songs are to play. I always thought that because they were the first songs I ever wrote, they would be among the most simple. I’ve been wrong before, but not with such ferocity. Like having to learn how to walk again after a football injury to a pro, this exercise in genre regression has warmed everyone up nicely to the task ahead. This task being to give everyone the best night out of their lives.
Now that Guns N’ Roses have cancelled (sick guitarist, apparently?) and there is sadly no more Ramones, this leaves only The Wildhearts to bring home the punk / r’n’r groceries this summer… which is strange because having heard these songs again, for the first time in years, the comparisons between us and both the aforementioned bands are not lost upon me. This June rock ‘n’ roll is most definitely coming home. Skin up and put the kettle on.
SilverGinger 5, on the other hand, are experiencing what is commonly being known as SG5-itis. Things were never set out to be easy for this band and this mini-excursion in June is no different. We are being given (by whoever it is up there that organises these kinds of things) a total of one day in which to rehearse. Don’t worry, we’ve done much more in far less time, and no one will ever imagine that we haven’t been rehearsing for months. It’s just that kind of band, y’know?
The acoustic dates have provided me with not only my first official sell-out in advance this year (London Borderline), but the first / only sell-out for the month of June in that venue. We went down to see Jason Ringenberg (Jason & The Scorchers) at the Borderline last night, and we’re seeing him again tomorrow in a recording studio to stamp down some tunes with him – the first recordings of The Wildhearts (featuring Jason on vox, natch) and my first chance to write for the man himself. I penned a lil’ ditty called One Less Heartache for him. I gave him a tape last night and he phoned me today to tell me he loves it. Some experiences are worth savouring, y’know?
The singles club has notched up a total of 20 songs recorded and mixed. The first single is due out anytime now, and will also be on sale at all of the Wildhearts dates, should you be unable to track down a copy. The second single (Cars And Vaginas; You, Me and BT; Not Bitter, Just a Little Disappointed) has been mixed, sleeve notes penned and artwork finalised. Oh, and did I mention that it looks great and it kicks fucking ass?
And the final artwork, packaging, etc, has been pressed for the forthcoming acoustic album, Grievous Acoustic Behaviour (a name brought about during a drunken evening in the studio with Kerrang!’s Jason Arnopp), and I gotta tell you all that it is good enough to eat. I ate one and it comes out the other end a little rough, but the flavour is all that matters in matters such as these.
Busy? You could say that I’ve been busy all right. You could say that and be so right that you’d start a movement.
Oh, and I went to the dentist and got my teeth fixed! Man what a month. Jake is doing great and sprouting teeth like a baby shark.
It looks like Devin Townsend could be joining us on the Wildhearts tour. And my Jeep that got stolen has been found at the scene of a near fatal crash through which the thieves are fighting for their lives.
Man, God looked down one day and said: “Every dog must have his day… and I’m running out of dogs so I guess it’s the turn of the red-headed mongrel down there to get some.”
Clean, sober and reaping some good karma. Thank fuck I didn’t die.
Ginger