Concert Fun

Simon, James and Jem (of Thantcher's Children) were at Louisiana to see Gravenhurst support Charlotte Hatherley. A solo performance involving a Les Paul and a modest pedal board, it was the first time I'd seen him play since Ashton Court a few years ago - a really nice gig; 'Black Holes In The Sand' wrapping things up very nicely.

It got us thinking about our favourite recent gigs and bands (I can exclusively reveal that Simon does not like Keane). So, in no partcular order, gigs we've enjoyed recently:

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah at Birminghm Academy
Broken Family Band at the Thekla
Peter, Bjorn, and John at Koko
Gravenhurst at Louisiana
Shellac, Isis, Trans Am, The Woods and The Thermals at ATP
Joan As Policewoman

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Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
(Incidently, the dude facing away from the stage (bottom left) was easily the nicest gig-cop I have ever encountered)

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Gravenhurst

James and Jem are off to see Deerhoof in Cardiff this weekend - we are very excited about this.
Ben is going to see Brad Meldau and Pat Metheny the weekend after. The rest of Yanu is jealous.

We got a gig!

We have a gig on 28th June. At the moment we are not exactly sure where it is or who we are playing for, but we know that it is in Bristol on 28th June. We need to write lyrics, practice, repair amps, and come up with a set list and a 'look' in the interim. The clock is ticking.

More details soon.

Thatcher's Children make a lot of noise in The Thekla

Thatcher's Children owned the top room of the Thekla Social last weekend. Simon, Ben and James from YANU were joined by another member of DJ troupe Thatcher's Children, Jemma. We all filled our records bags and CD wallets with lots of edgy rock and leftfield gems with the intention of proving to people that we are just as cool as Diplo who was playing in the hold of the ship, below.

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Simon drops some solid rock

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Jem gets a bad-meaning-good case of the funk thanks to Prince

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Ben feels the effects of more Brazilian sunshine folk-pop

We started with a pretty thin and disinterested audience. We did one round of two-tracks each, back-to-back, which failed to move the punters in anyway. It was only when Peter, Bjorn and John's 'Young Folks' whistled a few revellers onto the dancefloor that we realised what was needed. It quickly degenerated into a right old indie disco, and we had a chocker dance-floor eating out of the palm of our hands until chucking out time at 3AM (with one moment of mis-judgement from Ben that saw Dizzee Rascal clearing the floor like pepper spray).

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Free beers and an unexpected tenner each were ample reward, and we hope to be doing it again soon. Dates will be announced here.

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So hot right now...

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James lends a hand by pushing the light on an unused 1210....

Re-housed

We have found new shelter in Room 4 studios:
Room 4 Studios
We have to pay for our jam/practices now which is a new one for us, but after two visits we are very happy. The people are friendly and the clientel varied. We nearly burnt them down last week - Ben's bass amp began to smell and smoke - very rock'n'roll.
Just in case you were wondering, this is the Telecaster that I mentioned in the post below.

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This is Ben's Squire Tele - it's a bit better than mine to be honest. The Japanese (Squire) output was all over the yankee shit for quite a while in the 80s. This one was stripped down to a bare wood finish after manufacture and is a little skinnier than normal as a result, but plays like bitch.

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And here is some rather erotic double-tele action for you:

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Spray Jobs and Hand-Cheese

As a rule of thumb, you don't sell guitars, you just amass them. If you get to a silly level like say, Ben, you do occasionally have to flog off a minor axe in the collection. I've yet to reach this stage. My collection is only beginning to take shape. I've an acoustic, a half-size classical, a relatively new solid top Spanish guitar, and until recently only one electric. A beautiful blonde telecaster came bursting into the fray, rendering my first electric ornamental. There was absolutely no question of selling the first one though; it's been with me ten years and I'd sooner sell my own kidneys. I just assumed that it would remain largely unused and instil in me a sense of the Judas.

Aged 18, when an electric was first needed, I knew nothing about guitars (I know only slightly more now), so I asked friends who did know something... or the one friend who knew something. He, Rick, was the proud owner of USA Stratocaster, something I badly wanted but could never have hoped to own. I stated my budget (£250) and was informed the best I could do for that money was a silver series Squire Stratocaster. Blindly I tracked one down to a shitty Southsea guitar-den. They only had one; sunburst with a black scratch-plate. I knew then that a black-scratch plate on a sunburst finish didn't work as a look on any level, so my priority became to swap it for a white one as soon as possible. It took me a few months to source one and I quickly rose to the challenge of a little light home guitar modding. Misguided judgement soon saw me thinking that my guitar modding didn't have to end there - why didn't I totally customise my little beauty by taking her apart again and giving her a make over. The pick-up covers were spray painted red, while the original scratch plate was spray-painted bright green... presumably because that went so well with the sunburst... I just don't know why.

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A few years passed with this look retaining favour. Then the sticker era began - first was a Free Tibet Sticker (this is probably the one decision I can still empathise with); two years of Ashton Court Festivals provided me with the next stickers - one fluoro green with "VIP" written on it (these were given to everyone who paid the voluntary gate fee), and the second was fluoro pink wth "I'm on the guest list." Hilarious. I stuck them on badly enough that they soon became dog-eared and flakey, but somehow managed to leave a trace of sticker glue that won't shift to this day (I may have used super-glue... I was a different person then). The stickers eventually jumped ship, and but the rest of the guitar remained the same for years. Then the telecaster arrived, and the strat simply became a nostalgia device.

I'd always assumed that a Squire Strat was simply a piece of shit that looked the part, and could never quite understand why I had quite such a fondness for mine. I rationalised it as sentiment, but deep down felt that no other guitar quite had the same beautiful tone on the middle strings around the twelfth fret as the one I possessed. This year I did a little asking around in guitar shops and discovered that actually the silver series was really quite a respactable run of Squires, indeed, one that would have held, if not increased, in value. This wonderful news gave me the nudge I needed to bring my sartorially abused darling out of retirement. But something had to be done about the asthetics - the excesses of youth had to be laid to rest. The green scratch plate had to go.

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As happenstance would have it, Ben came round on the Friday afternoon I was planning to do the overhaul. I made the coffee, while he took the old strings off. A keener eye for detail than me, he suggested that we cleaned the frankly disgusting fret-board of, what one guitar website called, "hand-cheese." In our case we were cleaning away ten years of the shit. Unpleasant yet satisfying.

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Hand Cheese

Of the many and various cleaning techniques the internet harboured we selected two from the 'scraping' arsenal - the credit card and screw-driver approaches.

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Credit Card

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Screwdriver

I finished off the scrape with my own invention: a polish using vinyl cleaning solution. It cleans everything else I've tried it on, so why not a rosewood fret-board!? It brought back some of the lustre and helped hide the rather heavy handed scrape-job if nothing else.

I somehow managed to spectate for the rest of the process, as Ben unscrewed the pickups, scratch-plate, and pots. Apparently this was "good practice." Fine by me. The white plate went on a little harder than the green one came off, but Ben got there in the end.

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We opted to keep the red pick-up covers - I think they work well with the sunburst.

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I like the fact that some of the red has transfered to the white scratch-plate in flecks that look like blood. New D'Adarrio stings went on and former glory was restored.

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A Strat is a pretty vanilla guitar, but there are times, rock times mostly, that you need it's thin clean tone to feed into an effects pedal and really be able to hit those the strings hard with out worrying about how shit it will sound. I have my strat back now. The next step is a sweet distortion box and a deep delay pedal.

jimma

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