grilly, ian, corey, and alex, and we are in it for the lulz.
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News
Well.
Here we are 6 months into our maiden voyage, and we're having a wee rest, knocking back a few irn bru smoothies. the last couple of weeks
have seen great progression on our debut album, 'the bruised pilgrim', and we will be doing off a special show to commemerate it's release when it's ready.
In the meantime, enjoy new, less rough mixes, and we'll see to you soon.
Bruised Pilgrim was recorded in a weekend last november by Andrew Gardiner when we were called bruised pilgrim and sam played bass.
it will be released through Ex Libris Records ASAFP. the album contains all the songs we could play at the time except our awesome covers
of 'black eyed dog' and 'forever', and 'midweek cd purchase' which we never got right.
Wednesday 20th May - Catch, Shoreditch, Hits of The Future night
setlist:
womansour
fractal universe
disposable friends
love
pretty girls make cakes
purple milk
encore: 1 message received/klein bottle fish tank
taking time to play the songs we'd neglected more recently, love and womansour.
a nice mellow set, that we had to finish off with klein bottle because we felt we had to rock... a really nice crowd for our last gig for a while.
Wednesday 6th May - The Legion, Shoreditch, Odd Wednesdays night.
setlist:
tofu
pretty girls make cakes
double anti-promise
kinky friedman crime club
fractal universe
klein bottle fish tank
womansour
this was alright.
Friday 17th April - Bedsprings, White Hart, Whitechapel, with Drunken Butterfly
pics by emoware.
setlist:
fractal universe
pretty girls make cakes
sex
tofu
double anti-promise (if that's what we're going with, although on the night it was called 'reg piggot')
klein bottle fish tank
kinky friedman
purple milk
womansour kinky friedman crime club
Utter joy. Our friends and colleagues Drunken Butterfly headlining, a promoter with a birthday. Again, we hadn't practised for a while,
but our last rehearsal had been stupidly slick (giving us opportunity to work on new 'material') and this gig went very well too.
Sunday 29th March - Goonite, Barden's Boudoir, with a bunch of other bands.
setlist:
sex
um...
i forget...
we didn't write a setlist..
and we didn't write one after wards...
but it was pretty much on the same line.
a knock-about, sloppy gig, which was quite fun and well supported.
Saturday 14th March - Betsy Trotswood with Mad Staring Eyes and Girls Girls Girls.
pics by martin.
setlist:
pretty girls make cakes
klein bottle fish tank
(as yet untitled)
kinky friedman
tofu
fractal universe
purple milk
This gig was lovely. Girls Girls Girls have named their second album 'Songs for Grilly', for our eponymous singer/guitarist, and so it was
great to be asked to support them. The Betsy trotwood is fantasticly intimate, especially for a band like us, although having those little underground booths
was sometimes a problem when people hid from the bands in them. Push up closer guys. if you will. but anyway, lovely sound, good show, and plenty of broken strings.
Near the end of the night, Grilly joined Girls Girls on keyboards for 'Song for Grilly', and everyone clapped.
Friday 27th February - Bowled Over, Wanstead Bowls Club, with Happy as Larry.
setlist:
Disposable Friends
Pretty Girls Make Cakes
Love
Apathy Maps ian's song is between names
Girl in the Kid A Top
Sex
Tofu
Fractal Universe
Purple Milk
Better. We played a pretty tight, mature set. the place was DIY gone strange;
a large function room, a gazebo, fairy lights and candles. it felt like a wedding, but for the massive dark void in front of us. i just stared at a distant
light source and sang on. the set was exhausting, even without the heavier songs - we felt like pandering to the audience, being paying customers and all.
tracks coming soon.
Friday, 20th February - Bedsprings, White Hart, with Umbrella Assassins and Harrison Hope.
pics by rachel
setlist:
Klein Bottle Fishtank
Pretty Girls Make Cakes
Apathy Maps
Love
Fractal Universe
Purple Milk
Womansour
A good start, we were told; too noisy, and some harmony problems. but we good a good lot down. upstairs at the white hart's quite a nice old venue
, but it's pretty out of the way. no-one's going to wander in by accident, and the huge amount of seating meant there wasn't much chance of
getting people dancing or moshing or swaying, which is wierd because it's such a loud venue that you can't talk over the bands.
A D-string break on Apathy Maps left me playing the rest of the set focusing on working out how to play the all the songs -
probably the string i could cope most with, but it meant dropping kinky friedman; sex was dropped from the set due to time (as i recall).
04/05th October - album sessions and White Hart gig
label boss andrew unimbued came down with his mobile studio, and we set up in pilgrim caverns. plugged everything into everything else, set up 12 microphones and got levelled.
we did most tracks twice, taking about 4 hours and huge amounts of coffee to get through all the instrumental tracks. here's a clip of an unused take:
theme from womansour (take 1)
grilly's went for tea with his mum and got back late for starting, provoking accusations of being 'whitney' from sam. we ended with:
klein bottle fish tank
sunday, we rejoined at pilgrim caverns and recorded many many takes of vocals and percussion, and sam officially quit. it was the end of bruised pilgrim.
20th September - Good Ship
premiered 'theme from womansour' and 'pretty girls make cakes'.
25th July - Bedsprings, White Hart
7th June - Bedsprings, Phibbers
Conversely, I quite like bedsprings. They put us on at phibbers on Holloway road, a pub that I actually quite liked in many ways. The stage was low and small and I knew the soundman from the penny sweets gig at the white hart. It was a Saturday night, and it was free, and I love doing free gigs. There were a couple of slightly pathetic moments on their part – between either of the two drum kits, the venue’s one and the brought one, neither hand a snare stand, so ian had to run back to London bridge to get ours; and for a while there was a horrible bass feedback issue with my microphone. Considering it was a Saturday and it was free, the turnout wasn’t great, but we everyone remarked on how well we played, and the soundman’s praise was high indeed, which considering how much I liked his band (ear for imagery), I took with some weight.
Sam put it best; gig 6 really was a new beginning. I know I’ve used that phrase often; it’s confusing when you start out, everything’s changing. But we’ve finally snapped past the point where playing the songs isn’t a challenge any more. High time you might say, after 6 months of rehearsing twice a week.
23rd May - Glasswerks, tommy flynns
The gig at tommy flynn’s was with glasswerks, a sinister company that makes me feel atrocious and used; there is no quality control over who they get to play, there’s no effort on the sound desk. The clientele were a mix of obscene irish drunks – sam was told by one that he was a candle sniffing bastard, or something – and friends of the bands that were playing, of whom two had dropped out, leaving three. Add into the mix the thai kitchen and things get even less harmonious. Glasswerks business plan appears to be based around turning the broken dreams of so many bands into cash. We didn’t get any money off them, having only brought in 14 people at 5 quid a pop. Torrid. I thought we played well though.
22nd April - Bull and Gate
this was, in many ways, a real start for us. in no way was it our first gig, but it felt really starty. it was the first 'real' gig in london i suppose, and people were paying to come and see us. we were finally ready to drag 'the girl in the kid a top' (girl) and 'klein bottle fish tank' (kbft) out of rehearsal. we got in and sound checked and enjoyed the sunshine and et and waited for people to turn up, which they did, and a fair few of them. getting the gear there in time for the sound check was an piece of logistical engineering.
so we wrote out several set lists, then rewrote them, and finally agreed to one that we all could go with, then of course sam goes and changes his mind and we should open with girl after all.. then proceeded to dandy around when the sound man was trying to get us to start.
the girl in the kid a top
as you can see from the video, it was about a minute in when i broke my a string. i tried to carry on but with the guitar was now slightly out and i played only smatterings until the next instrumental section.
so i can't really remember the set list now, but we played everything (except the forgotten lore of midweek cd purchase) and finished with purple milk. then played forever and one message rcvd, innit.
it was a good gig; still didn't feel completely right, but i was glad that some people had made the effort; we'd got enough through the door not to make fools of ourselves to the promoter, and played well enough to not make fools of ourselves to the audience. that's enough for me.
purple milk
then ruth left. she'd been sitting on the fence for some time; we wanted all of her, but she could only give us so much; and with a compromise, no-one's happy. so she had to go. we're missing her parts, but tighter as a result; now's the time to get someone in who can really join in.
unknown date - squat party
sam mentioned in passing, as he, corey, and i were tying up our practise (klein bottle fish tank played over and again for an hour), that there was a squat party that we could play at on wednesday.. some friends of his... getting evicted or something.. should be fun..
so somehow, we ended up agreeing to this, on a school night; met up at piglet towers; jammed, re-re-re-re-rehearsed the difficult bit in kid a top; then loaded up the van with all our kit, and sam's friend tom's hammond organ, to be dropped off en route, and split up. ruth, corey and i took the bus, while sam and ian 'mr. resposible' wilko drove, with tom crouched secretly in the back.
the bus contingent including meself got there several minutes ahead of the van, and had to introduce ourselves (not a problem) and start clearing a space, unfortunately in the wrong room... the right room was big, venue sized perhaps. as we were unloading, well past nine o'clock, some members started to address concerns about time, and how getting to bed at one in the morning wasn't there idea of a good school night. the problem was, it being a squat party, at ten, there really wasn't going to be very many people there. as it turned out, that was their problem. we had a gig to do and a home to go to and work in the morning (just like their neighbours!), and we decided that's what we would do in that order. so we piled the stuff in, fended off the 'can i just borrow your mic for two minutes?' man, and started playing all our fast songs, quickly. starting with klein bottle, then pregtard, then quinlagg, by which point i was down to three strings. then... er, sex, then maybe midweek then we stood around and had our phots taken while playing ambient variations on love - there seemed to be old fashioned cameras galore, proper video ones even -, then stuck the stuff back in the van as quick as possible.
the people really were lovely, and there house so welcoming, in some ways broken, but all the great colours everywhere... i really wanna paint diagnol stripes on my bedroom wall now. shame i just put all the furniture (sorry, wrong blog). i'd have love to have stayed, another night, and other town*.
how did we actually play? it was great to be under pressure - no fucking around with keyboards and lost recorders this night. i reackon my playing was shoddy. i'm sure i played many wrong chords, partly because of beer, partly hurriedness. but on the other hand, we knew we had nothing to prove and just bashed out. the longer, slower songs are definitely sounding less appealing to my ears know though. i think it's time to unleash the out-rock.
corey went off to get the bus, ian and sam went in the front, and ruth and i in the back. illegal, but not as illegal as having open cans, which ian and i weren't having any of.
we got back to piglet towers around 11 and unloaded again. during this ruth spilt her beer much to sam's chagrin - the poor devil could get in so much trouble at our mistakes. taxi came and took us back to london fields for exactly midnight. a perfect night in a can.
*it's time to burn this disco down.
22nd February - Ex Libris Records, Cumberland Arms, Newcastle
we did get a video of this whole gig, and another angle on 'sex', but as enjoyable as it was at the time, it's pretty cringey to watch.
this was our official launch gig, at longstanding associtates' Ex Libris Records
10th February - Enterprise Open Stage, 12 bar, with Girls Girls Girls and others
as far as i remember, the set went:
midweek cd purchase
love
pregtard
one message received
sex
the kinky friedman crime club
purple milk
forever
upon leaving the tiny stage at the 12 bar, corey said 'i can't believe we fucked up every song'. i didn't understand his remark; it was amazing and people smiled at us afterwards.
it's hard to remember much of the gig - i seem to have been on autopilot, my most vivid memories being the two times i had to get my bass e string back into it's groove on the nut. i seem to remember just playing the songs straight through, not really listening to anyone else or taking any cues, but definitely hearing them. it sounded great to me; it's great to finally hear corey not pulling his punches on the drums, and actually going for it. we were in a virtual line, right to left: ruth in a lovely evening dress, in front of a speaker, off the stage (somewhat sore from it afterwards), then ian, sam and i bunched together, then corey in the corner. i seem to have been the only person who could hear everything, except somethymes my self - i've to learn how to use a mic properly. i have been asked a couple of times since the gig 'where did you find sam?' he turned up in full leathers, perched at the front of the stage. i caught glimpses of him every time i looked a little to the right - i'm mic-bound most of the time - to see him kneeling at the front of the stage, holding his battered bass aloft like a phallocrat. i don't think of it as having 'found' him; you don't look for someone like sam unless he wants to be found...
i thought midweek and love were pretty solid. things started to loosen around pregtard, i think; it's a fast song and we played it discernably, but sloppily. i'd like to take it even further in a benny hill direction - me chasing ruth round the stage with a massive inflatable hammer or something.
1 msg rcvd was fun, a good mid-set resetting point.
sex was my fault. i forgot to go back into the verse after the first chorus, the structure collapsed, and somewhere around the second verse i could no longer play guitar or remember the words. but sam's bass line - possibly nicked from 'girls and boys'held it together. it was loose. but everyone else was really good on it, working around my mis-direction.
the kinky friedman crime club was better - meaningless, aimless, drink your weak lemon drink now, ed reading porn over the top of it, some mistakes but good.
purple milk was great - i need to work on my soloing though.
forever worked.
and then my back gave in and i had to lie down and take the next day off work.
thanks though.
Bruised Pilgrim was recorded at pilgrim caverns in a weekend last november by Andrew Gardiner, live with overdubbed vocals and percussion.
it will be released through Ex Libris Records ASAFP. the album contains all the songs we could play at the time except our awesome covers
of 'black eyed dog' and 'forever', and 'midweek cd purchase' which we never got right.
Disc 1 - on benefit: eight songs of impotence and frustration for the long term unemployed.
1. The Girl In The 'Kid A' Top
2. The Kinky Friedman Crime Club
3. Fanthorpe
4. Midweek CD Purchase
5. forever
6. Klein Bottle Fish Tank
7. Purple Milk
8. New Boyfriend
Disc 2 - on aggregate (e.p.s)
1. Love
2. Rain On Your Sunroof
3. Wrap Yourself In Pebbledash
4. deagol
5. Theme From Womansour
6. Purple Milk (single mix)
7. Sex
8. Fairtrade Whore
9. Love (try to relax remix)
10. Gold Top
11. New Boyfriend (part 1)
12. Haardvark (take 1)
13. Pregtard
14. We Fit Together Like Two Halves Of A Badly Cut Bagel
15. Haardvark (take 2)
Recorded over 2003-2007, On Benefit comprises the album alongside the contemporaneous eps Womansour, Purple Milk, and New Boyfriend.
Rather than being simply demos for future band material, these releases were meant to stand alone as a solo career.
The first songs To The Boats..! recorded have largely been derived from this release, so it stands as an interesting comparison to
the Bruised Pilgrim album; here are the tracks in their original context as they first sounded, with tacky microphones and drum machines.
listen, at last.fm, to on benefit and on aggregate.
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