Untruths | July 2026 A couple of people had stated that they had missed my inane mumblings and rantings. What's happened since my last blog in May? July 2026 21st: Mistake. The reaction was just what you would expect. Drums were almost packed up and put in the car. They were not at all happy. Faces went red and the air went blue. The agreed times and fee were on the bass player's phone (effectively a totally binding contract) and were shown to the bar staff and the manager was reminded of the agreement. The band landed up playing for their agreed fee and from 10pm until 11.45pm. The manager admitted that he 'should engage with the bands more'. I'm not convinced. His DJ was quite surly with our drummer at the end of the night and it nearly got rather nasty. I didn't bother to leave my band's card for the boss to check out when I left. They won't ever get us playing there. I had time to watch just a couple of songs then I really had to make my way to my next port of call. After I left, I worked out that as I was running half an hour late, making my way home via Manchester Victoria rail station now looked rather improbable, so I just got a bus back in the direction of home. I was home by 11.15pm. On Saturday, my band played at Milnrow Workmens Club. I've played there a number of times and it was a slight surprise when I landed to find that they had put a new stage in a front corner of the floor area. It had a plugged-in DJ' gear stand on it, which made the space slightly awkward, but we worked around it esily enough. A hen party was in and we mainly played for them, as they were dancing quite enthusiastically, though they went on to their next stop at half time. The rest of the crowd really enjoyed us and said some very nice things to us afterwards. It was good night and we hope to be back there next year. The band is going to be mostly playing one night per weekend next year. Our guitarist, Paul, has become a father this year and so he naturally doesn't want his entire weekend taken up with gigging. The band has to work for all of us, so I can live with that. I may do some gigs on the side occasionally with a friend's ad hoc group if needed. Sunday was a trip to the supermarket, which I repeated on Monday with an additional trip to the tip thrown in to get rid of some things. We are having our bathroom replaced and rebuilt soon, so some preparation will be required for that. This afternoon (Monday) saw me paying a visit to the Bolton Hospice to get a blood test taken, as they are an outpost of the Christie Hospital, who monitor my cancer levels for potential treatment. I have never been there before. To me, Bolton Hospice is very much like the main Christie Hospital, a place I have always avoided completely, hoping I would never ever see it. I will be pushing the 'publish' button on a new book on July 30th, so that it's available on August 1st 22nd:
I got a phone call from our bathroom installer, talking about a site visit tomorrow and a start date for the installation, which should take about a week. 27th: It's been an expensive week with our main TV dying (it didn't make it to two years) and having also just replaced my dead computer monitor. Our drummer has been down with tonsilitis since our last gig (when he started to feel really iffy). Hopefully he will be feeling better for this coming Saturday. Every loony in Reform-Land is making noise about Andy Burnham's No 10 North being located at the former Stockport South DWP building at Heron House, which I have been to a few times in its former guise. Apparently the lease was signed just prior to his election as an MP. I just call it 'planning with confidence,' yet the Reformers are seeing Reds Under The Bed and some sort of conspiracy. If Reform get in, next time, the first thing they will do is vacate the building, or just give it to Farage as his personal property, anyway. 28th: A new Mott The Hoople book ('You Are One Of Us') also came in the post today. Looking forward to reading that. I have two books on the go at present: I called in at the council tip on the way home to drop off the old monitor and TV and all of the packaging. A surly little runt had a proper go at me for using the wrong Non-Recyclable skip for some plastic. They are not marked up as being any differently to each other. How was I supposed to know? He was really aggressive about it. It was really not at all necessary. Mind you, I'd be hacked of too if I was stuck standing there at the rubbish dump for 40 hours a week, in all weathers, telling people where to put their unwanted crap. 30th: A friend called round to collect a copy of a very short run private-publish book we did recently. I do them just to have them on my own bookshelf and let a few people have them at cost price. I don't make any profit on them.That's not what it's about. There are only about 10 hardback copies existing, with restored pages and photographs. A little while ago, I started to get bombarded with a stupid number of spam emails, some quite threatening, some were just utter rubbish. I went through a quite rigourous exercise to change all of my email addresses and sign-ups / logins to a different one. It was a laborious task that took a while, but it was well worth it. I redirected all the email to my old email addresses to a new single email account inbox just for junk, so I don't have to wade through them. I logged in this evening to view it and had to laugh that Best Meds4U sometimes send me an email a minute and the plonkers who would like me to buy $9000 worth of crypto to not reveal what they caught me doing via the webcam (that is never EVER connected to my PC unless I am doing Zoom) are still at it. During the night, from after I went to bed at about 2am until I got up and 9.30am, I got 2630 spam emails which were all diverted to a junk mailbox. I recommend Mailwasher - you just tell it what you don't want to see again and then you don't. I got rid of several thousand emails with one click. Very satisfying indeed. I went into Bolton to do a few things and came home with another migraine. Four Zapains and a couple of hours sleep in a dark room sorted that out. I cautiously watched some TV in the evening, including two of the latest episodes of 'The Traitors Canada' s3. I got the dogs out for a walk on the local park, but that was curtailed by one of our cats (Baby) following us and screeching for us to come home. 31st: I drove to Holmfirth in the evening, as I was very kindly gifted a ticket to watch Eric Johnson and his band at The Picturedrome. The parking was a total nightmare, as was the drive over the tops from Oldham way, but never mind. What a skilful player. August 1st: |
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Some shopping and stuff during the day. I made sure I got a good rest in the afternoon, as the migraines I had the other day have left me rather drained. I don't recover from them like I used to. In the evening, we played a storming gig at one of the oldest pubs in the country - The Old Man And Scythe on Chruchgate in Bolton. We always look forward to playing there. It's a cramped space, with little elbow room, biut you can see the whites of the crowd's eyes and they are all there for the music. There's no confusion at all. Once again, the parking in town was a nightmare. The crowd were really with us from the very start. We did a soundcheck before 9.30 (Dogshit Blues) and that really got them going, so we just carried on. A very good night indeed. I took two Rickenbacker basses, a Fender Precision bass and my two ancient Trace Elliot combos (from 1993 and 1994) which have just come out of retirement. They are really heavy so they may just get used on some gigs. They sounded really good. We've arranged a rehearsal for Monday evening. 2nd: |
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3rd: In the afternoon, I went to our bathroom suppliers and firmed up the re-design of the bathroom plan. It saved us £2300 and we will be returning 13 boxes of wall tiles, meaning a further saving. We have a new installer. All we need now is a start date from them. In the evening I went to our guitarist's house, way up in te hills near far-off Burnley, and we had a fairly productive rehearsal, getting a couple of songs to add into our live show. We also tossed a few ideas around for new songs. We didn't speak about next year. Bed at 11pm. 4th: 5th: Slade drummer Don Powell's one-word review of our 1965 book: "Wow". 6th: Downstairs to make a coffee. The milk was off. Bottle was dated 3rd August. Walked a few minutes to our local shop and back started again. The milk was off. Bottle was dated 3rd August. Made a hot chocolate intead on our coffee machine, which usually doesn't like me. It crapped out (of course) halfway through making a cuppa. My wife gave it a stern look, pressed the buttons again and off it went. She has AUTHORITY, I don't. So I got on with my day. Super challenge freecell and reading some downloaded music mags. After a short while, the Macmillan nurse rang back. She, quite thoughtfully, didn't want to keep me hanging on. As I expected would happen, I will be re-checked in 6 months time. I do apprecaiate that a re-test is extra work for already-stretched resources, but if a result may be flawed and therefore the result given out causes some distress, perhaps they have a duty to conduct a re-test? Amazon delivered a nice shiny trolley, that fold up quite compactly, to help with moving my gear at gigs. While I was out buying even more milk, I decided to call in at a local venue to try to catch up with the owner regarding next year's dates. I have messaged him via Whatsapp a number of times since he cancelled us for a world cup match and promised us three dates next year and an additional make-up date on top. He says he will look at the diary but he never gets back to me. I only got this year's dates by going in and catching him in person, as messaging just doesn't work. He was upstairs in the office. His staff's job is to protect him (the publican) from those awful people known as the public. It was suggested that I could send him a message. In my frustration, I said he ignores them. They took the dates that I had sent to the owner down on paper and one of the girls behind the bar promised to get back to me this evening. She didn't. I wasn't surprised. We have one more date there at the back end of the year. I'm going to keep my trap shut, or I suspect that something will happen to that date too. It has been my home gig for the last 20 years or so. In 1984 (** when it was under different management **) my band went in there on a break from recording and those of us who ate one dish all got food poisoning and had to move the next day's recording to the weekend afterwards. I have quite a history with the venue. We have introduced new members there, done an album launch there, all sorts. We don't have very much arranged for next year at the moment. I really don't appreciate the frustration involved with chasing people who don't want to be caught. The other guys in the band don't do gig hunting (to be completely fair - they haven't needed to, as I have been quite good at it). Having had enough of today, I went up to bed early with a book that I couldn't concentrate on properly. 7th: If enough venues contact me in response to messages that I have already sent, I may change my mind. The diary (as well as a feeling of obligation to the new band members) kept me playing this year when I was ready to give up. For the last few years I have been ready to hang up my bass at New Year, as I get so tired after gigs. We will see. The idea of juggling the diary to play with two bands doesn't interest me as much at the moment. Someone messaged me the other day regarding the 'Slade - song by song' book that we have been offered a contract for by an established publisher. He had thought of doing it a while ago and had made a start then had left it alone. Back in March, Chris and I both felt that it would be a VERY laborious task indeed, writing down the details of each song on each release in chronlogical order. I can't get at all enthusiastic about it. Some of Slade's lesser songs don't really even deserve to be written about and to have to write a few paragraphs about some silly piece of nonsense rhyme with a stolen tune from one of their later albums that I never play.... nope. I have always tried to avoid injecting my own opinion into any of the Slade books we've done and to have to do that for all those songs gives me the chills. We (well, I) made a bit of a start on the book about the songs, to see how the writing of that book actually felt, but I had a word with Chris and we quickly decided that we preferred to work on our own books instead. I sent a brief response to the person who asked the question, saying if he really wanted to go for it himself and do that book, to get on with it and I'd buy a copy. I know roughly how many copies Slade books sell and it's always been a case of 'as long as I have a copy on my bookshelf, it's immaterial how many they sell'. It's never been a money thing. I know what is left to be done on the Slade book front and fortunately, it's not very much. 10th: |
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The situation with the venue that is jerking us round was briefly discussed and our guitarist says 'just let it go, it's not worth the hassle'. Our drummer says 'sue the arse off them for the cancellation'. We haven't lost a small claims court case yet. On Sunday morning, I was beyond exhausted and it was almost lunchtime when I woke up. I didn't even unpack the car when I got home after the previous night's gig. I just quickly checked for any emails and went straight to bed. I'm not far from the end of the utterly fabulous Beatles book that I am reading (Mark Lewisohn's Tune In Vol 1 'the extended version') and I am really dreading finishing it. It is probably the very best music history book I have ever read and I don't want it to end. It was expensive yes, but I don't regret a single penny I paid for it. There is little prospect of Volume Two appearing any time soon, even though the author is doing twelve hour days, seven days a week, to finish it. The story is massive and the research is done, but hewants to do it properly. It will be worth the wait. Volume One was published about fourteen years ago. These books are so in-depth that the task is horrendously daunting. The more affordable paperback version is here. I can't recommend or praise this book enough. Naturally, there are people out there who are trying to pick holes in it, using things like 'amalgamated quotes' to rubbish it. This apparently makes them feel like they are 'Beatles Experts'. What have these people ever done but sit on the sidelines carping? You'll always find some utter gonad-brained simpleton lurking around who is ready to have a pop at someone who is trying to do their very best, yet you will generally find that they have done nothing much worth speaking about themselves. My wife was outside, attacking the back garden hedge with some clippers, so a degree of guilt crept in and I went to attack the top of the bushes with some shears, as they were getting a bit out of control after the recent heatwaves. It was very hot while I was out and up a ladder, snipping away, but the hedges are looking decent enough now. The green bin is well and truly full. |
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Adventures In Clubland (part 642): Then he sent me the running order for the day. Being set up for 2.15pm means being there for 1.30pm at the latest. Then hanging around for two hours to do 45 minutes. Then hanging around for 75 minutes before the second half. Then 45 minutes to get the gear out. Then the drive home. 90 minutes for our guitarist. Too much hanging about being bored by solo singers. The band discussed this and we regretfully cancelled the gig. Far too much hanging about. I chased up Horizons Music regarding the John Entwistle CD box set, as it doesn't show as having been dispatched. 11th: 12th: Horizons Music again offered me a credit note. I repeated that I want my money back. 13th: Horizons Music emailed me regarding the John Entwistle CD box set. They have cancelled my order and will refund in 14 days. On the 27th I will be right on their case. I wish that I had read this before I ordered. I splurged on the Roxy Music 'For Your Pleasure' box set that is due out later this year (Nov 6th).
17th:
I had my bass rig on stands in Burnley, as the floor there is a problem. Bass notes reverberate and hang on badly, making the sound horrendous. The same problem applied the night after in Leigh, but I was able to use two small stools instead of the stands. I'm a bit distressed by the very sudden death of the lovely Hayden Panettiere at only 36 years old. I thought she was wonderful in the things that I saw her in and hoped she would do great work in the future. Very very sad. 20th: I have been chasing up our bathroom suppliers to get them to get the installer to contact us to price up their part of the work. I mentioned that I asked about this 7 days ago as a reminder and have still heard nothing. I have also said that if we have heard nothing in 7 days I will be asking for a total refund of all monies paid to them and for a return and refund of the items that we have bought separately. 25th:
A good weekend with a gig at the tiny and packed-out Lucky 8's in Chorley. We went down very well and I'm waiting to hear back about 3 dates for next year. A couple of other venues have got with the programme, though in some cases it is taking some chasing up. One venue offered me the date of my daughter's wedding, today. I got a different date out of them... I'm a bit peed off that a couple of venues that I am holding onto provisional dates for are not responding. One since July when they messed us about because of the World Cup. I messaged the landlord yet again today about a make-up gig date and three others. It now says clearly on our website that provisional dates are available to other venues if not taken up timeously. With my band being limited to one gig per weekend, I'm rather interested in an approach that has been made for me to have a side project - a tribute band. It remains to be seen whether anything will come of this or not. I'm hopeful. I took Oscar for a bit of a long walk. He was flagging a bit so we caught the bus back for the last few stops to give him a bit of a breather. The wonderful person that was Dolly Parton has left us at the age of 80. I heard her recent traditional bluegrass albums which were a return to her musical roots and they were as authentic and as good as she was. The house band upstairs is getting far better than the one down here and far more attractive. Bed late. 26th: I have just read the reddit post about Horizons Music. If my refund hasn't arrived by just before lunchtime, I will be onto my credit card company. As I didn't have a promised delivery date, it will be Sept 2nd before I can ask for my credit card company to refund me. 29th: Today's inspirational tune. 30th: 31st:
September 1st: 2nd: 3rd:
I have also ordered the Prince Diamonds And Pearls Superdeluxe box set as I found a sealed copy very cheap. |
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I went into Manchester on the train from Bolton to buy some cheese during the afternoon. It is amazing how poor Bolton Market's food area and the Arndale food market have become in recent years. I do have to say that Bolton DOES have a truly fabulous meat and fish selection, but for anything else, it's a case of forget it. There are so many foreign general food stores (just like corner shops) in there now that it's not worth bothering with. They are turning into lowest-common denominator rubbish markets. Thank God for Bury Market. Last night and tonight we've binge-watched Trigger Point with Vicky McClure excellently playing the part of the lead bomb defuser. Fast-paced and brilliantly written and acted as usual. From seeing the last episode, it looks very much like that will very probably be the end of the programme. It's been very good. She's very good at playing tough Policewomen and Army types. There has always been a very slight danger that she may get typecast, but she has taken on other roles which have shown a different type of character and personality. |
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