Another year, another clean slate. More water, less coffee, more fruit, less sweets, sleep more, read more, it feels like you can always read more… phone less, eat better, stress less, exercise more… It’s the same optimistic resolutions every year. January 31st. It’s going so so thus far. I think I’m drinking more water, at least.
In adhering to another immutable pattern, I’m still finding ways of adding to an already packed schedule. Sometimes my life feels like a game of Kerplunk. It’s hard saying no to fun stuff, though. Just as long as it doesn’t all come crashing down. So on that note, I decided that as I’m busy studying for a degree in sociology, working a job and raising a kid as well as playing punk rock, I’d release a book this year. Why not?
I’ve been thinking for a long time about putting Punk Rock and Coffee into print. I’ve achieved my teenage ambition of having my own records on my record shelf, now it’s time to fulfill a somewhat later ambition and have my own book on my bookshelf. I’m compiling a book from a lot of the writing I’ve done on the Speedhorn era of my life, and as well as rewriting large chunks of it, I’m also writing around another ten or eleven chapters of new material. It’s going to be in paperback format and will be a collection of short stories in loose chronological order, mapping the story of Raging Speedhorn as seen through my eyes. But it’s not just the story of Raging Speedhorn. It could be the story of any band. It’s also a story about friendship, about the ups and downs of belonging to a dysfunctional group dynamic. It’s about love and hate, ecstasy and despair. It’s about being a working class kid desperately searching for an identity. It’s about growing up and growing apart. It’s about taking your dream further than you ever thought possible and then blowing it up.
The Biggest Thing That Never Happened: Ten Years Of Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory With Raging Speedhorn will be released this year in late fall. Further details will follow in the coming months.
Now, back to working on those New Year’s resolutions...
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In the early days, working with Ninth Circle, we encountered RSH - initially, pushing their broken van along the road to Hastings. We were to support. Being the friendly Scots hoard that we were, we stopped to help. I think they thought we were a van load of ...manky travellers! The offer was politely rejected. Later, NC took to the stage and played a fair set. However, it was destroyed by the tightest wall of rock 'n' roll since Black Sabbath burst onto the scene with "Paranoid". As NC's manager, I was ripped out of my delusional state of ..."I manage the greatest band ever" syndrome. It came down upon my eago like a furnace of molten steel. I now realised just how great you needed to sound, to get anywhere, on the first rung of the music machine. That machine minced and ate up bands by the score, every day. Here though, was a band that sounded like the entire might of the German Panzers, every fucking one ever built, charging at full throttle, and it was awesome to behold - yet humbling to acknowledge. These guys had the chemistry and it was undeniable. The guys of NC and RSH, became great friends and NC went home to regroup and come back out, amps blazing as Ridgeback. Unfortunately, it just wasn't enough. The saga of RSH...is now the stuff of underground band legend.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping you remember borrowing a plectrum at The Man on the Moon, Cambridge, from the support band lol. Pre-first debut album release I think \m/ Have followed the band ever since. Keep it real!
ReplyDelete@Matt Mildinhall Haha, no I can't say I remember, although it sounds entirely familiar :)
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