Superman Revenge Squad

Just me yesterday, in a very rainy Brighton. Played to a fairly busy room above the Prince Albert pub. And it seemed to go pretty well. Played these songs:

I'm gonna go to bed and when i wake up I'm gonna be someone else.

A good idea.

Losing Yourself to Stadium rock.

Fairweather friends.

I'm ever so slightly spontanious when it comes to a crisis.

An old man flicking through a pornographic magazine.

This is a happy song.

I'm afraid of flying.

An endless bottle of blood-red wine... whistling into the abyss.

Lately I've found myself regressing.

Get yourself into the arms of drunken people.

I did start writing a new song on Friday night, that I'd hoped to play yesterday, but I couldn't quite get the lyrics to a point where I was completely happy with them. But I'm quite happy with it so far though: it starts off being about me watching rocky 3 when I was little, proggressing to being about the fact that I can remember scenes from films really well but can't always remember scenes from real life so well. Hopefully it'll be ready for the next gig...

Oh, the Dead Crow blues CD is definitely on its way. There will be news on this soon.

Me and Martin played at the Green Dragon last night, our first gig for a couple of months – and we played most of the stuff off of the new (and soon to be released) Dead Crow Blues CD, including the title track, which has electric drums on the recording so I managed to get the audience beatboxing and clapping along to replicate the drums – sounded quite good actually. We also played a brand new song called ‘Lately I’ve found myself regressing’, which I’d very freshly written lyrics for – about, amongst other things, ‘Persistence of Time’ by Anthrax meaning more to me than ‘Blood on the tracks’ by Bob Dylan, and re-reading Stephen King novels for the first time since I was 13 years old. It was nice to play nearly all new stuff – we realised that there was nothing on the set-list we played last night that was on the set-list for the first gig I did with Martin a year ago, which felt nice and revealed to me that I had written a load of new songs in the year.

 

Sound of the Ladies played after us, and was really good as usual.

Superman Revenge Squad does still exist! Just thought I'd let you know that this was the case, just as I haven't been doing any SRS gigs or anything for a month or two now, and have started play electric guitar with a band called the Jonbarr Hinge, so people were asking if that meant SRS had come to an end or something. But, certainly not: we recorded the final track from the new CD a couple of weeks ago and they're all being mixed at the moment, and as soon as this mixing is done a new CD will be available. The title track of the CD, "Dead Crow Blues" should hopefully be being played on Progagana Radio this Tuesday, between 7 and 8 - me and Martin were meant to be doing a couple of songs live for it but I can't make it unfortunately so I sent in the new recording instead...

Tune in at: http://www.xstreameast.co.uk/details.php?show=58 at 7pm on June 29th.

Seem to be playing 3 nights at the Green Dragon in Croydon in July - SRS is playing (hopefully with Martin on cello) with the Sound of the Ladies on 13th, then Jonbarr Hinge play on 17th, then SRS (on my own) is back on 25th... Oh, if you're interested, we've set up a myspace for the jonbarr hinge and there are four really rough recordings on it from a practice - one of them (De La Fonte) was written by me and the other three were written by Sam (the other guitarist and main man in the band): http://myspace.com/thejonbarrhinge

Quick update on 'Dead Crow Blues': We started work on the new set of recordings last week. And I've a had few listens to the rough mixes over the week. And they're sounding great! So far we've recorded these:

1. Fairweather friends

2. Playing God Games

3. An Endless Bottle of Blood Red Wine... Whistling into the Abyss

4. The Summer We Finally Cut Our Hair

5. An Old Man Flicking Through A Pornographic Magazine

6. Yeah, This House Is Haunted

So we've got two more songs to record, a new version of 'A Funny Thing You Said' and 'The Dead Crow Blues', and a bit of mixing for someone to do, and a new CD should be ready to go! I'll keep you updated though.

There's an interview with me on the Sonic Reverie website, which you can find at this address:

http://sonicreverie.blogspot.com/2010/04/ben-parker-interview.html

Oh, and last night I signed myself up to twitter, although I don't really know what I'm doing with it. Any suggestions for people I should 'follow'? My name on it is 'BenSRS', if you fancy a look, although I can't promise I'll ever have anything particularly exciting to say.