Superman Revenge Squad

And it was good. MJ Hibbett played a fine set first, which featured quite a few songs I didn't know - leading me to think that he must have loads of songs, absolutely loads, as I've seen him play quite a few times now and there are always at least three songs I've not heard before each time. Then we played a set. I was worried my voice wouldn't carry to the back of the room enough, as I'm used to mics doing all the work for me, and the night is genuinely totally acoustic, but I think it went okay. I was always a little concerned that I'd seem very unfunny after Hibbett, as his songs are all funny in an upfront way and mine tend to be a little bleak, especially the new Dead Crow Blues stuff. But people seemed to like it, and they did laugh in the correct places. So all is well. And I think the new stuff is sounding better with each gig, so is certainly ready for a bit of recording. After we played Keith TOTP played, and was also good; I particularly enjoyed a song called "I Hate Your Band", which slagged off a load of indie bands he didn't like. Then the night was over, at a very reasonable 9.15 in the evening.

Finally played a song called "Yeah this house is haunted" at the gig at the windmill yesterday - I started writing the song ages ago, and then forgot about it, but re-visited it last week and Martin put a bit of cello on it and it seemed to work. I whipped together some more lyrics yesterday morning and now it's nearly complete... The gig was good, although it took me over an hour and a half to drive from my flat in Croydon to the venue - a journey that normally takes about 25 minutes - and so I turned up just before the time we were due to play and was in a bit of a foul mood... we then did our set before I had time to write down the set list, so used a piece of paper that Martin had jotted the song-list down on in the week, which was written in such tiny writing that it took us a while between each song to decide what song name was written down. But apart from that, the gig went okay. After we played Paul Hawkins and his band played and were good as usual. And apparently they've recorded a cover of 'the angriest dog in the world', which I'm quite looking forward to hearing.

We played some new stuff at the gig at the Scream Lounge last night ­ a song called "(There comes a time for saying goodbye to) fair-weather friends" (or maybe it should just be called "fair-weather friends"? dunno yet, seems a bit more concise though) was played for the first time, and seemed to go down okay ­ me and Martin had only actually practiced it twice, and the lyrics to the second verse were only about two weeks old, but its sounding like a good one I think. It has a chorus that talks about a dream of me and an old ex-friend dying and then meeting like two strangers, and making small talk like two strangers, in the afterlife; we end up talking about our record collections, and the records we won't ever get to play again. All good, cheery stuff I think you'll agree. I liked the venue, mainly because its only about fifteen minutes walk from my flat, but also because the sound was pretty good and I got to pick some of the other people that played.

In non-SRS news, I got the new Bonny Prince Billy album last week, and it's pretty good. Much better than the last "proper" album (Beware) in my opinion.

I decided to have a break from playing gigs last month, so that we could write some new stuff, but we’re back to playing live in April – new dates are in the ‘gigs coming up’ bit at the top of this page, and good ones too; I like everyone that we’re playing with, and they’re all worth checking out: Benjamin Shaw, Paul Hawkins, MJ Hibbett, the Sound of The Ladies; all good people... And we will be playing some new songs.

We recorded some stuff for a video podcast thing on Saturday, and some of that should be up on the internet soon – we recorded these songs from the new EP: “Playing God Games”, “An Old Man Flicking Through a Pornographic Magazine”, “The Summer We Finally Cut Our Hair”, “An Endless Bottle of Blood-red Wine… Whistling into the Abyss”, and one old one: “I’m gonna go to bed…” – not sure how many songs will be shown, but I’ll let you know when they are up and where you can find them…

Think I’ve got all the songs written for the new “Dead Crow Blues” EP now, just need to practice some of the stuff with a band – I want at least one of the songs to feature my brother on drums, and I want a bit of piano on one of them, maybe some other stuff – then we need to record it all. But the songs are ready, and I know what I want on them, which is the main thing! I even have some artwork for it, which has been done by Dave Broadbent, the guy that did the artwork for the Nosferatu D2 album. Seeing the artwork has actually inspired me to write a “dead Crow Blues” comic book and to persuade Dave to do the artwork for it. He seems up for it. But we’ll see…

In other news, me and Martin have been asked to write and record a soundtrack to a short film, which is quite exciting – I’m talking to the filmmakers about maybe doing the soundtrack live at the first showing of the film. I’ll let you know more details when they are known.

Anyway, that’ll do for now. But I’ll endeavour to update this a bit more in future!

Ben

There's an interview with me on the Music Fix website, which can be found here:

http://www.themusicfix.co.uk/content/feature/8909/superman-revenge-squad-interview.html

I played at the Green Dragon in Croydon again last night. Just me again. Played after Frivolous Laura, who was good. Strangely, the guy that described me as a lyrical Ninja on his blog was there, and he wrote about it on his site - which is here:

http://www.chaosbeforepredictability.com/2010/02/lyrical-ninja-strike-back.html

And I played these songs, in this order:

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

A Good Idea

I'm Ever So Slightly Spontaneous When it Comes to a Crisis

Supersad Morgan

the access self-storage

an old man flicking through a pornographic magazine

the summer we finally cut our hair

I'm Afraid Of Flying

this is a happy song

get yourself into the arms of drunken people.

And here's a picture of me playing it, taken by Tim...