Music and me
I was a huge fan of music from an early age but it was not until after I left the Army in March 1989 that I became more involved than just as a gig goer and record buyer. Back in those days I only dipped a tentative toe in writing for the odd fanzine then I became involved in putting on gigs at the pub where I eventually ended up living, The White Ball Inn in Tiverton, Devon, my home town. The pub had regular band evenings on Friday and Saturday nights that were pretty well supported and popular on the local band circuit. The people that ran the nights used to charge a £1.50 on the door and do pretty well out of it as some of the bands only got paid a few quid. I did my sums and worked out that rather than travel all over the country to see my favourite psychobilly bands, a scene and genre I was heavily into at the time, if I advertised it well and didn’t expect to make any money I could sneak one in to the schedule, then before the landlord or the punters knew what him them, viola, psychobilly in my local!
The first gig I put on wasn’t actually at that venue but a local night club; I had been collecting what I considered to be a nice little array of contacts and had been giving the local clubs a bit of spiel about being well connected. One of them called me and said they needed someone ‘famous’ for a night the following week. I managed to get hold of Screaming Lord Sutch who was in Devon for the Monster Raving Loonie convention. He agreed a cash price, the venue agreed, and it was all booked. Then they dropped it on me, you’ll have to guarantee the fee. Green as green can be and with pride at stake I foolishly agreed with less than a week to promote the gig. I did get a piece in the local paper but on the night only a handful of people turned up at a club that could hold a 1000. Screaming got his money, while myself and a bookmaker I had roped in with the lure of easy money, lost ours. First lesson learned, you need time to promote.
The first band of a rockin’ persuasion I booked at The White Ball were a Dutch band called The Ubangi 4, the landlord agreed to let them stay in the pub, as they made their way upstairs one of the banisters came away from the wall complete with plenty of 300 year old render, I remember thinking maybe the music business wasn’t for me. But the gig went well, even if it wasn’t packed and the locals didn’t know what to make of these rockabilly types, but in the years that followed we had great Psychobilly nights that the locals and even the landlord supported, even if all these blokes with ‘daft haircuts’ turned up beating each other up on the dance floor. Almost every luminary on the scene beat a path to the White Ball, The Meteors, The Long Tall Texans, The Frantic Flintstones, The Sharks, The Gazmen and The Lost Souls all played at least once.
In between the psycho gigs which we could only get away with one every couple of months or so I learned a fair bit about how the local gig thing worked and amassed bin bags full of tapes that were sent to me dozens a week, some good some bad. A couple of the bands that did play went on to much better things, the most notable being a band that enjoy current international superstardom, Muse as well as an embryonic 3 Colours Red. We used to run a very popular annual battle of the bands which legend has it Muse entered and didn’t win.
Around this time I got really friendly with some of the psychobilly bands, especially Chuck of the Frantic Flintstones and ended up driving one of the wildest bands on the scene around Europe on several occasions, some of the best fun ever.
During this time I was submitting previews of my own gigs to the local paper and on the odd occasion reviews, especially of the battle of the bands so had got the writing bug, mainly because I saw it all as great free advertising and was also practise. Around 1992 Alan Wilson of the Sharks had started to put together a little psychobilly fanzine, Deathrow Database, and it wasn’t long before I volunteered to contribute stories of our adventures home and abroad within the psychobilly scene to that fledgling publication, I continued to do so right up until its demise in 1999. Little did any of us suspect then but we were writing our first book, the best of that fanzine was published by Cherry Red books in 2006 entitled ‘The Chronicles of Psychobilly’ and contains some of my early efforts, at the last count it has sold over 8000 copies worldwide, pretty good as we never expected anymore than a hundred or so people to read our reports. At this time I was also published in a German fanzine called Fiesta, not to be confused with the soft porn magazine of the same name, Dynamite in Norway and a Japanese magazine that I never got to see.
The White Ball closed in1998 only to re-open as a Wetherspoons and I turned to another venue, The Tube, to promote gigs and once again got psychobilly into Tiverton, Demented Are Go and Spear of Destiny being additions to the original roster from the White Ball days. In 2000 I decided the world was passing me by so sold all my stuff and set off to see what I was missing ending up in Australia for the last six months of an 11 month jaunt. In that time I broadened my musical horizons and got into all sorts of music and became a regular face in the Sydney pub gig scene which was thriving at the time. I even managed to appear in the video made by rockabilly band The Howlin’ Moondoggies for their track ‘Pieces’ if you ever get to see it, I have shocking peroxide hair courtesy of my mohawked house mate Jordan who also appears pretending to play the slide trombone.
On my return to England I was keen to get more involved in music and started a short-lived club within The Tube ‘Misspent Youth’ named after a song by a band I had grown to love while in Australia, The Living End. I also wanted to write, but Deathrow had ended and my emails to the established music press fell on deaf ears or should be uninterested eyes. Then I discovered
Big Cheese magazine, an alternative and independently run national glossy, I called them and explained I was off to the Warped Tour (my feet itch from time to time and I need a jaunt) and could I cover it for them? The answer was yes and that was the start of my association with the magazine. On that first trip I secured interviews with The Ataris, Alkaline Trio and MXPX all of which were published in 2002. Since then I have been a regular reviewer of live gigs and CD releases and have been responsible for several features, including one on Psychobilly and another on Horrorpunk, several interviews including one that became my first Big Cheese cover story with Matt Skiba of The Alkaline Trio, as well as Nick 13, The HorrorPops, The Living End, P Paul Fenech, Mad Sin, that have all graced the hallowed pages. I also write a regular column in Big Cheese ‘Psycho Realm’ which covers all things rocking. In 2006 I was off to the Warped Tour again, this time on the tour bus with
The Living End and reported on a life on the road albeit for only a week.
That trip really got my literary juices going and resulted in some international press, a feature in Australian national glossy Blunt and a front cover story in Sydney street press publication The Brag, both written direct from the tour bus, and both on The Living End. I wrote an overall view of the Warped Tour for Big Cheese which appeared in the August 2006 issue that sold out, though I’m not claiming it to be because of my piece, but who knows, if you don’t blow your own trumpet and all that, and that pretty much brings us to 2007 where my association with Big Cheese continues but being freelance I’m always open to offers, especially if bands require an embedded journalist ala my Living End stint or magazines and record labels that need researched features on specialist genres.
As well as scribbling for Big Cheese I have been asked to write and research the sleeve notes for several CD releases, mainly for Anagram/Cherry Red but also for Cesar and Red Five. It is something I enjoy and am actively seeking more commissions for, so if you are interested in using me give me a call or drop me a line.
New for 2008 I’m keen to get involved in helping bands with publicity and getting their name out there as well as continuing to write for my regulars, once again, any band who wants to commission me to help them in this respect give me a shout. So that’s it, me and my musical CV in a bigger nutshell than I anticipated.
Enjoy my site and feel free to give me a call or drop me an email if you thing I could do something for you.
Until then, Keep whistling past the graveyard!
Simon Nott
www.myspace.com/simonnott |
