Rotten Hill Gang are happy to host the Rotten Hill Review at (I guess) our spiritual home, Inn on the Green, Friday’s from May 15 onwards. So far we May 15 and May 22 organised (I use the term loosely).
The line ups are as follows:
May 15:
Rotten Hill Gang
JC001
Adam Masterson
Taurus Trakker
Savage Nomands
May 22
The Trojans
Rotten Hill Gang
The Langley Sisters
JC001
Plus DJs and generally convivial atmosphere.
Don’t forget the moustache wax.
Rotten Hill Gang are playing at the Cobden Club, Kensal Road this Friday, Feb 27 2009. I can do no better than to quote the official words from the promoter:
Friday 27th Feb (8-2am)
Featuring an explosive cocktail of delicious live acts and DJs,
Eclectica Fusion is coming back in the Cobden’s Gran Hall
to mix diverse musical flavours in to a mouth-watering Night!!!
LIVE MUSIC
ROTTEN HILL GANG
Experimental Funky Hip-Hop with a rocky edge
www.myspace.com/officialrottenhillgang
BELLA CHERRY
Funk Rock 5 Piece with driving melodies and groovy undertones!
www.myspace.com/bellacherrym
HELLA CHOLLA
Indie Pop with Soul and Latin influences
www.myspace.com/hellacholla
SUSANA LANG-LENTON
Latin,Jazz
www.myspace.com/susanalanglenton
DJ MEJOR
Doors open 8pm
Entry £5 at the door
It’s been a quiet January here in Rotten Hill City, but we haven’t been totally inactive. For a start we have the makings of a few new songs and we’ve had requests to play various gigs over the coming months.
The first of these is this coming Tuesday, Feb 10 at Movida, a club so cool I can’t even find their address on their website, but it’s on Argyll St, just by Oxford Circus station. We’ll be on around 10pm. I’ll post a flyer as soon as I get one.
Next up is our old haunt, Inn on the Green on Friday Feb 13, where we’ll be playing with some old friends, The Self, The Dirty Curtains, JC 001 and Taurus Tracker. It’s a benefit gig for the lovely Lenka, one of the bar staff there. All money raised will go to aid her speedy recovery and we wish her all the best.
I won’t bore you with gigs further into the future, but interestingly I see that some of them are being billed as “Mick Jones’ new band”, which must be a bit of a shock to Tony James! The truth is that Mick is good enough to contribute to RHG whenever he’s available and we’re most grateful, but Carbon Silicon is his band. What we can’t guarantee is that whenever you see a particular gig of ours advertised specific members will turn up. It’s more of a squad with interchangeable members. Clear? 
Oh and in that spirit, the Fun Lovin’ Criminals’ Huey Morgan is jumping into the fray on guitar. We’ve known Huey since they played with us (by which I mean BAD II) at a couple of gigs in New York in ‘94 and it’s a pleasure to have him living over here in Rotten Hill City now.
Now it’s time to get back to our kitchen renovation project. We need to find some engineered oak for the floor at a reasonable price today if possible so all suggestions welcome!
Movida
8-9 Argyll St
Soho
Inn on the Green
3-5 Thorpe Close
London W10 5XL
Tel: 0208 962 5757
Excuse me, but YADDA YADDA YADDA
I can barely remember a single year out of the past 30 years when Carnival hasn’t been threatened with cancellation or at the very least, re-routing. Each time it seems really seriously and each time it leads to nothing. Nada.
Yes, there were a record amount of arrests last year, but that was completely accounted for by the Police making the sensible decision to take pre-emptive precautions rather than allowing people to waltz boldly through with knives (much as the metal detectors on public transport pained me). And yes, there was some trouble at the end that I and the rest of Rotten Hill Gang got caught up in.
Those things aren’t good. In fact they’re very bad. But those and much worse things have happened before and the Police are now better at handling them.
My advice - don’t worry. Carnival will happen again this year and every year for the forseeable future.
Do I care much about Hawkwind? Well not very much is the honest answer, them having been consigned to the “But surely punk got rid of all that pompous nonsense” pile by my generation in their teens.
I will, however, admit to knowing little about them beyond Silver Machine and they did play their first gig 40 years ago this year in Notting Hill, so let’s be charitable about them for a moment for the following reasons:
1) They played their first gig 40 years ago this coming August 29 (as a band with no proper name) at All Saints in Notting Hill.
2) They had Lemmy on bass for three years (’72 to ‘75). We all like Lemmy don’t we?
3) Their 40th anniversary gig is to be at the lovely Porchester Hall and B.A.D did one of their earlyish gigs there (1986). I was a roadie back then. Well more precisely I was a computer programmer during the day, then I rushed along to Porchester Hall after work to sit at the side of the stage looking busy.
4) You could make a day of it, going for a session in Porchester’s Turkish baths before the gig.
That’s about it really, four rather specious reasons for giving them a mention. One day I’ll get round to writing about the music scene in the area (Pink Fairies et al) around 40 years ago. then again one day I’ll do a lot of things I keep promising to do.
Wifey and I have become quite partial to Persian food over the last year or so. We’re not sure if there genuinely is a proliferation of Persian restaurants of late, or if we’re just observing the “since I bought my new car I see them everywhere” effect, but we’re learning to tell the difference between good and - well - indifferent Persian food.
Behesht, unfortunately, falls into the latter category. We had passed it many times and Wifey in particular had one of those “feelings” about the place, so on Saturday we decided to try it for lunch.
On walking in we had high hopes. Split into five rooms and much, much bigger inside than you could ever guess from the street, the interior is a fantasy land of Middle Eastern décor and indoor water features.
We sat down and ordered from the very reasonably priced menu, which, by the way, somebody really should proof read. My okra main course included something called “green papers” while, alarmingly, several of the starters including my baba ganoush, had as their main ingredient either grilled or baked aborigine!
We were refused tap water. I think it’s an urban myth that it’s a legal requirement to offer it, but it’s the only restaurant I know of that doesn’t and that alone is enough to stop me from going back.
Something we really like about Persian restaurants is breaking a raw egg yolk into the rice. That too wasn’t available.
The service was, to put it politely, offhand. Our waiter had all the charm and some of the sleaze of a used car salesman and we were left feeling as if we’d turned up at an inconvenient time at the house of someone who then felt obliged to entertain us.
The portions though, are very generous especially given the price. So much so in fact that we decided to finish early and asked for the food to be wrapped up to take away. We were somewhat nonplussed when our waiter returned with three Tupperware boxes for us to pack the food into ourselves!
1082 - 1084 Harrow Road
London NW10 5NL
But don’t go there
While paying a congestion charge just now (it feels rather like being gently mugged) I happened to notice that
from December 25 to Jan 1 there will be no congestion charge.
So - er - wait - having said that it won’t be possible to repeal the corn laws remove the western extension for 18 months, what you’re now telling us that, actually, you can remove the charge any time you feel like it. Which is it?
Come on BoJo, it’s great that you’ve turned conventional wisdom as to which party listens to people on its head and we (Londoners) feel like our relationship has got off to a good start, but you’re sending us mixed messages and we’re confused as to where you see “us” going.
Sadly, as we all know, Woolies, at least the one on Portobello Road, isn’t to see another Christmas. I popped along there between the soundcheck and the gig at Inn on the Green last night to see it for myself and it’s quite a maudlin affair.
These pictures were taken at around 8:30 in the evening as staff were - well doing whatever staff do at 8:30 in the evening. The woman in the first picture was also taking photos and she turned out to be an employee. She told me that it had been on Portobello Road for 68 years. Now I’m sure that when it first arrived, my grandparents, who lived on Oxford Gardens, objected to a multinational chain moving into the neighbourhood just as much as we don’t much care for Coffee Republic and Star*ucks taking over opposite corners of Westbourne Park Road now, but it’s been established for so long that it feels like it’s a bit of our own lives that’s being taken away.
My mum dragged me round Woolworth’s as a kid and yes, I do remember the pick ‘n’ mix and that the shelves were wooden. It was shabby years before shabby was chic and suited post WWII austerity to a T, but the trouble is that their idea of moving with the times has been to put the word “Local” in friendly, “hand written” script after their name in response to Tesco’s “Metro”.
Cheap? Well yes. Cheerful? Not really, but it had an atmosphere of its own and was so bloody convenient (listen to me, I’m talking in the past tense already).
The woman outside pointed out that you could see the board with all the prices of their fixtures and fittings, which is what I tried to take the second shot of. After I’d done that one of the staff inside came running to the door, thinking that I’d been voyeuristically taking photos of or gawping at them. Woman-outside explained that I hadn’t and woman-inside wandered away muttering something about being unemployed in two days, which made me think twice about writing this article at all.
I don’t expect there are any plans for the space that they are about to vacate yet, but I do hope that The Portobello Blog’s predictions of a giant supermarket don’t bear fruition.
Farewell Woolies! I bought my first, multipurpose screwdriver there when I bought my flat. It was the best £3.75 I ever spent.
We’re playing our last gig of this year tonight, fittingly enough at Inn on the Green, where we played our first gig back in January, courtesy of Mick Jones and Tony James, hosts of those fantastic Carbon Casino nights. Still trying to find out what time we’re on.
It’s been a great year for us with some real highlights, but the important thing is that we’ve stuck to our basic principle, laziness. Old fashioned sloth. If it gets too hard, move on to something else. We’re in it to make music that we like and to enjoy it. It took Gary months to coax me back into the studio, but I’m really glad he did. Enough of that!
Thanks to Trish, Pockets and everyone else at Strummerville for putting us on last night. It was a bit chaotic as always, but it’s probably how it should be. The “surprise” guest was Huey Morgan, who came on to sing Can’t Take My Eyes Off You (better, though incorrectly known as Too Good To Be True) with us. We all joined in on the chorus. Frankie Valli is reported to feel unthreatened.
Thanks to everyone who came to see us freeze our nuts off at the Portobello Winter Fest last night and thanks to the festival organisers themselves.
I arrived a couple of hours early because I wanted to catch Ebony Bones and I’m very glad I did. I first became aware of her a couple of years back when Rat Scabies (who was managing her … or something like that) asked me to try out on guitar for her. This despite the fact that I didn’t have a guitar1, hadn’t played guitar since I was a teenager (and never on stage) and that Rat had never seen me play any instrument whatsoever.
Anyway that didn’t come to anything because I didn’t have the time, but she put on an excellent show and we were really indebted to her for pumping up the crowd.
It was so cold when we went on that the ends of two of my fingers went numb during the second song and I made what can only be described as a right hash of it. During the next two songs the temperature change threw my guitar wildly out of tune, leading to some dark looks from Mick. Which was fair enough!
But it went really well and we made a good few new friends out of it if the comments we received afterwards and the hits on our myspace page this morning are anything to go by. We were honoured to be asked to play the first ever Portobello Winter Fest and wish them all the best. One of the organisers was saying that they were hoping to make it a 3 monthly affair.
Don’t forget, tonight is the Strummerville show at the Tabernacle on Powis Square. If you like it last night, you like it tonight, because it’ll be the same. Only in tune. Oh and we have the obligatory “surprise guest”. No not Mick, it’d be a surprise if he didn’t play with us these days.
1Actually strictly speaking I still don’t have my own guitar. The one I use is Wifey’s. She acquired it in a “settlement” when she split from a musician boyfriend in a medium sized US band I’d never heard of called Sister Machine Gun. I think he just never came back to collect it after they split up.
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admin | 
05 7th, 2009| 
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