Notting Hill Diary

Largely because we haven’t played since New Year’s Eve, somewhat because we are playing about 50% new songs and mostly because quite a few people can’t make the Shepherd’s Bush Empire shows, we’re playing a pre tour warm up gig at our old haunt, The Tabernacle this coming Thursday, March 24.

In addition to debuting new material we’ll be trying out one or two things that may or may not work. In other words, anyone who comes will probably get to see some pretty raw stuff that may not be repeated and it’ll take us 15 years to work out that actually, it probably was rather good and we should have run with it. Raw stuff is so often he best, but so often passed over at the time!

It’s about time I mentioned that with the impending Big Audio Dynamite reunion tour, Mick has been kind enough to ask Rotten Hill Gang to support. You’d have to be an especially geeky to know that Gary and I (from RHG) used to be in a later incarnation of BAD, known as BAD II¹. In a nutshell, the first band are mostly known for E=MC2 from the album “This is Big Audio Dynamite” (mostly in the UK), while BAD II are known mostly for “Rush” and “The Globe” from the album “The Globe” (in other words, almost not at all in the UK, more in the US and Aus/NZ).

So this should be a fun tour. Unlike most bands with several incarnations, the various members of BAD over the years have always stayed in touch and socialised. We still all live in the same area and we’ve all known each other since before the very first BAD album came out and in some cases since the Clash days and even (I’ve known Mick since I was born). In the early days I was a roadie for the first band.

And of course Mick’s played with RHG at most of our gigs and made no small contribution to our recordings. Less so recently because he was on tour with Gorillaz.

We’re getting together a set that’s going to be about 50% new songs and so far we’re really happy with the way rehearsals are going. We plan to have tunes available for download by then.

Wherever possible we’re putting on post gig parties in the towns we’re playing, which will be the “Official BAD Aftershow Party”. We’ll be playing at the parties and I dare say we’ll have the odd guest playing with us for old time ’s sake. I’ll try to post the locations here, although by then we hope to have a proper RHG website going.

As for me, I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing the first BAD lineup play again. I wonder what they’ll make of Rush and The Globe.

¹I played keys and co-produced/arranged the records, while Gary played bass and co-wrote the songs and shuffled around on stage looking generally cool and a lot like Paul Simonon, which caused the odd confusion on occasion.

You know some people seem to think we just sit around all day here at Rotten Mansions twiddling our thumbs and thinking up new scams. Well we do do that, but in addition we make music and, on occasion, videos.

Here’s one now. City of Cold Steel. Enjoy! Just leave the cutlery at home.

Rotten Hill Bar & Grill II you say? Well - er - yes. There was a RHB&G I just befoe Carnival in Tavistock Park, a bit of green land just up from Tavistock Square, which in turn is just off Portobello Road. 15 bands plus dj’s on a stage, 200 odd locals, Joe Rush of Mutoid Waste very kindly providing the generator and the nearby Pelican pub was drunk dry by 4pm on a Sunday.

Sadly the Pelican closed down shortly afterwards under what can only be described as mysterious and possibly suspicious circumstances, but that needn’t concern us here. Not should the fact that I signally omitted to mention the event on this site.

Rotten Hill Bar and Grill II takes place this weekend in Powis Square opposite the Tabernacle. This time there will be an actual bar. And a grill. And loads more bands mostly different to the last one. In fact the only bands that will be the same will be Rotten Hill Gang (er - if that’s OK with you) and the excellent Westborns, just because we personally love them and want to see them play again.

It runs from midday to 6pm and if last time is anything to go by, expect a nice, chilled vibe, all welcome. The weather report is sunny all day.

So following my previous post pointing out that while he plays with us much of the time Mick Jones is not actually a member of Rotten Hill Gang, it seems that we are still not quite getting the point.

Here’s a tip - if you want Mick to play at one of your nights, why not ask Mick’s own band, Carbon Silicon to play, or better still, just ask Mick himself! If, however, you want Rotten Hill Gang to play, just ask our manager. And once a deal has been hammered out, don’t then go and promote the gig as being about Mick. It’s an almost surefire way of guaranteeing that it won’t happen. To misquote the Feds, we can neither confirm nor deny that Mick Jones will play at any specific Rotten Hill Gang gig.

Mick Jones

Rotten Hill Gang

Right - I’ll make this simple. Two misconceptions that crop up all over the net.

• The name of the band is “Rotten Hill Gang”, not “Rotting” anything.
• It is not “Mick Jones’s new band”. Neither is it “Mick Jones’s band”. In fact, and I hate to disappoint anyone who’s already bought tickets to one of our subtly misbilled forthcoming gigs, he isn’t even playing with us at the moment because he’s busy playing with Damon’s current live incarnation of Gorillaz.

Um that’s it really. Just making sure we’re clear on that!

Axx

Rotten Hill Revue - the ship is already under way

Ahoy there Cap’n! Bit slow off the mark with this one in that the ship has already left its dock, but the new season of Rotten Hill Revue is under way (full listing below).

Actually we kicked off in style on November 13 with the Dirty Strangers and John Sinclair (am I allowed to prefix that with “The Legendary”? I think I am), who intoned his poetry over both bands. If that night is anything to go by we’re in for a good season and I really ought to try to get individual flyers out for each night. The theme this time is 10s, 20s and 30s travel.

In a rather lovely irony (although strictly by the definition of the Alanis Morissette Little Book of Irony), on December 18 we have Space Ritual playing, the band led by former (and founder) Hawkind member Nick Turner and comprising other Hawkind members.

Considering the interest in Hawkwind that my previous posts on the subject generated, I’m rather looking forward to them being on the same bill as us, not least because that means they’ll be on the same bill as Mick, so they can ask him directly whether their explorations into space rock influenced punk.

The final night of this run is New Year’s Eve, from 8pm till 6am, featuring a whole host of bands an DJs. The theme of that night is The Titanic, so come dressed for the Captain’s dinner.

Full line up (so far - and don’t get precious, the running orders aren’t fixed)
November 27Th…..Skylarkers, Langley Sisters, Dirty Strangers, Rotten Hill Gang
December 11Th…..John Burn, Trojans, Rotten Hill Gang
December 18Th…..Matt Mau Mau, Space Ritual, Dirty Strangers, Rotten Hill Gang
December 31St…..Freak Elite, Skylarkers, Matt Mau Mau, Savage Nomads, John Burn, Johnny Boy, Dirty Strangers, Rotten Hill Gang….

Suzi Quatro’s Can the Can, one of the greatest pop records ever made, if you happen to be about my or John Robb’s age

John Robb, whom Wifey and I recently had the immense pleasure of meeting, posted an article today on his blog postulating that Pop is Dead. I agree with him, but for completely different reasons.

Why is John wrong?
John theorises that great pop was based on the concept of the 7″ single and that as such the format peeked in the 70s with punk. According to him, pretty much for this reason (and the greater involvement of Big Business from the 80s onwards), pop music has been on the decline since the end of the golden decade of the 70s.

And I agree with him! Why? Because John and I are roughly the same age. The best music in the world, ever, was made whenever the listener was between the ages of around 10 to 17 or so, which is why John and I think that the 70s was the golden age of pop music.

I know people 10 years older than me who swear blind that no good songs were written beyond 1969. And wait, what’s this? Wifey is 10 years younger than me and guess what? She’s convinced that no decade before or since has produced pop music as fine as was created during the 80s.

Both of us felt very old a couple of years ago when we watched some up and coming band tell an interviewer that they were “brought up on Oasis”. Yep, to them, there’s never been a decade like the 90s as far as pop music is concerned.

The greatest period of pop music is completely relative to the age of the listener.

Why is John right?
And yet, yes, John is completely correct in his assertion that pop music has been dying since the 70s, but for a different reason to the one he states.

When I was growing up, half the point about listening to “our” music was that our parents didn’t like it. We are the last generation whose parents hated the music we blasted out of our bedrooms and we loved it all the more because of that. Nothing pleased us more than to hear “grown ups” telling us that “There’s no tune, and you can’t hear the words” when we subjected them to what to us was just “obviously good”.

Sometime around mid 80s our contemporaries became parents themselves and because we’d grown up on modern popular music our kids¹ could no longer shock us. I feel quite sorry for them I suppose, robbed as they are of their main raison d’être, but that’s the way it is. From the 50s to the mid 80s, being a teenager was about loving the music your parents hated and that’s what made pop music great.

¹Just for the record, Wifey and I don’t yet have kids, but we are actively working on it.

The dreaded sign of gloom

Like many people I’ve been caught out by the congestion charge, accidentally straying into the zone for 20 feet or so. And like some of those people I once didn’t realise, only finding out a week later when a letter arrived demanding £60 for late payment.

Then there are the times when you’re not quite sure if you entered the zone, or you entered on the stroke of 6pm (when charging stops) according to your watch, but want to know if you are or are not liable. There’s no way to query the system to find out.

But here’s the thing. I’ve previously paid the charge and even have one of those handy “Let us extract money from you even faster” cards, so they already know who I am! They have two phone numbers for me and my email address and particularly in the case of the latter, it would cost absolutely nothing (well - next to) for their system simply to fire off an email to me to let me know, there and then, that I’m liable. Or I could subscribe to a text messaging service to let me know. I wouldn’t mind, really!

That would be too easy however and the lure of being able to extract £60 from me a week later has obviously proved to much. Now when was it Boris intends to abandon the western extension again?

Pizzeria Ristorante Portobello - officially the best Italian in London

At the end of Carnival and on the way back from Don’s traditional Carnival Monday barbecue, Wifey and I stopped into a pizzeria on Chamberlayne Road. For some reason it seemed a good idea at the time (00:30 Tuesday morning since you ask). It wasn’t. The pizza was a vile abomination and had no right to the appellation.

The base was a thick, putty like clump of damp matter, while the topping was a slimy mess of out of date and overcooked vegetation that may or may not have once been the mushrooms and spinach we requested. The only point in its favour must be that both Wifey and I benefited from an ironic nett reduction in calorific intake since we were unable to eat properly for the next four days while the feeling of lumpy goo subsided from our stomachs.

On day two I bumped into Gaz and co who were still coming down from Carnival by way of a cleansing ale in Nektar and told him of our hideous experience and ensuing discomfort.

“You need to try this new place just past the top end of Portobello Road. Pizzeria Ristaurante Portobello”, he told me. Now Gaz likes his food, so I take his recommendations seriously and as luck would have it, yesterday was the day after our wedding anniversary, which we call “Pizza Day” because the day after our wedding we went for a pizza. Two pizzas actually. It’s a tradition which we only started yesterday, but no matter, we decide to give this new place a shot and I’m really glad we did.

Like the pilot of a plane that has been shot down, we knew it was important to get back up in the air as soon as possible, so we hot footed it over there and were pleasantly surprised to see how this former Greek restaurant (and prior to that a rather nice tea rooms called “The Launderette” or some such) had been transformed.

Benefiting from a wide pavement area at the front with extra seating and being light and airy inside, the impression is given of being in a Mediterranean environment while escaping the cheesier aspects that can often result from attempts to give restaurants in London that Latin appeal. Simple and unpretentious is how I’d categorise it. Not, I’ll grant, two words often applied to Notting Hill by outsiders.

And the food - oh the food! Just seeing the pizzas come out while waiting for ours to arrive made us salivate. We chose the “Franco’s Surprise” option - a veggie one for me and a meat one for the carnivorous Wifey. When we asked the waiter what was on it he simply shrugged and said “Who knows?”. Pizzas are sold there by the half metre. It seems like something that’s started to happen here over the last 4 or 5 years, but we’re increasingly informed that “That’s the way they traditionally make it in …”, then tack on the name of the most obscure Italian region you can think of. Whatever, it is good for sharing that way.

When they arrived they were almost perfection. Crusts, thin, bubbly and just with the hint of slightly overdone bits here and there. The toppings, superb. Fresh and tastefully scattered for the perfect rustic effect. Mine was a combination of aubergine, capers, basil, sun dried tomatoes and a couple of other items that elude me at the moment. Wifey had some sort of meat (you understand it’s jut not my field of expertise), basil, rocket and something else.

Why did I say “almost” perfection? Well because to my pallet the combination of tastes was just slightly overwhelming. To be fair I could see myself putting it together too, but I’d be wrong. Wifey usually selects something simple and delicious like mushroom and spinach, possibly with some jalopeno peppers and I always end up enjoying hers more. I’m being very unfair here. It was excellent - the best damned pizza I’ve had in London I think.

The rest of the food looked amazing too and we’ll definitely be back there in the near future after which I’ll be singing its praises again. Pizzeria Ristorante Portobello is the Italian restaurant Notting Hill - no - London, has been waiting for. I’m in love!