Notting Hill Diary

The mighty Rotten Hill Gang are playing Inn On the Green this Friday, Sept 26 2008.

Expect our usual helping of Dickensian tinged rap, blues, rock, soul, dub etc. We’ll be debuting a couple of hot new tunes. All together now: “Maybe it’s because we’re all Londoners …”.

Axx

Rotten Hill Gang are to play an acoustic set at the Tavistock (41 Tavistock Crescent W11 1AD),  on Thurs, 18/09/2008 and a full set at Cobdens (170 Kensal Road, London, W10 5BN) on Fri, 19/09/2008.

The Tavistock is free, Leave a comment to this post and I’ll see about guest listing you for Cobdens!

Ranking Roger is far fitter than a man of his age has any right to be

But surely this was in Camden!
OK this didn’t actually happen in Notting Hill, but it happened anyway so I’m going to write about it. Last Thursday and Friday Wifey and I went to see The Beat, supported by Nevile Staple of The Specials at the Jazz Café in Camden. Neville’s band is always briliant and last week they were tighter than I’d ever see them as they ran through a storming set of Specials songs and also the Fun Boy Three’s “The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum”, which they ska’d up for the occasion.

Then The Beat came on. Sadly over the last five years they’ve been reduced from 4 to 2 original members with the loss of keyboard player Blockhead and the legendary Saxa on sax, but they have been more than ably replaced and, crucially, Everett Morton is still there pinning down the groove on drums.

You could actually just listen to Everett hammering out his speeded up steppers rhythms all night, possibly with a hint of bass and the odd flanged and delayed guitar and you’d know instantly that you were listening to The Beat.

That said, the band these days is still all about the charismatic Ranking Roger and his son Murphy, AKA Ranking Junior. Now 25, his and Roger’s voices are almost indistinguishable and they mesh together over the fearsome rhythm section that set the precedent for the dubbier end of drum ‘n’ bass.

Sure they played all the hits and more. But what I truly love about The Beat is that it’s apparently very simple music that I DON’T QUITE UNDERSTAND! I mean there’s nothing to it. Everett plays nothing more than a fast four on the floor steppers kick, the odd syncopated sidestick and a driving hi hat on straight 8s, but somehow when accompanied by the bass (almost a lead instrument in this context) it’s the greatest dance music you’ve heard in your life.

And that’s before you get to the songs, in themselves pop gems. The Beat are among my top four or five favourite bands and long may they continue to do their unique thing that’s ska but not ska, punk but not punk and pop but not pop. What they are is absolutely sublime and I defy anyone to be in the audience at one of their gigs without a permanent grin on their face from start to finish.

One of the highlights of the night (both nights) comes with the first song of the encore. In one of the more ad libbed moments of the evening (and I say there should be more!), Murphy kicks off the show’s new start by freestyling a fast ragga lyric (no matter that it’s too fast for anyone to catch the words). The keyboard player works his way in and then without warning, Roger appears on drums playing a driving dancehall beat in perfect sync with the new bassist to accompany his son.

It’s a truly magic moment and, as with most of the set, it’s one that leaves me with craving that can only be sated by going to see them again, which I surely will. Next time they’re in town.

Last night was the (re)opening night of George Vjestica’s legendary Dirty Roar acoustic night at the newly reopened Tavistock pub on Tavistock Road, its previous owners having recently been detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Dirty Roar has always had a great vibe and now that it’s rediscovered its spiritual home, it looks set to move forward apace. A variety of mainly solo singer songwriters performed, followed by your very own Rotten Hill Gang, doing acoustic versions of some of our songs.

I think it’s fair to say that non one could ever accuse us of over rehearsing the acoustic set. In fact the entire time we’ve spent working on it amounts to a few run throughs in Gary’s living room and an hour during the summer in my driveway. Compounded by the fact that we have yet to play any two gigs with the same line up, last night was always going to be somewhat off the cuff, but we surprised even ourselves.

“Fed Up” morphed into a reggae song, while “Londoner” mysteriously gained half a verse and lost a chorus. During “Pick a Pocket”, my accordion, which had been wheezing for some time now, developed a gaping hole in the bellows. Oddly none of this seemed to matter and the set was very we’ll received. One half of our management team, the photographer Richard Young, was on hand with his camera so I might be able to persuade him to let me use a couple of shots here.

The good news (for us at least) is that it looks like we’l be playing there quite often, so the acoustic set should pull itself together nicely and organically. It probably doesn’t hurt at al that George, himself a talented guitarist and all round musician, plays with us whenever he’s available, as opposed to his day job playing guitar for Groove Armada.

 

Greek food that is far nicer than the food we endured this evening

Wifey and I have just come back from what we think was probably our worst restaurant experience ever. I’m not going to name names, but it was just outside the area and it was Greek.

Her starter of calimari was both hard and rubbery and most definitely inedible. I had a selection of three starters. Houmous, baba ganoush and a mushroom dish of no specific origin. While we sent her calimari back immediately (it was replaced by some that was average, which in context seemed good), we had just brushed our teeth before leaving home, so we assumed that that was the reason why the starters tasted funny to us.

A few mouthfuls later we realised it wasn’t. The baba ganoush had the desparately sour taste of wrinkley old aubergines that they’d attempted to mask by adding too much tahini. The mushrooms had overtones of mould and way too much cinnamon, but the pièce de résistance was my houmous, which tasted more than faintly of puke.

Finally, wifey’s main course of kofta was as dry, stale an overcooked as her calimari had been. We gave up all hope at that point, sent it back, cut our losses and drove up to Sainsburys to buy a couple of sachets of instant soup just to get the taste out of our mouths.

Why am I not naming the restaurant? Well because if I do you won’t go to it and if I don’t you won’t go to it either because you won’t know about it and in general I hate to criticise people who are trying hard, plus it’s only my opinion (although houmous that tastes as if it’s been regurgitated is more than an opinion).

But while we were sitting there, we had an idea for a new site where only bad reviews are posted. Doesn’t this go against everything I said in the last paragraph? Um - yup! But I never said I was an angel! The reviews won’t necessarily be of restaurants, they could be of plays, movies, anything. And extra points will be awarded if you went there with high hopes, either because you’d read good reviews, had it recommended by someone you trusted, or simply had one of those “feelings” you sometimes get when you think something is going to be good. Any bad review will be welcome. but if you had hopes that were dashed you will gain extra kudos.

We’re working on the domain name at the moment, but as soon as we get it up and running we’ll let you know. Meanwhile, keep trying to remember all those places you’ve wanted to spread the bad word about and be ready to submit a bad review.

Mr Vjestica is not in the mood for any monkey business!

George Vjestica revives his Dirty Roar acoustic night this coming Thursday at the newly reopened Tavistock. And would you Adam and Eve it, the opening night only features our very own Rotten Hill Gang playing acoustic versions of some of their own songs.

The night itself? I can’t do better than to quote he Dirty Roar myspace page:

“George Vjestica started the Dirty Roar Club in 2005 at The Mother Black Cap and it has since grown to become THE most Rocking & Rolling acoustic night Notting Hill / Ladbroke Grove has seen in years. Fused with singers & musicians, known and yet to be discovered, the Dirty Roar weekly delivers a great night out. Add a DJ set of classic & contemporary rock / soul / blues / indie”

The Tavistock
41 Tavistock Crescent
London W11 1AD
Tel 020 7727 9250

Grrr!

I know I thought the same thing in a moment of madness but ..
It’s almost certainly nothing to do with me. Some other idiot (that’s an idiot other than me) made the same dumb mistake as I did and assumed that the “e” had been missed off the “creat”.

Yes I feel bad! But not as bad as the crazed hooligan who “corrected” the “creat” to “create”. Hanging’s too good for the miscreant.

I may feel more charitable in the morning, but I’m not so sure.