Notting Hill Diary

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

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.

That lovely Gaz Mayall has once again asked Rotten Hill Gang to play on his Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues stage on Talbot Road at Carnival

Quite why I’m not sure, because his theme this year is Cuba, while we remain resolutely Dickensian, but no matter, I’m certainly not complaining. Last year was great fun and I’m sure this year will be, plus our drummer Arran will actually get to play this time.

We’ll be on at 2pm. Mick will be playing with us. Not to ruin the surprise, but I just have an inkling that we’ll be playing Should I Say or Should I Go at the end.

Here’s a nice picture of the band. By the way I still don’t really know whether we’re “Rotten Hill Gang” or “The Rotten Hill Gang”. I’m going without the definite article for now. Any thoughts anyone?

A nice picture of Rotten Hill Gang. Left to right: Mick Jones (Guitar - not really in the band ), Arran Ness (Drums), Jimmy Raygun (Rap), Redskin (Rap), Krysten Cummings (Vocals), Alexia Collen (Vocals), Andre Shapps (Guitar), Gary Stonadge (Bass) - photo by the wonderful John Gladdy

After a few wonderful weeks, Mick’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Public Library is finally closing tomorrow.

Nick Reynolds and Viv Albertine thinking meaningful things at each other in the R ‘n’ R Library’s studio

We’ve had some great times there and made some new friends. Rotten Hill Gang played there last night (and thanks to Strummerville for having us) and various members of the band have been involved in a couple of the many recording sessions they had up there in the impromptu studio. One for Ronnie Biggs tune written my Gaz Mayall and Mick¹ and another this week with the Slits’ guitarist Viv Albertine, who I’d never met before, but was thoroughly lovely.

The amiable Ade Sabini, who has been looking after the place, has made a film about it, somewhat in celebration and somewhat commiseration, that I failed to see this afternoon because I was off teaching our new recruit, Gus Robertson, some Rotten Hill Guitar parts².

So all the stuff will now go back to the bunker. There are vague plans and discussions taking place about what to do with it next. One suggestion is for a shop/gallery and that was really Mick’s original idea that he’s been nursing for years.

There’ll never be another library like this and there probably shouldn’t be, because to try to do it again in exactly that way it would be like trying to recreate a great holiday. It can’t be done. Actually I hope it can …

¹It obviously worked because 2 days later he was freed, although where that leaves Gaz’s pile of “Free Ronnie Biggs” t-shirts in unclear.
²Actually teaching is a grossly unfair term. Gus is an excellent guitarist who can figure everything out for himself. We just needed to work out who’s going to play what.

Hawkwind - did punk ever happen?

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.

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.

Portobello Winterfest

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.

Rotten Hill Gang have a flurry of gigs coming up in December - more of that later, but first up in a few weeks we’re playing at Carbon Casino 9.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Carbon Casinos 1..7 were a series of nights hosted by Carbon Silicon, which is Mick Jones’s actual band. Yes I know he plays, records and generally helps us out with RHG and we’re most grateful, but he’s not exactly in (or even out) of the band. Nope Mick has his own outfit with Tony James, but of course most of you know that.

Carbon Casinos 1 to 7 (at Inn on the Green) were a fantastic success and CCs 8 and 9 look to build on that at on December 15 and 16 at The Hammersmith Club. In fact I’ve heard that they’re both sold out already, but there ya go. We’ll be playing the one on Dec 19 and we heartily thank Mick & Tone for the opportunity because the original CCs are where we started out as a live band.

The Hammersmith Club
Rutland Grove
Hammersmith
London W6 9DJ

Rotten Hill Gang are playing … oh crap. The title says it all.

Don’t know what time yet, I’ll update when I do.

OK now I know what time - 10pm.