Slightly Forgettable...

Well... that was a weird couple of weeks!

Gigs have started to filter in for the 2 week blast we’ve got planned for 30^th July to the 15^th August... which is nice! Anyone who wants to suggest us to their local venue is welcome to do so!!!ha!

However, we’ve got a long wait and so we’ve been keeping ourselves busy in other ways...

Ron’s arm is coming along well enough – he’s a cagey fucker though, so it’ll probably be the case that we’ll not hear a peep out of him until he rags it to pieces again!!!

We’re merrily writing away. We’ve got 2 new tunes sorted, both of which you will have heard us play live. We’ve at least 3 in the pipeline and hopefully in a few weeks time we’ll have enough songs that we’ll be able to put the brakes on writing and get in the studio!

Also, we’ve been frantically trying to scrounge out people who’ll review our first demo... we’re not all 100% behind this idea... half of us are reluctant because we think that the CD is not the best recording in the world and then there’s the other half who are adamant that the recording – weak though it may be – stands up well simply because the tunes are so awesome... I’m in the latter camp and, accordingly, I’ve been collecting names and address furiously!!! Hopefully in a month’s time we should have a nice wee crop of reviews, not all of which will say we are utter, utter caque... or as our first live reviewer put it: “Slightly forgettable”!!!

Also, we’ve been thinking about recordings... the plan is still to rattle off a quick 3 track demo to push at the Summer shows, but we’re all aiming for this summer recording... we’ve had a few offers from people to mix it and a few offers to record it, including Lee Malcolm of the Vessels (who are recording in Texas as I write!) which is very cool...

...but the truth is we’re still up in the air about how to go about it, so no doubt that’ll be the next crisis!!!

So, the hunting pack stumbles on, not quite on the same trail, but tracking bountiful prey nonetheless!!!

In a bit,

b!x

Break/Brake!

Alright!

Once upon a time a guitarist called Ronaldo got battered and went for a merry jaunt down Blue John mine... well, it just so happened that the Mine had not eaten for such a long time and it’s favourite snack was Heavy Metal guitarists’ arms... no sooner had young Ronaldo started his descent, dressed in his shiniest sequin flares, 8 inch platforms and sparkly face paint, than the cave gave a mighty rumble and started to chew on Ronaldos arm...

...so basically something like the above actually happened, which means that all my previous talk of ‘The Plan’ was only true for literally a couple of hours...

Turns out that Ronnie’s arm will take about a month to heal and then at least the same to re-strengthen...

What this means is that we will have to cancel all outstanding gigs and have to relinquish the idea of playing shows until late July at the earliest. Now, while on the surface ‘The Plan’ may seem to have been obliterated, here at MOTM, we are far more conniving than you might at first think.

All it means is that we will now spend the rest of May, all of June and most of July writing new material and hopefully – hopefully – book some shows for the last week of July and the first 2 weeks of August.

We also hope to get some recording done. We have a couple songs ready to record and as soon as we have another tune nailed we will, again hopefully, head into the studio, record them bad-boys and release a couple of them on Myspace and put together a new demo to sell at the shows in July/August.

We’re all proper gutted as we all feel that in this short space of time we’ve played some really good shows and have been received so warmly by so many people that it seems such a shame to have to stop this freshly-set-loose beast in its very first steps...

We hope you keep an eye on us, as we will be pushing some bits and pieces (there is talk of doing a mini ‘documentary’ of us in the studio and perhaps some new artwork will be flying around), and bare with us...

In true Manly style, we are looking at this as a positive opportunity, as a blessing in disguise; come July/August we’ll be back with a load of new shit. We’ll give you all a wee taster, a glimpse of what the crack is, but then we’ll be back in the studio August/September and then in October will come the real push...

In the meantime, send money, sexual favours, fashion tips and anything that makes you dizzy...

See you soon!

b!x

"The Plan"...

Prologue:

There is disagreement amongst people about the efficacy of having and making plans… there are those who believe that having a plan is asking for trouble and an almost dead cert route to calamity…

On the other hand, there are those who suggest that having a plan, while never a guarantee for achievement, is a tactic to combat the fickle whims of fate and serendipity…

…

The first thing I want to write is a statement of thanks to everyone who bought a CD off us at the shows that we’ve played in the past couple of months… your individual squid coins for our wee demo have proved so valuable to us in terms of being able to part subsidise our fun… it is pretty cool to think that since February we have managed to shift around 100+ demos and that, directly because of this overwhelming generosity, we’ve been able to travel across the country to do a couple of shows without having to rape our feeble bank accounts!!!

…very fucking cool… ta!

We did Shitstock, a Roth show with our fellow slime-dwellers ‘Hand of Grief’ and we popped our Birmingham cherry with a show at the Old Wharf… for anyone who caught us, I hope it was plain quite how much we enjoy doin’ MOTM and that some of that energy and enthusiasm keeps you popping along to our shows and giving us the odd clap here and there!!!

We were due to play 2 more shows this month – 14^th @ Leeds ‘Royal Park Cellars’ and 23^rd @ London ‘The Gaff’ but unfortunately for different reasons these shows were pulled from under us and so we only have a Leeds show at the Well (used to be Joseph’s Well) on the 27^th… which means that since February we have FIVE (2 x Manchester/ 1 x Leeds / 1 x Notts / 1 x London) shows cancelled by venues or promoters (to our 1 - which was down to a death in the family)… I don’t know if this has to do with bad luck or the wider political and economic situation we are in, but the cynic might be tempted to suggest that other more inane and avoidable factors are at play…

I really hope this isn’t the shape of things to come and that as we get going we will work with all kind of folk as confident, as committed and as concrete as ourselves…

Whilst being pretty gutted about these cancellations, we remain unperturbed… and this is because we have ‘The Plan’… the idea being that we can weather these hiccups and still have plenty of work to be getting on with…

Roughly, we are going to take these next 6 weeks or so until the end of June to write and record at least another 3 track demo. Come July, we hope to do a good run of shows, wind up the propaganda machine and make some noise before disappearing for the summer…

In between tanning our balls, sipping over-priced booze and catching the flus off of aeroplane air-conditioning, August and September will hopefully see us record some 8 tracks or so (all the demoed tracks + a couple more) to a release quality level…

Then we’re on about putting these recordings out in some form or another and focusing on gigging through the winter… hopefully to emerge in the spring with a bit more of a platform to do more recording and releases…

While not set in stone, this is nonetheless ‘The Plan’ and although Serendipity is fickle and sometimes cruel, she is alluring and seductive and rewards those that court her with ambition and overt acts of sacrifice to her honour…

...roll the dice…

b!x