My personal favourite of the ART NOUVEAU tracks. Was going for a real Bon Iver-y kind of vibe I suppose. Sorry about using the word ‘vibe’ there. Too late.
Good ol’ Nelly played sublime trumpet and lap steel on this which I think really elevate the track. The ending in particular I was always really pleased with, the muted piano and layered vocals. Some artists say they hate listening to their own stuff. I’ve always tried to write music that I like and want to hear. Sometimes I mess it up completely and listen back with maximum cringe but other times I feel quite proud. Maybe that’s big headed. I do have to wear a large size of hat.
The lyrics are just a made up nonsense story of an elderly man looking back on his life and young love lost in old Mexico. Why? Why not? I went to Chichen Itza. It was amazing. So in it went. It doesn’t always have to be turmoil and despair you know…
So that’s the ART EP’s in a nutshell. We toured around the UK a couple of times in support…then we took stock, steadied ourselves and began what would really be the final journey. Album 2. Christ what a long time that took….more on that soon sports fans.
As I’ve posted up some shonky covers on the past few posts here’s the last one I’ve found. ‘House’ by Patrick Wolf. Sketchy as you like.
PADRE, OH PADRE!
WOODEN BONES
And so we gallop onwards to the ART NOUVEAU EP. The idea behind it was to present a flip side to the electric, full band ART DECO EP. If you bought that you got a code that would give you a free download for these gentler, acoustic offerings. I don’t think I ever actually got round to sorting it out like that though – instead we just bunged it up on our soundcloud page for any folks to have if they wanted it.
The first track is ‘Wooden Bones’. I recorded most of these songs on my own or with Nelly at Old Blacksmiths during downtime from us working there. I think The Dawn Chorus were recording what would be their last album ‘Tremendous Magic’ around the same period so I asked Kyle if he was up for singing a duet with me and this was the result. It’s a song about being lazy. Of which I am. Lazyness is highly underrated you know. We’d talked about performing it live a couple of times but it never came about. In fact I don’t recall anything on this EP being played live by us. Lazy.
Whatever instruments were around on the day got chucked on – banjo, mandolin, shaker. We were going for a Neutral Milk Hotel/Bright Eyes spontaneous lo-fi(ish) sound I suppose. I was listening to a lot of Decemberists around then too. Hazards of Love. What an album.
Victorious & Free
Hallo there
Being in a band can be a lot of things – invigorating, exciting, liberating, sexually arousing, annoying, incredibly frustrating and heartbreaking – but, ultimately – it’s never boring. This weekend just past proved that with aplomb. I love the word aplomb. Aplomb. Say it. Brilliant.
Friday was the usual ups and downs of playing in London involving a car crash en route (a fairly minor one but still one that wrote off our Ox’s car and meant we had to use a guitar lead to tie the boot shut to get to the gig…) and the standard, minimalistic London crowd. We played well though and it was a good warm up for the next days show which is probably in my top few of recent times….
Victorious Festival was organised by some of the fellows that run a couple of the decent boozers in Southsea – namely Little Johnny Russels and The Belle Isle (Fact #1 – I was the first person to play a gig in LJR’s when it opened….check me out…) and it’s always nice to be involved with something that brings together all the best bits about living in our community. The independent spirit shone through the whole weekend and it was pretty much a roaring success. I even finally got to see Reef!!! (Fact #2 – my first ever gig as a pimply young nipper should have been Reef at Southampton Guildhall and I bought 3 tickets off a tout…silly….only to give the 2 real ones to mates I’d gone with….mates who didn’t know who Reef were….mine was fake and I had to go home….alone…..sniff sniff…..lesson learned though….)
Anyway – our set drew a great crowd and having a decent sound system for a change really does help us with all our silly instrumentation etc…here’s a pic by our Retrospective Soundtrack Playing chum (and trumpeteer on ‘Chemikals’) Pauly B:
Sexy hat eh? EH?
The rest of the day was spent catching up with chums and wandering about enjoying the delights of Portsmouth Dockyard…the wonderful old ships of the Mary Rose, the Warrior & the Victory are certainly beautiful backdrops for a festival. Special mention also goes to All About Tea for supplying their top notch Portsmouth Tea blend when the queue for the Ale Tent was too long….oh and Day of the Rabblement sounded great on the acoustic stage too.
Our sexy lovers Pie & Vinyl where also there ‘representin their endz’ with a stall in the Smuggler’s Market. They asked us back on the Sunday to do a ‘secret’ unplugged set for them which was most enjoyable….mainly because rugby player Rob had to ask the Camp Cooks (the excellent on site Drag Queen caterers…) to turn their music off for a bit so myself and Elliott could fumble our way through some songs we rarely play. Here’s a pic by the ace Joe Watson (who did our ‘Wander’ vid and fronts ace hardcore band ‘Attack! Vipers!’):
special friends….and me still looking good in the hat…
Here too is a wee review from the wonderous (and fantastically named) music blog ‘Call Upon the Author’:
http://www.callupontheauthor.com/blog/4489/victorious-festival-one-mans-view/
All this good cheer in the air has led me to think should give something back so we’ve made our twin EP’s from a couple of years back FREE to download for a while on our Soundcloud page. ‘
ART DECO’ is full band electric stuff and ‘ART NOUVEAU’ is stripped back acoustic stuff. Have a gander and see what you think. ‘Padre, oh Padre!’ on ‘ART NOUVEAU’ is one of my fave songs we’ve written but…for some reason…we’ve never played it live. Doubt we ever will either. Odd that.
Anyway – here they are for you:
…and…
So….finally…..that brings us to our next gig and one of our favourite events on the planet. The mighty Southsea Fest. I think we’re the only band who’s played every single one of these. God that makes us sound like seasoned veterans rather than the clueless amateurs we so successfully seem to portray on a daily basis. Best line-up yet too….
See you there.
Wit
xxxx
TBOTB
Where are we now?
…as a certain David Jones might say…
Soooooo….let’s briefly recap dear reader….
Had a couple of messages recently that go along the lines of ‘ahhhh I remember seeing some stuff about you lot a few years back and then you disappeared…bit of a shame’
Well – I cannot comment on whether our perceived disappearance would be a ‘shame’ or not but thought I’d just give you a bit of a lowdown on what goes on/has gone on behind the scenes. You may or may not be interested…but if you’re not…WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING LOOKING AT THIS BLOG??? GETOUTTAHERE!!!
Anyhoo. As far as it goes for us, we’ve never been away. In fact, everywhere I turn, I’m there. It’s ruddy irritating to be honest. Our first album came out in 2009 and we toured it around the country to various dingy back rooms. Some amazing, some not so much. Many of those early gigs were a bit more acoustic in nature as there wasn’t so many of us in the band and they were often easier for us to play. In fact, amusingly, we were nominated for a Folk Award even though we’re not particularly any more folky than…oooh, I don’t know, Slayer or someone…that may be a slight stretch but…you catch my drift. Just because we wield the occasional banjo or accordion, the arran sweaters are firmly stashed away (for now). I even wrote my Uni dissertation on notions of genre and how we perceive them don’cha know??? So check me out.
So, folk or not, in 2010 we recorded and released 2 EP’s….’Art Deco’ and ‘Art Nouveau’. One was electric-y, full bandy, sample-y stuff and one was more solo-y, traditional-y, acoustic-y stuff. As is often the case with EP’s however, these sort of slipped beneath the radar and no-one really noticed. We liked them though.
Since then a variety of things have occurred…first off, I swanned around travelling a bit…growing various beards and wrote most of what was to become our new soon-to-be-released-honest-guv album. The people who made up TBOTB swapped around a fair bit too so myriad rehearsals and low-key gigs testing out new material and members was pretty much the de rigeur order of the day in 2011.
It was also the year of a few side-projects that developed into other things which naturally took up plenty of tim. Myself and Mr Rhodes dallied with our inner noise-rockers in Analogue Manilow, Elliott stepped in to alt-country-pop-rock mode with the Retrospective Soundtrack Players. Again, a few members went off on their own journeys and more new members came into our warm bosom (titter titter). Southsea’s musical fraternity is like that. I for one relish it and it means I’ve had the honour of playing with some amazing musicians of whom all are now firm friends. And that’s the important part really isn’t it? Yes. Yes it is.
So – anyway – fast forward to 2012 – album 2 was finished and ready to go. Self recorded and produced we were as happy as pie with it…but the opportunity arose for another good pal of ours, the esteemed Mr Jake Gordon, to give it a bit of an extra mix and polish. My word we’re glad he did. Here’s a bit of info about him and his recent work (including stuff he’s done with a couple of our fave bands…)
http://miloco.co.uk/engineers/jakegordon.php
Jake made everything sound a hundred times greater than we could have ever achieved on our own so it was well worth that extra wait. So, prepped, ready-to-go, gorged with fresh blood and mixed perfectly…..our dear little indie label Jelly Maid Music fell off the cliff into the abyss! T’was a sad day for all and meant, like The Littlest Hobo, we were now homeless…
After touting it around to a few of the labels that we love and trust and being greeted with stares that I’m sure Joseph and Mary received in Jerusalem before they bedded down in someones shed or something, we realised that we were probably looking at a self-release. Now these aren’t necessarily a bad thing as it means you have total control (always good) and can create your own world around you…..BUT….you also have no money (or we certainly don’t) nor any inbuilt ‘network’ of friendly faces and industry peeps to help you out or fight your corner.
If you can now, at this point dear reader, imagine a hero – swarthy and muscular – swooping in and grasping us in their bulging arms while we look up doey eyed and, well theres no other word than aroused, then please feel free to do so as that is basically the truth of it. I’m not going to reveal all yet (where’s the fun in that?) but, rest assured, April is certainly going to be a splendid milestone in The B of the Bang’s strange, exciting, terrifying adventure…
Keep your ears to the ground BangFans
xxx
ps just in case you wondered David Jones is David Bowie’s real name. Told you I went to university.
Gigs! Free Music! The World Wide Web!
Aloha!
First up – 2 London gigs are on the horizon. We’d love to see some friendly faces at them. Well, just faces really….
- WED 3rd OCT: Death2Disco, Notting Hill Arts Club
- FRI 5th OCT: Camden Wheelbarrow
Secondly – we’re trying to get everything up to date and ready to go for album 2’s imminent release. As a part of this, for a limited time, we’re offering our first album ‘Beginning. Middle. End.’ and our twin EP’s ‘ART DECO’ & ‘ART NOUVEAU’ AS WELL AS our brand new forthcoming single as FREE DOWNLOADS over on our Soundcloud page….that’s 20+ songs! For nowt!
Don’t say we never give you anything….
http://soundcloud.com/thebofthebang
So…you’ve got the back catalogue sorted now. Where do you go to keep up with what’s occuring in BangLand?
http://www.thebofthebang.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/thebofthebangwillsaveyou
https://twitter.com/thebofthebang
http://www.youtube.com/user/thebofthebang
http://jellymaidmusic.com/artists/the-b-of-the-bang/
And if you’re reading this you’ll already know about our blog won’t you? Good.
See you very soon…..very very soon
TBOTB
xxxxxx
The B of the Bang 