A lot has happened in the last week, including our sponsorship of the Collings & Herrin podcast #105 hitting the the interwaves. Following our successful cross-pollination of cake, chew bars, satire and Sideshow last Summer (podcast #79), Paulio and I managed to collar the currently furred-of-philtrum Richard Herring after his Berwick-upon-Tweed show in March; pressing a brown envelope stuffed with sweaty money, Al Fayed-style into his comedy-icon palm.
Lo and behold! A mere couple of weeks later, and the C&H podcast is officially sponsored by The Smoking Rolo Sideshow! As stated last time out, I am very happy that the urine was duly extracted from our latest project: it is very much in keeping with the spirit of their endeavour, as sponsorship in almost any other context inevitably equals censorship. With C&H, they categorically reserve the right to say whatever the like about any product or service that wish to contribute: in fact, derogatory comments towards willing sponsors have become a fine tradition within their podcasts, although I also did make the rather redundant comment to Richard Herring at the time that they could make fun of it/us as much as they liked. It's also rather a neat satire on the whole payola/commercial sell-out culture currently infecting modern mass media, and over which the internet is still finding its feet.
Needless to say, it remains something of an honour to be ripped on by these two charming gents; and the SRS are pleased and proud to be able to support another independent operation, in the same spirit of community and cameraderie with which we started this whole ridiculous venture.
They did also mention that as the current incumbents of the Saturday 10-til-1 slot on 6Music, they are ideally placed to get us prominent national airtime, and would probably do so had we not already given them cash and thus ensured they never could. But surely:
1) That's how it works with every other radio station on planet Earth...
2) It wasn't much money: in fact since it was a toss-up between this and a postage stamp-sized advert in the back of the NME, I'm surprised it even stretched to a night out in London. Being from Charlton Mires - and spending most of my time in London either swanning round the Barbican or pogoing at the Shepherds Bush Empire - I have no idea what a "Nando's" is, but I doubt it's The fucking Ritz.
3) Damn.
The silly sods also said that ROCKET SILENCE was already on release. It wasn't: but now it fucking well is! Although that slightly-wide-of-the-mark statement led to a mad couple of days of activity, the album is now available for DOWNLOAD VIA BANDCAMP.COM or the actual CD can be ORDERED VIA PAYPAL. It will be available on Spotify from May, and will be added to iTunes for silly people who haven't twigged that iTunes is bogus. By the way, if you aren't familiar with bandcamp.com it is shaping up to be a terrific proposition for musicians and music-lovers both. The site allows you to pay what you like for downloads, cuts out the middle-man/record companies/Steve effing Jobs who would otherwise skim 90% as pure profit, and offers a range of download formats as well as payment via PayPal, which for eBay addicts such as myself is like breathing in and out.
I have also added Mucho Mojo Baby for dowload on the Bandcamp page, so impressed have I been with the thing: watch this space for further additions...
Also: the MySpazz page has been totally revamped, and is now only an embarassment insofar as MySpazz itself is an embarassment; biography updates continue to flow like drivel from an idiot's keyboard; and some other - more exciting - things which are currently bubbling under surface, to be revealed in full, and in the fullness.
Ben G.x
No: it it's not out yet, the fucking idiots... However, we'll try to get some sort of pre-release release sorted on Bandcamp.com and/or via Paypal by the end of the day, since we love our fellow Collings & Herrin internerds soooo much...
UPDATE: the physical compact disc is available to purchase here via PayPal. The bandcamp.com download site should be available sometime today.
UPDATED UPDATE: ROCKET SILENCE NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNOAD VIA BANDCAMP.COM. In the spirit of the new digital economy you can pay whatever you like, but will need a PayPal account or credit card (unless you're a stingy get).
Ben G.x
Brumtastic studenty-type newspaper Redbrick have featured a review of the black-and-green bitch, which can be found online here.
Top soundbite: "worthy of a disrespectful emo band".
Overall the reviewer seems positive, largely enjoys the music, gets a lot of what we were trying to do; and yet, and yet...
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see music that we dig is dug in circles other than our own, but this review does seem to echo the sentiments of a write-up we got last year from a Nottingham student newspaper (it's somewhere in the Press Archive bit). Again, largely positive but really taking exception to the occasional wilful idiocy of our presentation as "pretentious" (rather than "pompous" on this occasion). At the time - in one of these achingly sensitive 'review-the-reviews' news items - I wrote something to the effect of:
"What has happened to the ironic sensibilities of the nation's young minds, since the days of my own spotty youth when the might of Lee and Herring strode the Earth like sneering, satirical behemoths?"
Music - last time I checked, which admittedly was some time in the late Nineties - can be anything you want it to be, y'know? If you want it to be serious, earnest and bone-crushingly dull, I'm sure there's are bands that cater for that (I am tempted to name a few, but am trying to tone down my John Lydon-eque sneer generally for the greater good of all humanity). A substantial raison d'etre behind the Sideshow is here to lead the listener a merry dance, pick you up from where you are at, waltz you through something strange, different, erring towards the ridiculous sometimes aye but at occasionally showing the odd flash of insight, and drop you down somewhere else after we're done.
Then again, maybe that's just a very pompous take on what music should be; maybe there are too many earnest young men in skinny jeans, writing second division poetry and nicking XTC riffs for us not to get tarred with the same brush; at least, by otherwise-discerning, similarly fresh-faced fowk who look around themselves and despair. Had I not grown up on a steady diet of PWEI, The Auteurs and Viv Stanshall - albeit towards the end of his tragically-foreshortened life - then I'm sure I'd think I was a pretentious fucknut as well.
In fact, I do kind of think that anyway: this post is proof, were any further proof needed...
Ben G.x
First past the post are the ever-dependable and lovely fowk of Rock Pulse who gave us this rather spiffy review for Mucho Mojo Baby a while back. Here is their take on our latest wee snot-nosed whining brat of an album.
Top soundbite: "Eyelids will fall and brain fog will set in."
Well, the first reponse seems very positive once more: although the accusation of 'maturity' sits ill with my more puerile, tongue-in-cheek sensibilities. I guess it does at least capture that we've taken several steps forward with this new project, in terms of writing, performance and overall sonic attack.
Final thought: damn those clunky song titles, I only meant them to amuse and delight...
Ben G.x
Atten-shun! ROCKET SILENCE, the second album - and third release - by The Smoking Rolo Sideshow will be available to buy, download or stream via Spotify and the like from the 3rd of May 2010.
More info will be added as and when it becomes available, along with reviews, feedback, live dates (!) and the usual accompanying loquacious drivel from yours truly. Excitement!
Ben G.x