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[The Ghost Of Fudge]

Fudge and the Moorings Bar proudly present:

GOLDBLADE + Bones Of Freedom (Sweden) + Escape To Victory
Saturday 11th April 2009, 8pm-1am.



Goldblade on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
Goldblade - Goldblade

Still fighting the punk rock war, GOLDBLADE were formed in 1996 by ex-Membranes front man John Robb. Maintaining the swagger and sharp edge, Goldblade have incessantly toured the world on the back of their last album, 'Rebel Songs'; their best selling album yet.

In the last 12 months Goldblade have been tearing it up at huge festivals across the planet and on big punk tours. Their sweatshod adrenalised live show has built them a powerhouse reputation on the international punk rock circuit. In a blur of sharp threads, fierce quiffs and phat shoes, Goldblade have taken the maxim that rock 'n' roll is a physical thing to its Olympian limits. This is truly a revolution of everyday life! Punk rockers in the dancehall!

'Rebel Songs' was inspired by the ugly politic of our times. Songs were written on anti-Iraq war demos, missives from the frontline of mediaeval Britain; it's a re-affirmation of punk rock's political roots, a loud shout back at the vile corporate world, a celebration of the rebel song and a set of stirring rabble rousing anthems to dance and sing along to. Every song is an anthem. Proof that punk rock still has meaning in 2006. Lyrically it's a brilliant skewiff vision of the world, Captain Beefheart twisted surrealism mixes easily with northern humour and punk rock anger.

Goldblade have written a populist album that will sit in alongside both Green Day and Rancid, they have shared the stage with Buzzcocks and The Offspring amongst many others, they have been compared to The Clash and give a nod to Crass - it's got one brothel creeper firmly placed in the wild polemic of late seventies punk rock and the other in the punk rock of 2006.

Goldblade are equally at home playing in the stadiums of Russia, huge festivals in Europe and any venue in the world. "This is the people's music," they explain mysteriously. Their audience ranges from pre-teens to gnarled punk rock veterans, Goldblade's insane energy and punk rock celebration welcomes everyone. There are no boundaries.

Plus support from classic Swedish rockers Bones Of Freedom (hippie/hard rock/70’s psychedelic) and local boys Escape To Victory (quad-vocal hardcore punk rock).

Goldblade on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
Bones Of Freedom on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads
Escape To Victory on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

TICKETS ONSALE NOW FROM THE BAR.

[The Ghost Of Fudge]

Goldblade - A video taken at the Moorings Bar

[The Ghost Of Fudge]

SATURDAY!

tickets onsale til friday night...

xxx

[The Ghost Of Fudge]

INCLINATION MAGAZINE: How’s your latest release “Mutiny” doing for you?

JOHN ROBB: It’s sold slightly better than the one before. The other one did good for an underground band, which is what we are, really. I’d say it’s done about 10% better. It’s from touring for us and playing festivals because a band like us, we don’t get the radio, coz in England they don’t play our kind of music on the radio. I think there’s maybe one punk show on Radio 1 and they play us. That’s it, that’s all you’re gonna get, so just by doing support gigs and festivals, anyone outside of those who have already heard of us, get to hear our music. It’s kind of frustrating.

I.M: Where was it recorded?

JOHN ROBB: It was recorded in London at Pat Collier’s studio. Pat used to be in “The Vibrators” years and years ago. He has this cool little studio and does a lot of the punk bands. He did Cock Sparrer- they’re on the same label as us. He’s very laid back, gets the job done. We did a really quick thing, we did it in about six days because we’d rehearsed and because of touring. He did a really top job, it sounds ace.

I.M: Who did the CD artwork? I really like it!

JOHN ROBB: This guy called Simon Clegg. I grew up in Blackpool and I was in a band called The Membranes in the 70s and 80s and he did every single sleeve with us. He’s like a mate. The guitar player in The Membranes was a guy called Mark Tilton and his brother was Ian Tilton, he is quite a famous music photographer in England now. I used to work with him for Sounds, did loads and loads of jobs together, he’s got quite a big reputation now. Now his best mate in school was Simon Clegg and that’s how we knew him. It’s kinda weird how everyone you know seems to be good at something. You don’t expect anyone to do anything good in Blackpool, but somehow we had this little crew of people that were good at stuff and like all punk bands you just use your little pool of friends. What we did was, describe the picture the picture to Simon, and then he’d send a little pencil line of it, we’d say, “Can you change this, this and this? Make it look more dark, more macabre” and he’d send me back a new drawing. I like the way he draws. Look at the Membranes artwork, there’s loads of his stuff all over the Internet.

IM: Do you write the lyrics? I hear you’re a bit of a writer…

JOHN ROBB: Yeah, yeah I am. I write books. I just finished writing this big book about Manchester. So I’m always writing, writing lyrics, writing little stories. It’s kinda funny; you spend your whole life tapping away at your laptop. It’s not very Punk Rock is it? You kinda get into music because you love it and you want to play it, how did I end up writing about it? It wasn’t really the plan, you know?

I.M: Do you currently have a single out from the album?

JOHN ROBB: We did a Christmas single. We re-recorded one track off the album, “City Of Ghosts” and did “City of Christmas Ghosts” with Poly Styrene of X-Ray Specs. It came out in the UK only, we did a couple thousand vinyls of it, it’s sold out here, but you can get it on iTunes if people wanna get it. If you look it up on YouTube, there’s also a video of me and Poly walking down the Prom in Brighton. Poly sounded ace, sounded like she did when she was younger, she’s great, really cool! If we’d been on a big label, if we’d had lots of money, we could have had a big hit with it, but our hands are tied. To have a big hit, you have to have loads of money. It’s funny, when you’re a little kid, you think you’re gonna make lots of money getting a hit record but it costs you about twenty thousand quid to get one in the charts. I don’t have that money at all, and of course we can’t get on the radio! There’s just every excuse in the world to not play your record. “Well we don’t play that type of music” “Well what type of music do you play?” You go to an alternative station and they wont play it, you go “Oh it’s alternative music is it? Is it too alternative for you?” They move the goal posts all around all the time you know.







I.M: Tell me about your band Goldblade.

JOHN ROBB: We’re essentially a punk rock band, there’s no limitation. There’s so many styles of music and they’ll all emerge in there somewhere. I grew up a Punk Rocker and I still listen to Punk Rock a lot. But I like a lot of different styles of music, blues, hip-hop, rap. I don’t narrow myself down and somehow it’ll end up in our sounds, we don’t do a hip hop track, because there’s nothing more corny than a band like ours trying to do a hip hop track, but there’ll be little flavours of it mixed in there, which no-one would notice unless they knew how we did it. It all kinda mooshes together into our songs. We like the crowds to join in and sing with us, because to us, Punk Rock is communal experience. It’s not about Rock Stars, like with U2 or something. We’ve played some pretty big gigs in our time and it’s great when you play the song and you get the whole crowd to sing them that to me is one of the important things about Punk Rock, breaking down that barrier between the band and the audience. It’s about community too, it’s a world-wide community, that’s a very modern thing, you can have more in common with someone in Chicago than you have with your next door neighbours, kind of more joined together like, because of the internet. Because we’re a band that tours around the world, you can feel this community it’s very strong out there. There’s people in Tokyo that are on your wavelength and you can find them, and I like that idea of Punk Rock.

I.M: I saw on your calendar that you’re going to be playing “Mutiny Festival”…

JOHN ROBB: Yeah a festival named after our album, isn’t that cool!?

I.M: Yeah it is! I was going to ask if it has anything to do with your album, that’s awesome!

JOHN ROBB: The Organizer is a huge Goldblade fan, and because we have a lot of energy, I think he’s got some of that energy from us. The idea of Goldblade is to inspire people to do stuff. I know bands sell merchandise, which is nice because it’s what keeps a band afloat, but I think there’s more about going to a gig. You know we go to see some of these big bands sometimes and people with queue and buy six T-shirts and I think, “Why not buy one T-Shirt and a guitar and make your own music?” because really that’s what Punk Rock is all about. This guy, Fisher, can’t play music, so he’s putting on his own festival. I think it’s really good. But it’s a tough call with the recession, but give him credit, he’s put his mind to it and sorted it out. He’s put a lot of money into it. He’s selling a lot of tickets now and it’s going to be one of the main punk festivals this summer. Another thing we did is we got in touch with one of the punk festival promoters and said “Look, all you guys have got to work together, there’s no point in having rivalry” and they’re all good mates now and going to each other’s festivals, which is important too, because it’s all about teamwork in the music we’re involved in, because you don’t get the radio, we don’t get a lot of press. So we have to work together to keep our bands alive. All the bands do know each other and do tend to work together, which I think is really cool as well. Sharing information.

I.M: Do you know who else is playing?

JOHN ROBB: Stiff Little Fingers, UK Subs…You know when you play so many festivals, you forget who’s playing at which one, they’re roughly the same bill at each one. It’s on the internet- look at the website…
MySpace.com - MUTINY FESTIVAL - 25 - Male - Bridlington, UK - www.myspace.com/mutinyfestival

I.M: Where else will you be going on tour this year?

JOHN ROBB: UK tour in April, then we’re gonna do a German tour in Oct/Nov. Another big UK tour around that. We’re trying to get back into America. Got back in touch with SOS Records, see if they wanna do the album and then…it’s kinda hard to tour America, because the real problem is getting a visa. Just to go over there it costs about three thousand quid, to get the whole band into America. Where the other way around: American bands get to come into England for free, bit crap really ain’t it? There’s a lot of paper, it’s really complex. So a lot of bands aren’t touring right now.

I.M: I grew up listening to bands like The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers…I know you now play shows with these guys. Who did you grow up listening to and have you had the chance to play with anyone that was a huge influence on you?

JOHN ROBB: I grew up with Glam Rock bands like Mott The Hoople, T-Rex, Bowie, all that kind of stuff. But it seems very unattainable, like it’s from a different planet, that kind of music. The great thing about Punk is that it’s made so you can do it yourself and that’s such a powerful message. You know when the Buzzcocks did “Spiral Scratch” it was like, WOW! They have made this record themselves. You could tell they’d photocopied the sleeves. You think you can actually make your own record. Now it’s nothing because you can just shove all your tracks on the Internet, but at that age, just the idea of making a record that everyone could hear just seemed absolutely impossible. It was quite inspirational that you could make your own record, so that’s what we did. We made our own record. So for the punk thing…the glam thing turned me onto music, but the punk thing turned me onto making music, the idea that you could make your own stuff. You didn’t have to learn eight hundred chords to make a song. We couldn’t even play our first gig- we just got up on stage and tried, that’s what it should be, you know? You don’t have to be a virtuoso to be in a band. If we’re at a gig and some band’s playing and they’re really struggling, ore power to them, at least they’re up there trying to do something.

I.M: What do you think sets you apart from other Punk bands of this era that has made you so successful?

JOHN ROBB: What sets us apart? Well I dunno. We’ve got our own little version of what Punk Rock is and I don’t think that any version is more right or wrong than any other version. You can play on a bill with a band like Conflict, they’ve got an absolute wall of sound, it’s great because it’s challenging, there’s a lot of energy and anger to it. They sound completely different from what we do but somehow we’re joined together, you know? I don’t see it, as one band’s better or more important than the other. I guess what we have as a band is the songs are catchy, melodic, there’s a lot of energy, we do a really full-on gig, a lot more energy than most bands. We took a lot of care over the lyrics. Yeah those kinds of things give us our flavour, and because we’ve been playing a long time, we’re a tight band.

I.M: What’s your opinion on the current state of politics and the economy in both the UK and the US? How do you think the music industry, that’s already struggling will get through this?

JOHN ROBB: Quite interesting really, because its all those things we’ve been singing about for years in the Punk Scene, ya know? It’s the end of capitalism, or it should be. You can tell they’re really panicking, the money people. They’re trying to put a finger in a dam that has a massive crack in it. I think with Obama getting in, there’s not much he can do, it’s a feel-good factor, the situation is fucked. We’ve had this situation before where we’ve crashed and come out the other side, but how long is the crash gonna last for? The bank system is so corrupt, so bent. You can’t justify the money they make shoveling bits of paper around; it’s not even real money. I often wonder what the fuck they really do. How can they justify making all that money when nurses are making none, it’s a fucked up society. In a thousand years time people will look back and say, “How could they do that? It doesn’t make any sense” You know, how we look back on the Victorian era when people lived in the city full of clouds of smoke, or families of six people living in the cellar of a house like they did in Manchester, you know that seems really wrong. These guys pay themselves huge amounts of money and bonuses for basically shifting fake money around, they’re criminals, they’re crooks aren’t they? And they’ve been found out. All those years, those political people on the punk scene who know about this, talk about this, sing about this, and now it’s general knowledge. I can’t say I’m sorry to see these people fucking up. I think its bad that people lose their jobs as a result of these people’s greed, but I think the way we were living up to the point of this recession was absolutely ridiculous. I’ve got a car, but it’s twenty thousand quid and it’s not as good as one that’s twenty-four grand, so I’ll buy one on me card. Why not keep that one car going? People living beyond their means for a long long time. In the end all our debt gets called, and that’s what’s happening now. I think that’s a fucked up situation, but people are adaptable, people deal with situations. The other big story of our times of course is the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and I think that’s a fucked up situation as well. Hopefully Obama will put out the hand of friendship. I know he’s tried; it’s kind of weird- he does that then sends twenty thousand troops into Afghanistan. I hope it’s not a case of says one thing and does another; you’re hoping he is what you believe he is. To have America respected again- no feared, but liked to a certain extent, at least like it was before Bush became President where people loved American culture. They didn’t like the president so much, but they loved the culture. It’s sad when you see people hating America because there’s some great things about America, just not the people who run it. That’s what’s exciting about Obama, there’s a person that the people said, “I like this guy” He does seem really likeable. The people over here are more excited about him getting in than anyone getting in over here! With the current situation everyone needed an “up” something to get excited about. There’s no way he can be as good as what people are hoping, that’s impossible. Also everyone has different expectations, so you have to compromise them somehow. But I would like to see him make friends with as much of the world as he can do. There are some with such extreme positions they will be impossible to make friends with, but with a little diplomacy, a lot of situations could be sorted out there. I just wonder what the comedians are gonna do now, because Bush was such an easy target!

I.M: You have a new book out on the history of Punk Rock! Do you want to tell us about it?

JOHN ROBB: That one came out a year and a half ago actually. It’s all quotes, about six hundred pages long- a huge book! It came out really good; it’s done really well! The new book I’ve got coming out is the same format; it’s The Oral History Of Manchester Music. It starts off with Punk; we kind start out with the Buzzcocks into Joy Division, goes on into Roses, Happy Mondays and ends with Oasis. It’s all about generation really. The generation by Punk Rock N’ Roll and how they diversified and criss-crossed the music into different styles and ends with Oasis because Noel’s probably the last person that grew up on the edge- he’s younger, but he grew up touched by punk rock living in Manchester. So I thought it was an interesting place to end it, when Oasis played to 250,000 people at Knebworth, which is quite a spectacular place to end. It starts off with The Pistols and Buzzcocks gig and 40 people there which basically started the Manchester scene, a really important gig. It’s a really great story, because no matter what you think of the bands, they’re all really interesting characters. You’ve got people like Johnny Marr and Ian Browne and they can really talk, they understand their pop-culture inside out. They know why they’re wearing a pair of socks and what record that pair of socks related to. They’re like Pop Professors, not academics, but people that lived it. There’s a lot of people that are really good talkers like that in the book. It was hard squeezing everything in the book, a lot of it had to be edited out. It’s about a tenth of the size it could have been. It’s coming out in the UK and Europe in April, then the agent’s going to look for a deal in America.

I.M: How many books have you written?

JOHN ROBB: Four. One’s about the history of Manchester. One’s about the noisy underground scene of the 80s when I was involved with The Membranes. So there was The Membranes, The Three Johns, Nightingales, The Witness. It was like the post post punk scene. Very Underground. We were all over the world; we toured America a few times, all over Europe. It was little pockets of resistance to crap in the mainstream really.

I.M: Is it true that you gave us the phrase “BritPop”?

JOHN ROBB: Yeah I did. It’s not the world’s cleverest piece of word play. 1988 I reviewed The La’s over in Liverpool and I’d seen some article on British Punk bands and they’d called it “BritCore” So I just twisted it around and called The La’s BritPop a week after. And that was six years before BritPop started. It kinda kicked around the press then stuck to that scene. It used to be a little game when working for newspapers, quite fun actually, making up completely fake adjectives, but they would stick and people would just start using them. I made up quite a few at the time, but I can’t remember them now.

I.M: You’ve accomplished so much! What would you say is your greatest achievement so far?

JOHN ROBB: Surviving.
Being able to create something, that’s one hell of an achievement. So many young bands, they get a record deal, make a couple of records, get dropped, split up and they don’t make music ever again. Being creative is in your blood; it’s there all the time. Whether you’re walking around or if you’re lying in bed you’re thinking up tunes and ideas and concepts. It doesn’t switch off does it? If you’re in a band for only two years, you’d have to force yourself to not think like that anymore. I don’t really understand that because it’s always going on. It’s a little fire that doesn’t go out. I can’t say: On April 4th 1989 I did this thing that was really mega, its lots of little things.

I.M: Have you started writing any new material for another album yet?

JOHN ROBB: Yeah, we got about four new songs. We’ll probably wait to do another album until next year because we’ve got to tour America with this one first. Give it time to get this one sold. We’re not like U2, where we put the record out and get on TV- they’ve been on TV like twenty times the last week! It’s not like that; it’s just the way the cards are dealt. So if we were to tour America this time next year, we’d be touring the new album and we’d be getting ahead of ourselves. It’s not like we ever stop writing though.

I.M: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

JOHN ROBB: Go check out our music on myspace, you can make up your own minds about us, Myspace is great for all that stuff, shame it’s owned by Murdoch but it’s great for bands coz it lays out your table: Here’s what we sound like, here’s our videos, come check us out. And when we come play in America, if you like our music, come check us out, come chat and that cause we’re not a band that sits in the dressing room like rock stars doing cocaine or something. We like to hang out with people and talk about Punk Rock all night, that’s what we love doing, you know? We wanna hear other people’s music as well.

[Shaki]

What are the approximate (or exact if you like) stage times?

[The Ghost Of Fudge]

(approx, natch)

E2V - 8.30pm
Bones of Freedom - 9.30pm
GOLDBLADE - 10.30pm

(something along those lines)

[The Ghost Of Fudge]

tickets still onsale, btw

[Shaki]

Fighting on the dancefloor, fucking in the streets, wo oh oh oh oh, wo oh

[The Ghost Of Fudge]

ooohhhh ohhhhhhh strictly hardcore, strictly hardcore...

[kirkt]

Good night, Goldblade did not disapoint and Strictly 'Ardcore has been in my head all day. Had to leave before the end, did they play Haircut? I meant to buy John Robb's book but I forgot.