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GOLDBLADE return to THE MOORINGS BAR - Sat 11 April


The Ghost Of Fudge

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Fudge and the Moorings Bar proudly present:

GOLDBLADE + Bones Of Freedom (Sweden) + Escape To Victory

Saturday 11th April 2009, 8pm-1am.

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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/70s 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.

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INCLINATION MAGAZINE: Hows your latest release Mutiny doing for you?

JOHN ROBB: Its sold slightly better than the one before. The other one did good for an underground band, which is what we are, really. Id say its done about 10% better. Its from touring for us and playing festivals because a band like us, we dont get the radio, coz in England they dont play our kind of music on the radio. I think theres maybe one punk show on Radio 1 and they play us. Thats it, thats all youre 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. Its kind of frustrating.

I.M: Where was it recorded?

JOHN ROBB: It was recorded in London at Pat Colliers 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- theyre on the same label as us. Hes very laid back, gets the job done. We did a really quick thing, we did it in about six days because wed 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. Hes 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, hes got quite a big reputation now. Now his best mate in school was Simon Clegg and thats how we knew him. Its kinda weird how everyone you know seems to be good at something. You dont 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 hed send a little pencil line of it, wed say, Can you change this, this and this? Make it look more dark, more macabre and hed send me back a new drawing. I like the way he draws. Look at the Membranes artwork, theres loads of his stuff all over the Internet.

IM: Do you write the lyrics? I hear youre a bit of a writer

JOHN ROBB: Yeah, yeah I am. I write books. I just finished writing this big book about Manchester. So Im always writing, writing lyrics, writing little stories. Its kinda funny; you spend your whole life tapping away at your laptop. Its 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 wasnt 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, its sold out here, but you can get it on iTunes if people wanna get it. If you look it up on YouTube, theres also a video of me and Poly walking down the Prom in Brighton. Poly sounded ace, sounded like she did when she was younger, shes great, really cool! If wed been on a big label, if wed 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. Its funny, when youre a little kid, you think youre gonna make lots of money getting a hit record but it costs you about twenty thousand quid to get one in the charts. I dont have that money at all, and of course we cant get on the radio! Theres just every excuse in the world to not play your record. Well we dont 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 its 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: Were essentially a punk rock band, theres no limitation. Theres so many styles of music and theyll 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 dont narrow myself down and somehow itll end up in our sounds, we dont do a hip hop track, because theres nothing more corny than a band like ours trying to do a hip hop track, but therell 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. Its not about Rock Stars, like with U2 or something. Weve played some pretty big gigs in our time and its 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. Its about community too, its a world-wide community, thats 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 were a band that tours around the world, you can feel this community its very strong out there. Theres 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 youre going to be playing Mutiny Festival

JOHN ROBB: Yeah a festival named after our album, isnt that cool!?

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

JOHN ROBB: The Organizer is a huge Goldblade fan, and because we have a lot of energy, I think hes 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 its what keeps a band afloat, but I think theres 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 thats what Punk Rock is all about. This guy, Fisher, cant play music, so hes putting on his own festival. I think its really good. But its a tough call with the recession, but give him credit, hes put his mind to it and sorted it out. Hes put a lot of money into it. Hes selling a lot of tickets now and its 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, theres no point in having rivalry and theyre all good mates now and going to each others festivals, which is important too, because its all about teamwork in the music were involved in, because you dont get the radio, we dont 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 SubsYou know when you play so many festivals, you forget whos playing at which one, theyre roughly the same bill at each one. Its 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 were gonna do a German tour in Oct/Nov. Another big UK tour around that. Were trying to get back into America. Got back in touch with SOS Records, see if they wanna do the album and thenits 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 aint it? Theres a lot of paper, its really complex. So a lot of bands arent touring right now.

I.M: I grew up listening to bands like The Damned, Stiff Little FingersI 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 its from a different planet, that kind of music. The great thing about Punk is that its made so you can do it yourself and thats 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 theyd photocopied the sleeves. You think you can actually make your own record. Now its 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 thats what we did. We made our own record. So for the punk thingthe 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 didnt have to learn eight hundred chords to make a song. We couldnt even play our first gig- we just got up on stage and tried, thats what it should be, you know? You dont have to be a virtuoso to be in a band. If were at a gig and some bands playing and theyre really struggling, ore power to them, at least theyre 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. Weve got our own little version of what Punk Rock is and I dont think that any version is more right or wrong than any other version. You can play on a bill with a band like Conflict, theyve got an absolute wall of sound, its great because its challenging, theres a lot of energy and anger to it. They sound completely different from what we do but somehow were joined together, you know? I dont see it, as one bands better or more important than the other. I guess what we have as a band is the songs are catchy, melodic, theres 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 weve been playing a long time, were a tight band.

I.M: Whats 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, thats already struggling will get through this?

JOHN ROBB: Quite interesting really, because its all those things weve been singing about for years in the Punk Scene, ya know? Its the end of capitalism, or it should be. You can tell theyre really panicking, the money people. Theyre trying to put a finger in a dam that has a massive crack in it. I think with Obama getting in, theres not much he can do, its a feel-good factor, the situation is fucked. Weve had this situation before where weve 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 cant justify the money they make shoveling bits of paper around; its 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, its a fucked up society. In a thousand years time people will look back and say, How could they do that? It doesnt 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, theyre criminals, theyre crooks arent they? And theyve 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 its general knowledge. I cant say Im sorry to see these people fucking up. I think its bad that people lose their jobs as a result of these peoples greed, but I think the way we were living up to the point of this recession was absolutely ridiculous. Ive got a car, but its twenty thousand quid and its not as good as one thats twenty-four grand, so Ill 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 thats whats happening now. I think thats 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 thats a fucked up situation as well. Hopefully Obama will put out the hand of friendship. I know hes tried; its kind of weird- he does that then sends twenty thousand troops into Afghanistan. I hope its not a case of says one thing and does another; youre 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 didnt like the president so much, but they loved the culture. Its sad when you see people hating America because theres some great things about America, just not the people who run it. Thats whats exciting about Obama, theres 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. Theres no way he can be as good as what people are hoping, thats 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. Its all quotes, about six hundred pages long- a huge book! It came out really good; its done really well! The new book Ive got coming out is the same format; its 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. Its 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 Noels probably the last person that grew up on the edge- hes 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. Its a really great story, because no matter what you think of the bands, theyre all really interesting characters. Youve got people like Johnny Marr and Ian Browne and they can really talk, they understand their pop-culture inside out. They know why theyre wearing a pair of socks and what record that pair of socks related to. Theyre like Pop Professors, not academics, but people that lived it. Theres 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. Its about a tenth of the size it could have been. Its coming out in the UK and Europe in April, then the agents going to look for a deal in America.

I.M: How many books have you written?

JOHN ROBB: Four. Ones about the history of Manchester. Ones 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. Its not the worlds cleverest piece of word play. 1988 I reviewed The Las over in Liverpool and Id seen some article on British Punk bands and theyd called it BritCore So I just twisted it around and called The Las 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 cant remember them now.

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

JOHN ROBB: Surviving.

Being able to create something, thats 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 dont make music ever again. Being creative is in your blood; its there all the time. Whether youre walking around or if youre lying in bed youre thinking up tunes and ideas and concepts. It doesnt switch off does it? If youre in a band for only two years, youd have to force yourself to not think like that anymore. I dont really understand that because its always going on. Its a little fire that doesnt go out. I cant 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. Well probably wait to do another album until next year because weve got to tour America with this one first. Give it time to get this one sold. Were not like U2, where we put the record out and get on TV- theyve been on TV like twenty times the last week! Its not like that; its just the way the cards are dealt. So if we were to tour America this time next year, wed be touring the new album and wed be getting ahead of ourselves. Its not like we ever stop writing though.

I.M: Is there anything else youd 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 its owned by Murdoch but its great for bands coz it lays out your table: Heres what we sound like, heres 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 were 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, thats what we love doing, you know? We wanna hear other peoples music as well.

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