Another mixed bag

I have been pretty busy the last few weeks so not had much of a chance to do any updates on here. But seeing as the Saloon website was down for almost 10 years, I don’t feel too guilty.

Nice to hear an interview on Radio Berkshire with Reading band The Jettes. Two of the members are Richard and Sarah who were also in Desdemona, a band that Saloon played with several times, and I am sure we had them at the Happy Robots night on a number of occasions. Richard also came and helped out when we did our final tour in Scandinavia. We did try and drag him on stage for the finale of ‘Girls are the new boys’ in Stockholm, but he declined the offer. Great to hear them doing so well.

Also in the news, but far less uplifting, is the story of Naomi Button who has had her baby girl Elsa snatched. Naomi is currently campaigning going through legal proceedings to try and get Elsa back from Egypt where she is being held by the family of Elsa’s father. Naomi was a close friend of Mike back when we lived in Reading. Naomi needs financial support for her campaign; if anyone reading this can help I know it would be incredibly appreciated.

So this morning I read that the cassette tape is making a comeback. Not in our house though, in fact if it wasn’t for me clearing out all the C90’s this site probably wouldn’t exist.

Another reminder that Alison has another gig coming up with Left Outsides and Alice (my partner in Arthur and Martha) has a new single and new video out now with her band Cosines. 

And finally, while working on the new Arthur and Martha record (which is a rare enough thing in itself) I found a bundle of Saloon set lists in the Moog Opus 3 case. Four lists all from the same gig, no idea which one it was though. Undoubtedly a headline set in 2003 but certainly not Scandinavia as we definitely closed with Good Life / GATNB there. If anyone knows the right answer please write in to the usual address to win something we have overstocked in the shop. Can’t say fairer than that. 

Gigs, gatherings and other gossip

It’s not all just dwelling on the past on the Saloon website. Alison has announced a gig for The Left Outsides on 24^th May supporting Gravenhurst in a church in Hampstead. There will be a bar apparently and should well be worth the price of admission. 

Saloon’s collaborators have also been busy, Mike’s brother Rob (who collaborated with Saloon on ‘Have you seen the light’ amongst other things) has been touring the states as part of Hot Chip including playing Coachella. Another of our collaborators also inadvertently made it to the gossip pages this week.

In my own news, Alice and I had our first session in the ‘studio’ for about four years to work on some new Arthur and Martha material. Obviously don’t expect anything soon (if ever) but it was great to be making music with Alice again. Her other, much more active band Cosines have a new record out as well as some gig dates 

announced.

Also, on the Saloon front, I found a couple of lost tapes at the bottom of a box on the weekend. Now this was hardly a find on the level of The Tomb of the Cybermen, but what I did find was a really nice instrumental piano version of Chromosomes played by Amanda, along with a demo of a song that Mike wrote and recorded solo called ‘Cool as can be’. Hopefully I will get them up on here in due course of time.

As you can see, my web skills now stretch to hyperlinks.

Pow to the People! Easter Sunday 2000

An Easter gift. In April 2000 we played our first gig for the Track and Field Organisation, we were first-on at what became the annual 'Pow to the People' Track and Field All Dayer at which took place at the The Monarch (now Barfly) in Camden, London.

This gig was was a big deal for us. Mike had tried hard to get us on one of their line-ups for a long time and somehow he got Steve and Paul from Track and Field to agree. At the time we didn't know that they had already seen us, supporting Stereolab at The Alleycat in Reading. We also didn't know that they weren't all that enamoured with us. Their first impressions, was that next to Stereolab  they 'couldn't see the point'. Obviously they came around to liking us  in the end as we ended up playing another gig for them in the Summer of 2000 and eventually went on to release three albums with them.

This gig was a big turning point for us and perhaps moved us towards the second phase of our career, where stopped trying to chase record labels and we embraced our inner indie-ness. Certainly it was our first London gig where we were playing to both a full house and the right sort of audience. At the time the most memorable thing about the gig was it marked the first time that I had ever received a parking ticket (and I learned that Easter Sunday is not a national holiday as far as traffic wardens are concerned.)

In terms of the set-list, we played a pretty solid and reliable set of 6 songs. 'Plastic Surgery' was by then a regular opener. I think this is one of the last times we played 'Suivez La Piste', a song we always struggled to get right live and one that only me seemed to like anyway. 'Electron' was in the pipeline as a forthcoming single. 'Spacer' again crept into the set. 'Make it soft' was pretty new at the time and already becoming a song we really enjoyed playing. This show also features my favourite live recording of 'My everyday silver is plastic' (which at the time we were still calling 'Nashville'). I remember feeling goosebumps from excitement as I stared out at the audience while playing the melodica refrain at the end. I felt at the time that I was living out my own Bernard Sumner fantasies.

As was regular for a Saloon gig, where we felt we had to be as difficult as possible, no attempt was made to play either track from the new single 'Shopping / Song for Hugo'

The gig was recorded by a lovely French girl called Anne who had written nice things about us in the fanzine that she wrote for called 'Creme Anglaise'. This was definitely one of our favourite zines and I remember a previous issue with a  lots of articles about Belle and Sebastian knocking about our house for a while. Anne recorded the gig and sent me a tape of it which (for some reason) she recorded the debut Badly Drawn Boy album on the other side. I loved getting my first Saloon bootleg; it reminded me of my mispent youth when me and my mates would sneak off to Kensington Market on school trips and buy badly recorded Joy Division, Cure and Mission C9O's and almost get beaten up on the way home by putting then on the coach stereo on the trip back to school.

Saloon: Live @ The Monarch, London 23.04.00, a set on Flickr.

Photos by Rattail and various others.

A museum filled with timeless animals

Reading Heritage Map

The 4th April is always a special day for Saloon, not only is it Matt’s birthday but it is the anniversary of our first gig. This year is the 15th anniversary which is a scary thing as it still seems so recent. Time is a cruel mistress. My recollections and an audio recording of the night can be found on an earlier blog post. Listening back at it, I think it has been transferred from tape a bit fast so I may try to re-master it at the correct speed at some point.

Tonight also is the launch of an event organised by the good people at Readipop called “Reading on Tour” which aims to uncover the town’s rich musical heritage and stories from the Reading music scene past and present. The event takes place at 7pm at Reading Museum’s Windows Gallery and will unveil two heritage trails that can be walked around the town. I am sure it will be fun, sadly I can’t make it but hopefully Matt will be able to fly the flag.

Finally I was very sad to read the news that the author Iain Banks has terminal cancer. Over the last year I have many of his books, notably most of the Culture cycle. He has a fantastic vision and wit, and by bringing his distinctive literary voice to ‘genre fiction’ he is certainly the most exciting writer in the field. Sending best wishes for Mr Banks and his friends and family.

Communications, Photos and Love

A few days ago it was lovely to get a message from David, a Saloon / Arthur and Martha from Madrid who sent me us these great photos of him sporting a fetching Happy Robots T-Shirt that he made himself.  

Perhaps you have noticed that I have made a few tweaks to the blog; the ‘gig list’ is now the timeline as I hope to add details about release dates and other things that we were up to. And the big update is that I have uploaded all of the old photos that I had on my computer onto my Flickr page with links from the relevant event in the timeline. As you might expect, I have not done much in terms of editing them, which is why they are not all that flattering (my double-chin features quite prominently on several photos). 

For future blog posts I may say something about the recording of each of the singles, mainly so that the people updating the Saloon Discogs page have something to chew on.  If you have any other suggestions for things you would like to see on here please let me know.

Finally, big congratulations are due to Matt and his lovely wife, who have fantastic news that they are now proud parents. With all our best wishes as they enter the magical realm of the un-slept.

Dressy Bessy Tour and Betsey Trotwood 21.01.02

Tour Flyer with De Stijl Alison

In my determination to get as many of the recordings from the archive up here as soon as possible, here is the next which is from 21^st January 2002 at the Betsey Trotwood, in Farringdon, London.

This was one of the dates on another long tour for us, supporting Kindercore and Track and Field label-mates Dressy Bessy. I don't think a week touring was very much to some of the US bands we played with like Dressy, Great Lakes or of Montreal who seemed to know how to handle the mental and physical strain. But to us, a week touring was a big deal as we we all had jobs or college to go back to, and none of us agreed with the diet of peperami and kitkat chunky. 

I don’t have very much in terms of artifacts from this tour, which is why I am a bit sketchy on details. I do have the flyer scanned here, although I don't know if we used it as its accuracy is questionable and is of most interest for the creepy picture of Alison with the image from De Stijl (and the ‘Shopping’ record sleeve) superimposed on her face creating a creepy robot / Boards of Canada look.

Saloon and Dressy Bessy Mash Up

The tour itself I don’t remember that well either, which is why I can’t talk about it at the same length that I did Summer 2003. Dressy Bessy were a great  bunch of guys and gals, although on a tour like that we didn't get to 'hang out' a great deal  (as permanent designate driver I never got to ‘hang out’ anyway). My most profound memory of the tour was the members of Saloon eating really good fish and chips (cooked in beef dripping) in the front bar of the Adelphi in Hull, watching an episode of ‘The Good Life’ (from where came the song title)

I didn’t know much about Dressy Bessy before we toured; I had a copy ‘Pink Hearts’ and quite liked it, although it was miles off of what we thought we were doing. The difference between our tracks on the great tour split single showed that we were very much on a different page.

At the Betsey (in £3 Primark Shirts)

Dressy Bessy were though the *loudest* band we ever played with, which was a total shock considering their recorded sound. They forced me to wear earplugs from then on. We did play with them again in the Summer of 2002 for the live Peel Session. By then ‘Progress’ had come out, and they made us realise the degree that we had ‘broken’ in the States with tons of college radio play. They were probably surprised to be 'supporting' us on the Peel show, but obviously they had the last laugh and are still going strong with a new LP for 2014. They were a cool bunch and, although I didn't understand it at the time, I am proud that we got to do that split single with them.

Anyway back to the gig posted on here. Relatively tight for us (with the odd bass- slip from me) the vocals are nice and clear and Amanda’s voice has held up amazingly we had been on the road for a week. A good example of the 7 song Saloon set- structure of the time: Big Opener, Poppy Up-tempo One, Slow One, Fast Noisy One, Slow One, Fast One, Big Noisy Ending. Most interesting perhaps for hearing Spacer again, which we played far too much considering it was only ever released on the Blue Demo, nice to hear the the megamix opening of Movimiento / Impact also notable the lack of GATNB  which we were no doubt sick of by the end of the long tour.

The recording is not bad for one done on a  tape recorder. I don’t know who recorded it, as someone sent it to me at the time. What I always remembered this one for was the audience chatter, notably the person who slags-off the bass player, saying midway through ‘Bicycle Thieves’ of the bass-playing “it’s not nice, it spoils it.” Perhaps this is one I shouldn't share with my grand-kids then.

Saloon Live @ Betsey Trotwood 21.01.2002, a set on Flickr.