hey everyone
quick news-splurge. for anyone attending this Saturday's free show at the Wheelbarrow, note I'll be on at 10pm, with the excellent Dave Giles opening the show at 9pm. good times.
also, tomorrow morning at 11am there'll be some me-related 2000Trees highlights (as well as stuff from Crazy Arm, Future of the Left, Sonic Boom Six and more) on Xtra Mile TV. the site is www.xtramile.tv, and if you share this on facebook you get entered into a prize draw. i'm not one of the prizes.
as far as i'm aware, the me-related stuff on Xtra Mile TV from tomorrow is a short interview conducted with me by Chris T-T, and also I tried to do a song. we may have been interrupted by quad bikes and nesting birds - i don't quite remember.
Thursday, 23 August 2012
Monday, 20 August 2012
cursed again
bonjour, bonjour!
hello from my sweaty bedroom (not normally sweaty, but it's tiny, and in this heat it is indeed a hotbox or sauna or somewhere in between depending on what next door are doing) where I bring some great news.
Gigs this fortnight
indeed, the lesser-spotted Ben Marwood is actually leaving his/my damn house and playing some shows for you kids down south the next couple of weekends. there'll be the road test of some new material here and there, but mostly it's just an excuse to make sure you buggers don't forget about me.
The two:
AUGUST Sat 25th
LONDON Wheelbarrow, Camden
w/Dave J Giles, free entry, 18+
SEPTEMBER Sat 1st
READING Rising Sun Arts Centre
w/Aubrey Dye-Welch and band, plus Burnt Tomorrow
£5 entry, £4 adv (ticket link)
The return of the mack, if the mack is my first album
This month we celebrated the first anniversary of the original run of my first album going up in smoke courtesy of youths (yuck, you with your nice hairs and positive outlooks). The first anniversary in the US would've been the paper anniversary, but here in the UK it is the cotton anniversary.
All that has little to do with how Xtra Mile have re-pressed (after a year of selling the 150 super-limited-but-definitely-very-official replacement CD-Rs) the first album Outside There's A Curse, which is now in a very sexy jewel case, and you can own one via all the normal means (the interweb, the big old-fashioned shops desperately trying not to just be DVD and electronics stores) but also they're now in the webshop either as a standalone item or in one of the bundles, including the one where you get a t-shirt, album, mini-album and split EP all for not much money.
AND also since this is the cotton anniversary, I'm pretty sure my t-shirts are made of cotton, and fittingly you can now buy the t-shirt along with a CD-R copy of the album for just £1 extra whilst stocks last. Good link!
So there, all is rosy. Stay positive! See some of you these next few weekends..
b
hello from my sweaty bedroom (not normally sweaty, but it's tiny, and in this heat it is indeed a hotbox or sauna or somewhere in between depending on what next door are doing) where I bring some great news.
Gigs this fortnight
indeed, the lesser-spotted Ben Marwood is actually leaving his/my damn house and playing some shows for you kids down south the next couple of weekends. there'll be the road test of some new material here and there, but mostly it's just an excuse to make sure you buggers don't forget about me.
The two:
AUGUST Sat 25th
LONDON Wheelbarrow, Camden
w/Dave J Giles, free entry, 18+
SEPTEMBER Sat 1st
READING Rising Sun Arts Centre
w/Aubrey Dye-Welch and band, plus Burnt Tomorrow
£5 entry, £4 adv (ticket link)
The return of the mack, if the mack is my first album
This month we celebrated the first anniversary of the original run of my first album going up in smoke courtesy of youths (yuck, you with your nice hairs and positive outlooks). The first anniversary in the US would've been the paper anniversary, but here in the UK it is the cotton anniversary.
All that has little to do with how Xtra Mile have re-pressed (after a year of selling the 150 super-limited-but-definitely-very-official replacement CD-Rs) the first album Outside There's A Curse, which is now in a very sexy jewel case, and you can own one via all the normal means (the interweb, the big old-fashioned shops desperately trying not to just be DVD and electronics stores) but also they're now in the webshop either as a standalone item or in one of the bundles, including the one where you get a t-shirt, album, mini-album and split EP all for not much money.
AND also since this is the cotton anniversary, I'm pretty sure my t-shirts are made of cotton, and fittingly you can now buy the t-shirt along with a CD-R copy of the album for just £1 extra whilst stocks last. Good link!
So there, all is rosy. Stay positive! See some of you these next few weekends..
b
Monday, 13 August 2012
falling asleep standing up.
so the olympics has been and gone, and i feel like now might be the time to break the blogsilence that i maintained whilst it was happening. i don't have a lot to say about it, but i note the following points.
it is possible to fall asleep standing up on trains
on the monday of the very first rehearsal, i got up at 4.45am in order to get to London. after the last rehearsal, I fell asleep around midnight on the train home. standing up. leaning against the border of an open window. thankfully i was blocking the door so someone had to wake me up at Reading in order to get off the train. this is good news because whilst i can't remember where the train was going to, i know it was way beyond Reading.
i can be proud to be British
Danny Boyle's opening ceremony gave me a warm feeling in my soul, and i thought perhaps i was ill or something, but i realised it was actually National Pride and not a disease. this is pretty odd because although this land has a lot going for it, we're reminded of its failures every day. media outlets remind us constantly that the NHS is understaffed and shit and getting worse, police are understaffed and shit, our politicians are rotten, are newspapers will hack your phones, we're unemployed, we're unemployable, and our national football team sucks eggs. Well, fuck off. Aside from Hull, this land is okay by me.
the daily mail is still written mostly for your local UKIP MP
i'm not going to say too much on this, because i think this article sums it up pretty nicely, but really - Britain gives the world some excellence, and the Mail gives it some casual and pretty desperate racism? but screw it, even that didn't dampen the fun.
and that it's good to catch up with friends (duh)
first things first: i'd like to congratulate Frank Turner on his constant hard work earning him the opportunity to play in front of X million people watching at home and the Y thousand people in the stadium. this man works hard, punk-rock hard, and in a decade in the industry i don't think i've met anyone like him. and let's not forget that his, and Xtra Mile's, choice of extended backing band was entirely excellent, because frankly Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo and Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun are two bands who deserve a zillion times more plaudits than they earn, but give it time.
me, i accepted this gig entirely blind, with no knowledge that it was the Olympics, just a knowledge of the dates I'd need to be around for, and whose company i'd be keeping. in truth, that's why i accepted it - to hang out with FT, Charlie at Xtra Mile, the cast and crew of Sleeping Souls, Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun and Emily Barker and friends is one of life's little pleasures for me. I may never tackle this industry, but at least i can show my grandkids this moving gif i made of ben marwood, aged 31, shuffling on a slippery hill in awkward embarrassment:
i'm off to practice my carnivale dancings for Rio 2016.
it is possible to fall asleep standing up on trains
on the monday of the very first rehearsal, i got up at 4.45am in order to get to London. after the last rehearsal, I fell asleep around midnight on the train home. standing up. leaning against the border of an open window. thankfully i was blocking the door so someone had to wake me up at Reading in order to get off the train. this is good news because whilst i can't remember where the train was going to, i know it was way beyond Reading.
i can be proud to be British
Danny Boyle's opening ceremony gave me a warm feeling in my soul, and i thought perhaps i was ill or something, but i realised it was actually National Pride and not a disease. this is pretty odd because although this land has a lot going for it, we're reminded of its failures every day. media outlets remind us constantly that the NHS is understaffed and shit and getting worse, police are understaffed and shit, our politicians are rotten, are newspapers will hack your phones, we're unemployed, we're unemployable, and our national football team sucks eggs. Well, fuck off. Aside from Hull, this land is okay by me.
the daily mail is still written mostly for your local UKIP MP
i'm not going to say too much on this, because i think this article sums it up pretty nicely, but really - Britain gives the world some excellence, and the Mail gives it some casual and pretty desperate racism? but screw it, even that didn't dampen the fun.
and that it's good to catch up with friends (duh)
first things first: i'd like to congratulate Frank Turner on his constant hard work earning him the opportunity to play in front of X million people watching at home and the Y thousand people in the stadium. this man works hard, punk-rock hard, and in a decade in the industry i don't think i've met anyone like him. and let's not forget that his, and Xtra Mile's, choice of extended backing band was entirely excellent, because frankly Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo and Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun are two bands who deserve a zillion times more plaudits than they earn, but give it time.
me, i accepted this gig entirely blind, with no knowledge that it was the Olympics, just a knowledge of the dates I'd need to be around for, and whose company i'd be keeping. in truth, that's why i accepted it - to hang out with FT, Charlie at Xtra Mile, the cast and crew of Sleeping Souls, Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun and Emily Barker and friends is one of life's little pleasures for me. I may never tackle this industry, but at least i can show my grandkids this moving gif i made of ben marwood, aged 31, shuffling on a slippery hill in awkward embarrassment:
i'm off to practice my carnivale dancings for Rio 2016.
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