Recently we played a show at the Brixton Windmill, organised by Dan Ormsby of ‘4 of 5 Magicians’ fame. We were up first on the Sunday and had to cover two songs by a band I’d barely heard a month before, The Butthole Surfers. Simon and T*** were pretty familiar with them, having more of a grasp of the early 90s American alt scene, whereas I never really had the chance to get into that era at the time as I was far too young. Coming back to it, and in particularly to what the Buttholes were doing, I can’t help but feel slightly short-changed. Noise “experiments” don’t generally make for interesting listening, and the first Buttholes record (the one with all the distended arseholes on, or stomachs) didn’t grab me at all. I was in search of a tune, and found none.

Later on things seem to get more interesting, and on the Locust, Abortion… (whatever it’s called) record there was at least one tune that I got into— ‘Human Cannonball’, which has a killer riff and nice scuzzy sound. Simon picked the impossible track ‘Something’ which came from a terribly recorded, almost bootleg LP. Being a fan of screamy stuff, he took to it like a goat to water. We probably rehearsed the tracks about twice, maybe three times, and then performed them live. Mine was arse; I forgot the lyrics to verse two and the ‘lift’ that was needed to give it more punch wasn’t quite there. I read them from a piece of paper to save further faffing, foregoing any sense of dignity or decent stage presence. ‘Something’ was much more enjoyable to play.. we pretty much survived the thing by making noise, and Simon headed off-stage to annoy the punters by screaming into an unplugged mic. Classy.

Next up, a rehearsal where we run through only new/half-finished ideas in the run up to recording album #2. It’s a very different beast from ‘The Fortress & The Fatalist’.