Monday 20 September 2010

Waiting For Rocktober

It's all action at GMHQ as preparations for possibly the rockingest month ever continue! After a couple of months of writing new material at semi-respectable suburban Beeston volume levels, we decided it was time to crank it up to a near-Tufnel 2 (I have an extremely loud amp - Fender Dual Showman 100w head for the geeks out there). Our good friends and accomplished hat-wearers the Saboteurs have kindly let us take up a temporary residence in their practice room deep beneath Nottingham's darkest backstreets.

The haziness of this photo might be due to the high density of rock in the air. Or it may be because my phone camera lens was very dirty. We won't know for sure until the results come back from the lab.

We've also begun to think about the setlists we'll be putting together for our coming engagements. Committed fans can rest assured that every show will be different. Here's a sneak preview of what we expect our setlist on October 23rd (Chameleon, Nottingham) to look like:


Also coming soon in Great Men land: new t-shirts! Watch this space. In the meantime if you haven't been paying attention, here is the lowdown on our major UK tour:






Wednesday 15 September 2010

Mountain Goats and the perfect Scotch Egg

Hello there!

Here's a few things that happened to me this week. This is what blogs are for right?

I saw The Mountain Goats for the first time ever, which is awesome because they're one of my favourite bands. They played at Koko in Camden and glancing at Youtube it looks like a few people have done some cheeky videos so here's one that in no way proves I was there but does indeed prove the gig happened. Why would I lie? The high point of the set for me was my all-time favourite Mountain Goats track, Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod? I totally recommend the album The Sunset Tree, it's one of my top albums.

The next cool thing to happen was that the Turrell Brothers agreed to open An Evening With Great Men vs Ulterior with another film set. Everyone who packed out the last Evening With Great Men will agree that their last 30 minutes of film was a masterclass that made us laugh, cry, think and shut up. That's on 23rd October 2010 at Chameleon in Nottingham - if you're on the Facebook here's the event.

There's not enough space on the internet to list everything I did, but Cooking With Great Men fans will be delighted to hear that this week I made Scotch Eggs for the very first time. I've always thought Scotch Eggs were a delicious but perplexing foodstuff: how did the egg get in there, and how exactly did someone come up with the idea anyway?! Anyway turns out it's pretty straightforward to make them:

As you know, Great Men Smash Laws! Hence my next question to myself, to you dear reader, and to the universe is: What would be the ultimate scotch egg?

Some things to consider would be:
  • Type of meat (or meat alternative)
  • Type of egg
  • Type of bread from which to get the breadcrumbs
  • Replacing the egg with something else
  • Getting cheese involved in some way (guaranteed way to improve anything)
Let me know. If I get a good enough suggestion I will make some for both me and the inventor to enjoy. If you live a long way away I will post it or get a strong person to throw it. If the universe comes up with the best idea, I guess the only way to share it would be to divide it by zero.

Monday 6 September 2010

Rocktober and the Twitdome

Guten Tag!

I am totally psyched about next month so wanted to make sure all twelve of our fans are clued up on the following rocking events:

Great Men's First Ever London Gig!

That's right, you heard right! The Fabulous H-Town Savage strikes again as we'll be playing not only with her band Ginkinta, but with our mutual friend and my rock brother Robin's band Monsters in the Attic.

Hear some of our new tunes for the very first time at Tommy Flynn's in Camden on Thursday October 21st!

Another Evening With Great Men: vs Ulterior!

After the jam-packed success of our last Evening With Great Men, we return to Chameleon in Nottingham on Saturday October 23rd with our good friends Ulterior on the eve of their Sex War Sex Cars Sex single launch. Expect chrome.

Hopefully we'll also have some cool new t-shirts available for these gigs, anyone fancy a Springsteen Stallone design to accompany our American Dream essay?

One last thing - we've just lurched forward on our quest to embrace nearly-archaic technology and signed up for Twitter. I haven't got much of a clue what it does or how to work it so if you're down with that then tweet us up and welcome us into the Twitdome. http://twitter.com/great_men