Collider: Lady Cakes

Track 1 of Collider is Lady Cakes. Here's what Mr Regars and I have to say about it:

CW - I think this might be the finest song we’ve written together. In terms of recycled material, only my clean guitar part comes from a previous composition, everything else was written in the spare room at Regan’s house. I’m especially fond of the guitar solo in this. A friend of mine said the first time he saw us live that when we hit the unison riff in this track, he nearly fell over.

R-Man - It’s not until I’ve tried to explain it that I realise quite how complicated this track is.  It’s doing about 5 different things but always driving.  I couldn’t begin to remember how it came about- the pieces just happened while we were at the height of our powers.  It’s something I’m immensely proud of.

Some time between the recording and the release of Collider, we did a live session for Shazam and Lady Cakes was the only album track we included; here's the video:

Rocktober 2011

Wow is it already a year since our triumphant triumvirate of our Camden show with Ginkinta and Monsters in the Attic, our Shazam session, and our blood, beer and flames glory in Nottingham with Ulterior?

This October might not be quite so adrenalised, but we are playing in central London on Wednesday October 5th at The Comedy courtesy of Dead or Alive Promotions. We're aiming to record the gig so if it comes out okay and we don't have any massive disasters I'll put some stuff up for download soon. There's a Facebook event here.

It's been quiet here recently as I've been over in Sydney and R-man has been realising his dream of adventure on the high seas by borrowing a narrowboat. I tend to check in on Twitter when possible so do come and say hello to us there.

See you on the 5th!

Spectators at an Execution: Year One

On June 18th 2010, my friends went to the pub to watch England play Algeria in the World Cup. I retreated to my feedback den and, in my ongoing Widdleman VS The World Cup tradition, over the course of the match I wrote, recorded and mixed this track:

England 0 0 Algeria by chris-walls

Some geeky points to note are the dual drum machines (one of them hand triggered - the out of time one!) and the feedback duet that I finished just moments before the neighbours knocked on the door...

Shortly thereafter, R-Man and I learned the song and incorporated it into the Great Men set. We dropped the initial World Cup name in favour of something a little more us (with some conceptual continuity of course - there's a present for the first person to spot it). You can hear our version on the Live in London EP and here's a video of us playing it in the Shazam live lounge on October 22nd 2010:



At some point, I'm not sure when, I started noodling about on an acoustic guitar and over time this solo acoustic version came together:

Spectators at an Acousticution by chris-walls

Since I'm not that great on acoustic, I tried playing a solo (with drum machine) version on electric as well:

Spectators at an Electricution by chris-walls

There's probably more mileage in this yet. If anyone out there fancies trying their own version we'd love to hear it and add it to the catalogue!

Download 2011

Yes, it's the obligatory festival review! I hadn't actually planned on going to Download but got offered a ticket at the last minute (thanks Lou!) so headed on up. As is tradition, Regan boarded a plane to France so as to maintain a rock equilibrium in the Midlands. Due to lack of planning I only set off after work on Friday, hence had already missed most of the awesome bands that were scheduled. Luckily 2 nights before I'd seen The Darkness in Shepherd's Bush so all was not lost. The plan was to arrive in time for Def Leppard's headlining slot. Then 20 minutes before they were due to being, this happened:


So we did the sensible thing and absconded to dry old Beeston for a few Harvest Pales with R-Man and T-Fran. I'd caught Def Lep a couple of years ago so it wasn't too much of a shame to miss them and stay dry for a night, especially since we'd have missed half the set by the time we arrived anyway.

So clean and dry, Saturday kicked off with Rise to Remain. I'm not down with the kidz enough to know anything about them but there was some satisfactory widdling involved. I'm a sucker for bands that look scary, so Ghost were good to look at but unfortunately the mix in the tent didn't let me find out if they were actually any good. So a giant Yorkshire pudding later, we headed over to check out Royal Republic's acoustic set. Sadly by the time we found the Jagermeister tent (secreted down a hidden pathway) we'd missed most of their set. I'm going to go ahead and recommend you watch their excellent Shazam session, even though Great Men have been shunned by the Shazamers now.


Skunk Anansie are always good, but chose a very poor setlist for a festival slot: far too much new material. Cheap Trick were very accomplished for "a brand new band from the United States"... And I was pleasantly surprised by Avenged Sevenfold, they put on a top notch show on the main stage.

At this point I was faced with a tough call. On the main stage was System of a Down, the very first band I ever saw at Rock City. But on the second stage was Alice Cooper, who is guaranteed to put a massive smile on my face. I got in position for Alice and was not disappointed. My advice to you, dear reader, is not to make my mistake of nearly not watching Alice Cooper. Always watch Alice Cooper. There was an especially great vibe in the crowd as clearly most people had never seen Alice before and were totally blown away. A python, 20 foot monster and guillotine, not to mention riffs and solos galore, later, grins and a buzz of excitement abound. I then managed to catch the last 40 minutes of System of a Down, who were excellent (on a sub-Alice plane of course), and as my friend pointed out, probably mentally ill.



The rain held off all night, but just as we contemplated leaving the tent at 10am, the heavens opened. And stayed open. We braved the elements for a cheeseburger and watch Sworn Amongst, who satisfied the 3 main requirements of metal:

1. Riffs
2. Solos
3. Growling silly things. (example lyric: "Die! Die! Die! ... we f**k the system every day"

We then had the misfortune to witness My Darkest Days (apt name), who must have taken a wrong turn on the way to the X Factor auditions. They were so bad that we decided to just leave the whole festival immediately.

Back Off Boris

After one too many traffic contraventions, the penalty charges have become too much and Boris Johnson has insisted I repay my debt to the red lines, traffic wardens and box junctions of London with some community service. I only know how to do 2 things: guitars and maths, and London long since stopped making things add up, so in the name of justice Great Men will be appearing as follows:

Thursday June 2nd 2011 - Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes. Courtesy of Criminal Records, along with Guitars Have Ghosts, Othereyeswise and Enteric. We're on at 8:45. The Dude abides. Facebook it here.

Friday July 1st 2011 - New Cross Inn. As part of Chamber club night, along with Pet Scenes, Plantagenet 3 and The Party Faithful. Facebook fun within.

Remember Rocktober? In between rocking Camden, Nottingham, and the Science Museum, we popped into Shazam's Live Lounge and played a spot of music. Here's some proof:

See you on Thursday kidz! And remember, Twitter us with any setlist requests.

The Lords of Rocktober: The Two Rockers

After getting up to play Parking Meter Chess with the brave soldiers of the Camden Traffic Warden Militia, R-Man and my good friend Steve popped off to Delichio's (my current favourite cafe in That London) to collect some bacon sandwiches whilst I holed up in The Fabulous H-Town's kitchen with my headphones on, overhauling the beats from the night before and adding Spectators to the repertoire.

We then piled into the car and got stuck into the central London traffic jam that stood between us and the Shazam Live Lounge. Steve livened up the journey by dropping the [largely fictional] bombshell that I was a massive Whoopi Goldberg fan, then commando rolling out of the car door clutching his compass, muttering something about "running errands for the Lockpicker", never to be seen again. Speaking of Whoopi, if we were to have a "Great Women" t-shirt, who would replace Springsteen and Stallone on the artwork?

Arriving at Shazam an hour and a half late, the Live Lounge was ready for our session and we laid down Lady Cakes, Messerschmitt and Spectators At An Execution in quick succession, the latter two making their Great Men recording debuts. The sound on playback was immense, so get ready for the final mix! Thanks so much to Hazel and Dan at Shazam for making it happen, running a slick operation, and forgiving our tardiness. Check out their Youtube page for ours and all their other sessions as they are edited.

Having had an awesome time recording our session, we followed it up in the sort of rock and roll fashion that only Great Men can: we went to the Science Museum! Regan got giddy over steam engines whilst I put my hands inside some astronaut's gloves. Spaceships and machines on display for free: you really can't complain.

After a quarter roast chicken and chips in a Hammersmith cafe, and a pint in The Hop Poles (getting homesick for Beeston and its fine pubs) with my rock brethren Robin and Edd, we put A.R.E. Weapons on the stereo and headed north for Nottingham...