The Lords of Rocktober: The Fellowship of the Rock

After the drum dramas of the night before, R-Man phoned every music shop, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse from Nottingham to London and none of them, regardless of what their websites claimed, had an Alesis SR-16 in stock. So we ended up buying an SR-18 on our way down to Camden. With an hour to spare between arriving at the venue and soundchecking, I set about learning how to use it and programming our set for that night:

The gig went fairly smoothly considering, Messerschmitt received its world debut, and we got some good feedback after, including this gem:

"so rocking they hurt my spine and made me miss a call from my mum"

Sorry about that Mrs Tolliday.

I later made a guest appearance playing bass with Ginkinta (very nearly playing all the right notes), which was good fun and something of a holiday without all the machines to operate as well! Then it was like a trip down memory lane watching Robin rock the drums for Monsters in the Attic. The highlight of the night though was catching up with lots of old (and new) compadres who'd come down to see us. Thanks everybody!

Tune in next time to find out what happened on Friday...

RIP: Great Man #3

It is with great sadness that I must announce the death of a band member. At the start of practice tonight, on the eve of our 3 day rock extravaganza, our drummer could not perform a single beat, instead spouting gibberish and Chinese. Finally, as R-Man and I tried futilely to revive him, he spouted a cryptic pi symbol and faded away.

A faithful beat keeper and comrade for the past 2 years, we'd like to remember him the way he was in his glory days, as I'm sure would you. Here's a photo from the pinnacle of his performing career, An Evening With Great Men in March 2010 (pictured on the right):

Of course our immediate priority is not to disappoint the good folks who've put us on in London and all you good people who'll be coming to see us, so straight away we've been tracking down a replacement. For tonight's rehearsal we graciously accepted the help of my old friend Boss DR-550, necessitating a complete re-write of the London set-list. However we're hoping en route to the gig to pick up another Alesis SR-16 instead. Being Great Men we have a comprehensive range of options:

Plan A: Get a new Alesis, and I'll have to program it from scratch in the venue before we play, then do the gig hoping I've got it right!

Plan B: Use the Boss and deliver a ramshackle but serviceable set.

Plan C: Enlist one of the fine drummers on hand (they don't know it yet) to lay down a groove.

If anyone else was at that Metallica gig at Download festival a few years ago where Lars couldn't play and they got guest drummers, it'll probably be exactly like that. Which was awesome by the way.

Rock Week!

This is the week we've all been waiting for! Here's the lowdown:

Monday 18th October

We kicked off the week with a loud rehearsal deep under the streets of Nottingham. Big In Japan came along for the ride and captured this moment as proof of the rock in the room:

Tuesday 19th October

Craig David taking us for a drink.

Wednesday 20th October

More practising!

Thursday 21st October - Tommy Flynn's, Camden

We're on early - 7:30 - so get down early for our first ever London gig. Although strictly speaking to most of the London crowd all our songs are new, we will be giving Messerschmitt its live premiere, the first time anywhere in the universe! Later in the night I will be guesting on bass in all-girl punk band Ginkinta. Bring one of these flyers for cheap entry, and tell them Great Men sent you!

Friday 22nd October

We're off to the Shazam Live Lounge to do a session, probably some new material that's not on the album! Check out the awesome Foxy Shazam video, in whose footsteps we will be following. Later on we'll be Oystering round London like a couple of tourists.

Saturday 23rd October - Chameleon, Nottingham

We're hosting our second Evening With Great Men, again featuring the films of The Turrell Brothers to open the show, and this time we're the support band, with our pals Ulterior headlining. Chameleon is just off Market Square, near The Bell - it's above Clinton Cards (physically and socially). Get down for 8pm and let the good times roll!

Sunday 24th October

We're dividing to conquer: R-Man will be checking out our hombres The Cupid Stunt at Nottingham's Hockley Hustle, and I recommend you do too. I would if not for the fact that I'm off to see one of my all-time favourite guitarists, Adrian Belew. Thela hun ginjeet!

Hopefully see y'all at one or more of the gigs!

We are the goon squad and we're coming to town...

Firstly, bonjour to our French readership! Apparently those guys love Springsteen and Stallone. I once made a French-language evil techno mini-album under my secret super-villain identity The Green Trouser, have a listen if you like.

Well, Rocktober is upon us but rather than get all the excitement into one blog post I'll try and stagger it! So this time let me introduce you to our new t-shirts:

As you can see, available in all sizes from "small, as worn by pretty girl", through "medium as worn by grown up man", to "large, as worn by cuddly idiot". "But at what cost?!" I hear you cry. Only 8 of your English pounds. I'm too naive to know how to set up a way of slickly ordering online, so please drop us a message on Facebook or Myspace or something. I'll be your best friend.

Expect to hear from me soon about our London gig on October 21st and Nottingham gig on October 23rd...

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:

Thursday October 21st - Tommy Flynn's, Camden. With Ginkinta and Monsters in the Attic.

Saturday October 23rd - Chameleon, Nottingham. With Ulterior and films from The Turrel Brothers.

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.

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