Woah there. Goodbye Sergeants are playing in London this friday!
Where?: The Watershed, Wimbledon., with Just B, Kenwyn Drive and I Ludicrous. When?: on stage time 21:00. How much?: £5 Why?: Even newer new songs, reworked classics and free promo cds! Which? : What?
It’ll be the last show for a while and should either be a really great one or a shambolic mess so hopefully see you there!
Sergeant Buzfuz play at the legendary Hope and Anchor on Wednesday night.
Where? Hope and Anchor, 207 Upper Street, N1 (Highbury and Islington tube)
When? Wednesday November 26th at 10 pm
Also on bill: The Machine Gunners – Ponyboy – Ayo Bamidele
How much? £5 (£4.50 concessions)
One of the things that I find increasingly annoying is when people brag about how much they drink like it’s impressive. You know the kind of thing: “I tell you what, I certainly put a lot away last night!”, or: “well you know me, 1 or 2 pints normally turns into about 8 or 9! You know what I’m like!”. Yes, big wow. It’s for this reason that I am embarassed at having to admit that yet again, I was pretty much well on the way to being ruined by the time we went on at nearly 23:00 at the Marlborough in Camberwell.
This was for 2 reasons: the first being that we’d been there from about 20:00. We were actually supposed to be there at 19:00 but we got stuck in traffic. (God, imagine what would have happened if I’d been there drinking since 7! You know what I’m like! Wahey!! etc.)
The second reason was that the venue were very kindly giving us Free Beer. We didn’t expect this, in fact we rarely do. Only a handful of venues I’ve played in have really gone to town on the Free Beer as far as I can remember. The Watershed in Wimbledon always kindly gives you a few bottles, The Northern Monkey in Leeds were the same, The Swan in Ipswich were actually very generous with drinks and food actually…
Anyway, being on a bit of a money saving mission at the moment, and the fact that I’m incredibly classy, I’d bought some cans from a garage on the way up which I intended to neck in the car and in the street just to get ‘in the mood’, so I was pleasantly suprised.
I don’t know about you, but I always feel a little uneasy accepting free stuff off people who are very nice, but then the more you drink the less uneasy and embarrassed you become, and the quicker and quicker you knock them back. They were also kind enough to give us free pizza, so for this generosity we thank them again, and happily plug them.
Incidentelly, I don’t think the headline band knew there were Free Beers, as they inexplicably left before soundcheck.
One of the other bands on the night were The Perry Lane Sect which were interesting in that they are influenced by Can. Can are one of those bands that it’s kind of cool to reference so I was over the moon when I actually managed to successfully start a conversation about Can with the singer. I’ve never felt cooler. I think I remember Thom Yorke used to cite Can as his favourite band back in the mid-90’s, around The Bends, and talk about how they ripped off the opening track on Tago Mago for Planet Telex.
On to more important matters though, it seems that our very own Matt Jarman has become quite a chameleon, appearing to change his appearance even more often than Sam gets mistaken for Russell Brand. Here he is sporting a hairstyle I believe was fashioned with the help of duct tape:
This an instrumental that Matt wrote ages ago. Here’s one of our first goes at it, so a little lacking in energy but not a bad start! I really need to get some new clothes though.
OK so yet again, as we were soundchecking at 7-something and weren’t on stage till 10-something, I managed to be drunk once again despite my best efforts to only have ‘a couple’ beforehand. However, I think it was the best show so far, and it was cool crowd. Also got to hang out with The Sneaks, a pretty cool band from New Zealand who’s bassist James wore a helmet with a mic stuck in it the whole show. Yeah it’s been done but I love that shit.
Matt’s friend Keefer, who is possibly both the nicest and the most tattooed man I’ve ever met, did some videoing too which was very kind of him. You can check out 2 of the songs below: our cover of Biffy Clyro’s Eradicate the doubt (I made a little mistake but it’s not that obvious), and our song Valentine.
Pistol Gang & The Preacher – Valentine
[youtube=http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=YTob0S99C9Y]
Pistol Gang & The Preacher – Eradicate The Doubt (Biffy Clyro)
[youtube=http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=jp6H1Tvw8-o]
I should also emphasise that although you can hardly see me in these videos at all, I really was there. It wasn’t just Sam and Matt and a drum machine. A drum machine wouldn’t make mistakes like that for starters. Also, check out Matt’s tash. Isn’t he handsome? He should definately bring that back.
So it’s taken me a while to write this because we only just got the photos back, but even now I would have to say, that was probably the most ramshackle gig I have ever played, but also one of the most fun.
We had a good turnout considering most people who know us at this stage are probably south of the river, so thanks to everyone who made the effort, especially on a school night. Sorry we played every song about ten times as fast as it should’ve been.
Probably the most memorable bit for me was at the very end during Vaudeville when I was just making a load of random noise on the kit, then looked up to see Sam’s guitar on the stage, and Sam in the crowd with blood all over his face. The crazy young scamp had only gone and split his eyebrow open with his guita hadn’t he! Bless him. Went to A&E and everything. The youth of today.
After my very enjoyable performance with Ratty Rat Rat at the Astoria 2 a little while ago, I’d been meaning to get along to another gig, partly because I wanted to check out the drummer they chose over me, but also partly because I liked the music and thought they were all really nice guys. However, I was disappointed to learn that they’d decided to split up, and that their last gig was on Friday 26th September, which I couldn’t make. Genuinely gutted about that. Anyway, I’m sure Simon, Gary, Chris and Matt will be doing more music in the future, which I will look forward to!
SERGEANT BUZFUZ SINGLE OUT MONDAY/LAUNCH GIG FRIDAY 26TH
The
new Sergeant Buzfuz single “Here Come The Popes Part 3″ is released on
Monday Sep 22nd. The limited edition 7” purple vinyl single is
available form all good record shops and from www.normanrecords.com
Also available as a download from i-Tunes, www.finetunes.net and all other download stores. B side is “Dentist To The Stars”
“like the Pogues beating up My Life Story….Single of the month by a mile” (Playlouder)
“a bizarre string-driven song about those popes of the middle ages that’s kind of XTCish” (Organ)
“Like the Soft Boys, this is unselfconsciously smart-pop, with a noir-psychedelic twist” (Sounds XP)
“Wow” (Mark Lamarr, Radio 2)
“Absolutely brilliant” (Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music) “they have taken the Sixties back catalogue and asked Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci to give it a remix” (bbc.co.uk London Calling site)
Tom Robinson is a very nice man. You should check out his show some time. I must admit I didn’t realise he did that song “2-4-6-8 Motorway”, which I actually know.
We played Here Come The Popes Part 3, Rebellion, and Cab, and Tom even happily accepted a Goodbye Serrgeants cd off me. We’re even getting paid too. Unbelievable.
(Thanks to Joe for mentioning Goodbye Sergeants to Tom in the first place…)
The final date on the tour. What better way to mark such an occasion than looking like a complete arse. My first time on a proper festival stage, my first time wearing a plastic wig and all in one jumpsuit on a stage in general, and my last time seeing the Reckless Sons before they bid their merry way back across the pond. Good times. Or maybe just times.
Sam LeGassick teams up with Queens of Noize on BBC Music 6 at 8pm – 10pm to do his own mix. You can listen to it through either DAB (digital radio), online on http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/ or Sky 0120, Freeview 707, Freesat 708, or Virgin 909/
He even managed to play our own crappy demo for The Answer!
So what has been going on with Goodbye Sergeants of late? If you’ve been checking the site/blog or the myspace you’ll see things have been a little quiet, but that doesn’t mean we’re not doing anything, far from it! The last show the band played was back on June 1st, on the bandstand in Sutton town centre. Pretty random gig really, especially as our slightly-acquired-taste-noise was following 2 acts playing covers, you know of like, recogniseable songs! It was a great gig though, probably the best since MJ joined the band, and people seemed to actually enjoy the tunes too, which was an unexpected bonus for us! I remember the sound guy asking us if we could ‘tone it down’ before we went on; I remember ignoring that, then I remember getting really wasted afterwards and not a lot else. Oh, now I do remember jumping off the stage to go and sing with a child who seemed to be getting into the music, but then stopping a bit short when I realised I was scaring the hell out of her.
So yeah, as for ‘updates’ on GS, we’re currently working on new music, which is why we haven’t done any gigs for a while. Also, we thought it would be cool to have a bit of a break anyway, go on holidays, make music with other people, that kind of thing.
We went into the studio a couple of weeks ago, just before I went on holiday, and just spent a couple of hours getting down drums for 4 new tracks. jon’s obviously the best drummer ever, so it didn’t take him long to nail the parts. We’re then gonna record everything else ourselves. So far, Jules has redone his bass, I’ve re-recorded my guitars, and started the vocals for 2 of the tracks round Matt’s. I have to say, Matt is an absolute genius, not only with the guitar, but when it comes to production, it is just amazing listening to some of these first mixes he’s done, and I can’t wait for you to hear them once they’re finished. I’ll be posting some official updates on the GS site and Myspace when they’re up.
In the meantime, Matt is also lending his skills to another little project I’m involved with…