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Dear friends,
as some of you may know, we released an album this year called “Spectre and Crown” which proved very popular indeed with the press and the people alike. A grand scale event it was too with terribly high production values, huge amounts of extra instrumentation and 5 years of sweat, graft and delicious tears. Some time ago, we were asked to do a show in Vicar St on the 21st of November which aimed to match the ambition of the record and we happily agreed. That’s fifteen people on stage – 225 times more people than one fifteenth of a Dickie Rock.
Things got a bit tricky in the interim, however. People are panicky about the economic climate and the sexy bottom seems to be slowly falling out of a fairly oversaturated live music market and we’re now thinking to ourselves “if Spiritualized can’t half fill Vicar St at the moment, then are we kidding ourselves to believe that we can do it?”
But, we’d still really, really like to do this, despite our promoter voicing serious concerns about the timing and the turn out. They’re cool with honouring the contract, but we’ve no interest in bleeding anyone for a show that’s not going to break even so here’s the thing: most people who go to Jimmy Cake shows tend to just pay in at the door. We think it would be smashing if you guys could come see us play (obviously), but also buy in advance this time so we know vaguely where we’re at in terms of breaking even. This is a big gamble for us, because we’re not really big enough to be playing Vicar St at the best of times, but it’d be a nice way of signing off on a record we’re hugely proud of and then getting back to heads-down heavy kraut-rock tunes and punk-rock prices.
Tickets can be bought from local commission junkies Ticketmaster here:
Whatever happens thanks for reading/listening/caring. It’s greatly appreciated and if you can help us pull off this show we will be eternally grateful.
Humbly yours,
the jimmy cake
(Lisa, Dip, John, Parx, Jurgen, Mick, Gav, Vin, Paul)
Jurgen, Parx, Gav. Oooooh, Matron.
I’m way to long in the tooth to be believing, for a second, the guff that comes out of the production lad when he proclaims nonsense such as ” the Jimmy Cake will soundcheck between 1 o’clock and 2.30 and no more!”. As i left the venue at 2.30, to head back to work, nary a kick drum had been kicked. All i’d discovered in my time there was that my amp was fucked, and why. Some utter cunt had nicked the rubber feet off the amp head, which keep it elevated off the cab. Cos the fan is on the bottom ( a winner of an idea). Of course i didn’t notice and of course the thing over-heated and of course now it’s fucked. Cos someone nicked me feet?? What in gods name are they going to do with them? I will get to the bottom of this, rest assured. So i missed the soundcheck. Mick says, “i did the line check there was loads of bass”.
There wasn’t of course, and what there was came back at me distorted and harmonically wierd, so that i thought i was playing the wrong notes or out of tune. But it wasn’t a disaster. We had a string quartet add to the songs (but subtract from our stage-space), and they sounded pretty cool to me, seeing as i was standing next to them. Before we played Jetta’s Palace, we were told we were over-time and had to stop. Well, we considered this and decided fuck that and played anyway. Why would we stop? the venue decided to to put a curfew on the whole show after it was booked, after we’d already been told our stage time was 11 o’clock. This utter lack of respect for audience, promoter and artist is pretty indicative of the fucking state of the arts in this awful country. Get off the stage, we need to fill the venue with the silent disco. No offence to silent disco, or the the room full of ten year olds who turned up to it, but fuck off. The Button Factory did that to us on our album launch too, added an 11.00 o’clock show after we’d booked it, after we’d put out posters, too late to pull the gig, which believe me we were very tempted to do. Greedy money hungry wankers desperate to cram as many people into their gaff as possible, reducing the expierence for both audiences, reducing the impact of music and the desperate wasters like myself who’ve dedicated a sizable proportion of their existences to attempting to create something worthwhile. And even if it isn’t worthwhile, and it frequently, nay, mostly isn’t, it’s still better then a room full of children with headphones on singing along to Queen. You can do that at home. In twenty years time, all discos will be silent, cos there’ll be no more fucking music left, cos by the time you turn up, it’s over. bah fucking humbug.
Oh, and it turns out, i was out of tune. Or everyone else was. Something bizarre, in anyways.
Last night, as we left our interim rehearsal space, located chillingly above a fruit and veg market in Smithfield, my self and Parx saw this bloke fall down with a thump, and start cussing. We sensed agrro, and intelligently moved away, but, as we passed by the still prone, still cursing figure many minutes later on our way home, we realised it wasn’t agrro, it was some drunk tool, lying on his back taking pictures with his mobile phone of the errant brick he had tripped over. “i’m after falling over this errant brick, chaps” he said (i’ve paraphrased, natch). Yeah great, we said, but sauntered on. It wasn’t gettting an warmer, and he was clearly alright, if his constant mouth-gub was anything to go by. “oh, be like that,” he says. “be ignorant.” and we did. We beed ignorant, like foxes. What is wrong with us? why didn’t we go to help a fellow, clearly plastered, human. Why didn’t we go over there and sign affidavits to attest to the man’s anguish on having tripped, as he innocently sauntered home, clearly sober, by the way, over an errant brick. The brick he had since taken so many pictures of. Ignorance, sir, we are guilty of, when such a chance to sue the world for leaving what appears to be an errant brick, on a pavement, unencumbered by signage that says: THIS IS AN ERRANT BRICK, BEWARE. Ignorant!
The shame burned us warm, on our march home. Parx said “write about this in your blog,” perhaps sarcastically. See? see what you’ve done?
