acwildheart

MOOD: Tired
LISTENING TO: See below

The last few days at work have been insane. I'm quickly finding out the hard way that a failure in this job to cross every t and dot every i can have dire consequences which often take a good couple of days to rectify if you're not careful.

In a bizarre way though I'm enjoying this. Many of my previous jobs have basically involved little more than sitting at a desk doing one task (if that) for nine hours a day and actually being able to feel my brain turning into mush. It's nice to be working somewhere where there's never a shortage of stuff to do. I reckon a bit of superhuman effort in the week ahead and I'll be well and truly on the case.

On a good note, finally found a copy of this at the local Waterstones today:



Think that's my reading matter for the next few weeks sorted.

And, on that note...

Great Under-Rated Albums Of Our Time by Yorkie (part Idunno)



Gold Blade - "Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock 'n' Roll?" (2001)

Anger is an energy! - PIL - "Rise" (1987)

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WE MEAN IT MAN?! - Gold Blade - "AC/DC" (2001)

It was 1998 when I first discovered Gold Blade. I was 19 at the time, Britpop had just collapsed and, to be honest, there didn't seem to be a lot coming in to take its place if the introspective emotional masturbation of crap like Radiohead and "Urban Hymns" era Verve didn't really push your button (let's face it, the last good song Richard Ashcroft put his name to was "This Is Music" way back in 1995 - fuck knows what's happened since then but...well, let's not get sidetracked here eh?)

At the time I'd just left Leeds and moved to Stoke-on-Trent where I'd done the obvious thing for someone with a love of music and blagged a job with Keele's student radio station, KUBE FM. Me and my flatmate and companion in rock 'n' roll miscreancy Deano would inflict the student population of ST5 with a mix of old-skool punk, glam metal junk and the odd minor label indie band, most of whom sailed headlong into the abyss after one or two great singles (plus, if they were very lucky, an album) never to be heard of again in the great post-Britpop cull era of Steps, S Club 7 etc.

Anyway, some time around the end of the year, we were sat in our student house just next door to a chip shop in Hartshill

listening to a few new singles we'd picked up in Mike Lloyd Records Hanley (in the words of Marty DiBergi, don't go looking for it, it isn't there anymore).

Amid the usual mix of hit and miss, we found something that aroused our curiosity a bit - a fantastic, revved up dizzgo-funk rock anthem with a none-more-pervo chorus that went "I like your hairstyle/Well it's fantastic/Why don't you rub it in my face?". The song was, funnily enough, called "Hairstyle", it was by a band called Gold Blade and it got pretty heavy rotation on our show for a good few weeks. We weren't the only ones who liked it either - imagine our surprise on stumbling out of our pits one Saturday morning with whichever random females we'd managed to cajole back to the flat at 2am the previous night at the student disco to see them playing it on CDUK of all places! Sure enough, it would turn out to be the second in a brace of Top 40 hits for the Blade.

Then...I dunno, they just sort of disappeared. Certainly, the story of Gold Blade is a very mysterious one indeed (cue swirly music and flashback). They were formed in Blackpool some time in the mid-'90s from the ashes of post-punk stalwarts the Membranes (who you may or may not be aware of via Therapy? covering their best-known song "Tatty Seaside Town" on a B-side during the height of their popularity). They'd been a hard-gigging band for a good few years at this point and had chalked up a minor hit with the song "Strictly Hardcore" (a proper '90s punk classic) and a couple of decent-selling albums. "Hairstyle", so it seemed, was going to be the song that broke them. And it probably would have done had their record company not gone bust a mere week after it was released. D'oh...

"We're gonna break the people down with some punk rock hardcore hooligan blooz y'all!!" - "Hail The People"

I seem to remember them being in Stoke some time later in 1999 supporting the King (an Elvis impersonator who enjoyed a fleeting spell of notoriety by covering "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Come As You Are"...no, I wasn't on drugs at this time...well okay I was actually, quite a lot, but I've heard several other testimonies to the effect that this guy really did exist and have even seen his albums in Leeds HMV so there you go) at Stoke Sugarmill. I missed that gig, either because I was playing football (possibly) or just skint (more probably) or that it was 2-for-1 drinks night at the Uni (equally probably). Either way, minus a label to support them, members started dropping out of the group at an alarming rate and Gold Blade just sort of...well, faded away really and for a couple of years I just had 'em down as one of those post-Britpop bands who should've had a better shot than they did but hey, as Charlie Harper once said: Night is falling, no one in sight/You make your entrance/Did you time it right? (UK Subs - "Ice Age" (1981)). Lots of groups, as I've said already, went the same way. Very few of 'em had the sheer bloody-mindedness to carry on. Even fewer had the nous to come back sounding even better than before. But...

Sometimes I feel pretty wired!/Music it makes me alive! - "Who Was The Killa?"

Fast forward to late 2002. Uni is by now a fading memory, girlfriends have come and gone, friendships have been made and broken and...well, indie music hasn't got any better. This was the era of tedium epitomised by the Strokes and, soon to come, the Libertines where dull grey music was being made by public schoolboys playing at junkies ("Hey little rich boy/Take a good look at me/Why should I let it worry me?/'Cos I'll never believe that you're better than me!" - Sham 69 - "Hey Little Rich Boy"). It's not good. Still isn't. Ah well, on with the story...

By this time, after a couple of disastrous post-Uni temping jobs, I'd managed to settle down working as an IT technician in Harrogate, was briefly happily in love with my starry-eyed lapdancer gf "Chloe" (see V-Day journal entry) and, after a couple of misfires, had finally got the mob of urchins in my new band known as Brookside Riot Squad up and going. Whenever we could we'd be out there, four crop-haired lads terrifying the floppy fringers by playing Sham 69's "Cockney Kids Are Innocent" (retitled "Yorkshire Boys Are Innocent" by us), the Rejects' "Badman" and the Upstarts' "Machine Gun Kelly" plus a load of our own stuff which, well, sounded like the above really. It was good.

One thing I should say about Harrogate, it's a fucking boring place. Unless your idea of good nightlife is UKIP sponsored tea dances, there's not really much. However, down one of the back streets there was a decent little record shop called Mix Music (I've not been to Harrogate in many years so I can't really say whether it's still there or not). It was in there, one dull lunchtime, idly sifting through the bargain bin, that I came across an EP called "AC/DC" by none other than, yes you've guessed it, Gold Blade. "Hmm," I thought, "didn't know they were still going, might as well risk the 99p asking price on this". Took it home and listened to it. What happened next can be anticipated.

Wake up call goes out to the wired
I guess they know what this song is about
Corporate moves for the inspired
Nothing to say? Then shut your mouth!

"Who Was The Killa?"

Hearing that one song knocked me fucking flat. In their two years off, Gold Blade had changed a lot. In the early days (as evidenced on their excellent debut album "Home Turf"), they mostly sounded like a thinking man's Black Grape mainly due to the twin vocal attack of John Robb and Wayne Simmons. However, with Simmons leaving the group, they'd slimmed down and adopted a new ultra-lean mean rock 'n' roll machine outlook. The following weekend, I found the group's then-new album "Do You Believe In The Power Of Rock 'n' Roll" for seven quid in CD Warehouse in Leeds (in the words of Marti DiBergi...erm, see the above quote about Mike Lloyd Music) and it did a lot to reassure this then-young shaven-headed vagabond that yes, there WERE other people out there thinking along the same lines as his gang. From the pure rush of the title track to the fired-up anti-chav/trendy anthem "Kiss My Ass", the spooked-out "Who Was The Killa?" and the Vince Taylor tribute "What A Life", I still say it's the best punk album the 21st century has produced so far.

We live in medieval times/Fast cars they cannot deny this - "Psycho"

Fast forward once more to the present and again, much has changed over the last three years. I've grown up, gone through yet more self-destructive relationships, moved houses more times than I care to remember, joined SG and met so many great people through it that it's unbelievable. More to the point, my music taste has changed a lot as well. My love for punk, which I previously regarded as unquenchable, seems to have...well, not really faded, more evolved. These days you're just as likely to catch me listening to David Lee Roth as you are to Stiv Bators - as far as I'm concerned, both of 'em are rock 'n' roll icons just in totally different ways and both should be goddam well revered, not anodyne chumps like the Arctic Monkeys and Hard-Fi.

One thing hasn't changed though - I still love Gold Blade and I think it's fair to say I'll continue to roll with Brother John and the boys forever. Quite simply, they're truth tellers in an ocean of scaredy cats. They make music that says something about the world we live in beyond that old emo cop-out of "I'm so jaded" etc. Since I finally got into 'em, I've successfully tracked down their first two albums, "Home Turf" and "Drop The Bomb!" via the wonder of second hand record shops (to be honest, the sleevenotes for "Home Turf" are worth buying the album for alone, they certainly woke me up to a few things). I've seen 'em play a good few times and have even got hauled up onstage with 'em to sing backing vocals in Leeds last summer (man, THAT was a night! ). I've bought the new album "Rebel Songs" and stand by my decision that it's easily the best album I heard by any band last year (see here for more info on that particular album - blatant self-plug ).

Quite simply, the music scene needs a band like Gold Blade more now than it arguably ever have done. They're one of the last bastions of truth in the increasingly heartless corrupt facade that music's turned into in the last five years and that's why I wanna testify to the stereo gangstas.

A disunited kingdom seethes in disgust
Who you vote for you can never trust
A great melting pot of lust and desire
Stiff upper lip and funky street fire
Grey starch days and endless neon nights
Bowler hat brigade and smalltown fights
Suffragette tradition of dissent
ENGLAND DESTROYS AND ENGLAND EXPECTS!

Gold Blade - "Psycho" (2005)

Brother Yorkie

PS - See, this is why it's a bad idea to get me started on my favourite bands, look how long the journal entries end up!!

PPS - Btw, Gold Blade are on tour supporting Stiff Little Fingers later this month. If the tour comes to your town, I strongly suggest you go. Hopefully I may see a few of you fellow Leeds natives for their date at the Met on the 27th.