Thursday 31 July 2008

New Ruffian Album Title Delivered by Email

Subject: fever standish‏
From: Wallace Wade (WillardprovenanceWade@drupal.org)
Sent: 27 July 2008 04:34:49
jukes flagpole pentane europa bankrupt mete? waterfall, jelly affricate.fever doug fever pentane indonesia marcy, combustible
consolation collar fever venereal swahili.
boniface consolation.

Well, it has got a ring to it.

This evening I started on the video for 'Windsor Uplift'. It currently consists of lots of footage of my great, great, great Grandmother's nephew giving a speech. I imagine this will change at some point.

Have been experimenting with new encoding software to attempt to get the huge Ruffian video library into editable form. We've got well over an hour of footage from various gigs, but the pieces of software that I use to put the music videos together won't recognise the huge majority of it. Hence the same pieces get regurgitated again and again.

Hopefully I'll find a way around this...

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Billy Ruffian is Down Wid Da Kidz

As I'm always on the forefront of technology I thought I'd add the
Ruffian as a user on Bebo assuming that it'd be a bit like Facebook.
A quick shuffle around would suggest that it's nothing like Facebook
whatsoever.

However, we should at least pretend to play along and so Bebo
themselves advised me to advise you all that I'm now using a service
to stay connected with friends. Please click below to link with me:

http://www.bebo.com/a/invite/7556352396a791811653b65

* Draw or write on my White Board
* Upload, share and comment on unlimited photos
* Read my bebo blog
* And, er, other stuff

Here's hoping the "other stuff" is as exciting as it sounds. Peace
out, homie... cough.

Tuesday 29 July 2008

So, Farewell Then, The Castle...

With an exciting August FLC date (The Housewives, The Favours and The New Royal Family) all confirmed and September (Go Lebanon, Starfighter Pilot) in readiness, the demise of our venue, The Castle, has come as quite a blow. It's very unlikely that Filthy Little Clubnight will continue, unless we can find a venue who will allow us to put it on for £cheap. We'll send a few Press thingummies out to possible venues in the next week or two, but the FLC future ain't bright.

The Castle was the only venue in Manchester willing to put on bands for free. This was free for the organisers and free for the punters (unless, like us, you wanted to pay the bands). We would take £3 on the door, split it evenly between the bands who played and owe nothing to the landlord or the bar manager. They took their money out of the extra bar takings that our clientele and bands would provide them with. Everyone went home happy and bands took home money between £5 and £50 depending on the success of the night.

We were first associated with The Castle on 2nd August '07 when we played a gig to seven friends in the backroom. We clambered around, we fell, we played an encore and we hurt some equipment. Despite the lack of clientele, the atmosphere was wonderful and we kept it in mind for future events.

The event would by the Filthy Little Festival, on 23rd and 24th September 2007. We were meant to organise the 23rd, but instead ended up organising both days due to horrible personal crises on behalf of the organiser of the 24th. We put on And What Will Be Left of Them, Balor Knights, The Fountain and The Leatherettes on Day One (Das Wunderlust died in transit). It was an excellent day with a good crowd. Day Two saw ourselves, Vichy Government, Dirtblonde, The Colt .45s and Natalie Findlay and was another treat with another great turnout.

At the start of 2008 we set up the monthly Filthy Little Clubnight, to run on the 3rd Friday of each month. January saw the excellent clatterpop of And What Will Be Left Of Them?, headlining over the first gig from Manchester's currently hugely tipped First Black Precedent, who brought along an unimagineable army of friends and fans. The surreal and scary world of the Plague Doctors supported, as well as a two-man line up of the Ruffian performing their own brand of Ruffeoke.

February saw us squeeze The Generalissimos, ourselves and Julius Martov and the Sexy Mistakes onto someone else's bill due to a double booking. The Martovs scowled through an excellent opening set and the Issimos bounced merrily and brought sunshine into the dark and dank back room.

In March we tried for A! Big! Band! and got Das Wunderlust. Unfortunately, due to it being Good Friday, the students had fled the city so it wasn't quite the success that it could have been. Nevertheless, the Wunderlust were excellent as were the Plague Doctors (again), who played after FLA favourites Dirtblonde and The Colt .45s.

In April we had the excellent Starfighter Pilot headlining over ourselves and the great Liverpool girl punk of Town Bike and Awesome Wells. Excellent atmosphere, excellent crowd.

In May we had The Lovely Eggs (starring Holly from Angelica), ourselves, Dirtblonde and the unforgettable Hyperbubble, featuring American indiepop's answer to David Hasselhoff.

Later that month we hosted a whole day of entertainment at The Castle for Maps Festival. We showcased Whitstable's unique and wonderful Psychotic Reaction, Manchester's rawkish The Dead School, the tweepop of The Lovely Eggs, Liverpool's rather good and rather well attended The Affection, FLA favourites Starfighter Pilot, Colt .45s (best set I've ever seen by them) and Dirtblonde before The Plague Doctors took to the stage and gave us their reworking of 'Earth Song'. Pink Riot and Town Bike followed before ourselves. Finally, after the excellent Housewives (who I would heartily recommend), First Black Precedent headlined, bringing another huge crowd. The day was a huge success. We finished only twenty minutes over time, and all of the band went away happy at playing on such an excellent bill.

In June we had The Affection, ourselves, The Fountain and The Dead School. A sort of 'greatest hits', if you will.

July saw us with Buxton's snarling, noisy and brilliant The Ascension, a wonderful acoustic set from Politburo, a fascinating and wonderful set from The Man Amp (ex-Car Crash TV) and the Ladyfest sounds of Hug Party.

So, there we have it. Excellent bands, excellent times. Many thanks to The Castle for its unstinting support over the last year, and many thanks to you all for coming to our nights!

Tuesday 22 July 2008

The Other Billy Ruffian

We just got a facebook message from the other Billy Ruffian - no, not the ship - that would be crazy, boats can't email. The other Billy Ruffian is www.billyruffian.com and it's a sort of record-label-cum-collective of people who make experimental music and sounds:  

"Billy Ruffian is a completely non-profit-making open-source hippiefied non-entity. But it's a bit like a record label. All music is released gratis through the Internet Archive."  

Ironically, the registered address for this domain used to be just down the road from Ste Ruffian's house but now they have moved their operations into Central Manchester.

Go check them out: www.archive.org/details/billy-ruffian

---

Back in the world of Manchester indie band Billy Ruffian, we've got a rehearsal tonight.  On the agenda is tweaking and resending the Masterminding My Downfall single, practising Debtor's Lament for the live experience and working on new song Long Walk Home. I'm certain it will be most edifying.

Monday 21 July 2008

Billy Ruffian on Just A Minute

Ok, so it's not that Just A Minute.  The Ruffian reign of terror on Radio 4 still only clocks in at 15 seconds and a confused sounding Humphreys namecheck.

The blog title actually refers to the www.filthylittleangels.com compilation of 1 mintue long songs. And would you believe it, it actually looks like it's going to see the light of day! Billy Ruffian open up side 2 with a song about a man who wakes up and decides he's the queen.  Lots of other FLAians are on there with the glorious Town Bike and lovely Star Fighter Pilot putting in appearances. I'm also a fan of the song about Jimmy Tractor.  It has 19 songs by 19 bands on one 7" slab of vinyl. That's economy right there.  Just remember to run it at 33 and a third or it'll seem even more concise.

Thanks to all who came to see us at Tiger Lounge, although we were 40 min late going on I think it sounded as good as we'd ever done at the Lounge and a great time was had by all.  Thanks go out to The Rise and Fall of the Rockets for being very polite and nice and cheering me up with a banjo solo.  Thanks also go to whoever it was that left the amps on stage. They were handy.

I've just listened to the new song by the Wild Beasts on youtube.  I really recommend you don't do similar.

Much love, Ben Paul

Sunday 6 July 2008

First Haltemprice and Howden Candidate takes notice of 'Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender Of All...'

David Craig, author of the catchily titled 'Rip-Off!: the scandalous inside story of the management consulting money machine', 'Plundering the Public Sector: how New Labour are letting consultants run off with £70 billion of our money' and 'Squandered: how Gordon Brown is wasting over one trillion pounds of our money' writes a blog. He is also standing as a candidate in Haltemprice and Howden. Not quite sure what his stance is (but he is negative on Davis), but on 28th June he wrote the following blog entry:

"Saturday 28 June

Somebody posts a comment directing me to a very funny video about David Davis http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KsqYihgo0AI It's called The Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender of All - brilliantly done, worth having a look."

Thus we have been noticed! A shame that none of the Sunday papers picked up on any of this, but to be noted by one of the candidates is quite exciting! We're fairly confident of reaching 2,500 hits on the video between now and by-election day. Currently at 2,337 and counting...

Tuesday 1 July 2008

The whole John Humphreys thing

"...but he is attracting some er, perhaps unlikely supporters...

~cue tune~

...yeah, if you can catch the lyrics, 'Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender Of All' there, by the band 'Billy Ruffian'. Well our correspondant Danny Savage is on the line. Does that sort of set the tone for this by-election, Danny...?"

Hearing Jon Humphreys read out the title of our latest record was an odd experience indeed. Mind you, hearing anyone talk about us always throws me a bit. Indeed, the last thing I tend to think about when writing a song or lyric is the critical reception/attention that it will receive, so when stuff does get heard and commented on, I always tend to find it an odd proposition. The idea of Mr. Humphreys talking (however briefly) about our song certainly never occurred to me as I sent the 50% joking, 50% serious text to Thom Ruffian whilst walking down Wilmslow Road one morning.

I’m paraphrasing here, but I think it was something like: “When are we going to write ‘The Most Unlikely Civil Liberties Defender Of All’ then? “I think that maybe I’ve been taking pills / ‘cos David Davis is acting like he’s John Stuart Mills””

As simple as that. Thom sent back part of what would become the 2nd verse and we went on from there.

Trying to get the key line to scan as I was walking along was slightly troublesome, and I tried several permutations to try and get the two main facts across – a) that Davis seems to be pro-civil liberties and b) that he really is the least likely chap that one would expect to do so. The words swapped position several times until I settled on what I was happiest with. Thom suggested the chorus be put to the music of the old, old Billy Ruffian song ‘Mixtape’. The words duly fitted. In time, due to lack of having any other suitable music available, we stuck the verse to the Mixtape verse, too.

When I wrote ‘Mixtape’ back in the Summer of ’05 as one band died and another began to be born, I never could ever have dreamt of it being heard by as many people as it has now been!

I’m glad I pushed ahead with the song. It seemed a bit silly to spent so much time on something that would be so ephemeral – there’s only another nine or ten days left before it entirely stops being relevant – but I thought that, with good luck on our side and a lack of any other big political stories, we might just get a fair bit of attention for it. At the worst I hoped for at least a couple of blog mentions. At best? Well, a phone-call from PM’s Eddie Mair to discuss the song and our own views on politics wouldn’t have gone amiss. But, y’know, John Humphreys is definitely the next best thing!

Where next from here, then? We certainly don’t have any intention of becoming a political group, for starters. The song was never meant to be political, merely being a song written from Davis’ own point of view. We’ve been tarred as Conservatives, Libertarians and, most confusingly, the progeny of Labour MPs. Not sure I understand that one. But the experience has been useful – writing a song with such a quick turnaround was a fascinating challenge, and Producer Paul really does deserve kudos for getting it ready so quickly. I’m not sure I’d like to try and compile a video in just one night again, though. But the whole experiment was definitely worth the effort. We’ve raised our profile exponentially and, keeping our fingers crossed, perhaps as we approach by-election day, we’ll get a bit more play out of it.

Oh, and just for the record – we're very much in line with Nick Clegg’s stance on this one, in that we agree with Davis’ stance on opposing 42 day detention without charge, but I can’t imagine that we’d agree with Davis on many other topics.

I also don't agree with the previous blog post that suggests the song is about the 'ridiculousness' of David Davis. As I said, this song is largely written from his point of view and, whilst there are some of our own thoughts and opinions in there (notably on the verse about the length of detention without charge in various other countries), I don't think we're really hitting any targets other than the Prime Minister, Kelvin McKenzie and The Establishment (i.e. those who would support '42 days') in general.

Just a shame I hadn't forseen the fact that David Icke would stand. That's a song in itself right there...