Billy Ruffian Live!!! Tonight!!!

Hello, if you happen to be reading this, good for you! If you happen
to be reading this in Manchester and you're not up to anything
tonight, even better! You should come up to Tiger Lounge to see Billy
Ruffian performing their Greatest Hits! Live! Tonight!

Billy Ruffian @ Fiction Non Fiction
Tiger Lounge, Cooper Street
9pm, Tue 16 September 2008
£3, 4 bands (probably) lots of fun.

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...

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.

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!

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

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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.

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

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