This blog covers what I consider to be the second part of The False Poets story from June 2013 when Tristan left to June 2014 when Dean stepped down, too. There were a further four rehearsals after that into the Autumn of that year, two with Tristan drumming and singing a bit, then a couple later with current drummer Ian Carroll stepping in, but no gigs or recordings. I had some things going on personally I had to take care of at that time & felt it was time for me to put things on hold. Take stock of things. The wheels for me quite literally came off when Dean decided that he didn't want to do it anymore. As smashing a drummer as he was, he was also pretty important cos he had the van!
(Look at them two daft lads, man. I think we were headed up to The Old Ship again for that one.)
After Tell Me When came out & we were reduced to a 3 piece, we started doing more pub gigs. There was a couple of gigs at The Lambton Arms in Chester le Street, The Wharton Arms in Dudley, The Railway Tavern Darlington, The Old Ship, The Britannia in Chester again, a few appearances at The Northumberland Arms. Attendances could be pretty dreadful. A Northumberland Arms one comes to mind. We opened with a cracking version of I Can Only Give You Everything to hardly anyone. 3 blokes who normally drank in The Star came to see us tho cos the gig was listed in The Crack with us described as a garage band and they stayed for the two sets, which was kind of them. We kept at it tho. Dinny taking photos of empty rooms as we weren't long off starting became a bit of a thing. Most of the gigs were ok tho and, although the material we were doing wasn't what you could call very well known there weren't any complaints. The songs were invariably short and fairly catchy. The first Lambton Arms one was good. A few people came to see us there. A personal favourite night was The Sun Inn in Swalwell. I sometimes drank in there and the landlord there was a music fan. He said he used to put bands on, but it wasn't worth the outlay, so knocked it on the head. We were never really bothered about the money, so I said we'd play for 70 quid. The pub has 3 rooms. We were to play in a small room looking down the bar, the other rooms were fairly busy, watching England beat Moldova 4 nil in a World Cup Qualifier. When we were setting up there was a local talking to us rather happily, telling us how stingey Alan Shearer was in buying fish and chips for some lads who had been doing for some work for him on his house, only for him to ask for the money off them when he brought their scran back from the chippy. He also had a story about Jimmy Nail having a revenge shit on somebody's table, but the exact details of that tale elude me. He wished us well for the evening with a cheery farewell after that anecdote. 9 o'clock came and there was still no one else in the room to see us. About ten past I said we might as well start and after You're Gonna Miss Me I was saying thanks very much, only for Dinny to ask who I was talking to and I said that fella on the other side of the pub who was looking across the length of the bar. Once the England match finished the room started filling up and they were into it, so it was all very positive. In the intermission, on a tab break outside, there were a few young Polish lads necking a bottle of whiskey. We started the second set with Gloria much to the delight of one of the Polish lads who made his way up to Dean's cymbals and started merrily hitting them before trying to singalong on a mic. He had to be ushered out. When introducing the Nightcrawlers' Little Black Egg there was a bit of crack with one of the crowd about the fella who parks his car in the Lidl car park at Swalwell to sell eggs out of his boot. It was satisfying tho, winning people over & giving them a good time. Slow Down was a fun one to play. Here's a version from The Old England:
Possibly our highest profile gig, if you could call it that, was a support slot in October '13 at Cluny 2 for The Wicked Whispers who were on the fringes of the Liverpool psychedelic scene. As it was shorter than our usual sets we did mostly our own stuff: Call the Doctor, Tell Me When, Girl I Know, early versions of Mad Machine and What It's All About, Stomper, You Are The Way, Stick or Twist, Did It Feel Real? and a couple of covers in the middle somewhere The Remains' Why Do I Cry? and The Bad Seeds' All Night Long. Again tho, not that many there, really. Never mind, it was a Sunday evening. We had a rider & a dressing room for the only time ever. That was quite amusing.
The only other gig we did which heavily featured our own stuff was at The Three Tuns in the February. It must have been a showcase of local bands on a Tuesday. I remember being dissatisfied with it at the time. I thought my amp was misfiring, but I've listened back to it today and it wasn't a bad set, really. Possibly it might have been a confidence thing about playing people our own stuff. The set-list that night was Call the Doctor, Girl I Know, Tell Me When, Set It Free, Like a Rolling Stone, The Mad Machine, Did It Feel Real?, You Are The Way, Hey Joe, Stick or Twist. Looking back, it couldn't have harmed to push our own stuff a bit more with such gigs when we had the chance. We did slip plenty of them into the pub gig sets when we were doing the garage covers.
The False Poets EP
I think this was recorded, mixed and mastered Saturday 13th February 2014 at the First Avenue Studios, Heaton where we had regularly been rehearsing in the red room downstairs. A the desk was Dave 'The Wizard' Curle who had recorded my debut EP Cloudwalking in the Concreteworld back in 2004. Sound bloke. The studio had amassed some cool gear during that time. He and the studio are highly recommended for your recording needs. The price was the same as it was in April 2004. £160 for 8 hours. The Old England gig a few weeks before helped pay for that. I think I remember him saying that since the banks crashed in 2008, not so many people were wanting to record, so they had to keep prices competitive.
Going in to record, I'm pretty sure we were telling ourselves that if we got anymore done than You Are The Way and Did It Feel real? then that would be a bonus. They were what we felt were our biggest numbers at the time and a bit more time was spent on them with a few overdubs and what have you. Call the Doctor and A Girl I Know were one or two takes using what was effectively the guide guitar. Quite punk, really. As it transpired, we may have been able to have a stab at another song or two, but 4 was fine & dandy.
The rhythm section take a break here, as Mr Curle twiddles with his nobs offscreen.
One of Tristan's trilogy of 12 bar blues songs. The fuzz pedal was from the studio. No idea what it was, but it looked expensive. Dave just turned all the nobs up on it full whack as it went into a smallish vintage valve amp. I just went along with the guitar sound. Dave didn't look like he was ready to be argued with. Tristan liked it. He listened to the EP once with his mate Bush. He said that the recording made the Broadwater session sound quite tame in comparison. He was pleased we were still playing his songs. The rhythm guitar and the solo are the same part. On the Tuesday, when we were at The Tuns, Dinny was asking me to go back and do a second guitar part to give it something extra, but I quite liked it as is. Plus, there would have been the effort of having to go back to the studio. It reminded me a bit of Nirvana's Stain.
A little bit more time spent on this one, although it was written fairly quickly. Based around the quizzical A7 chord a la Love's She Comes In Colors. It's a chord with a raised eyebrow, is A7.
This next clip might be interesting, although it is pretty nerdy. It's from the rehearsal which I took to the band when Tristan was in and I was showing it to the rest of the band. It's a good illustration of a song coming together in rehearsals.
You can hear following that, that I'm pretty much playing the instrumental lead that Tristan heard for that on the first rehearsal. There's a distorted tremolo open chord guitar somewhere in the background. It features Dean's sole tambourine recording during the instrumental break. The harmonised vocal in the third verse was an impromptu thing and worked well. I think of the four EP songs, this is the one which I prefer to the one that ended up on the album. Might be the vocal. The title is a bit hippie-ish. Possibly comes from the none-more-hippy Incredible String Band and their far out magnum opus When You Find Out Who You Are.
A G, C, D surf rock thing. I think it got a play on this
Garage Punk podcast from Moab, Utah. One of my friends at work said recently that she had been on holiday to Moab. And I said Moab, Utah? Ah yeah, population 5,000? She said how do you know that? And I said I looked it up cos we got played on a garage punk podcast broadcast from there years ago. I like the bendy note at the end and how we all know it's going to end at the exact same time. I can't bend my notes so well on the Strat presently, The nuts have gone rusty, so my wang bar don't wang no more. I really must see someone about that.
A pretty wild, in your face version. Maybe some of the clean guitars in between the verses could have been brought out a little more. I said it could do with a 12 string guitar and Dave had a guitar which had strings an octave higher than a standard guitar, so that also plays the intro and mid verse motif. It's the most recorded of The False Poets' songs. There's the two studio versions by us, the live one and Tristan did one of his own, possibly in answer to this which is perhaps more textured than this one. There was this review below in local mag The Crack. You might have to zoom in to read the review. I think the comments about him wigging out to the EP must relate to Did It Feel Real? It's a good one to let loose to.
So, that's a wrap on Year 2 of The False Poets. I had a feeling when things stopped at the end of 2014 that that would not be the end of it cos we've always been and always will be great mates and we can make a canny racket when we put our minds to it. When we got back together in 2018 it was with a view to play those songs we'd written rather than more cover stuff. They're maturing quite nicely.
