Ne'er cast a clout

There's an awful lot of news to write about today. First and foremost is the fact that we now have a new bassist!! Rob Howell has been with us for a couple of weeks now, and he officially joined the band last Thursday.
We're really sad to have lost Trev, our cheeky bass wielding Dubliner. He had to move back to Ireland and although it was a tough decision, we know it's for the best, as Trev can now get on with life being a top notch animator. Life goes on and the seasons change - no doubt about that. But we'll sure as hell miss you Trev!
Rob, meanwhile, has been a great friend of the band for a long time and he's a very cool chap, so the changeover was a breeze. He's been working hard to learn our set - when he first joined us he learnt 7 songs in a week (that's one song a day - impressive or what!) and then we went and played the Hinterland festival over in Glasgow.
Hinterland was loads of fun. We rocked the art school and then caught a load of other great bands, like We Have Band (just as good as they were at SXSW) and Jesus H. Foxx, who just keep getting better. Running up and down the steep streets of Glasgow carrying most of our equipment and a little too much beer to fuel us along.
After Hinterland was over, we played Sick Kids Sunday at the GRV in the burg. What a great day - the creme de la creme of the Edinburgh music scene all having a laugh and playing some tunes - it really was a good day to be part of. there's some new faces in town - the Stormy Seas are great lads - and every act I saw reminded me of the variety and quality of the music that people are making in this city.
No rest for the wicked, though - after that I had to focus on my degree show - the hand in day was 15th May. I won't go into the details of the energy-sapping, panic-inducing, creativity squeezing black hole where my life went for the best part of a week, but the joyous result is a degree show I am pretty chuffed with! The Edinburgh College of Art degree show is open from the 13th June, and it's well worth a visit if you're in the city. There's so much great work on show, seeing it all going up is really exciting. My work is in the Illustration studio along with my talented fellow fourth years, and (not being biased or anything) our illustration show is a must see. Here's a sneak peak of one of my screenprint linocuts, illustrating a poem by Rudyard Kipling:


The very night of the hand-in I was supposed to catch a flight to Brighton to play the Great Escape.. but I missed it cos I was so exhausted that I passed out on the airport bus! But one much needed sleep later I joined Rob and Mikey down in my home town.


hooray! They'd been staying with my folks for a couple of days already and they were well rested, good friends with the family cat, and had seen plenty of gigs. I was pretty jealous, in fact I didn't end up seeing any other bands cos by the time we'd played our gig, the whole caboodle was over. A shame, but still, we managed to get some rest hanging out on the beach, overzealously ruffled by the sea breeze, and coated with a little salty drizzle, filled with fish and chips, and all the other things that make Brighton so great. Mikey and Rob actually saw the Clash's Mick Jones - playing with a new band. What a treat. And then we returned to auld reekie.

Once we'd settled back up north after our short break in brighton, we had to carry on practising and rehearsing and then we got an offer to support White Lies at the Picturehouse. This was great news, Mikey and I had watched the band in Texas and we'd never played the Picturehouse (a venue of stunning proportions and a fabulous, vintage cinema vibe.) It's always so rewarding to play to an energetic and up-for-it crowd and this lot certainly were - they clapped along, smiled a lot, and generally looked like they were having a good time, which is what it's all about really isn't it? And once we'd played, along with the Trailer Trash Tracys (who'd come all the way from London) the main event really put on an amazing show - all dramatic bursts of light and high-drama crashes into choruses - no doubt about it, they're very good at what they do. Well worth checking out if you can.

That more or less brings us up to the present. It's been a busy few weeks, and all of it's been great fun - knackering, but fun. Now the view is rosy for the coming summer months of gigs and ice lollies. And Rockness, which we'll be playing.. but more about that later.

south by southwest: the tale of a week in the lone star state

OK. Time to spill the beans all about South by Southwest.

Well there are no two ways about it: it was an amazing week, but it was so jam packed full of stuff that by the end we were most certainly three exhausted band mates, a week older but much wiser as to the ins and outs of life in the chaotic milieu of the music industry. So much to take in: the temperature, which of course is always the first innate sign that you are somewhere new. The food, the accents, the scale of things.

The first time we walked onto Sixth Streeet (the main street of the SxSW festival, with practically every premises hurriedly turned into a music venue) we were met with a tidal wave of noise unlike anything i've known before: a hundred bass drums beating different rhythms, endless guitars mixing up into a cacophony; singers and keyboards and notes flying about with such velocity that they almost knocked you over.

And from that moment on it was a non-stop riot of running from one gig to the next, trying to make sense of the layout of the city and the timescale of each day. I saw a brilliant array of bands, from the gentle folky aplomb of Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons and Slow Club, to the weird and wonderful shreiks and swerves of Wild Beasts, and We Have Band's robot anarchy. I sneaked into the last 2o minutes of a Masterkraft set, which was crazy, and the British Music Embassy (where we played our showcase set) always had a good array of bands, and here I caught marvellous Yorkshire young'uns Sky Larkin and also witnessed Gallows and Frank Turner, both of whom I'd been keen to see live.

This list of bands is made up noticeably of Brit acts. I don't think I was being xenophobic in my enthusiasm for seeing home-grown talent: we caught many American bands too but it struck me that the British contingent really was an incredibly strong force to be reckoned with, both in the variety of the music that was produced, and the skill and infectious enthusiasm with which it was played to the crowd. They certainly lapped it up. I heard many impressed noises coming from almost every audience I was part of.

Our own gigs went extremely well, the first being in a bar called Friends, and the second in the BME. This second fell on Mikey's birthday, and high spirits were in the air (and strong spirits were soon in our systems once we'd left the stage) and we played one of the best gigs ever. There's nothing like a great sound system, a good team behind you, and genuine euphoria buoying you up when you're playing your hardest. It was reflected in the reaction we got which, of course, only served to power us along the better.

There's a short clip of our smaller Friends gig here:

Our two gigs done and dusted, we were free to soak up the atmosphere, and any other imbibements that came our way. This included hot chilli sauce. BBC Scotland decided to torture Come on Gang! by interviewing us while feeding us the stuff, in a shop on 6th street called 'Tears of Joy'. They were all set out on a long table, from 'Mild' all the way to 'Inferno'. The labels on the bottles got scarier further down the table, until the imagery was all skulls on fire and screaming people in agony. If that was just the illustrations, what the hell would the taste be like?! I for one was particularly fearful considering my wimpish stance on hot food. Usually ginger tea is about the limit of my range. But we worked our way along, and by the end, teeth smouldering, eyes watering but soldiering on, we felt unconquerable. Until we tried 'Holy Shit', one drop of which made us go haywire and grab bottles of water off anxious kids. And with that, the BBC chuckled (they decided to shun all sauce tasting opportunity) and went on their way.

Trev, Mikey and I spent the evenings doing our seperate things, meeting up as and when our plans came together. I heard stories of Proclaimers rolling eyes at their enthusiastic sing-alongs, and close shaves with wayward taxis driving the wrong way (luckily Trev survived to tell the tale). While I adventured on my own I found lovely old vintage clothes shops, an amazing van which sold giant pots of delicious smoothies, a downcast boy on a bench who was accosted by a girl giving 'free hugs' (they ended up walking off hand in hand together), not to mention many friendly people, in bands or just wandering about, who always had a friendly word. Once I was rooting around in my bag for my passport, starting to get a little concerned, when an old homeless bloke walked up holding it open. In the middle of a crowded street, whilst drunk. It was a minor miracle and I still can't really believe how he found me before I even knew it was missing.

We also found time to get a proper Texan barbecue in. To sum it up in one word: Huge. Like everything else in the lone star state.

And with that, the week was over, and it was time to go back to the antique closes of Edinburgh. We packed a taxi to bursting point and headed off down the freeway.

A couple of days to go...

Today, technically, is Saturday (but it only has been for 2 1/2 hours) and we leave for Austin on Tuesday. At this point I am barely able to contain my excitement. The air is starting to warm up here in Edinburgh, Spring is definitely in the air. But I looked on BBC weather today and learnt that the temperature in Texas next week is set to be in the early to mid twenties celcius. At night it gets as 'cold' as our days here are warm. Ohh yeah! I have got some sunglasses, and some miniature shampoo bottles. Small mercies eh!

Mikey has warned us that we shouldn't take too much stuff. Erm, I think I am going to have to bypass this request. I am going to take loads of clothes and there's no getting around it. Sorry Mikey.

We played our Trade Union gig on Monday night. It was also the leaving do for an employee of Cab Vol so the shots were free and plentiful. This was not really the good thing it would have been at any other time. In short, I have never played a gig having two shots of whiskey inside me, and it put me just past the level of alchol ingestion that i am comfortable with. I don't usually drink before a gig and this reminded me why!
It was a good gig though, lots of fun and dancing. Wolfjazz, one half of the fab duo who run Trade Union, has concocted a rather marvellous remix of Spinning Room, which you can find on that link above. Enjoy!



ooh, Mikey has a postscript. More useful bits to tell you:

Our song Both End Burning has been used in the T In The Park 2009 web advert thing...check out a version of it here: http://www.youtube.com/materialblog

Also, and a bit cheeky this one as its not entirely Come On Gang! business...sod it. Our good friend, favourite Greek and all round swell musician type Rob Howell has put a new song on his myspace with me (Mikey) lending a wee bit of guitar to it...check it out here (the particular song is 'Three Steps' and its an epic drum & bass classic): http://www.myspace.com/robhowell

Seriously, check out his stuff, he's ace.

A few photies

The view on the way down South

We have emerged from the American Embassy, it's 9am and none of us have slept. Hurrah!Whitechapel in the early evening

Back in the Burgh we lark about on the Royal Mile after our Sneaky Pete gig

Well the band went to London and a treat it surely was. Our trip to the American Embassy threw up queue company in the shape of Primal Scream, Graham Coxon, Jeffrey Archer and a few actresses who kept their heads buried in magazines; aside from this, i'd hazard a guess that around 55% of the queue was SxSW bound: you could tell this from the tightness of the jeans and largeness of the hair. It was all over much quicker than we thought, and once we were given leave to go, we collected our stuff from a nearby church (you're not allowed to take basically anything into the embassy, and the lovely old church built in 1793 was the only place that would look after our bags. I say look after - we left them behind a fire extinguisher and hoped for the best) and headed off into the London sunlight.
Trev and Mikey had to hotfoot it back up to Edinburgh for work. Luckily for me, I'm an art student, footloose and fancy free for the day and so I went off in search of adventure.
What I found was Primark, and it took rather too much of my overdraft. I knew this would happen. I have been spending too much money on clothes but I don't really know how to stop at the moment. Nothing short of backruptcy will give me the willpower to pass by a sequinned top. Ah well.
I stayed with Polly and Lottie, thanks for that dudes. Lottie is a graphic designer, find her work at http://rudi-designs.blogspot.com/ . We went out to Ghetto and danced a bit. London nightlife can't really be explained properly until you're actually there: the incredible thought that people put into their appearance, which is great to see and very inspirational; the lingering sense of the massiveness of the city and a vague awareness of the grime and the need to keep an eye on your bag.. it's not always nice but it's absolutely never boring.
I woke up the next morning a little bit late, but considering that this was my first night's sleep in 3 days, I think that's fair enough. However, I got on a train headed for Glasgow at 1pm - for reasons not entirely well thought-out - meaning I arrived in Edinburgh at 7pm and late for the soundcheck for that night's gig with Everything Everything. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=253099360 . This band are brilliant. I could only watch in awe as they harmonised, laptopped and rocked out with a great sense of cameraderie. Superb!
I took some photos of these things as they were happening, and i'll put them up soon, when i find my camera cable.

Cheerio.

A very good place to start

Well, here we are. The beginning! To be honest I'm a little ashamed to admit that it took us this long to figure out that we should start up a blog. Come On Gang! is an Edinburgh-based band and we have been going since June 2007, and having a brilliant time of it. I am Sarah, the drummer and singer, typing this now, although Mikey and Trev, who play guitar and bass respectively, will also write for the blog. It makes sense doesn't it? What better way to collect together all our experiences, photos, images, gig reports (ours and other peoples'), flyer designs, etc into one nice little space? The art college are always telling me to reconcile my life with the band with my work as an illustrator and it think this could be a grand way to do it, and maybe even entertain you perspicacious folks out there who might read it. 

So here goes. 

We're starting to get really, REALLY excited about going to South by Southwest in a couple of weeks. Texas! Yeehah. I can't believe it's nearly upon us. We're going to get our visas tomorrow, catching the train to London town. We've been to London

 once before as a band, when we played our first awesome gig in the capital. It was like this:

it'll be good to have some time in the big smoke again, albeit over in a flash.

We have also just designed the band's flyers for south by southwest.

they look like this:

i think the quality might be slightly rubbish here but you get the jist. Me and Trev often use coral instead of red, combined with black and white. It's a subtle way of saying that our music has a soft side to it, nestled comfortably in a spiky little punk nest. and if that doesn't sound comfortable, well you'd be surprised. It works a treat.

On that note, I shall now head off to bed, in preparation for a long train journey tomorrow.

Til the next post!

Cheerio