Just a quick entry to summarise what I've been up to recently... I've had a busy couple of work weeks (still happening), the biggest job being a comic strip-style football illustration for The Observer Sport Monthly, which will be out this Sunday (4 June). It was going to be the cover, but is now an internal illo for an article on England's World Cup chances. It had me doing one all night-stint to 4am and another to 6am last week. Also on the football front I've coloured a lovely piece of work by Tony O' Donnell which will be the cover to a book about Alan Shearer from Tonto Press. The other main job I've been working on is the cover and CD inlay design for an audio play, starring Nicholas Courtney and Terry Molloy (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Davros from Dr. Who). It's called The Scarifyers and it sounds really good stuff. I will post images when things are more finalised.

And onto slightly older work... on more than one ocassion I've had some of my theatre poster artwork splashed on a banner and strung across the London Road in East Grinstead. Ellie took this photo at the weekend of Stage-Struck's 'Spend Spend Spend' banner outside the Chequer Mead Theatre, which features the logo and silhouette figures I designed. You can see the actual poster here.

The title to this entry is from a fabulous song by the Blue Oyster Cult, by the way.

In early 1992 Steerpike were still building up a set of original material, so we played a number of covers. In an attempt to be a bit different from the many local blues-rock bands, these covers included four songs by The Cure - In Between Days, Love Cats, Boys Don't Cry and A Forest. Besides that, quite a few of our friends and fans liked The Cure, and they had been a local band too (we were from East Grinstead, they had originated in Crawley).

I have put up a page that features tape recordings from a gig we played at The Ravenswood Inn, Sharpethorne, in May 1992 - those days were really enjoyable and happy times. Hope you enjoy the recordings.

I bought the Wolfmother album off iTunes as someone told me they were reminiscent of Overtoad - the first band I was in. More than one review mentions Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and while I think they do have that vibe about them, they more strongly resemble bands like Grand Funk (c.1969) and Blue Cheer, and are not too dissimilar to the White Stripes, or even Supergrass. Though I agree with Pete about it wearing off quite quickly, I do like it, and it's perfect to hide amongst the iTunes playlist to pop up randomly every now and then. It's good stuff (with variable lyrics).

They come complete with a Frank Frazetta cover (what could be more apt?) and it's nice to hear that the E-minor pentatonic scale is in pretty good hands and still doing what it does best.

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, the Colbert speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, with Bush just feet away, is one of the best political snippets I've seen in a long time. Pretty brave, and very amusing. Watch the variety of facial expressions and uncertain laughter from the audience (and Bush himself).

Local musician 'Mr Bonx' has written a short piece on East Grinstead's 101 Club in his usual unique style over at his website. The photo of the stage shows the typical Steerpike set up (they're the band I played bass in), and the story of the ceiling bowing from the dancing and jumping was at one of our gigs. When I was involved with the local entertainments guide '5D', we worked closely with the two chaps who were setting up the 101... it was all rather exciting. You can see from the gig list below (and here) how often we played there.

Embarrassing moment no.327: while working as a porter at a Gatwick hotel, I asked one of the chambermaids if she wanted a pass to this new venue called the 101 Club (I was in promotion mode, not flirting - at least I don't think I was). It was quite noisy in the canteen and she was horrified to (mis)hear I was asking her to go to something called the One-on-one club! I don't think she ever looked me in the eye again.

And a little story about Bonx and his old band, Pump. When 5D organised a birthday bash at Clair Hall in Haywards Heath in 1992, we had 5 or 6 bands play. Someone had to go on first, and the band we felt were the least well-known of the bunch (and they were all top local bands) was chosen. Upon hearing this, the band refused to participate, as they felt it was too early in the evening and the crowd would not be large enough yet. So we had to get a new band in quickly, and asked Pump. They were professional to the hilt - it is true the crowd was small that early, and mostly round the corner in the bar, but Bonx didn't even mention it and played one of the best and tightest sets of the night.