We toured, we conquered. Conker.

Folks, willies, beatniks and Terry Chapstick! We are back from our tour of the UK with Backyard Babies. News Just in: It was top fucking notch.

Expect a reasonably concise blog detailing even the most banal events that occured during our stint around the fine cities of the UK. Just don’t expect it too soon, because a) I’m lazy, b) I’m knackered and c) I’m on ‘oliday.

Also, onstage at our last show (London) I mentioned 3 people that made the tour possible, but in a haze of onstage devil eyes and cheap vodka, I actually only pointed out two. It was shameful behaviour, i cried uncontrollably into Dregen’s bosum later that night. Because I regrettably forgot to point out our beautiful ballbag stage manager Riot Popshot! He was but a mere few feet away from me, but alas out of my sight.
This is the ol’ cocker here, keep an eye out for him on the mean streets of Stroud:
FANKS RYAN YOU FACKING PENI DE DANDAY!!!

Be sure to check out his band RIOT AND THE POPSHOTS. They’re better than sliced salami from Somerfield’s deli counter, and i don’t say that lightly. West side Punk Rock muthafuck: http://www.myspace.com/riotandthepopshots

Here’s the other urchins that helped us out:
Bruvney Drives (left) – Tour Driver Extraordinaire. Did more than most men could do in a lifetime. Legend.
Sam 41 (right) – Tour Manager and Bear. Relished his role and was a fucking star in sorting out the backstage arrangements, getting us in and out of venues, and making booze a priority.
Both were accomplished merchandise sellers and their hard sell gave us dosh to travel. Cheers boys!

These fucking sweehearts made sure we could actually do the tour and helped us maintain a semi professional outlook on the touring life. As well as helping us maintain semi professional semi’s.

Also, thanks to: Gordon Wyper in Glasgow for helping out with the van and getting much needed supplies, Kevin Leah in Sheffield for putting us dickheads up for the night, whereby we showed our punk rock ways by going straight to bed. And thanks to The Mark in London for lugging equipment around, teching and filming.

And thanks to everyone who came to the shows and appreciated the noise that we put forth into your brains. It’s not always nice, it’s usually fucked up, filthy, and far to fast. But glad to see some people did their research and didn’t expect some bullshit Motley Crue rip-off glam band. We might have beautiful locks and apply our sympathetic make-up better than your 14 year old chav sister, but we always make sure we boisterise to fuck. Cheerio.

DEATH PUNK DARLINGS ALL THE WAY! x

BACKYARD BABIES UK TOUR – SEPT 2008

In case you haven’t already been bombarded elsewhere on the internet, there’s something you should know, and i think the title of this blog explains it all in a very subtle way.

Yes fine people, we are indeed going out on tour with one of the greatest rock n roll bands around! Backyard Babies are taking us out on the road with Crucified Barbara around the UK and we’re very much honoured to be a part of the ruckus! Look out my sweethearts because you’re about to witness some top notch noise racket and it’s gonna hit you right in the snatch like an old man’s withered hand.
It’s not everyday an unsigned band gets to do something like this. So be proud of us. Be proud that sometimes the record labels and promoters don’t always get their say. Sometimes it isn’t all about the backscratching of the business. Sometimes it’s about having nice haircuts.
Nicke wanted us, and Nicke got us.
I can feel the jealousy burning in your loins, but don’t worry my lovely fuckers.. the burn will turn into flames. And we’ll all be dining tonight on your charred ballbags.

Is The Curse lifting? Is this just the start of another story into the fabled curse of the Jaguars?

A paradox has woken. Beware the beast that brings new songs, new terror, new tears and old plowers.

See you all on the road! Come and say something special to us, warm our hearts with campfire stories. But more importantly buy our merch so we can pay for petrol and get to the next date on the tour. And when the puppy dog eyes rear their beauty at you, it’s not a cheap con to get you to feel sorry for our malnourished state it’s actually a plea. A cry for help. Buy us a pack of peanuts and a pint of Britain’s finest cider, Ploughbow and forever will you be in our hearts.

Tourdates are as follows:

SEPTEMBER
Tue 2nd – BIRMINGHAM – Carling Academy 2
Wed 3rd – NOTTINGHAM – Rock City
Thu 4th – NEWCASTLE – Carling Academy 2
Fri 5th – GLASGOW – Cathouse
Sat 6th – SHEFFIELD – The Corporation
Sun 7th – MANCHESTER – University
Tue 9th – BRIGHTON Concorde 2
Wed 10th – SOUTHAMPTON – Joiners
Thu 11th – NEWPORT – TJs
Fri 12th – LONDON – ULU

The Ballad of Wilson.

Back from the tour and hungry like the wolf. We are survivors.
We drank, we went to the beach, we played some shows, some people turned up, and yes, there were injokes aplenty.

So how were the shows I hear you cry into your pillows at night? Well my nosey fuckin’ parkers… They were good. Some were amazing (Cheltenham) and some were abysmal (Weston SM), which has resulted in the creation of my overall review of good. This is the UK we’re talking about here! people can’t afford to leave their houses anymore in fear of house repossesion and the credit crunch eating it’s way through the pantry like there was a potato famine.
The week however was a bonafide British holiday. Enjoying the shitty beaches, drinking lots of Strongbow, driving a lot and getting hot and sweaty in the traffic, listening to mid-90s rap CDs, listening to Yngwie Malmsteen’s ‘Odyssey’ album, listening to our seldom funny jokes, paying extortinate prices for crappy Ginster sausage rolls at service stations, paying £30 for a pink acoustic guitar named Marlene, paying £1 to buy a new friend Wilson – the ‘Shoot’ football that smacks you in the side of the head and says ‘Boing!’ like it was a 1940s edition of the Beano, brushing ballbags, wearing hats, wearing do-rags, buying finery and stealing finery. We did it all, we had it all, and we’re gonna have it again. 

New phrases include: ‘Shine Me Up’, ‘Wilsons’, ‘Boston Crab’, ‘Hey main’ and ‘Sympathy’. ‘Sympathy’ is an important one to remember, so get your notebook out you noncing jobsworth:
Sympathy is the application of eyeliner and mascara on a man, and according to Mike Ness in 1981, it’s used “to create sympathy, make it look like you’ve been crying, to create a sympathetic look so people can sympathise with your band and the punk rock scene”. See? So next time you go out and fancy putting some slap on – don’t! Put some fuckin’ sympathy on instead. 
These are the new words on the street so keep up.

Thanks to everyone who turned up to shows, and thanks to all the other bands who we played with, especially the ones who organised things and made top notch posters, like Da Capo for Bristol’s show at the Junction.

Riot And The Popshots were darlings too so make sure you continue to support them and get involved at their shows: www.myspace.com/riotandthepopshots 

See you back in the streets of blood ladies and gentlemen. x

The Fawcett Inn.

Finally back and on the blog! It’s been a while friends, allies, fuck-ups, fuckables and fuck offs.
There’s no excuse. I can’t tell you of ashaming stories. 
The story of how I perhaps got caught in the back allies of Soho, rope tied ’round my waist, getting tugged off.
Or of how I left the band for a month and grew a moustache.
Or perhaps the tale of how I left my bag on a nightbus, got stranded outside my flat at 5am, and smashed the window in so I could obtain a decent night’s kip. 
NOPE! I’m afraid the truth is we’re lazy, inconsiderate and enjoy drinking in the sun so much that our ballbags have turned into a bulging sacks of nutritional cider. We take extensive time off to plough foreign countries, and pose romantically on Primrose Hill.
Hope you missed this insightful wisdom and wit. Could you really imagine a life without the skinny boys in black?

Word on the street is: THE TOUR IS HERE! The admin is over. Admin was the way forward. We’ve booked dates off our own backs and we demand you attend any show you can! All hands on decks!
Realistically, we’ll be playing to one man and his favourite pint of real ale at most of these shows, but at least he’ll enjoy himself.

Yep, that’ll be our driver.

And so, off we go into the wilderness, outside the safety net and delicious confines of the blackening smoke we all love and hate. There’ll be plenty of anecdotes, and more stupid in-jokes for you to turn your nose up at. Join in. Get appropriate. PLOUGH THE BOW! etc….

Here’s the details:

Bonus news item:

If there were ever a cake based tribute to the Jags, the members would go something like this.

Kipcake – Vocals
J’amtart – Drums
Mattenberg – Bass
French Fancy – Guitar

Rossberry Ripple – Driver/Roadie (Ice Cream based)

I Am The Wolf, Man.

It’s a busy life in the kingdom of the Jaguars, and while some of us stalk young nubile prey in Los Angeles the rest of us chase our tails in the stained grey streets of London. Like eccentric wispy-haired old sailors we prowl the high seas of the Thames looking for the next young bra-strap/ballsack to tickle into submission. Yeah, you’ve seen us…you’ve smoked our pipes…

So, the reason for a delay in relentless stories of how we either a) Ploughed the streets and got arrested or b) Ploughed the streets and got mugged, are due to the monotony of administration duties. And as myself, Kip Legend, once announced: “Admin is the way forward”. If you’re lucky enough, these sentiments are actually going to ring true – we’re going on tour in July with fellow punk rock cohorts Riot And The Popshots (http://www.myspace.com.riotandthepopshots). Organisation skills are abound, so look out for a tour bus of sharply dressed mohawks and stained side partings driving the wrong way on the M1. Be invulva, your country needs vulva’s.

In the meantime, while I drown my sorrows with a glass of chardonnay and dissolve myself into perpetual bliss with the latest offering from Chas n Dave, have the lyrics of our hit single ‘I Am The Wolf’ to get sexual about:

This cut throat face plants the seed in my mind
We all, pale in comparison, and let the weak survive
‘Cos it’s a holocaust of action
and we’re getting short of breath
And i’ll be standing tall when there’s fuck all left
I will be standing tall when there’s fuck all left

I am the. I am the wolf.

Bite down on you like an animal, I’m one of a kind (I wanna come)
Frustration’s rife when it don’t touch the sides
So gimme danger, inject me, just gimme the chills
Desperation in fiction and my fiction’s real
Desperation in fiction, baby my fiction’s real

I am the. I am the wolf.

Only the weak survive. Gotta get it right.

Thanks for sticking around, and huge thanks to all the people who came to see us play with Young Heart Attack. I’d love to buy you all flowers, but you know, I probably wouldn’t.

Drink, Fight, Fuck Off sweethearts x

The Getstuck Inn

Good Friday – it turns out – wasn’t nearly as ‘good’ as the name suggested. Give it the name Mediocre Friday instead and I’d still expect the money back.

A classic Jaguar night on the town started off with horrific amounts of cider, dark rum and crap chat up lines in The Enterprise – and culminated with Ryan getting punched in the face while waiting for the N20.

Hilarity ensued in a blur of blood, bravado and beer goggles.

Particularly when I asked the cops to give me a fiver to go into the G Lounge and coax out the dickhead responsible with some good old fashioned fisticuffs. I reckoned he was in there due to the fact it was hosting some shit RnB night. Where else would a chancing thug hang out I ask? Deduction, my dear Watson! blah blah etc.

Anyway, the idea was that I’d go in and shake my fist at him in an “I hate you Butler!” kind of fashion and he’d be tempted to tussle with me outside (sleeves rolled up, no hitting below the belt, anchor tattoos optional) at which point the cops could pounce on him.

Ryan pointed out that life wasn’t like an episode of 24. (It’s more like The Bill but with even worse acting)

So we went home and cooked chips. They were showing Queen live at Wembley on TMF at 5am. 

I must’ve been pretty battered, I found a text the next day that I’d sent to myself, simply stating: “Old slapper in a puddle”.

If you know why I sent this, keep it to yourself. ‘Cos I don’t give a fuckin’ monkeys mate.

Next week’s whimsical story from Kip: ‘How to drink a cup of tea after you’ve dropped a fag end in it’.  

Album review in Powerplay Magazine

Check out the March issue of Powerplay for a glowering review of The Curse.

“You get the feeling that twenty-four hours spent with these guys would leave you dead or at least seriously injured” 

Beat that!

T-shirts on the way

We’ve put in an order for some more amazing Carp t-shirts so keep an eye on the order page over the next couple of weeks…

… feature in Total Guitar No.173

Check out this month’s issue of Total Guitar, whereupon you’ll find the delights of a small article on Skintight Jaguars in the ‘For Those About To Rock’ section.

Good work for an unsigned racket! Get your peepers ’round that.

The Sex Offenders

Sensual and romantic track Joey Ramone Won’t Leave Me Alone is to feature on filthy Razordolls porno dvd The Sex Offenders, released later this year.

Playboy are rumoured to be involved with the distribution of this disc, which means potentially millions of guys and gals getting stuck in to the pumping sounds of the Jaguars. More info soon!