Vampire Junkies featuring Texas Terri

Oooh. Vampire Junkies featuring Texas Terri.

When that dropped on the matt I was very surprised.

I hadn't even heard a whisper about it.

With the cellophane wrapper trailing in my wake I had it on the stereo within seconds.

Guess what?

It's everything I wanted it to be.

The music is exactly what needs to be backing up Texas Terri.

In gang parlance the guitars are screaming we've got your back.

The drums are pounding out a war cry.

There's only five tracks, but that's plenty to get your teeth into.

It's got the blood of the Stooges and the New York Dolls painted over its scraped knuckles.

You would swear that it had crawled from the gutter of the Bowery after washing up there when it was chased out of the Motor City.

That's not that it sounds like a lost master tape from the seventies though.

This is so fresh that if it was meat then it would be so rare it would look like someone had just introduced it to a grill before slapping it down in front of you.

Remember when there was a resurgent of glam rock bands who melded a punk attitude to sleazy rock and roll?

It was something that you can hear on a few bands debuts before the major labels watered it all down and packaged it as hair metal.

Well there's a whole lot of that lipstick smeared fuck you attitude going on here as well, but it's all 2013 baby.

In my head this is the sort of album that should be riding high in the charts.

It certainly shits all over the pre-packaged and passion free dross that I keep hearing being pushed at people.

More info and where to get it.

Friday night footage

I was asked a few days ago if I had any footage from some of the gigs that I have put on through the blog.
I have.
Not that I filmed anything. Full credit has to go to the people who came along and done such a good job.
They are the ones who preserved some great memories.

Here's some Canadians. Lovely people and an outstanding live band. The Wooden Sky.




and equally as lovely, but from New Orleans this time. Hurray for the Riff Raff




Scabies/James/Texas Terri


Pretty much everything from the gig here

Scabies/James/Texas Terri - Damned Damned Damned - Pivo - 17/12/12 (Glasgow)

As I have said often I'm not very keen on reviewing the gigs that I've promoted.
So when others do I'm always pleased to share them.
Especially when they are so positive of course :)
Here's a link to what Joe Whyte wrote for Louder than War about the recent support slot that The Coffins played supporting Rat Scabies/Brian/James/Texas Terri in Glasgow.
Please feel free to visit the excellent site and have a look at pretty much all the content they have as you will not be disappointed.

The Coffins - Louder than War.
Take dark garage punk played with passion, add in a twisted sense of humour and a mad-man for a lead singer and you have LTW's New Artist of the Day,The Coffins!

Bursting out of Glasgow?s underworld, The Coffins are a breath of fetid air in a world of X-Factor pseudo-niceness.

Riding a Cramps/Gun Club/Meteors kinda wave, they play the type of music that will have you grinning from ear to ear whilst planning to murder your in-laws.

Joe Bone leads the band and the diminutive vocalist attacks the mic with a gusto and energy that positively screams ?goodtime? at you. That?s, of course, if your version of a good time involves songs about 60?s serial killers, drugs, celebrating alcoholism, blackmail and general mayhem.

Opening earlier this week for the James/Scabies Damned Damned Damned show in Glasgow, The Coffins wreaked havoc on the audience and quite frankly, blew the headliners away. With a rhythm section of Graham Platt and Michael Werninck on drums and bass respectively, The Coffins are a tightly-drilled garage rock machine. Add in Bill Gilchrist?s metal-tinged guitar and Bone?s bluesy, gravelly, shrieks and yelps and you have a mixture that?s hard to ignore.

Bible John' is about the notorious (and as yet, still not apprehended) 60?s Glasgow serial murderer who preyed on women in the legendary Barrowland Ballroom. It?s a sleazy, greasy rocker with sinister backing vocals from the band and evokes Alex Harvey?s mental-er moments. ?You dancin?...? I?m askin?,? stutters Bone in the songs coda. Unsettling in the extreme.

'Boy Band Member' has a staggered Who-style chord progression with spiraling lead from Gilchrist and a vocal line in which Bone urges, ?Bring me the head, of a boy band member.? Hard to argue with that, really.

It?s refreshing to hear a band these days with so little pretension and pre-planned agenda. The Coffins are a straight-down-the-white-line punk-rockin?, garage-stompin?, arse-kicking rock and roll band. The songs are fast, furious and darkly humorous courtesy of Bone?s deranged mind.

Looking for something to blow away the Xmas cobwebs? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and ghouls, I give you The Coffins.

The Coffins forthcoming album is called 'Bob's Shed' and it will be out in January. You can hear what you will be in for on their Soundcloud page. Be sure to check out theirFacebook page as well

and then if that's not enough there was this from The Scotsman.

Gig review: Rat Scabies and Brian James, Featuring Texas Terri - Pivo Pivo, Glasgow

By DAVID POLLOCK
Published on Wednesday 19 December 2012 01:41

THE fan who yelled at the top of his voice that “Sensible’s a w*****” might simply have been fulfilling a tradition where live concerts by first wave British punk outfit the Damned are concerned, with Captain Sensible himself – never less than a snot-nosed wind-up merchant in the group’s enduring incarnation – well used to fielding the slogan as it’s chanted in his face.

Rat Scabies and Brian James, Featuring Texas Terri

Pivo Pivo, Glasgow

* * * *

Yet in those words there was more than just a decades-old slogan being trotted out, more a statement that this group before us laid strongest claim to the soul of the UK’s first punk band.

Guitarist Brian James and drummer Rat Scabies (real name Chris Miller) haven’t been involved with the Damned since the early 1990s, but they’re both key members of the classic line-up and enough of a draw that Pivo Pivo’s low-ceilinged basement bar was rammed full of punks old and young for their return. The body of the set was an in-order run-through of the debut album Damned Damned Damned in honour of its 35th anniversary, but this was no nostalgia trip.

Scabies, James and their band played tracks like Neat Neat Neat, Feel the Pain and the Stooges homage I Feel Alright at ear-splitting volume, offering a conduit back to both the nihilist danger of punk’s early days and their spiritual forebears on the Detroit garage scene of the 60s. In this their secret weapon was “Texas” Terri Laird, a gangly, tattooed androgyne with a voice like a drill splitting cement and the same forceful, trashy sexuality as Iggy Pop. “You are the Damned,” screamed another thrilled acolyte, and the definitive finale of New Rose suggested he had a point.

Rat Scabies, Brian James, Texas Terri Glasgow Pivo Promo

It's a LIVE thing.

This is partially the reason why the blog has taken a bit of a backseat just now.
Normal services will resume though.

Kirk Facebook invite page.
Dreaming Spires Facebook invite page.
Brian James, Rat Scabies & Texas Terri Facebook invite page.