TBK @ ITC – Day 3 – Tuesday 20th Oct 2009

After taking the Monday off to generally loiter and drink (taking in the excellent The Hidden Revolution @ Walkabout, being denied due to lack of delegates pass at Night & Day, visiting the Ruby Lounge, sticking my head in at BBC Introducing @ Moho, moving swiftly into the Rocksound showcase where I chanced upon the raucous Outcry Collective, then fucking right off home) we rolled up for our last show of ITC, SJM Concerts presents…

Painless soundcheck, and the night got to the off with Apples opening up…

we then smashed out probably the best set we’d done over ITC, finished strong…

After spending some time speaking to to all manner of peeps, it was time for NYC act Jessica 6 to take to the stage…let’s get it out right now, the vocalist was smokin’ hot, unbelievably so…brilliantly, Nomi Ruiz is a M-F transsexual, and has performed with Hercules and Love Affair (see Guardian Review here)

The night was taking a turn for the exotic…they put in a great set and we’re a friendly bunch to boot… We bumped into loads of people this night, Senor Rob Kerford of Sonic PR was a welcome meeting – fair play to him he stood and listened to us both put the world to rights.
Patiently.
For about 10 minutes.
Mark of a legend right there.

Special mention goes to George who’d caught our set at The Bay Horse and came back for more. Heroic.

Jon of mm.co.uk was also spotted (for the fourth night in a row!) and there were a host of others….
Plenty of tossers abounds too to be honest – lamentable dickheads who who seem to pop up like cockroaches from time to time…ah well.

And that was ITC 2009.

Onwards to the studio….

TBK @ ITC – Day 2 – Sunday 18th Oct 2009

…still feeling a bit grim but dragged myself off the floor to head to Manchester’s Northern Quarter for our headlining show for The Country Club @ The Bay Horse..
sheer relief flowed over me as it became clear that Cheap Cuts were letting us use their drum shell – we were completely in the dark as to whether there would be a kit for us (given that our last one was razed to the ground in the now infamous Attic Electrical Fire episode).

The relief was tempered by the need to gnaw off my own arm at one of the bands set…fucking awful in a completely music college way…lifeless, soulless gash performed by performing chimps – i had a fantastical vision of dousing the stage area with cheap vodka and even cheaper whiskey and setting it all ablaze…

But I digress – the aforementioned Cheap Cuts put in a great set and related some pretty fucking funny tales to us afterward – they also had one of the best touring vans I’ve ever seen..

We took to the stage, and to be blunt I was fueled by the visions of wanting to destroy that lump of smegma masquerading as a band that I’d seen earlier…we tore into our set like maniacs, and we saw it was good.
Worth it just to see the quicksilver Cath A of manchestermusic.co.uk proclaim ‘That’s a fucking good band’ to anyone  who was or wasn’t listening before giving it legs to her next stop..
You can see the ridiculous amount of legwork Cath put in here…of us she said this:

‘The rest of Cath’s Sunday and why Manchester still matters:
The Black Knights are on the official ITC Unsigned list and deservedly so. And the purple-suited, sparkly eyelinered, Satanic goateed Gary L Hope is still one of the scariest frontmen you’ll encounter. His vocals are best described as, well, imagine if Prince and Jack White had a child (no, bear with me) only he was born in Salford and fucking pissed off about it. This is backed by dirty great motherfucker riffs, often thrashed out on the bass strings, and drumming that sounds like a fight. They’re always good live but they’re absolutely on fire tonight, Gary pushing his guitar deep into the amp while Tom Pickford batters seven shades of hell out of his minimal kit. The interaction between the two is compelling; with a tight two-man set-up such as this they fix on each other constantly, with looks that fall somewhere between encouraging and threatening. The Bay Horse of course has no PA, you play through amps, and this is exactly how The Black Knights should be heard, red raw.

They come offstage at 11pm. I’m due at Ruby Lounge at 11pm. Oh good, first sprint of the weekend. Which is bordering on an obstacle course, due to the proliferation of enormous tram-related roadworks in the short stretch between the venues. Run down the stairs just as the band come onstage, adrenaline still pumping from The Black Kinghts’ explosive finish. This is as much a part of ITC as the actual bands, that buzz of managing to get somewhere just in time.
It’s interesting to note that despite ITC’s national / international remit, the four best sets I have seen today – Run Toto Run, Air Cav, The Black Knights and The Switch – all came from Manchester. This is not some sort of misplaced civic pride: out in the wider world most of my favourite bands are actually not from round here. And neither is it any attempt to categorise a scene; the four bands have little in common musically. It’s just what happened today.’

Brilliantly, once the dust had settled on our show the uber-professional staff at the Bay Horse cleared everyone quick smart and got the venue sorted – it was a sight to behold.

Was also good to hear the ever-supportive BBC Manchester Introducing give us a spin and a decent plug beforehand and we met some top peeps including a gang of Glaswegians who’d come specifically for us and afew people who stopped in on the off-chance (note: heroes) and were blown away.

Another highlight was witnessing the absolute runaround one band were given, as they wanted payment (free entry gig btw), culminating in what appeared to be a cross town hike, probably to a venue they wouldn’t be allowed entry into without a delegates pass.

Ah music can be a cruel bitch.

Onwards.

LISTEN to live tracks n interview from our BBC Introducing show at http://ping.fm/fgjBZ Dirty.

TBK @ ITC – Day 1 – Saturday 17th Oct 2009

…as luck would fucking have it I was poleaxed by flu on the eve of it all….but grim determination overrides my more rational senses and I don the white suit and we head off to Hope Mill in Ancoats for Blowout In The Mill - our first show of the festival. After negotiating some fucking godawful roadworks and a couple of village imbeciles we arrive, catching the aroma of Mexican BBQ in the air…

It’s two floors up on an olde-worlde spiral staircase so thank fuck for the elevator that I then got stuck in for a bit – until the release lever was pointed out to me…special mention to the toilets, which we’re very french and de riguer with the men’s urinals directly opposite the ladies sit down effort, complete with non-locking door…

It’s goin well, the room is pretty smart, there’s load of people we’ve not seen for a bit, and some we have seen recently..bandwise, we chat with The Witches and The Second Floor, I speak with a top lad from Tigerside and I start to get over the illness…

Then some horrible twat walks in, and this prick is the antithesis of everything I hold…clearly an upper-middle class, parent baiting child of divorce, showered with guilt money and a misguided sense of the rebel…this opinion is formed over time – I’ve had the misfortune of being forced to share oxygen with this tit on  numerous occasions…he will remain nameless.

Anyway, driven by flu-twatting adrenaline and the desire to get a good start we take to the stage – it’s a bit hectic as it’s overrunning a bit, had to clear The Arch Nazards from the stage due to time confusion caused by the overrunning, had to give the amp a volume tweak mid first song, and I instantly feel 100% better.

Jon A from Manchester Music caught the set and said thus:

‘THE BLACK KNIGHTS are a shimmering duo, racketeering their sound with loose, rivet shaking suggestions of feedback and heavy, clattering rock n roll sentiments – this is like thunder on carnival ride, riddled with the blues and dark addictions . Gary is the black eyed preacher – he has the suit to prove it – stolen from angels (it’s white) and dipped in the blood of his disciples. This is very Archie Bronson and equally as effective.’

Thanks very much to Jon for that review (see the whole live ITC blog here) and cheers to the excellent response we drew from the crowd who were bang into it!

Special praise also for the guys behind the bar who kept me in free lemonade which undoubtedly kept me from dying a horrific death…

The Witches were battling some sound issues but put in a great set, even better considering one of the member almost died in the Guatemalaen jungle recently…

Given the nature of ITC we decided to start a prison style cigarette-based betting ring on numerous factors: people who would break promises made to us, number of twats we’d meet, number of top people we’d meet, number of people who would try damn hard to pretend to not know who we are, number of peeps with passes who held no sway and more…

Cheers to Graham and cohorts for putting on a great night and having us as part of it!

For day one we’d got a great start on all accounts as we thundered through the night…

Last show of itc2009..tomoz tues 20th 8.30pm for SJM Concerts at the ruby lounge..finish strong..

..fightin off the flu to smash fuck out of Blowout (last night) and The Bay Horse (tonight)…bring on the ruby lounge (tuesday)

TBK @ In The City shows confirmed 17th, 18th and 20th Oct… More info: http://ping.fm/6oK7J … nice.

The Black Knights at the BBC…

oh yes.

We played a storming set on Friday 25th (in the spirit of the whole night with To the Bones and Exile Parade chipping in with great sets too) for BBC Manchester Introducing @ the Ruby Lounge. Everyone was on form and the night was absolutely buzzing…

It more than made up for the preceding weeks debacle- look for the pics on our flickr photostream or the feed on this page…the show was recorded too and will be played out on Sam’s show (95.1FM, DAB and the BBC iPlayer) in a couple of weeks!

Onwards.

Tomorrow. Ruby Lounge. Mcr. BBC Introducing Live. Free Entry.
Space bats? You bet your ass.

Meltdown in The Ruby Lounge…

…one of those nights where it goes wrong massively and you have to accept certain immolation…

We were halfway through our set (main support for The Hot Melts) and it was going well – then some uneartly noise started emitting from my amp on ‘Dim Mak’, temporarily defeaning Thomas (really) – he left the stage twice (at that point I didn’t know about the deafness)..he came back on and then he couldn’t hear anything in the monitors as we attempted ‘Shame You Don’t Know’, swiftly followed by my mic stand collapsing, then a string breakage on the guitar..I had to release a bestial roar at this point as we approached meltdown…

We felt like a coupla fucking Nero’s fiddling away whilst Rome burnt around us and called it a night when Thomas left the stage for the third and final time, poleaxed by imbalance caused by the mild tinnitus in his ears…

Ironically, people loved it.

We’re back in the dungeon getting straight for Friday’s return to The Ruby Lounge for our BBC Manchester Introducing show…