Ah, Dodgy friends... technology.
HENCE - REVAMPED 02.03.2012 - ALL VIDEOS EMBEDDED
Sorry in the interruptions to posting the series of interviews we've done about all the tracks on the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place'. It seems that Blogger/Youtube is out to confound us. Having happily let us post the first four we've been bashing the computoo with a hammer trying to get the others up. One way or another this post is going to include videos (or links to videos) for four more of the album tracks... no it's not... we can only get three at this point time... they are all there, locked safely in YouTube for private view but whoever's got the key has gone missing.

Anyway, unable to embed the videos here are links to us talking about three more of the songs 'DID IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY', 'WAITING FOR THE SUN' and 'RAGGEDSTONE HILL' (a favourite with the NME we understand ;-) - click on the image to be transported to the video or if that doesn't work the link via the title / heading should definitely lead you somewhere - amateurs we hear you cry! Are you enjoying these by the way? - hopefully they'll wet your appetite and give an idea of what we have tried to achieve

TRACK 5 - DID IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY

TRACK 6 - WAITING FOR THE SUN

TRACK 7 - RAGGEDSTONE HILL

 
Phew... hope that works and as soon as someone helps with the technical stuff then we'll see if they can be embedded properly... OK - publish and be damned - ALL YOUTUBE LINKS UPDATED/CORRECT

New Dodgy album - ''We Try' and 'Shadows' from Stand Upright In A Cool Place

Here's another batch of the filmed interviews produced by Kris Thompson to accompany the tracks on the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place'
First up, recalling the Liverpool Dockers etc..the track WE TRY

Second up today is a bit of background on  - SHADOWS

 
Hope these little treasures are giving a bit of insight into the album and a taster of what is to come when the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' is released next Monday (20th Feb)

New Dodgy album - 'Tripped And Fell and 'What Became Of You'

OK the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' is released in just 7 days time (20th Feb) .. woooeee. Thanks for all the continued support in every shape and form, it's just adding to the excitement.

OK over the next week in the blog we're going to be focusing in on the album in more detail and bring together a series of filmed interviews we did at the start of the year at The Boogaloo Bar in North London. For those that want or need a bit of context it's a little window into how the album songs came about.
Let's kick off with track one from 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' - TRIPPED AND FELL

We'd like to give a big shout out to an exciting film-maker called Kris Thompson who filmed, edited and put these films together for us, above and beyond the call of duty. We met Kris at a roudy night at the This Feeling clubnight in Hoxton where he was filming us for the club. His camera assistant was Ollie Pearson, we linked up with journalist Terry Staunton who helped to get the info out of us (no waterboarding necessary) and a special friend Noel Thompson came along and helped out with sound. Noel did some live sound for Dodgy in the very early days and then moved into becoming a film soundman - so all top notch.
Here's Track Two - WHAT BECAME OF YOU

More tomorrow as we work through the tracks on the album ... thanks for reading /watching/ listening etc. x

The Maccabees, Tribes music purchases and the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place'

Woah, D-Day or more accurately R-Day, the day that our new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' is released, is screaming towards us at a rate of knots - COME ON 20th Feb and we're just hoping that word is getting around and people are getting prepared to part with their hard-earned readies to buy it.
As mentioned in the last post, if we are expecting people to fork out hard cash on a whole album of our songs, then the least we can do is make sure that we do the same and don't rely totally on listening to stuff on Poncify. The two new CDs that I ordered from Amazon have arrived, I do admit the choice was slightly random but both bands had been talked about in terms of 'saviours of UK guitar music' whatever that may be.
Discovered a great quote recently from Gruff from Super Furry Animals about the chance of another SFA record and he said that they had such a strong back catalogue that he'd let the public catch up and get into that first. You sometimes feel that about the whole of art and culture - all musicians, artists, film makers, authors etc JUST STOP. You know, for a couple of years at least, let everyone catch up. Well, let US catch up.

Anyway, back to those CDs,

Baby - TRIBES (Island Records) £7.99 - Amazon.co.uk

Well there's a good start, calling your first newborn debut album 'Baby' - that enables a bit of career building because if this one's a success we can have at least 'toddler' and 'teenager' to follow, though looking at the boys languishing about their bench on their cover, you wouldn't feel comfortable about leaving any baby in close vicinity. They certainly look the part, like The Strokes might after living in the Holloway Road for a year. In 2003. One member sporting a good beard can't be bad and they've even got a member called Miguel - there was a Miguel in Curiosity Killed The Cat as well.
Giving it a good listen, Tribes certainly know their way around an indie rock song, though the structures, sounds, lyrics and plots don't hold any surprises, for my taste it lacks a bit of invention. However, if you like to jump around to spunky, indie rock and you're a fan of Razorlight then I'd imagine that you'll love em. 'Corner of an English field' is a worthy attempt at an indie an anthem and 'Himalaya' is where they most cross paths with Razorlight - not sure which version of Razorlight though - pre or post dressing up box.

Given To The Wild - THE MACCABEES (Fiction) £6.99 - Amazon.co.uk

Of the two albums bought, The Maccabees is the favourite and where you'll find the most positives and that's not just because it was a pound cheaper. I met Orlando from The Maccabees once, backstage at a festival in Europe and he was suitably enhanced, shall we say, for that situation and having a merry old time. This is a few years ago now but please don't expect me or him to divulge the main thrust of that conversation.
The sound of the album is rooted in the left field but as this is their third album there's an eye firmly on the main stage. They've obviously learnt from the masters and like all great third albums (ex: Dodgy - 'Free Peace Sweet') it opens with a moody shorter 'intro' track and then one moment you'll hear flashes of White Denim type experimentalism next to Coldplay like epic-ness and old Orlando has got a unique, goose-like vocal style, which stands out. But then again, I quite like geese (both wandering and on a platter)

OK, so the result is, definitely keeping The Maccabees CD to delve deeper into it's potential treasures and to keep the music cycle moving we'll make sure that The Tribes CD is put back into circulation, either by putting it on Ebay or if anyone wants it just drop us a line and we'll pass it on. We've paid for it - I mean that wouldn't be harming the band or illegal, would it?

The next blog posts coming hot on the heels of this one will be focusing on the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' and feature track by track interviews from producer Kris Thompson with us speaking about the album and how it came to be. Release date 20th February 2012

Great reviews for new album from Dodgy - victorious 'comeback' ? and more Spotify debate

This is no time to gloat or get cocky, this is still a long road we travel on but we have to raise a smile at the positive reviews of the new Dodgy album 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' coming through; four star **** reviews in Mojo and Uncut and a 3/5  in Q Magazine that we're being told reads more like a 4/5.
Of course, as an artist, it's hard not to but you shouldn't really hold much value in reviews, good or bad. Often it is down to the mood of that particular reviewer at the time, what knowledge (or baggage) they use to inform their review, or the intervention of a devilish sub-editor but at the moment we are as chuffed as a beaver with branches, at the feedback we are getting.
Arsenal are not a football team supported by anyone in the Dodgy ranks, though they were our local team for most of the 90's but wherever allegiances lie there was no denying the impressive comeback by The Gunners last week from being 2-0 down in the FA cup to Aston Villa - who wouldn't have been impressed? (unless you were a Spurs fan I suppose). So it made us chuckle a little bit when someone threw a Tweet out there referring to Dodgy as 'attempting a comeback'  like it's some kind of inglorious struggle to get attention. If you're facing adversity finding yourself 2-0 down it might be a matter of pride rather than anything else to get back in the game. More likely Dodgy's status up until recently was a scoreless draw with everything to play for - musically we stand by all the albums we have released and the new one is no exception, the only thing that cast a shadow over our past was the way the three of us parted company initially with a lot of things floating around in the press but we have never felt the need to answer or make a 'comeback' from that.

You may or may not be aware of the story that it was a certain Dodgy drummer that gave Ian Brown , singer with The Stone Roses the moniker 'King Monkey' (long story) which has now become universally embraced and when Mr. Brown got his career back on track with his solo stuff he called his debut album 'Unfinished Monkey Business' - well that's us and we had unfinished business too. We just wanted to take our time making an album that was a worthy addition to the Dodgy catalogue and something as good if not better than our last album together and now the reviews indicate that we might be on our way to achieving that... of course, not that we need reviews to tell us that *wink*
The other route we could have gone down, interestingly enough, is to lever control of the Dodgy back catalogue from Universal by re-recording songs already recorded and released (see Squeeze and The Wonderstuff) At the moment we receive no payment whatsoever from the actual sale of our catalogue recordings as it all goes to paying off some mysterious debt to Universal Music and it's not to say we won't be addressing that at some point in the future but we felt that we could create something good and new with our creative chemistry freshly revitalised. Of course, what the whole new project does, is put us in direct contact with the financial complexities of trying to make a living from our music, which brings me back to 'the man' from Universal again and the continuing debate about Spotify, something we continue to follow and comment on with interest.

Obviously the last thing Dodgy want to do is to 'alienate' our fans, we've worked out that it's not the best thing to do in our game, in fact we always pride ourselves on having whatever close contact we can, from the early days of stuffing envelopes with the latest missives from Dodgy spokesperson Sir George Winterbourne, to organising special evenings like the recent one at River Cottage. However, 'The man' from Universal recently said that singers and bands who withhold their albums from music streaming services, such as Spotify, are in danger of doing just that - "alienating their fanbases". He referred specifically to the fact that Adele, Coldplay and The Black Keys had all refused to let their latest albums be available on Spotify. For those bigger acts though, it's a different argument, though gut feeling is that the veto must surely have gone someway to helping the initial sales of Adele's album on XL and when you are talking about initial sales approaching millions it all becomes part of a long term marketing strategy.
At our end of the spectrum though, all the numbers become vitally important and it is quite a reasonable assumption to think that if 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' were to be on Spotify then for the casual listener or new fan, especially if they paid for the subscription service then that would be enough and would probably not get round to buying music even if it was on their shopping/music wanted list. It's just rich coming from the man from Universal, who was addressing the label's 'investors Open Day' (sorry we missed it - will there be an artists Open Day?) where Spotify announced that it now had three million paying subscribers, with approximately 12 million more using its free service, all cosy cosy now Universal and Spotify are in bed together - why don't we trust them with artist royalties? hmmm? We don't have the answers only the questions?????

For the moment it's a nice feeling to be hands on with everything to do with the album release and particular praise must go to our Artist In Residence, Russell Hardman, who is the creative force behind ensuring that  each pressing of the vinyl edition of 'Stand Upright In A Cool Place' will have it's own hand printed sleeve. Here's some photos of the process that will hopefully excite more people than any discussion on the pros and cons of Poncify. Can't wait? Neither can we.

Thank you for everyone who has pre-ordered the album already from www.dodgyology.com and as Dodgy are asking you to cough up hard earned cash to purchase our wares we thought that we should do the same and put some of our pennies on the table.  There's been a lot in the press recently about the dearth of good guitar bands - so where are the saviours? Well there's Dodgy of course but there's been a lot written recently about The Macabees and Tribes flying the flag, so money has exchanged hands, CDs ordered from Amazon and a verdict will be posted when they've arrived and been given a good listen to see if they deliver the goods - anything else current we should be listening to?

Finally, you will find the Dodgy drums and guitar moonlighting with our 'classy' Northern Soul covers band, The Soulwinners in London at the Bull and Gate in London and stay close to our Twitter and Facebook feed for news of a secret acoustic DODGY gig next also in London on Thursday.

New Dodgy single 'What Became Of You' is good enough - Official

Can't say we're not chuffed that momentum seems to be building around the new Dodgy single 'What Became Of You' the first track to be released from the new album. We always appreciated that it might be what we believe is termed in the business as 'a grower' - one radio producer has apparently said to our radio promoter "well, it's not good enough is it?" If you were being picky, you might think they were playing the teacher and reading out our report
"Clark, Miller, Priest - it's just not good enough, IS IT?" ..
"no sir, Mr. Producer, sir" *looking down sheepishly at our scuffed shoes*
"you could DO BETTER, boys"
Well actually, we think we have done rather well judging from the other feedback so far and obviously what he is referring to is the past Dodgy single 'Good Enough'. Though we are very proud of that song, it did cause us some, albeit positive, problems when it was originally around. It was sooo ubiquitous on radio over the summer of 1996, that the release of the follow up single 'If You're Thinking Of Me' was put back and put back, because radio stations didn't want to stop playing 'Good Enough', bless em, in the end it was released in November, if we'd known at the time or been more in control we'd have delayed it even more, overdubbed a few sleigh bells and released it as 'If Your Thinking Of Me This Christmas' as a Christmas single. Alright to think of these things after the event.

Before anyone has had a chance to say "well it's not a roof top in Jamaica, or a beach in Morocco, is it?" We'd like to say that the video for 'What Became Of You' has certainly helped people get a handle on the single and proving popular on tha youtube thing, here it is if you haven't seen it yet. All your comments about the video on You Tube and Facebook etc. are appreciated, the more the merrier.

We have done our first big radio session this time round. Back in the day, Dodgy did a load of them, especially on tour abroad. The usual tour routine of drive, soundcheck, drink, gig, drink was usually punctuated with a few radio interviews and sessions and you soon forget that you are being broadcast to thousands of people when you do it everyday.
But when it's Radio 2, the biggest station in the UK and also one of your favourite stations then we got very excited and a little nervous. Bless.
Going into Radio 2 is a bit like going to the zoo. You shuffle around these corridors past these big reinforced glass windows, peeping in, hoping to see a bored wild animal. Or a famous DJ, or indeed both. Or maybe a mixture of both. Spotting Tony Blackburn in full flow behind the glass on Saturday filled me with the same excitement at seeing a rare White Rhino at Dudley Zoo when I was a kid. Especially as they didn't have White Rhinos at Dudley Zoo. We were on Dermot O'Learys show with Cerys Matthews sitting in for the absent Dermot - as it happens we go way back with Cerys, including her band Catatonia being guests on one of the Dodgy Big Top Circus Tent shows, in Exeter, where we also booked Muse for our 'new band' stage. Yu can return the favour any time you like chaps. We haven't moved.
We were briefed beforehand that as well as the single we would have to play a cover version, prompting some frenzied learning and run throughs of the song backstage at the Bromsgrove gig. Well, one run through anyway. We chose Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People cuz Nige had heard them first on Dermot's show and liked them, helped by the fact that they did a cover of a Neil Young tune, also his daughter is a fan. It seemed like a good song to cover because a) it's not a bad tune and b) because Foster The People have had 55 million hits on YouTube and figured if we could maybe attract 0001% of their fans with our homage then we'd be happy.

Thanks to Cerys for being as charming and lovely talking to us on Radio 2 as you could ever hope someone to be.

We got back in the gig saddle, leaping into 2012 in style last week. A wee semi-impromptu-acoustic jobbie at The Boogaloo Bar in North London, which coincided nicely with quite a few press features focusing on the fact that the bar had been named one of the Top 10 Bars and pubs in Great Britain. Us playing there coincided with Thierry Henry's return to Arsenal prompting an on the spot bit of songwriting from Nigel.

Following The Boogaloo there were two full band gigs in arts centres - Arlington and Bromsgrove. The last one was a bit of a homecoming for me and Nige as we met in Bromsgrove 26 years ago when he joined the band I was in called Four of which the two other original members of said band came down to the gig and brought some early demos. Oh my word - "from my cold, dead hands" as Charlton used to say.. before his hands went cold and dead.....

2012 starting with a Dodgy Secret and Twittering as we mean to go on

2012.. a New Year; we've made thirty three and a third resolutions which just about equates with the speed of the revolutions that the vinyl version of our new Dodgy album Stand Upright In A Cool Place will be spinning at - it really is now just 7 weeks until the album is finally released and we can't wait for people to hear it. Orders are coming in thick and fast apparently via www.dodgyology.com

We're not wasting any time and will be beginning the year with what we'll call an 'under the radar' appearance, another live preview of the new album in London of the semi-acoustic variety. Dodgy are rubbish at keeping secrets but here's the deal on this one - we've got a major London album launch gig coming up at The Bush Hall on February 22nd. If you purchase your tickets for Bush Hall this week or have already got them then just let us know the ticket number or confirmation code and we'll let you know the full details about where Dodgy are playing next Monday (Jan 9th) and we'll make sure you can get in on our special guest list for a fiver. Can't say fairer than that. Very intimate.

It was nice to get a mention in the pre-Christmas edition of The Guardian Guide
www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/dec/24/2012-guide-film-television-music
- although OK, you could smell the sarcasm as they bunched us in with a few other bands releasing albums after a break. Slightly annoying though was that they managed to avoid properly linking Dodgy to www.dodgyology.com whereas most of the rest of the article was studiously linked to relevant websites... don't worry, we expected the cynicism from some quarters and are confident that the music will do the talking once they actually get to hear it. Though I must admit, being bunched in with NOFX and Garbage is no bad thing really.

So New Year's resolutions. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with all the developments that come with being in a band. This time round we have been advised to Twitter, Blog, Facebook and Tumble (might have made that last one up) in order to ensure we're 'in the game' apparently - and there's silly me thinking all I had to do was help write a bunch of songs and bang a few drums. So before I go off on one I'll come clean with you, the short version of this blog is FOLLOW @DodgyUK on Twitter, sorry.. PLEASE, follow @DodgyUK on Twitter - we keep communications short, sweet and relevant and you'll get all the Dodgy news and gossip first.

This might be one of my own 2012 New Year resolutions, or I might have been sat down in a chair and threatened ...  I'm not sure but whichever it is, in 2012 Dodgy are going to try and get to grips with Twitter.
We can add a bit of personal historical context here; just up to and before we started writing and recording the new Dodgy album I was involved in managing bands amongst other projects (hoped you checked out the Tribute bands podcast/radio show I contributed as part of the Dodgy Advent Calender) and it seems only yesterday we were attending meetings with A&R executives who would try and justify going to less gigs to check out new music as it was easier for them to check out stuff on MySpace - anyone remember MySpace? .. and I was quietly informed that if a band didn't have a healthy quota of MySpace Friends then record companies wouldn't even consider signing them. All this seems to have gone one step further now, listening to the radio the other day and in the midst of a conversation about a new website called Live&Loud a representative from the A&R community was on and actually said, that for a band to get signed now "they should be trending well on Twitter"
- What? WHAT?? ...At least on MySpace there is/was some music to listen to....

So applying the principle "if you haven't bought a ticket you won't win the lottery" (or if you haven't got a ticket for Bush Hall you won't know where the secret gig is) @DodgyUK Twitter account is up and running. What use is it? Well, it's instantaneous communication, people can be informed immediately of developments in the world of Dodgy and we can sign up to follow other 'interesting' people on Twitter and check out what they are Tweeting? then if they are expounding words of absolute wisdom or information that is essential to a Dodgy follower's well-being at that very moment, well we can press the 'retweet' button and that will go to all our 'followers' too. The big question is, how many potential Dodgy fans are signed up to Twitter and how many new converts are we likely to reach and how do we reach them?

At current count we only have 500 or so people following @DodgyUK - when this blog is finished we might even close our eyes and wish it over the 600 mark... fingers crossed eh? It can be sometimes dispiriting though, because it's always interesting just to check out 'who' is actually following you and sometimes you look, only to discover that a bunch of ladies have joined up to follow you, looking very much like their reputations are in dispute, offering weird and wonderful services, usually in $ dollars.
I have mentioned the mighty Grandmaster Gareth before, front man and genius behind the band Misty's Big Adventure - after he came to see us near Birmingham on our tour last year it was nice to see that of the half dozen or so new Twitter followers we had after that gig, he was one. However,  a minute either side of the time he signed up were two very orange buxom ladies from California. It gave the impression that Gareth might have left our gig with one of these ladies on each arm and when inside a limo outside perhaps, he insisted they all gather round the smart phone and Twitter up to follow @dodgyuk - nice image but obviously a long way from the truth. Who are these people? Spammers obviously because their Twitter accounts seem to get removed as soon as they arrive.
Personally it's extremely heart warming to know we can follow the Twittering of a few of our favourite bands, comedians and venues; the likes of Sarah Millican and my personal favourite Brian Blessed and it seems that Twitter is the main means of communication from Dexys Midnight Runners at the moment, who also have a new album  ("a few tweaks and it should be there" via Twitter) out next year.
So come on Twitter, 2012, let's have it - let's be trendy and get trending..

Don't forget to let us know when you've got your tickets for Dodgy at The Bush Hall on February 22nd and if you're in London ... see you next Monday....