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What a fucking tour! It came and it went and, boy, did it go!

Highlights?

* Setting fire to Nottingham Rock City was pretty ROCK, not to mention very ROLL.

* Random Jon Poole reinventing himself as a cross between Keith Flint from the Prodigy and the bloke that your parents told you would pay you a visit if you didn’t behave yourself.

* Setting fire to guitars and then smashing all flaming Hell out of them. And the look on the security guards’ faces as they tried to be ‘cool’ about it happening behind them!

* Seeing familiar faces appearing at most (if not all – Trace) of the shows.

* New fans taking the chance to check it out and coming away excited, happy, and willing to part with cash for the album (OK, OK, apart from one miserable wretch at Manchester, but there’ll always be at least one pooper per party).

* Getting to use the entire pyro show at the Bristol Fleece & Firkin, which is made out of wood and is no bigger than our tour bus.

* Selling so many T-shirts that we all made a good few quid to take home, as well as being able to pay for the fireworks (thanks again, you lot).

* And writing the whole thing in diary form (that was an honest read, huh?), another thing that I always wanted to do.

But for me, the biggest highlight was seeing the whole tour through without a drink. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I did it. And now I can say that it can be done. The biggest hurdle is surmountable, and now the future is all a matter of choice. And here I am sitting at my computer at home, thinking all about choice. Choice.

Mind if I think aloud? Of course you don’t, you’ve heard all this shit before, anyway.

See, choices are there to test our intuition as well as our nerve. What’s the right thing to do? The right direction to go in? What the fuck is happiness anyway, and how do I get me some? Happiness is a tricky little puzzle, but in the end, it’s far easier than it looks. Happiness is usually measured on the successes of others – like levels of excellence, sums of money, amount of peer respect… none of which you’ve actually obtained to the degree where you’re satisfied with your lot.

So what’s our problem?

Well, apart from jealousy (based largely on guess work), we all have the same problem, whatever rung of the success steps we stand on. We are inconsistent. We make choices and then we re-think them; reinvent our game plan, modifying the choices. The only way to success is not changing the plan. The way to success and happiness is consistency, sticking with that instinctive decision that made sense to you back when you made it, even thought you’ve now forgotten why. Make the choice and see it through until it either succeeds or fails. Regret hurts a lot more than failure. And if you’re going to regret anything, you may as well regret something you did rather than something you didn’t do.

I’m coming to terms with the idea that the big money music industry won’t touch people like me, people with a bad reputation. It’s not because people with a bad reputation don’t get over it, and come out the other end good. It’s that people famous for having a bad reputation spend their life working to get rid of it until they become a paragon – someone like Iggy Pop. It doesn’t matter what you did, or what you don’t do now, you will carry that weight for a long time. Why? Because most ‘famous’ people in this business don’t make you want to do anything but make money. If it wasn’t for Iggy, then who would someone like me (or maybe you?) look to for inspiration, especially when the whole thing seems fruitless and unfair?

I would like to get famous, rich and massively influential for two reasons – to feed my family for the rest of their lives, and to let young musicians know that there are two ways to skin a very expensive cat. What’s the point of leading by example if that example isn’t, ‘take your message to the most people that you possibly can’? Anything else is failure. Success is measured in money, and money doesn’t mean anything but, ‘boy, you are doing really well’. It’s the business telling you that you shouldn’t be involved in their safe profit-making organisation, but you are. You must be smart.

There are plenty of anti-rockstars to teach you how not to make it big. I would like to teach young musicians how to make it big; how to affect things on a large scale and one day influence people themselves. And should it fail, they will escape with their life and their pride. And regret nothing. Again, failure doesn’t hurt as much as regret.

I would like to kill the legacy as unchanged since Kurt Cobain died.

I could do The Wildhearts for money (and nostalgia), and in between trips to the bank book solo shows to make some extra money. Nothing wrong in that. I worked hard to write those songs, and fuck you if you think I should be busking for pennies. But if I invest everything in SG5 and I win, I prove many things. I prove that people can move on. I prove that the hard life is the good life, and the good life is the long life. I prove that drinking is nothing more than an environmental virus, infinitely more contagious to those of a small imagination. I prove that if you can see it, you can change it. Even within yourself.

And if I don’t? Ah, what the fuck. I ain’t got nothing better to do.

It all involves starting small and doing the growth work. Every level is essential in the learning process. And that’s where I find myself, and you the listener / reader. And if I start to weaken and forget, please remind me that I wrote this shit, will you?

It’s important for a lot of reasons.
Ginger

Is anyone looking forward to this tour as much as I am? Answer? No, not even close!

The response to tickets has been relatively good, apart from in Ireland. No one wants to admit to being responsible for those tickets being as easy to get hold of as Osama bin fucking Laden, but the truth of the matter is, SG5 sold hardly any tickets for Ireland. No tickets, no show.I’m told that ticket agencies didn’t even know about the show in Belfast. I’m told that there has been absolutely no promotion, posters or radio play to advertise the show. I guess that means we’ve got every telepathic rock fan in Northern Ireland already in on the secret, but they probably knew that no one else was going to turn up and it was gonna be cancelled anyway. I’m told a lot of things and I don’t believe 90 per cent of them. All I believe in is this band and the fans. And I’m sure that there isn’t a single poster advertising the American bands, or the bigger British bands, who are playing in Ireland either.

But this won’t stop this tour going ahead. Nothing will stop this tour going ahead, not even the people holding out for Wildhearts tickets to go on sale. Now, these people are most definitely not telepathic, just a little naive… and this is a real pity, as there’s fucking thousands of them. And most of them are not coming to see SG5 (a far superior band in every way), judging by the amount of tickets sold for the last Wildhearts tour compared to this one.

The last tour might have been a bit of a spectacle from the point of view of the morbid outsider, but for the band it was as much fun as a nailbomb enema. The notion of bands fighting each other, sticking things in their arms, sniffing tramlines of cocaine, and drinking enough alcohol to make Oasis look energetic onstage, is hopefully an old-fashioned concept that has been replaced by bands / artists being in good shape, attempting to look professional and being able to fucking play – y’know, worthy of the door charge and all that. This still matters, right?

The Wildhearts was fun to do when I was younger and a lot more selfish, but I don’t want to be seen as a road accident any more. I’d rather represent something a bit more positive for inscription on my gravestone one day – and I don’t plan on that day turning up for a fucking long time. Yeah, there was that Kerrang! article that reported on a visit to hospital for cocaine overuse. The trouble is, I’m hopeless at lying, especially to friends, even if they do work for Kerrang!. Anyway, it happened ages before the article went to print and I’ve been straight ever since. Straight, sober and as bored as all fuck.

Did I tell you how much I need this tour? Enough to stay sober in the middle of a fucking war. I’m a Geordie, for God’s sake… sobriety to a North Easterner is as welcome as an electricity bill laced with anthrax. But this tour is going to make up for any disappointment left over from the Wildhearts shows. For you and for me. We’re getting paid pennies and we’re still taking pyro out with us. How? Don’t ask me as I have no fucking idea!

Yeah, it was great to hear you singing the words back for The Wildhearts. Yeah, it was fun to have sold out shows and play big stages. We had a few great nights and saw some faces that haven’t been around for a few years. Been there, got the cheque. But there isn’t enough money in this business to be embarrassed for. And both the Newcastle and Dudley shows were fucking embarrassing. The rest we’re just a huge anti-climax. And as for the London, Camden Monarch show? I ain’t playing another show where only two members of the band turn up ever again, no matter how great the review. I guess this destroys the “only in it for the money” myth then, huh?

SilverGinger 5 are gonna start from the bottom, like any band starting out has to. It’s a humbling experience but it’s going to be real rewarding when we descend upon these small venues and thoroughly destroy every single last fucking one of them. You are never going to have seen or heard anything like this in your entire life. And the irony is that when we go up a level, ‘new rock’ people are going to insist that they came to see the band on that legendary first tour, back when the tickets were cheap, you didn’t have to queue for hours at the bar and you had enough space to check out every boy and girl in the room – even though those ‘new rock’ people stayed at home that night watching TV and making do with the self manipulation of their genitalia.

This tour will be an indication of just how popular the concept of partying is in this country at the moment. I get a feeling that the earnest misery of Nu Metal is no longer needed and that the world could do with a good fuck. The jury, however, is still out on whether or not the UK rock population is aware of this – or at least the UK ‘new rock’ population. I guess time will tell. Fingers crossed, eh?

Yeah, these are slightly trying times. It’s difficult for any new band to be taken seriously in this country. In the beginning, the world seems to be awfully full of people passing the blame instead of doing the work. If only the music magazines in this country got as excited about homegrown talent as they do about the next big American band / artist. Hey, I guess it makes us tougher, right?

Fuck it. Fuck all the bullshit, it’s driving me nuts. Just get me on that fucking stage so I can get rid of some of this pent up energy before I do something evil with it.

See you at the show. Wear the shirt with pride and get ready to shout someone’s fucking head off if they so much as look at that shirt with an attitude. Get ready because we are going to show the country how to party. We’re going to show this backward fucking place what real passion is; what it means to go to a show because you want to and not because you’ve been told it’s the right thing to do.

Party hard? We fucking invented it. And you know I’m right.

Come on, let’s fucking go.
Ginger

How on Earth do you write a new intro when the world is about to go to war?

I can’t take music as seriously as I used to. The art of penning a few interesting lyrics and coupling them with a succession of well worn chords seems to reside on the silly side of art at the moment. Shit, it’s hard enough to even get excited about listening to anything new (even though the new Veruca Salt album, Resolver, urges me to advise you all to buy it forthwith).

My boy is to face a war unlike any that history can boast of winning. Biological and nuclear threats combine with a ‘gung-ho’ mentality with a zest unseen until Hollywood discovered computer graphics as a way of bolstering the movie hero’s buffed up screen presence. The enemy (who at present has still to admit involvement – sheesh, a villain that lacks balls) boasts of an army prepared to die, kamikaze-style, for a book. If they don’t care about saving their own lives you can bet that we haven’t seen the last of their plans to humiliate the ‘civilised’ world (‘civilised’, being the media’s term, not mine). The attacks on New York and Washington might eventually look like a warm-up. Imagine the talk in ten years’ time?

“… shit, at least they only took out thousands back then.”

Anyone will agree that the planning has taken years, and the war about to take place will take a lot longer, at the cost of millions of lives. Music seems a little trite in comparison. And musicians?

“… here’s a little ditty I composed when I was blah blah blah.”

Who fucking cares? Who cares about you or your little fucking tune, buddy?

No one. We need a release. We need to be taken out of our home, away from our fears and our anger, and shown a good time; to forget our sinister world for an evening, or at least put it to the back of our mind until tomorrow’s newspaper headlines drag us kicking and screaming back into reality.

Slap us around the face, put a drink in our hands and show us something amazing.

It’s time for the entertainers to entertain. Not impress. Not inspire. ENTERTAIN.

SilverGinger 5 can do that.

In November, we will take out our all singing, all dancing, all smashing, crashing, exploding, ear-splitting, genital-lubricating, libido-loosening, anguish-free monster of a show to as many fans as can squeeze into the modestly-sized venues that we are about to land upon.

Remember? Conny Bloom and his serpentine sex-like style of slinging a six-stringed sonic sabre, Tom Broman and his thunderous tubs of tutonic tribal torment…

… and Random Jon Poole.

I’m talking about entertainment, brothers and sisters. An almost disgracefully agreeable ticket price for an evening’s merriment in the company of fine, fine friends of the LiST (labelled for purposes of name-checking), most of whom you will not have seen for a good while, and will quite frankly have forgotten just how gorgeous they are.

These, my friends, are the good times, the memories to last you through the next instalment of war-related media feeding frenzy. You are cordially invited to get your dancing shoes out of the cupboard that has been locked since Limpkin Bizkorn and the rest of those whining, self-obsessed, little bastards convinced the media that screaming about how pissed off you are is ‘the next big thing’. Hah, they’re gonna look a little foolish when still trying to palm off ‘angst’ to a nation shattered by serious problems.

“… bwahhhh, my mommy didn’t love me enough, and my daddy beat me.”

So kiss them, you fucking pussy. You still can.

Musicians? It’s gonna take a long time before anyone takes them seriously. It’s a hobby. It’s stamp collecting, with an audience cheering your newly acquired Penny Black. Entertainment, on the other hand, is a service, and having fun is the requirement. Anyone not adhering to this request should be made to give up their instruments until the world needs a new problem. Right now, we have enough.

Dance, drink, fuck and party like it was yesterday. Because yesterday we didn’t know how much it meant to us.

Peace and love… and fucking huge pyro.
Ginger

Anyone who’s given up anything that has become a constant in their life knows the pain of longing. Anyone who’s forced themselves to refrain from gorging on old habits due to health problems understands the day to day nature of the battle. Drugs, gambling, sex… shit, even TV, chocolate or coffee. All are serious enough to warrant a certain level of concern for the health of the protagonist. Mentally, usually more than physically.

But I’m gonna stick my neck out here and say that nothing is as hard to give up as alcohol. I know that Danny agrees with me on this, as would most junkies. The best way to get off junk? Move to somewhere that isn’t infested with it.

So, where do you move if you want to get away from British people that drink? Well, you stay at home and you don’t answer the phone. You stay in bed for four months and you live on health food. Yeah, right!

When I last afforded alcohol a healthy distance, for a sensible amount of time, I was living in LA (and believe me, if there’s a place on this planet that makes you want to drink it’s LA), and a friend of mine told me about AA, Alcoholics Anonymous (anonymous is a little far-fetched because people would join up to hang out with celebrities). The idea of sitting in a bright room, drinking coffee and smoking copious amounts of cigarettes (hey, hang on… isn’t there a cigarette ban in LA? Oh man! Told you it was a bad place to sober up) whilst listening to love-starved bottle blondes bleat on about how they know your pain – that appals and disgusts me. Public masturbation, anyone? Nah, didn’t think so. Designed by the weird for the weird if you know what I mean.

Y’see, I don’t care who’s giving up drinking, or why / where they come from or how bad they had it as a kid. James Hetfield goes to rehab? If you can afford rehab you ain’t got too much of a problem. If you can afford rehab you can afford six months in the Bahamas with a beautiful girl, so it looks like your problem is your imagination, not your liver. Losers and coffee vs pussy and sun? If alcohol has fucked your brain that much then you surely can’t string together a sentence as long as “hello, my name’s Ginger and I’m an alcoholic…”

In California, every ex-alcoholic I meet still does ‘bumps’ of coke in the toilets. Most of them still drink, “only not as much as I used to”. Scott Weiland stood and lectured me, one night at a club in Hollywood, about how hard it is being clean, but how rehab sure is the right thing to do – only to be spotted half an hour later emerging sweating, shaking and scratching from the toilets. People that go to rehab are usually so in love with their own legend of ‘fucked up-ness’ they should rename it ‘mehab’.

“Yeah, dude, that’s fucked up… but just listen to this fucked up thing that I did.”

And the confessional nature of rehab is so sinister that it’s no great mystery why at least 50% of people come straight out of there and into the warm, dark arms of a bar. Clapping and cheering at a stranger’s announcement that he / she has an alcohol problem? Surely they’re only there because they have no close mates? Otherwise they’d have known they had a problem long before they knew they had a problem, right? Friends would tell you, right? So how come the long suffering friends don’t get a round of applause instead? It’s those around the alcoholic that really suffer.

Self-imposed diseases are best cured by harsh and cruel reality. Don’t be a coward unless you want to live as one.

But surely the most banal aspect of the 12-step programme is the section that would, in any other culture, be termed as ‘humiliation’.

Living and coping with guilt is one thing, but humiliation doesn’t even work when training dogs. Taking someone so far away from themselves is surely guaranteed to distance the person from the real reasons for wanting to give up in the first place. Wanting to be a better person, more productive, more rational, more relaxed, more hygienic.

The Californian 12 steps have a stage in the programme where the ‘ex-alkie’ must telephone everyone they’ve offended in recent memory, get down on their knees and say something along the lines of “I am an alcoholic, please forgive me for my sins.” Regardless of the fact that the person they’re talking to has probably either forgotten all about the shameful incident or is just as much of a dick, with or without drink.

The 12-step programme has too much in common with the Moonies or the Branch Davidians to really gel with me. It offends my sense of individuality. It increases my growing exasperation with the gullible nature of humans, which was the main thing I intended to blot out with drink in the first place.

So I propose a slightly more realistic programme for those of you that are starting to feel a little tired of feeling tired, and shouting at people for very little, if any, reason… and repeating yourself… and waking up feeling like 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag… with violent mood swings… and debts piling up… and your life going nowhere… and repeating yourself… and smelling bad… and looking like a turd with a face… and puking regularly… with hiatus hernias… liver problems… and jaundice… and listening to boring fuckers who talk too loud while spitting at the side of your head.

Here, in no particular order, is the ‘Ginger 12-Step Programme (for the hopeful)’.

1 – DO NOT GIVE UP FOREVER
A sure-fire way of making you resent the clean life is saying “I am never going to drink again.” Remember that the clean life is very, very boring compared to the life that you are used to. Getting used to sobriety as a reality is one thing, but being imprisoned by it is another entirely. Anyway, nothing will make you appreciate your newfound ‘well-being’ than a gargantuan, head down the pan, family-sized hangover, the like of which you used to nurse every single day of your life. Falling off the wagon every now and again is normal just as long as it’s for one night only.

2 – DO NOT SMOKE POT
Cruel, I know, but true. Pot makes you as thirsty as Hell, and all drinkers know that nothing kills a thirst better than a cold beer. You will go through every soft drink known to man to kill that thirst, and each time will carry a small picture of a can of beer around in your head. In your stoned state this will make so much sense that eventually you won’t be able to argue with yourself due to the fact that you will have forgotten the argument and only remember the ‘beer’ part (in which case see step one). Pot makes you lazy whilst thinking that you are not, simply replacing one denial with another. Pot also makes one find a perverse solace in the determined picking of one’s nose. You are an adult. You should maybe think about stopping this activity too. Pot also makes you eat copiously, and ‘eaters’ are just as sexually attractive as ‘drinkers’ (Oh, so you aren’t giving up because of your falling looks, huh? Stop lying, you bastard.)

3 – STOP LYING YOU BASTARD
Just ‘cos no one can see you, it doesn’t make it right (see ‘nose picking’ section of last step). If you lie to yourself, you will never believe that you can do this. Remember you are doing this yourself, for yourself, because of something you got into by yourself. Also remember, people are quite easy to lie to.

4 – DON’T EXPECT HELP
Or pity or understanding. While your world comes crashing down around your feet, the world, according to others, goes on untouched. Your frustration will turn into exasperation if you try and get someone to understand what you are going through. And this goes for other people in your position. Do not seek solace in the pain of another. Reformed alcoholics, or reformed junkies, are the worst company in the world. Don’t join them or you’ll end up the loneliest clean person to grace this filthy planet, with only ex-alcoholics and ex-junkies as friends. You will talk endlessly about drink and drugs and how great it is that you are ‘off’ the ‘shit’. You will eventually get so tired of talking about ‘it’ you will fall naturally and hopelessly back into ‘it’. (In emergency, see step one.)

5 – LISTEN TO MUSIC
Behold how long albums actually last. Behold how a beautiful melody can now render you a blubbering, soggy mess and open the doorway to the repressed emotions that you have been harbouring all these years. Behold how utterly shit most of your record collection really is.

6 – EAT GOOD FOOD
That £20 price tag on that lobster in that fancy restaurant is nothing compared to the £15 a day that you used to spend on vodka, the £15+ a day on beer, and the few hundred a month you spunked on coke. The feeling that someone is secretly putting money into your bank is natural and will fade as any new buzz naturally does. The moral? If you don’t spend money it doesn’t go anywhere. The solution? Spend as quickly and as zestfully as possible. Do not worry, you will get bored of the sensation in due time. And if not, you will become a shopaholic. And then you will truly know that you are rubbish and will more than likely start drinking again. (See step one.)

7 – WATCH GOOD MOVIES
Whereas good music has been largely made by people excessively drinking and consuming drugs, movies, on the other hand, take much longer, and cost a lot more to make, than records . Therefore someone is at the wheel of the production with a mind as clear as yours. In these first stages of your cleanliness, you may find no better role model than a great director; a leader of men, a true visionary in a sea of blind optimism. A man, much like yourself, with a goal and a path not obvious to the outside world, oblivious to the inner strength that motivates him. And let’s face it, 24 hours is a fuck of a long time to kill every day.

8 – READ
Simple, really. In fact, it’s something that you probably thought you were already doing, right? Well, kind of… except, instead of getting through another novel, you will find yourself devouring the written word. You will feed your mind and starve your ignorance, propelling you to a higher level of confidence in your task. You will not only open yourself up to new information and experiences, but will unlock the years of suppressed knowledge that has been dormant due to effective block-out caused by alcohol and its effects on your short-term memory. Reading is your very own brain work-out and is one hell of a lot easier than exercise. In the event that you are not a ‘reader’ you could always join a gym.

9 – JOIN A GYM
Expensive, humbling and very, very boring. Those people that actually enjoy the atmosphere of a gym were never really alcoholics in the first place anyway, the two environments being entire worlds apart. Like nuns worrying about the dangers of contracting HIV, the testosterone-fuelled ambience of a weights room could not conflict more with the smoke-filled comfort of the local snug. Alcoholics hate discipline and the gym insists on it. Try it by all means, you may be one of the few that actually gets one of these so-called ‘endorphin highs’ that some people rave about. The truth of the matter is that ‘endorphin junkies’ have, as a rule, never tried freebase. Go, see what all the fuss is about, stay for a month, leave, and argue (with absolute confidence) that it’s not for you when another ex-whatever starts giving you the ‘body and mind’ speech that they learned from rehab.

10 – SMOKE CIGARETTES
Woe betide the inexperienced ‘clean-living person’ that does not smoke. That temper that was the main reason you quit drinking in the first place? You are still David Bruce Banner, mate. The Hulk appears when driving on a motorway surrounded by cars driven by maniacs whose sole mission on this planet is to stop you getting to your destination by killing you. That smug-voiced little shit from the bank that just called about your overdraft? That red letter that comes through your door informing you that your [insert essential amenity here] is going to be cut off due to unpaid bills from the time you were drunk and ‘forgot all about it’? That girlfriend that now takes great pleasure in reminding you how much of a dick you were way back when you drank, usually with exact dates and times? That ‘friend’ that urges you to go out for a drink, but it’s OK because it’s only a beer? The sheer shock value of settling into a reality that you had otherwise been unaware had actually existed? When in doubt, go for the snout. It’ll save you and the rest of the world a brand new problem to deal with. And if you don’t smoke? Then you’re on yer own, pal.

11 – FUCK
One of the few legal, and generally acceptable, things to do to kill boredom of all kinds. The new ‘logical yet needy’ you will accept sex as the equivalent of drugs and drink. In fact, the one thing that begins to envelop all other senses is the closeness and satisfaction that sexual intercourse brings. OK, so it’s not as much fun when not wired to the gills on good quality cocaine, but it sure beats reading books, watching movies or any of the other shit written down here.

12 – IMPROVISE
There is no better way to give up drinking than to do it your way. You didn’t drink because someone told you how, so why should it make sense to give up that way? Make your own rules up. Do it your own way. That way you can hold up your finger with pride. Everyone knows how hard this is… that’s why everyone doesn’t give up.

Happy living.

Mine’s a fucking bastard mineral water.
Ginger

Well, where do we start? Trying to put the last couple of months into perspective is kinda like feeding a camel through the eye of a needle. You could eventually do it but it’d be really messy and take a helluva long time. And would it even be worth it? Probably not.

The Wildhearts started off proceedings in fine style, and then the much-documented drama saw the disintegration of something designed to self-combust in the first place. Was the reunion a bad idea? I think so, yes. That’s not to say that bad ideas don’t work themselves out.

Naturally (despite certain magazine-sponsored rumours), I didn’t see the problems clearly enough until they were on top of me. Blind faith or just a love of ‘bad boy rock ‘n’ roll’? Maybe both. Thinking things out never really came naturally to me. I prefer the ‘chaos of improbability’ method. If it’s gonna blow, let’s get the marshmallows out. Enough has been written about the problems to make encyclopaedias look wafer thin, but enough to last a lifetime? Nahhh, I’m still perversely curious about where this could go from here. And I swear to you that you know the future of The Wildhearts as well as I do.

Favourite rumour? “Ginger bought Danny a bag of smack when the band reformed as a kind of welcome.” That’s so good I almost wish it were true.

Favourite bit of blatant bullshit? “Ginger, the man regarded by many as the person responsible for Danny McCormack’s problems.”

I just want to know how you can make someone take drugs for ten years? Even when you’re not in their lives? God can’t control people as well as that. I dunno, maybe it’s a compliment of sorts?

The first release of the singles club came and went in a blur of apathy. Admittedly, the original idea for this little club was to let the fans hear some material that didn’t fit in with The Wildhearts or SG5. The result? Many people complaining that it didn’t sound like The Wildhearts or SG5!

The production was supposed to be ‘garagey’, ‘raw’ and ‘quick’. The main point of concern? The production. I never attended the mix due to the fact that my son was sick, and I also didn’t want too much of my ‘stamp’ on the sound, preferring to let other people show me how they think it should sound. A wrong move, perhaps? Like the feathers at the Astoria, it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. But hey, we lived through that too, remember? Let’s look forward and not dwell too much on criticism.

Don’t forget, criticism is as sexy as Y-fronts.

I know I haven’t made things easy for myself. I realise how good my past records have sounded and how good your taste is. Just please, please, don’t go into this expecting rock anthems or punk / rock n’ roll harmonies and riffs. It’s not meant to sound like anything else, that’s the whole point. Let’s see what you think in 12 months’ time and we’ll compare notes then, OK?

SilverGinger 5 are releasing the new version of Black Leather Mojo in October (complete with an extra CD of live stuff and rare demos, including the barnstorming Walk Like A Motherfucker), with a tour of Britain to follow in November. The good news for everyone that shelled out a fortune on import copies is that the version you hold in your hands right now will become an instant collectors item, deleted in Japan and with a different running order, different artwork and extra tracks not available on the UK version. Keep hold of that sucker, it’s only gonna go up in value.

The Sonic Shake video will be ready to view on this very site soon and it’s a live extravaganza featuring all the highlights of last Christmas’s London Astoria show – a treat for anyone that wasn’t there, and a hint of what to expect in November.

So, June came and went. The impossible got done and no one died. Three different tours with three different outfits, during which I saw a disturbing side of some fans / listees / friends that I was shocked and disappointed with – the criticism that stemmed from watching something stumble and have to regain its posture in public.

Don’t let criticism get in the way of your enjoyment of this thing we’ve got going. We do things. We dream. Not many people do that, but it seems that there are thousands of critics on every block, anywhere you go. I really hope that we don’t turn this into something that anyone else could simply do. If this thing stops being special I’m outta here. The last couple of months have shown me a face of some people that I would happily kick into mush.

You are running this thing. You can make anything of it that you want. It’s your ball. I’m just a guy trying my best, y’know. If that’s good enough to live with then I’m right with ya all the way. If not, then good luck finding something else out there to believe in.

Trust me, you got it good.

Stay cool, throughout.

Love…

Ginger

And so, on the first day of Wildhearts rehearsal I OD’d on anti-depressants, CJ had a fight in a pub with a gay Muslim nutcase and Danny was taken to prison for possession of a knife.

All’s well on the Wildhearted front. Rehearsals sound big, the riffs are huge, the ambition and sheer workload is gargantuan and the hangovers are / were leviathan. Only one week in and there’s already a set list that would make Aerosmith blush. We’re plundering the earliest stuff to give proceedings an authentic feel. The line-up is working like a dream.

CJ is, and must have always been, one of the best guitar players I have ever heard. Danny is louder than I remember… and I remember his volume so well I lost half of the hearing in my left ear because of it. Stidi has to be the most underrated drummer breathing air at the moment. The playing is muscular and lean. The vibe is pure electricity. The neighbours are complaining… it’s all good.

The biggest shock to all of us was just how difficult these old songs are to play. I always thought that because they were the first songs I ever wrote, they would be among the most simple. I’ve been wrong before, but not with such ferocity. Like having to learn how to walk again after a football injury to a pro, this exercise in genre regression has warmed everyone up nicely to the task ahead. This task being to give everyone the best night out of their lives.

Now that Guns N’ Roses have cancelled (sick guitarist, apparently?) and there is sadly no more Ramones, this leaves only The Wildhearts to bring home the punk / r’n’r groceries this summer… which is strange because having heard these songs again, for the first time in years, the comparisons between us and both the aforementioned bands are not lost upon me. This June rock ‘n’ roll is most definitely coming home. Skin up and put the kettle on.

SilverGinger 5, on the other hand, are experiencing what is commonly being known as SG5-itis. Things were never set out to be easy for this band and this mini-excursion in June is no different. We are being given (by whoever it is up there that organises these kinds of things) a total of one day in which to rehearse. Don’t worry, we’ve done much more in far less time, and no one will ever imagine that we haven’t been rehearsing for months. It’s just that kind of band, y’know?

The acoustic dates have provided me with not only my first official sell-out in advance this year (London Borderline), but the first / only sell-out for the month of June in that venue. We went down to see Jason Ringenberg (Jason & The Scorchers) at the Borderline last night, and we’re seeing him again tomorrow in a recording studio to stamp down some tunes with him – the first recordings of The Wildhearts (featuring Jason on vox, natch) and my first chance to write for the man himself. I penned a lil’ ditty called One Less Heartache for him. I gave him a tape last night and he phoned me today to tell me he loves it. Some experiences are worth savouring, y’know?

The singles club has notched up a total of 20 songs recorded and mixed. The first single is due out anytime now, and will also be on sale at all of the Wildhearts dates, should you be unable to track down a copy. The second single (Cars And Vaginas; You, Me and BT; Not Bitter, Just a Little Disappointed) has been mixed, sleeve notes penned and artwork finalised. Oh, and did I mention that it looks great and it kicks fucking ass?

And the final artwork, packaging, etc, has been pressed for the forthcoming acoustic album, Grievous Acoustic Behaviour (a name brought about during a drunken evening in the studio with Kerrang!’s Jason Arnopp), and I gotta tell you all that it is good enough to eat. I ate one and it comes out the other end a little rough, but the flavour is all that matters in matters such as these.

Busy? You could say that I’ve been busy all right. You could say that and be so right that you’d start a movement.

Oh, and I went to the dentist and got my teeth fixed! Man what a month. Jake is doing great and sprouting teeth like a baby shark.

It looks like Devin Townsend could be joining us on the Wildhearts tour. And my Jeep that got stolen has been found at the scene of a near fatal crash through which the thieves are fighting for their lives.

Man, God looked down one day and said: “Every dog must have his day… and I’m running out of dogs so I guess it’s the turn of the red-headed mongrel down there to get some.”

Clean, sober and reaping some good karma. Thank fuck I didn’t die.
Ginger

So I got home late Easter Monday from a weekend away having shite-loads of drunken fun in the country. Tired, and more than a little bilious, I nabbed a quick look at the weekend’s mail before catching up on some much needed kip. I saw something about Joey Ramone dying on Easter Sunday and drifted off into a peaceful sleep, interrupted only by dreams of being a kid and getting into a love affair with my first band. Yeah, I loved KISS when I was a child-sized-kiddy (in the way a kid loves Superman, though I personally couldn’t stand the fucker myself), and I later loved Motorhead for the simple reason that they played louder than anyone I’d ever seen before, and they were also British, therefore guaranteeing me a ticket to see ’em live at least a few times a year… but Ramones?

Well, it was vastly different. For a start, I already looked like one of them. Secondly, they played ‘pop’ which I always thought was much more ‘punk’ than pissed-off-sounding. And they had long hair (which I also saw as being ‘punk as fuck’, y’know? I mean my mother wanted me to have short hair!). They also shared something with KISS in that they didn’t have a dodgy-looking member in the group. They all looked like Ramones. They were also the only band that sounded exactly like I imagined them sounding, purely by looking at the cover picture.

I can’t count the amount of times I physically stood up for Ramones in those ‘whose band are the coolest’ situations. No one I knew liked them, which kinda made them even more of a find. I used to get the piss endlessly taken for, supposedly, “looking a little like Joey Ramone,” until irony struck and I got one of South Shields’ first known (to me anyway) blow jobs from a cute lil’ Ramones fanatic because I “looked a little like Joey Ramone.”

My first concert in London was Ramones. I sneaked into the venue via the girls’ toilets. My first band played Ramones covers. You could sound good playing that shit because they played at roughly the same standard as you. As years moved on, my love for Ramones grew as large as the holes in my jeans. (Dunno how, but my jeans also always went at the knees first – stop yer sniggering at the back).

I kinda lost them after Subterranean Jungle, and consider Pleasant Dreams to be their last truly great album (hey, I’m older than you, remember?). But classic videos for I Wanna Be Sedated (new version) and Psychotherapy kept me hanging on like the fan I always was, waiting for them to get their sense of humour back. Sadly, they turned into a Heavy Rock band and I stopped buying their albums – there were too many po-faced bloody rock bands filling up the 80’s, y’know? Still, after all these years I could look at photos and still get a rush (like that recent Mojo magazine spread with the ‘ripped jeans’ cover), and I never missed a concert if I could help it as Ramones were the greatest live band of all time. Their crowd were the most fucked up looking bunch of misfits ever to peacefully share an evening together. And Joey just got more and more bizarre, continually reinventing the English language until Blitzkrieg Bop became ‘Blleeeeeeeeeeee-bup’.

I was lucky enough to actually meet Joey Ramone at a Backyard Babies show in New York when The Yo-Yo’s were supporting. He had enough time to talk to every fan that had anything to say to him. I thanked him for being such a huge inspiration both visually and musically, and Danny shouted / sprayed into the side of his head how “none of us would be here now if it wasn’t for this fucker – no one is fit to lick his shit.” He stood patiently, showing not the slightest concern, or fear, about this pissed-up, tattooed Geordie yelling into his ear in a language that must have resembled dogs barking mixed with live Joey Ramone-isms.

Joey was a very rare thing in this business. A smart, talented and unique music fanatic, living out a dream until his last day alive.

Hey Ho.

Death is only the beginning. Play the records and have a drink for him when you come see The Wildhearts in June. You wouldn’t be there, we wouldn’t be there, had he not been there before us.

For everything. Joey Ramone, you will never be forgotten.
Ginger

There really is nothing else, is there?

I woke up this morning (cue blues riff) and the world was getting in my arse something rotten. Bills, debts and general badness abounded about my existence. ‘Fuck this’, I thought, ‘let’s hit that bottle of Absolute and fuck it all. In fact, fucking fuck it all. Fuckers. They can get a sober man down, but a pissed up Geordie… no fucking way baybeehhh, just no fucking way’.

Got myself drunk as a lord and the first of many things happened.

Sanctuary Management placed a bill in my hands for services rendered for the silly figure of £18,000 (er, did I miss something? I thought they didn’t get me signed or earn me a single penny? What a wonderful business!). Now, as you in the real world know full well, this kind of money doesn’t exist. It might as well be £18 million – I’m going to jail, y’know?

Then I got a call from Nikki Sixx who said that he loves the SilverGinger 5 record (hey, ya gotta check this out) and wants to sign us to his label. And guess who wants to close the deal? Sanctuary America – the same people that issued that extortionate bill to me this very morning!!!

At this point I’m thinking, ‘there is absolutely no reason for getting wound up about anything, just get drunk and see how it all looks from that side of the bottle’. See? It’s easy. You don’t need smack, you don’t need crack, you don’t need nothin’ that’s gonna get you arrested. Drink, it’s your friend. And a fucking good friend at that.

Then my girl comes home and puts it all into perspective. She says (and take this in, it’s a blinding piece of advice): “Do the right thing and it will bring you good luck.” She was so right that I had to pour myself a new drink.

DO THE RIGHT THING.

If you’re a good person, and aren’t fucking over anyone that didn’t deserve it, you will be paid back in justice. Why? Because there are millions of people not doing the right thing; trying to break people’s balls; making the less fortunate suffer for their enforced supposed superiority; booking themselves a one way ticket to Hell. And believe me they are going right there. No drop offs, next stop fire and punishment.

Me? I’m gonna be up there where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, and God is gonna say, “well done young man, what a bunch of wankers!” See, God fucking hates cunts. And cunts make up the majority of the world… therefore Heaven is a place with free tables and good service.

Justice will be seen to be served. As it always has… you just didn’t notice.

New solo singles, tickets for Wildhearts shows selling swiftly, SG5 finally getting the attention they deserve (maybe?) and realising that your girl is the greatest thing to happen to you since you came kicking and screaming into this world. What more could anyone want?

Well, I’ll tell you what I want. I want you lot going fucking mental in June. Acoustic shows, SG5 shows, Wildhearts shows – it’s enough to make you cry. I don’t feel like I’m in a band. I feel like I’m in a gang, and there are hundreds of us fuckers!!! Power in numbers? You’d better believe it.

Someone emailed me the other day saying that my heart wasn’t in this. The guy must live on an island in the middle of Dickville! No one knows exactly how me, Danny, CJ and Stidi are feeling at the moment, but it’s real and it rocks. It’s a free bar. And it’s vibrating like an epileptic woodpecker. It hurts. And it feels like life.

Timing? Alcohol? Girls? ROCK ‘N ROLL? Fuck it all and let’s party like we invented getting high! Shit man, know how cool this Summer is gonna be? Think about it, then times it by hundreds, and it feels good, right? Wrong!!! You don’t even know, because you haven’t ever felt like you’re going to feel. You only know how you have felt, and that example is only there to be improved upon. Fuck, I can only thank God that he didn’t put me here in the last generation and had me miss all of this shit.

Gotta go now, I’m scaring myself. Life is fucking beautiful and hard as fuck. Would you want it any other way? Yeah, me neither!!!

Rock fucking absolutely ROCKS!

Peace, love, alcohol and girls
Ginger

Hey, hey, hey… so it all happened as laid down in the hopeful rantings of last month’s intro. Funny what happens when you commit yourself… or, if you like, ‘careful what you wish for’.

Gotta admit, the response from the news that The Wildhearts are to reform was quite frankly ridiculous. Men openly weeped, women openly weeped, sores openly weeped… and the UK was once again a cool place to be.

Well, the news this month is that the line-up has been completed by Stidi on drums, recreating the magic line-up of the classic Earth Vs The Wildhearts album. So that’s three Geordies and a southern, shandy-drinking nancy puff (just don’t tell CJ that I said that or he’ll kick my ass).

There looks likely to be an available slot for The Wildies at this year’s Bulldog Bash, as well as a tour in June, from 15th to the 20th. Just a short one first. Got to get the lube oils dripping again.

The band got together in ‘full line-up mode’ (for the first time in nearly ten years) on Friday 16th March to celebrate the completion of the first of my ‘solo’ singles (remember the 12 singles in 12 months plan? It has begun… and we don’t even have 12 months to do it in. Oh man, the impossible gives me the fucking horn). A small party was held, post-recording, at the studio… resulting in the warmest bout of mayhem I have had the pleasure to witness in a long, long time.

Man, I’ve missed these guys so much it really does feel good… y’know, like a band! CJ even supplied backing vocals on a couple of tracks, while Stidi played drums and SG5’s ‘Random’ Jon Poole carried out his bass workout in suitably impressive style. Fuck, can that boy shred! Hey, even Alex Kane turned up to torture some guitars. Is there anyone out there that doesn’t love this guy? Well, if there is, you’d better keep the hell away from this here site, buddy.

The final decision about which song to call the A-side was made at about 1 pm on Monday 19th March. When four tracks can all stand up to each other face to face, eyeball to eyeball, and like mad dogs fucking it’s imposssible to pull them apart, then the final decision is just to pick the one that rocks the most, a kind of sonic flip of the coin. And the victor is a belter called I’m A Lover Not A Fighter, a song originally written for Backyard Babies (with Dregen in mind for vocal duties) and inexplicably passed upon. Have a listen and tell me that it rocks harder than a crushed diamond enema. Put another way, you wouldn’t turn it down… so neither did I!

So the B-sides on the CD single look likely to be Same Again (an alcoholic prayer) and Don’t Let Me Die Lonely (a romantic’s plea, originally written as an A-side, which lets you in on the quality here). Add to that a vinyl single featuring the B-side Thailand Uber Alles (written during my stint in that Bangkok pokey) and you should be due to wipe that saliva dripping from your chin right about now (please note that there’s been a change of plan regarding the vinyl. See 21 March news – Ed). Recorded nice and quick and featuring more hooks than a New Order bassist look-alike competition, you could say I’m quite proud of this, the first wee step in making the impossible seem merely fun.

And just when you thought the fun has to stop somewhere, you remember where you are and open another cold one… SilverGinger 5 look certain to appear headlining one of the Metal Hammer nights of mayhem going down between 4th and 9th of June. Add this to the fact that The Wildhearts have been officially turned down to appear at the Ozzfest (surely a thousand of you could send emails letting the Ozzfest know that they just lost a lot more sales than whoever else is opening up? When will these people learn? Well, pretty fucking soon I reckon, but anyway…), and you will no doubt agree that this has been a pretty eventful few weeks.

And you know what? I have a funny feeling that the next few weeks are going to make this look like time off. I’m going into the studio on 26th March to record singles numbers two and three in one shot (owing to the fact that we gotta release one every three weeks, or something), so we’re talking eight bloody songs, man. No fillers and no fat. Family-sized nuggets of sonic / melodic pleasure and eclectic charm to warm the coldest and most jaded of stereos.

2001, as predicted, is already rocking like a motherfucker… and we’re only just starting to get the blood pumping. This country is going to be rubble by this summer. The news that rock ‘n roll is the next new thing, and will be spearheaded by Europe (the continent, not the band), will be on everybody’s lips. And Popstars / Hear’Say (regardless of the fact that the oriental-looking one is fucking gorgeous… aw, come on, have a look willya?) will pave the way for us rockers to dance upon the rotting corpse of Britpop shouting “I’M IN LOVE WITH THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL WORLD”.

You only have to walk down any high street known for its fashion to see the proliferation of ‘flame’, ‘dice’, ‘number 13’, ‘devil head’, Coop- / Kozik-style shirts to tell the trend, feel the fad, and see the style of summer. It’s all coming back, boys and girls… and it’s all coming back home.

Drop that guitar a notch or two on that strap, make sure that shirt matches those shoes, and lose that fucking beer belly… sex is coming. Oh sorry, I meant to say SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… SEX IS COMING… (Blimey, that’ll improve our chances in search engines – Ed.)

And don’t forget who told you.

Songsmith, band leader, baby machine and fortune teller?

I love my job(s).
Ginger

So I got pissed off with the way things were run. So I made some changes to the way that things were done (good line, right? OK, you can have it).

I got off Sanctuary management because they were just too big, too blind to the needs of the small guy. A great management company for some people, y’know? Just not for me. Too old fashioned. Times change, and management companies have less and less to do, and more and more to gain. Artists take less maintenance these days, due to the fact that most of them are as fucking boring as waiting for milk to boil on a candle-powered fucking stove. People in bands just tend to be a lot more boring than me. I’ve gotta move on. Gotta make waves… and waves are most definitely what I plan on making.

Over the next 12 months I plan on making up the lost ground that I’ve sacrificed over the last 12 months while I’ve been sitting here waiting for the corporate world to recognise that taste has a place in music. A labour of love and unrecognised ideals… and it fucking sucks. The majors are out. They have no style, they have no substance (Maria McKee cannot get a record deal, in a time where ‘Popstars’ has the media’s undivided attention… this is the truth, people!), and they have no balls. So, what are we to do?

Well, I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna fight. And I am gonna fight with my strongest asset at my disposal. My music.

Things are gonna happen.

There is talk of an acoustic album, recorded back when I played the 12 Bar Club (in Denmark Street, London, WC1), being released in a double CD package to coincide with a spate of acoustic gigs around town(s) to welcome this magnificent affair to the lives of the fortunate. And if that ain’t enough, there’s also talk of another acoustic show to be thrown in the faces of an agreeable audience, sometime in May, to be called something like ‘The International Hillbilly Cousins’. It’s set to feature me and the mighty Jason Ringenberg of the mighty Jason & The Scorchers fame (it’s funny how the people that you most respect seem to take notice of your efforts when you most need them to). This rock ‘n roll lark is definitely linked with a strong karmic- / justice-style theme that goes through every single rock and roll soul living on this here very planet. When the going gets tough the tough get active. And activity is what separates us folk from those big ugly fucking cows we see in every field that houses burgers. Big brown eyes aside, cows taste good but we rooooooool.

I will also (within the next year) attempt the death-defying feat of releasing a single every month (complete with the requisite 2 B-sides… natch!) for the next 12 months until there is enough material to make an album of A-sides at Christmas as a seasonal surprise for those unfortunates that missed the boat first time(s) around.

Then… there is the possibility of SilverGinger 5 recording our next album for Nikki Sixx’s label Americoma, with Nikki Sixx at the very helm of production responsibilities (although mentioning ‘Nikki Sixx’ and ‘responsibilities’ in the same sentence sounds a little ill-informed). This particular boat was meant to float.

Then there is The Wildhearts. Yes, you heard it right… THE WILDHEARTS.

I am so fucking bored with the pussies that constitute our rock ‘n’ roll fraternity these days. The world needs some attitude. The world needs some ugly behaviour. Where have all the bad boys gone?

I went out for a drink with Danny and CJ the other day. It was a usual Wildhearts night out. Danny had a punch up with some guy. I had a punch up with another guy. CJ smiled like a Cheshire cat throughout the proceedings. It struck me how much I had missed the mayhem that always was The Wildhearts. It struck me how much you have missed the mayhem that always was The Wildhearts. So we figured we’d get back together, do some shows and let these new fucking chancers know what rock ‘n’ roll is all about. Now, tell me you couldn’t do with the same dose of real life R’n’R that I could do with? This is serious! We are going to fuck with your world and we are going to do it around June of this year.

When the going gets tough… the tough think ‘fuck this for a lark… I’m off to do something that pisses people off fucking royally’. And in this tight a situation that’s as good a deal as you’re ever gonna need, let alone get.

There will also be a new SilverGinger 5 album out around late summer, or just as soon as someone gets their wallet out and recognises that talent and fun still belong in rock ‘n’ roll. The festivals are going to be full of me. The magazines are gonna be full of me. The radio is even gonna have to submit at some point and be full of me. Fucking me… and why not? Who else is gonna give you your daily dose of drama (sonically speaking, of course)?

Oh my brethren, and sisteren… sistren… sist… fucking chicks, we are going to dance again. We are going to sing again. We will make every night Friday night… unless it is Friday night, in which case we will of course make it a Saturday night. Or something suitable, I’m sure you will agree. Don’t worry, we’ll make it worth your while to leave the house… then you can put a fucking anniversary on the fucker. Needless to say, come summer, we will be having things on a very large platter… and that is all that matters.

Get your tents out, boys and girls, the sun is gonna be be your friend this year. It is all going to happen. Know why? ‘Cos I told you so. And that’s a guarantee. And if I’m wrong? Well, at least it wasn’t a fucking management / record company telling you bullshit now was it? You can always trust a Geordie, right?

Hey, right or fucking wrong you’ll be seeing me.

The future started yesterday.
Ginger