Bombskare

Well it’s with great sadness that I am announcing my retirement as the band’s spiritual father and chaplain, and while I realise that it’s highly irregular for me to be retiring like this, the first Bombskare skank guitarist in over eight hundred years to do so, I do feel that it’s time to grow up. For when I was a twat, I spoke like a twat, understood like a twat and thought like a twat. But now I’m not a twat so I’ve put away all this twattery. I would like to stress it has nothing at all to do with the time I spent in the 80s as a member of the Thatcher youth, or my involvement in the great chicken fucking cover-up scandal of, let’s say, 2003. It’s simply that Andy, a holier and more devout Ska-meister than I, saw the Lord in a vision one night last week, whilst out on the Buckie, and so even though I’ve the gift of prophecy, and I understand all mysteries and knowledge, and I can move mountains, that’s nothing compared to spotting the Almighty out on the tiles, one night in Edinburgh. Anyway, that night when the Lord revealed to Andy that One Direction are machines sent back from the future to destroy all happiness and usher in the end times, he immediately realised that we would be the ones that had to stop them, possibly with fire. As well as being the basis of my new graphic novel, it also sets the scene for an epic battle between good and evil with Bombskare representing Ska on one side and One Direction representing Evil on the other. Even the non religious amongst you have to admit this is an alarming scenario yet makes total sense; Buckfast is made by monks after all. Anyway it’s very exciting because I’ve always suspected I’d have a hand in the Apocalypse. So now Andy is our new titular head, and I for one wish him well. For when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. Of course I’m not really going anywhere; it’s just that no one has to listen to my twattery anymore, they can just tune me out the way we currently do with Colin and his Victor Frankenstein impersonation. I’ve realised that I can best serve the band by spending more time praying and studying and by praying and studying I mean playing Skyrim on the Xbox. Now that I’m stepping aside as head chaplain, people are free to ask me any stupid questions they like such as, what’s your favourite Planet of the Apes movie, and was it difficult being a spiritual icon? The answers to which are Beneath, and yes, it had its challenges, and unlike Das Popenfuhrer I didn’t have the ancient and vast untaxed resources of the Church to support me, just the limited taxed resources of your standard run of the mill Ska juggernaut, which includes a devastatingly tight rhythm section, a horn section of dubious origin and tuning, a lead singer of average attractiveness according to this poll I just did in Cosmopolitan and of course Zombie Lloyd Knibb. Most people don’t think of Zombie Lloyd Knibb as a resource but he is. As well as being my emergency contact, his spinal fluid has the highest concentration of pure Ska in the world. We extract it and inject it straight into Papa Joe. Don’t tell me you never wondered why he was so cool. Herr Popenfuhrer and I have some similarities, of course; in German we both insist on being addressed by the formal ‘sie’, we both hate the Oxford comma, and are upset by condoms, but the differences are striking. I could never dress head to foot in white; it’s just not practical or appropriate, considering my sexual history, plus I don’t like to make it too easy for snipers. Also, unlike Herr Ratzenberger I could never be in the Hitler Youth; I’m fine around kids, but I am compelled to sexually abuse Nazis. They are just so cute in their little jackboots. Also Herr Popen-Vater, God’s representative on earth, needs a bullet-proof golf cart to get about in, whereas I have to suffice with just a normal stab-proof Ford Escort that I have to operate myself like a sucker at great personal risk. I also don’t live in a museum within the heart of my own private city and if I knew that someone in my organisation was raping children, I wouldn’t transfer him to somewhere safe where he could lie low, I’d shoot him in the face with a crossbow. In the interests of full disclosure, one time when Jay Sloan was caught abusing a horse, we did transfer him to Root System where that sort of behaviour is not only condoned but actively encouraged. Naturally this change in the band’s organisation is going to have some short term disruptive effects. It won’t have any impact on the Ska of course, that will be as impeccable as it always is, 100% pure, uncut. It’s the band’s spiritual well being that is at risk. For instance we’re still not sure who will be performing the exorcisms from now on. Colin has volunteered but unfortunately most of the exorcisms are required to dispel the demon that inhabits Colin. Let’s face it; he is a stranger to reason and unreasonably loud. But then, if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle, am I right? Also if anyone in the band needs to get married quickly I’m afraid I won’t be able to officiate at the ceremony any more. It’s happened more often than you think. One time I married Murray and Sam four times in a single day. As the good book says, now are they members, yet but one body. It was annulled each time on the grounds of gross indecency and war crimes. Most recently you might have noticed we’ve been doing some unusual cover versions like our cover of Rory McLeod’s ‘Love Like a Rock’, recorded using the most devastating instrument in the world; the human voice. And a harmonica, of course. If this doesn’t move you to tears then you are soulless husk.

We’ll probably do more covers in the future so feel free to offer suggestions as to which songs or artists and we’ll feel free to completely ignore them. As you may have heard we have finally completed our second album ‘The Day the Earth Stood Stupid’. It took about three years to make which is shorter than the Second World War and it will be released on April fool’s Day. That’s April the 1^st for any fools out there. It has fifteen tracks and is over an hour long, much longer than an episode of Murder She Wrote, including the adverts, and much louder. It is going to take a while to recover from the sheer level of compression we’ve had to expose ourselves to. In fact for the last two months I have been doing nothing but decompressing, and I have to say it is fantastic to have some quiet bits again. Sorry that was an engineering joke, but that is pretty much what I have had to put up with for the last few months, jokes about compression and reverb…verb. Anyway we’ve been pretty busy lately trying to sort out the best way to promote and sell our album. We know how to design and construct the Ska, but selling it is another matter. We are not salesmen; I have no idea why people part with their cash for anything. Intuitively it seems that something this awesome should sell itself, like black tar heroin; but you don’t see too many pop up ads for that. Remember we have no record label supporting us, and we have had almost zero mainstream press coverage over the last eight hundred years, so we have to rely on a combination of old school bribery, internet skulduggery and Voodoo. We have been making videos, preparing our press releases and all the other related nonsense, which has compelled us to think about ourselves in the third person a lot and describe ourselves objectively yet favourably, sort of like visiting a psychiatrist. Our first attempt at a press pack went something along the lines of ‘Bombskare are mostly Ska and occasionally sober’ but I’m sure you’ll agree, that lacks a certain something. There’s no detail. For instance, what is Ska? Even now most people still don’t know what Ska is. In our view Ska is a genre, but ska is also taking an existing piece of music and squinting at it, like looking through a glass, skankly, twisting it so that the emphasis is on the backbeat and thereby making it 50% sexier, but how do you describe that to a journalist who is not interested in music unless it’s a) made by four piece indie/folkie navel gazers with skin tight jeans and child snatcher shoes or b) singer/songwriters who sing songs about the time when they were sad and they didn’t get enough cuddles. Yes, I find morbid self attention a really attractive quality in a person, especially when they then turn it into a form of music that we can then listen to and talk about afterwards. It’s a conundrum, we can make the Ska but we don’t know how to punt it, but by the grace of God we are what we are and his grace which was bestowed upon us was not in vain, as it says in Herr Popenfuhrer’s favourite book. In the meantime we will continue to promote our music the old fashioned way, by turning up in different towns at pre-arranged locations and performing it live directly into the audiences’ ear holes, the same way that Beethoven did it, and if it’s good enough for that deaf German nutter then it’s good enough for us. To that end we’ll be doing a world tour in support of the album; London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and Newcastle which is most of the known world I believe. I really need to update my Google maps. We’ll be appearing at the London International Ska festival on Friday the 29^th of March, and then we’ll be driving back up to Edinburgh through the night to get back for our album launch party down at Studio 24 on the Saturday night. We aren’t taking any chances this time, after last time when we arrived back from London to our Edinburgh show with fifteen minutes to spare. You can read about that piece of ancient history here. You may recall that Studio 24 is where we had our first album launch back in 2009 and what a crazy night that was, the hottest night since Ska records began. You can read about that night here. It was a sell-out and we drank the bar dry. It was that gig that we recorded for our live album ‘How the North Was Won’ and you can hear how hot it is on the recording. No joke, you can hear the sweat running down the walls. So it goes without saying that you would be crazy to miss this one. See you all there. Yesh!

Just discovered that I’m old. I’ve always shouted at the TV but I have never thrown pasta at it before. That’s what old people do. Crazy old people. But what else can we do? If God didn’t want us to throw things at the TV then why does he keep putting Jeremy Clarkson on the fucking thing. To anyone in Croatia reading this right now, let me explain who Jeremy Clarkson is. He’s sort of an English version of Marie Antionette. Let me now say that I think Jeremy Clarkson should be shot. Out of a cannon. Into the sun. If you are offended then I was just kidding. Just speaking hyperbollockly as I am known to do. I was momentarily upset when he said how dare public sector employees strike over their ‘gold plated’ pensions when the rest of us have to work for a living. Of course when he means work, he means being paid millions of pounds of license fee money to have cars bought for him and drive about in circles all day. Yeah, that’s a man’s work. They came to my door recently and said, hey our records show you haven’t bought a TV license, to which I showed them the picture I have of Jeremy Clarkson pinned to my blood stained dart board and said, this cunt won’t be prancing about with any of my cash in his back fucking pocket, so feel free to fuck off and if you do come back, make sure you bring your top boy. And they haven’t been back. Seriously though, I’m sure the BBC does a lot of good work. I only ever use the TV to watch BBC News 24 anyway, which is depressing enough without having to pay for it. The news this year has been rubbish, worldwide revoulution, riots, economic and financial ruin. David Cameron has vetoed a new European treaty basically because it would tax and regulate the City of London, not the actual city you understand, but the square mile around Threadneedle Street where all the money is. After all the last thing we would want to do right now is tax and regulate the banks. Better to just press on with failed austerity programmes that are destroying the social fabric of the country in order to sort our massive debt. Balance the books on the backs of working people, not hedge funds and banks and the City of London. What about the growing social unrest and anti democratic forces at play all across Europe, from Tottenham all the way to Athens? Fuck it, nothing bad has ever happened from social unrest and anti democratic forces in Europe as far as I can remember. Everyone is also very concerned about Iran and their alleged weapons programme. A total distraction in my view. We should be more concerned about Root System’s weapons programme. They’ve been trying to weaponise Ska for years, whilst simultaneously denying Bad Manners right to exist. They are also Madness deniers. They deny Madness ever happened, even though we have pretty convincing records. Pretty extreme stuff and they are just over the bridge, which means they really could hit us within forty five minutes. These are just rumours by the way but it would be irresponsible of me not to repeat them. I have to confess I felt a little bad before, when I laughed at Roddy Radiation not being invited to the U.N Ska Summit. It was a cheap shot. It’s nothing to do with his abilities, he’s a capable guitarist, a very nice gentleman, it’s because he is a security risk, naturally. If the X Men movies have taught us anything, and I believe they have, it’s that you have to be extremely careful with that much radiation at the U.N, frankly you’re just asking for trouble. Naturally radiation doesn’t affect me, I fell into a cauldron of the stuff as a child, but for others it can be dangerous to be exposed to such high levels of irradiated skank guitar. To show there were no hard feelings we invited him up to Fran’s birthday party and we played a set of covers with this This R2 Tone. You can see from the photos that Colin was getting uncomfortably close behind Roddy, and he does look understandably worried, but it all worked out fine. In the end Colin said he was one of the most giving lovers he’d ever had. That’s sweet. We’ve finished the Ska this year. The Ska has been completed you might say, the live Ska anyway. Our last gig of the year was the Prestonpans Labour Club, the sort of gig that has been our bread and butter for ten years, where the crowd don’t know you and you have to win them over with sheer drunken magic. No problem for a charismatic bunch of two fisted he-men like us because that’s our speciality, drunken magic. The secret is lager, drink as much as you can, as fast as you can and do the gig before you fall over. I learned that trick from Judi Dench, not directly of course. I read it in ‘Intoxication Secrets of the Stars’ which is also where I found out that Justin Timberlake wears a cock ring on his vagina. Great night and good to catch up with the boys from Big Fat Panda. I forgot to tell Big Andy to get up to the zoo, and stamp his authority with the new panda, bloody immigrants, coming over here and stealing all our panda jobs. Or something. As soon as we got back from that gig, the snow came. Time to hibernate and focus on the recording which is virtually completed. The problem is the guys insist on making multiple copies of the album itself, something about selling it to the people. My view is that we should have one copy and sell it for a fortune. Little difference of opinion there. We’ve already started planning 2012, which according to the Mayans and Hollywood is going to be the end of the world so we’ll be hitting the ground running, in anticipation of the end times. To get the ball rolling we’ll be in Inverness, Aberdeen, Dumfries and Shetland before the end of January. Dumfries will be interesting; no Sam, as he has a court appearance for masturbating out of the window. I really thought he would have learned his lesson from last time; and our second gig ever without Papa Joe who is off getting his back varnished, so we will be featuring Ms Mandy Clarke on bass guitar. Mandy was outraged that we had reprogrammed Waz for bass back in September instead of asking her, so this time round, since Waz will be on drums at that gig, she was the first person we asked to play the role of Joe. You might think that it’s not an obvious choice for understudy since Mandy is small and lovely, whereas Joe is monstrous and terrifying. However Ms Clarke rocks the bass guitar in Super Adventure Club, who truly are monstrous and terrifying. Bombskare absorbing 66.6% of Super Adventure Club is going to be fantastic. Shetland is also going to be amazing, even better than the last time. We returned in October after seven years to Lerwick and Scalloway and had an amazing time, saw a lot of old friends. It was such as a success we’ve been invited back up to play after the Up Helly Aa festival in Lerwick. Look it up nerds. Basically it’s a giant fire festival, held all across Shetland, everyone dressed as Vikings, complete with burning longboats, alcohol and thousands of mad Shetlanders. And Bombskare. What could possibly go right? Merry Christmas folks.

First off let me sort out some rumours that have been floating about. No, Joe and I are not leaving the band to form our own side project called Combskare. That’s just daft. Obviously it just makes sense to stay in the band and wait till everyone else is bald. Another rumour is that we are a punk band. Technically we are a genetically modified hybrid of Ska and Punk called Skunk, which you can easily tell because of our pungent aroma, overwhelming lethargy and deleterious side effects. At the music awards someone actually asked me if I was the brains of the operation, to which I laughed so hard beer came out my nose. And I was drinking milk. Let me disabuse this notion once and for all, there are no brains in this operation. Brains are a massive hindrance. Men of action can’t afford to think. Does a tiger think? Does a pterodactyl think? Thinking causes hesitation, and hesitation causes your worst fears to happen. So how do decisions get made? Short answer, they don’t. We leave it all up to the twisted design of the universe. If Bombskare was a train, we’d all be in the buffet car getting hammered, and no one would be driving. Where are we going? We’ll find out after the crash. When we picked up the award I did take the opportunity to point out to the assembled music types that we were clearly the best dressed band in the building, and so therefore incapable of being a punk band much as we might like to be. Incidentally we’ve already tried selling the actual music award itself, the trophy, down at Smack Generator, just like we do with all our Baftas, but the most they could offer us was an old SM58 with a dented shield. So we still have the thing. In other band news ever since the passing of Lloyd Knibb, our spiritual father and patron saint, we have been a bit lost. Directionless you might say, but all that’s about to change because now we have a new patron saint. Cue the drum roll. It’s the re-animated corpse of Lloyd Knibb. They said it couldn’t be done, they said I was mad, but I proved them. Again. Just like my amazing plan to breed a race of genetically modified footballing supermen to help us qualify for the World Cup in Rwanda 2036. Anyway Lloyd is a lot more helpful like this, although he doesn’t move about as much. He wasn’t too quick before I suppose, but now he has all this wonderful advice such as, ‘Brains! Need brains!’ Hey Lloyd, I realise you are a hideous undead creature from beyond the grave and an abomination unto the Lord, but pay attention. I’ve just finished saying that brains are a massive hindrance in this band. At the minute he’s chained up in the lab, that’s right we have a lab, but I’m sure nothing could possibly go wrong. Science, Ska and the Undead, sounds like a winning combination to me. Aside from branching out into necromancy, or skaromancy, we have been gigging. Toots and the Maytals at the O2 Academy was good, even if it was a short set, twenty five minutes. Quite a few people complained about Toots daughter’s mangling of the Tina Turner tune. I could have done without that frankly. We headlined at a new festival in East Lothian called Audio Soup with our old friends Taking Chase, who are jealously guarding a new album we can’t wait to hear. Highlights of Audio Soup included Clogg and the Quirks, a young band who had the ubiquitous Phil ‘Big Hand’ Ramsey up for their cover of Big Hand’s ‘Magnet’. Cracking stuff. Loopallu was a cracker too, featuring Phil Hopwood on guitar and our very own stunt drummer, Captain Waz ‘The Waz’ Wazzster, but cleverly reprogrammed for bass guitar. For sheer skill, my hat is off to him, a man of such style like you’d not often find. He’s also very highly regarded in his native Wazistan. We could only spend one night in Ullapool unfortunately but we had a great time, especially afterwards in the pub, jamming with everybody, although I have absolutely no recollection of it. Cheers to The Imagineers and I’d also personally like to thank Kassidy for controlling themselves, sexually, whilst around us, we know how tough that was. That night we slept in the church in Ullapool, an Episcopalian one I believe, always best to sleep on holy ground especially in that part of the world. So that seems to be the end of festival season then. One thing that I won’t be missing is eating food from service stations. Can I just say that in no part of the world is a cheese and onion sandwich, a bag of Walkers crisps and a bottle of Coke considered to be a meal, and £2.99 is definitely no deal. One other thing we also went down to Ashington to play ‘ahr Tony Eastlake’s 50th birthday party. He had a marquee set up in his back garden and a hefty PA system. That’s pretty much our natural environment. What a night it was. I woke up with my head inside a plastic bag, clearly an assassination attempt gone wrong. Happy Birthday Tony, cheers for a great party although I haven’t had sore head like that for a long time. Andy and I shared a bottle of champagne on the way back which totally sorted out /postponed the hangover. The next thing we have coming up is our long awaited return to Shetland. We are very excited about this one. We’ll be there exactly ten years to the weekend of our first trip up there, playing the exact same venues with the immortal Steve Hook doing the sound again. On that occasion Jeff picked us up at the airport in an old ambulance that was literally packed to the gunnels with Tennants lager. And that was us for three days. It was the stuff of Viking sagas. This time instead of a one hour flight from Aberdeen, it’s a fourteen hour ferry crossing from Aberdeen. It’s going to be great although I don’t think I’ll be able to take the punishment I took last time. Remember, it’s not the years it’s the mileage.