The Paranoid Squirrel ep 508

It’s Saturday and that can only mean one thing; well probably on reflection Saturday can mean a whole host of different things to different people, but for me as the weekly Tesco shop is put away it’s time for me to play an hours’ worth of music that you should hear on the radio but don’t, even if it is super late this week. Reason being my day job Boss treated us all to free drinks and free food at The Meantime Brewery yesterday to celebrate the company being 19 years old. As you can imagine, put me in a situation with the combination of those two ingredients even with Mrs A. there to keep me relatively on the straight and narrow things aren’t going to end well. Fortunately I didn’t wake up with an 8.2 but in my state of “Fuggness” I forgot the shopping list so spent twice as long in the Supermarket trying to remember what I needed to buy if we were going to eat this week. But I digress. First up are The Turbo ACs and a track from their forthcoming “Radiation” album. I then regale the “Fuck it, let’s get drunk” Team Rock Radio Breakfast Show drink up a couple of weeks ago that had me bumping into former Rachael Stamp, current Scant Regard, She Made Me Do It and Adam Ant Guitarist Will Crewdson where I managed to purloin a She Made Me Do It CDs which I don’t play opting for their current one instead. Sad news reach me last week that The Pipeline in the City come the 23rd of July due to a massive rent increase will cease to be. I was up their last on the 1st July to see the Razorbats who were on route to Slugfest 9 with Flash House in support. Of course I review said gig with a Flash House demo and a live Michael Monroe cover courtesy of the Razorbats. Chuck Norris Experiment have a split acoustic single out at the moment (with Trigger McPoopshute) a track of which I play. Unintentionally the next five bands all have links to The Damned. Up first is Stiv Bator, obviously his Damned connection is forming The Lords of the New Church with original Damned guitarist Brian James, with a track from his “Disconnected” album. I then move on The Black Bombers and a track from their debut Easy Action self-titled CD.  The Black Bombers on Wednesday supported Brian James up at The 100 Club and that tenuous link isn’t the only thing that connects them to the Damned. Black Bombers’ bassist Darren Birch also plays in The Godfathers that used to feature Kris Dollimore who played with The Damned between 93-95. So yes Brian James celebrated the 40th Anniversary of The Damned’s first ever gig which appropriately enough was at The 100 Club supporting The Sex Pistols. Brian had issued an open invitation to Rat, Captain and Dave to join him. Captain on Facebook the day before reminded everyone of the gig, even if he thought it was a day earlier, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of “New Rose” d’oh. He also quite rightly paid tribute to what Brian had musically achieved back in 76-77. I think we all knew that he’d respectfully declined Brian’s offer. Rat was an obvious yes having played with Brian up until a few years ago. As for Vanian? Even if he is in a Business Partnership with Rat regarding the Stiff back catalogue, the chances of him turning up were nil. It turns out that the One Show had been in earlier filming and interviewing, with a transmission date of September, when who should turn up but Dave Vanian. Also pencilled in was Ginger Wildheart and if he was in the Country Jesse Malin. Of course Vanian was never to be seen of again come show time and with Jesse Malin still on route to the UK it was left to the two Gingers of the Wildheart and Scabies variety to join Brian for the encore of “I Feel Alright” and “New Rose”, the latter of which I play. The Dirty Strangers, who Brian James has been known to join live, have had their “Crime and a Women” CD officially released for the second time. The first was late last year but thanks to Record Label Fucktarderry it was only available for about 5 minutes. Fortunately it’s now readily available on all the normal platforms. Naturally I play a track from it. The last Damned interconnectedness comes from Johnny Moped and a track from their BBC6 Music appearance on July 4th. I got an e-mail from The Ramones Store informing me the 40th Anniversary Box-set that I had order has been pushed back to September 9th at the earliest. Cue gnashing of teeth and wailing. But I still manage to play a Ramones track to cheer me up. I got a very vague e-mail in the week purporting to be from a band that I should check out. The e-mail didn’t inform me of who the band was let along any links, so I copied and pasted the guy who sent me the e-mails name into Facebook and lo and behold he is in a band called Missiles of October. I play the title track form the bands last album. At this point I’m starting to flag, so I play some Dio Sabbath so I can put the kettle on for a cup of tea that hopefully will spring me back into life. It doesn’t, so I end the show this week with some Hellacopters. I’m now going to spend the rest of the day, rest being the operative word, lying down.