The People's Republic of Ramonia

Here are a few snippets of randomness about our Italian tour, which, even now we have completed it, still feels a bit unreal. You can read Mutt's excellent and intensive diary here , but I thought I would fill in the gaps, or add some bits that I observed along the way. There are also some quite pictures available on flickr , if you want the full slideshow! Some of them are quite funny though. Anyway, before I begin I would just like to thank Paulo (Mr My Honey Records) himself for inviting us, along with Fabio (and his family) for putting us up in splendid style on the first night and everyone else who worked on our EP, promotion, accomodation, food or who just turned up to here what we sounded like!
So, day one... It was a very early start (the flight was 7.15 actually Mutt, but at that time 15 minutes either way makes no difference), but we arrived in good time to be met by Paulo and his Methane powered Fiat! That sounds sarcastic, but I think it's a great idea, that is good for the environment and wish that there were more alternatives in the UK. It did make squeezing my specially bought for the trip hard case into a boot mostly filled by a gas tank quite tricky though, so Mutt and I spent many a fine trip huddled up to it, along with Mutt's guitar case. We spent a nice afternoon wandering round Paulo's home city of Brescia where I believe Paulo himself examines every drop of milk personally. Our apologies to the people of Brescia that their milk was not so intensively studied for the week we were dragging him around Northern Italy. We had been told about the radio interview, but were living in denial until we were actually on the air and talking rubbish. We had an interesting chat with Jean-Luc on Radio Onda d'Urto for about 45 minutes in which he played quite a few of our tracks and we butchered 2 of them live. We worked out later (at the gig in discussion with Alessandro from "Le Man Avec Les Lunettes" who mastered it), that the EP tracks turned up in Alphabetical order, as that is how Windows lists things on a data disk. Still, I think the order works quite well, despite this. Also (getting very technical here), the start of our gig was a bit fraught as after the soundcheck we went to eat large quantities of pasta and veal (or cheese in Mutt's case) and Ramon Jr (our trusty laptop) went to sleep and shut down his harddrive. Then when we turned up (a bottle of good local red wine later), and I pressed "Go", he was still asleep and didn't rouse quite so easily. The glitches in the Dog Song weren't as bad as the 2 minutes it took to load Unwind, in which everyone including Mutt thought I'd gone mad as I spouted total bollocks continuously interspersed with "It's still not loaded" as a clue to Mutt that something was up (that he singularly failed to pick up on) to an almost totally non-English speaking audience. They looked ever so slightly confused and thought they'd come to see some avant-garde English stand-up routine I think. I set Ramon up to stay awake at all times after that by pouring double espresso's into his PCMCIA slot. The rest of the gig went mercifully very well,and we played our first encore (albeit after a request to play "Just 1 more" - mostly politeness maybe, and I don't know what would have happened if we'd tried to play 2 more!). We drove back to Fabio's afterwards listening to the "Let it Bee" compilation (out now on My Honey Records - as is our EP!).

The Peepls Repooblk vo Ramonia with great honour announces the opening of it's new Official Ramonian Embassy rov the benefit of all Ramonian people in Italia. It is located at Zuni in the city of Ferrara, and should be the first port of call rov all Ramonians visiting the fine country of Italia. It will be providing all the usual facilities expected ov the Ramonian People, including Free Fresh Ramonian Air, the compulsory singing of our glorious National Anthem ("Oh Great Minnow!") on the first Monday vo each week, and interactive water enhanced waste disposal, freshening and cleansing compartment. The embassy was established after long and intensive negotiations between the Ramonian Minister vo Culture, the Secretary ov State vo Ramonia's Mental Health and Welfare and representatives of Zuni who now carry the esteemed titles of "Ramonian Ambassador & Manipulator vo Sound" and "Ramonian Chief High Commissioner & Dispenser vo Grappa".

For the Glory vo Ramonia and the Workings ov the Great Minnow!

So, it's been a while, right? And the last entry to this blog was particularly despairing and it looked like Mutt Ramon was finished with that oft quoted "Musical Differences" being cited as grounds in court, right? We hated each other and would soon be fighting over access to the songs, right?
Do you read this blog much? Really? Of course it's not over, far from it! You should know that I only write when I have something that really irks me to write about, otherwise I just plod along and don't get round to doing anything. Or, as in this case, I have just been too busy with one thing or another. (A holiday, for one thing, to Euro-Unrealmouseworld in the middle of France - that deserves a whole entry in itself, but suffice to say that some of it was fantastic and some of it confirmed my deepest most cynical preconceptions).
So what has happened to make everything so rosy then? Well, out of the blue we got invited to play a set of gigs. In Italy. How could we refuse? Ok, so it's at the end of February, early March, but still... Italy! Worth it for the food and wine if nothing else! So that had a certain impetus for us. It's actually an invitation from our Italian Label - well that's what I like to say. Our CD is available via My Honey Records in Italy, and we have a track on a forthcoming compilation CD of Honey and Bee related songs on the same label (more details when it is out).
Then, Mr Mutt as "Truant Mom" played a "bad gig" as he puts it on his own blog and we had a get together soon after, which degenerated into an argument about bongo's (you had to be there), and after a lot of discussion and Mrs Mutt and Mrs Ramon banging our heads together we kissed and made up (no tongues involved though).
Since then, Mr Mutt has arranged us an acoustic gig at Cafe Moca in Sheffield next Thursday (the 23rd if you're in town - it's free!), which we have been practicing for at lunchtimes. The venue has an acoustic night, so it seemed best to perform acoustically. This does involve me playing a nasty red Melodica the Mutt has bought, along with some percussion stuff (straight outta Early Learning Centre) and singing mostly. Don't worry though, the Italian gigs will involve electronics. I promise - as does Mutt, as he will really know about it if they don't! You see, we do still have "Musical Differences", but I think that's half the point, if there were no conflict, we'd be a much more boring proposition.
Right, I'm off to practice me Melodica and look up flights to Italy.

So, People of Ramonia, what has been happening in the world of the Republic's Official Band the mighty Mutt Ramon? Well, therein lies a story a or two (thankfully, or this would be a very dull entry). Mutt has completed a move (for weekends at least) to deepest darkest "Baköv-Bêyon" and spends his weeks holed up on the top floor of one of the many stately towers of Steêlskí (inevitably the steel making capital of Ramonia) where the Mutt and I work in one of the many silicon forges. As he moved into his penthouse squat (although his flatmate has finally extracted some rent from him so I suppose he is no longer squatting - although the chairs are a bit lacking), he requested that I bring one of his guitars which I was borrowing on the train with me from Ramonia's State Capital Cheêdol Hölm. He stated that he would be "Bored in the evenings and needed something to do". Given that he was away from his family, I thought this sounded reasonable enough, although slightly insulting to his new flatmate (let's call him Mr Gray shall we). I carted the great stringy thing with me on the train, with various work colleagues asking me if was going busking etc. and handed it over. Towards the end of the week I was chatting to Mr Gray (something which Mutt seems to have forgotten that I am capable of doing) and discovered that Mutt has been rehearsing all week so he can go to the End of the Road festival in Baköv-Bêyon and perform at an open mike spot without me. Mr Mutt had returned back south at this point so I wasn't able to confront him then.
Sure enough on the following day I get a phone message from an excited Mutt who had gone on stage and sung a couple of songs and got a good reaction to his unplugged session. Now, don't get me wrong, this is all generally a good thing, and I don't mind in the slightest that he played without me (I'm not that much of a diva honestly). What annoyed me was that he lied to me about why he wanted the guitar and what he was planning (you may take a guitar with you to a festival I suppose, but you don't practice first unless you intend to play it!).
Anyway we chatted (fairly) good naturedly on his return, and even planned a rehearsal last Thursday in his Steêlskí Garret. I was slightly dismayed when he wanted me to bring a tambourine/shaker or some other such ELC (Early Learning Centre) Instrumentation with me. I said I would be fairly loaded down with my laptop (the trusty Ramon junior) and USB keyboard, and directed him to the nearest ELC if he wanted to shake something. So we went through some songs and played in the plugged and unplugged methods which each of us favour and it went generally pretty well. I played him a new backing track I was working on for a song he gave me as a demo a while back called Vouchsafe for which I had also written some slightly biting lyrics (it starts "If I gave you a vouchsafe, to keep you amused in the evenings, would you use it go to the end of the road?"). He didn't seem very impressed and said it sounded like a good New Order song which he thought was a problem but I didn't. He did say it was catchy and we could do something more with it.
So I went away and played with it some more at the weekend, reducing the bassline a bit and changing the drums to be less drum machiney and using samples of real drums and then put some vocals on last night and stayed up late transferring it to mp3 so he could listen to it (whilst he went to the pub). This morning I sent him an email letting him know it was ready to listen to, and got a reply saying how he had heard it and "liked it but I Dunno - is this how we want to sound? We'll talk at lunch...". At lunchtime I ascended from my test dungeon and tried to discuss it with him. During the course of the conversation he expressed various opinions:
1) He doesn't like the treatment of the song, but when pressed on how he would like it to sound says that he no longer likes the song anyway.
2) He doesn't know what he would play on it live - I suggested he could play the guitar chords (that was too boring), he could add another guitar tune (that was too difficult), he could sing the bridge part which is too high for me (no reaction). I couldn't work out what he would play on any of the songs if playing guitar chords or tunes was not possible.
3) He doesn't like half the songs from the last album anymore. They are "too serious". Hey! Let's do comedy folk music instead!
4) He doesn't want to do electronic stuff (no laptops/backing sequences except maybe drums) live.
5) He doesn't want a conventional indie band setup.
6) He doesn't want a line up of people playing keyboards live either (that wouldn't be us!).
7) He doesn't want to do it all alone (although he does seem to think that went down well when he did it).
8) He doesn't really like electronic music (I knew that, but really, he doesn't even get "Blue Monday" which he gets bored with and it isn't at the exact BPM which he dances at - along with the majority of music which isn't 131 and a half BPM either).
9) Maybe we could release the electronic stuff as another band, and then sound more like how he perceives Mutt Ramon should sound - Swedish I think, but as I don't come from Sweden I find that difficult.
10) He doesn't know.
11) Erm
12) Dunno
13) ...

I Dunno either.

I am currently reading an excellent biography about Depeche Mode, and you know I think they have a point. If God exists - which is something I am deeply sceptical about - I was yelling at the radio this very morning when "Thought for the day" came on and the Bishop of Liverpool was trying to solve the worlds environmental problems by pretending that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and all that was actually true and not just some slightly bizarre story, but anyway, if God really does exist he does have a sick sense of humour. There was a passage about the Modes concert in Pasadena in 1987 (recorded for the 101 live album) where it said that there was a freak rainstorm during "Blasphemous Rumours" which promptly finished when the song ended. The song, as well as summising about the deities dark amusement at suffering also contains the lines "And then the rain, and once again, a tear fell from a mothers eye". After this point, the band gradually descended into a chaos of drugs, alcohol and nervous breakdowns. Then this morning I read about a Primary School in Dorset (where's that? Back of beyond?) which had just completed a display on Noahs Ark and was promptly flooded. It is almost making me believe in God, or at least one of the many Rain Gods - Tlaloc, Tefnut, Chaac, Anitun Tabu (who handles wind too), Kura-Okami, Taka-Okami or Haddu. Enough at least to not tempt fate by actually accusing whichever one is responsible (I don't think it's Anitun Tabu as no wind was involved) of having a sick sense of humour. You're all very nice Gods and Godesses, and I wouldn't dream of dissing any of you (in case you're reading - which being omnipotent I guess you are...). There, I think I'm safe...