DEMO No.19: Heaven Scent plus – Playing Abracadabra with Rick Astley, a swanning heiress, Disco the dog and one unholy funk

Hello everyone

Billy here, hoping that you’re very well indeed and skipping into summer with light hearts and air-con.

I know, I know, it’s been a while since the last ManOrMouse? newsletter. What can I say? The spiteful mother of all writer’s blocks barged into Mouse Manor a couple of months back, hand-cuffed herself to the art-room radiator, short-circuited the muse-box and left me in one unholy funk. To use a line from an old MoM? song, I’ve been ‘digging for chickens in stony ground’ ever since.

I’ve made the usual offerings of chocolate and goats, threatened her with nettles and cooed sweet nothings in her shell-like, but to no avail. She’s a tenacious old bird, this one, and no mistake.

Hey ho. Life goes on. And how. Last weekend I was in a barn in the Cotswolds, playing a cover of Abracadabra with Rick Astley to a drunken melee of pogo-ing, welly-wearing bumpkins. Beat that.

1: GIG ALERT!

But fear not, gentle meeces. Life goes on. In fact, it’s going on this Sunday, 13th June, when ManOrMouse? play The Good Ship in Kilburn. I hope to goodness you can come along. Here are five reasons why you should:

• Fishnets and I have missed you like you wouldn’t believe.
• It’s going to be the maiden outing for our brilliant new guitarist, Dave Bell.
• Our friend Nat The Hammer will be opening the evening with an acoustic set of his wry, learned and blooming marvelous songs. Think Leonard Cohen crossed with Ivor Cutler – ‘chocolaty with a chalky under-taste‘***.
• We should be finished by 10-ish.
• We are ManOrMouse?, dammit, and we are insanely good.

So, if you’re twiddling your thumbs on Sunday evening and wondering where the weekend went, please come along. It’ll be a blast and a half of full-fat, dairy goodness.

The Good Ship, 289 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR
Doors 7.30pm, Entry £5

*** The first person who can tell me which ’70s film the “chocolaty/chalky* reference comes from will win free entry to the gig

2: Blimey. THE LEARNING CURVE IS NOW DOWNLOADABLE!

It’s inconceivable, I know, but our album is finally downloadable from:

www.manormouse1.bandcamp.com/album/the-learning-curve

You can get the whole album in pretty much any format you could want for only £5.99 or individual tracks for £0.69. That’s half the price of a pack of Harribo Tangfastics, for goodness sake. And let’s face it, our songs taste just as good but aren’t nearly as bad for your teeth. What’s more, on BandCamp.com we get all your hard-earned cash, unlike on iTunes where we’d get less than 50%. So please, spread the word.

3: NEW DEMO No.19 – HEAVEN SCENT

listen to all our demos on the EXTRAS page

Heaven is a place in Crouch End

Now I may not have any fully furbished demos to offer you at the moment, however, there are a number in various states of undress. So I’m posting one that’s in its undies, so to speak. It’s called Heaven Scent. The tune itself is done and dusted and, if I say so myself, rather lovely – rich, sad and pretty, like a lonely heiress swanning through autumnal Venice.

The words, however, are very much under construction. For starters, they don’t make any sense. But much more importantly, no London-based band should have two songs referencing snowmobiles and, seeing as Spirit Of The Mountainside already does, Heaven Scent cannot. By law. Nor can it keep the Woollies Pick ‘n’ Mix line, sadly, as that was lifted from a song called Cookie Monster by my old band Sandstone Veterans.

By the way, you can listen to Cookie Monster at http://www.myspace.com/sandstoneveterans and you really should. It’s the happiest song you’ll have heard in a long time (unless you’ve listened to ‘Happy’, four songs down), it sports a truly great riff played magnificently by DinkyMouse, Dean Tidy, and includes a starring role by lead singer/drummer Tommy’s pet terrier, Disco. Woof.

4: YOU ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL MEECES

Ta-ra

BMx

Our mix was a bit woooah!, but it was a blast, especially when everybody in the station started singing along to Jackson. Er….well I say singing….judge for yourself.

You can listen to it here.

Head to the ‘Listen Again’ section at the top of the page and scroll down to the ‘04.06.2010 – Friday Forum – New Subs Show’. Our session starts at 01:09:20, although Billy was also a panelist throughout the two hour show discussing new music releases.

Many thanks to Karim for being such a good host, Jordan and Alex for driving some great new music and to Kim and Steve H for being such good company. FAKE TEAK!

• Fishnets and I have missed you like you wouldn’t believe.
• It’s going to be the maiden outing for our brilliant new guitarist, Dave Bell.
• Our friend Nat The Hammer will be opening the evening with an acoustic set of his wry, learned and blooming marvelous songs. Think Leonard Cohen crossed with Ivor Cutler – ‘chocolaty with a chalky under-taste‘***.
• We should be finished by 10-ish.
• We are ManOrMouse?, dammit, and we are insanely good.

So, if you’re twiddling your thumbs on Sunday evening and wondering where the weekend went, please come along. It’ll be a blast and a half of full-fat, dairy goodness.

The Good Ship, 289 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR
Doors 7.30pm, Entry £5

*** The first person who can tell me which ’70s film the “chocolaty/chalky* reference comes from will win free entry to the gig

http://manormouse1.bandcamp.com/

You can download the album (£5.99) or individual tracks (69 pence) in pretty much any format you could want. So spread the word. BMx