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Monday 29th September 2008 posted by TJ Our recent trip to London (AKA James's journey through Hell) warrants a blog page by the man himself but, until he gets around to it, here's the general jist of what went down last Saturday/Sunday. We set off from Cornwall in the late afternoon- it's a gorgeous day so we're not too bothered about the drive to London. I'm traveling with Jimmy and Louise and we take the opportunity to listen to our newly-mastered album which, naturally, sounds fantastic. James is piloting his own vehicle. Then we get The Call from James: there's a problem with the drive shaft (basically, this is a bad thing and involves lots of rattling and clunking noises.) A recovery service is called and a guy shows up who, it transpires, once picked up Madonna (but didn't recognize her) and may or may not have been making moves on James's traveling companion. There's a tense period of waiting. Is the gig on or off? It looks like James might be okay if he drives slowly but less than an hour later we get another call: the noise is worse. We call the venue- we may have to call it off. However, after several games of phone tennis and a car swap, he makes it to the Camden Barfly just in time. We set up and line check in record-breaking time. The room is ridiculously hot and the audience are almost certainly not about to start shaking their booty to The Shark (as much as we'd like them to.) I try to help cool them down by emptying my on stage liquid supplies over them- it's a gesture not appreciated by everyone. We hand out free CDs, badges and a few people get lost in the music (which, really, is all we ask) and we leave the stage 30 minutes later united in one thought: we need to buy a van. We head off (so it seems) barely after we arrive, through the fog and arrive home around 7am. When I finally wake up it's nearly dark again. C'est la vie!

Sunday 22nd June 2008 posted by TJ Last night (Saturday) we showed off our new lightsabers at the Alstock festival (pic: Darth Piper) in Bodmin, Cornwall. Alstock is an event held in connection with Cornwall Hospice in memory of local musician/legend, Al Hodge and is now in it's second year. After the show, we heard a lot of money had been raised which, considering it was wet and grey pretty much all day is fantastic. It just goes to show what an influence and inspiration 'Big Al' was to the people. And rightly so. Not only was he an incredible musician and well-loved guy, he's also responsible for ushering in a new generation of outstanding young musicians, several of whom played at the festival yesterday. More about Al here.   Wednesday 18th June 2008 posted by TJ Earl Of Camden gig review by Artrocker HERE. Thursday 15th May 2008 by TJ Last Tuesday we drove up to London to play our debut London gig at Tommy Flynn's in Camden (see Piper 'action pic' below.) We met some good people who like what we do and want to help us put our record out. It was a pretty manic 24 hours but we all left London feeling very confident about the future amid sleep-deprived motorway hysteria, Foals' outrageous prog drum fills and rain-battered, dead windscreen wipers (held together with my shoelace.) These are exciting times for The Shark and some pretty amazing things are happening for us including a residency at a London venue (details TBA soon.) Excellent 'Music Like Dirt' live review and pix of the gig here.

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