Clearing out the garden shed just before Christmas I unearthed a box with a load of mini discs and 7″ vinyl; bit of a treasure trove truth be told. In amongst some other gems (like the Business Machines track) were three live recordings from the 1999 Big Ray tour of France. I’ve not listened to all three gigs that closely, but I have trawled through one of them, from Club Jimmy in Bordeaux, and edited out the half-decent songs. I’ll get onto the other 2 gigs sometime soon.

 Play the whole concert in your media player: Download

 

 Buzzing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 I Envy You: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Mefloquine Dreams: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 The Love You Gave Me: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 House At Wilson: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Iron Days: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Ticking Over: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Spaces Inbetween: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Dance Class: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Evergreen: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Driven: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Shadowplay: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The line-up for the France tour was a one-off (i.e. not a seasoned outfit) so we had only just started to really get our shit together when the tour finished, but for all that there were some really decent moments onstage and it has to be said, it was by far the most fun tour I’ve ever been on. Great spirit all round, loads of laughs and our man, Didier Bouyer at the helm.

Points of interest from this particular gig:

• The Love You Gave Me is an unrelelased track that we were supposed to record for the Business Class album, but never did. Not sure why as it’s a decent song.
• This was the most poorly attended gig of the whole tour. Shame because it’s a nice club and everyone was very cool.
• Fluck was the support band.
• Recorded straight onto MiniDisc with a stereo microphone.
• We did a short set because there wasn’t much of a crowd; I dropped 4 songs for this post.

The Line-Up:

• Ed Wenn - Vocals and guitar
• Paul Duncan - Bass (2nd half of the set)
• Reado - Drums and vocals
• James Allen - Guitar
• Jason Green - Bass (1st half of the set)
• Sarah Parkin - Vocals

Just came across these cheesecake shots of myself, Jason and James that we shot one winter lunchtime in 1999 in Ipswich in preparation for the French tour later that year.

In an attempt to get some more music up on this site I’m having a Big Ray splurge for the new year. Here’s the 2nd album, You Get What You Deserve. This is our ‘classic rock’ album in the vein of those early 70’s Who albums, Mott The Hoople and maybe a touch or two of the ever present Neil Young (and his occasional colleagues Crosby, Stills & Nash). The album was recorded and mixed at Gemini in Ipswich sometime in 1993 and was supposed to come out on a couple of different labels, but was then shelved due to a whole load of shit that went down in a short space of time and essentially the band split up.

Roll forward a few years and our knight in shining armour, our Sugar Daddy, Monsieur Didier Bouyer got in touch from his power base in France to say that he’d got hold of cassette of the unreleased album at some pointing the past 5 years and that it had saved his life or something - it was never made clear exactly what he meant by this, but he said it in the sincerest of tones and we believed him. As a result of its apprently life-saving qualities he had made it his mission to bring the 2nd Big Ray album to the attention of the world. It was his quest, his mission…or something like that. Who was I to stand in his way? The man’s a god, a genius, a wonderful person and has impeccable taste in music

Re-invigorated by some outside interest, Paul, Roop and I dusted off the old multi-track tapes, booked into a cheap studio in Hoxton for 3 or 4 days and overdubbed/remixed the stuff we needed to to finish the album. We enlisted the help of our buddy, Colleen, in New York to knock up some rather tasty artwork and we were set.

Hope you like it. More info, photos and lyrics to follow.

Line Up:

As with the other 2 Big Ray albums, there are a lot of different musiscians dotted around the various songs on You Get What You Deserve, but the core band is as follows:

• Ed Wenn - Lead vocals & guitar
• John Ruscoe - Lead guitar & vocals
• Paul Duncan - Bass
• Reado - Drums & vocals
• Steve Cox - Keyboards

I haven’t posted any MP3s here for ages, so I thought I’d bash out a quickie post and get the first Big Ray album made available for download/streaming.

Windfall - 5.0MB
Treat You Right - 5.0MB
Free Range Flesh - 3.6MB
Missing A Train - 4.6MB
Evergreen - 4.6MB
Open House - 5.2MB
Spaces Inbetween - 4.0MB
Watch Me - 3.6MB
Richer In Body & Soul - 4.8MB
Feeling Tired & Useless - 3.3MB
Carousel - 5.7MB
Squirrels & extras - 29.5MB

Alternatively you could stream the whole album instead of downloading the individual tracks.

Some quickie notes (lyrics to follow eventually)

• The album was recorded by Sink, but we decided on a name change before it was released.
• It was the first time I’d recorded with Roop (Rupert Coulson). He was awesome. I’ve not recorded without him in the intervening years unless I was really short of cash. He the man.
• It was released on City Slang. It was their idea to do an acoustic album (not that we needed much encouragement). They wanted us to break from Sink’s punky image (cough!) and wanted ‘Naked’ to be similar to Yo La Tengo’s ‘Fakebook’ album which they had released the year before.
• This is the last album that you have to endure my fake American accent. Not sure how it got there in the first place, but it took me years to shake it. It had gone by the time the next Big Ray album was recorded.

Warning: This post is for Big Ray anoraks only. No-one else will give a shit….I promise you!

Mefloquine Dreams was always going to be a weird one to record, but I had no idea just how much of a pain it would be to mix. Roop and I tried to nail it on about 10 different occasions during the immensely drawn out process that was The Making of Business Class and in the end we had so completely lost the will to live that I think we probably just went with the one that was closest to hand when it came to compiling the final running order. Definitely one of those occasions when you appreciate the skill of the professional mix genius.

Anyway, I recently came across 3 of the alternative mixes and thought that I might finally exhaust even Andy Sandall’s gratifyingly intense interest in all things related to Business Class if I posted them along with the original for your delectation. If you’re only going to download one then I would strongly suggest Trippy Mix #1 as it’s the most different. Both it and Trippy Mix #2 are more spacey than the one that ended up on the album and have none of Michael Hampton’s nasty guitar-work, but they do showcase his keyboard skills instead; so for him it’s a win/win My only problem with the 2 trippy mixes is that a lot of Dave Derby’s backing vocals are gone which is a shame. They’re back in full effect on Another Bloody Mix though…as are Michael’s electric guitars.

• Original version (4.0MB)
• Trippy Mix #1 (6.5MB)
• Trippy Mix #2 (6.5MB)
• Another bloody mix (6.5MB)

The photo above was taken at Bark studio in North London at some point during one of the Business Class sessions. Not exactly glamorous looking is it? If you didn’t know already let me assure you that the majority activity involved in making an album is standing around getting bored.