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Yeh we’re in a book. Its’ called ‘Radio Head’, by John Osbourne, and it’s ace. Not just cos we’re in it, have a look:


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radio-Head-Down-Dial-British/dp/1847372309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242135168&sr=1-1

There’s a whole chapter on John Peel and bearsuit’s debt to the great man, and the author seems to use us as a benchmark of quality throughout the rest of the book, dismissing some radio station’s playlists if it seems like they wouldn’t play us. What a sensible fellow. The book is also a pretty endearing account of the John’s obsession with music, quality radio and his attempt to break free from the drudgery of office dronery. Recommended in the bearsuit clubhouse! Buy it!  

This Friday (15^th) sees us helping out at the launch gig of ‘…sometimes I pretend to be a writer’, a new book by Ben Shepherd. Ben was a friend to us bears, and a stalwart on the Norwich music scene, but he died suddenly, shockingly, two years ago, of a heart condition. Still seems impossible- he was only 29. His friends and family have compiled a book of his writings, and a CD of songs in tribute to him, and bearsuit have had the honour of being included. We’ll be playing his song, along with the other bands on the CD (Alto45; Andrew from Magoo; Cruiser Chimps; Girl In A Thunderbolt, Angela and Rob from Lalia; Master Solo; Mia Vigar; Tell Me How and Tiger MCs), at the Norwich Arts Centre, so come see if you are able, £3. It’ll be a fitting tribute to a lovely, lovely, talented, silly, tall man xxxxxxxxx

If you can’t make the gig, check out the website. You can buy the book and cd there also:

www.birdsofmalta.com

It’s for sale in Waterstone’s University of East Anglia, too. I’ll try and get a preview of our exclusive song up on the myspace page as well so you can have a butcher’s…

The next day (16^th) we’re zooming down to the Great escape Festival in Brighton and playing a really early gig on the Saturday, starting 3pm. It’s called (B)EAST!, at the Fortune of War, and as you can see below, will showcase many of Norwich’s fine musical talents, gyrating for your pleasure in a red-lit window for only £3. Cheaper than a full blown session, but about the same price as a hand shandy, very reasonable.

As well as Ben’s song, we’re hoping to be able to play some new material at these gigs too, for the first time. It’s been a while, so we’re flipping bricking it, but we’re dead excited about the new songs. So come along brothers, sisters and frumpy cousins, all are welcome.

Is it weird that I’m doing blogs again? I feel like I’ve been on holiday to an Eastern Bloc country since 1988, or locked up in Lisa’s weird special dungeon, for so long now. I’ve missed you guys…

i and bearsxx

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It’s never easy breaking up with someone you love. But sometimes stuff just happens and you’ve got to deal with it. Such is the case with this leaky old paddle steamer we like to call bearsuit. Still chuffing and huffing upstream, fighting off cutbacks and a creaky engine against the the tsunami of shitty music. That’s a pretty dire metaphor but you get the idea, campers.

Someone pointed out to me recently that we’ve been going ten years. TEN YEARS, dude! Well we’ve probably been practicing together since about late 1999, early 2000, but we didn’t really start gigging and recording til 2001ish. I think. I can’t even remember. In the early days, bearsuit was Lisa, myself, Matt Moss and a girl called Emma on drums, we were all at school together. We had about three practices and sounded like the Pixies, but the Pixies if they were all incredibly shy and scared of their instruments. Emma would literally hit the drums, and jump at the shock of the noise they made- eeeek! I guess that would’ve been funny to watch if we’d ever made it to a gig. Craig turned up for a few weeks and played a bit of guitar, but then he had to go build Johnny 5-type robots. Emma stayed indoors where the sound of cymbals couldn’t hurt her, but painted beautiful artwork for us instead. That’s her cute ‘muscle belt’ disco design on the new bearsuit t-shirt you’re now wearing. God you’re sexy.

Anyway, we didn’t really get it together properly until after Peel started playing our demos, and that was with the ‘classic’ line up of Lisa, myself, Jan, Matt Hutchings and Cerian. After a while, Matt Moss was off. It was all too twee for him. We put the sound of an ocarina on ‘minerals made me’; he screwed up his face in disgust, went out for a pint of milk and didn’t never come back. He was the first person, other than Lisa, to tell me I could actually write songs. I believed him too, otherwise none of this would’ve happened. Bromley emerged from the shadows, played bass for a few gigs, touched us all, gently, lovingly, in the crotch region, usually without us noticing, or minding, but then slunk back into the darkness. Owen helped out too, although it was embarrassing for us having an actual musician in the band; showed us all up, that sweet, talented bastard. So then Rich came along, decided he’d stay (and recorded some of the best bass and guitar lines I’ve ever heard in any music, ever), cocked his hat, unfolded his loading gear, and made bearsuit his home for a good while. Don’t remember him touching us in the crotch, but there were a lot of blurry moments on that Swedish tour…

And now? I always thought- ‘If this line up ever changes, I can’t conceive making more bearsuit music. It wouldn’t be the same’. Cerian, Matt H and Rich are such an essential part of how we’ve always sounded, for so many years, that it would be impossible to continue without them. Plus, they’re like my best friends, my sisters and brothers. Like a fucking dick I’m actually welling up with tears as I write this, and I’m at work now, so I look like a right old pansy. Brilliant, thanks a bunch, Emotions.

But they just can’t do it anymore.

It became clear last year. We had a few trips to the US, and a fair few gigs that those guys just couldn’t commit to, so we drafted in our friends Charlene and Joe to fill in on bass and drums, which they did brilliantly. But Cerian was pregnant, Matt had to look after her, and Rich and his girl had another baby (Jesus that guy has plucky sperm), and by Christmas 2008, we all realised it just wasn’t going to work anymore. It’s not a band if you can’t play gigs, or spare time to make up and record songs. That’s more like a project, like a hobby. And this has never been a hobby, it’s too important. To us obviously- I doubt you guys could give a fig. Listening to old Iain moaning on again, bloody Nora.

We met and talked about it, in a pub that smelt strongly of gravy, had a little cry, and went off and did Christmassy things. Robbed orphans, took smack, drank in church. The end result is that Cerian and Matt have an adorable new baby, Noah, and Rich and Becky gave Lucy a cute little brother, Charlie (see how the Snoopy gang continually haunt bearsuit’s every move? Good grief).

I went round telling everyone, in a Danny Glover voice- “I’m too old for this shit”. I was ‘retiring’. I didn’t think we could add any more to the glut of music that’s already out there, and no-one would listen anyway even if we did. Plus I missed my bear friends. I still do, although, as with all mutual exes, I still see them all around- Norwich is a small place.

But Lisa, Jan and I can’t stop the rock. We just can’t control our feet. Ten years we’ve been doing this (nearly), and still there’s this constant nagging; either an artistic calling, or some kind of reaction to talcum powder. I still can’t stop writing songs. I’ve really tried. I even buried my guitars under piles of star wars toys and didn’t look at them for ages.

It doesn’t matter how crinkly round the edges we get (although our bottoms remain pert, our bosoms alert and perky, our brows stern and manly, our genitals engorged beyond average sizes), or how few records we sell, or how ‘painfully uncool’ (thanks, artrocker!) we are. Bands who started after us, sold more records and had more photo shoots than us have flared up, recorded a terrible second album, and split acrimoniously. ‘Somehow’, as a great sage once said (me), ‘we’re still alive’.

We’re still more determined than ever to record the best motherfucking album you will ever hear. And put on the most fun shows. And get to sit in a stinky van and travel around and meet new people. We’ll sound different, stranger, more JoeandCharleney. Musically, change is essential. But we’ll stop only when we die.

And even then, when the world is a Mad Max wasteland and we have, like, one arm hanging off and have to butcher other humans for their tasty flesh and the robots hunt us down in the sewers and we build our own laser rifles and blow loads of shit up and stuff… still we will be making up tunes on battery-operated casios and yamahas. Humming optimistic melodies through the gaps in our teeth. Designing seven-inch single covers in rat faeces and radioactive waste. Even during the bloody apocalypse, there’s nothing sweeter, more necessary, than guitar feedback, the throb of a decaying keyboard, and the sound of some losers howling into the night, raging at the dying of the light, because they don’t know what else there is to do.

It’ll be really awesome. See you there? We’ll be the ones in capes.

Love

i and bears xx

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After being deported from SXSW last year (confused with international strip group, arrested, questioned, mug shots, threatened with jumpsuits and shackles, you get the picture), we bears were even more determined to get to the mammoth industry fest in 2009.

The annual event sees nearly 2,000 bands descend on Austin, Texas, playing across 88 venues.

For four days Austin doesn’t sleep, with music running from noon till 2am each day, followed by after-shows, clubs, and house parties till dawn. The weather’s hot hot hot and we’re ready to rock, hells YEAH!

Here's our tour blog, and bear top tips for some of the best bands we saw....

Wednesday

A panic all the way to the airport. Getting up at 4am is never easy and we’re late. Luckily we make the flight and catch up with our old record label boss Sean from Fortuna Pop who is going to look after his latest signing The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. We’ve only slept three hours. He hasn’t slept in three days and we fear he’ll die mid-flight.

10 hours later (no bodybags, phew) we land in Houston. After a nail-biting wait and extra questioning for Joe and Charlene, we finally make it onto Texan soil.



First stop, Taco Bell. How they can get so much fat and sugar into one flour tortilla amazes me.  Feeling sick, we drive on to Austin, where we are greeted by our hosts Gary and Magda, and their Snoopy beagles – George, Ringo and Winston.





Thursday

Today we have two shows – a warm-up house party and our official showcase at 1am at New York’s coolest After The Jump night.

First off though, we go and meet up with the boys from Transgressive who are putting on an afternoon show with our hero Graham Coxon.



We arrive at the house party to find some of our most hard-core UK Bearsuit fans already there.  We play in a pitch black garden lit only by flaming torches. The police come. We leave.   

Bear tip: Cale Parks from Brooklyn - amazing 80s inspired electro pop. Think Depeche Mode, New Order, Neon Neon.

Our showcase at the Rusty Spurs goes well and we feel properly famous getting interviewed by two TV stations and Radio 1’s Huw Stephens. Sean FP is still emotionally weak from sleep depravation. He breaks down in tears during our set - twice.

Bear tip: Drink Up Buttercup completely insane trash-can-banging four piece from Philadelphia.

Friday

An early start with a session at Austin radio station KVRX FM. They seem surprised that we arrive in full costume.  Then on to a Back To The Future party with lots of our US Happy Happy Birthday To Me label mates playing.

Bear tip: Grooms (formerlly Muggabears) - Pixies, Sonic Youth-esque trio from Brooklyn.

We drink too much beer and head out to the ghetto where we’re playing an art collective after-show party. The garden is decked out with a million fairylights, huge cinema screen, and roaring fire. Jan Bear drinks half a litre of Tequila, our UK fans have turned up in force, we play indoors taking up most of the living room and it turns out to be the best fun show all festival.  

Bear tip: Austin dance duo FM Campers and Project Jenny Project Jan from Brooklyn

Saturday

Playing in a car lot outside a cycle shop with The Besties. After the show we eat Migas (Austin speciality, kinda like cheesy scrambled egg in a tortilla, yum) and meet none other than our ultimate movie heroine Drew Barrymore (super tiny pixie, very friendly, bond over Spielberg love). It’s our SXSW highlight and feel giddy with excitement the rest of the day.

Sunday

Hungover we stumble through a radio interview and pick out some tracks to play including our all-time faves Kaito. Then it’s back to the airport, exhausted but happy.

See more photos here and here and here

Alright slags, thanks for coming to our gigs at the weekend - we had the best time! hope you enjoyed our kiss + cakes stall in norwich too... and special thanks to the Brownies, Le Tetsuo and The Middle Ones for being completely splendid as usual!

We succeeded in raising nearly half our airfares which was a tops result - thank you every bear body for all your kind support!

Well, we're in a terrible hurry to pack our capes and catch the plane to austin now... if you happen to be going to sxsw we're playing the following shows.....they're all free, and most have free booze too so come get ruined with us!

Thursday, March 19: SXSW Bloody Massive House Party @  <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />....3100 King St.. ..Austin.... (..8pm.., free + free food and beer + indoor and outdoor stages)

Thursday, March 19:  SXSW Official After The Jump Showcase @ The Rusty Spurs Saloon (1am, wristband only) <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />....

Friday, March 20: KVRX session (..11am..)

Friday, March 20: SXSW Back To The Future Party @ ....1024 E. 44th St.... (..5.45pm.., free + free beer)....

Friday March 20: If I Like It @ The Ant Art Farm, 4901 Blueberry Trail, ....Austin.., ..Texas.... (1am + free beer)

Saturday, March 21: SXSW NYC Popfest @ Waterloo Cylces (..3.25pm.., free + free beer)

See you there twinkle tits xxx....