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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

happy anniversary!

i've just realised that, quite unbelievably, ten years ago tonight the band played its first show. of sorts. we didn't have any of our own songs but made a bit of a racket and, shamefully, shamelessly destroyed some equipment. nine years ago tonight we played our twenty-first, at a party in a house in cameron street, belfast. we hadn't yet recruited diamond-michael-kinloch; his old band hosted. that new year might have been brought in with alex donald drunk-as-hell and dancing on the roof of a portable toilet, singing along to some glorious abba-tribute-spectacular. it might. it could have been someone else. i suppose our actual birthday falls in march, with ten years since our first proper gig. out of doors, in a world filled with constant widespread chaos and appalling behaviour, and even in my own neighbourhood where this afternoon i was presented with a flyer for the national front, it's nothing more than a very minor personal achievement that a rock band has managed to live for ten years, but still it would be nice to do something to mark it. we're a lazy disgrace though and likely won't bother.

cheerio 2008 then, a year in which we managed five tracer amc shows (five! in only a year! we'd gotten so tight that number six would have been a stormer!) and a great deal of work and frustration brought little to show for it. it used to seem so easy to make a record! our first seven inch was in the shops and played on the peel show literally a few weeks after we decided it might be an idea to make it! that was almost nine years ago! the pyrenean ibex had only recently been declared extinct! the internets, mobile phones and personal mp3 players had yet to be discovered! PR companies and pluggers were unheard of! local gigs mostly costed two pounds! the duke of york on a saturday night felt extortionate at four! petrol was ten pence cheaper per litre, and public transport was less than half the price it is now! new records by unknown bands were very happily loaded into lorries and carried to hundreds of shops where people bought them if they liked the cover, or if the shop-owner was playing them! it was a great and fascinating game of chance! all could enter! someone who ran a record label would randomly buy your record and offer to put out your next! and would then offer to drive you around on your first tour! (thanks adrian!) someone in another record shop half the world away would randomly buy one, then ten, then a hundred, and it would eventually lead to another label (thanks linus records! thanks thomason sounds!) and releases and gigs on the other side of the planet! and so on! records in record shops and people buying them! it was marvellous! i think i buy more records now than ever, but i do it without setting foot in a shop and it's sad.

anyway, on the new year's eve theme, one year ago tonight my amplifier smoked and burned in what was ultimately an unsuccessful suicide attempt, presumably due to boredom as it suffered the recording and re-recording of part of a long since scrapped version of a song which should by now have been included on a long since released third tracer amc album, or fourth tracer amc single / ep, or the first (ok, second...) tracer amc ringtone, or anything. i've heard several times over the past few months the sourceless and confusing news that tracer amc has finished. as i type i see two amplifiers glowing, three microphones pointed in their direction (they look so sincere; how could they fail?), i hear playback of a partially finished song, i can hear 147 semi-finished songs. if you look at our profile page you can hear one of them. one of them! it's been over three years since 'islands'! real results might and should appear on some kind of record in 2009. even if 'appear' means i have to email you a copy. or bluetooth you a ringtone (is that possible? i'm not sure i'm enabled.). or build it into the fabric of your tshirt. or just come round and describe it to you. barring the preferred more conventional means of delivery, special requests will be taken on december 31 2009.

end of nonsense. may 2009 bring satisfying work and as yet unknown delights to all!

9:01 AM

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

Ireland’s Hottest Entertainment Magazine!
Category: Writing and Poetry

This band is made up of Johnny Ashe, Alex Donald, Michael Kinloch and Keith Winter. They began the set with a really long instrumental and I was constantly waiting for the vocals to come in. I waited and waited but they never arrived. The music was ambient and moody but uninspiring. At first the crowd was really into it but when they kept hearing the same thing many decided to leave. The band were obviously passionate about what they were doing and they gave their all. It was an individual sound and those who stayed cheered loudly for them. Tracer AMC have singles for sale now and their stuff would make great background music. Instrumentals can be very rewarding, but if this band want to go places, they'll need a vocalist.
MMcK

12:37 PM

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Monday, May 12, 2008

tracer amc is real, dublin is real!

After February's cancelled rockshow Dublin will finally get our noise this Friday 16th May -

tracer amc + and so i watch you from afar!

boom boom room - dowstairs at murrays, o'connell street!

9pm!

great!

9:12 PM

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

please do something unexpected (part three)

our lives are okay today!

so we decamped to hull at a leisurely pace. a rivalry developed between the two cars we travelled in, and much kudos was attached to who got where first and such things. many exciting detours and twisty routes were taken. a & j took the bridge while we sidestepped it because we feared it would bankrupt us. i opened a bottle of wine out the window and we arrived in hull ahead of schedule. i attempted to carjack jonny in traffic on the outskirts and he wasn't best pleased.
hull is full of the most fucked up dead ends and one way streets i have ever seen. even ewan, who lives there and HAD A MAP WITH THE ONE WAY SYSTEMS MARKED ON IT managed to suck at navigating hull. without him, we were total arse. still, we eventually reached his place, in what i guess must be one of the leafier corners of hull.
steve west (formerly of pavement) has another band, called Marble Valley, who were playing in hull that night, and it seemed only sensible to go see. they were supported by one of the bands who would play the last show on the amc tour, too.
thing is, i'm pretty sure i ended up drunk, and any attempt to sensibly recount the evening would be futile. the way home involved some pretty studenty behaviour, as i recall. so began the new theme of my adventure: scaling stuff.

so!
yes.
i woke up in bed with keith, again, at some ungodly hour, and already the sun was high and hot. i managed to escape from ewan's house and find a costcutter, where i purchased the now traditional tuna and banana breakfast, and copious amounts of diet coke.
this was before 9am, but costcutter's radio was already cheerily imploring me to pick up a four pack of strongbow, or if i didn't like strongbow, how about some beer. normally i am all for this kind of thing but it was just sick and wrong, there and then.
michael was suffering too. i'm pretty sure mike was not that happy about being one of two drivers out. the marble valley gig really gave him a chance to shine (in the drinking pints of beer department). mike does not enjoy a good hangover.

alex was busy trying to make arrangements to get keith home, arrangements which proved alarmingly costly when some ridiculous train company charged his card four times for a ticket we did not even want. it should be noted that alex did some sterling work in the getting people home business - i'd probably still be there if it wasn't for him and so, most likely, would some of the others. anyway.

that night team amc were scheduled to rock york. we didn't really have sufficient transport for six people, in that mike's car had no back seat. keith & i duly sat on a bit of wood, and were in no small amount of pain by the time we reached beautiful york.

on the way, incidentally, we stopped in some 'common land' - which was a fairly great wee area which i'm sure one of the others will describe better if asked. it was just a fenceless few acres with people and animals all going about their business pretty peacefully, and i loved it.
in york, the first thing we saw was a family of geese walking through a busy road. i liked york already.

driving around york is pretty much as awful as driving around hull in its complexity. especially when you've just had a few beers and need a piss. but at least it's a bit prettier. it's a 'walled city', for a start, and plenty hilly where hull is flat as anything.

still. we found the venue, so at least we could load in and go see beautiful york. oh, hang on! for reasons so mind-bogglingly complex six of us couldn't begin to fathom them, we had to set the gear outside the venue and watch it.
still, i was happy enough, because it was sunny and there were things to climb on.

i bought two interesting things in york - a can of pina colada (disgusting) and a miniskills football. i tried to buy a tshirt (all mine were foul by this point) and a hat (it really was very sunny) but york thwarted me, somehow. we took turns to mind the gear and played soccer and were finally allowed to load in before vanishing off in search of the walls. the walls were closed, for the most part, and i can't remember why, but we found a section of wall we could scale and walked along it til it deposited us in some awful industrial bit. still, we found a rock shop, which sold dvds of how to play guitar like oasis (!) but sadly did not sell carbon drumsticks.

a man has just come in to my work; so i must go sell him booze. he comes in alone and tells me the dullest facts about leeds united that you could possibly imagine. i'll pick this up again back at fibbers.

now, on with the fairly tame tour stories:

we meet back at the venue.
alex and jonny are struggling over a form they've been asked to fill in which asks what songs they'll be playing, who wrote them, and how long they last.
one of the other bands, they had a silly name like the hellfire orchestra or somesuch, had still not arrived when doors were due to open.
anyway, i can't even remember how soundcheck went, for any of the bands. after hearing tracer three times in as many days, i'd got a pretty good idea of how they were supposed to sound, though, and had started helping out the soundmen; asking for less snare and more alex and can that microphone not go any closer please. so i did that during the amc's soundcheck and it sounded pretty damn good in the end.
tracer's set got cut to half an hour by some psychopath and there was not a lot of love around.
the hellfire orchestra played first, i think. i'm sure one of them was very, very pretty - a cellist i think. cellists are often pretty, i've noticed. there was far too much life about the singer, all shouting like he was a crazy character. they had no guitarist. i wanted to ask him where he got the idea to have no guitarist, was a fan of keane, perhaps. but i didn't. i just took photos of the singer as he danced at michael, who was attempting to drink a pint with some old friends who'd driven up from leeds.
that reminds me of what the Hellfire Orchestra reminded me of - The Arcade Fire with Eamonn Evangelists writing the songs. only not as good as that sounds. i liked them by the end of the set, it was not without its charm.

team amc didn't have too much form filling-in to do; playing as they did a whole three songs. still lasted half an hour but i felt a bit cheated, having come all the way from belfast. well, no, i felt bad for dyno-mike's friends. i was pretty much sick of those three songs by now myself. it's not like there were any bum notes or hilarious playing the drums at the wrong time or anything, but it still stank a bit, just because there weren't too many people there, and a pissy smell, and so on. it was a shame.

still, we went home happy because Fonda 500 were tremendous. they were really great. they've got a load of albums out, i knew i'd heard of them before, even if i'd not actually heard their music. i can't really describe it, or be bothered describing it, but i was reminded of a lot of bands i love - the Pixies, Enon.. spiky, great tunes, lots of fun to watch.
anyway, we packed up. i'd realised by now that it was a rubbish idea to get drunk and then go manhandle big amplifiers about the place, but i think i did it anyway.

we played a lot of mini-skills outside fibbers while ewan managed to divert the lady who was asking for a lot of money. something to with room hire. i tripped over myself attempting a soccer skill, and fell into the pile of gear.

we got out of york.

7:33 PM

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Saturday, August 11, 2007

please do something unexpected (part two)

part 2 - nottingham

free tickets to simply red for the next person to buy a beer!

so we march on to nottingham. the guitar has been fixed with superglue. i've got a couple of cans of gin and tonic.

junktion7 is pretty easy to find and it's sunny and there are seats outside and we've arrived early and i start to think that i could do pretty much do this indefinitely.
we load in and have a pint in the sun and go for a wander.

i'd been looking forward to this show a lot. the other bands playing are: Beyond This Point Are Monsters, You Slut!, and The Jesus Years. i think the gig was promoted by someone who's a big fan of tracer; and there's a decent turnout. i don't remember too much about the bands but we notice a few tracer riffs have been 'borrowed' here and there.

team-amc play really well, and 'snow' is replaced by nineteen, by special request of BTPAM's drunk guitarist, who shows us porn on his mobile phone for some reason. nineteen goes pretty well, especially as it hadn't been rehearsed or basically played at all for six months or something.

through illness the promoter didn't arrive so we had to find somewhere to stay.. which involved following BTPAM to derby and back to some town.. they tried to break into their own practice room with a crowbar for some reason, and to be honest i still have no idea where on earth we ended up. i especially had no idea where we were in the morning.

we met a large labrador who scared alex quite a lot, and brought back painful memories for diamond mike, and we headed off. jonny & alex went to nottingham, where they had a busy and intense schedule of looking in shops and getting accosted by a martial arts man.

jonny bought a bag pretty much exactly like the one he was carrying, for £30.
i bought some 'Sorry' cards, in the knowledge that i'd have something to apologise for, eventually.

we went wandering and had a tough choice between caves and a castle. i don't know how you're supposed to choose between two things so awesome, generally i'd head to whichever was closest, or downhill. i think we pretty much failed to do either, properly, but it was still sunny, so i didn't much care.

i've got work to do now, so york and hull will have to wait.
you'll be ok.

10:06 AM

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

get our noise

on saturday, at lavery's bunker, belfast, new songs, old songs, very old songs..

also - saturday, julip, featuring several tracer amcs
also - sunday, heliopause, featuring one tracer amc
also - pretty much everything else, greatness

12:40 AM

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Monday, July 09, 2007

please do something unexpected (part one)

precisely one year late, presenting niall harden's semi-fictional tour diary of traceramc, and he..

( part 1: belfast, edinburgh, nearly nottingham )

last night they were superb. that's not to say it went without hitch. none of it went without obstacles and danger. tracer amc, in real terms, ended up paying several pounds sterling per person who listened to their music on this tour of the UK, but i'd do it all again. still, the "cheaper-than-a-practice-room tour" was deceptively named.

sunday night in belfast, the ninth of july, tracer amc played what might very well be their only belfast show of the year. my good friend barry and i had the enormous pleasure of opening for them; and so began one of the silliest weeks i can remember.
(the songs were: paper machete, some electric, flux & form, copenhagen, you follow the snow and are wasted)

we met the next morning on 0735 ferry to stranraer. i'm not sure they entirely believed me when i said i was coming with, but coming with i most surely was. one belfast show just won't cut it. i didn't sleep at all.

so we roared on to edinburgh in two cars, stopping for a breakfast (tuna? bananas? that was pretty much the standard fare) in beautiful stranraer.

we made it to keith's edinburgh pad without major incident (i think? have i blocked something out?) and i realised that if i did not sleep i'd begin to imagine things or possibly go into shock. it's possible, though, to be too tired to sleep, and i stumbled out and downstairs, missing my chance to meet and possibly marry keith's flatmate.
this is not the last time in the week i miss my chance to marry someone, but that is not important.

we found the venue (subway cowgate). it has a remarkably high ceiling and smells slightly of rock festival (that is, poo). not all of the venues left me whelmed. this one remained very dark for some time after we arrived; and featured labyrinthine corridors (possibly containing doom). the man controlling the faders made some strange decisions as we tried to balance everything and make beautiful sounds but i think in the end it was satisfactorily pretty, if very very loud.
the attendance was not what it might have been for a city so tasteful.
the other bands who played were transit and pilotcan, who had played with tracer amc many years previously.
interestingly, i think, pilotcan played the same city days before this show and featured barry, who i mentioned much earlier, playing guitar. i think that's some sort of coincidence, but it might just be a 'thing'.

anyway, transit were great, depite being named after a van. a lady played the harp and a man played a guitar like tom mcshane's, and tracer a m keith played the drums. he was making up his drums as he went along! he'd never even heard the songs! he is special. the harp lady was striking.

we sold a fair number of records and went to the pub. keith's flatmate was there, she is striking too, but for some reason i suggested she should not move to belfast. careless.
i slept in a bed with keith, not for the last time.

the next morning my flight to nottingham departed while i was getting out of bed and freshening up. dyno-mike and a. w. donald had teamed up and used all their packing skill to create car space for me, and i am forever grateful. so began the marathon drive to nottingham.

i leave you in one of many identical service stations we visited that day. as custom had it, we drove anywhere except where cars are supposed to go, paid wildly over the odds for sandwiches / water / comedy, and jonny ashe has broken his (or rather, alex's) guitar. we are trying to work out the best way round the guitar damage, and enjoying the sunshine.

photos mostly by niall and alistair harden

1:25 PM

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

a series of

intimate portraits by niall charles brendan harden

jonny ashe:

jonny's text messages are punctuated by exclamation marks, and feature x and o when he needs them to.

alex donald:

his text messages are punctuated by full stops and never feature an x or an o.

michael kinloch:

his text messages are unpunctuated and feature an x or an o only when neccessary.

keith winter:

his text messages are punctuated by commas, and feature an x or an o if he thinks i need them.

everybody:

more:

photos by niall and alastair harden

1:04 PM

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Friday, July 28, 2006

"it's cheaper than a practice room.."

so five shows in six nights; we played with some great bands, met some wonderful people, displayed a shocking lack of pool ability, countered somewhat with frequent demonstrations of untouchablesoccerskills. a full account will follow shortly from the hand of niall 'niallharden' harden, stowaway and aerialist. thanks to everyone who helped out; particularly ewan, bod, heather and beyondthispointaremonsters, and gaju and barrypeak/niallharden for starting things off tremendously. cheers all!

photo#1 niallharden, photo#2 alastairharden

11:42 AM

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