It's been a hectic time for the Graeme Mearns Band. Behind the scenes, we've been working on a fresh live set and laying down the first few tracks towards a brand new release. There's been loads of songwriting, a change of personnel (out with the old, in with the new bass guitarist...) and a whole bunch of new and exciting developments. We'll be bringing the fruits of them to you just as soon as possible.

In the meantime, however, it means there's no gigs to speak of. Which we don't feel very happy about. Our fans haven't heard a single live note from us in over three months and, frankly, we think that sucks.

So, after a longer than expected gap, we've prepared you a collection of live video footage from the original GMB. You can access our memorable Spectum 5 Festival appearance in glorious technicolour via our MySpace page. Just view our profile and click on 'videos' to view all 8 songs from the set.

OK, so it's not the same as seeing the band in the flesh, but we think it's at least the next best thing...

Feel free to drop a line, let us know what you think. All comments are welcome. And we'll back for real in good time.See you then!

Loves
The Graeme Mearns Band 

From the horses mouth (although her name’s actually Ruth, and she’s not a horse).

Acoustic Edinburgh presents: Oxjam - Edinburgh Unplugged @ St Brides Centre, 10 Orwell Terrace , EH11 2DZ - 8pm Tuesday 29th April 2008

Oxjam - Edinburgh Unplugged is a unique performance, bringing together a combination of some of the countries best loved and most aspiring artists. Edinburgh Unplugged aims to give fans and performers alike the opportunity to experience the very best of Scotlands musical talent up close and personnel in the most intimate and exclusive concert performance.

Oxjam – Edinburgh Unplugged is proud to be part of this years unique nationwide Oxjam Music Festival, the concert ultimatley aims raise awarness and funds for Oxfam and help put an end to poverty.

Poverty isnt a fact of life. You can do something about it. Please help to make a difference in the lives of people in impoverished countries!

Venue
St Brides Centre, 10 Orwell Terrace, Edinburgh EH11 2DZ

Line up
Jill Jackson
http://www.myspace.com/jilljackson1
http://www.officialjilljackson.com/

annie christian
http://www.myspace.com/anniechristian
http://www.anniechristian.co.uk/

Gecko 3
http://www.geckomusic.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/gecko3

The Graeme Mearns Band
http://www.thegmb.com/
http://www.myspace.com/thegraememearnsband

Ziggy Campbell (Found)
http://found.surfacepressure.net/
http://www.myspace.com/ziggycampbell

Running order and more acts to be announced
See Acoustic Edinburgh

Tickets
Entry: £6.50 includes booking fee or £6 over the counter or at the door. (all profits go to Oxfam)

TICKETS SCOTLAND LTD
127 ROSE ST.
EDINBURGH
EH2 3DT

It's been a lively few weeks for the GMB. We've been taking a bit of time out to start putting some new material together - the preliminary moves towards that rumoured EP are finally underway - and Graeme's also been given his first commission as record producer, making a long-awaited album with the poet/songwriter, Colin Donati.

There have been some highly enjoyable gigs, notably a headline slot at the fabulous Acoustic Edinburgh and supporting the wonderfully titled Monkey Swallows the Universe at Cabaret Voltaire. More will happen very soon, we promise, and we'll keep you posted as as and when.

On top of this, the finishing touches are being applied to the soundtrack and visuals of our live performance at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall during last November's Spectrum Festival.

The memorable performance, where we shared a stage with some of Edinburgh's finest unsigned bands, including legendary ska maymem-makers, the Big Hand, and the simply stunning Broken Records, was captured in high-definition by our camera crew and directed by seasoned video-maker, Colin Usher. (Sounds expensive, I know, but although, as usual, penniless, we were able to use a shrewd combination of cunning, charm and tequila cocktails to scam free access to some rather fine HDV Cameras courtesy of one of the capital's jumped-up polytechnics... Who says the spirit of enterprise is dead?) And the results are looking simply stunning!

It'll be a few weeks while the final edits get finalised but in the meantime, you can sample some of the live sound on our MySpace homepage, where we've just uploaded the live recordings of Some Kind of Bliss and Dancefloor. And we'll get those visuals to you ASAP.

Hope to see you all soon!

LuvsThe GMB
X X X

Oh dear. Crass hack Camilla Pia doesn't like us. The List's intrepid defender of anodyne pop (this is the woman who slobbered over Girls Aloud's latest offer in beige before claiming, absurdly, that "anyone who disagrees doesn't deserve to have ears") finds my accent annoying (fair enough), the music derivative (of what?) and the lyrics cliched (was she even listening?). Now, we all had a good laugh about this, but just in case anyone was thinking of taking this seriously, here's what some other reviewers have said of us over the past year or so...

The Skinny's Ali Malone called us "a revelation... suave and demonic in exactly the right proportions... superb". A later reviewer from the same journal was less enthused but at least knew decent musicality when he heard it, saying: "No matter the genre, this tight guitar/bass/drums combo display seemingly effortless musicianship and surely some of the most fiendish guitar solos to be heard in this nation since The Sensational Alex Harvey Band... damn fine music-makers."

Meanwhile, Is This Music magazine bigged up our "Excellent riffage and razor-sharp sense of melody" and American magazine, Music Connections, who recieve literally thousands of demos from around the world, placed us in their top 25 demos of the year, praising our "wonderfully weird mojo" and "superior musicianship" before adding: "This band is a find for any U.S. alt-label".

Veteran DJ and promoter, Lenny Love has been a keen supporter of our music for almost as long as we've existed, praising our "music of real integrity" and we've also enjoyed supportive exposure from local music gurus, Vic Galloway and Jim Gellatly.

And, of course, let's not forget the hundreds of music-lovers we left shouting for more after our headline set at the Queen's Hall during November's Spectrum 5 festival (an event the List completely failed to review) or that event's organisers who were considering altering their constitution in order to allow us to play their future events.

Now, maybe I'm missing something, but could it really be that all these people - whose ears dearest Cammy would have hacked off - are wrong? Are we really a "cringeworthy" outfit that deserves a damning, one-star review from a champion of naff pop? Or could it be that Camilla Pia is simply an industry slut that wouldn't know a good thing if it exloded out of one of her vile mentholated cigarettes?

If you think you know the answer to these questions, please write it down and mail it to music@list.co.uk or The List • 14 High Street • Edinburgh • EH1 1TE

Sincerely yours,
Graeme Mearns
x x x

This of course has nothing to do with music but it's information everybody needs to know...

On 27 December last year, Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto was shot dead. Her assassin himself was annihilated a split-second later by a suicide bomber, thus destroying all prospects of any individual or group being prosecuted or even questioned by any authority.

The murder itself was no major surprise to observers. Bhutto had already been targeted on her return from exile to Pakistan by a suicide bomber who killed more than 150 civillians who had crowded around to celebrate her arrival and the hope for democracy it represented.

Shortly after this attempt on her life, in an interview with David Frost for the BBC on 2 November, the politician revealed that, though she had no conclusive proof, she did have several suggestions as to who her potential assassins may be. She had written to Pakistan's military dictator, President Pervez Musharaff, requesting that, in the event of her murder, his government investigate the crime fully. As she revealed to Frost, there was evidence to sugget that a key government security official had links to various extremist groups and associations with terrorists - including "Omar Sheik, THE MAN WHO MURDERED OSAMA BIN LADEN".

Yes, you did read that correctly. Benazir Bhutto, who presumably knew a thing or two about Eastern politics, stated quite clearly - in parenthesis, as if the information was already public knowledge - that Osama Bin Laden, the 'world's most wanted man', threat to civilisation and international terrorism's no 1 pin-up boy, was no more. David Frost didn't bat an eyelid at this earth-shattering news. In fact, he didn't question it at all. Clearly this was a long-established fact already understood between infromed adult members of society.

Indeed, the BBC certainly didn't deem it newsworthy.While you can access the rest of the 2 November interview in its entirity on the BBC's website, this little fragment of news has been edited out. Clearly not important.

Follow the link below and you can see the Frost interview unedited and form your own conclusions. Don't allow yourself to be lied to by the mass media and your government any longer. Tell everyone you know and let's do what we can to change this appalling culture of lies and deceit our western democracies have degenerated into.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIO8B6fpFSQ

The less said about Graeme Mearns right now the better. Our troubled frontman is still recovering from a psychotic episode caused by a vicious cocktail of existentialist literature, far too much tequila, and an ill-advised trip to his home-town, Dundee. He currently spends his days gazing out of windows, twitching occassionally, and murmuring indeciferably vague, Kurtzian utterances about "the horror", a far-off look in his eyes as if staring deep into the abyss.

Twenty-four hours in Dundee can do that to a man.

The good news, however, is that while our doomed colleague recovers his senses enough to be wheeled out for the forthcoming shows, the rest of the band have been working overtime drawing up plans to produce the GMB's first ever film.

Yes indeed, GMB the movie! For, to mark our grand album launch at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall on Sunday 4 November - part of the capital's 5th bi-annual Spectrum Festival - we've investigated the possibility of filming the event for posterity; it looks like all systems are go. And we want you to be part of it.

How? Well for most of you, simply being there will be enough. Come along, enjoy the music, have a dance and some drinks and be gorgeous for the cameras, luvees! But for those of you with a voyeuristic streak, you could even be part of the film crew...

We're sorting out the mechnical aspects, getting the gear and have hired an experienced director. All we need now is the camera team. We're looking for experienced camera operators to push the buttons, make the frames and capture the excitement of the GMB in full effect on one of the city's biggest stages. We'll meet your expenses, make sure you're properly catered for and put your name clearly on the credits. We won't make you rich (hell, we're musicians for Christ's sake!) but we may make you famous.

Anyone interested in helping us out at this fabulous event should contact us through this MySpace site, or email us direct at graememearnsband@googlemail.com

Thanks to everyone for all your support.

Let's make a movie!

Yours,
The Graeme Mearns Band

Ladies and Gents, we're all excited. A-quivering and a-twitching and a-reaching for sedatives. For it's finally coming, like an actress in a brothelful of bishops; Some Kind Of Bliss, our debut album, is about to be pressed.

Only the finishing touches remain. The tiniest of details in the sleeve design are being tweaked as we speak; the dull legal paperwork is being filed in the appropriate dull places; and Ali's in the sanatorium, having the weird noises in his head electronically extracted and transplanted onto the special effects production of our latest song. He may never be the same again. It couldn't be better.

There being some obscure hairdressers' convention happening in Edinburgh over the summer (some kind of Fringe Festival or something), it'll probably be around September before we do our big bumper Album Launch, but we'll be having a few mini ones for our nearest and dearest, starting on 20 July at The Village in Leith with our dear friends Ten Storeys High.

Come along! We'll have a blast! And when the party's over and the sawdust swept away, when the beer's flat and only the hangovers and the speed fiends are awake, you could have a piece of us to take home and care for. Isn't that sweet? We could live together happy as rats in a dead horse's intestine, our sauce-sticky fingers entwined like an orgy of worms; you and we in the happiest of unions, like chips and brown sauce. Like pornography and beer. Like some kind of bliss.

Alternatively, you could just buy our CD... Go to www.thegmb.com for details.

I'm off for those sedatives.

Yours in filth,
GMX