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WiZARDS of TWiDDLY



Last Updated: 12/6/2009

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Status: Single
City: Liverpool
Country: UK
Signup Date: 4/7/2006

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November 16, 2009 - Monday 
WIZARDS OF TWIDDLY- The Kazimier, Wolstenholme Square, L

 - Tomorrow night (Tuesday 17th Nov)

appearing with  & LA BRASS BANDA (BAVARIAN FUNK) & LONG FINGER BANDITS

Twiddlys onstage 9.30
7:25 PM 
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October 17, 2009 - Saturday 

Wizards of Twiddly will be playing at

Love Music Hate Racism Event, The Masque Theatre Liverpool
Friday 30th October....Free


Other turns include the very wonderful Pete Bentham & The Dinner Ladies
8:33 AM 
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October 1, 2009 - Thursday 
WoT have been asked to play with The Invisible as part of Liverpool Music Week....

The Invisible have been nominated for this years Mercury Music Award. They is rather good and there may be some Twiddly / Invisible collaboration going on. maybe !


other bands and cost to be confirmed
6:23 AM 
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June 30, 2008 - Monday 

wizards of twiddly - the upendium (volume three) (cd)

The first volume of The Wizards Of Twiddly's 'Archive Series' featuring an assortment of new songs, old songs, live tracks and obscure demos.

Features original Mother of Invention Jimmy Carl Black and the track 'We Are Not Free' aired on Stuart Maconie's Freakzone on BBC 6 music in November 2007.

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wizards of twiddly - live at the zanzibar (cd)

In December 2004, Liverpudlian legends The Wizards Of Twiddly reformed for a triumphant gig at Liverpool's Zanzibar Club.

Recorded absolutely live, it features powerful versions of tunes from their two studio albums, plus two previously unavailable songs, 'People with Purpose' & 'Cardboard Banjo'

A superb document of a justifiably lauded live band.

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wizards of twiddly - man made self (cd)

The second Twiddly album, from 1994, saw the band continuing to uniquely combine elements of jazz, metal and punk.

However, the writing and performances were considerably more ambitious than on their debut, with the extended outro of 'Large Geographical Features', the Bowie fronts Crimson mayhem of 'Man Made Self', and the Kurt Weil flavoured 'Abnormal Man' (where the band are joined by Liverpool's Brasshoppers providing extra brass for a stirring close to the album) suggesting powerful new directions.

The album was highly acclaimed by Vivian Stanshall ('The Best Thing I've heard All Year' MOJO) and Canterbury legend, Kevin Ayers (who toured with the band throughout 1995).

'...a collection that includes jazzy TV themes gone haywire, yobboik punk numbers, outrageous guitar heroics and the most blissful sixties-drenched pop' - Facelift Magazine

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wizards of twiddly - independent legs (vinyl)

With its eye boggling red and green sleeve, this unclassifiable and startling debut from Liverpool treasures, The Wizards Of Twiddly, received major local and national airplay on its 1992 release (including a memorable Mark Radcliffe session).

Voted Facelift' Magazine's 'The Canterbury Scene & Beyond' album of the year.

 

Carlo Bowry - Ear Candy (cd)

An eclectic and aurally (and possibly orally) tasty collection of instrumental tunes both old and new from the Wizard of Twiddly guitarist, loving crafted and cooked in the Crazy Bedroom of his imagination.

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1:10 PM 
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June 7, 2008 - Saturday 
I'm sure the last time I saw Wizards Of Twiddly was at the George Robey (around about the time the Mutoid Waste Company had a few of their 'tanks' parked in the beer garden).  Back then, I thought they were pretty good, but they didn't blow me away. Now, the Wizards Of Twiddly have been re-emerging, rebuilding over recent years, and the band I saw this night was a bit of a shock.  Traditionally, a band is supposed to have a sort of a shelf-life, lose its oomph as time, tide, family commitments and physical decay take its toll. Rock bands are supposed to slowly get sick of the songs they have to do every night, and lose the ability to scissor-jump with a v-neck guitar.  They are not supposed to kick greater amounts of arse as they mature and approach small gigs as if it were the main stage at Glastonbury.  I guess one thing they should do is get tighter and better at working a crowd, which is what the Wizards most certainly have done, and then some. 

           Travelled down from Liverpool, the Wizards Of Twiddly are a pretty good match for ZATCB - evolved in the 80s, playing twisted prog jazz of the Zappa persuasion with rather Pythonesque lyrics.  Back then, they were fun, sometimes a bit wacky for me..  Now the same songs seem to have more bite to them - but that's all in the ferociously tight and brilliantly played delivery.  Two guitars, a sax, trumpet, and I think there's some instrument-swapping. The menace of Man Made Self stunning live rounded off with a wild guitar solo... the lyrics of Large Geographical Features a delight I'd not noticed before.  They've done that thing where all the bullshit of Being In A Band has been gone through, and a chunk of life has been gone through, and then you find out that your band is something wonderful that belongs to you. Suddenly you're out gigging again, better than ever, tougher and wiser, with ten times the balls and fire of most other bands, looking the audience in the eye.  Warning - the Wizards are on top form.
6:16 PM 
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May 2, 2008 - Friday 
Kevin Ayers – "Turn The Lights Down"

This little known live recording captures the Canterbury legend Kevin Ayers in the mid 1990s, accompanied by a great British band called The Wizards Of Twiddly, who by that time established quite a following on the Acid Jazz scene. The band fits Ayers like a glove with his crossover material moving freely between Folk, Rock and Jazz. Ayers delivers a splendid set of thirteen of his songs, with the usual ironic and often bitter and sarcastic lyrics. He's in top form and the rapport between him and the band is plainly evident. The band members supply plenty of interesting solos and the overall full sound of the band, horns included, revitalizes the music immensely. This is a must have for all Ayers fans.

https://www.jazzis.com/shop/default.asp?item=102516

JAZZIS WEB SHOP

Normal activity.

HAVE FUN!
5:59 AM 
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March 29, 2008 - Saturday 


WIZARDS OF TWIDDLY are back in action and they’ve just made two of their albums available as download releases (actually they’ve probably made their classic 90’s albums available as well). You can catch a rare London date alongside those other love-by-lots/unknown to most underground heroes of the last century Zag And The Coloured Beads at the Bull & Gate on May 10th where they’ll no doubt regale you with tales of tuna fish and sardines on toast and all they wanted was a wreck somewhere.


The two albums, released in the last couple of years on their own Fractured For Pleasure label, are Live At The Zanzibar - a live album recorded at two of their re-union show on home ground in Liverpool in 2004/06 and The Upendium Volume Three – a collection or rarities, demos and unreleased versions of old favourites.


Wizards of Twiddly were (and indeed are seeing as they appear to be back in some kind of full working/playing live order now) a band who got a lot of coverage (and space on Organ bills) around these parts in the 90’s – that period of English musical history when strange quirkiness was not the acceptable norm it is today. Eccentrically English, some might say dangerously wacky and a little bit twee, others might say laced with devious humour and thrilling progressive jazz/art rock otherness. A band in the grand tradition of Gong or Super Furry Animals or Zappa or Sleepy People or The Blockheads. They were/are regular collaborators with Kevin Ayers, they’re armed with songs of cardboard banjos and falling off bikes and large geographical features...

And unlike back in those 90’s when the evil people at selective blinker-bound places like the NME held all the media power and the only place you could ever find out about bands like Wizards Of Twiddly (or Zag And The Coloured Beads) was via word of mouth and handmade fanzines like Organ or Freakbeat or Facelift or Earzone, all you need to do now is hit the links and hear instantly for yourself. The live album is just that, live and unmessed with, excellent introduction, actually both the albums are excellent.
Heavily flavoured in all things Canterbury Scene, Wizards of Twiddly are ultimately plain different – go explore for yourself over at

www. myspace. com/wizardsoftwiddly – you don’t need our words, you just need us pointing the way, there they are over there... go find out.
6:16 PM 
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February 28, 2008 - Thursday 
..>..>
Wizards of Twiddly reunite
The fairly legendary band plan one night at Zanzibar. We've got some tickets to give away

..>..>

"THE best band you've never heard", is how one blogger calling themselves "Swedish For Beginners" described the Wizards of Twiddly just this week.

Now we are not Swedish (unless you pay us) and we are certainly not beginners when it comes to the Twiddlys' music, an entirely refreshing sound which is a twisted jazzy fugue of them, Frank Zappa, the Cardiacs, the Blockheads and more.

During the 1990s, the Wizards of Twiddly were one of Liverpool's most compelling and entertaining live acts, their finely honed music, from Carl Bowry, Andy Delamere, Andy Frizell, Simon James and Martin Smith, regularly attracting massive local audiences. Eventually, Twiddly gigs became "happenings". They collaborated with Kevin Ayers on an album and even had a narrator, Keith Lancaster, who operated a "contraption" which would reveal, in crayon, the title of the next song in the set.

If, like our Swedish friend's friends, you have never heard them, it's little wonder. The band sort of split years ago, to do other things like provide the horn section for bands including The Coral and Shack, and write scores for musicals, but just now and again they get back together and sound even better than before.

The they putting in two very rare reunion gigs at the St Helens Citadel (Friday Mach 7) and at the Zanzibar, here in Liverpool the following night (March 8).

Want to go? We have two pairs of tickets for the Liverpool gig and, just to add to the wow factor, may even be there ourselves.

Fill in the boxes.

8:18 AM 
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February 22, 2008 - Friday 

Category: Music

Monday, 18 February 2008

The best band you've never heard

Not much new to report today, but here's a little something for you music lovers out there.

Now and then you stumble upon these great bands that for some reason has stayed completely under the radar of the mainstream. British rock/jazz/pop/whatever combo Wizards of Twiddly released two albums of beautifully mashed up genres in the early nineties, and then seem to have disappeard for about a decade. Until quite recently you could barely find a word about them on the web. But now they have finally got their act together and actually made it possible to buy their albums in a brand new webshop. They even have a couple of gigs booked. What do you know...

Head over to their home on Myspace to check out a few songs, try "Large Geographical Features" - a superb little altpop gem. Highly recommended for anyone who want to have their music served al dente.

5:03 PM 
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January 26, 2008 - Saturday 
Wizards of Twiddly will make their debut appearnace at Southports Arts Centre tomorrow evening. Acclaimed as one of the finest and most innovative bands to come from Liverpool, they hijack musical and theatrical forms to present a powerful yet polished combination of the ludicrous and the bizarre. Their eccentric and visual blend of rock, jazz and comedy defies categorisation, despite comparisons with Zappa, Madness and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Their programme ranges from intricate jazz arrangements and a capella singing to searing boogie. Their songs may be about death or vegetables.......

Who needs Rolling Stone & NME when yo got....Southport Visiter !!
Rock n Roll journalism at its best !
8:02 AM 
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