2011: The Year in Review

I got the idea to review the year from Dave Hughes, folk singer extraordinaire, whose album you can buy here: http://corpor.at/A211

January to March 2011 was spent in preparation for the release of our epic and much anticipated concept album David Koresh Superstar, an album about the Waco siege of 1993 and our first major foray into Country style music. Also some luau, which was lots of fun for me to sing! Amongst the many beautiful things simon made for the promotion of the album, I came in one evening to discover that Simon had MADE A GAME, having had no experience whatsoever of game design before. Naturally, I was astonished. Then my competitive streak set in and I had to WIN. You can play it HERE http://corporaterecords.co.uk/koresh/gamerelease.html )

Before releasing David Koresh Superstar we decided it would be ace to release The Book of Job: The Musical!. We had already recorded the performance with the complete original cast a year before, but never released it (the files were ENORMOUS). Since the musical was first performed in 2004 (long before EVERYONE started doing musicals, I might add) it was nice to finally have the much sought after script and recordings publicly available. If you missed them, they are here: http://corpor.at/R183 We performed the show again just before Christmas 2011 in a two night special in London. It was a blast!

In April Simon wrote an article called Less Wedding, More Beheading, about the disgusting royal wedding, our distaste for it and why you’re all a bunch of servile little dupes who couldn’t dignity your way out of a tea-towel. It is very interesting. Here if you missed it: http://www.indelicates.com/2011/04/27/less-wedding-more-beheading/

Me and Lily Rae did a probably-should-have-been-edited song called We Love The Queen (yeah, sarcasm) too: We Love The Queen

May to Early July… We released and toured David Koresh Superstar with a band specially rehearsed and put together for these shows. This featured Max Saidi on drums, Mikey from David Devant and His Spirit Wife as an ATF Agent, JimBob from Carter USM as Mc Veigh, Chanson singer Philip Jeays as an ATF agent, Lily Rae as a young girl, Laurence ‘The Leisure’ owen on bass, Keith totp on guitar, Ciara Burke on backups, Al Clayton on rhythm guitar, Ed Sanderson on violin, Ed Van Beinum on additional guitar, and me and Simon on everything else. We had recorded much of it in 2010 with Brian at Bark Studios, and four of the tracks in the US in Austin TX with Britton at Ramble Creek studios, produced by Joie Mikitson and with additional pedal steel, banjo and Dobro played by Todd Pertll. We even went to the Waco site to look at the memorial there. It was fascinating and moving and strange and wonderful and unsettling. Highlights were shows in Sheffield, Brighton, London, Milton Keynes, Cambridge and Glasgow and, in October, finally getting Todd to play pedal steel on stage with us on our first proper US tour. One of my favourite video’s from the recording is Britton Beisenherz playing an ATF agent in “Something’s Goin’ Down In Waco”.

One of my favourite reviews of the album was, to our non-religious, philosophically-satanic surprise, from the christian “World” magazine in an article about The Book of Mormon and David Koresh Superstar, which said

“…’A Single Thrown Grenade’ followed by … ‘I Don’t Care If It’s True’ arrestingly articulate megalomania and its discontents at their most sadly poignant. In short The Indelicates don’t so much seek to mock as to understand. The extent to which they succeed is chilling.”

The official video for I Am Koresh was a lot of fun to do, and we got deliciously close to ‘the line) when the young women playing the followers of Koresh put jumpers up their dresses to mimic pregnancy. (Mwahaha). You can buy the album and lyric book here:

http://corporaterecords.co.uk/koresh/preorder.html

And digitally here: corpor.at/A190

July saw us returning to germany for a mini tour, playing in Mainz, and featuring the First Super Special Edition Performance outside of the UK, in Stuttgart, which was brilliant and everyone was ace to us. Aside from some vehicle troubles, it was nice and warm compared to our knee-deep-in-snow tour of 2010. Here’s a video from Stuttgart…

In August our friend Keith Totp released his debut album on Corporate Records. We, and many MANY others played on it, and Simon designed the artwork for it. It is loud, experience it here: http://corpor.at/A219

I grew Chillis for the first time. They didn’t die, which is a miracle, as I really don’t have green fingers… They taste lovely, which is also a miracle.

September was a sadder month than we anticipated. Twitter started feeling less like a place for content, and more for dullard’s outrage and boring opinion. We had less people to talk to than before. The music industry seemed to recuperate enough to frighten people into using only their business models. They will lose, probably – ultimately. But it was sad to see it working, and on people we thought it wouldn’t. Not everyone who works in the music industry is bad, or does a bad job, but that it’s last gasp was a willingness to frighten people into thinking it’s authority was absolute was sad. But we were preparing for our first US tour, which was exciting and for the most part unknown territory for us. Plus, if you don’t know by now how much we love it there, well… You haven’t been paying attention 😉

October… FIRST EVER US TOUR!!! We had done SXSW in 2008 and some shows in New York before, but never a full length shows-every-night thing like we do in Germany and the UK. We crowd sourced Brad, who drummed for us the first two shows, and who very kindly put us up for the first few days of Boston/ RI shows. We then moved on to NYC, where we spent an afternoon with Nathan and ate perhaps the best meal I’ve ever yet tasted (Sichuan chilli dish, with sichuan peppercorns, and a side dish of beef tendon, which sounds terrifying, but is BREATHTAKING. For pudding we had Red Bean Ice Cream. New York really is the best city in the world for food that will pay us to come to it). The gig was ace, it was the tail end of Comic-Con so we had some friendly UK/US faces there, as well as patient fans who hadn’t seen us since 2008, and Pianos is a beautiful old place. We all went for Pho afterwards and talked and talked and it was a breath of fresh air and I miss them all terribly.

Philadelphia saw us playing in the Tritone, managed and run by great people, and playing first were a band whose blues guitar was just awesome. We met a man from West Philadelphia (like Will Smith hur hur), and we had time to go to Independence Hall and take a tour where the Declaration was signed. Simon got to have his roast pork sandwich with sharp provolone cheese and broccoli rabe, which he liked. Ohio, Indianapolis and Lafayette were followed by Port Byron Illinois (one of the quad cities) where we had booked a Super Special Edition for Grahm Eberhardt and Autumn at G’s Riverfront Cafe. We were fed, watered, treated to a visit to a canyon, to the worlds biggest truck stop in Ohio (it’s amazing), met Grahm’s wonderful family, Jeff’s wonderful family, talked politics and occupy and old style activism, played a packed out gig, got Annah, Grahm’s daughter, on stage with us, and generally had the best time. You are my American Family, and we love you.

On to St Louis Missouri, Madison Wisconsin (where we had cheese curds mmmm), and finally Chicago, Illinois, where we met up with Kat our US booker, who’d done such an ACE job, and Joie, Todd and their dog, who put us up there. We got to have Hot Doug’s hot dogs (I had a Foie Gras and Sauternes Duck Sausage with Truffle Aioli, Foie Gras Mousse and Fleur de Se. WHAT OF IT. It was $9.00. And blew my mind) and so we began to drive back to NYC for the final show of the tour – a Super Special Edition Performance for Jordan D. White in Manhattan. It was a wonderful end to the tour, we got to see Kevin and Jordan and Dave and Samuel and everyone else we’d seen in NYC at the beginning, again for this show. You can download the whole 20 track show here: http://corpor.at/A234

I’m sure I’ve forgotten things about the tour, but I have photos you can look at all on my Tumblr, just keep scrolling down. http://juliaindelicate.tumblr.com

In November and December… we began preparing for a Rarities show, which ended up being more of a Homecoming show in London. It was one of my favourite yet, group singalongs of Fun Is For The Feeble Minded and Point Me To The West, and it was nice to see everyone. Laurence and Ed joined us on bass and violin respectively, and Dennis on drums who, considering we threw him in blind, did an ace job. We rehearsed for The Book of Job: The Musical! Christmas shows, which were great fun, and the script and cd packages sold out in no time at all. It was a christmas miracle. We had money for presents! To sign off on the year we did a final Super Special Edition Performance in Folkestone for Peter Murrells, which was ace, and a show in Colwyn Bay in Wales for the Digs Project, which was cold but lovely.

The world is less bright and more lonely since the deaths of Christopher Hitchens and Russell Hoban. Hitchens used to say that he could tell people who didn’t know the first thing about Iraq from the way they’d begin their point ‘OK, So Saddam was a bad guy…’, Similarly, you can tell people who didn’t know the first thing about Hitchens when they appear on television referring to him as Chris (which, as a cursory glance at his memoir reveals, he wouldn’t have permitted while alive) and describing his ‘journey’ from the left to right wings of political opinion. It’s rubbish. There’s no betrayal or journey involved in a consistent disgust at totalitarian impulses wherever they’re found – among dictators, gods, the servile, the censorious and the boring. We didn’t know him at all – but this brave new world feels even less welcoming to us without him. You should read the chapter of Hitch-22 about his relationship with America, It will save us the bother of trying to write identical sentiments later. Russell Hoban was also a wonderful writer. If (like us before drifting into consciousness to him in a New England motel room) he’s just been a name from the periphery of your reading, you should try and find a copy of the HBO adaptation of The Marzipan Pig – which is just the whole book read out by Tim Curry with some lovely animation over the top. It’s our new favourite thing in the world.

We’ve been reading everything by Orson Scott Card and we ♥ it. If you’re thinking of telling us not to because of some things he’s said that you don’t agree with, you might want to ask yourself if you really want to sound that much like Joe McCarthy. We don’t go in for blacklisting, even when we agree with the blacklisters. The thing about people is that they always think they’re the good ones.

Simon began writing and drawing his children’s stories, which we are currently ‘testing’ on any children we know 😀

I started a side business with Harley Rose called Shop Girl, making Jewellery and Pins and Rings out of Old Postcards and STUFF. Site is here: http://shopgirl.me and @shopgirlcrafts

NEXT YEAR… We will release an album. I won’t tell you anything about it yet.
We will play gigs. Some of them are up here http://gigs.indelicates.com

We will come to America again. If you want a super special edition in THE WEST in FEBRUARY/ MARCH, then CONTACT US NOW! We will be offering special rates to people who can help us out on accomodation/ food etc. @theindelicates on twitter, or on Facebook or by Email to info@indelicates.com

We will come to Germany again. We would like to do Special Edition Shows in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Koln, and anywhere else you fancy having us. As before, CONTACT @theindelicates

It’s been a very hard year for us, filled with work and content and new things and old things and new friends. People who have touched us, people who have ignored us, people who have listened, people who have cared.

It has been a hard year but we will not stop.

We wish you all the best for the New Year,

Julia Indelicate X