Magic Muscle #6

Regarding Magic Muscle, the only way we could promote the new LP was if Adrian and I carried on without Huw Gower and, with a lot of luck, maybe get the chance to go over to Huw in the States for our next get-together, because Huw couldn't really afford to get over here from New York and Zippo really stretched their budget for us on the album; it cost a lot of money.

So we were saying "well what can we do without Huw, we need another guitarist that's got the same sort of views as Huw, that comes from the same direction." And then Nick Saloman, THE Bevis Frond, jumped up and volunteered; I got to know him over the year that had just gone by and he'd become a good friend but! had no idea that he'd be prepared to go out and play, because I knew he hadn't gigged for nine years and was bound to get more than butterflies over his debut gig since he became, well, famous as far as I consider it: where I come from he's famous, he's a huge underground hero. And the fact is that he didn't want anything for it either; he just wanted to get up and play, to help us out, which shows what an extraordinary bloke he is. So we were hoping to be able to go out and do some gigs and make it roar again; and that maybe somebody would take it upon themselves to record one of those gigs, and we'd have another LP, a live album.

I think live is Magic Muscle's forte, because it's all stream-of-consciousness stuff I'd have a few songs on that LP, but even the songs are kind of extended and I'd rather we didn't even do songs, just blows... because it's remarkable stuff when we just play. There's one on "One Hundred Miles Below" that's called "Heavy in E" and that's all it is, E. And that's the stuff you set off a drone in E and let it take off of its own accord just like "everybody pull together" and that's the way I'd rather it was. And maybe we'd get into doing our feedback again, which we used to be so good at: Thin White Rope impressed me a good deal, the way they play with feedback; it reminds me of how Muscle used to do it; not their songs in any way at all, but the way they use feedback is similar to what Magic Muscle used to try and do on antiquated equipment, so nowadays I'm sure we could make much better controlled feedback live…(not too controlled though!)

Ade and I got together at Wee Mee Nit Studios on 28th August with Nick and Martin Crowley (ex-Room 13, and among the participants on the Acid Jam album, who seems to have hit if off straight away with Adrian and Rod; he'd already made Nick's musical acquaintance, of course, L.). Unfortunately a gig we had lined up at The Crypt in Deptford on September Ist fell through when the police shut the place down just two days before we were due to play there, and another gig (planned for August 9th on Bodmin Moor; the "Marquee Moon Freak-out') had already been cancelled. Which left us just one appearance, at the Hawkwind 20th Anniversary all-dayer at Brixton Academy; this went ahead as planned, on 3rd September in fact it was amazing... and very fitting, you know, with Hawkwind etc.!