Announcement - We Don't Live in America - 4th Of July Special! Mark your diaries

At the start of the year, I was working on a new album for my band. The title was provisionally set as "It's behind you".  This was also the provisional title of our next single. The single became "Big Hairy Spider", as the band rightly overruled me and said it was more memorable and catchy. The album? Well last year, I was becoming increasingly irritated by the infiltration of our culture and politics by Trumpite politics and mindsets. I love many things about the USA, it is where much of the music I love originates, Motown, Stax, NYC Punk, West Coast Psychedelia. I grew up watching the NASA moonshots in awe. I love American gangster films, such as The Godfather and gritty TV series such as The Sopranos and ER. But I am not and have never wanted to be American. I deplore the turn American politics has taken over the last decade or so. There is still much good about it, but watching the rise of Trumpism has made the world a worse place. Now I believe in Democracy and if America wants to choose a path they don't like, that is their choice and it is none of my business.

However when Americans right wingers start poking their nose in over here, it crosses a line. Being a zillionaire and owning a social media platform gives you a degree of influence that, if misused, can be very dangerous.  What disturbs me more than the Trumps and Elon Musks of this world poking their nose into our business, is the fact that our won right wingers do not see the irony of launching a "Unite the Kingdom" protest and asking a bunch of dodgy foreigners to turn up and spout claptrap.

I am English,. I am happy and proud to be English. My band played a St George's day celebration, as we are all proud to be Londoners living in England.  But our sort of Englishness is a very different one to the aggressive form of Nationalism that the likes of Tommy Robinson espouse. We are the England of  cups of tea, warm beer, fish and chips, currys, Roast beef on Sunday. We like waving flags, but in the right context, at The Proms or at a football match. Not in someones face to intimdate them. 

I wrote a song called "We don't live in America" to celebrate, good mannered, polite, welcoming Englishness. A country which is grown up and so we don't give the police guns, or electrocute villains. It celebrates the fact that we can have a laugh and it also celebrates the quirks of London language. 

We don’t have a president with big big cars
We don’t have a flag which has any stars 

We don’t fry villains in Electric chair!
We’re not allowed guns and we don’t care 
 
We call all our mates something rude
We love a cup of tea to wash down food
We knock back beers with indecent hurry
And have three more with a Ruby Murrey
Restaurant portions aren’t that big
But then again we aint greedy pigs
Chips are something we eat with fish
Roast beef dinner is our national dish
 
We drink warm beer, kick round footballs
We love the proms at the Albert Hall 

Liz was the boss, now we’ve got a King
He wears a crown and genuine Bling 
We moan at the bus stop in the rain
And dream of a holiday over in Spain
If you want a ciggie it’s an oily rag!
When you see the Queen she don’t wear drag

--

The song has become a key part of the set. Many people have come up to us and said that they love the sentiment. We agreed that it was the logical title for the album and the logical date for the album launch was clearly the 4th July. The date when Great Britain and the USA went their separate ways. 

Once we'd made the decision we realised that the tracks were very English and it worked extremely well. The album is a celebration of UK culture and living in and growing up in London. The tracks are very much about the life and times of the band growing up and growing old in London.

So what are they?

Dave The Roadie -  A celebration of the people who keep bands going. It is a mash up of about four people I know, who all made a massive non playing contribution to the band in the early years. Bands like The False Dots have only ever survived on good will, people lending us vans, driving us around and generally just being there. Our character Dave, smokes too much hashish, lives in Burnt Oak, has a very disfunctional family and a very hot sister. But we've all grown up, what happened to Dave? Well it is a story of redemption!

Electric Ballroom - This song was originally entitled Reality Ballroom and was co-written by myself and my original band mate Pete Conway, after he had an unfortunate experience at the Electric Ballroom, where he drank too much, passed out in the toilet and woke up after everyone had gone home and the venue was deserted. When Pete left the band, I rewrote the lyrics. I felt that Pete's version had made a classic mistake of trying to do too much and had lost its focus. I reshaped the first two verses to tell the story exactly as he told me. The third verse, where it is resolved, was my own experience, after drinking too much at Dingwalls. We played it a couple of times, but moved on. Our new version slows it down and makes it very psychedelic. Many of our fans tell us that they had similar experiences. It is a real favourite.

Please Myself - Allen Ashey was the singer of the band in 1985 and from 2012-2020. Allen wrote this song as a diatribe against the Internet and the trolls that inhabit it. It fits in perfectly with the theme. Allen wrote it in 2016-7, it seems very prophetic about the rise of a certain US tech zillionaire. Tom sings it.

Chinese Nosh - This is to me a very London song. London used to be full of family run, cheap Chinese takeaways. Mill Hill had one on station road, that had various names, The New China Garden, The Moon House, Wok Express, Hees are a few! I loved it. I probably weigh 3kg more due to their efforts. I was good friends with the family when it was The Moon House and this is my tribute to them and all of the other such people who keep us drunks in late night food!

Rambo's Rampage - Although I wrote this, it is based on the stories of our drummer Gray Ramsey and  how he became a Mod after seeing Quadraphenia and witnessing the lovely Leslie Ash in action. 

The Crows - I wrote this as a result of seeing the regeneration of The London Borough of Barnet, over my lifetime. The demise of outdoor swimming pools, Woolworths, warm beer in pubs, police on the beat, semi detached houses. They've been replaced by police cars hurtling around with sirens blaring, supermarkets selling super strength beers, to be consumed on park benches and the smell of skunk weed everywhere. It simply doesn't occur to planners that if there's nowhere for bored teenagers to go and nothing for them to do, you get anti social behaviour. A proper bouncy Ska song though. 

Hadley FC we love you - The title says it all. Our tribute to Non League football. Tom sings. The English love of lower league football is a wonderful thing. Our next single.

Big Hairy Spider - Our last single. A mash up of Ska and Punk, with Benny Hill thrown in. This is the sort of song that only gets written in London!

Pusher Man - Perhaps our meanest song. Like "Dave The Roadie" this song is based on several people I used to know. The local drug dealers, that used to serve the locality when we were teenagers. The nastiest song I've written for decades. It is a bit of a warning to people to be careful what you are getting into. This is based on things that these characters actually told me they'd been up to. Back in the day, it was mostly Hashish being sold by freelance dealers. Now it is all part of a very big, well organised business. I lost interest in such things many decades ago. Back in 1986-7, I shared a flat with a couple of such characters. It was no fun.

Wrong - The first song that the False Dots played at their first ever rehearsal in 1979. I think it could have been written yesterday. It's a 45 second long blast of punk anger. It needs to be said. Still. 

Traitors -  The middle 8 was written in 1568, by an ancestor of mine, Chidiok Tichborne, as he awaited execution in the Tower of London, for being part of a plot to assassinate Queen Elisabeth I. I always felt he was a kindred spirit, although I've never really been tempted to assinated anyone. Then again, we don't have religious repression in the UK anymore. The rest of the song, I wrote whilst on holiday in Florida in 2017, lying on a lounger whilst the family enjoyed the swimming pool. I'd always wanted to incorporate some of "The Tichborne Elegy" into a False Dots song. I hope Chidiok would approve. It is very different to anything we've ever done. I like the idea of a song that is in parts nearly 500 years old. Sadly, in this world, people are still being executed. Just not in the UK. Some things are worth fighting for. You will have to wait to hear what it sounds like though. 

We don't live in America. Coming on the 4th July. We hope you like it.