Eddie Argos - I Formed A Band.

I'm performing a spoken word show in Islington on the 22nd of October  and in Jersey at the Branchage Festival this Saturday 27th September.

I've recently had it pointed out to me that actually all Art Brut shows are spoken word as my singing voice is not very different than my speaking voice, but these spoken word shows won't have any musical backing, it'll just me talking at you.

The show I've written is called Formed A Band it is about forming a band, specifically me forming Art Brut and how I went about it. Some of it will be funny because I am an idiot and did quite a few stupid things.

However there is a vaguely serious reason for me performing this show and I'm afraid when I tell you it I'm going to sound self important and a little bit like a grumpy old man, but I'm going to say it anyway.

So, without wanting to sound too much like Jake Bugg, here we go...

I'm not really a fan of those TV shows where people try and get famous by singing/performing  in front of judges, I think it is detrimental to music and art and that the pop charts are much worse because of it.

I recently became worried that nowadays people think those shows are the only way to become a performer so to show there is another path, I have decided to tell my tale of starting a band which is full of happenstance, hoover playing and pretending you can sing like Aretha Franklin.

Luckily no judges were involved.

I'm not telling my story in front of Simon Cowell or Ricky from The Kaiser Chiefs with a tear in my eye, hoping to win a very short lived record contract and a mawkish christmas single, I'm telling it upstairs at the Hen and Chicken and in a tent on Jersey. You should come.

That has made the show sound a bit grumpier than it is, I promise I wont shout at you (well no more than usual)

You can buy tickets for the Hen and Chicken show

HERE

The Branchage show might actually be called I Met A Man Called Chris Chinchilla At A Party as I've only got 30 minutes and I havent quite figured out how to shorten the story yet.

Hey look over here...

It looks a like like I've been neglecting this blog I haven't I just started a new one.

It's over HERE

and part of my new shop which is HERE

Hey! Motherfuckers! A HARDBACK lyric and essay book.

Hello, I recently crowd funded a book called 'Any Questions?' the book is an annotated collection of all the lyrics I've written for Art Brut, plus an essay on each album, (and an essay about the B-sides) plus a few illustrations drawn on to the original pieces of paper I wrote the lyrics on. HERE is what I wrote about the book when I launched it.

It went really well, THANK YOU. It went so well, in fact, that I have upgraded the book from Paperback to a very nice matte HARDCOVER book, the sort of book that a motherfucking academic, like myself, deserves. The cover has changed slightly too, it now looks like this.

Everybody that has already bought a book, your version will now be a hardcover. All the first edition copies of the book will now be a hardcover, limited to 500 copies signed and numbered.

Because of the personal nature of Art Brut lyrics, as a band we tend to attract a lot of people who are very similar to me, one of my defining characteristics is that I am very disorganised. This explains why I've had quite a few emails from people who missed the opportunity to buy the book while I was crowd funding it - well this and the fact I was crowd funding over the Christmas period when everybody is busy.

For those disorganised people, and also for the people who are more interested now its a hardback book, I've extended the offer I used over the crowd funding for a few more weeks.

Here are the two versions of the book you can buy.

A signed, numbered, hardback edition of 'Any Questions?' £20

A signed, numbered, hardback edition of 'Any Questions' with a painting on  (12.7cm x 17.7cm) canvas board of the motherfucking publishing logo, and your choice of Art Brut song hand written into the back of the book. £40

The book will ship out at the end of January, postage is included in the price to anywhere in the world. I will email all the people who bought a book wanting a song written into it next week - to find out which song it is they want. I may be using this information to compile the most crowd friendly set list for Art Brut ever. So far there have been a lot of request for Demon's Out you bunch of misanthropes.