2020 Vision

Well where do you begin trying to review a shit show of a year like this?!

It all started off so well in January with a visit to Harlow London for a photo shoot and writing session with Cherry B followed with us supporting punk legend TV Smith at the Anarchy Brewery in Newcastle. LoGOz also got off to a flier with our first visit to Glasgow on the 17th playing with our good friends 2Sevens. Then the following night a headline gig at Bannermans in Edinburgh with Slalom D in the mix! February saw us support American Rock n Roll stalwarts The Supersuckers in Newcastle. As well as our first trip to the Parish Huddersfield with our punk pop buddies The Spangles plus a slot at Rockmantic Festival at The Brickyard in Carlisle. 

We shot the LoGOz video for Disgraceland in and around Ashington. The song is all about the kind of reflective sadness that things just aren’t how they used to be. But that’s life. But there’s always hope and something to look forward to. The live parts were filmed in Bubbles Bar home of my very first gigs as a young drummer back in the day. So it made sense to shoot it in a venue which has so many special memories for me. Graeme J Baty did a brilliant job on the video as always.

By the time LoGOz played our last official pre lockdown gig on Sunday March 8th at Think Tank Newcastle with Gimp Fist there were strong rumours of this COVID-19 spreading across the world! Surely it won’t affect us? How wrong we were! 

With the original plan being a 3 weeks at a time review, the pubs, clubs and venues would be back open in no time right? Wrong. Shit. As a busy gigging musician you live for performing live -  that’s where we feel alive and where the energy is. You can’t replace that so now was a time to kinda think outside the box. Or inside the box! So I’d noticed a few musicians performing Facebook Live streams. Some with pretty professional set ups but also others just simply going live on their phones. The latter idea appealed to me as it was quite a DIY punk rock simple and instantly accessible format. So I gave it a shot. The first one was ridiculously nerve wracking talking, singing, playing into my phone with only my acoustic guitar as back up. Having no idea whether anybody would be interested - or arsed -  to see or hear what I was up to? 

Thankfully the interest was there and the feedback over the months has been overwhelming to be honest. On some of the early streams my daughter Evie would occasionally pop up with random facts or Tik Tok moves much to the amusement of people in the comment box. It actually helped me relax too! After a few weeks I had the idea of introducing Kieran on Bass to play some LoGOz tunes. This has also helped our playing together and keeping the band relevant and out there for people to enjoy. It’s also given me the chance to play some of my new unreleased and unheard solo songs as well as from my previous bands Junkster and The Blisters. Learning new covers has been great fun too as that’s something I was never really interested in doing before this. So I like to keep the sets fresh and different every week by constantly mixing them up. Trust me, although it can look pretty chaotic and spontaneous I’ve been practising all week for this haha! Up until my final gig of the year on December 18th I’d only missed 2 Friday nights since my first one on March 27th - once when LoGOz had an actual real gig at Morpeth Music Festival and the other was when I was struck down with the dreaded Covid in late September. 

Also in April I was massively honoured when Tony Wright from Terrorvision covered my song ‘Black Dog Barking on my Shoulder’ on his Live stream! So a massive thanks to everyone out there who has watched and commented every Friday and I look forward to getting back into it in 2021 as we don’t seem to be any closer to returning to venues anytime soon.

In a way I’ve been busier than ever but in a different way? 

LoGOZ have still managed a handful of socially distanced gigs this summer, notably the Punk Rock Drive-In 2 at Newton Aycliffe and Radio Rooms in Berwick - both of which were successful events!

My partner in rhyme Cherry B has been performing spoken word live streams on occasional Saturdays too and we’ve managed to record a few new songs and still make videos. At the start of the year we put out new song Chemistry, then our cover of the John Cooper Clarke classic Twat. 

I tried to avoid writing about the pandemic but when it’s affecting your everyday life it can’t help manifest into your creativity. The first one I wrote was a solo song called Terminal Days. Then Cherry had a brilliant poem called Wonderland is Calling which we formed into a song and video we’re very proud of. If that wasn’t enough we also put out our Halloween themed swipe at the government with Track or Treat.

 

LoGOz played our last socially distanced gig of the year in October at The Tynebank Brewery in Newcastle with One Million Motors. 

Thank you to everyone who has bought our new Disgraceland tee shirt they’ve been flying out - these as well as the CD single are still available to purchase - please contact me via Facebook if you're interested in buying anything! 

Also the feedback for our recent video single DiGiTAL DETOX has been amazing - thank you! I complied the video using friends, family, followers and fans phone footage so really chuffed with the outcome. Plus getting air play on Planet Rock Radio was pretty cool too! We have been busy with Ally Lee at Mill Studios in Alnwick recently recording tracks for DiGiTAL DETOX which includes live favourites ‘Monkey Business’ and ‘Joie de Vivre and we will be releasing this as a 4 track Digi-Pack CD in late January so really looking forward to sharing this with you all! 

To round off this year I also released my new festive song Drinking About Christmas with a fun video featuring Evie and myself enjoying ourselves interspersed with some of my favourite Christmas TV / Films / Songs etc!

I hope everyone has had a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Cheers again for your support in everything we do! Cheers for reading.

All the best for 2021.
Peesh x