Do The Flicker #1
HEY FLICKERS!
Man, it's been a long year, hasn't it? Feels like we've been through five fundamental paradigm shifts already and it's barely February. I mean… who could ever have believed it? Who could genuinely have ever thought it was possible. Sure, the signs were all there, the world has been edging that way for a while, but we never REALLY thought it would actually happen. Freddos are now a freakin quid each?! It's just wrong.
They say the first true death is the inability to change. If you're not moving forwards, if you're not growing and evolving, then you're stagnating and dying. And that's generally a bad thing.
You've probably noticed that the Flicknife Blog isn't updating as much as it used to. And while I'm sure you see this as a good thing, we're not as convinced. SO! With that said, we're evolving. Changing. Trying something new and probably not totally ill advised.
I'll still be here, flicking you off when it's required. We will return, wherever we have any interesting bits of information that we think you'll enjoy. There will also be some new content coming your way. Our Illustrious Leader Frenchy will be taking up his quill once in a while, to set the world to rights in an ongoing series, currently dubbed "Frenchy Rants", the first of which will be with you sooner than you might think! The Football Rants will also have a new home within the blog.
Then, in this new style, 'moving forward' Flicknife Blog, I'll be posting a few reviews, usually television and movie related content, because if there's one thing the internet needs more of, it's people talking about movies, right?
Right!
Anyhoo… From everyone here at The Flicknife Kru, we'd like to thank you all for reading the blog for as long as you have: we've had up to 30K reads on some blogs and many over 15K, so we're grateful. We hope you find this new beginning as interesting and readable as you have the content we've released so far.
Hey, remember when I said Frenchy would be doing some ranting?
Remember when I said it would be with you sooner than you might think?
Now is that time!
Let the Rant commence!
This one will be short and sweet. The new year finds us all in a very different world than the one we were in just a few weeks ago: the world with Trumpet as leader of the USA is in serious danger. The man is a complete moron, hopping from one subject to the next without the slightest bit of understanding and /or knowledge of what he is talking about. He signed new deals with Mexico and Canada, saying the previous ones were terrible and who had allowed that to happen. Well, Don the Con, you did, in 2018, you signed these bad, bad deals! And now, he wants to wipe a whole race off the face of the earth and replace what was home to 2 million people with holiday resorts!! The depth of his stupidity is hard to fathom for anyone who has an ounce of empathy and those who know that 2+2=4. But, fear not for we are galloping to your rescue on our righteous chargers to give you a couple of minutes of peace and distraction from Don the Gibbon!
We have been busy but not particularly on the release front: we have spent the past few weeks exploiting our back catalogue, shifting stock and all that good stuff.
We did release NEOVENATOR's first album 'Songs From The End of the Pier' (SHARPD24002) and to say it was well received by the press is an understatement. We had three reviews within five days of release and an additional two a bit later. For those of you interested, you can read them all below:
Steampunk Explorer
Lost In The Manor
Thoughts Words Action
Facebook
Louder Than War
For those who want just a quick résumé of the reviews, here are a few quotes:
"Olde English Peculiar they may be, or Steampunk Psych if you prefer, but fans of the Stranglers, Damned, Cardiacs, etc. are well advised to check them out, as there is so much to take to your heart"- Louder Than War
"The dynamic rhythm with driving passages and calculated drops makes for a compelling and addictive listen" - LostInTheManor
"Plenty of steam. Bags of punk. It's the end of the pier as we know it. And I feel fine" - Steampunk Music and Entertainment
You can also listen to 'Launch Day' here: https://youtu.be/Hyb49OGfJyo
There is only a handful of their CD left so if you want one of these masterpieces, click here
For those of you who want to see the band live before buying their album, you can catch them at:
| Saturday 22nd February | The Surrey Steampunk Convivial – The Station, Stoneleigh KT17 2JA |
| Sunday 16th March | The Dublin Castle, Parkway, Camden NW1 7AN (support to Ramones tribute band) |
| Sunday 23rd March | The Hope & Anchor, Upper Street, N1 1RL (support to power pop legends The Vapors) |
| Sunday 6th April | The Fiddlers Elbow, NW5 3HS (support to Slow Faction, Noir Mates) |
| Friday 25th April | The Willoughby Arms, KT2 6LN (Tony the keyboard chap's 60thbirthday gig – all welcome) |
| Saturday 6th August | Eastbourne Steampunk Festival, Wish Tower Slopes, BN21 4BY |
Elsewhere, we have added albums and songs to our Bandcamp site where you can get CDs for as little as £4.00 and releases that are not available in our store or anywhere else flickniferecords.bandcamp.com
Finally, we still have a few copies of Hung Like Hanratty CD '50 Shades Of Sh#t' that is selling for ridiculous amounts on eBay but is still available from our store for a measly £6.00 and likewise for Yur Mum 'Road Rage' CD at only a fiver! Don't get ripped off, go Flickers!
So, there we have it, folks. The first of a new wave of Flicknife Blogs. I hope you enjoyed what we have for you here, and even if you don't agree, I hope we can discuss and debate everything that is said here and in our future blogs in the calm, friendly manner that is so common in all internet discourse!
Until next time, and the dawn of a new age.
Catch you on the flipside!
Taheg, and the Flicknife Kru.
Blog #38
HEY FLICKERS!
Sorry for leaving you all hangin' for so long. It's been a rough few months for all involved, and we've had our share of drama here at the Flicknife Officers. Our Glorious Leader, The Frenchie, messed up his foot and was bouncing in and out of hospital, barely able to walk for months, which slowed things down a touch. But we've got him a little scooter now, so he's back to being an absolute menace. Good Times! So, is anyone else a little disappointed that the eclipse didn't give us all magical powers? I feel a little cheated, myself. All that coverage in the media, social media frothing at the keyboard because the end times were here. Personally, I didn't it realize it WAS an eclipse. When it started getting a little dark in the afternoon, I just figured it was business as usual for the U.K... Ah well, apparently the rapture is coming, at the end of this month, so we'll see if that's any more fun. Assuming the world DOESN'T end, we've got some very fun releases coming up, see if anything here tickles your ear-box.
Blog #37
HEY FLICKERS!
Sorry it's been a while, life is pretty crazy right now!
It's funny, all those centuries back when I said I wanted to get a job in a creative industry, people always thought I was mad. They're such risky jobs, they would say. Tiny chance you'll ever actually be able to support yourself, huge amounts of competition etc etc etc.
Blog #36
HEY FLICKERS!
Wow, 2022 was a lot, wasn’t it? I keep hoping I’ll write one of these end of the year wrap up blogs and just talk about how we all had a really nice year, and everything went so well. But this year, is not the year I get to write THAT post. Nope, 2022 was another year of struggles for all (well, most...) Many businesses, great and small, didn’t make it this far, and many more won’t make it to this time next year. But, it could be a LOT worse. Keep a spot in your heart for all those that spent 2022 fighting for their freedom, and their lives. If you wake up with a roof over your head, and even a little food in your fridge, you’re doing better than most. That’s something, right?
Blog #35
AHOY FLICKERS!
It's been a while, sorry everything's been so calm and free of catastrophes that time just slipped by!!
Seriously, though; The 'Rona continues to ravage the world, Putin has thrown his toys out of the pram and our country is being run by self serving morons, too busy lining their own pockets to notice that the world is burning down around them. But, on the plus side, we have music! Aaaah, music. A gentle song to calm the heart of a savage beast. Well, we don't have anything that will soothe your heart for you this time, but we've got some crackers, to get the heart pumping and the toe tapping. That's way better, right?
Blog #34
HEY FLICKERS!
We thought we’d try something a little different, this time around. We were talking the other day, at the Flicknife Towers, about albums that for one reason or another, were formative in our history. Not just albums that we enjoyed, but albums that went one step further. Teaching us something about who we were, who we wanted to be. Taught us vital lessons, that were formative in the young days of freak culture. Even beyond that, these albums that taught us all that an album could be, how they should be built and presented so that when the time came for us to start putting out albums of our own, we could make them the absolute best they could be!
Blog #33
HEY FLICKERS!
It’s been a busy couple of months, since we last spoke! Hope you’re all doing well. At least as well as Paradise 9! Their new album 'Science Fiction Reality' (that we mentioned in our last blog) has dropped and it's doing REALLY well. Lots of great radio plays and some great coverage in the press! But why would you take our word for it? Why not check out some of the reviews here?
Even punks bloggers got in on the praise with a 4 stars review on the Punk Site.
See? Told you it was doing well! And it doesn’t end there, we’ve got some more reviews coming out: look for a piece in an upcoming issue of Shindig! You don’t want to miss it.
Blog #32
HEY FLICKERS!
Spring has sprung. A new season is here, some life has returned to the world. Lockdown is beginning to ease, and there’s a small chance that life may just return to something that resembles normality by June.
So, naturally, we’ve decided it’s time to try something a bit new! Spring is the time for fresh starts so that’s our plan.
Blog #31
HEY FLICKERS!
We’re back once again, for another round of "Someone let me talk to the masses, what a mistake that was" Also known, as the Flicknife Blog!
Yeash, it’s been a wild few months, eh? But don’t worry, there’s always a way to finish the year on a high and I just happen to know exactly what it is. So, if you want to make sure you have a rocking Christmas, and a rock-tastic New Years, listen close:
Cast your mind back! It’s March, 1982 and you’re listening to DOREMI FASOL LATIDO, watching Only Fools and Horses and drinking a cool glass of Pepsi, because some things are timeless. As you sit there, it hits you. What could be better, than sitting, listening to an album by your all-time favourite band, Hawkwind? Simple: listening to an album of Hawkwind, their friends, and some relations!
And thus, it came to being: Hawkwind Friends and Relations. One of the greatest album series of all time. But wait, there’s more!
Fast forward to today. Now, while you sit in that same old beanbag chair, listening to HFAR and thinking of better times, you can do it while wearing AWESOME t-shirts, featuring Hawks sleeves-inspired art! Aww yeah!
Blog #30
HEY FLICKERS!
Yeash. Well, it’s September. We’re still on lockdown?! ‘Rona refuses to leave. I think it’s safe to say, by this point we’re bouncing back and forth between angry, confused and resigned to spending this whole year hiding away drinking tea and watching ‘Only Fools and Horse’ on repeat.
Of course, here at Flicknife, we’d never even CONSIDERED letting something as small as that stop us from our task. We’ve been working since ’79. We’ve seen off everything history has thrown at us this far and we’ll see this off too. So, we’ve got a few wonderful releases for you today, to keep your spirits high and the good vibes flowing, until we all emerge on the other side of this current trauma.
How about we get started, then?
We dug around, looked under some roots, flipped over a few stones and we might have just ‘scavenged’ up some new tracks for you!
That’s right folks, The Scavengers are back! Forged like Damascus steel from former members of Crazyhead and Gaye Bykers On Acid, the Scavengers never fail to impress. So check out their epic new release 'Rights of Salvage' (SHARPCD20117 release date 25/09/2020), featuring 11 brand new tracks. It’ll be available as a digital download from all the good stockists and most of the rubbish ones. BUT, if you’re a special kind of legend, you can swing by our store and get one of the very, VERY, VERY special limited edition CDs. They’ll be first come first served. And trust me, these are going to fly out, so you’d better hurry!