This Sunday at The Ruby Lounge in Manchester you can catch me playing as part of the lineup for Evil Genius: Prince.

As you would imagine, I’ll be covering a Prince song (but you’ll have to be there to find out which one it is!) as well as performing songs from the new EP. Other acts include Sloganeer, Aristocrash and Shirokuma.

Doors open at 5pm. More details at the promoter’s Myspace page. See you there!

Tomorrow night (Tuesday 6th May) I’ll be DJing in between the bands at Mushaboom - a new regular night at The Carlton Club on Carlton Road in Whalley Range, south Manchester.  Hopefully you’ll be able to make it down to say hi.

Tom Hickox, Sparky Deathcap and Klaus Says Buy The Record are all playing.  It’s £3 on the door.  I’m not sure of the start time ut 8pm is a safe bet.  See you there!

If you weren’t there last night why not? You missed an ace night. I was playing at the monthly Filthy Little Clubnight at The Castle in Manchester.

With two bands over from Liverpool, Awesome Wells and Town Bike, it was good to see a good contingent of fans had followed them over. Both bands dealt in carefree punk-influenced pop in the Kenickie mould (no bad thing in my book!) and both had songs about celebrities (Dannii Minogue and Dougie from McFly, if you’re wondering). Oh, and Town Bike had uniforms - proper bespoke ones unlike the shop-bought jacket I wear on stage. I was impressed!

How I’ve managed to miss Billy Ruffian so far, I don’t know. I’d go as far as to say that they’re the most fun live band from Manchester at the moment. Seriously - you should go see them ASAP. They win extra points from me for the blog post they published yesterday which described me as “Trent Reznor singing the songs of Grandmaster Flash shimmying with Shergar on on speed!”. I fully intend to include that quote next time I re-write my biog.

As for me, I had a great time during my set. At a couple of points I suffered what’s known as ‘James Dean Bradfield-itis’ where I forgot a couple of lyrics. This was made worse by the fact that a some people were singing along! The songs from the new EP went down well and all in all I’m itching to book loads more gigs. I chickened out of wearing a clown mask on stage though, although that does feature in the upcoming video for ‘My Little Test Case’. More news on that soon!

Finally, I felt I had to share this with you. It’s Awesome Wells’ unhappy cat mascot, or ‘mascat’ if you will.

This Friday (18th April) I’ll be playing at Filthy Little Clubnight at The Castle Hotel on Oldham Street in Manchester alongside the excellent Billy Ruffian, Town Bike and Awesome Wells.

Entry is £3 and doors open at 8pm. The Castle is a great little pub and I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of the lineup. Hopefully you’ll be able to make it down. I’ll be playing some tracks from the forthcoming ‘Kingdom Hearts’ EP for the first time so if you haven’t seen me play live for awhile, here’s a perfect opportunity!

For more details, visit the event’s Myspace profile.

With a title like that, what else can you say? Tuesday 6th May sees the first of a series of nights called Mushaboom! (exclamation mark compulsory) at The Carlton Club in Whalley Range, south Manchester, and I’ll be DJing.

No doubt I’ll be playing some Fiery Furnaces, Of Montreal, Xiu Xiu, Beck, Neon Neon and loads more inbetween sets from Tom Hickox, Sparky Deathcap and Klaus Says Buy The Record. All in all it should be a good night. Hopefully I’ll see you there!

Find out more at their Facebook group.

By the way, here’s a quick progress update on the EP - promo copies will start to be sent out at the weekend and I’m filming a video for ‘My Little Test Case’ in the Northern Quarter of Manchester on Thursday. If you’re around that day, look out for me with a clown mask and a baguette. That’s all I’m saying for now!

Don’t forget, if you haven’t heard ‘My Little Test Case’ yet, you can hear it on my Myspace page right now.

In the run up to the release of the new ‘Kingdom Hearts’ EP I’ve launched a page on Facebook where you can listen to songs and ‘interact’.  So head along there now and become a fan!

Yes, the new Star Fighter Pilot EP is called ‘Kingdom Hearts’ and is going to be available as a download from the Filthy Little Angels website from the 29th of May. If you’d like a preview though, head over to my Myspace page where you’ll find I’ve uploaded the track ‘My Little Test Case’. Let me know what you think!

Here’s the artwork…

The full track listing is:

1. My Little Test Case
2. When We Break Up
3. Cultural Song
4. 33 Suns

I’ll upload another track from the EP closer to release so keep checking back!

In what might be considered a sideways move, I’ve been booked to play a Prince tribute night at The Ruby Lounge in Manchester on the 11th of May.  Details are on the Live page.

Not sure what song I’m going to do yet.  I’m quite tempted to do ‘Batdance’ but I’ve no idea how you’d actually cover a song built of samples from a film without it sounding very silly indeed!

On Easter Saturday I “went on down to South Park” and “had myself a time”. The South Park in question was the one in Darlington, rather than the cartoon one in Colorado. Between snow showers I stood around in a T-shirt, trying to disguise how cold I was, while Louise took some rather ace photos of me.

You can find them over on the Photos page. Media bods will be glad to hear that the new ones are well over a megabyte in size each - nice high quality!

While I was away at the weekend I had some new press shots taken.  Look out for them here (hopefully) later on tonight!  In the meantime, a quick gig review.

Last night I was down at Night & Day for the first night of Chris T-T’s UK tour.  Support came in the form of Lucy And The Caterpillar.  A solo artist, rather than a band, I’ve missed her Manchester shows to date.

She’s certainly what you’d call twee.  Unashamedly so too.  If you write a song about knitting yourself a mascot in the shape of an owl then you’re so completely and utterly twee that there’s no point trying to hide it.

Giggling through her set with a northern twang she reminded me of Victoria Wood for some reason.  At one point she stopped the song she’d started by dedicating to a friend called Sarah to ensure us “I’m not a lesbian!” to much laughter in the audience.  She’s the only act I can think of that could play a Primary School and the Camden Crawl and fit in at both.  Funnily enough, that’s exactly what she’s doing!

Then Chris T-T took to the stage.  If you’ve read my biog you’ll know I cite him as an influence.  It’s not that I sound much like him, but he’s a songwriter with a unique viewpoint and isn’t afraid to expand his sound with interesting production techniques.

Starting off alone on stage, he rattled off the night’s only song from his ‘9 Red Songs’ protest song album, ‘The Huntsman Comes A-Marching’, followed by the oldest song of the night, ‘Open Books’.

This was the first time I’d seen him with a band (they got stuck in the lift) at the last gig I caught him at!  Once the band were on stage (Night & Day, luckily, has no lifts) we got loads of tunes from his rather ace new album ‘Capital’ as well as his previous London-centric album, ‘London Is Sinking’.

Combining ‘leftist protest singer’ with imaginative songs about things like giraffes flying (that one wasn’t played last night, although Lucy And The Caterpillar could have covered it without it sounding odd) makes Chris T-T unique.  I really don’t know why he’s not better known.  Do yourself a favour and go out and grab ‘Capital’.

You can catch Chris T-T on tour until the 20th of April.  Dates on his site.