Captain Biggles

I have a frightfully big bone to pick with Google.

Imagine that you are strolling absentmindedly along your local high-street one day when you suddenly recognise an old acquaintance walking in the opposite direction. As you wave congenially to them you would expect to obtain some form of acknowledgement. It might be a fleeting glance. It might be a handshake. It might be that you spend the next four hours making small talk in the nearest Weatherspoon with someone you hardly know. Whatever the outcome, it is deemed the greatest slight to ‘blank’ such an advance altogether. To be left impotently gesticulating in a public place is the ugliest humiliation. In polite society, if quarrelling is like traditional military engagement, a ‘blank’ is the social equivalent of unleashing mustard gas. It is a dirty, underhand and gruesome tactic.

This is how I feel about Google. Oh, had you forgotten that I was discussing our omnipotent webmaster?

Google knows exactly who I am. I visit her several times a day and ask her various ontological questions. It is a sad truth that I see Google with more frequency than I see my own mother. Why then, when I type the words ‘KITES MYSPACE’ into her window of wisdom, does she callously refuse to recognise me?

Google! You left me standing limply in the street screaming your name as you walked casually by! If I knew what ‘Bing’ was I would be using it!

To make matters worse, she happily lists every other band with a similar name. Evidently, Google has her favourites. She is as fickle as the most weak-minded primary school teacher. I will not be party to such petty politics. Ever since Google signed a deal with Verizon she has undermined the very principle of digital democracy. Why should I change a band name for the sole purpose of improving my SEO ratings? No, it is Google who should change. Let us revolt against this cruel tyrant!

If I saw Google in the street nowadays, I wouldn’t simply blank her, I would go over and spit in her face!

Oh dear, I think I need a cloth to clean my computer monitor.

"So let's not drift here like the Raft of Medusa. 

We'll make our way to the rocky shores of South Georgia.

In an open boat.

We pitch our hopes."

Pretentious? Moi?

There is so much about my elevated prose that merits public ridicule. Perhaps you think I should hang my head in shame? These entries are not the typed ramblings of a literary wizard but of a garrulous parrot. I am aware that I frequently use words carelessly and, dare I say it, incorrectly. Please pocket your red pens and arrest your rolling eyeballs. They are not wanted here!

"It’s so easy to laugh,
It’s so easy to hate.
It takes guts to be gentle and kind."

I make no apologies. Without such brash declarations the world would be so much less colourful. Put plainly, my jejune words are symptomatic of my character.

Maybe you think I should try to emulate Hemingway? He knew how to write. He knew how to keep things simple. Really. Simple.
But It would hardly be convincing. It would hardly reflect Matthew Phillips.

Blogs serve as a gateway into an artist’s internal monologue. They are not carefully edited or scrutinised.
In short, they are not lyrics.

The present outburst took minutes to compose.
In contrast, I can toss and turn and sweat over a period of many weeks until I feel content with a single word in any given Kites track.

Now I must leave you. I have a dictionary I am desperately attempting to swallow!

Kites Tour – Part 3

Exchanging Glances Over Glasses

So this was our nadir. We clambered into our vehicle on Wednesday morning without the usual Flintstones-like aplomb. As I configured our Sat-Nav for Manchester, I was demoralised, fatigued and disillusioned. Privately, I was dreading our journey through the barren moors of Northern England and yet, somehow, the experience was to provide roboration for our troubles. I soon learnt that this was not a land of dark Satanic Mills, as William Blake may have described it, but one where hope springs eternal. As we twisted and meandered our way through the salubrious countryside, I could feel Kites’ lifeblood return.

We were greeted in the car park of Blueprint Studios by Frederick and his assistant Christopher. These two amiable characters instantly put our combustible nerves at rest. My previous experiences of recording houses had been limited to snotty adolescents slouching before faders and dials like they were attempting to fathom Pythagoras’ Theorem.

Blueprint Studios was to be an altogether different affair.

We were ushered into separate rooms and left to set up our equipment with the sort of care usually reserved for Airfix model aeroplanes. The glamour of Blueprint seemed like a world distantly removed from the flat cider, temperamental equipment, and howling feedback that we had grown accustomed to. I could not have imagined how easily Kites would assimilate this new territory. Georgie and Taio refined their parts in under three takes whilst Richard aided Frederick in pin-pointing snares and crashes which were a nano-second out of time. Some might call such punctiliousness ludicrous but I was charmed by his thirst for perfection.

We left the studios flushed with excitement and clutching our first professionally engineered demo. It hasn’t been released yet and therefore I must urge patience!

Manchester embraced us in its bosom as we frolicked through its streets in a whirlwind of interviews, inebriation and youthful folly. It all culminated in a fantastic show at the Night & Day Cafe where we were fortunate enough to meet the lovely Andrew Grimshaw of Get Your Ears Out.

There was only one journey and one more show in Brixton before our maiden tour would reach its natural denouement.

We were tired.

We were dirty.

We were enriched, enhanced and empowered by our experiences.

We were ready to face a nebulous future with confidence and optimism.

A huge ‘thank you’ to our manager – Matt Errington – who made this all possible.

Next stop: Indigo2...

Kites Tour – Part 2

Exchanging Glances Over Glasses

With trepidation.

With anxiety.

With cowered effervescence, Kites embarked on the second phase of their tour.

Alarmingly, our mode of transportation was motorcar and I was to be the designated chauffeur.  I had not grasped a steering wheel for two and a half years and yet I was the only member of Kites to hold a valid driving license.  On the last occasion I had handled an automobile my long suffering Nissan Micra – Mauritius - had endured a head-on collision with an indomitable Audi A3.  I will not bother to elucidate upon which car escaped with a scratched number-plate and which car was towed to the nearest scrapheap, suffice to say that the prospect of my motorway hegemony put fear into the hearts of my other band members. 

In the event, it was nigh impossible to exceed speeds that a semi-motorised tortoise would find exhilarating.  The M1 was riddled with tailbacks and I spent more time with my foot on the brakes than I did cruising precariously down the outside lane.  We finally arrived in Nottingham both unremarkably intact and unpardonably late. 

I had never frequented Nottingham and I admit that I may have formed some fairly ignorant preconceptions of the Midlands capital.  However, upon entering ‘The Maze’, such preconceptions were immediately confirmed, albeit temporarily, when Rich was propositioned by a lady of the night.  I am not suggesting that there is anything particularly unseemly about this incident. I am not a prude!  I am merely passing comment on the thin passage of time between alighting from our vehicle and our introduction into the city’s carnal playground.  Alas, my fascination with our new surroundings was to end soon after this sensual curiosity.  As we ascended the stage it became hideously apparent that the venue was ill-equipped to engineer two guitarists, one keyboard player and a drummer. It is no embellishment to say that my monitor sounded like the feedback from Kevin Shield’s guitar amplifier.  Kites fumbled and clawed their way through a thirty minute set like four deaf, dumb and blind kids.  It will therefore come as no surprise when I declare that Nottingham was not exactly the renaissance we sought after Birmingham.

If we were hoping to take consolation in an early night we were much mistaken.  The most gruesome of vigils was thrust upon us when our hotel's fire alarm resounded at 3.30am.  The sleep that we so desperately craved before our recording session in Manchester the next day had been cruelly taken away. 

Little did we know that fortune was about to smile on us once again...         

This is a pictorial representation of how I felt during the Birmingham fiasco...

Kites Tour - Part 1

Kites Tour
Exchanging Glances Over Glasses
Part 1.


Kites have just concluded the first leg of their summer tour and are presently enjoying a brief siesta before they depart to Nottingham tomorrow morning.  It therefore falls upon me – Kites’ loquacious and, arguably, inane vocalist – to herein recount the details of the first chapter of their musical expedition.

I was under no delusions of what a tour entailed.  As a blemished teen, I had devoured enough rock biographies to make the Encyclopædia Britannica look like a harmless collection of Enid Blyton novels.  The realities of life on tour – the technical debacles, the in-band quarrelling, the interminable tinnitus! – were not part of some secret history but were as familiar to me as my own reflection.  Imagine then my internal confusion as I struggled to comprehend the perpetual difficulties that were to rain down on us like manna from heaven.  As an enthusiast of musical folk-lore, I knew that these trials and tribulations were an inevitability.  As the singer of Kites, I was utterly dumbfounded.

Our opening show in Guildford was fairly innocuous.  The venue itself reminded me of the scene in ’24 Hour Party People’ when Tony Wilson unveils the Hacienda to his bemused colleagues at Factory Records.   Just like at the inauguration of its illustrious counterpart in Manchester, the paint had barely dried on the walls of Guilford’s Backline Live.  The post-industrial interior was sparsely populated by an advanced guard of Surrey musos.  Clearly, in six months time, this setting will be their cultural Mecca but, for now, it is still in its embryonic stages.

Although Guilford could not be declared a disaster it was hardly the launching pad into global ubiquity that we were hoping for.  Moreover, Kites’ next performance at 93 Feet East was prefaced by a string of ill portents that sent chills down my spine.  Please don’t drown me in a lake!  I am not a witch.  I do not jovially greet magpies.  I deplore Mystic Meg.  In fact, I am probably the most unspiritual cynic you will ever meet but, on this occasion, nerves were getting the better of me.  Let me quickly recite the facts; we were an hour late for soundcheck after a journey that would make Marco Paulo look like an errant schoolboy, Taio’s guitar was on strike, and tumbleweed was rolling through an empty venue.   It thus seemed like a veritable miracle when Taio plucked his first note and the sticky floors of 93 Feet East exploded with the dancing feet of revellers who had forsaken balmy beer gardens for Kites’ brand of provocative melodrama.

Intoxicated with our own success in East London, we arrived in Birmingham brimming with youthful enthusiasm.  We were scheduled to headline a mini-festival at the Hare & Hounds - an extraordinary little venue tucked into the heart of the city's King's Heath area.  The day had been a delight as we prepared for our set by supping on shandies and lolling our heads in the late afternoon sunshine.  Should we have been suspicious at this juncture?  Perhaps; yet our equipment had been under our eagle-like supervision all day and there seemed to be no real cause for concern.

And so it was that, upon taking the stage for our performance, an emotional uproar was to occur that seemed like two tectonic plates colliding.  IBM!  You have so much to answer for.  As a modern day Luddite, technology has never been a friend to me but I never expected our sturdy laptop to give way at such a crucial moment.  On closer inspection it became apparent that the machine had been sabotaged and there was no way of knowing how it happened.  If there is a culprit I would like to presently articulate a few words to them: 'I hope that you suffer some similar calamity in the not too distant future you churl!'  Our vexation was only exacerbated by the knowledge that this would have been a truly memorable event to partake in.

On this occasion we had been denied that privilege.  We could only pray that our our fortunes would improve for the second half of our tour: 'Exchanging Glances Over Glasses'.