Hey all, first off thanks so much for all your support with the new record. I hope those of you who’ve received your copies are enjoying it. Those who are still waiting, fear not, it’s on route to you – but a whisper away.
A quick reminder that orders for the hand-crafted versions of the CD digi-pack will stop this Thursday, so get your orders in before then if you want to be the proud owners of part of this very limited edition collection. Standard CDs are now available in Sound and Vision (music emporium) in Chatham. We’ll be dropping some copies into Rough Trade stores in London over the next week or so as well as the Deaf Cat Café in Rochester.
For those of you in reach of London, if you didn’t already know, I’m playing my first headliner of the year, a solo acoustic set at The Slaughtered Lamb this Wednesday night, 29th June. Joined by Jack Cheshire, and Dave Pickett from The Flowing, gonna be a great night – I would love you to join me. If you use Facebook, details can be found here Slaughtered Lamb Gig. You can purchase tickets here ……www.wegottickets.co.uk.
As well, here’s a few words from me about the new album and life in general, an interview I gave to DESOLATION MUSIC … Lupen Crook Interview.
Hope you all had a great weekend, Glastonbury bound or not. I had my own festival of sorts, less the mud and presence of U2 … the result was these two lo-fi home music videos that Matilda Kilda kindly assisted with (see below).
A week or so ago I supported SMOKE FAIRIES at The Royal Function Rooms in Rochester. Hg captured the gig on film. Here’s a short montage of me performing this new material, all taken from the soon to be released album ‘Waiting For The Post-Man’. PRE-ORDERS of the album and other related material will be made available in a day or two. Hope you enjoy. x
Still head high in mixing the new material, but drawing ever closer. In the meanwhile, here’s something from the vaults, a long lost video, a sweet and stolen moment filmed by Katie Camosy at the Tap ‘n’ Tin in Chatham, Kent. It was the first time I took to the stage with brothers Bob and Tom. Many thanks to Katie for making this available. x Lupen Crook
Two gigs remain before I twist me way into the New Year, where winter reflection now turns to resolution, and this time it means revolution. The horizon will hail change on all fronts, and how glorious that will be. This rendition of ‘Lest We Connect The Crooked Family’, filmed by Hg at our Southampton show at Hamptons last Wednesday, is a fitting beginning to the finale of our year .
Tonight we fix our grip onto Folkstone’s Bar Below and then head back up to Camden on the 22nd for a night of both acoustic and electric mayhem, at The Flowerpot’s new residence, The Wheelbarrow. Be great to see you there, or else I’ll catch you up in the New Year.
The tour kicks off in earnest tonight in Bristol and the guys are looking forward to seeing everyone who can make it. For those like myself who can’t be there (I’ll be joining them from Sheffield onwards), here’s the next best thing – footage of Sleeping Lions being performed at The Cellars in Eastney (Portsmouth) last Friday night. A great gig in a lovely venue, hopefully the template for what’s to come tonight and over the next couple of weeks.
Dorothy Deserves (Howie B alternative version) will be released as our next single on Monday 6th December 2010. It will be available primarily on download, with a limited edition CD (only 100 copies) available via mail order and at gigs.
The single is backed with Statement Of Dyscontent, a short spoken word piece, and Kid On Fire and Teddy Fucker, two songs that were recorded during the same sessions as the material on the album The Pros and Cons of Eating Out.
The video for Dorothy Deserves was directed by John Bland of One Eyed Monster Productions. We hope you enjoy it! Please share this little slice of one-eyed, crooked madness far and wide to help Dorothy get what she truly deserves…
We’ve got a small virtual mountain of video footage recorded at festivals and gigs over the past few months. Plans are afoot and in hand to make good use of it in varying forms. Here’s the closing song of the Latitude set, Hour Glass, which also appears on the new album. x
We have video footage from our trip to Latitude that will one day be edited and will see the light of day. At the moment, it’s all hands on deck to get the album out.
Yes, at last the album has an almost-finalised release date of 4th October. We have until the end of the next week to turn that into a beastly reality.
In the meantime, here’s some great footage that we spotted on YouTube of Dorothy Deserves at Latitude. Thanks to Nige for shooting and uploading it. x
We set ourselves rather an ambitious target by commencing work on the Devil’s Son video a fortnight before the release date, mainly due to availability of personnel and resources. Having said that, deadlines are always good for sharpening the mind.
The two songs on this double A side single highlight very different aspects of the band’s output. We therefore needed to ensure that this video worked both with and against Dave Wise’s reflective video for World’s End, which went public a few weeks ago.
We adopted an almost entirely opposing approach this time around. Little planning. No storyboard. Inspiration, but no “concept”. Spur-of-the-moment opportunities, stolen with a magpie eye and polished during the final editing phase. Creative chaos.
For the World’s End video we chose a location, made a trip of it and shivered on the shoreline in the watery Spring sunshine. For Devil’s Son we used the band’s rehearsal space in Chatham, sweating in the claustrophobic heat and dim lighting of the venue.
We had a great time. Dave joined us, filming half of the footage as well as lending the benefit of his experience. Everyone contributed ideas and I edited the footage, with Mr Crook providing guidance and feedback during the penultimate session.
Here are the results. To watch in HD, press Play, change the video quality setting from 360p to 720p and then watch full-screen (click the four outward-pointing arrows next to “720p”). If it “stutters”, you might need to drop back to 360p.
Hey punk rockers. The Crooked Family are massively excited to announce that the first Lupen Crook release of the year will be a limited edition double ‘A’ side 7″ single and download comprising World’s End and a re-recorded version of Devil’s Son, available on Monday 12th July.
This single is the first proper taster of the new material from the forthcoming third album, The Pros and Cons of Eating Out, which will be released later in the year and which forms the basis for most of our live sets this summer.
The album was recorded at Ranscombe Studios with Jim Riley and remixed by Howie B. It’s been a long and wonky road but the album is now finished. All your support so far has been massively appreciated. We hope this first offering begins to make it all worth while. Long may it continue.
World’s End and Devils Son is being released by Label Fandango and the 7″ Vinyl comes with a Crooked lyric insert for each track. It’ll be available by mail order from the label and direct from this website. You’ll also be able to buy the tracks via download and purchase the 7″ at gigs after the release date.
I mentioned the trip we all took down to Dungeness to shoot a video for World’s End, which is proudly presented above (also available on YouTube). Dave Wise has done a fantastic job. He’s also put a great pinhole shot of us at the beach on his blog. If you manage to get your hands on the vinyl you’ll also see I’ve bastardised one of Hg’s Dungeness shots for one of the lyric inserts, which all form part of this lovely little offering.
So, with the single set for release, album ready to rock and a healthy string of festival appearances lined up, our Crooked Summer Of Hate is all set to start. It would be wonderful if you can join us!
xxx
Yours SINcerely
Lupen CroOK
PS – in case you haven’t spotted, you can listen to both tracks right now on the player.
Update (9th July): the Devil’s Son video is now available here.
