TeamHorseTales

  With the Foamboy debut album out there and a panoramic soundscape to inhabit, what would be my next move? I’m not sure why but my mind has terrible brain fog for what happened in these years. As I mentioned in my last blog I found my wee logbook of releases, so that helped me determine what I did for the purposes of the next few blogs. I found some old press clippings too, but they don’t date back to the foggy years! I know I played my only gig in Belfast’s Front Page bar somewhere around this time. I’ve a photo of myself somewhere wearing a fetching pink striped t-shirt and at that time I was sporting a frazzled mop of blond hair. Quite the look I’m sure you’ll agree. Ahem. Anyway, this was a major thrill for me as I was supporting the Canadian post rockers Fly Pan Am. The gig was put on by the lovely Darren Smyth of Strange Victory and I had saw Fly Pan Am on a legendary triple bill in the Empire a few years earlier. They were supporting a then unknown Sigur Ros and Godspeed Yo...

I'm writing this blog a bit of a sweaty mess. Not from doing exercise, but from wrecking the house trying to find a wee tiny hardback book that I recently re-acquainted myself with. The contents were purest gold dust. Especially given my intent to write some historical blogs about my musical past. The front page of this little book still contains the words "Geoff Topley-Cell3-'C' Shift-Kiefel Instructions. There follows 7 points about how to start up the big plastic forming machine I used to run on the night shift in a local factory. Thereafter, there are details of every CD I released under the name Foamboy, or Foamboy Deluxe, or The Foamboy Deluxe Arkestra. Not only that, but a list of every one of the lucky bollockses who received a promo copy of their very own. This information is extremely handy given I have misplaced a lot of these CDs and can't recall the exact order of releases. You see, I didn't just pop up and fire out a lock of CDs and disappear. Oh ...

It was a strange mixture of fear and excitement breaking free from the constraints I found in the latter days of Foam/Roque Junior. I could now set about my art in my own (considerable) sweet time. I was also free from the shackles of working 12 hour night shifts, having moved jobs to daytime employment. I had nothing to stop me now and my newly acquired guitar meant I could make the sounds I wanted to without filtering them through a slightly wayward guitarist. The sampler I had was bought out of my own pocket, so it stayed with me along with the Kaoss pad and other gadgets I would use to turn a shite musician into something approximating a not so bad musician. My skill set was arrangements and knowing how to strip away the best bits of other people’s music to add my own to. I had been doing all of the admin stuff for Foam so that wasn’t going to be a problem, the main issue was always going to be the live situation. At least before I had a wingman to lean on. I wasn’t really the mo...