Fit and the Conniptions

Regular Live Streams

2025-10-05T00:00:00+01:00

Not being able to gig due to COVID has absolutely been doing my head in.

Given that I first started streaming live music on Twitch in 2018, it would have been extremely sensible if I had resumed streaming during lockdown.

Unfortunately, being an idiot, I did not.

Anyway, better late than never, and I’ve now started twice-weekly solo streams over at https://twitch.tv/drpoopys, running from 9.30pm to 11pm or so UK time.

There’s a mix of Fit and the Conniptions music along with random covers and tunes from Other Projects. So far, I usually start on mandolin, play guitar for a bit, then switch to bass, but this may change.

It’s a lot of fun to do, it’s doing absolute wonders for my mental health, and I’d be absolutely delighted if you, Dear Reader, had the time to join me one of these Tuesdays or Saturdays. Feel free to say hi in the chat, or not, as you prefer.

At some point, I hope to invite a few guests over - I’ll keep you posted.

See you there?

Old Blue Witch At Seven

2024-05-13T00:00:00+01:00

Old Blue Witch cover art by Molly Crabapple

Tuesday week ago was the seventh anniversary of the release of Old Blue Witch.

I meant to post about it then, but eight weeks ago I had surgery (more details over in the other blog) and while I am recovering well, I am also Really Tired All The Time somehow.

That’s also why a couple of other posts I had planned for April went missing in action.

It was Record Store Day on the 20th April, and - better late than never - I should remind you that there are at least two excellent independent record shops where Old Blue Witch is available. These are Fish Records in Stone, Staffordshire, and Tough Love just round the corner from us here in St Leonard’s-on-Sea. Both lovely places, well worth the visit - and importantly - in addition to buying Old Blue Witch there, you can also buy a wide range of other records at either establishment.

If you can’t visit those, why not visit your own local independent record shop instead, and ask them to stock Old Blue Witch, or failing that just buy something else from them. Something good, obviously. They are bound to have something of that sort - it’s the kind of thing independent record shops specialise in.

The 8th April was the eleventh anniversary of the death of Margaret Thatcher in 2013. That was the day I wrote the title track of the Old Blue Witch album. I am of the generation that grew up and came of political age in Thatcher’s Britain: we witnessed the (ongoing) destruction to lives and communities wrought by her politics, and I know a lot of people who had long sworn to throw a party the day she died. Some of them did. I did not, in the end, go to a party on the night of 8th April, 2013, but I did write that song.

Old Blue Witch came in for some criticism on release. The Morning Star pointed out that the title contains a gendered slur, while a random music blogger whose name I forget refused to so much as review it on the grounds that it was ‘too political’ and ‘disrespectful of a great historical figure’. I’m still pretty pleased with it though.

Have a listen:

Old Blue Witch by Fit and the Conniptions

Bob Crow

2024-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Photo: Jarle Vines, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s exactly ten years to the day - as I write - since Bob Crow died at the very young age of 52.

Non-UK readers may not have heard of him - the short of it is that Bob Crow was the General Secretary of the RMT trade union representing railway workers.

For more detail, Wikipedia has a fairly good article, but there’s something it doesn’t quite capture.

Left-wing politics in the UK has for some time lacked anything remotely resembling an articulate, charismatic, successful figure. Corbyn was none of those things. Starmer doesn’t even count.

But Bob Crow was exactly that. Everyone knew who he was and what he stood for. Everyone knew that the RMT union under his leadership would never roll over and accept cuts to wages, to staff, to working conditions, or to health and safety.

That’s a big deal in a country where the right-wing press likes - still - to crow that the power of the unions was destroyed forever by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. This is a lie.

It was reduced, certainly, but not destroyed. As long as he lived - and beyond - Bob Crow was a continual reminder of the continued truth of Billy Bragg’s words: There Is Power In A Union.

When he died, I wanted to write a song about him in tribute. So I did:

Old Blue Witch by Fit and the Conniptions

I re-used the melody of an older song about a different union leader from a different place and time - Joe Hill - because that’s how folk music works.

Sometimes I think I may never write a better song.

See what you think.

Valentine’s Day

2024-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

FatC live at Aces and Eights with Dana Immanuel on guest vocals.
Photo by John Banyard - johnbanyard.com

I am not, of course, a goth, not even remotely, and never was, but Valentine’s Day is definitely one of my Top Three Gothiest songs.

Here are the lyrics:

Valentine’s Day in the cemetery
All of the dancers are dead
Been running so long don’t know where I went wrong
I don’t even know what I just said.

Valentine’s Day in the mortuary
All of the knives are so clean
They shine in the sun as they whisper of one
Who will show them the things they have seen

On Valentine’s Day,
Valentine’s Day.
Just a few hours, till it’s all gone away.

Valentine’s Day in the hospital
All of the nurses are gone
Been looking for you, I don’t know what to do
I don’t even remember this song

Valentine’s Day in the dockyard
All of the ships sail away
And I’m left here alone with a flower and a phone
And a rock and a handful of hay.

And a handful of hay
Handful of hay
Just a few hours, till it’s all gone away

On Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day.
Just a few hours, till it’s all gone away.

I’ve recorded it a few times, but the most recent version, on the Old Blue Witch album, features the very excellent Dana Immanuel on harmony vocals.

Have a listen:

Old Blue Witch by Fit and the Conniptions

Sleeping Beauty At Ten

2024-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

Sleeping Beauty album cover

Yesterday I gave my 2014 release Sleeping Beauty a listen for the first time in a very long time.

It’s always hard to listen to your own music in the same way as music made by other people. This is especially hard if you didn’t just write it, arrange it, sing it and play several of the instruments, but were also responsible for mixing and producing the recording. But with sufficient time and distance, you can - sometimes - get beyond hyperfocussing on all the arguable production choices and minor fluffs in your own performance (never anyone else’s…), and hear the music itself, as if for the first time.

It’s… pretty damn good, given the limitations I was working with.

Sleeping Beauty was released ten years ago today, and most of the recording came from a single session that happened twelve years before that, in 2002.

It’s still not easy for me to write about.

I’ve tried to tell the story more than once, both over in the comic, where I had a stab at doing so in a complete change of visual style for nine pages before flaking out, starting here, and also on the notes to the Bandcamp page for the album.

In short, 2002 was the year I had my Major Mental Health Event, during which I went - very suddenly - from being a superficially normal functioning young adult lucky enough to have a good job, nice London bedsit and generally comfortable existence, to being an unemployed self-medicating bag of nerves incredibly fortunate not to be homeless due to the availability of a spare room at my parents’ house.

I still feel weirdly guilty about that period, because it all could have been so much worse. I survived entirely due to numerous immense privileges including having a supportive family. Many people going through the same kind of thing just… don’t.

What little money I had went on trying to record an album of eight songs in one day at the old Bonafide Studios in Old Street. I self-released four rough mixes from that session under the then-band name Fast Freddie Fourier and the Transforms. It was another twelve years before I was together enough to finish the whole thing and call it a Fit and the Conniptions release.

It’s much darker and gothier than I remember it being. There are no political songs on this one, just songs of love, loss, awe, pain and - hopefully - healing.

I’m on guitar, bass and vocals, and the other musicians - Kevin Davy (trumpet), Danny Keane (cello), Brian Hedemann (drums) and Alero Scott (vocals) are all superb.

Have a listen yourself:

Sleeping Beauty by Fit and the Conniptions

Gigs!

2024-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

FatC live at Nambucca, July 2017

Gigs.

I miss them terribly and I don’t miss them at all.

I’ve been unable to gig since Boris Johnson declared COVID to be over by decree as part of the Tory party’s ongoing War On Reality, and - what with various health issues I shall not bore you with - it stopped being safe for me to do them. But the truth is that that I’d stopped playing nearly so many Fit and the Conniptions gigs in the few years beforehand.

Over and over again the same cycle: the brief burst of excitement at getting something in the diary. Someone taking an interest! Or at least feigning interest!

Flurries of emails to musicians trying to see who was free that night and sort out a line-up. The great thing about Holly and Duncan is that they are fantastic musicians, but the problem with them is that they are fantastic musicians. So they are in at least seventeen other projects each at all times, generally in high demand and have very full diaries. I’ve a list of other friends I call after that; all fantastic musicians also, and also - as such - always busy. But there’s always a band.

The band is the best bit, to be truthful.

After that, all the social media nonsense, busting a gut trying to get people to attend or at least say they will, designing posters, drawing cartoons, making flyers, managing the occasional mailing list post even though hardly anyone on it lives in the same country, generally flailing wildly, the anticipation, the runthroughs, making the set list - again - and then finally, all too often…

Turning up to find the PA is two empty coke cans suspended from a piece of string held up with gaffer tape in a cardboard box propped up on a piece of bent scaffolding plugged directly into the mains with a plug marked ‘Do Not Use’ in purple felt tip pen, all running through a desk looking like something salvaged from a collision between a submarine and a disused lighthouse - some of the channels work! - you are told, no, not that one, and the mic smells funny because last night was Comedy Night. There’s another mic but it doesn’t work. You can set that all up can’t you? Bill said he was doing the sound but he can’t make it.

Spending the evening pretending I’m having an absolutely fantastic time playing to four or five people, two or three or all of whom are in one of the other bands anyway, with one guy - always this one guy - talking loudly not quite through the entire set, but waiting for the quiet bits and talking then.

The blank, bored faces of excruciatingly London hipster bar staff tragically doomed to be trapped in the room by forces beyond their control, hating you with every fibre of their being not already devoted to hating everything not you, wishing they were dead or somewhere else, or that you were dead or somewhere else, or that everyone was dead and somewhere else, or that maybe the place would suddenly explode, or sink, or melt, or something.

The constant stream of messages through the evening from people wishing you well for the gig and so sorry they couldn’t make this one.

The heavy merch case that half the time I would be too embarrassed to open, it being painfully obvious that not only would no-one be buying a CD but there was no point trying to give badges away either because no-one would want them.

The rush of adrenaline from playing as if the room was full anyway counteracting the effects of shitty, overpriced and now pointless beer. Then the adrenaline crash after the set, more shitty, overpriced and still pointless beer, and the long, lonely, empty journey home.

Not every gig was like that, of course, but too many were. Way too many. Thankfully hardly anyone came to those ones ;)

On an entirely unrelated note, here’s me, Duncan and H (from the Stolen Band) playing Chez Tina at the Harringay Arms in Crouch End in 2018.

As you see in the video, they put bands on in a sort of corridor / storage area sectioned off from the rest of the pub as if they wanted live music but were also embarrassed by it and hoped it didn’t disturb their regular customers. Duncan’s playing is great and H makes it all groove like a bastard. That One Guy gets his oar in early but thankfully wanders off. The bar staff there hated me so much. So much. I don’t know why. I’m always very polite.

Didn’t get asked back, but I’d have said no anyway. I’ll play almost anywhere once, because you never know. But life is too short for shitty gigs.

What I miss are the good ones.

Meanwhile, until COVID is no longer a thing, the next Fit and the Conniptions gig will be online.

You’ll be the first to hear of it.

Eighteen!

2024-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

The first Fit and the Conniptions comic

As Granny Weatherwax might say, I ATENT DEAD.

Not only that, but it’s eighteen years now since I began Fit and the Conniptions.

I’m not sure who’s supposed to feel old.

The original idea was for a combined band and webcomic project, so I began with a comic, that being quicker and easier than putting a band together.

The first comic was uploaded on January 6th, 2006, and it’s still there over on the comics site, along with the other 782 I’ve drawn, or perhaps, more accurately, “drawn”, in that time.

783 comics works out at an average of between 43 and 44 comics a year, but when you consider that I managed three a week for most of the first several years and only produced one in the whole of 2023 plus not very many at all in previous recent years, well… yeah.

It’s got sporadic. I’m fine with that.

Despite various attempts to try different things at various points, the art style (or “art” “style”) of the comic hasn’t really evolved too much over the years, and in any case the comic side of the project is now very much Its Own Separate Thing with its Own Separate Website. I’m fine with that too.

The first full band gig was November 2006. It was a scratch outfit put together at the last minute and that lineup sadly never played together again. There’s video somewhere - I should probably try and dig that out ;)

It took me two and a half years to release the first Fit and the Conniptions album, Bless Your Heart, in 2008.

For financial and practical reasons, I cheated slightly on the band bit by playing all the instruments myself. It’s got a definite wobbly lo-fi vibe, but the songs are solid. The CDs sold out.

Have a listen:

Bless Your Heart by Fit and the Conniptions

Good lord.

Anyway.

Here we are.

It’s 2024 and work on the fifth FatC album is ongoing.

To be clear: I ATENT DEAD.

2021 Roundup

2022-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Mainly, 2021 sucked.

I did manage a filk though:

I blogged about it in the other blog.

A Shiny New Website

2021-01-09T14:11:00+00:00

At long last I’ve got around to a complete overhaul of conniptions.org. Hi! Welcome.

The old design was all very well for 2011 or so - the blog I wrote at the time suggests that I was very pleased with it then - but it was now no longer fit for purpose. Code rots in real time. You can watch it happening.

Firstly, the old site didn’t work on mobile phones. This meant that most people visitors will simply have thought the band was defunct - nothing says ‘band on hiatus’ in 2021 more clearly than a band website that doesn’t render properly on a phone. But the band is very much not defunct. Snoozing, perhaps, like many bands under lockdown, but not defunct.

Secondly, the big experiment of trying to have a combined band/webcomic thing is now, I think, very much over. I’m still going to draw the comics, and the comic is still called ‘Fit and the Conniptions’, but I’ve separated it out from the main band site into its own little silo, where it now lives. I’m keeping the latest comic on the front page of this site for the moment, but it’s at the bottom of the page and I might lose it at some point.

Finally, the blog needed a rework, and now it’s had one. Conflating the Wayne blog with the FatC blog wasn’t sensible, and Blogger is - for me - increasingly painful to use. So, I’ve now moved everything from there over to a new location, and added a new ‘News’ section here (you’re reading it now) for band specific posts.

Posts such as the one I should have - but for some reason did not - write about the recording and release of Old Blue Witch in 2017.