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January
2001 to April 2004
Following
the group's triumphant return at London's Forum,
all of the members then returned to their normal
day jobs and the group disappeared from the public
view again although it was confirmed that the group
were looking to appear at a couple of festivals
in the UK during the Summer.
By March,
it was clear that plans for the release of a live
album culled from the Forum dates were still underway
as producer Mick Glossop had completed initial mixing
of a planned compilation release. Planned
to be a double album of 26 tracks, the mixes were
only eventually taken from the December 14th and
15th performance. It was also announced that
the group were planning on releasing a new DVD to
follow up the Welcome To The Cheap Seats video which
would include up-to-date live performances, interviews
and other features.
The
same month, Miles appeared on the BBC2 television
series Never Mind The Buzzcocks - a music-related
celebrity quiz show hosted by Mark Lemarr.
Unfortunately, it is rumouored that Miles and Lemarr
did not get on well during the recording of the
show, frequently trading insults and banter.
As a result, the aired broadcast showed Miles appearing
sullen throughout, barely speaking two words and
seemingly generally bored and un-interested.
However,
to boost spirits in April, the announcement was
made of the release of the live album from the Forum
performances. Titled 'Cursed With Insincerity',
the album was to be released on Eagle Records at
the end of May although this was later moved to
early June in order to coincide with a major article
on the group to be featured in the Sunday Express
newspaper. Sadly, a new features editor took
over at the company the week before the article
was due to run and shelved it.
Shortly
before the release of the album, the group issued
a statement on their website saying that a small
number the albums contained a 'golden ticket'.
These tickets, limited to just a few hundred, would
give the holder entry to a special ticketholders-only
concert to be held at London's Kings College on
June 7th. London radio station XFM would also
be airing a competition to win tickets.
More
live dates were also announced for August which
would see the group playing their first festival
appearance since reforming at Nottingham's Longest
Day festival in addition to two dates at the Ocean
in London and the group also took part in an online
interview for the internet service provider, Compuserve
to promote the album release and tour.
At the
end of June, it was announced that Miles had been
asked to appear alongside one of his lifelong idols,
Tom Robinson at his forthcoming concert at The Fez
in New York. They played four songs together
including 'Not Ready', one of Miles' favourites
and Miles also helped out during the encore.
As with many of Tom's concerts, his cult status
often leads to a varied audience and, on this occasion,
a number of known musical names could be spotted
in the audience including Blondie's lead singer,
Debbie Harry.
Following
the groups appearances in Nottingham and London
in August, a series of Christmas dates were lined
up in Wolverhampton and Glasgow, with a special
warm-up gig scheduled for the Rio in Bradford.
It also emerged that a limited edition CD EP would
be sold at the venues which would contain previously
unreleased material. Although the EP was not
to contain newly recorded material, it did offer
the exposure of one of the last tracks to be demoed
by the group in 1994, Sing Our Song. Other
tracks on the EP including live versions of Sing
The Absurd, Unfaithful and Piece of Sky - all versions
of which had been mixed during the preparation of
the Cursed With Insincerity album but not included
on the release. The remaining track on the
EP was a rare demo version of Ooh Ooh, Ahh Ahh from
1987. Although some of the groups demo tracks
have been heard by fans, this version is not one
that had previously been available. Limited
to just 2000 copies, each copy would also be numbered
and signed by the group members.
Prior
to the December dates, the group launched a competition
on their website for local bands to support them
at each of the venues. The competition was
aimed at groups without existing recording contracts
and was simply aimed at getting them more exposure.
The eventual winners were: Bradford - Fugoo, Glasgow
- Nabushi Shang Hong, Wolverhampton (1st night)
- Theory of Everything, Wolverhampton (2nd night)
- Moco. The other support act on the tour
was the legendary Jesus Jones.
2002
As was
now becoming customary for the group, following
the December live dates each of the group members
went their separate ways again. Since the
group had reformed in 2000, Martin Gilks was acting
as their manager arranging the tours and handling
initial promotion etc. Miles was actually
once quoted as saying that he would just get a call
from Martin out of the blue saying that they had
had an offer to play somewhere and was he available.
That left Miles to concentrate more on his solo
career.
Indeed,
nothing more was heard from the group for another
four months until they announced on their website
that they would be playing at London's Fleadh Festival
in June supporting The Pogues and Joe Strummer.
To prepare for the gig, a warm-up date at Dudley's
JB's the previous night was arranged.
2003
2003
began with the announcement that the year promised
the long-awaited release of the group's new DVD
in addition to a handful of live dates - the
group would be returning to Dubai early in March
to play at the Aviation Club and would also be headlining
at the Longest Day Festival which was being held
in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham in August.
A special
DVD launch concert was held at London's Canary Wharf
in February where the audience could purchase the
first copies of the release - the only difference
between these versions and the released versions
were that the sleeves had no barcodes on them.
A few
weeks later,
dates were also
announced for a pre-Christmas tour which would see
the group playing a handful of larger venues in
England and Scotland. The tour would be preceded
with a warm-up date to be held at the Ambassador
Hotel in Dublin. The group also performed
at a special after-show party at The Hub in Dublin
After much anticipation
and delay, the long-awaited new DVD was finally
released to retailers in mid-May. There were
no explanations for the delay from the time of the
DVD launch concert back in February. When
the idea was first announced almost two years ago,
it was anticipated that the release would tie-up
the public availability of the promo videos for
the single releases by including the final three
videos from the 'Construction...' album along with
rare archive performances and other exclusive content.
With the features available on DVD and it's increased
capacity over its video counterpart, much was hoped
for. Sadly, when the release finally came
out, 'Construction For The Modern Vidiot' only contained
tracks recorded at a selection of live appearances
during the previous three years mixed with live
chat and interviews. Martin Bell had been
primarily involved in the DVD project and whether
he had not been given permission to use older material
from it's copyright owners is not known but it was
felt this was a great opportunity missed and not
the 'Welcome To The Cheap Seats'-style follow-up
we were once told of.
Nevertheless, the
DVD showed the group in fine form, playing live
with renewed vigour and thumping out all of the
classics from their back catalogue such as 'Mission
Drive', 'Golden Green', 'Ten Trenches Deep' in addition
to the inclusion of their cover of John Lennon's
'Gimme Some Truth'. The recordings were taken
from the group's London Forum shows in 2000, Nottingham's
Longest Day Festival in 2001 and the Fleadh Festival
in 2002.
Shortly after the
release of the DVD, three of the December dates
were cancelled 'due to unforeseen circumstances'
- Bournemouth, Sheffield and Glasgow. Although
it was said at the time that the dates would be
rescheduled, as the end of the year got closer it
became apparent that this was no longer the case
and only the London, Manchester and Birmingham dates
would be going ahead as planned.
In an interview
for the icBirmingham website, Martin Gilks spoke
of new work the group had recently been involved
in. They had been approached to write some
music for two new children's television series'.
The first one, Underground Ernie (for the Fremantle
Corporation), was initially to be a 26-episode series
and, according to Martin, was "...rather like an
update of Thomas The Tank Engine, but it's on the
underground. There's a character called Jubilee,
another called Bakerloo who looks a bit like Sherlock
Holmes, and Ernie is like the Fat Controller."
Initial pictures also show the series to include
a street busker who seems to bear an uncanny resemblence
to a certain Mr. Hunt.... The Stuffies would
feature on the theme tune to the series with the
narration provided by former footballer, Gary Lineker.
The other series, with a working title of Lord Nose,
was still very much 'work-in-progress' but said
to be along the lines of the Mister Men animation
series.
Martin also spoke
about plans for the setlist of the forthcoming tours
and, for the first time, about new material the
group had been working on. "We're going to
delve into our back catalogue and see what we haven't
played yet. One of my ideas was to put it to the
audience through our website." "We have also
got some proper new songs too," he revealed. "We
haven't got around to thinking about what we're
going to do with them yet because we've all got
full time jobs - Miles is in New York with Clint
Mansell from the Poppies working on some soundtracks,
Malc is a personal trainer and Martin Bell syncs
music to films - but I hope we'll get a chance to
record them in the New Year."
One
online ticket retailer also began advertising
tickets for an appearance by the group at the
Ocean (Hackney, London) in March 2004. The
venue would be celebrating it's 3rd birthday at
the time and the group had been asked to appear
as part of a series of concerts the venue were
looking to put on.
2004
Early
in 2004, Miles announced on the Miles Hunt Club
website that he had begun work on his next solo
album, 'Escape From Rubbish Island', which would
be released in the Summer of 2004. However,
a few months prior to it's release, news began circulating
that The Wonder Stuff would be releasing an album
around the same time which started leading to much
confusion. All soon became clear - the forthcoming
album from Miles was now going to be released under
the Wonder Stuff banner, rather than as a solo project.
It was not to be The Wonder Stuff that we were were
expecting though....
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