7/1/00

Hi Everyone,

I hope you all had a fantastic New Year.
I spent the weeks leading up to Christmas in New York mixing a little bit of work with pleasure, Joined Up Talking has a 'big city feel' to me and with much of the language used on it based on Americana I felt it was appropriate to start looking for a label out there.

The weirdest highlight being that I bumped into Louis from Rialto in the lobby of NYC's cheapest hotel, The Paramount. He had just flown in to meet some friends who lived opposite and needed to use the phone because it was pouring with rain. Coincidence or what?! I was on my way out the door to see Buckcherry playing at The Bowery Ballroom (a bit like The Garage in London) so I dragged him along. I have to say they were superb, reminded us of the New York Dolls a bit, they had a great sense of 'send up'.

The next MLS single Walk/Don't Walk was a vague attempt to recreate a sort of Brill building song with Al Green and some Temptations thrown in for good measure. I know songs never turn out how you originally expect them to and that's the beauty of the writing process, they eventually become your own style. Standing outside the Brill Building and breathing in all those great songs was an inspiration.

After a week I took a flight to meet up with 'Chicago's first lady of phallus, Cynthia Plaster -Caster. I had been introduced to her by Mary from Apollo 440 some years earlier when she had been on a trip to London to see MLS among other bands. I promised then, I would donate a replica of my appendage to her collection, but unfortunately we couldn't get the necessary materials she needed for casting in the UK.

Finally I am proud to announce a new baby boy arrived on Friday 17th December in the state of Illinois, I am officially Number 42 in her 3 decades of dunking and the last to be cast in the 20th Century. I don't know which order she puts them in on her shelves, but I'd like to think she'd plonk me down between her Tony Newley and Pete Shelley.

The B sides for Walk/Don't Walk are now mixed and we're just getting all the artwork off to the printers. I finally gave in and put an already recorded version of Cherries on CD1, we were originally going to put it on the 4th album but I've written so many new songs since my return home that it would have sounded a little out of place. Therefore Cherries is now officially my favourite ever B-side.

Finally we will be organising a 'secret' tiny sweaty venue gig before the LA2 show in London. We really enjoyed The Princess Charlotte gig in Leicester on the last tour and we're all up for another near death on stage experience again. We'll keep you posted in the News section when the details come through.

Keep your peckers up

Jakexxx

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25/10/99

Hi Everyone,

It's Monday night and I find myself sitting on my bed waiting for it to drive off to another provincial town. Simon's got "tour flu" which basically means that when you stop and take a long hard look at yourself after nearly 30 days of touring - 'bad stuff' comes out of your body.

I really enjoyed this tour, more so than many before. I think it was due to the fact that we feel up against the world again (like our very first tour when we we're introducing weird things called violins to modern day pop music) yes, up against a world of crass consumerism, talent fatigue and general dumbing down of the arts and especially MUSIC.

Seeing Empire Line receive a relatively luke warm response from the media came as no surprise to me, it was a brave record to release. A song with a message, a fascinating story and a quirky selection of instruments (my debut on harmonica, oh, yes), is always going to find it hard against the high budget, low rent svengali lead music that now infects our charts.

One of the band's favourite tracks, I have always seen the song in the way that some MLS fans view our more popular b-sides. I would have regretted it being a b-side or just an album track. The competitive side of my nature has infected my disappointment glands and the diagnoses is that, yes, it is a shame that we have failed to notch up our 7th consecutive Top 40, but to be honest, the charts, now, don't reflect what's really lurking out there. The mid-nineties was full of interesting bands going in like torpedoes and competing one to one with Tina Turner. We have to accept that times have changed. Not that we got anyware near, but it was interesting. Remember Monorail on the National Lottery Show? They we're pissing themselves.

On a more positive note, the tour has been a great success, I now feel that this maybe the only possible route for original bands to get themselves heard. As we entered into the last six days of the Empire Tour I noticed we had gathered great momentum in crowd size and a "tightness' in the band. Regular faces were appearing all over the country (a special mention has to go to Jaimie from Pheonix, who flew to the U.K. to witness 11 shows and a large bit of Hadrian's Wall).

The sweaty intensity of many of the venues suited our more 'urgent' sounding tracks and it was great introducing new songs like 'Stalemate' to the set. Leicester was particularly memorable as I blacked out on stage for a couple of seconds under the intense heat, oh, and a curry that I'd just eaten from 'Friends' -Leicester's 2nd best curry house- according to the venue's promoter.

I'd just like to apologise to all the fans that had to endure the terrible conditions at the Derby gig. The band were unable to perform to their true potential due to a series of problems. Namely, the PA system could not cope with a band of more than 5 members, the stage was too small and the ceiling was so low that Crows head touched it, the stage was still being built at 5.30 that afternoon, the ceiling had nails sticking out of it, the crew warned us that the electrics may be faulty and it was possible we may get a shock off the mics if we touched our guitars, I had no sound on stage and could not hear anything. The strings and Rox were unable to perform due to this and we had to make do with a cut down set. The Pub's dog came onto the stage at one point! The fact that the venue had the audacity to charge £6 to you lot makes my blood boil. I will be having words with our agent.

Thanks to all MLSers who turned up to any of the shows, you showed us that somebody does care for what we do and we will hopefully pay you back for your loyalty. Thanks also to all the new fans that have just been introduced to the band though 'Girl Thing' and 'Empire Line' for checking us out.

Jakexxx

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31/8/99

Hi everyone,

Shillingford reporting in on Reading Festival Jinx.

Well it's been one of those weekends, the messageboard is down, the power on stage at the Reading festival was faulty and our supa sleepa bus broke down on the way to Leeds. OK. Apparently it was a full moon that day and I didn't wear my lucky Chelsea boots on stage for the first time. That must be it.

Unfortunately the bad luck doesn't stop there, the TV at the back of the bus fell out of it's fittings and smashed, after the driver had to make an emergency break. Worst of all, and I'm sure some of you noticed, Lucy was taken very ill a few hours before the Reading show with a bad fever. She managed to play a few songs but eventually had to leave the stage in mid-performance to seek treatment from the St. John's ambulance crew.

We bumped into Sarah our deputy cello player who was playing with Beth Orton that day, and found out that the crew had snapped her cello in half buy hastily removing it from the main stage!

Actually as we arrived at the Leeds site, we started to get bits of info filtering through from Reading suggesting, that it wasn't just MLS who have been cursed. Intermittent power surges had apparently affected nearly every other band on the Radio One stage, including Sparklehorse and Manson. The former managing to complete only 3 songs. Jim's Super Stereoworld had no monitors for their show on another stage,... I'm sure you all have your own accounts.

Believe me I was broken hearted after the concert, we were sounding great in rehearsal. Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do when things happen in this way, after being told that it was our equipment that was faulty, we checked it in Leeds and found it to be absolutely fine.

Determined, we made up for it with a firery and mechanically faultless show in Leeds, and received a great reception. Lucy's happily on the mend and Sarah's got the super glue out. The inquest begins.

Love Jakexxx



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23/8/99

Hi everyone,

Today we launch the new My Life Story single on the internet. As a band that have always been interested in using technology to enhance listening pleasure, e.g. the cd rom element to The Golden Mile, this seemed like the next logical step.

"If You Can't Live Without Me Then Why Aren't you dead yet?" is a song for the 'Me' generation. That final, despairing, uncaring point of melt-down you reach when you honestly realise that ex Lovers can never be friends no matter how nice you are to each other. There is quite simply too many love songs in this world and I 'm on a one man crusade to correct this. I'm a nice boy really.

The virtual B-side "The History Of The World On Ice" has been a live favourite this year, and I'm pleased that we are able to release it at last. I think a censorship issue is raised here as we were unable to release the track as the B-side to "It's A Girl Thing" as certain record shops in the U.K. would not stock it due to it's lyrical content. I am amazed that these days the most censored genre seems to be pop records, where British TV and magazines seem to get away with murder. Again the internet interests me as it allows more freedom of speech. Even in bitchy pop songs!

I hope you enjoy the tracks, and are able to download without too many problems. One thing we will be doing throughout the 3 months that the tracks are available is improve the site where possible.

Another great advantage of using this new tecnology is that the song file can be e-mailed to anyone you think may like MLS anywhere in the world. So if you like the tracks please forward them on to your friends. This, we hope, will have a 'chain letter' affect. You never know, by October more people may have heard "If You Can't Live Without Me Then Why Aren't you dead yet?" than any other MLS song!

Love Jakexxx



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9/7/99

'Hi everyone,

I've just got back from my holiday in Southern Italy and Nice where I had the pleasure of hanging our with the immortal Sister Sledge, they were playing in a club in Santa Margaritta. They all look not a day over 21! While I was out there I had a shot at writing a few songs for Marianne Faithfull's next album. Having read her autobiography, I have come to the conclusion that it is the most hedonistic life story I've ever come across - even more so than 'Wouldn't it be nice" by Brian Wilson.

Where Brian's book is a dark and morbid tale of excess, Marianne's is so much about living your life. It has inspired me to go out every night and rekindle by Dice living days. The programme Diceworld on Channel 4 was filmed last year, just incase you think that I've had 3 different haircuts in one month......now that's an interesting dice option.

I've been acting out her story of 70's London in 90's Nice. There is something so sexy about the freedom of the unknown. I couldn't be Marianne 24/7 but the dice has helped me get into what she is about and I feel I'm getting to the point where I will be able to present my ideas to her (I'm doing 3 songs in all).

If all this travelling and debauchery wasn't enough - myself, Crow and Danny are flying out to Ibiza tomorrow with the kind people from the Melody Maker to (well, I don't really know why we're going, but I'm sure it will be a good story, especially with my dice in hand). Oh, Simon's in New York, bringing me back a I LOVE NY T-shirt I hope. We're hoping to meet up with Boy George while were out there, he has been raving about us whenever he's on TV or in the Press. I think he may be doing a remix of It's A Girl Thing in the future.

On the MLS front we have already booked in 15 dates between late September and mid October, some at towns and venues we have never been to before (That's not many in 10 years). We are also planning a single release around this time.

I'll leave you on this note, I've just been to my local doctors and found out that there is a patient there called Jack Shillingford. Is there nothing original any more?

Names are for tombstones anyway.

Love Jakexxx



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8/6/99

'It's a Girl Thing' is out in the shops

No I'm not shamelessly promoting our new single. I just wanted to type those words. The sentence seems to give me a great sense of pride.

Sometimes when you're surrounded by all the hussle and bussle that goes into trying to make a record happen, the endless local radio promotion in Northern Scotland ,the phone interview with a Lithuanian Fanzine, you forget what is real.

As I walked past the Our Price record store in Putney High Street (which I do at least twice a day) and saw our single standing in the rack catching what light was left at the end of another day of millennial weather, I smiled.

This chapter of My Life Story has been the hardest so far, the plot has changed and therefore it's exciting for me again. I feel like the proud father, I feel that we really are out there, irrespective of chart positions and critics' praise or hatred.

What is real is the fact that we have a round piece of plastic that will last longer than peoples memories.

I am glad we released a record that has caused so much discussion, It has got people talking about us again - and you know how much I like that. Over the next year we will be bringing you more of the same, stuff that sounds like it could have been on MC or TGM and songs that are even more diverse.

This is my aim, mass eclecticism, the fact we have given you IAGT and Florence's Theme on our first Cd is a pointer to the future.

What is also real is the huge reaction to the recent shows, I can't remember the last time I saw ticket touts at a MLS gig, and like always, people are coming round to the new sound.

I think these recent gigs have helped that, we have proved that we are not going to dismiss our old songs,our past, bands like doing this too easily.

What is real is that we're back, and for now, I don't need escapism.

Love Jakexxx



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25/5/99

Well, three dates down and now the big one to come, I'd like to thank everybody for turning up, especially those who had long journeys to make.

I was extremely pleased to find that the shows were all near sell outs and that the message board is buzzing with comments, Markie was right when he said that no matter how good your new material is, they will still talk mainly about your hair!

It was great to see Rox, Lucy, Rob, Becky and Ollie again, I hadn't seen them since we recorded the album, and Roger on guitar slotted in with everybody very well (nice to see somebody playing the thing properly in MLS).

Milky really are an excellent band, James' lyrics are so well suited to Pippa's voice, 'Meanwhile back in the city' is a nineties anthem.

I'm also looking forward to Velocette again at the London show, 'Bitterscene' is like Ronnie Spektor Vs My Bloody Valentine.

Nice to hear that we broke another tour record by consuming over 100 bottles of beer at Sheffield.

See you at the LA2

Love Jakexxx



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26/4/99

Hello everyone and welcome to our web page.

I'd like to start my diary entries by briefly explaining what we aim to do with this 'official' site. As many visitors my be aware there already some excellent MLS sites already on the web and we feel that there isn't much more to add. The combination of the Megaphone Theology Message Board (with it's free speech and open debate) 12 Reasons Why (excellent archive material) and Welcome To My Archipelago (discography etc.) seem to cover most things any respectable MLSer could want.

What we wanted to do was bring all the independent thinking sites together under one roof and just add factual information about My Life Story. I've never particularly liked record company run band sites that preach about how great they are. MLS have always invited strong opinion and we feel that this should not change. For the time being we will be keeping the layout fairly simple and accessible but with constant up to the minute news as the year progresses.

I will endeavour to do my homework and keep this diary updated as often as I can, and also answer any important questions that arise from the Message Board. I'd like to thank you for all your patience over the last two years, this third album hasn't been easy but like I said before it's easier to break up than to stay together. We have used this time away to grow stronger and more focused as a band and we all look forward to seeing you at our first shows of 1999. The past is irreversible, the present incomplete, but the future is yours and mine.

Love Jakexxx



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