Let The Blogging Commence

Okay then, this is the first post of The Stagger Rats' new blog.  I'm Daniel Paylor, I sing, play guitar and write songs for the band.  At the moment, the band is gigging a lot, working on new songs and helping to organise our European tour.  We played in Edinburgh on Saturday night with The Law, The Merrylees and Greg Pearson, which went very well; the place was rammed to the rafters and there was a great atmosphere despite the first act being on at 7pm.  For the European tour we're arranging dates for all round the place, Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, London, etc.  If we make it home I'm pretty sure there'll be many a tale to tell.  We're awaiting physical copies of our Singles EP, which we'll be carting around with us in Europe.  They've been magnificently designed by our very own Craig and Kai with help from our friend Gaspar and using the artwork of Moris Tepper, which we're obviously grateful to him for.  Rehearsals have been going very smoothly and Terry, our new bassist, is fitting in very well.  We've put a whole new emphasis on backing vocals with him on board and it definitely gives us another dimension as a band.  We never shied from harmonies and backing before, but we've really put a lot of work into it recently.  We've started working on a few mostly nameless new numbers which are scrappy at the moment, of course, but certainly promising.  One is called 'The Young Man's Book of Amusements' and its about a Victorian experiment I read about recently.  An Italian scientist toured the world with a gruesome show in which he would take a recently deceased local, usually a hanged murdered, and stimulate certain nerves and muscles to make the cadaver convulse and dance in ghastly and strange ways, which I'm sure you'll agree is proper subject matter.  So this was just a post about what we're up to in general, keep reading for more specific day-to-day updates.  Cheers.  Daniel.