Ghosts Of Progress Are Not A Fucking Busker Band.

Ghosts Of Progress: Lew Palgrave(Left) and Callum Christie
"We've been through a lot of crap to get here."

I'm sitting with Ghosts Of Progress in the basement of Elvis Shakespeare on Leith walk.  It's a bookstore.  They're about to play a gig in it.  But for these guys it's just another gig- the Montrose-based duo have been relentlessly touring up and down Scotland for some time now, racking up an impressive touring schedule.  Real rock n' roll bands work hard, and these guys are a real fucking rock n' roll band.  Their brutal, blues-tinged sound is instantly recognizable- and don't start with that White Stripes shit.  This music is real blues- it's gritty, loud, out of control and hard as nails, songs about whores and whiskey with none of your sugar-coated lyrical pish.  But don't just take my word for it- see them live for yourself and you'll be a believer.  Singer Lew Palgrave juggles his razor-sharp vocals with slide guitar and drumming (the guy plays a drum kit with his feet, it's as badass as it sounds), whilst Callum Christie adds guitar noise and some impressive riffing.  They're a force to be reckoned with, and having recently signed to Belfast-based, respectably bullshit-free garage rock label Motor Sounds, the hard work's paid off and the future's looking pretty sweet.

[ continued from part 1, which you can find on Edrock.net (clicky!) ] 

So what kind of music did you guys come together over?


Lew:  Metal music mainly.  When we were young that was it, we liked our old blues shit and everything, but at the time it was all Britpop, Oasis and that.  We didn't mind it earlier on but the spinoff from that was these total shite bands, that were just complete fucking droll, crap.  So it was bands like Rage Against The Machine and going to metal festivals for us.  The thing with blues music is, it's something you always fuck about with, it wasn't until we realized we were two band members down that we started playing it, not so the songs sounded good, just to enjoy ourselves, know what I mean?


Callum:  It wasn't really a plain either was it?  I mean if someone had said to us a year before then that we'd be playing a blues song we would've been like "what're you on?"

"Some guy approached the stage with someone else's blood all over his face... 

that was a good night."

Lew:  It's good to be in a band where you're actually enjoying doing it.  It's difficult to get people together that don't fucking let you down.  When you can do something by yourself and think "fuck, this is great", and don't have to worry about the drummer nae turning up, or turning up with his annoying fucking girlfriend...  It's like, "aw no..."   But aye, since then....we've been gigging pretty much 5 or 6 times a month for the last year or so...it's probably past that now.


Callum:  It's a kind of niche we're getting into.


Lew:  We'll play gigs anywhere, know what I mean?  Even in little book shops like this!


Most mental you've ever played?


Lew:  One of our hometown gigs...  Last time we played in Montrose it must've been like, 250 people crammed into a pub that should've only had like, 200 in it, and I remember on the last song saying "let's how see how many people can get chucked out during this song"....

Callum:  ...they took up the challenge, basically...

Lew:  They did.  It was like, people getting glasses smashed off their faces and that, you don't think about that at the time, people been drinking for 12 hours or whatever and you say a thing like that.... It's like, "whoopsie daisie, we're getting fucking banned from here..."


Callum:  I remember some guy approaching the stage with someone elses blood all over his face.... that was a good night.

Lew:  Our hometown gigs are always good.  I mean Montrose was one of these places- when we were growing up it was like, these karaoke bands and shite...and people thought that was music.  But now there's Montrose Music Festival which gets held every year, and there's a lot of indie bands, some metal bands, who're all doing their own thing.

Callum:  It's a small town.  There wasn't anything happening for quite a while...


Lew:  Aye, so it's good to be part of that, know what I mean?  


You play Montrose regularly?


Lew:  We only play Montrose 3 or 4 times a year, we have to make the most of it when we do.  There's venues in Glasgow we can play regularly.  I mean we did 13th Note last night, always a great night.

"We don't have many starts and finishes in our songs.  We just wing it."

Callum:  Aye.  We just played the fringe festival a couple weeks ago actually, it was one of these plug-in-no-soundcheck things, which we always worry about you know, but it turned out to be one of the best gigs we'd done...


Lew:  ....for a long, long time aye.  We were only supposed to be playing for 20, 25 minutes, then when we finished the other band kinda said "naw, we're no wanting to play after these guys"- ended up playing for an hour and 15 minute, sold 20 fucking CDs in 10 seconds flat...  Gigs like that are good, turn up on a Sunday night, 30 second line check know what I mean?


Aye, really spontaneous.


Lew:  Aye.  We've been kinda lucky though.  We've got our own regular sound guy, who recorded our stuff, the guy upstairs doing our sound (Mo Dickson - check the live recordings on GOP's myspace to see the kinda standard this guy works at, great shit) - it's good to have someone to keep the sound guy in check. A lot of sound engineers can get really confused when we show up, they treat us like some kinda busker band.  We're no a fucking busker band.


Your first record on Motor Sound is coming out soon- is it going to be new songs or re-recordings of the ones we already know?


Lew:  The songs on the live E.P are gonna be on it. But maybe another 6 or 7 more.  We did record about 11, one of them was maybe a bit iffy.  We were maybe a little bit stoned when we did it....


Callum:  Maybe redo it for album number 2....


Lew:  Aye, we're just going to get as many gigs as we can, get as many copies punted out as we can...  The only people who make real money from records seem to the ones who're selling millions of the fuckers.  But if you're just selling them at gigs you can still make a healthy return on them.  I'm not really a big fan of the whole recording thing though, you know what I mean?


I was going to say, what you do is a really...live thing.


Lew:  It's a bit of a fucking drag for me doing it.  It's always like, let's just do this as quickly as we can.  Which has never been the best attitude for something like that...


Callum:  We always try and play the song live as much as we can before we put it down.


Lew:  We don't really have many...starts and finishes in our songs.  We just kinda wing it, you know?(laughs)  It's this bit here, this bit there.


Callum:  Aye.  We're not going to stand in booths or anything when we record, it's not like..."do this bit 4 times then this bit..."  It all comes from eye contact onstage.


And with that, they're needed upstairs to play their set, in a bookstore.  Unsurprisingly, they fucking kill it.


Ghosts Of Progress are currently playing up and down Scotland.  Check out their myspace for their tour dates and some killer live tracks - most importantly, go see them live, you won't regret it. I'll keep you informed about their upcoming record which, let's be honest, is going to be fucking amazing.