25 August 2009
Hello! Oooh, such a lot to tell you. First up, we had the most smashing time imaginable at Indietracks last month, and if you were there we hope you did too. If you were one of the apparently 50-odd people queueing in the rain outside the church to see us, and didn't get in, then God, we're so sorry! Thanks of ineffably huge proportion are due to Emma Pocketbooks for some tremendous (and unreheased!) keyboard playing on our last two songs and to Matloob out of Roadside Poppies for dashing off to get a guitar to lend me when I bust a string in the first song. I'll be here all night if I get started though. There's a great thread on the Anorak forum with everyone's memories, but basically Indietracks 2009 = Best Thing Ever! Here's a video of us playing 'Hey Dr Beeching'.

And don't forget you can download the proper recorded version of that song for free (sort of!), from this very website, if you haven't already. Wooo-wooooo!

Two days later, of course, we were back in Sheffields playing in front of ten people – but Eux Autres were glorious and Standard Fare excellent despite the flu robbing them of their key asset in Emma the singist. There was something radiant and fine about it all, despite or perhaps because of the big contrast with Indietracks.

Across all of that loveliness falls the dark shadow of the news that Rob is being forced to quit the Juggernaut because the Man says he has to leave Sheffields. And of all the destinations his job has to take our marvellous hi-fivin' drummer to, where does it have to be? That's right – chuffing Grimsby! I've told him at least he can come and watch some high-class fourth division football with me, but somehow it failed to cheer him up. Any road, we've spoken to a new drummer and it all looks quite positive, but I don't wanna tell you any more than that yet in case something goes horribly wrong. Our last gig with Rob is this Saturday but there are still solo popshows going on while we get the replacement trained up – keep your eye on the gigs page for details.

Sorry, I've got to go to bed now. I'm knackered. Ni-night!

6 July 2009
To celebrate our forthcoming appearance at the Indietracks festival, today's the day The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut release 'Hey Dr Beeching' as an mp3 download from this very website. Woooo-wooooo! It's free to download the song but we're asking everyone who does to consider making a small donation to the Lincolnshire Wolds Railway – a small heritage line near where I grew up, on a section of the former main line closed as a result of the Beeching report. The song features not only yer obligatory train noises and onomatopoeic drums but also samples of Dr Beeching himself, speaking in 1963 about his disastrous plans to 'reshape' Britain's railways. We think it sounds chuffing ace (heh, geddit, chuffing? No? Never mind). Go to sparklemotion.co.uk/beeching to download your copy and donate to help turn back the Beeching Axe!

As if all that were not excitement enough for one lifetime, we're heading down to Bristol this weekend to do two things: record a session for Rocker at Dandelion Radio and play on a stunning line-up at the Big Pink Cake weekender (it looks brilliant: a sort of Queen's to Indietracks' Wimbledon). We'll have to let you know more about this later, like which songs we're recording and when it'll go out, because at the moment we have no more idea than you!

And at the end of this month, if we haven't dropped dead from all the excitement and heat, we're playing a sort of Indietracks warm-down show to an adoring home crowd in Sheffield, just after the festival, with the amazing line-up of Standard Fare and Eux Autres! Hit the gigs page for more details. Eeeeeee!

1 July 2009
It's actually 11:58pm on 30 June while I'm typing this bit, but as July shapes up to be perhaps the busiest month in Corporate Juggernaut history it seemed apt to be in mid-website-update as the calendar ticks over. Hello! And now it's midnight. Happy month!

The first thing I have to tell you is that I have done an interview with A Layer of Chips fanzine-turned-webzine about this month's Indietracks festival (and indeed Indietracks festivals of the past). It should give you a nice, rounded view of what to expect in Butterley in three and a half weeks' time. In just a week a so, meanwhile, you'll be able to download 'Hey Dr Beeching' from this site – and there might still be another surprise to come in connection with that, so if you're not already on the mailing list, get yersen signed up now and be among the first to find stuff out!

That's all for now but there will be more soon.

10 June 2009
Goodness, is it that time already? When I redesign this website I shall have to include a blog bit, so as to facilitate newsy updates more often than every two and a half months. Sorry! I had no idea it was so long.

So what's been a-happening? The Mariners stayed up. We've worked up a Juggernaut version of 'Where The Music Still Plays', the nice song I debuted solo at the Indiepop All-dayer in Nottingham last November. The Mariners stayed up. I've written a piece about trains, stations and popshows for a beautiful zine called Intercity Baby '09 (buy a copy from Caramel and pick up a few other goodies while you're about it). The Mariners stayed up. We played some popshows in Sheffield, Nottingham and Leeds. And did I mention about the Mariners staying up?

But what's a-happening next? I'll a-tell you. The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut are releasing 'Hey Dr Beeching' as a free download to coincide with our appearance at next month's Indietracks festival. Woooo-wooooo! Yeah. I've just been back over to Stoke to resume work on the recordings we started last year, and 'Beeching' is all mixed and just needs mastering and it sounds proper lovely. So watch this space! And if you're not already on the mailing list, join now and you'll be among the first to hear when the track becomes available.

Also next month, we're heading to lovely Bristol for a couple of nights – first to record a session for Rocker at the redoubtable Dandelion Radio, and thence to perform on Saturday afternoon at the Big Pink Cake weekender. More details can be had on the gigs page. Cross your fingers for us that the train doesn't get stuck for several hours outside Birmingham in a flood this time!

Amid all this Juggernautery there are some solo gigs coming up too: in Nottingham on 28 June and, remarkably, at the Moseley Folk Festival in Birmingham in September. Yeah, I know, but if St Etienne count as folk then I'm sure I can just about pass. It looks very much like I'll be on at the same time as the amazing Rose Elinor Dougall on the other stage, which would be a major gah factor, but I guess I could always catch up with her later to ask for haircare tips.

So, if we don't see you in Hull this Friday there'll be plenty of other chances (you'd best hit the gigs page now and make sure you know about them all, really). Bye for now!

30 March 2009
Hello! There are now, at last, quite a few gigs coming up that will feature The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut: April in Sheffield and Nottingham, May in Sheffield and Leeds and thereafter in Hull. Yeah, the Sheffield ones are just where I'm the promoter again (sigh), although one of them is a co-promotion so that's progress of a sort. Hit the gigs page to learn more!

Oooh! Also! The day after we play in Nottingham in April, I'm DJ-ing at another popshow, also in Nottingham. This is a very good thing because as everyone knows, playing records makes DJs loads more ace and cool and sexy than the people who actually make the records in the first place and, and just better, right. The DJ-ing gig is on Saturday 25 April, at a place called Sumac where anarchists live, apparently, and the bands are The Motifs, The Crayon Fields and Heptagons, who are ace, but clearly not as ace as me, cos I'm a DJ, me, yeah. Come and join in my polymath weekender!

To date I have found two videos from the Juggernaut's set from last month's fabulous London Popfest: this one of 'It's Gonna Happen Soon' and this one of 'She's an Accountant'. Sound: good! Hair: very good! And, as Dan the Bass pointed out to me the other day, they are both better than the vids of us from last year's Indiepop Alldayer in Nottingham because on the London ones we don't look like we're all about to die.

And finally, in other amusing video-related news, I noticed the other night, while Googling myself furiously, that the video search on the NME website turned up a result that might be embarrassing to the NME if they had any sense of shame whatsoever. I tittered to myself and made a mental note to write about it here the next time I did an update. Unfortunately the same search, for whatever reason, no longer turns up that result.

Fortunately, I'd taken a screen grab!

1 March 2009
Exciting times in Juggernaut Towers! No sooner had we boarded the up train this weekend – having somehow blagged our way on to the London Popfest bill, alongside loads of fabulous live bands and Comet Gain – than the lovely people at the Indietracks festival announced the first tranche of bands playing this year's event, and guess who's included? That's right – Eux Autres. Eeeeeeee! Oh, and The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut. Which is nice, because playing solo at the 2007 event was one of the highlights of my entire stupid life. I guess we won't be allowed to play any festivals in 2010 if we're playing them all this year, but hey, maybe we'll invent our own or something. Anyway, just to reiterature: eeeeeee!

So, hello to any of you who may be here for the first time after seeing us at London Popfest. It was a wonderful way to get back on the live scene, and no, just to clarify, we hadn't been practising the whole time we were away – we only had three practices and they were just in the last two or three weeks – so if we sounded good it must have been some sort of outrageous fluke. For those who weren't there, we managed to debut a new song, 'Tear Down the Daily Mail', which was satisfying. Hmm, and if you are here for the first time, or if you're here for the first time and you haven't joined the Juggernaut mailing list, why not join the Juggernaut mailing list?

14 January 2009
Happy new year, humans! It's now two months since the Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut last took the stage – at the fabulous Indiepop All-Dayer in Nottingham, to put a place on it – and after my baby break ends in another month and a half we'll be back on the scene like a biscuit-eating machine at another fantastic mini-festival thing: the London Popfest 2009. A shameless four-day orgy of indiepop thrills with a line-up to die for, and then come back from the dead and die for again, the event runs from 26 February to 1 March at four venues: the Juggernaut will play at the Macbeth in London's Trendy Hoxton on the Saturday, 28 February. Limited early bird tickets are available now for £15 for the whole thing (after a bit they go up to £20). It's the UK's second greatest popshow of the year already!

Warm and slightly moist thanks are due to all of you who voted 'Best British Band Supported by Shockwaves' to number 30 in the 2008 Festive Fifty on Dandelion Radio. Thanks! Especially since I didn't even have to ask you. If you haven't already bought the Platform Zero EP, please consider doing so now on the back of this stunning endorsement for its third track! The vote represents a gain of seven places since 'Everything I Do is Gonna Be Sparkly' made it into the 2007 list, so if my progress towards dominance of the Fifty continues at the same rate then by 2023 I will have morphed into some kind of hideous Mark E Smith/David Gedge hybrid.

Speaking of Dandelion Radio, the Juggernaut have been invited to record a session for the station's ace DJ Rocker, and to play another gig in Bristol while we're down there. Woohoo! I bloody love Bristol, me. It's lovely. Rob and Dan are already blasphemously demanding non-rail travel after their admittedly protracted journey there from Sheffield last time – which was one of the more stressful preparations during last year's Collapsed Soufflé Tour, but the audience were so utterly wonderful that it hardly seemed to matter. Although I guess it's easy for me to say that, since I got there from London in barely any time at all. Anyway! I'll let you know more when we know when. There might be something in Birmingham soon-ish too. A popshow, I mean, not a city council that no longer puts superficial flashiness ahead of functionality and sustainability in all its planning decisions.

And speaking of Birmingham, I don't think I've mentioned this on here yet, but about three months ago I started a blog to reissue, in mp3 form, the posthumous compilation album Effortless by my old band The Regulars. If you've been following my musical non-career since way back then, and remember the songs or even own Effortless, you might be interested in the new commentary that I'm writing, with reminiscences about playing and recording and writing the songs and the Birmingham indie scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s. If you've only ever heard my solo and Juggernaut stuff, then listen with fresh ears and see what you reckon. I'm posting one song every week (usually on Tuesday nights, for no good reason at all).

Finally for the time being... December's now-annual flurry of internet airplay for 'Everything's Dead Pretty When it Snows' seems to have resulted in the song being used in a computer game (or a level of a computer game) with the magnificent title of Aggressive Alleys; but right now my favourite digital repurposing of one of my songs is this:

No, me neither!