Rob St. John Fucking Rocks
Photo pinched from Blueback Hotrod.
Given he’s from Lancashire and lives in Oxford I am not sure I should be tagging Rob St. John as a Scottish band really, but as far as I am concerned he’s one of ours, dammit! Fucking Oxford. Not only did they lure away one of my best friends last year, leaving our football team short of an excellent centre forward, but now the conniving bastards have fucking well pinched Rob as well.
Anyhow, to celebrate selling every last copy of both of his EPs Rob is making all the songs available for free. It’s a lovely idea – you make a short run of physical copies and if that sells out then it’s done its job, and you might as well let everyone have it instead of milking that set of songs for as much as you can get out of them. Of course, he won’t get rich that way, but he’ll have so much fucking integrity I may just have to slap him.
The stuff can all be downloaded from here, along with three other recordings which really caught my, erm, ear. They really show the bite Rob has injected into his stuff with the move to electric guitar, and the sound is scuzzy as hell, and fucking great. The guitar sound in particular makes me want to dry hump my speakers, it’s that dirty. Rob apparently has a 7″ single on the horizon too, and if he can capture this kind of growl in the recording process then it should be fucking brilliant.
Fuck you Oxford, you bunch of bastards!
Here are the three songs in question, recorded live at the Retreat Festival in August 2009:
Rob St. John – Domino (Live)
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Rob St. John – The Shipping Forecast (Live)
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Rob St. John – December & Whisky (Live)
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retreat was the first time i had ever seen him which makes it all the more heartbreaking that i might never see him play again. one of the best sets i have seen in my life and his recordings are a lovely listen too. fucking fucking oxford!
I doubt it will be you last chance to see him play around here, Michael. If he ever tours there will always be a bunch of people falling over themselves to put him on a bill up here.
true. just being dramatic.
i love the person and the music that is Rob St John……..just wanted to share that with you all!
You make me feel bad Toad for getting paid to work with all this integrity talk!
No-one would be foolish enough to expect integrity from you anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about it.
yeah, fuck oxford!
rob will be back for most of december however, so don’t write him off altogether! i’m sure he’ll want to play shows whilst he’s up.
also, he’s not gone to oxford for good. i hope. do you guys know something i don’t?
Wow. That Domino track sounds amazing. The distorted electric guitar bursts provide a tension and weight that’s very different from his acoustic music.
Ooh – don’t suppose he fancies playing a house gig with Virgin of the Birds around New Year time does he?
C&B – the original version of Domino was acoustic – at least, the first version I ever heard was. It’s bloody gorgeous too, and I really wouldn’t be able to choose between them.
Great performances, all three of them.