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Sadly we must first mention the sudden passing of Dave Mount.
We received the news during the early stages of the Christmas tour. We, as everyone else, were shocked and saddened by the news. I had the pleasure of playing drums with Dave at the Les Gray Memorial gig, where we both did our level best to demolish my drum kit during the finale Tiger Feet.
Dave took his place on the stool while I took control of the floor toms with matched gusto!
Even putting drummer bias to one side, I strongly believe that the 70s style of tom pounding rhythms typified Dave's playing. It is not an easy style to try and emulate, especially live.
But to use a phrase born to me from Slade's Don Powell " Drums to sawdust in three minutes!"
Dave was the King.
He will be sadly missed and our thoughts go out to the family.

Welcome to 2007.
We will now be keeping you sharp with all the goings on in Mudland! or rather MUD II land.
Yes it's official folks, to avoid confusion and after consultation with Ray Stiles and Rob Davis we have now decided to re brand as MUD II, officially carrying on the true MUD spirit and legacy.
Our thanks go out to Ray and Rob for all their time and personal input.
Catch up time then,well the year ended on a busy high opening for the 40th Anniversary Slade Christmas Tour. Our second year on the tour and great fun it was too! Some pictures are up and we thank Nicki Wanford and Steve Crispe for providing them. It was a pleasure meeting all of you who came along.

Time, and my fingers make it impossible to report on every gig of the tour but to give you a taster…
NEWCASTLE. Journal Tyne Theatre 19th November.
The most amazing theatre! A Sir Frank Matcham design, so Chris, our in-house theatre history boff tells us. We had a good nose around and thanks to the staff for letting us snoop around the building so freely. We ventured right up to the gallery where all the clouds are. I got vertigo, Syd got lost, Marc couldn't find a bar up there so wasn't interested and Chris had to rush back down as he was getting a chill! It was a packed house for the show and everyone was very much up for the party! . Newcastle must be the only City in the world where a council worker holds up the traffic to allow the MUDBUS to cross a pavement to the theatre and a cabbie moved his car to allow the bus to park closer to the venue. I liked it there. Next visit, I'm going to eat my way through China Town.

DARTFORD Orchard Theatre 24th November
My local gig…… yes Mum came! It's always nice playing a local gig, we also had Folkestone on December 17th, but Dartford is only twenty-five minutes down the road. What a crowd, full house and a fantastic atmosphere everyone was on their feet from the first number.

Truro Hall For Cornwall. December 1st
One of those "everything clicks" kinda nights. Great crowd, great town and I had the biggest meatball sandwich with a truck load of extras. Roll on the next visit.

STEVENAGE Arts and Leisure Centre 22nd December.
We like it here a great crowd. Those of you with a copy of the recently released Mud in Your Eye live album will get a feel for this gig as it is the crowd from last year being very vocal and adding that important little atmosphere to the recording.

The whole tour was a great success, and it was a pleasure working alongside Slade and T-Rextasy, not to mention the behind the scenes gang, Graham (Monitors) Jon (Front of house)Steve at Viking PA. Mike Holden and Graham Naylor.
With special thanks to Tim for being Tim! To Robin for always pulling together!!! And to everyone else beavering away including Bugsy and Dave for keeping the humour levels at just the right pitch! Thanks chaps!!
Well done and thank you to Abbie Carter and last but by no means least John Hessenthaler promoter extraordinaire!

OK Boring Drum Stats. To save time in changeovers, I shared Don (Where's my tea! Black no sugar!) Powell's Kit during the tour, between us we mullered three floor tom heads, one hi-hat stand and about fifty rolls of Gaffer tape. I got through five snare heads and two boxes of drum sticks.
I unfortunately lost count of Don's stick breakages after he ordered another rain forest be culled! Thanks Don you're a true gent.

Next week we are off to Butlins Bognor. I have some great memories of working the Butlins festivals with Brian Poole, we will also be at Minehead and Skegness check the date sheet for info.

Can I offer a quick special thank you to those of you taking the time to sign the guest book.
Your comments are always welcome, you can email too! The Webmaster spends all day twiddling his thumbs so keep him busy!

Speak to you again soon
Phil.

Minehead 2nd March.

Well its a long way to Minehead especially when you have to stop every 20 miles to get some food for Phil (who needs to keep his strength up allegedly). As we left the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day, however by the time we got there it was raining (can you see a bit of a pattern emerging here!!! )

We finally hit the stage at Midnight following shows from The Rubbettes, Roy Wood and Brotherhood of Man.The atmosphere was amazing and everybody was singing along from the first line of Oh Boy, by the time we got to Tigerfeet the whole place was on its feet going absolutely bonkers. A good night had by all!!. We left at about 2.15 and got home about 6am.

Skegness 3rd March,

Back on the road at 2pm and off to Skeggie, again sun shining and A lovely day (thats a good title for a song) all was well with the world, as we approached Butlins the storm clouds gathered over it and yes you guessed it rain!!!. We arived for sound check on time managing to get there with only 2 pie stops and a lot of moaning. John Couglans Quo opened the show and had the crowd buzzing by the time we went on.

Well I have to say WOW!!! what a show even better than the night before, it went in the blink of an eye and we were soon at the bar rewarding ourselves with Cider and Beer, as Showaddywaddy took to the stage. All in all a good weekend and it was nice to see all the people we met on the christmas tour again and thanks for coming and saying hello.

We will be back in Skegness on the 27th March, so see some of you there.

Marc

Hi all,
Thought I had better give you all an update on all things in Mudland,
Sorry its been a while but we have been a bit busy.
Since I last wrote we have been gigging quite a lot and met loads of great people.
Recently we played in Womboure where we were very surprised to see Mick it had only taken him 3 hours to get there!!! Always good to see you Mick thanks for your support.
That night we were supported by a great little band called The Fans Of Faye, check them out on my space, good music and all the lads had a great sense of humour far older than their tender years. We think they will go far.

Bognor We love the seventies weekend.

A great night followed by a few drinks at the bar, then a few more at the other bar even Chris had 2 whole bottles of beer to himself and managed to remain upright, luckily special agent Carter was on hand and managed to get us all home safely.
Next day it was back in the bus and home in time for Tea.
Hello to all the people we met that night and at all the other gigs.
Looking forward to Minehead hope to see some of you there.
We will be announcing the Christmas tour dates soon so until then
I will sign off
Marc