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  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited Edition Blue & White Marble Vinyl.
    Comes with a fully printed colour inner sleeve and lyric sheet.

    Includes unlimited streaming of The Columbus Memoirs via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    CD in single cardboard sleeve. The full 10-track Columbus Memoirs album plus tracks from Walking The Tightrope and Shooting The Messenger.

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lyrics

A bare room in the bus depot and I sit on a bench
Standing in front of me is a bored teenager
No more than seventeen
He wears a military uniform
He's playing a game with no words
Listening carefully to music on his iPod
He casually waves a loaded rifle round the room
Pointing it first at a wall
Then straight into my face
Then out of the window
Targeting a succession of passers by

When I was his age and drunk on holiday in Italy
Me and some local lads got into an argument with the police
It grew heated
One of the lads hit a young cop
We all ran away, laughing

Suddenly
Bullets from an automatic began thudding into the wall above our heads
I dived through a doorway
A whole family, sitting around their dinner table, mid meal
Glanced up to see me, a mad Englishman
Sauntering drunkenly past them through their kitchen and away

Years later, touring America with a couple of punk bands
A cop stopped us after midnight on a beach somewhere in Los Angeles
He told us to take our hands out of our pockets
When I didn't, he pulled out a gun and stuck it against my head

I got angry, or is arrogant a better word?
Anyway, I refused, saying
I'm English and I'm not used to cops with guns
Ask me nicely
Take your f###ing hands out of your f###ing pockets now!
He said

Motionless, I stared back at him
Just do it, Nick
Said my friends
So I shrugged and held up my hands
Turning to the others, the cop told them
I didn't know if he had a gun
I wasn't gonna wait and see

Then, addressing me, he added
You're lucky
I was counting to five before pulling the trigger
I'd got to four and a half

I'd got to four and a half

credits

from The Columbus Memoirs, released June 4, 2022
(words: Nick Toczek / music: Matt Webster & Jack Atkinson)

Nick Toczek - vocals
Matt Webster - drums, keyboards, guitars, bongos
Jack Atkinson - lead guitar
Mark Cranmer - bass
Simon Nolan - mandolin
Keith Jafrate - saxophone
Chris Walsh - flute

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about

Nick Toczek & Signia Alpha Bradford, UK

Poet Nick Toczek began collaborating with Matt Webster in 2019.
They released Shooting the Messenger in 2020. A mix of indie, jazz and funk grooves with Toczek’s surreal poems and stories.
Walking the Tightrope followed in 2021 & included a guest appearance by The Damned’s Paul Gray.
A third album in 2022. Webster plays many of the instruments with contributions from guests, including Paul Gray,
... more

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