www.whelanslive.com
presents
ROSES KINGS CASTLES (Adam Ficek of
BABYSHAMBLES)
+
guests
Whelan’s, Thursday, October
8th
Tickets €12.00 plus booking fee
from WAV Box-Office (Lo-Call 1890 200 078), City Discs, www.tickets.ie,
Ticketmaster outlets nationwide
Musician and DJ Adam Ficek is most
commonly known to the general public for his day-job as drummer in notorious
British rock act Babyshambles. As a member of the band fronted by Pete Doherty,
the most talked- and written-about rock star of our time, Adam has seen the best
and worst of life at the casualty-laden core of the music industry. What many
people don't know is that he is a blistering artistic talent in his own
right.
Adam was born in Bletchley,
Milton Keynes. “It's an odd satellite suburban
juxtaposition of a place,” he says. “It doesn't quite know whether it's farmland
or city. I think due to it being built as the main overflow for the London spill, the residents
are left wondering where they fit in – or maybe that was just me.” The estate he
grew up on was notorious for housing the largest number of convicted criminals
in the capital. “We lived on the edge of the city, so on one side we had acres
of fields, trees and green. On the other we had sixties architecture, housing
estates, and lots of grey. Although I love both
equally.”
Over the years he amassed an
impressive repertoire of musical skills, and plays the guitar, piano,
vibraphone, accordion, flute, trumpet, harmonica, tin whistle, recorder, and –
of course – drums. “All the hitting stuff.”
He knew Babyshambles' former
manager James Mullord and ex-guitarist Patrick Walden from the time the three
spent together in and around London's Old Street area. Both told Adam that they
had a shared dream of him joining the band. “What else was I supposed to do?”
Much of what followed (the albums, the gigs, the arrests, the tabloid scandals,
the burnouts and triumphs and tragedies) is already modern pop
history.
Roses Kings Castles is the moniker
under which Adam performs and records his own unique catalogue of quixotic,
chiming, and blissfully astute acoustic pop songs. Lost somewhere between Belle
& Sebastian's pastoral warmth and the hallucinatory six-string invocations
of Syd Barrett, a typical Roses Kings Castles track is buoyed by the finest
elements of classic British songwriting; by turns wry, beautiful, and
bizarre.
Originally conceived as an outlet
for Adam's “need to create my own ideas when Babyshambles were on holiday,”
Roses Kings Castles quickly became something more than a means of occupying
himself whilst on hiatus. “I continually write, whether it's big band
arrangements, electro riffs or folk-pop songs. I just needed an avenue to walk
down.”
Tickets: €12 + booking
fee
Doors: 8pm
http://www.roseskingscastles.com/
http://www.myspace.com/roseskingscastles