Just a quick update on the two nights that The Wild Swans are playing in Liverpool at the end of July (see previous news item below). Tickets have been selling at an exceedingly brisk pace and we're told that quite a lot of people are coming on both nights. A few people have been asking us about merchandise and, although these events aren't being organised by Occultation but by The Wild Swans camp themselves, we enquired and were told that there are plans for at least some items, although as always the emphasis will be on quality rather than quantity. So there should be t-shirts, a selection of badges, possibly posters and perhaps – just perhaps – there might be something exclusive and extremely limited made exclusively for these events. Then naturally copies of both Occultation singles will be available and there'll hopefully be an opportunity for anyone who wants to get their copies signed by other members of the band to gain satisfaction in this respect.
No, before you ask, we don't know exactly what the band's set-list will comprise but usually reliable sources close to the band have been hinting that, as well as a number of tracks from the forthcoming album The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years which Occultation hope to release later this year, they'll be performing a number of classics drawn both from the early Revolutionary Spirit period covered by Renascent's excellent Incandescent double CD set and from the Sire era that spawned the two superlative albums collected with 'b' sides and demos on the Korova Magnitude double a couple of years ago. We did also hear a rumour that there might be "the odd surprise" as well. Not entirely sure what that might mean...
Anyway, if there's anyone out there who's thinking of going to these very special events and hasn't yet booked their tickets then we'd very seriously advise you not to wait too long. Although we do hope that there'll be more Wild Swans performances to follow, given the kind of organisational work that's involved it's unlikely that these will be frequent. Remember, this is a band whose whole career – if you can call it that – has been about taking what Robert Frost called "the road less travelled by" so don't expect them to turn up in a tent of whatever size in a field somewhere or other any time this summer. See them now, when they're absolutely on fire, or forever grind your teeth.
