Where did my happy new year go? Or rather, when does it begin,
exactly? Since Xmas it's been coughs and colds and laryngitis and huge garage
bills and cancelled rehearsals and pranged hire-vans and other disappointments
I can't even go into --- catnip to petty miseries, that's me, I'm getting Where
Have All The Good Times Gone? tattooed on my perineum. I did just spend
a lovely couple of days in Wales with a friend I've known since primary school:
coming back up the M4, close to Reading services, I was doing about 83mph in
the outside lane when a car pulled out just yards in front of me without indicating.
All I could do was brake --- hard! --- and the car went into a skid and we found
ourselves at a halt, still in the fast lane but facing back the way we'd come.
(Should I pause here for your round of applause?).
Karl's been looking for a new place to live and I've been viewing
flats with him, often grotty little cells in insalubrious backwaters, reminiscent
of the crappy places we had to hunker down in when we first came up to London
(I keep getting these 'Nam flashbacks to the New Cross years!). Perfect for
those long August evenings spent pondering Death's finality and the inescapable
finiteness of the human spirit, but very bad for a soul's buoyancy, so he's
still looking. (If there are any corporate heavy-dicks out there living alone
in their big ole mansions with only their quarterly profit margins for company,
how about donating Karl and his cats Yin-Yang a wing? Somewhere near Chelsea
Harbour would be nice).
(And then, of course, there's the usual --- and permanent -- daily
low-level radiation of jealousy and resentment you have to put up with from
those acquaintances who hate the fact you're in a band and just wish you'd stop.
I've got this special tosser-klaxon that goes off in my head as one skulks into
view. I know all people in proper bands or bent on similar pursuits get shit
like this and it doesn't really count as a misery because a) it's in fact a
great compliment and b) it gives you a nice warm feeling in the groin (and the
ego) to know it winds them up so much, but I'm in a real grouchy kind
of mood tonight so make allowances …..).
Give me some help here: Scott Walker's 'Big Louise', there's a
chord I can't pin down --- I could try finding the CD in the pile but I'm too
lazy, so I'm working from memory
(for those unfamiliar with the song it's on 'Scott III' one of the very best
records ever made by anybody ever. I discovered this record as a teenager
and it floored me, it made me want to look like him, be him. Still
does). Suppose I play it in E (which may not be the key on the record): "She
stands (E) all alone, you can hear her hum softly from her (A) fire-escape in
the (A flat-seventh) sky, She fills (feels?) the (E) bags 'neath her (Gmaj7)eyes
with the (WHAT IS THIS CHORD?!!!) moonbeams, And she (Cmaj7) cries 'cos the
(D) world passed her (E) by. Didn't (Gmaj7) time sound (A) sweet yester-(E)
day, in a (A) world filled with (C) friends you lose your (E) way. What
do I have to play under 'moonbeams'? If you have a convincing suggestion PLEASE
e-mail it to me! (And while I'm at it, thank you again for the
messages you send. Karl's taken to wearing Hank B. Marvin horn-rims after we
got the one that said the guitar-solo to 'Jezebel' was the best ever played.
Contrast and compare with the green-eyed ones I mentioned in paragraph 3).
Since I've quit grouching (kinda) and I'm doling out praise, let
me mention in dispatches the wonderful Jim-White-chaperones-us-round-the Deep-South
film I saw on TV recently. Wonderful. And featuring the ever-magnificent Johnny
Dowd. (Get all his CDs. And all Jim White's, especially 'Wrong-Eyed Jesus'.
And buy all the Handsome Family's CDs too). And pin a medal on the BBC's "Folk
Britannia" series while we're at it. A lot of it was always a bit too gadzooks
for me, but boy could they play guitar! My new hero's the guy smoking a pipe
in the background in a grainy bit of b & w footage of the Hampstead Folk Club
in the early 60s! The missing link between the Left Bank existentialists of
the 50s and the Hoxton young lions of today …
I've
bought a few more books: "Hotel California" by Barney Hoskyns (Joni! CSN! The
Eagles --- oh dear!),"1968" by Mark Kurlansky, "The Likes Of Us: A Biography
Of The White Working Class" by Michael Collins, "An Infamous Past: E. M. Cioran
and the Rise of Fascism in Romania" by Marta Petreu, "La Possibilité D'Une Île"
by Michel Houellebecq, J. M. Coetzee's new novel, a biography of Edvard Munch
and Edward Thomas's Collected Poems that I picked up second-hand for £2.50.
I've been replaying Scott Walker's "Climate of Hunter", (lovely), and I'm getting
Neil Diamond's "12 Songs" (that spotty guy from The Verve sounds just like him.
Bet he wishes he could write songs like him, huh?) and Kris Kristofferson's
new album next week. Should help keep me busy until the Happy New Year gets
underway, right? And I'm off to see Sparks tomorrow.
In the meantime, we're playing Liverpool next week and I've still
got fucking laryngitis!!!!!
Saturday 25th February 2006
HELL’S DITCH, LIVERPOOL
Chris Stevens puts on a gig a month at the Pilgrim under the Hell’s
Ditch and Americana UK banner (Peter Bruntnell’s up next): the event has its
own dedicated audience and a lovely atmosphere. I missed Rattlebus but thought
Sparkwood & 21 were great. Our set went down really well and I enjoyed it, but
it felt like a first-night-of-a-tour gig from our side of the foldback, the
set very respectably performed but maybe without that requisite fire-in-the-belly.
“Gigolo Moon” seemed a highlight. Someone wondered if we were Christians, given
the references to God that kept popping up but I don’t think a bit of biblical
imagery makes one the Pope (and doesn’t everyone --- who’s anyone --- think
about God --- or his absence --- every day? I’m sure they do.) Corrinne had
taken a plane from Newquay to Manchester and then a train from there
to Liverpool, just to co-sing “Fairytale”. If there was such a thing as wages
she’d get a bonus….. Anyway, I love Liverpool and hope to go back before long.
Thanks to Chris for inviting us.
On March 15th we’re recording our take on Wreckless Eric’s “Whole
Wide World” for a compilation album to be released as part of a Stiff Records
re-launch project.
It’s
my birthday any minute: I forecast wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Back in
the old days when I was young and quite beautiful I’d go round Porthcawl’s Hall
of Mirrors and oh, how I’d guffaw to see myself squashed or stretched in distorting
glass. Now I need such mirrors just to look OK (-ish) in. “When gods were young
this wind was old,” said Edward Thomas (in the second-hand Collected I mentioned
last time), and I think I know how that wind must’ve felt.
Speaking of poets, I came across something by Gerald Manley Hopkins
where a child is berated for crying over leaves falling: “The heart will come
to such sights colder by and by”. And I hate it that he’s right …
A lovely gig and our best best performance since Liverpool last year. Highlights:
Your New Best Friend, Jerusalem Road, Fairytale, Hat-Check Girl (a new arrangement
utilising banjo and accordion) and Jezebel. Thomas Truax went on before us:
at one point in his act he jumped from the balcony back down to the stage, nimbly
avoiding Nick's 100-years-old- plus double-bass, laying in readiness. (So thanks
to Thomas for both the music and the gymnastics). We slipped in a new one, "She
Lets Me In By The Back Door" and I swear I was utterly unaware of any double
meaning when I wrote it; the song absolutely does not share any subject
matter with Willie Dixon's "Backdoor Man". When I say she lets
him in by the back door that's all I mean, alright? Any smutty connotations
are strictly in your own mind, buster, OK? (I'm stressing this because a reviewer
writing about our gig in Liverpool in February said she felt like she needed
a shower after an hour's exposure to a dirty old man like me (hey, check it
out! I'm the Valleys' answer to Serge Gainsbourg!) singing lyrics like that,
and although she's clearly no Greil Marcus --- plus I have to admit that I've
always felt that if you don't 'get' Songdog you're basically pretty fucking
stupid --- I'd still rather not be hung for a crime I didn't commit. So will
I then change the title before we record the song? Bollocks will I! Think of
my songs as fragments of one long single confession; I channel my whole inner
life into these ditties, goddamit, so fuck you, ma'am! ..... Or let's just say
that when the Bible tells us that David brought Saul the foreskins of a hundred
dead Philistines I'm inclined to think "Ah, those were the days!"
and leave it at that.......).
Interesting bit of trivia: my sister was one of the girls in the 'band' backing
Robert Palmer in his "Addicted To Love" video.
Another bit of trivia: For years the music of Simon & Garfunkel was banned
in Malawi .......!
I've been spending these recent lovely spring-like Saturday afternoons in dark
cinemas watching what Bertholt Brecht denounced as 'laxatives of the soul' (ie
commercial films) and I'd like to heartily recommend "The Proposition",
"Capote", "Syriana", "Good Night And Good Luck"
and "Munich".
Nice gig, highlight was probably "Childhood Skies"; the show was
promoted by Howard Monk,
a man so splendid that if he asks to borrow all your credit-cards and PIN numbers
for the weekend you should let him.
Shortly after the gig Dave headed for the Red Sea to do something in flippers.
I've
been listening to Bruce
Springsteen's wonderful new record --- and hey! guess what, readers?! ---
he's been listening to mine too! ( He asked One Little Indian
to Fedex him a copy of "The Time Of Summer Lightning" just a few weeks
ago. I wonder if he likes it? If he does I wish he'd say so publicly, help us
maybe get a bit of a spark going in the engines of reputation? We already knew
he'd picked "Days Of Armageddon" as one of the songs to be played
before he took the stage on his solo tour a while back). I'll be there to see
him play the Apollo on May 8th. I'm hoping he invites me back for some tequila
and celebrity hedonism.
Lately, Karl reckons, life's like being adrift on HMS Bummer. His mother Nance
died suddenly a few days ago, only a year or so after Fred. Nance was a very
cool person and didn't buy into much of the world's bullshit. It's the worst
news that she's gone but it's good to think she died in her own haven with her
cigarettes and crosswords close and not wired up to some machine in a hospital
bed. If they have TV in the afterlife I know Nance will already be there railing
at the squishy, sweaty, stupid sex scenes.
Talking of sex, I read a piece on the work of Robert Crumb (a hero of ours)
in the New York Review of Books, the writer identifing lust and nostalgia
as the twin engines of Crumb's art. Lust and nostalgia? I thought,
That rings a bell! Sounds like a fair-ish description of the place
my stuff comes from too! Maybe our slutty muses know each other, share
sharps down the same stinky old crack-den. Anyway, here's to you Mister Crumb!
Let one dirty old man salute another! (Funny how disgust always seems
to shadow desire, wouldn't you agree?). Actually, speaking of my songs, it's
a good thing the next batch (22 or so) are already written as I think I'm plodding
through a bit of an arid spell. (Mental note to myself: quit the onanism. Mondrian
said every drop of sperm is a masterpiece lost).
On a quick trip to Wales over Easter we drove up Manmoel mountain at dusk (it's
the sound of the wind and what it's saying sometimes on that same mountain is
what I'm after in the songs, that's the 'sound' I wish I could get) and in a
field right by the road a ewe had just had a lamb, it must've been only minutes
before, she was still licking it clean, the lamb still struggling to stand.
It was beautiful and I just felt sick to think this animal was struggling into
the world in this field on this evening just to end up in a fucking slaughterhouse,
it was self-evidently plain wrong. That same day I'd read Chrissie
Hynde say in Mojo " I think eating animals is the most disgusting,
depraved, indefensible practice there is" and how if you figured abbatoirs
were acceptable then your opinion couldn't be trusted on anything. I agree,
it's obvious it's something we must urgently renounce, evolve beyond
quickly. It was so quiet up there, there were grazing horses silhouetted
against the last light of the day and it gave me genuine ballsache to have to
go back down into the dunces' world.
Fuck, now I can't think of anything funny to end with!
*****
Saturday 13th May 2006
ROOTS AND SHOOTS AT THE ICA: SAT. MAY 13TH.
Avant-garde
art and hot middle-class totty ---- what's not to like about the ICA? (Me and
this place go way back: when I won the Verity Bargate thing it was here that
Eleanor Bron presented me with the award. We drank wine out on the balcony overlooking
the Mall and I kept thinking: "Wow! She danced with Macca in 'Help'!").
So I dab on a bit of my lucky cologne ('1725' from Scent Systems) and we hawk
a guitar,banjo and accordion down the Mall to the birthplace of British Pop
Art. This monthly acoustic night is usually held in the main hall but was moved
to the bar this evening, there being an immovable 'installation' (a phalanx
of electric-fans) parked in the theatre space. The Evening Standard had described
this do as 'the hipsters continuing their reappropriation of new folk' and you
know how it is with hipsters, they can be so awfully chatty, so fucking
gregarious, so much so they just yap right on through one's set. I
know it was nothing personal, for they did it to all four of the acts appearing
this evening, but the thing is, I'm the type of person that took even getting
born pretty personally (if you know what I mean), so you can imagine how
I felt at their callous disregard for my art (can't you?). But don't take this
to mean I didn't enjoy myself
and that it wasn't a good gig --- far from it, most of the audience were very
much into us and I thank them sincerely for their warm applause and kind comments
afterwards. The set consisted of "Blind Picasso", "One Day When
God .....", "Fairytale", "Hitcher", "Haiku",
"The Girl On The Escalator ..." and "Jinetera" (a world-première
for this one live). Lenny's spot was easily the best of the DJ's sets, and I'm
not saying that just because it's Lenny, I'm saying it because it was. (I'm
told Joe Boyd is one of the DJs next time. I dig Joe Boyd, even though when
he ran Hannibal he nixed a deal his head of A & R had offered the band I
was in at the time. Looking back, I can see he was right!). Thank you to Nick
Luscombe for inviting us to play.
Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band at Hammersmith Apollo were just
phenomenal! I've never seen such a rapport with an audience, not even
Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones have it. He looked great, sang and played
his heart out, I was profoundlyimpressed.
One magazine referred to how Springsteen's gigs had become ritualized over the
years, but this was my first time, and all I can say is that if it's
true, then this gig displayed all the power to move and mesmerize that any truly
great ritual does. When he yelled out "Road-crash!" at one point I'm
told it was because the drummer or the horns fucked up but if so I didn't notice,
even the fuck-ups sounded glorious to me. I wonder how he felt coming off after
a gig like that? No way could you sleep! (But I wonder too how he'd
feel if hipsters had chin-wagged all the way though his set?). He ended the
gig with "When The Saints Go Marching In", the first song I ever learned
on the guitar (G, C and D7).
I'd like to remember here Wayne Jury, someone I've known since our earliest
schooldays together. He died in hospital on Tuesday. I'd always liked him: all
his life he walked the roads with his dogs, one of the noblest pastimes a human
being can indulge in. I last saw him (walking the roads with his dogs) on April
30th, he was wearing a deer-stalker hat and a navvy's yellow high-visibility
vest. It just won't feel right knowing I'm not going to bump into him and his
hounds round some corner up in the hills, miles away from home. I suppose Wayne's
problems are over at last, but maybe his dogs' are just beginning? If he could
hear me I'd tell him I'm sorry I never ever seemed to get round to joining him
for that drink I kept promising we'd have.
We're still helping Karl to empty out his parents' house, it's a terrible task.
Corrinne and Lenny are (after Morrissey at the Palladium) off to tour Wales
in a camper-van. Starting Monday I'm doing my second stint of jury-service:
if a hipster happens to find himself up before me he's toast
......
Thursday 22nd June 2006
ACOUSTIC STAGE, THE WIRELESS FESTIVAL, HYDE PARK, LONDON
Lovely
toilets backstage, replete with framed reproductions of horses in oils and a
choice of soaps and handcreams. A massage tent too (but who could feel chilled
enough before a gig to submit to a massage!?) and a shop with a hairdresser
on standby and dispensing bagfuls of free 'Bed Head' products (mine included
something called 'Headbanger: A Way Out Wax for Rock Stars'.....!?). Robyn Hitchcock
wore a lovely pair of lime-green trousers and sat in the sun chatting with Peter
Buck, John Cale's strides were nowhere near as good as Robyn's (combats!
Ugh!!!) but he undeniably has an air of authority about him (and KT
Tunstall is spectacularly tiny). (I didn't see David Gray at all and
had left the site by the time he went on, so couldn't possibly comment on his
trousers. Like you care anyway, right?). Five minutes before we took up our
positions on the acoustic bandstand the zip on my trousers broke! Fucking Armani
too! Jesus, what I'd have given then for Cale's cheesy combats! Anyhow, luckily
the audience were at some distance from the stage, sprawled in deckchairs, so
I don't believe anyone noticed anything ..... I think the set went pretty well,
and the sound was good considering the --- frankly ludicrous --- position
of the sound-desk relative to
the stage (Jon had to judge the sound-mix via a monitor at his feet,
with Cho running to and fro between outfront and the desk, telling Jon what
needed boosting, what needed pulling back, etc.). Three songs from the end of
our set John Cale struck up on the XFM stage, all his personal authority now
symbolised in megawatts, a passable (no more) version of "Venus In Furs"
stomping like a school-yard bully all over our "Hat-Check Girl". (So
not only did he prove he had sturdier strides, he had a much bigger PA too,
the bastard). But that's how festivals are, and really we had a wonderful day,
I can't think of a better way of having spent it (unless it be headlining the
main stage, obviously .....). NB Hyde Park being a royal one there
were rules and regulations to be observed in approaching the loading gates,
the daftest and most irritating of which involved having to submit to an escort,
ie two Polish guys leading the way in a kind of hair-dryer (with a flashing
light on top!) travelling at 5mph! That's right ---- 5mph!
(Fuck man, I don't do anything at just 5mph! There were people
on skates overtaking us!). But still, just let me just say again that
we had a brilliant day, and thanks to Jon and Cho for all their efforts.
Let me recommend the best music book I've read since Ian MacDonald's "The
People's Music" --- it's Joe Boyd's " White Bicycles: Making Music
in the Sixties". Joe was there when His Bobness rocked Newport, he produced
"Arnold Layne", ran the UFO Club, was the first guy to bring Joni
to the UK, managed the Fairports and Nick Drake, etc. The book's published by
Serpent's Tail. (Long ago in a faraway place my brother and I were given some
pocket money, I spent mine on "Arnold Lane", he spent his on a soft
porn magazine).
Wednesday 12th July 2006
THE MARIE LLOYD BAR AT THE HACKNEY EMPIRE, LONDON
Someone once said that what we do in life echoes in Eternity, so for that reason alone
you really shouldn't chat during my set, should you? A) there's Eternity to think of. B) it greatly pisses me off.
"I'm sorry about the talking," said Ed Harcourt as we came off stage.
"It's OK, I've faced worse," I said, biting back the pain I always feel when folks prattle away while I'm up there strumming my protest songs, my heartfelt
cris-de-coeur.
"So have I," he replied.
In fact, the chat was really only down to the performers that had taken the stage before us, them and their friends and supporters; happens the world over, nightly. The gig was part of the Spice festival, three unsigned acts, then us, then Ed Harcourt, then two more unsigned acts. Within the limited range of empathies left open to me, beautiful Hackney trendies still cut it, so I was happy and pleased to play to a whole sweaty (the temperature in that bar was
Krakatoan) roomful of them, and even though it felt like hard work more than anything, I hereby thank the majority for listening and for their evident appreciation. (And this being Hackney, hey, look, there's Kelly Osbourne! And, er, that bloke who plays tablas for Ian Brown ....).
My journey home was fucked up royally because they'd closed the Blackwall Tunnel (if there's one thing I can depend on it's bad luck). Exhaust-fumes and a sense of futility hung in the summer-night air, and the meaning of it all escaped me as completely as does the gods' purpose say, a chicken ....
Summer 2006
When I'm not dreaming of cruel mistresses or eventual election to the pantheon
of god-like geniuses I like to roam the mountains of South Wales, among the
most magical places on earth; I like to feed the wild horses or watch those
guys that take off on canvas wings. This summer (once the heatwave had passed.
I waited that out in darkened rooms) I spent quite a bit of time up there: we
didn't get invited to play the Green Man festival (guess I'm not in with the
In-Crowd. Maybe I should get out more, 'network'? Make friends with Devendra
so I can be part of the 'quiet revolution' too? Who do I have to fuck?
Who's the Robespierre of this thing?) but I was up on the Blorenge
that weekend, 1,570 feet above the site. Every
year, too, we climb Penyfan, the highest of the Brecon Beacons, and Pod brings
back a stone from the summit, scrawls the year on it (we'll know we're old has-beens
when we're not up to the climb anymore. I did it one year on a freshly-broken
toe. [By the way, don't imagine we dress up in that kinky hiking-gear or nothing,
I'd trot up in Prada loafers if I had any]). In recent years we'd got to know
this little Tunisian guy --- a dead ringer for George Chakaris ---- who ran
a cafe in Blaenavon, and whenever I found myself choking on misery and/or carbon-monoxide
fumes in say Southwark Park Road or somewhere just as godforsaken I'd think
of this guy flicking a damp rag over a window-table and gazing out at the tumbleweed
rolling down Broad Street (romantic cocksucker that I am) and imagine him happy
and so somehow feel a little better ('cos even if you're not happy you need
to believe that someone somewhere is and I'd kind of elected this guy
for the job) but when I called in back in August it transpired that he'd upped
and fled to the South of France, didn't even tell his wife he was going, just
hitched a lift to Cardiff and disappeared. Something died in me when I heard
that, readers, I'd never dreamed that he'd been dreaming of fucking St Tropez
as he looked out that window, longing for escape. I mean, I wish the guy well
and everything, but Jesus .....! (Oh, the desperate deception we practise
on the world every day of our lives!).
Later, I did an interview with a newspaper in Pontypool. Another day we took
the train to Cardiff: the return journey back up the valley is always reminscent
of the sequence in Jarmusch's "Dead Man" where William Blake takes
the train west and it gets wilder and scarier the further the train penetrates
the badlands. (It's OK for me to say that, I was born deep inside that
bandit country: not that I set too much store by my proletarian origins, overrate
it the way say Nicky Wire does his fucking politics degree!). And then the blissful
rains came (like a trailer for blessed November) and the valleys are particularly
beautiful in the rain, for them that have eyes to see it. My favourite seasons
are coming up, I should be OK from here to next April. Maybe I'll even start
writing songs again .....
For
me, the best album released this summer has to be Bob Dylan's "Modern Times",
the best film I saw was "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"
and the best TV (best TV of all time, surely!) "Deadwood".
In a piece in Mojo on Arthur Lee (Arthur's music never meant a great
deal to me, alas) Joey Burns of Calexico says that Jim Dickinson reckons recording
is artists' way of communicating with life after they've gone, and that struck
me as spot-on.
Yesterday I was out shopping for the first two "Deadwood" seasons
on DVD, and on my way I perused a few of the trendier record emporia. My oh
my! Contemporary fame does attach itself to all manner of depthless
and ephemeral things, doesn't it!
Toodle-pip.
Monday 16th October 2006
THE FRONT ROOM, QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL, LONDON'S SOUTH BANK
This
was the inaugural event in a new series of concerts at the QEH and we were a
late addition to the bill, opening for Joan as Police Woman and booked too late
to benefit from much of the South Bank's publicity so I expected to play to
maybe a handful of early arrivals, but by the time we took the stage the place
was packed and buzzing. The audience did us proud and gave us a fantastic response
and the gig felt like a real milestone for us, it really did seem like our kind
of crowd. (It must be the poshest venue we've ever played, too. I did
play some German opera-houses once but that was in a vaguely tacky 1980s kind
of context whereas this was definitely an arty thing). We had the best
fucking time up there --- the best fucking time! ---- so thank you
to everyone involved. (Cho fed us Welsh cakes from a big tin: I'd like to extend
my compliments to his mother for her exquisite bakestones. Will there
be some at the next show?). If you're not familiar with Joan
as Police Woman's music, I can testify that she's a classy act.
A couple of evenings later we caught the final night of Johnny
Dowd and Jim White's Hellwood project, two American masters for the price
of one. The more whisky Johnny downed as the set progressed the better he played
guitar. Outstanding song of the night was one that Jim sang, called (I imagine)
"Grown Tired Of The Fireworks Of Love" (?). Next up, the Dresden Dolls at the
Roundhouse. A lot of the very best music that ever got made is to be found in
the 'Specialist' bit of the record stores,
and that's where you'll find
Jake Thackray's albums. They're all I've been listening
to for weeks, he was a true, honest-to God genius. (When I'm done here I'll
be playing him again). He'd be on TV a lot when I was a kid and it was always
a good reason for staying in. There's a highly recommended "Live at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall" album available, and I think that's why our QEH gig
went so well, Jake's shade was watching over us. Don't be square, buy his records!
Boy could he play guitar! And they really DON'T write lyrics like that
anymore (hell, they don't even have the vocabulary)!
Notice how I'm dishing out nothing but praise this time round? No
nay-saying? No invective? It's the new me, readers, accentuating the positive,
allergic to the negative. I'll even refrain from dissing that pseudonymous scrivener
that dished out a wholesale slagging to me and my band in a webzine last month,
the cun ----- no, no, stop it! If I kicked an 80-a day smoking habit surely
I can learn to overcome my penchant for negativity? Can't I? Quickly, think
of someone/something to praise! Ah yes, Joe
Wilkes's set at the Green Note in Camden a few weeks ago! Another
great guitar-player. He has a record out called "Spotlight" and he's a Songdog
MySpace friend, so go have a listen. (The Green Note's a nice place too, a vegetarian
restaurant-cum-acoustic venue with a photograph of the great Ms Joni Mitchell
on the wall).
Maybe I'm in such a good mood because it's autumn. I love autumn:
isn't it just the sublimest season?
Christmas 2006
Corrinne did good at the Bush Hall the other week, duetting on "Fairytale
of New York" at the Arctic Circle Xmas bash. Bumped into Derek Birkett
of One Little Indian there, he's looking good, something to do with his raw
vegan diet --- I'm tempted, I really am.
The
newspapers and magazines are full of their round-ups of the year but I've got
a cold and I'm in too bad a mood to bother you with mine: if you've got two
ears and a functioning brain you'll already know that Tom Wait's "Orphans"
has a pretty good claim on the title of best record, and there was "Modern
Times" too, that was a good one: also, those Beatles remixes serve to remind
how astounding the Fabs were too. And there's Joanna Newsom, obviously. Plus,
honourable mentions for Cat Power and Jolie Holland: and let me put the name
Joe Wilkes your
way as a hot tip for 2007.
Did you see us in The
Sun?!! Four-and-a-half out of five! Good, eh? All we need now is one
in The Beano and I can die happy or go live in the woods, wear a penis
gourd and dream.
We're demoing new songs at the end of January, we've got 23. Some titles: "Smoke-Rings
and Shaving Cuts", "A Prayer To Old Idols", "Hex",
"A Wretched Sinner's Song", "Barbarella", "She Lets
Me In By The Back Door", "Loser Heaven", "Like Kim Novak",
"Ruben's Tattoo", "Song For 5-String Guitar", "Owls",
"Pilgrim Hill", "On Porthcawl Sands", "Drums Over The
Churchyard", "Crown Of Thorns". Album number 4 will appear eventually.
I'm in the throes of a bad bout of aboulia, so in case I don't recover too
soon, I'll leave you this to be getting on with, it's a questionnaire Americana
UK asked me to complete. They provided the first few words of each
paragraph, I was asked to fill in the rest:
Our latest record .... comprises 13 songs about lust, regret,
nostalgia, protests at the erosions of passing time, loves lost, passions grown
cold, etc. Some of the songs are very lo-o-o-o-o-o-ng too, you have to slow
right down, synchronise your mental tempo to the mood and pace of the record.
(Note to busy people really into Razorlight: on our next record all the songs
will be shorter).
Writing songs .... is a compulsion for me, an attempt to impose
some form or stability on all that emotional turbulence. Each song is part of
one long, ongoing testament or confession.
Touring .... sure beats 'real life'. I'd tour forever if there
were enough people wanting to see us (alas, there aren't. As yet). I fully understand
Dylan's Never Ending Trek, and I'm envious. A tour drawing to a close feels
the same way the end of the summer holidays did as a schoolkid.
Music .... is essential. When I was about 11 years old it
changed the whole direction and meaning of my life, completely and for good.
But now there's too much of it, or it's all too easily available, it risks becoming
devalued. Lots of days I try not to hear or make any, just to try and keep it
special.
The best .... gig we've done in a while was opening for Joan
As Police Woman at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in October. The audience really
listened. Nothing pisses me off more than a noisy audience. I realise
it's nothing personal: I read that when Joni Mitchell opened for Dylan back
in the 90s a lot of people talked throughout her set nightly. Joni Mitchell!!!
Those bastards would probably have been twiddling away on their Gameboys through
the Sermon on the Mount.
The worst .... thing to come out of punk was the notion that
sheer energy and force of conviction will always carry you through, that you
don't need to have anything going down musically. Gabba-gabba-bollocks,
I'm afraid. I'm not advocating fretwank or jazz-level chops but some
degree of skill makes all the difference. There's been a decline in the art
of songwriting too, I think Jimmy Webb sounds off a lot about it. One of the
reasons those Beatles songs were so great is that those guys grew up on showtunes
and standards, they had a feel for chord-changes. I know people rightly
get pissed off that they fixed the chart so that "I Don't Want To Talk
About It" kept the Pistols off no. 1, but that Danny Whitten song is actually
rather lovely, whereas the Pistols tune is just some hoary old riffing and gorblimey
vocals, whatever its cultural impact may have been. "Marquee Moon"
was the masterpiece of 1977 and it's no coincidence those people could play.
Mostly I listen to .... the gold-standard songwriters, Waits,
Dylan, Cohen, Springsteen, Joni, etc. That's the only level worth going for:
I mean, what would be the point in setting out to be Kasabian or something?
(I'm talking in purely artistic terms, I don't mean for the fame or the pussy).
I listen to a lot of the new singer/songwriters that get eulogised in the press
and a lot of them are pretty good (Beck is very, very good)
but it's often the lyrics that let it down for me, so I just turn off. What
I was saying about blind energy in punk, applies to lyrics too, heartfelt
often just isn't enough. But I love M. Ward and Joanna Newsom, they both say
something.
Today .... I went to see Johnny Dowd and Jim White teamed
up in a project they're calling Hellwood. Amazing. Great lyricists,
both of them. The drunker Johnny got as the set progressed the better he played
guitar. Jim White sang a beautiful song called something like "Grown Tired
Of The Fireworks Of Love".
Home .... is the South Wales valleys, though I've lived in
London a very long time. Hiraeth is a Welsh word meaning a very intense
form of homesickness or an almost mystical connection with the homeland, and
I've got a real bad dose of it. It pisses me off that Wales is associated with
the likes of Tom Jones or the Stereophonics or the Manics --- barrel-chested
bellowing, stodgy riffing and lyrics that don't scan. It's supposed to be the
land of song for Chrissakes! The land of poets! Thank God for Shirley
Bassey.
My brother .... and I are chalk-and-cheese. But we both love
Roy Orbison.
I wish .... I could headline Carnegie Hall. And Bob Dylan
would call asking for a plus-one on the guest-list.
When I was younger .... I played covers in workingmens' clubs.
Walked the roads arguing about music. Got a rough ride from the rugby-and beer
boyos. Got my heart broken. Came up to London dreaming of glory, played 'new
wave' music in every dive in the metropolis. Always felt like an outlaw, always
swore I wouldn't go straight. And I haven't. Never did let anything jerk the
steering-wheel of my life, goddamit!
Bush is .... a varmint. A dangerous crackpot. And Blair's
a despicable cunt.
My favourite .... time of day is dusk. Dusk in Paris
and I swoon like a schoolgirl.
One thing I've learnt is .... er, I don't think I've learned
anything really. The older I get the more bewildering the world becomes. People
piss me off more and more. I love animals more, I'm for the real underdog,
ie the one you'll always find under the underdog. But hey, I'm harmless!
As E.M. Cioran said: Never run away from a misanthrope.
Did you know .... there's something called Littlewood's Law
(named after a mathematician) that says that on average everyone can expect
a wonder a month? This was at least definitely true of pop music between 1965
and 1968.
Is it just me .... or are we all just strangers afraid in
a world we didn't make? (I stole that from a dead poet).
Inside .... life feels as unreal as it did back in the schoolyard.
The
scariest thing .... the way the world grows shamelessly dumber. Dumbness
is totally where it's at, dunces rool, dolts are cool. We could
rename the globe Planet Retard and it wouldn't be a lie. Hence the new vogue
for religion. What could be dumber than a pinhead evangelist or a shit-for-brains
ayatollah?
Love is .... something that comes and goes? Like a train?
Or is that I'm just in a very bad mood over how everything's getting dumber?
I believe .... was an old hit for Frankie Laine.
One day.... I'll headline Carnegie Hall. And Bob Dylan will
call me asking for a plus-one on the guest-list.
memory
(for those unfamiliar with the song it's on 'Scott III' one of the very best
records ever made by anybody ever. I discovered this record as a teenager
and it floored me, it made me want to look like him, be him. Still
does). Suppose I play it in E (which may not be the key on the record): "She
stands (E) all alone, you can hear her hum softly from her (A) fire-escape in
the (A flat-seventh) sky, She fills (feels?) the (E) bags 'neath her (Gmaj7)eyes
with the (WHAT IS THIS CHORD?!!!) moonbeams, And she (Cmaj7) cries 'cos the
(D) world passed her (E) by. Didn't (Gmaj7) time sound (A) sweet yester-(E)
day, in a (A) world filled with (C) friends you lose your (E) way. What
do I have to play under 'moonbeams'? If you have a convincing suggestion PLEASE
e-mail it to me! (And while I'm at it, thank you again for the
messages you send. Karl's taken to wearing Hank B. Marvin horn-rims after we
got the one that said the guitar-solo to 'Jezebel' was the best ever played.
Contrast and compare with the green-eyed ones I mentioned in paragraph 3). 
I've
bought a few more books: "Hotel California" by Barney Hoskyns (Joni! CSN! The
Eagles --- oh dear!),"1968" by Mark Kurlansky, "The Likes Of Us: A Biography
Of The White Working Class" by Michael Collins, "An Infamous Past: E. M. Cioran
and the Rise of Fascism in Romania" by Marta Petreu, "La Possibilité D'Une Île"
by Michel Houellebecq, J. M. Coetzee's new novel, a biography of Edvard Munch
and Edward Thomas's Collected Poems that I picked up second-hand for £2.50.
I've been replaying Scott Walker's "Climate of Hunter", (lovely), and I'm getting
Neil Diamond's "12 Songs" (that spotty guy from The Verve sounds just like him.
Bet he wishes he could write songs like him, huh?) and Kris Kristofferson's
new album next week. Should help keep me busy until the Happy New Year gets
underway, right? And I'm off to see Sparks tomorrow. 
there
to Liverpool, just to co-sing “Fairytale”. If there was such a thing as wages
she’d get a bonus….. Anyway, I love Liverpool and hope to go back before long.
Thanks to Chris for inviting us.
It’s
my birthday any minute: I forecast wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Back in
the old days when I was young and quite beautiful I’d go round Porthcawl’s Hall
of Mirrors and oh, how I’d guffaw to see myself squashed or stretched in distorting
glass. Now I need such mirrors just to look OK (-ish) in. “When gods were young
this wind was old,” said Edward Thomas (in the second-hand Collected I mentioned
last time), and I think I know how that wind must’ve felt.
I've
been listening to 
Avant-garde
art and hot middle-class totty ---- what's not to like about the ICA? (Me and
this place go way back: when I won the Verity Bargate thing it was here that
Eleanor Bron presented me with the award. We drank wine out on the balcony overlooking
the Mall and I kept thinking: "Wow! She danced with Macca in 'Help'!").
So I dab on a bit of my lucky cologne ('1725' from Scent Systems) and we hawk
a guitar,banjo and accordion down the Mall to the birthplace of British Pop
Art. This monthly acoustic night is usually held in the main hall but was moved
to the bar this evening, there being an immovable 'installation' (a phalanx
of electric-fans) parked in the theatre space. The Evening Standard had described
this do as 'the hipsters continuing their reappropriation of new folk' and you
know how it is with hipsters, they can be so awfully chatty, so fucking
gregarious, so much so they just yap right on through one's set. I
know it was nothing personal, for they did it to all four of the acts appearing
this evening, but the thing is, I'm the type of person that took even getting
born pretty personally (if you know what I mean), so you can imagine how
I felt at their callous disregard for my art (can't you?). But don't take this
to mean I didn't enjoy 
myself
and that it wasn't a good gig --- far from it, most of the audience were very
much into us and I thank them sincerely for their warm applause and kind comments
afterwards. The set consisted of "Blind Picasso", "One Day When
God .....", "Fairytale", "Hitcher", "Haiku",
"The Girl On The Escalator ..." and "Jinetera" (a world-première
for this one live). Lenny's spot was easily the best of the DJ's sets, and I'm
not saying that just because it's Lenny, I'm saying it because it was. (I'm
told Joe Boyd is one of the DJs next time. I dig Joe Boyd, even though when
he ran Hannibal he nixed a deal his head of A & R had offered the band I
was in at the time. Looking back, I can see he was right!). Thank you to Nick
Luscombe for inviting us to play.
impressed.
One magazine referred to how Springsteen's gigs had become ritualized over the
years, but this was my first time, and all I can say is that if it's
true, then this gig displayed all the power to move and mesmerize that any truly
great ritual does. When he yelled out "Road-crash!" at one point I'm
told it was because the drummer or the horns fucked up but if so I didn't notice,
even the fuck-ups sounded glorious to me. I wonder how he felt coming off after
a gig like that? No way could you sleep! (But I wonder too how he'd
feel if hipsters had chin-wagged all the way though his set?). He ended the
gig with "When The Saints Go Marching In", the first song I ever learned
on the guitar (G, C and D7). 
Lovely
toilets backstage, replete with framed reproductions of horses in oils and a
choice of soaps and handcreams. A massage tent too (but who could feel chilled
enough before a gig to submit to a massage!?) and a shop with a hairdresser
on standby and dispensing bagfuls of free 'Bed Head' products (mine included
something called 'Headbanger: A Way Out Wax for Rock Stars'.....!?). Robyn Hitchcock
wore a lovely pair of lime-green trousers and sat in the sun chatting with Peter
Buck, John Cale's strides were nowhere near as good as Robyn's (combats!
Ugh!!!) but he undeniably has an air of authority about him (and KT
Tunstall is spectacularly tiny). (I didn't see David Gray at all and
had left the site by the time he went on, so couldn't possibly comment on his
trousers. Like you care anyway, right?). Five minutes before we took up our
positions on the acoustic bandstand the zip on my trousers broke! Fucking Armani
too! Jesus, what I'd have given then for Cale's cheesy combats! Anyhow, luckily
the audience were at some distance from the stage, sprawled in deckchairs, so
I don't believe anyone noticed anything ..... I think the set went pretty well,
and the sound was good considering the --- frankly ludicrous --- position
of the sound-desk relative 
to
the stage (Jon had to judge the sound-mix via a monitor at his feet,
with Cho running to and fro between outfront and the desk, telling Jon what
needed boosting, what needed pulling back, etc.). Three songs from the end of
our set John Cale struck up on the XFM stage, all his personal authority now
symbolised in megawatts, a passable (no more) version of "Venus In Furs"
stomping like a school-yard bully all over our "Hat-Check Girl". (So
not only did he prove he had sturdier strides, he had a much bigger PA too,
the bastard). But that's how festivals are, and really we had a wonderful day,
I can't think of a better way of having spent it (unless it be headlining the
main stage, obviously .....). NB Hyde Park being a royal one there
were rules and regulations to be observed in approaching the loading gates,
the daftest and most irritating of which involved having to submit to an escort,
ie two Polish guys leading the way in a kind of hair-dryer (with a flashing
light on top!) travelling at 5mph! That's right ---- 5mph!
(Fuck man, I don't do anything at just 5mph! There were people
on skates overtaking us!). But still, just let me just say again that
we had a brilliant day, and thanks to Jon and Cho for all their efforts.
Every
year, too, we climb Penyfan, the highest of the Brecon Beacons, and Pod brings
back a stone from the summit, scrawls the year on it (we'll know we're old has-beens
when we're not up to the climb anymore. I did it one year on a freshly-broken
toe. [By the way, don't imagine we dress up in that kinky hiking-gear or nothing,
I'd trot up in Prada loafers if I had any]). In recent years we'd got to know
this little Tunisian guy --- a dead ringer for George Chakaris ---- who ran
a cafe in Blaenavon, and whenever I found myself choking on misery and/or carbon-monoxide
fumes in say Southwark Park Road or somewhere just as godforsaken I'd think
of this guy flicking a damp rag over a window-table and gazing out at the tumbleweed
rolling down Broad Street (romantic cocksucker that I am) and imagine him happy
and so somehow feel a little better ('cos even if you're not happy you need
to believe that someone somewhere is and I'd kind of elected this guy
for the job) but when I called in back in August it transpired that he'd upped
and fled to the South of France, didn't even tell his wife he was going, just
hitched a lift to Cardiff and disappeared. Something died in me when I heard
that, readers, I'd never dreamed that he'd been dreaming of fucking St Tropez
as he looked out that window, longing for escape. I mean, I wish the guy well
and everything, but Jesus .....! (Oh, the desperate deception we practise
on the world every day of our lives!). 
For
me, the best album released this summer has to be Bob Dylan's "Modern Times",
the best film I saw was "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"
and the best TV (best TV of all time, surely!) "Deadwood".
This
was the inaugural event in a new series of concerts at the QEH and we were a
late addition to the bill, opening for Joan as Police Woman and booked too late
to benefit from much of the South Bank's publicity so I expected to play to
maybe a handful of early arrivals, but by the time we took the stage the place
was packed and buzzing. The audience did us proud and gave us a fantastic response
and the gig felt like a real milestone for us, it really did seem like our kind
of crowd. (It must be the poshest venue we've ever played, too. I did
play some German opera-houses once but that was in a vaguely tacky 1980s kind
of context whereas this was definitely an arty thing). We had the best
fucking time up there --- the best fucking time! ---- so thank you
to everyone involved. (Cho fed us Welsh cakes from a big tin: I'd like to extend
my compliments to his mother for her exquisite bakestones. Will there
be some at the next show?). If you're not familiar with 
stores,
and that's where you'll find
The
newspapers and magazines are full of their round-ups of the year but I've got
a cold and I'm in too bad a mood to bother you with mine: if you've got two
ears and a functioning brain you'll already know that Tom Wait's "Orphans"
has a pretty good claim on the title of best record, and there was "Modern
Times" too, that was a good one: also, those Beatles remixes serve to remind
how astounding the Fabs were too. And there's Joanna Newsom, obviously. Plus,
honourable mentions for Cat Power and Jolie Holland: and let me put the name
The
scariest thing .... the way the world grows shamelessly dumber. Dumbness
is totally where it's at, dunces rool, dolts are cool. We could
rename the globe Planet Retard and it wouldn't be a lie. Hence the new vogue
for religion. What could be dumber than a pinhead evangelist or a shit-for-brains
ayatollah?