Dark Satanics

Spooner's Mill [the dark satanic one] looks like a bomb site, Geoff is here with his power tools and his airstream pants, he's got one of those holster things for hammers and nails and plugs and whatever it takes. The studio is almost ready as we rehearse in the soon to be completed live room with Geoff keeping time on the Bosh and the jig saw. And yeah we could use that, he just needs to play in time! The good news is that Ben has had a baby boy named Rudi. OK so Jody did the real work but we're all made up for them and well wishing when he turns up,looking remarkably sprightly considering; all this of course jogs our respective memories of the birthing business, the sleepless nights and the joys and such. It seems like forever since my two were born and then my eldest phones me with news of her first dental appointment ever and to think I had a mouthful of metal by the time I was 10 years old. That will be the fluoride then. Leah is due up at the end of the session to add some backing vocals and we talk schedules which of course will overrun or change as is the way. Anyway, we're cracking on. By Friday we have put down some of the acoustic stuff which we'll build on, starting on drums and bass at the end of the week once we have some glass in the live room. The bass parts for the record have been a bit up in the air since Andy left the band, Craig and I had a go and Tim came over at the last minute. Then Markus the tree climber [former Mighty Lemon Drop who played with Mike in Julian Cope's band] showed up out of the blue and everything seemed to pick a gear. So Markus it is then and not just because he lives five minutes down the road and he's available for the next two weeks, he's just one hell of a bass player, a proper lock into the groove a leave em standing merchant. So far so good. Meanwhile I just got the Luke Haines triple CD retrospective which is of course quite superb and disturbing and beautiful and glamorously faded. You can't really go wrong with songs about funerals and wills and missing children and he seldom does. I remember seeing the Auteurs in Manchester a few years ago at a time when my record of the moment was 'How I Learned to Love the Bootboys'. Rob Ferrier and I were mesmerised by it at the time. He closed the gig with 'A Future Generation', a song that prophesises his recognition in some distant time [which of course he will be], the closer from Boot Boys, so my simple message to you is Bugger Bognor and the rest; buy an Auteurs record; now! OK so I'm off again and while I am I just want to say one last thing on the records I detest [as I was asked to compile a list recently by a Danish Arts mag], number 1 is Bruce Springsteen - 'Dancing in the Dark', utter shit,the absolute pits, he should be metaphorically shot. How he ever got a record deal in the first place has never ceased to amaze me. I spy a 'Light Aircraft on Fire', VPx..................Markus.........................

Preston 12 Bar

It’s only down the road so sure no problem and the promoters decent and the venue to has a cool reputation...I’m talking to Jamie again as tompaulin have a show booked and sure I’m more than happy to do the support. Last time I played here was with Ron Sexsmith at the Adelphi back in the Suicide Dad days. It’s warm and wasteful Sunday as I arrive at the 12 bar in time to catch most of the tompaulin soundcheck which is refreshingly good in light of yesterdays festival sound disasters, John the engineer clearly knows the room. Then we’re all off for curry where I engage in endless sports banter with Ian the banjo player recalling my on the pitch at Villa Park Replica Shirt experience [I am prone to bore anyone and everyone on this subject] He’s a Sheffield Wednesday fan, recently promoted to the Championship and with everything to play for. He was also mugged in Manchester though not for supporting the Owls it must be said. I return first to the gig to catch Super Kings, a Preston band who were immensely listenable with cello and piano, not the usual hard guitar noise you come across. This band were attempting to be different, they also had some great little songs, like a frenzied Elton fuzzed up and camp, Ray Davies meets the Scissor Sisters…...maybe? Any way I can’t quiet pigeonhole them which is always a good sign. The singer reminded me of a young John Howard and it was just yesterday I met Johns bass player who also plays with Sister Vanilla…anyway, sorry for rambling. If you don’t know of John Howard you really should do, he’s genius and I don’t use the word lightly. My gig goes off pretty well, I’ve even got my own table of people who’ve come down to see me from Sheffield so thanks Anna, the gig is intimate enough to have some proper living room style banter with them and others and I fear my mouth got the better of me in terms of waffle at some points still it was really enjoyable to be playing acoustic again. I even did a few poetry requests which don’t happen so much nowerdays. I also did some of the newer songs soon to be recorded for the new record. After the show I meet some local philosophers and talk about Revolt into Style, the song [it’s new and I’m just about record it] and the George Melly book from where I stole the title [I’m not the first as my google search just confirmed] oh well….tompaulin play a great set, inspiring,up close and personal. It’s been good these last two days catching up with them and such. Stacy has also agreed to sing on the new record which I’m dead excited about, I’m preparing a little broken hearted duo for us as we speak. I drop Anna off in Chorlton at 1.30am and then I’m home and out of it in no time. Tomorrow we start rehearsals at Spooners for the album, VPx

Arts in The Park, Blackburn

I’d been looking forward to the festival, Blackburn is connected to my very consciousness or something and notable for spawning [is the right word]? one my favourite bands, those sweet and tender misfits tompaulin. I’ve known Jamie for some years now; we were introduced by a late great friend of mine Graham Melia who we all remember with such affection. Graham was an inspiration to many people here today and it’s ironic that the festival site happens to adjoin the cemetery where he is buried. The last time Chris and I were here was for his funeral so Graham is central to my thoughts as we check in back stage and meet up with the others. It’s been a bit of rush this week sorting things out after Andy’s departure but Tim has stepped in at the last minute to play bass. Tim produced the Growing Up record and we’ve managed just the one rehearsal still I know Tim is more than capable of doing the business even at such short notice. Some musicians just have it, whatever it is, and Tim one of them. Ben is also missing in action; he’s in Japan with 808State earning some proper money so we’re just a four piece. We catch local band Maupa [it’s polish for monkey] finishing a taught and frenzied set to much acclaim, they really are quite spectacular and remind me of The Soundtrack of our Lives and The Strokes and the Kinks. tompaulin play next and despite the abysmal onstage sound [Jamie has a mini strop] the out front sound is amazing [this down to Joe the legend who’s doing our sound also]. Joe is a sonic wiz who knows his craft. The same can’t be said for the onstage sound crew who seem oblivious to any kind of requests for monitor adjustments and such. Blimey…going on again about sound. We hang out with tompaulin for a while after their set and assure them that it sounded great [it did] it’s just that they had no way of telling. Andy Woods is here, Slajana is here, Lisa is here, I’ve spilt a bottle of cider in my bag and Craig still hasn’t used the loo [he’s worried about the germs]. I’m not going to moan too much about the gig, we played well all things considered. What I will say is that getting an electric shock strong enough to jolt me across the stage is really unacceptable, so if came across like a drama queen that was the reason. That and the awful onstage sound…there I go again. The same thing happened to Kurt Wallinger at Glastonbury when I was compering a while ago [my strop was nothing on his], so much for kissing the mic. After the gig we loiter and sell CDs, all in all the reaction seems positive. Then Chris and I go walkabouts and meet up with Mike and Tina at the Indian takeaway trailer. It’s a beautiful summers evening and The Undertones are playing the mainstage though it all seems a bit silly without Fergal. We take the long way home over the tops, VPx

Three books that changed my life

The following from an article on books I did awhile ago that I just happened to stumble across...not sure if it was ever published but having returned to the hallowed pages of Mr Bukowski yet again...it always happens in times of need...I thought I might as well add it to the site. I was asked to come up with some literary inpirables so here goes, hope the world is being kind to you in such a traumatic week as this, VPx BOOK 1 As an impressionable punk-rock music loving teen I read the NME with gusto, as everybody did in those days. In a CURE interview Robert Smith mentioned Albert Camus as an influence and being a bit of a CURE fan I dutifully purchased A Happy Death from Bromsgrove Books mispronouncing his name as K-MUS much to my eternal embarrassment. I read it in the park the next day [I was on the dole] and it was like nothing I’d come across before. The hero was this guy Mersault, he lived the life of a Mediterranean aesthete, swimming in solitary oblivion, apparently devoid of conventional moral responsibilities, totally selfish and yet selfless. He murdered a cripple [with kindness]. He didn’t attend his mother’s funeral [out of laziness]. He opted out [because he could] and his lovers were transitional and mostly irrelevant, he was a bonafide hedonist, devoid of guilt and concerned only for the moment. I found these notions liberating, intoxicating and at a total counterpoint to my stilted late teen life experience in a pretty but oh so dull little Worcestershire village. I now realize through re reads and critical investigations that the novel contains all kinds of serious metaphors that examine life and death and morality, stuff I never really got first time around [ stuff I don’t get now]. For me the book will always be about permission, permission to be your self, permission to exist, permission to live your own life. I used to say to my dad ‘I’m an existentialist’, he just gave me the look; this is the book that liberated me from the spiritual confinement of Methodism. Its hip appeal was further enhanced by the knowledge that Mr Camus was a former professional footballer who looked like the Jesus of cool smoking gitanes cigarettes. BOOK 2 Failing miserably at school, issues with acne and teachers and girls, it was some posh kids from The Royal Grammar School in Worcester who invited me to play guitar at their end of year concert. Backstage after the audition I found a copy of Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar [a Picador UK edition] which duly ended up in my guitar case. I read it in one sitting which is not that difficult as it only contains142 pages and some chapters are barely a paragraph long. The book was shockingly different. I had never come across anything like it and remember how excited and intrigued I was to have made this oddball discovery. Did this make me cool? Absolutely not, Richard Allen’s Skinhead [the coolest book at school] took that accolade. A narrative about a stream along which some watermelons grow, where giant phone booths cover the river banks and get vandalized by tigers. The phone booths are carved out of giant water melons and factories produce different coloured watermelons on different days of the week for different applications. There’s a place called iDeath [a good place] and a bloke called inBOIL [who cuts off his thumb]. IWS often appears to make no sense, it’s almost as if the sentences are not really speaking to each other, and yet it draws the reader in with simplicity of style more commonly found in children’s fiction. I was immediately captivated. It remains my favourite Brautigan novel and set me off on pursuit of his collected works, most of which, over the following years, I’m happy to say I managed to track down. For Brautigans and others try www.beatscene.com Anything by Charles Bukowski, my favourite all time writer, [especially the poetry], gets my vote. I came across him via a friend in the early 80’s and have become progressively consumed. Bukowski, who died in 1994 aged 73, has a load of personal contradictions, a classical music loving alcoholic, a former street dweller [bum] who spent his formative years in the flop houses of the USA working unskilled jobs, a self destructive rebel and a bully who was in turn bullied by his father [Ham on Rye is the autobiographical classic]. He was first published aged 35 after numerous rejections. I love the fact that he never gave up and it shows in his work, there’s real defiance in his character. So at any given time there is a Bukowski poetry book on the go in this house, he’s great to dip into, he’s like an addiction, always the same voice, for me the voice of truth, the voice of warts and all. A man who treasured solitude, loved animals and turned his personal demons into great writing. His style is so un-flowery, so readable and so straightforward. None of the poncy elaborate over-wordy bullshit that you get from the typical English poetry elite [and the Welsh for that matter] clutters up his work. He cuts to the chase. OK so he usually writes about the same things, women, horse racing, boxing, madness, drinking ; but for me he understands the essence of sadness and truth. And he has helped me when I’ve been lost. I dutifully urge anyone and everyone to check him out. Post Office is a great starting point, for poems try Love is a Dog from Hell. Both are from the mid 70’s when he was firing up the old typer like magician. Brutal tender majesty it just is.