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.........................