Oh, look, it's a Hobbit, I mean a Bobbit.......

April 30th – Remember Mr and Mrs Bobbitt? OK, so their marriage wasn't exactly a bed of roses but y’know, really, I’d have thought a simple;

“Now then, dear, I’d be very grateful if you didn't do that again”

would’ve sufficed; apparently not. Even then, cutting off the end of his offending organ should have been enough of a notification to Wayne that Lorena was, if not exactly pissed off then at least mildly annoyed by his behaviour toward her, but for her to then drive off and lob the knob into a field…? That’s a bit OTT, isn't it? I mean, what would have been the outcome (no pun intended) if a rumbling-tum raccoon in the mood for a bit of gristle had happened along? My guess is the chase involving racoon and Mr. B would have been worthy of a cartoon representation…and all those bits of straw sticking to it after a romp round fifty acres of scrub? Jeeze.

Would you feel the sensation as the concerned medics scrubbed it clean, it being such an intimate part of your anatomy…you know, like when you lose a leg but can still feel the foot? I mean, the poor bugger, thirty miles away, minding his own, could’ve been trying to urinate when they started to rub the detached end in an effort to make it presentable and he’d ‘ave shot piss all over the place, and through no fault of his own…well, not quite no fault of his own, but still.

What’s this got to do with anything? Well, the infamous Bobbitt case came to mind when I read that, on this day in 1970, Twiggs Lyndon, one-time rock road-manager, had been arrested for stabbing a club manager to death over a contract dispute and that’s what made me think of the Bobbitt’s and the sometime extreme reasons folk use for committing crimes. You see, although, at her trial, Lorena Bobbitt said she was abused both sexually and physically by Wayne (and I’m sure she was and I wouldn't wish that on anyone). Notwithstanding that, on the night of her arrest for the shortening exercise, she told police;

“He always have orgasm, and he doesn't wait for me to have orgasm. He’s selfish.”

With that as the central pillar to her defence she was found not guilty of sexually wounded Wayne. Wow…

Now, I thought that was a top-trumps excuse until Mr. Lyndon, in his defence, said that at the time of the fatal stabbing he was suffering from temporary insanity caused by being the tour manager for the Allman Brothers Band: and he got off with it! Now I know the story of The Allman Brother’s Band reads like a car-crash but all the same…

There’s a life-lesson right there, folks. It would seem that sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll can not only destroy your life it can also ride to your rescue.

As for Lorena Bobbitt’s initial reason? Word to the wise, fellas; foreplay consists of more than just dumping your underpants in the laundry basket.

You've been warned.

I'd like to introduce my support act; but I won't...

April 29th – I wrote about Marilyn Manson yesterday and, as I was writing it occurred, not for the first time that he almost comes across as a poor-man’s David Bowie. Is that unkind? Hope not, it’s just an observation not a vendetta. As far as adopting a new persona, the pop-butterfly effect if you will, Mr. Bowie is second to none and his incarnations…that’s his changes in personality I mean, not that he’s covered in wedding button-holes…his incarnations, geddit?...oh never mind, his incarnations, Kabuki Hero, Ziggy Stardust, Thin White Duke, and whatever he is at the moment; Rich White Man? Dunno, anyway, he’s done the make-up and character work to death over the years and this is what makes Mrs. Marilyn/Mr. Manson seem shop-soiled to me.

I saw Mr. Bowie, as you know, on the ZS tour in Brum – T’was ‘mazin’, and that’s from someone who’s sort of fallen out from his performance appreciation tree, certainly after he finished with Ziggy. Don’t think this was because I missed the point of the character, not even slightly, I just thought that Bowie disappeared up his own anus after that and still think his best solo-with-session-men work was on The Man Who Sold The World album; nothing that followed comes close IMHO.

Anyway, ZS was a great show, but it wasn't just simply because of Mr. Bowie; it was largely because he was so ably supported by his lead guitarist, Mick Ronson; The Spiders would have been so much the poorer without him. Was I the only one who thought that Mr. Bowie used him a bit, not just on the tour but throughout their time together after the initial honeymoon? Probably just me. It was just the dynamic that exuded during the show seemed to be indicative of the larger panorama of the collective, to me at any rate. Maybe they were just fed up with doing the gig, it happens, even on the most successful of tours. Just thought that Mr. Bowie projected a level of callousness toward…no, not callousness, a sort of indifference toward Mr. Ronson that seeped over and off the stage. I mean, OK, using him for the sexual imagery he portrayed during the act maybe, but the rest of the time, between numbers, sidestage…? Maybe that was the point, the extension of Ziggy – the character…the usuary, the indifference the ‘bring the band on down behind me boys’ attitude…? If it was it worked, suckered me in all the way.

Clever musician, Mr. Ronson. Multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, record producer. Played on Mr. Bowie’s most successful albums – Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Pin-ups. Clever enough to go it alone, worked with them all, the greats, rated amongst the best guitarists of all time. On this day in 1993, he died of cancer at the age of 46 and, IMHO, on the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars tour, although Mr. Bowie was undeniably good, Mr. Ronson made him look undeniably great.

Mr. & Mrs.

April 28th – Never been a Marilyn Manson fan, not likely to be either. Nor, so I gather, is she/he a fan of mine so... I've always considered she/he took her/himself too seriously and, consequently, I’ve treated him/her in the opposite. If she/he doesn't (take him/herself seriously that is) and she’s/he’s really a fun gal/guy who only dresses as a clown on a weekend to entertain the old people then OK but all I can say is she/he needs to sort out the press and promotions side of the business ‘cos that’s not how the story so far scans. The reading I get is someone who has a penchant for being sued, pissing folk off and reneging on agreements.

I think, what it is, is that if you have to dress it up that much then it’s not worth the buying. Some of her/his music is OK, and the theatricality of her/his shows gives value for money but it smells of narcissism, never a nice scent when whiffed in too big a volume. I know, I know;

“Peter, Peter, you’re a 60+year-old, cynical and out-of-date old fart.”

I know. I also know the whole point of pop stardom revolves around the expansion of the self, but I’m not a follower of big egos. Maybe if Mrs. Marilyn/Mr. Manson wore less make-up on every public appearance then she/he would get a better grip on reality and allow us to do the same when it comes to assessing the human qualities behind the smoke-screen. As it is the make-up is a mask that stops her/him from being human, from taking too much notice of her/himself but making us do the opposite, and therein lies the trap. The minute you start believing your own press-cuttings, that’s when reality blends with fantasy to the extent where you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. You lose sight of yourself and your intrinsic worth as your place and message as an entertainer and social being becomes blurred in a mirror of your own construction. The subject eventually becomes locked into the creation of the myth, lines become fuzzy and the off-switch is lost in the scramble to maintain what is, in essence, the machinery that makes the money. Sense of place, sense of purpose, sense of importance and sense of humour go out the window as self-regard and an inability to see the bigger picture march in through the door. After this, it only takes a single slip, an inappropriate loss of timing, to throw the curtains open on the darkroom of the soul; for me, in Miss/Mr. Manson’s case, Des Moines was the one.
So, my advice (which I’m sure will be heeded as I’m fully aware she/he reads this blurb of mine every day) my advice is to put behind you the fact that, on this day in 1999, you stormed off the Des Moines stage after you found someone had stuck a smiley face on one of your stage props; in short, lighten up, Marilyn, life’s too short to stuff a mushroom.

There's nothing like a good advert, and that was nothing like...

April 27th – Gonna try the impossible today; (‘Like write something short, Peter?’) Ha, you wish! OK, here goes…and any ladies that are reading this, don’t roll your eyes in derision as you read what follows, it’s what us chaps have to put up with…what us chaps have to suffer everyday, y’know…constant… unremitting… If you are of a nervous disposition or take offence easily then stop reading now…OK? It gets gritty.

I think, if asked, most men would say their favourite video is probably the one made by Danish company, Fleggard… yup, I haven’t got a clue what they sell either but that isn't why the ad. is tops (or topless even). It contains humour alongside high production values and if you have to ask why they need to take their tops off then you've missed the point. Look, tell you what, for those interested, here’s the YouTube site address; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD2wB5Ng-4s copy and paste or, if you can’t track it by that then just type in Danish Sex Bombs into the address bar.

But please, a) don’t watch it if you’re easily offended and b) remember, it’s an ad. not a political manifesto or a personal statement. Do you wanna watch it now and come back…? OK, I’ll hold…

Hi! Right. Now, after that treat of advertising genius, my guess is that most men’s second favourite is the Robert Palmer video of Addicted to Love which hit the number one spot on this day in 1986. Predictable choice? Well, yes, but I wanted to take few lines to try and break it down and discover just why it works and what we’re being sold…what us chaps

have to suffer everyday, y’know…constant…unremitting… Look, tell you what, for those interested, here’s the YouTube site address; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcATvu5f9vE copy and paste or, if you can’t track it by that then just type in Addicted to Love into the address bar.

Do you wanna watch it now and come back…? OK, I’ll hold…

Hi! Good to have you back. Right. Addicted to Love; discuss:

The Ladies: Dressed in blouses of a black, chiffon-type material that throughout the video gives half-glimpses of nothing else underneath. Tights are black, sheer, hinting, in the case of three of the ladies, at the possibility of grip-tops just hidden by skirts that are short, tight and all on the verge of riding up higher, their cut emphasising le derrière’s shape and firmness. Two of the skirts are knee-length…which adds extra emphasis on the three that aren't.

Viewer’s Questions:

‘Are the one’s who are dressed alike two sets of twins?’

‘Are they displayed as such, these two sets of similar women, to equate with every man’s dream and draw the watcher/voyeur (mainly male) into the net?’

Right-onward:

The ladies’ hair is tight, pulled back to allow illumination of their open faces, beautifully made up to accentuate the arousal zones – lips, eyes, cheeks, necks. The eyes have dusky hues over and alongside them to pick out both the whites and the irises and these irises are also accentuated to seem large, piercing, inviting. One lady has ice-blue, particularly penetrating eyes, cat-like in their representation in the video; a feline heart and everything else that look implies; inconstancy, coldness, agility, seeking fuss, purring to the caress. The eyebrows are heavily tinted to allow even the slightest arching to be picked up by the camera (something they do very well at various points in the video hinting at…what? Ennui? Expectation?) Their stare is sometime raking the outer watchers, sometime peripheral to camera, sometime straight at camera in the former two allowing the watcher to implant their own take on just what the subject is thinking; in the latter one the stare is penetrating, a challenge or threat and leaves the watcher in no doubt as to what the possibilities are. The lips are bright red, glossy, moist and ready for action.

Throughout most of the video their lips remain closed but twice in the video two of the ladies part them, one to reveal tongue and teeth, and this makes her seem more startling and arresting and more available. In ancient times the vagina was often drawn as a ring with teeth (vagina dentate) as the church tried to stamp out fornication and lust (two mortal sins); is this a hint of subversion? Invitation? Threat? Dare? For the most part their faces remain expressionless and this makes even the slightest eye movement more potent. Long, white necks disappear into the blouse tops, hinting at love-biting and then further. On to blood-sucking? Are we are invited to become Dracula in the safety of our own home…? Their movement is suggestive; hips grinding, swinging and gyrating, mostly in step and in time and this, with the greater stillness of the upper body, draws the eye to the length and shape of each lady’s leg; accentuated by the short skirts. Finger nails are red to match the lips and manicured to within an inch of their collective lives suggesting deft manipulation of instruments, or anything else they come into contact with. The belts are studded, hinting at a dominatrix approach to physical friendship and are fixed tight, pinching in their waists, accentuating their hips and body-line like 18th century ladies of a certain sort. The white guitar strap on the one lady to Mr. Palmer’s left, draped across her right side is, in a real playing situation, awkwardly positioned, but she, like all the other participants, isn't playing, she’s miming; probably can’t play a note. That’s not the point, what is the point is that, in its position and as she gyrates, so the strap moves her left breast across and back, across and back, drawing the eye to the promised, half-glimpse of a naked body beneath.

The drummer has her kit in such a position that it would be impossible to play. What it does do, though, is allow her to display her legs to good advantage, and in order to compensate for her being in the background she is the only lady wearing a scoop-necked top that shows a greater amount of white flesh, her target area, and hints at a lack of bra, something affirmed by the close-ups of the ladies and the movement of their breasts under their blouses. Slow camera work drags down their bodies in a move akin to undressing them, to give glimpses of their bodies being affected by their movement to the music, of a union without consequences, to the very pulse of the music and what it means to be Addicted to Love.

Mr. Palmer wears a white shirt and black pants. Is he is the master, the pimp, the controller of their and our desire or is he under their collective command? Certainly his handling of the microphone is firm, controlled suggesting he knows what to do with stiff and hard objects. 

And there you have it.
Or you could just say that I've just written a load of old bollocks and it’s just a freakin’ good song with some real sexy ladies on view…

Wanting to become a politician should disqualify you from being one.

April 26th – One of my all-time favourite singer/songwriter performers is James Taylor. I do believe I first heard him back in 1969 or 70 on the John Peel Show which, I guess, was on Radio One, Top Gear. He did a Sunday afternoon slot, probably about two hours long, and on this, as is usual in Mr. Peel’s broadcasts, he showcased unheard, sometimes unsigned bands and performers; something he excelled at until his untimely demise, what, nine years ago was it?

I don’t know of any serious music aficionado who hasn’t had recourse to refer to him as the man who put me on to… His legendary status in always looking left-field, musically, and being open to listening to un-requested performance tapes and cd’s just because someone had gone to the trouble of making it and sending it, so the least I can do… What we wouldn't give to have that now in the music world and at any time in the publishing world, the film world, the scriptwriting world, the playwriting world… That’s what’s so annoying about this arts debacle that Maria Miller instigated and presided over last year. Let’s cut to the chase.

She has the bedrock of an educative background for making decisions on the arts as she graduated in Economics (?) and also has a first class honours degree in Expenses… Yet here she is preaching about the commercial aspect of theatre and how it needs to play a bigger part. Does she really think people put on a show to make a loss… jeezzeee…trouble is she’s serious. It’s like the bloke who got control of a theatre I worked in and started off the first meeting by saying;

“Right, now, I only want you to book shows that sell out from now on. OK?”

WATP. Well she’s like that, Ms. Miller. She thinks that’s how theatre works, that all we need to do is only make shows that sell… What you end up with, if this is your mantra, is just a list of famous names making mediocre junk ‘cos;

“At least people know who they are”.

And this woman is in charge…FMS!

What we need are more John Peel’s (what we get is more Ian Duncan Smith’s). Mr. Peel's programme introduced me to Tyrannosaurus Rex, Bonzo Dog, Jethro Tull amongst many others and was de rigueur listening for anyone in a progressive rock band.

That’s where Mr. Taylor first came to my attention and I've followed him and his career ever since. On this day in 2003, he had a bridge named after him in North Carolina as it had featured in one of his songs, Copperline, and you only have to listen to his recordings of Sweet Baby James, or Places in My Past, or Soldier, the more popular Fire and Rain or indeed the more recent Sailing to Philadelphia to recognise his rare, rare song writing and performance talent. 
I've laughed and cried along to his music for 40+ years…so, thank you Messer’s Taylor and Peel for your gifts…

Worth the dying for...?

April 25th – Apologies due once more for my ineptitude; just have days of feeling a bit shit. I’m sure once the dregs of the anaesthetic wear off I’ll feel a little more positive. OK, on with it:

 It has become more and more obvious, as I've written these daily jottings that probably the world’s worst occupation, certainly as far as risks to self are concerned, is the music industry. It’s the one sure-fire way of attracting death and severe injury to your side that I can think of.
Now I know that, because they’re high profile, their near-death brushes and eventual, fully expected demise is given greater prominence in the press than us other mere mortals, but, even so…

There’s often a sort of group dynamic apparent in stupid people or the use of illicit substances; let’s take touring. When you’re an up and coming band (I’m talking about the 60’s-70’s now) you have to tread the circuit, get about…there was no social media or YouTube to help get your message out. You did that by building a reputation and through that, getting as many gigs as you could in as many places in the country as you could on the back of your local successes; and we’re talking about a time when a word processor was a pencil and rubber here, so…  But despite this seeming difficulty, gigs were, in a way, easier to come by.

Discotheques had yet to be invented (the thought of someone actually being paid to play records at a dance hall would have caused a great deal of merriment back then). 95% of music was live (the 5% not so was out of a jukebox) and most places would be having live music five sometimes six days a week, and on a Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun night would have at least two bands performing in their halls, sometime three or four in the bigger places, the Locarno’s and Plaza’s of the day if they wanted to survive. As a band, to do this sort of gigging took stamina because we hadn't learnt the wonders of ‘logistics’ back then, so one night you were in Manchester, the next in Marlow, the next Bristol, the next in Leeds and so on. Keeping awake was a daily challenge and so pick-me-ups were much in demand in order to be alert enough to perform; the downside being it was but a small step from requirement to dependence.
As one band member did it so did another and, well, you are all mates, so… However I think there were limits to the spread…or echo effect if you will and in the case of his long-time partner, Pamela Courson, it was a mighty long reverb. She was the lucky lady to find Jim Morrison dead in the bath in his hotel. Mr. Morrison’s (that’s as in ‘Jim’ not as in ‘Morrisons – every penny matters’) use of booze is well documented, as was his use of suspicious additives, and Ms. Courson regularly changed her story about what Mr. Morrison had died of and who had killed him, stating on many an occasion that it was the heroin what dunnit. Sad to say, the echo effect caught up with her on this day in 1974; she died of a heroin o/d so we’ll never know whether Mr. Morrison scrubbed himself to an early demise with a loofah or whether heroin did play a major part in his death. Sam Bennett seems to think so, but that's another story...

The art of slacking....

April 24th – Do you remember when you were a whipper-snapper, back in the day? Do you remember having the Monday headache, the Friday ‘cold?

I never really got on with school (school didn't much get on with me either so, quid-pro-quo really and with that we parted on acrimonious terms) and I was always happy for an excuse to be off legally. Trouble was I, like so many of you reading this (who am I kidding…all two of you) had a very perspicacious mother who tended not to miss a trick which meant the opportunity for me to bunk off school with anything less than a severed limb was zilch. Y’know, I always thought girls had a head start on this one when they reached ‘that age’ ‘cos they’d got a ready-made, once a month tummy ache or headache or some such in order to spend a day at home…not that I’m either denigrating what an inconvenience these sessions could be...nor am I belittling the pain and discomfort (STOP DIGGING PETER!!!!) that could accompany them….nor am I suggesting that, faced with the same bodily cycle, boys wouldn't make as much fuss (STOP DIGGING AND STEP AWAY FROM THE SHOVEL!!!!!)…but…(NOW, PETER! NOW!!!)…….

Right, so, where were we…? Oh, yes, right, well, as I said, my mother could spot a fallacy at a hundred paces (unless it was a lesser-spotted fallacy, she could see that at 500 yards distant) so, if I wanted a clandestine day off, I’d have to be far more devious than just claiming a tummy ache or decapitation…I can remember getting a cousin of mine to write a letter claiming I’d been the victim of a ‘bilious attack’, trouble was she laid it on so thick that it seemed I was at death’s door after suffering a mugging by a particularly vicious gang of boys named William…I seem to recall visits by teachers to home, letter exchanges, punishments… I digress…excuses for missing school.

There should come a time in your life, if you mature as you should that is, when you realise you can’t just flip a bird to work/school; that you should be a responsible person and do what’s required of you in support of the team or your own self-respect. OK, there are, maybe, circumstances where a duvet-day would be a kindness to all concerned; post-hangover, say, where the sight of your rumpled, craggy face capped by hair full of last-night’s vomit and sporting the breath and temper of an excreta-eating dragon with an over-acidified stomach. That would be a thing to keep away from the workplace, I’d reckon; particularly a workplace involving close contact with anything even vaguely human. Well, as you all know, this kind of refusal to comply was nicely portrayed on Pink Floyd’s The Wall album by way of the always excellent, Comfortably Numb track. Don’t know if Dave Gilmore ever gets sick of playing it but I never tire of listening to it.

So, cut to the chase, I never thought that I’d hear of a real-life, “I feel poorly” excuse offered by one of the foremost grunge bands of the 90’s, Stone Temple Pilots no less and think;

‘If that aint rock ‘n’ roll then I don’t know what is’

A regular on my playlist, their recording of Crackerman is just sublime…sub-lime…and that’s a measure of their early work; full-on, TNP, F’EA… They lived the rock 'n' roll life to the max; played hard, loved hard, even slept hard I'd reckon and, in true rock 'n' roll' fashion, which underlined their credentials they had to cancel shows because, and I quote, 

“We have been unable to rehearse or appear for these shows due to his (Mr. Weiland’s) dependency on drugs. He is currently under a doctor's care in a medical facility.” 

Now that beats the girly excuse that I used of,
“I’m sorry Peter was away from school yesterday because of a bilious attack…” 

into a cocked hat…

Reminds me of the old joke:

Seven-year-old Billy comes into class.

"Sorry I was away yesterday, Miss, my daddy got burnt."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Billy, was it a bad burn?"

"Yes, Miss, they don't fuck about down the crematorium.

Byeee...!

...and one more for the road.

April 23rd – We've touched on this before, ad nauseum, but it still bears repeating; don’t drink and do drugs and play with a guitar…or play with anything really, especially a chainsaw.

Steve Clark, of Def Leppard fame, was born today; he was to die just thirty one years later by not heeding the rules that ask imbibers not to mix codeine, Valium and morphine...although having a level three times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream at the same time might not have helped…
I think the band were a little overproduced for my taste but I can’t deny, the In The Round, In Your Face tour was pretty seismic, especially the Kabuki-Drop at the top of the show; excellent way to kick it off. I think, though, that they were very much of their time. They have a certain ‘90’s’ ink-mark that just won’t rub off. That’s not to say that what they produced in what I hope I can call their hey-day wasn't good stuff, it’s just that it seemed to become set in hair gel when the decade turned.
You’d think, with Rick Allen having such a near squeak and him having the fortitude to re-learn the whole drumming thing, you’d think that would count as their slice of piss-pie; apparently not. Phil Collen also had his own problems with the demon drink, until he gave it up that is, but even with the loss of Steve Clark the band seemed to be able to keep on keepin' on. So, I guess it’s a thumb’s-up to them for their tenacity but a thumb’s-down for their seeming inability to recognise the warning signs and to stay rock-relevant…imho…

Scrotal surgery halts blog posting shock-horror....!!!

April 22nd – Sorry 'bout the break, just some minor adjustments to my manhood needed to be sorted by our local surgeon. Hopefully on the mend now.

‘Cos, of course, he did give that bloke from that band ‘Wet Wet Wet’ (just about sums them up for me, their title, but, let it pass) what was his name? Pele…no, not Pele…he was footballer, even I know that…Pellow, that’s it, Marti Pellow, that’s the fellow (did you see what I did there?) Anyhow Mr. Pellow’s remake hit of Love is All Around…; is it ‘Me…or Us’ or none of the above…? Whatever…that song we’re tortured with on a regular basis…Reg Presley wrote it and then had the short-sighted idiocy to allow Mr. Pellow licence to re-record, so his sins would, seemingly, be unpaid for as yet, Reg Presley’s sins that is; Marti Pellow remains unforgiven (I worked on The Witches of Eastwick stageplay after seeing the original with Ian McShane in the title role…believe me, Mr. Pellow remains unforgiven)…

The Troggs were never a band I took much notice of and, although I worked with them a couple of times when they came to our theatre as part of a pension-tour rock-package in their latter years…well, let's just say I didn't quite make it to their musical platform, never mind catch their train. Still, each to their own and they did give a good show, punters enjoyed it, just something about Mr. Presley (Reg not Elvis) that I couldn't quite connect to.

When Wild Thing was released in ‘66’ I was 18 and well into bands and gigging and stuff. Thought it was an OK single but never in the front-line of memorable; until Jimi Hendrix laid hold of it that is; until I picked up a Hendrix bootleg copy of ‘WOW’… bugger me! Where the F did THAT come from!? But then, that was the wonder of Mr. Hendrix. As I wrote, I’d heard the song on its original release and dismissed it as pulp-pop (Wild Thing) but had not made THE connection…that’s why Mr. Hendrix is a world-renowned, much vaunted guitarist and I’m here scribbling this drivel… Jimi Hendrix’s version just drips sexuality, aggression and a level of social discourse not encountered since Attila the Hun said;

“The Balkans. What do you think; theirs or mine?”

Just an absolute, standout, take-no-prisoners piece of work…(Mr. Hendrix’s not Mr. Hun’s)… and I never listen to it without the hairs on the back of my neck standing up at his musical audacity and panache. Brilliant, in the true sense of that word.

So, all-in-all we have two avenues of escape. Mr. Presely’s ability to publish and continue his research work on extra-terrestrials made possible by the money he made from Mr. Pellow’s re-release of Love is….compared with the money spent by Mr. Hendrix setting fire to his guitar on the first night he played Wild Thing at Monterey Festival…?

After careful consideration of the above two, I’m duty bound to say that the only thing missing from that guitar-pyre is the master tape to Love is All Around….Me...or Us...or whatever swiftly joining it.

Coffee and Cigarettes.

April 21st – It’s like this nothing for something business culture we’re suffering from today; those ones like in designer coffee houses where they have these signs saying;

‘This is our promise to you. When you buy our coffee we promise to give you…’

and then go on to list all the obvious things but with an edge that is supposed to make you, them, me, all one part of a great-big happy family;

‘great coffee plucked delicately from the rain-soaked, sun-drenched pod by laughing, indigenous workers who caress each bean to inbue it with love, infused with milk eased away from the lanolined breast of a free-range, grass-fed cow and sweetened with sugar grown in the sun-blessed, carefree cane farms of Barbados before being sieved through a maiden’s pure silk stocking held in wrappers sealed by the moisture taken from the inside thigh of a South American virgin…’

OK, OK, over the top and sexist…OK, I back down from that and beg your forgiveness.

It’s as though they’d really like to give you shit coffee in a cracked cup served by a seriously grumpy, fag-wearing slacker but, because it’s you, they’ll up their game and give you a truly uplifting coffee experience… It’s just a coffee FFS! Don’t start waxing lyrical about it; it’s just a cup of fuckin’ coffee. 

It’s the same as the M&S ads, and the banks telling us they’ll look after our money; well, will you REALLY; thank god! I really thought you’d take my hard earned cash and piss it up the wall on champers and risky deals…oh…hang on…maybe that wasn't such a good example, but you can get my drift. Like those trucks that pound up and down the motorways with the word logistics emblazoned across them…logistics; basically it’s picking something UP from HERE carrying it over THERE then putting it DOWN again; and if it reads, Express Logistics then it’s doing exactly the same thing but faster. It’s the way language is misused in order to confuse, bamboozle or deceive the public that is one of the great crimes of our age; politicians have built a career on it. The belief is that, if you tell it like it is no one will want to buy it, which is bollocks basically. If I need to buy bread I buy bread. No amount of procrastination will make toast out of nothing…so, I buy bread. Bread. Not;

A soft, fluffy confection of carefully sieved flour moulded gently by the caring hands of our experienced patisseries’’

just fuckin’ bread.

Chuck that shit overboard. If you’re prepared to tell it like it is, then good things can and will happen; take the Payola scandals of the 1960’s. Basically it was common practice for record companies to pay DJs to play songs. The bigger the recording company (and often the more shit the act) the better they paid for their trite rubbish to be given air-time on the radio. After this was discovered (I mean, hell, it only took them 20 years) the shock horror reverberations (much like the HUAC hearings in the film industry) caused ‘concerned citizens’ (who they?) to demand action from the U.S. government who ‘began cracking down on Payola’. 

On this day in 1960, Dick Clark, a DJ of the time, testified that he took money and gifts to play records – (Wow! Really?!) – estimating that at least 27% of his playlist was paid for in industry back-handers and favours. Another prominent DJ and TV host, Alan Freed, refused to admit that he took Payola, insisting that it was payment for him being a consultant to the record industry. Mr. Clark told the truth. Mr. Freed didn't.
Mr. Clark’s career took off after these hearings. He never looked back and had massive influence over the rock/pop genre. He lived a long and happy life and died in his bed in 2012.

Mr. Freed’s career bottomed out after this and never recovered, despite his previous massive influence and success. No one would employ him and he went from bad to worse, dying of alcoholism in 1965.

So, there we have it. Proof that, if you tell the truth about your coffee in plain language;

To bring you this coffee, we felled huge tracts of rain-forest then planted up alien, genetically-modified coffee trees using local labour who were pushed off the land they owned and worked in the first place by us then re-employed at a far from living wage and who we will keep on employing (until the bottom drops out the market or we find a different industry to make a profit from in which case we’ll make a gift of this now overused, under protected and useless land back to the workers and fuck off out of it). We harvested it with massive machines, thereby cutting down on any labour-intensive operations thereby saving the wage-bill and cutting the price of the coffee we sell to the middle-men who ramp the price back up again by spreading panic about bad harvests so that we can charge you, our faithful customer, a premium for what is, ostensibly, a cup of hot water with 6 grams of powder in it. That’ll be £2.50. Thanks.

Maybe people will still buy it; maybe buy even more of it …

Fame is just a drink away...

April 20th – One thing a rock band front-man has to have is chutzpah (the best definition of which I can give is to be found guilty of murdering both your parents and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re now an orphan)…chutzpah in plenty; trouble is, it can effect an already inflated ego, something you've got to have a fair amount of to think you can front a band in the first place, and it can also fuzzy-up an ability to balance on-and-off-stage life.

The late and much lamented vocalist (certainly amongst my fellow band-mates of the time anyway) in one of the bands I was in has made an appearance in this daily guff before (in the embarrassingly infamous Foundations Show) but, even though he was somewhat unpredictable when it came to booze (more on this later) one thing he could do was sing…and front the band. If you can picture a cross between Steve Marriott and thingy…him from that punk/mod band, still going strong now… erm… guitarist…Goin’ Underground…erm, Jesus, my memory, Eton Rifles bloke, you know…? PAUL WELLER!!! That’s him, Paul Weller…right, well think of a cross between Mr. Weller and Mr. Marriott for looks, and add the possession of a vox that was every bit as strong and arresting as Mr. Marriott’s with more than a dash of Chris Farlowe thrown in for good measure, then mix in more front than Harrods and you've got a good idea of the type of guy I’m talking about. My ‘love’ for vocalists has also been well documented here, but I’m not so foolish as to dismiss their input as unnecessary to the band dynamic (just sometimes their attitude) however, I always admired the aforementioned Steve Marriott both as a performer and singer/songwriter.

He was an actor first and I guess that helped him put over a number well, and when the Mod-movement happened he was nicely placed to cash in on it, both in looks and style; certainly made a better fist of it than Slade…adopting the Mod-Culture just because it was the ‘in thing’ and sending rats through the post to impress prospective A&R folk doesn't quite equate. Mr. Marriott wrote some standout tracks, welding genuine observation with a quirky take on everyday yet adventurous things; Lazy Sunday Afternoon, Tin Soldier and Itchycoo Park being just three of the tracks that regularly come up on my i-Tunes playback.

His vocal style has influenced many, Robert Planet and our late singer amongst them, and his involvement with the ephemeral beauty that was (and I believe still is) Jenny Rylance was noted by the guys I was gigging with at the time.

What we come back to time and again in the field of music and stardom that I scribble about in this Daily Rag of mine, that seems inevitable, inescapable, and what had an influence in the career outcomes of both our late vocalist and Mr. Marriott, was the dreaded duo of Mr. D and Mr. B – Drugs ‘n’ Booze. I’ll explain.

The similarity between our front-man and Mr. Marriott (apart from the mega-fame) is that, with our vocalist, the booze influenced some of his important life-choices and actions to the detriment of his career and, in all probability, cost him his life and dreams; with Mr. Marriott it did too. These two self-imbibed ugly-sisters seemed to colour just about everything he did, reducing him, on a number of occasions, to penury; the sort of penury that to avoid starvation you gather up empty, discarded glass drinks bottles and cash them in for the refund money…and this was AFTER the massive hits.

Large ingestions of pick-me-ups and a plentiful number of liquid lunches (and dinners and teas, by all accounts) fuelled an already, seemingly skewed ability to keep a balance on life (where’ve we heard this before?) Personal relationship split-ups, musical differences group arguments, hostility and a general sprinkling of inter-band hatred all figured in Mr. Marriott’s career…such a waste of the available talent and time he was given…but then, maybe it made him the writer/performer that I so admire…? What would I have been prepared to forego; the songs or the state of the man who wrote them?

On this day, in 1991, after his return from a recording session in the U.S., well boozed and lined, Mr. Marriott was killed in a fire at his home; a blaze, reckoned by the fire service that attended it, to have been caused by cigarette discarded when the deceased collapsed onto the bed in a stupor…he was found, Pompeii-like, huddled in a gap between bed and wall, apparently in a chemically-confused effort to escape…then the smoke got to him...

How good was he? When he auditioned for the Rolling Stones as guitarist and B/V, Jagger (that’s Mick Jagger, y’ know? Him who still has the ‘chutzpah’ to strut his stuff at 60+) Mr. Jagger vetoed Mr. Marriott’s involvement in the band because he feared being overshadowed…that’s how good he was.

Don't tell me; know the face, just can't....

April 19th – I always thought he was neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat, but my goodness he could play an organ.

Alongside Georgie Fame I consider him to be one of the better keyboardists to come out of the 60’s pop boom. I think it was because of his association with The Animals and his apocryphal solo on The House of the Rising Sun that first branded him on the pop-scene consciousness, and maybe he suffered a little from that ‘cos I guess I and many others thought we’d captured his essence; got that wrong then. Turns out he had far more arrows in his musical quiver. As the Alan Price Set he graced the charts with diverse productions and his rendition of Randy Newman’s ‘Simon Smith and his…’ (see, you can fill the dots in yourself, that’s how it’s stuck) is still a standout piece of his pop years. He teamed up with Georgie Fame in the 70’s – Georgie Fame…now there’s another keyboardist of note – and together they recorded a half-decent album. It was his work on movies that took him beyond our primitive understanding of what he was all about, and his work on the musical, stage play and TV adaptation of Andy Capp was a real turn up.

It was odd that we, as in, the band I was touring with at the time, never shared a stage with him as support act as we were all on the same circuit in the 60’s and we supported a good many of the popular current acts, but to make up for that we did share a forecourt, me and Alan Price; in Stirchley, Brum. 

It was probably gone two a.m. and I was putting ten shillings worth of petrol in the band’s Bedford Dormobile van (ten shillings worth, that’s 50p’s worth to you post decimal lot…and a Bedford Dormobile was, until the Ford Transit began production, the van of choice for bands…and yes, you could actually buy 50p’s worth of petrol…which we had to do with monotonous regularity; but then, when you were earning £25.00 per gig between five of you, well, what can you expect?)…anyway, I was in Stirchley putting ten bob’s worth of petrol in the band’s Bedford Dormobile van when a Mini Cooper ‘S’ (British Racing Green body and a cream roof, if memory serves) pulled in alongside me and out of it, dressed in a pale fawn/cream fur coat that would have decently covered eight Olive Oyls, stepped Mr. Price. Inside the car (I couldn't help but notice, honest) was a girl that I could only describe as pretty bloody awesome…but that’s by-the-by… He could see that I was involved in some capacity with the owners of the van as the name was plastered all over the side as well as posters and such.

“Gigging?”

He asked as he filled his tank (key word here; “filled”)

“Yup.” I replied.” Just finished at the Cofton. Come across to pick up chips…down the way, Stirchley chip-shop.” (Goodness me, if it wasn't for the glamour...I was gabbling...shut up, Peter). “You?”

“Yeah.”
I’d finished my use of the pump, well there’s only so long you draw out the addition of ten shilling’s worth of fuel to your already dry tank without it turning you into a stalker, isn't there? So I wished him goodnight and we parted; me to the chip-shop for what constituted to what I laughingly refer to as my nourishment for the day and Mr. Price probably to his pied a Terre in Lunnun for a meal of best steak and sex; met-but-missed if you get my drift.

Still, anyone who's still touring, can play an organ like that and have one of my all-time singer-idols (Maggie Bell, her of Stone the Crows fame) touring with him as well still commands my vote.

HAPPY EASTER!!!!!!!

Just a one-off really, because it's you and I feel you deserve a little extra for Easter. The content will give you some idea of how my head works, plus my senile percolation time. I’m sure you were all at this particular intellectual station a year last Monday, just humour me; I’m an old person.

Publicity departments for singer/songwriters, writers, actors work hard to promote their talented treasures and there is really no way of knowing what the end result will be because involved in all this is ‘the fickle fuckin’ public’. As it is they have to try and shoe-horn what is often and ostensibly a sow’s ear of talent into any and every niche that bears even the slightest resemblance to a silk purse opportunity or has any connection whatsoever to their talent’s latest song, film, book or other artistic endeavour not matter how flimsy, and I have to say it’s a pretty thankless task; unless, of course, your talent happens to not only be blessed with a good voice, have a polished way of putting over a song or film’s character, has cut his/her musical/acting chops on the circuit AND is also vivacious…with just a touch of eroticism for the punters to cling on to. Happy the PR department in those circumstances; job done and, in Taylor Swift’s case it’s not a case of a shoe-horn, it’s a shoo-in.

IMHO, she has everything, in spades, the lot. I think she’s a consummate performer, has an obvious ability with lyrics, can strum a guitar at the ‘better than average’ level, is very attractive, moves well, dances OK, the whole package has such a veneer, such a gloss and is so well produced that, really, you should just lie back and let the talent wash over you…but you know me; can’t just take things at face value, have to rummage around…and you have to do quite a bit of rummaging around and undertake a lot of carefully considered research before you even begin to hit Ms. Swift’s cracked pottery, such is the depth and quality of her marketing strategists. The first couple of things mentioned below I discovered and considered after doing a bit of research; the third happened by complete accident and also made the biggest impression.

Maybe it’s because I have an inbuilt mistrust of PR (don’t we all) but when researching for this one-off blurb two things struck me about Ms. Swift and caused me some eye-rolling.

1. Her biog: On the official Taylor Swift site it reads like a Miss World chant (world peace, love, furry animals, love, ‘my life is all about you, my fans’, love…). Nothing wrong with that, and I’d like to think Ms. Swift wrote it herself ‘cept it does tend to read like the output of some PR hack in an office who was tasked with the job of writing the ‘one-size-fits-all-cross-out-‘dog’-insert-‘goldfish’ star CV. If these statements are really what she believes and she really did write it herself then her overuse of hackneyed phrasing and clichés really lessens the impact of her lyric writing and, IMHO, does her a grave disservice; if it was the work of some hack then she should sack him/her and sit down to write it herself because he/she is also doing her a grave disservice and, providing she really thinks it through, self-penned, carefully considered, self-evaluating detail would carry so much more weight and conviction; providing she could get it passed by her publicists…

2. Her live performance: Watching her live performance on the Graham Norton show when she performed her new release, ‘Trouble’. Can’t say the lyrics and the body language she used would help move the female cause forward any (and certainly not the ‘show’ she put on at The Grammys) but, that aside…well, let’s just say, for a live performance, I didn’t see the front skin of the kik-drum moving, and the skins on all the toms and the snare were level with the rim, uniform white and had not a mark on them.

I know, I’m a sad old fucker and it may be they changed all the skins after the sound check or were using an electronic skin system to reproduce the recorded sound...if, however, there was a certain amount of digital enhancement going on; two things;

a) I know everybody does it these days but it doesn’t make it right.

b) Why? I mean, why would you want to reproduce the exact same thing over and over at each and every concert or ‘live’ performance? That must be mind-numbingly boring for the performer, same set-list, same order, same steps; and don’t tell me you do it because you want to give each and every fan the exact same quality of performance no matter where they see it (‘my life is all about you, my fans’) because you want them to get value for their money; that’s like touring the Premier Inn, and I’ve never met a promoter who puts the audience first; never. You know what makes a great and memorable live performance? I’ll tell y’. Never knowing quite what you’re going to get; ask Bob Dylan fans; Rush fans; Led Zepplin fans; early David Bowie fans… It’s called living your time, that time, in the moment and exclusively with the artist; with their mood, their fancy, their health; their temper, you know…live… I mean…FM, if that’s what you want then buy a fuckin’ video FCS.

However, in spite of all this ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’ of mine and for all that hard work and effort by your team of promoters, stylists, marketers, managers, designers, support musicians, PR pushers, personal managers, continuity and diary secretaries…the whole machinery that swings into action with every breath the talent completes, no matter how big your star in the fame-constellation, it only takes one mistake, one misreading of the audience’s perception of your work to cause your trajectory into the stratosphere to stutter to a standstill; and correct me if I’m wrong, I think Ms. Swift may have inadvertently strayed into that territory.

I went to see my son’s band, Silence the Weak, when they supported Chelsea Grin in Wolverhampton. No, this is not a nepotismic ad for Jake or the band (although, they were by far the best on the bill apart from the headliners and they ran them a VERY close second) it was what happened between bands that stuck.

As each band’s set came to a halt so the various band support staff and the in-house crew stripped out the component parts of one band and replaced it with the next band’s kit; all very ordinary. To fill this hiatus, as is the way with these things, the house sound crew played ‘in-fill music’ to cover what would otherwise be a silence that had the occasional clunk of assembly/disassembly all accompanied by swearing and cursing. I went to have a look at the drum kit the headline band were using (sad, sad) and, along with about forty others by the front of the stage, watched them assemble it to the backdrop of the house music playing in the background, just tunes to fill the gap…until Ms. Swift’s rendition of ‘Trouble’ hit the laser.

You know the ‘goat’ bit? Multiply that by a factor of 100 as the whole audience joined in with bleating at the appropriate point in the song and I thought to myself; well if that’s not your career fucked then it’s certainly stalled, Ms. Swift. All that work, all that effort: Seven Grammys – 1 million sales in the first week of release – first artist since The Beatles to have six and more weeks at No.1 – 1.2 million copies sold in the first week of the release of ‘RED’…all for nowt, all that effort burnt up in the bleat of a goat that had become the audience’s verdict on her work and their signature to her credibility; it’ll be what’ll haunt her for years, that goat, and I predict Ms. Swift will drop ‘Trouble’ from her set list, at least for the time being. My guess is that her promotion/publicity department has been in overdrive since that video hit YouTube; 15+ million hits later  and with remixes and compilations a-plenty, I figure they’re ‘not waving but drowning’, why it’s even billed as ‘Taylor Swift’s Goat Song’. OR, will they and she dodge a bullet and have it work in reverse? Will this defining overdub just add extra fuel to her already supercharged rocket of fame…? God, the fluff that clogs up my head…

Care; more or less....

April 18th – “A-well-a come along and be my party doll…”

Anyone?

Offers?

Can you sing the next line…without checking for the lyrics on the Net?

OK, put you out of your misery, it’s, 

“Come along and be my party doll” 

as is line three… Line four, however, neatly breaks the tradition...but then loses courage and becomes a repetition of its original sentiment 
‘And I’ll make love to you, to you,

And I’ll make love to you’

Huh?

Astounded?

You should be.

This was a time (1957) when they really could write lyrics… What has this to do with anything? Well, just this.

There are levels of lazy greed in society that transcend the norm. You know; those things that we see as everyday avarice. For instance; a true story. A husband walks into a sitting room of a Saturday evening (telly on, his wife of thirty years sat in an armchair) with a Wall’s Arctic Roll…a whole one. He sits and eats the whole thing…never an offer to said wife of thirty years of even so much as a lick of ice cream left on the plate…she says to him;

‘I’m out of fags, have you got any?’

He replies;

‘Yes. Have you got a sixpence?

She says;

‘Yes’, takes a sixpence out of her purse, gives it to him and he exchanges it for a fag: true story.

Well, the management team of any given pop star are much like that Arctic Roll-scoffing douche-bag. Let’s expand.

If you were promoting a singing star and, of a sudden he/she/it was called into the U.S.A. Army Reserve you would, you’d think, be concerned as the employer; if not concerned then at least indulge in some shared commiseration and support…sorry, got sidetracked listening to Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit…FM that’s some rendition of commitment by Ms. Slick! Just excellent…sorry… Right, onward, star being called up/employer empathy… right. Well, when this happened to Buddy Knox, the guy who recorded the single, Party Doll, that one with the lyrics directly lifted from a passage from Homer’s Odyssey? Well, when Buddy Knox was inducted into the armed forces and not the Hall of Fame, his record company showed their concern for this young man’s plight, this young man who'd just made them a packet with his rendition of Party Doll, by scrambling him into the studio to record twenty (that’s as in 20) follow ups to that hit before he was shipped off to boot-camp so they could capitalise on his popularity…all heart, see? They all failed miserably, the follow-ups which doesn’t seem fair, does it, for a man born and reared in the town of Happy, Texas… Maybe if he’d been born in Turd City, Arkansas his recording company’s scramble for lucre would have fared better, then they could have run with the advertising headline;

“Buddy Knox ‘Em for Shits”.