Bill Hicks and the War of Independence

July 7th – Have you gotten over the American War of Independence yet? I have, for the most part, but there’s still a couple things that rankle. Take, for instance, the central reason it started.

Toffs in Britain, the self-styled ruling elite have never got enough of anything, y’know? It’s insufficient, you see, to have only six homes dotted about the world (you can only live in one at a time but, WTH) and pay £6,000 per gentleman’s suit (when you could pay £12,000) and £2,000 for shoes (when you could pay £5,000) have the food of your choice served and delivered to your table wherever you are and no matter how inconvenient it is for all concerned (heaven forbid you should be inconvenienced). Where it all went pear-shaped in 1775 was that familiar friend of 2008, international catastrophe brought about by greedy fuckers and has a clear resonance with recent events: I paraphrase.

In 1775 the Brits were waging wars in various places, grabbing colonies, grabbing commodities, fucking over the population with the militaristic panache that was the hallmark of our diplomacy back then, either that or buying them out with cheap whisky and beads. We wanted their gold, timber, shipping ports, precious stones, forced labour and land; we didn’t want their culture, heritage, folk stories, population or any of that Johnny Foreigner muck they call local food. By waging these wars it was a win-win situation as we manufactured the arms used to wipe out these foreigners and their infrastructure then charged them to rebuild it with our people (because the majority of their labour force had been shipped abroad as slaves…or shot). But this waging wars thing was an expensive exercise to get involved in and, although the government paid the money to the arms manufacturers (their friends and, in many cases, themselves) still it wasn’t enough (is it ever) and so they hit on the idea of taxing the colony…(this is the same colony they – with the help of the Dutch, French and Germans –  pillaged,  systematically destroying the country, it’s indigenous peoples and wild animal species reducing it to just another London borough)…taxing the colony demanding that the cost of the hostilities be paid for…but not by them of course. The colonists basically said;

“You go fuck yourself. We pay enough to what are, ostensibly, absentee landlords”

(shades of Scotland and Ireland here, methinks) and, in their arrogance, the Brits said;

“Righto, you scallywags, we’ll just have to some over their and give you a sound thrashing”

It’s what we’d done so well up to that point. Like the school bully we’d picked a fight with the wimp in the playground in order to look big, all the time trying to play the injured partner role…go on YouTube and type in Bill Hicks – Pick Up The Gun he says it so much more eloquently than I ever could – we lost a man of rare talent and insight when he died…far too early… And that’s it, in honesty. But for the greedy, senseless, chinless, idle, in-bred, self-righteous, arrogant, elitist wastrels and their insatiable appetite for more (no matter what it is or whether they need it, just MORE) but for them, Bill Hicks could have been one of us, like Ali McBeal…

Didn’t see that one coming did you?

I know, I know, how can you possibly put that TV sitcom alongside arguably the finest male comic (grouped with George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen) that has come from our former colony?

Well, you see, I thought that, as a piece of slick U.S. TV work it’s up there with the very best and, yes, genuinely funny at times, a difficult trick for a US sit-com to pull off. What they managed to do was soften the zaniness of Marty Feldman and Monty Python, Americanise it and sell it back. Slammed by the US feminist movement when it was aired what it really did do was provide a clear lead for the production values that have been built on in countless other classic sit-coms both from the States and in the UK. The cutting, the characterisation, the set pieces and use of popular music to emphasise a point or emotion, like using Vonda Shepard, who was born on this day in 1963, for the dénouement at the close of many episodes. All clever stuff done in a country that should still have belonged to the Motherland but for our full set of greedy, senseless, chinless, idle, in-bred, self-righteous, arrogant, elitist wastrels…

JK Rowling and her debt to Louis Armstrong

July 6^th – Must be hard, being altogether famous and yet be branded as inconsequential, particularly when you don’t feel that way yourself.

Your childhood, your formative years have a real input into the person you become. Trauma’s experienced in what are classed as these formative years, which can be either between 4 to 10 for personal trauma and 16 to 25 for social/collective trauma, can have a real impact on how you deal with and view things in later life. On the social/collective front, much like how people who lived through the Great Depression in the USA see saving for a rainy day differently to those who lived through the years of flower-power plenty, or those who lived through the Second World War in the UK see the rules of combat and appeasement differently to those who lived through the years of the invasion of Iraq (the sequel). It informs your thinking and analysis and can give you opinions that are sometimes outside the mainstream. On the personal front, how you deal with a spider in the bedroom or a thunderstorm, or with untangling precious relationships.

Louis Armstrong’s troubles as child, with poverty, homelessness, near starvation and petty crime all playing a role in his early years, must have affected how he dealt with fame and the race issues that were prevalent in his latter years. His desire to remain in with the right people where his connections gave him access to continued work and a good living, but which consisted mainly of white folk, meant that the black movement saw him as something of an Uncle Tom, and he came under increasing criticism when it came to him putting race before place and not assisting with the equality and civil rights movement, certainly not to the extent they expected of him.

But one has to say that America knows how to treat its own; when he was a good, obedient citizen the white, ruling society showered him with access and perks denied to almost everyone in the black community. As soon as he did speak out (and then only very, very, very occasionally) the FBI opened a file on him and tracked his movements, intercepted his mail and ’phone calls and generally made things difficult for him…ring any bells? Snowden anyone? And STILL we never learn…or can’t be arsed to…and still we listen and believe the platitudes our rulers tell us… because we’re SO busy, and the mobile’s just rung and it needs answering and then there’s the Wimbledon semi-finals, we simply must see how Andy Murray gets on…sleep-walking into oblivion we are…

But, through all his association with white America and its doctrine of segregation and his involvement with the gangster element and commensurate mob-and-money troubles, he remained true to the music and the message and for that principle he has to be applauded…and, of course, that doyen of fiction, J. K. Rowling, has him to thank for being able to make one of her best descriptions of people other than the chosen ones; The Muggles. That was the title of an Armstrong composition that was another name for marijuana, of which Armstrong had a lifelong love for…what are you trying to say, Ms. Rowling…?

Chas Chandler - Should he be made a saint?

July 5^th – It must have been one of those ‘eureka’ moments, I figure. Like sifting through all the dross and wannabe’s (and there’s plenty, believe me, you only have to watch five minutes of X-Factor or Britain/America/Singapore/name your country here Got Talent or, alternatively, 30 seconds of Slebritee Big Bruvva to realise the fact of that) sifting through all the dross and suddenly happening on a diamond (in the rough, maybe, but a jewel all the same).

There’s a lot of things I’ll not realise in my life. I’ll never be the opening bowler for England in an Ashes Test, play drums for AC/DC or meet a politician I can trust, but there are a few things that, even if I’m not the discoverer, still, I can share in the fruits of the discovery. I feel that way about much in my musical experience. Having shared a stage, albeit from the support band position, with some of the finest bands or performers in the 60’s/70’s music business, I feel very fortunate to have been in such a position, to be so close as to be able to, for want of a better word, discover their unique talent for myself, and yet the discovery made by Chas Chandler on this day in 1966 (and how that discovery affected me) makes everything else pale into insignificance.

If it hadn't been for Linda Keith, Chandler may never have gone to the Café Wha? this July night in 1966; by such small coincidences does greatness emerge. Of Ms. Keith being an ex-girlfriend of Keith Richard and so having an understanding of the biz and what it takes to get folk noticed. Of Mr. Chandler being in New York at that particular time on The Animals final tour. Of Mr. Chandler, realising the band (The Animals) would split after the tour and whilst looking around for what to do next, homing in on maybe promoting other bands and musicians. And of Jimi Hendrix, being championed by Ms. Keith, who got Mr. Chandler to go along to the Café Wha?, and of Mr. Hendrix happy to take any gig he could to make ends meet, and of him being on his uppers at the time of the meeting and homeless too, and so willing to take a punt at coming to England with Mr. Chandler on a whim…

That’s it really, ‘cept to say that I am eternally grateful to Mr. Chandler (18^th Dec. 1938 – 17^th July 1996 – God rest him) for introducing me to the three greatest discoveries in all of my musical education: 1) that you don’t need wings to soar, 2) don’t need religion to free your soul or 3) that you don’t need a view to appreciate beauty. Music played by the right person will do all that and more for you, and oftentimes you’ll not have to lift a finger to receive it but just have the courage to let it in.

Mind you, Mr. Chandler did go on to manage Slade so he didn't get everything right…but he’s forgiven…and how.

Fleetwood Mac and God's little chapter...

July 4^th – Happy 4th July to any American folk reading this. X!

You’re never quite sure, are you? You know, when things come up about either certain individuals or organisations and as you read them you keep looking for the angle, keep looking for the reason behind the suggestion; who gains, who stands to lose… That’s the meal ticket for the paparazzi and the publicist; it’s the reason why agents, pluggers and those unprincipled cads, Advertising Executives, get out of bed each day; for the opportunity to fuck some poor schmuck over before bedtime.

Fleetwood Mac (FM) is a band I’ve had an affinity with for years, something I’ve touched on before, I know. Apart from their longevity (in spite of everything, things that would kill lesser mortals) and their track record of  being able to produce, over and over again, songs that connect in such a way that the earth stops until the fusing together is completed, songs like Landslide or Songbird, Shake Your Money Maker or Rhiannon. Maybe it’s because we take them, through the integrity of their work, at face value and realise all the trappings and hoop-la surrounding them still can’t protect them from falling into the traps that you and I try to negotiate every day, with varying degrees of success.

When they first started out in ‘67’ one of their members was a guitarist of singular ability; Jeremy Spencer. If you get the chance, look him up and have a listen to the recording of Shake Your Money Maker off’f the first Fleetwood Mac album; just excellent guitar work. He really was a talent and had a certain affinity with southern blues and the slide guitar technique in particular then, as FM became more and more famous so the following and its demands became greater. Like many of the time, various substances were imbibed and at one time, it’s said, Mr. Spencer had a particularly unappreciative dollop of mescaline which made inroads into his equanimity. He never seemed to be part of the scene even before that, not off-stage anyhow; his on-stage antics and sometime lewdness got the band into trouble on several occasions but off-stage he was, apparently, quiet and withdrawn…separate almost. Certainly was when he went missing mid-tour in LA in 1971.

Relevant searches eventually homed in on him having been converted to become a member of a left-field religious sect called The Children of God (funny, I thought we all were) and he announced he had quit the music business to concentrate on the church’s message. Nowt wrong with that, each to their own…seems funny though that a similar thing happened to Peter Green, remember? When he was whisked away by some German cult folk called Highfisch-Kommune? Turns out to be all a ruse by unscrupulous folk to get a rock-sleb onto their books and influence booking agents and managers…remember to look for the angle.

Mr. Spencer formed a new band from within the community and did some live stuff and recording, all amounting to not very much. Still, he was happy…

When the stories of child sex abuse and general inter-group fornication began to surface surrounding the religious order and Mr. Spencer, the first thing that came to my mind was;

“If you don’t want to stink of shit, don’t put any in your pocket.”

The Children of God, as they were known, or The Family of Love, or The Family, or The Family International (whatever) were the religious brainchild of David Berg (he was a prophet, of course…every cult should have one) and, as seems to be a prerequisite of such extreme branches of religion, became renowned for their predilection to sexual practices of a diverse nature. Why is that, hm? That almost anything starting out as an alternative religion has to have a sexual core to it and usually at the behest of the originator? I mean, isn’t the opportunity to worship God or Jesus – as they all profess they want to do – enough? Or is it because no one in their right mind would join if it wasn’t for the offer of regular sex with different people of different ages…? Just a thought. Anyway, the labels kept coming (no pun intended) such as the Loving Jesus Revelation (children of 14 encouraged to have sex) or Flirty Fishing, the use of sex to gain converts – look for the angle – oh and of course, to show God’s love as well as have multiple fuck sessions..

There’s a saying;

“A dog that bites might be just a dog, but it still bites.”

So, a religious order that admits, through writings, photos and videos that adult members abuse children in the name of God and Jesus may be just a religious order but it still abuses children…

It’s hardly surprising then that negative press for Jeremy Spencer has been the upshot of all the questions asked in various courts of law and all the evidence given by his children and various other cult members. And all he probably wanted to be was a bloody good guitarist, which he was until faulty stimulants and the appearance of a religious brainworm infiltrated his consciousness…shame; bad gods or bad drugs fuck up most folk one way or the other.

Fighting with Danzig

July 3^rd – What you need to know when touring in the music biz is when not to piss people off. People blame it/excuse it on the adrenaline thing, which often isn’t helped by hangers-on pumping up the egos and hormones side stage just before the performer goes on in the mistaken belief that this is what they require in order to give a great performance, which is bollocks, frankly. If you’re in, say, the music biz, doing what you love then you’ll not need any form of stimulus, internal or external, to give a great performance; trust me, there is no finer feeling than gigging it right; if you don’t do it right then it’s down to you not the substance.

There’s a lot of smoke blown up a lot of arses in the entertainment industry and no more anywhere else than in the music side of things. There’s a lot of folk doing it who’ll tell you what hard work it is, particularly those in the classical genre of the form. No it’s not. It may be physically draining due to the pressure of getting it right but that’s purely a mental thing. When you travel to a gig on the train, get a taxi to the venue and are able to walk in to where you’ll be seated, sit on your ass and play then do the whole thing in reverse…well, let’s just say it’s not like hewing coal for a twelve-hour shift, OK? It’s technique. Tiring it may be, but hard work it aint. The same works in the upper echelons of the rock business. When your every whim is catered for, down to what to wear and when and how to wear it, when the meals are always ready and the water always cold then, in honesty, whether you fling yourself around on stage or not, it’s not hard work. It’s technique. Tiring possibly, but hard work it aint. That’s probably pissed a lot of music people off…and don’t get me started on actors.

Fights caused by artistic differences are not the same as fights caused by being pissed off with someone. With the former there is, at least, a modicum of the artist mingled in with a lifted joint to the testicles or a push on the breasts that lends the whole attack a level of wholesomeness, a sort of holding back in deference to one’s artistic sensibilities. Without that artistic bent both assaults just become the result of being pissed off with someone; either a knee to the balls or a smack in the tits, and that makes all the difference if you’re on the receiving end…not that I know what a smack in the tits feels like, I’m just laying it alongside a knee to the balls, which I do have first-hand experience of.

Fights because you’re pissed off with someone can happen at anytime, even on stage. When the Messers Davies and Avory, of The Kinks fame, had their contretemps on stage…live at Constitution Hall, they were just showing their less than sensitive side and at least, although spit was thrown, no punches were well, not until they made the wings post gig anyhow for, in truth, hell hath no fury like a rock band member scorned.

On this day in 2004, Glenn Danzig, vocalist in the band Danzig…you know you’re in ego-trouble territory when the band is named after the singer… Glenn Danzig got into a fight backstage when he was confronted by a seriously pissed off member of the support band they’d dropped from the tour. A push from Mr. Danzig (person, not band) resulted in the other band member punching Mr. Danzig (person, not band) in the face. Which just goes to prove that there was no artistic input into either side of this disagreement; just big, fat, overinflated egos.

Mountain's end

July 2^nd – Of course, rock-song recordings often have a profound meaning; the lyrics, the phrasing, the work of the musicians in portraying for the listener the emotive, dynamic proposition of the song…but there are also rock-song recordings where the bulk of the music is OK or just passable but which contain a single vocal phrasing or single, sometimes repeated, musical anecdote that startles and makes the recording stick in the memory. Oftentimes these are referred to as the hook and, like a series of lines strung together at the outset of a book or a series of images seen at the opening of a film, this is the doorway in.

I remember being in Sligo, touring a show. On a day off I went to see the film, Intermission, saw it about a month before it went out on general release…why is that? I mean, why do they use Sligo as a try-out area? You can see movies there that don’t come out for months afterwards…I mean, months… Anyway, Intermission; anybody? That opening? In a chemist’s was it? A shop of some sorts anyhow. That’s the kind of hook I’m referring to.

An ending to a song, like the ending to book or film, is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make as a creator. It can work for or against; cases in point and as an echo of yesterday’s guff.

End of LOTR film 3? Too long, too downbeat? Right empathy? Correct closure?

End of ‘Usual Suspects’? Spot on? Too revelatory for its own good?

Endings to songs were no different. Any self-respecting band in the 60’s/70’s looked at and listened to the best in the business and stole. It’s a hard thing to do, the live performance fade out. It can leave the whole band looking and feeling foolish as the music fades to an uncertain close and the audience give a smattering of insecure applause; nothing worse.

Endings for Performers; first things first. These can be a series of endings (comedy punch lines) or a series of red herrings in a mystery or the closing of a piece of music or theatre. Think of the audience as a flock of stray sheep, you are their sheepdog and it’s up to you to show them where the pen (ending) is; drive them to it by any circuitous route you like but, in the end, they have to go into the pen; the ending is when you close the gate to that pen (signal for applause/laughter/shock/gasp/whatever).

Many of the bands around at the time (60/70) got the abrupt, single chord ending off to a tea; simple, obvious, overstated ending;

‘Now we’re playing’ (no applause)…‘Now we’re not’ (applause). Thank you. Next number. Off we go. ‘Now we’re playing’ (no applause, step and repeat).

It was Mountain (band not geological feature) however who penned the sheep the best on their recording of Nantucket Sleighride. The tune is, by all standards, a cracker, I think, but it’s the ending that clinches it. Anyone remember the politics show, Weekend World? That’s the tune that was used as the ending, and you knew exactly where you stood in the position of that programme when they played it; you were at the end.

Felix Pappalardi (the family-sized man whom Mountain were named after) was their bass guitarist and writer of the song, Great Big Tits. He was shot and killed by his wife, Gail in 1983. Now, was this possibly because she felt either threatened or embarrassed by having or not having the aforementioned large appendages; who knows? (Pure conjecture there, sorry; need to know when to end…)……….

Liv Tyler's true ring cycle

July 1^st – Unlike the Star Wars franchise, the Mr. Tolkien batch of books-into-films: hang on…were the Star Wars movies books first? I feel sure someone out there will tell me, probably alongside a bollocking for not knowing in the first place; can get a bit precious can Star Wars folk… Anyway, I’m on safer ground with the Mr. Tolkien stuff. I read the The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (LOTR) in the correct order, not because I was some kind of purist but because that’s how I discovered them, back in 1970. I have absolutely no idea what it is about either that made them un-put-down-able, that made them resonate with me but, pound-for-pound I can honestly say they are amongst the most enjoyable and stimulating novels I have ever read; they’re also the last two novels I read. It was round about then that I began writing seriously, factual stuff for magazines, newspapers and scientific publications. That meant reading up on factual stuff to augment my own miserable efforts and that left little or no time for what I call recreational reading…shame, eh?

Altogether now; ‘Ahhhhhhhhh’.

Anyway, it wasn’t long after that I began to scribble some fiction too. I’d done bits at school and after I left, short stories and the like, but I sort of began to take the genre seriously around then and I figured, rightly or wrongly, that if I was going to write fiction then I’d best stop reading other people’s or I’d get polluted with stories already told; that was my reasoning anyhow and I’ve not read a work of fiction (full length novel or short story) since finishing LOTR in, probably, 1971/2? All my reading since then has been factual, research stuff (this is probably why I’m such a boring old fart in conversation) and this knowledge I use in my own efforts at storytelling. Sorry; this is all by the by.

It was a revelation to me when the first rumours came out about how this horror director, Mr. Jackson, was going to make the trilogy of books by Mr. Tolkien into three movies. I, like most I figure, thought;

“What?”

Did any of you guys or gals…(don’t you just hate Mr. Savile for ruining a really nice phrase that sits comfortably in a real friendly way when you’re talking to groups of people you may not have met personally but feel an affinity with? It’s the same as the word gay. In its true meaning it’s a lovely descriptive word for the exuberance of youth, for untrammelled behaviour and a freedom from inhibitions; now it just describes a sexual preference…old, you see; curmudgeonly, sorry)…did any of you guys or gals see the first, cartoony effort at telling the story; when was that? Late 1970’s? Anyhow, all they got was into the end of the first book with a promise to finalise the second and third very soon. Still waiting. Even then they ran out of money…for a cartoon series and the die-hards were on it like an on it thing from the get-go;

‘Not a true telling’.

‘Chunks of the story missing, important characters glossed over’.

 and my favourite I read around the time:

‘The character realisation wasn’t realistic enough’.

Of course it wasn’t, you tosser, it was a cartoon! Clue in the word. No film of a book you’ve read will ever match up to the story and characters in your imagination, in your head, that’s what makes reading a book such an exciting, exhilarating experience (and it also makes writing one the same too). So, when Mr. Jackson made the announcement the nay-sayers were lining up to condemn it, him and the whole idea. What folk aren’t prepared to allow is someone else putting a picture to their dream. Instead of accepting another person’s viewpoint and saying;

‘Well that’s how he/she sees it’.

they say;

‘That’s not what it looks like at all’.

and the enjoyment level stalls right there. But that’s film discussion (a whole new area that I might just tackle next year…I also want to spend a year dissecting song lyrics…and I’m supposed to be writing a series of twelve novels…) No matter how the director visualised the landscape of middle-earth or Rivendell, the dress or horse colours of the Rohirim or the speaking appendage of Wormtongue, the dialogue remains the same. And it’s this dialogue coming from the mouths and minds of those on the side of right that creates the characters you would be prepared to fight and die alongside. From their words and deeds you know, you just know they would never, ever let you down, never fail you and that their word is indeed their bond. Maybe that’s what I couldn’t latch onto earlier, about what it was that made them un-put-down-able, that made them resonate with me…like sharing real danger with true friends.

Liv Tyler is one character in LOTR that has one of these enduring lines. There she is as Arwen, a woman on her own, pursued by the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and, after a number of close calls winds up in a river bed, mid-stream, with her pursuers wielding certain death just yards from her and her steed on the river’s bank. Alone she could run, lose them by the sheer speed and agility of her horse but she can’t because she’s not alone. She has with her an injured, helpless small person; a Hobbit. And because of this she’s slower and so becomes vulnerable. Unable to go any further she halts, draws her sword and, though outnumbered in combatants, and outplayed by their cruelty and power, she is prepared to die protecting the injured, the sick, those of lesser stature and place in the world and she utters that line:

“If you want him, come and claim him.”

Now, I know I’m a strange beast but just writing that line sends shivers down my back and brings a lump to my throat; it’s a gasp moment for me. That’s the ultimate in bravery and sacrifice for me right there; that’s it.

On this day in 1977, Liv Tyler was born and, given the uncertainty of her start in life (mother a notorious groupie, Bebe Buell, euphemistically referred to as a model and singer, and not knowing who her real father was – Steve Tyler, who had his own demons to cope with – until she was 11) has risen above it all to fight for the causes she believes in. UNICEF…aka ‘the world’s guardian of the small people of this world’.