This Wheel's On Fire

Dearest never quite *got* Mr Zimmerman. Sure she appreciated stuff like "Just Like A Woman", "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" etc., etc., but the rest of it? "Crap. He can't sing."

Come Monday as we settled down to a couple of hours of Bobdom, Dearest was giving off the unmistakable aura of someone who would rather be watching Holby City, Flog It or even The News. A couple of hours later and she has re-appraised the miserable ol' git. "Actually he's quite good isn't he? And didn't he have a lot of crap to put up with?"

Later (or it might have been Tuesday - old age, it's a bastard), we watched a BBC4 programme that showcased other folk singin' Bob's stuff. Dearest was amazed. Certainly Julie Felix doing "Masters of War" she adored. As for the rest: all I heard was "I didn't know he wrote this?"

"The Mighty Quinn", "This Wheel's on Fire": throw away songs that he couldn't be arsed recording. Dearest was well impressed.

The next day in work D, my colleague who is surprisingly well-versed in all aspects of my era of music, for a forty year old, said: "I didn't know Dylan wrote all them songs like "The Mighty Quinn", "This Wheel's on Fire" etc., etc. He's well impressed with his later stuff as well. Y'see, he hasn't got the inbuilt understanding that later=crap, earlier=better that those of us who grew up with the music have adopted. We live and we learn.

Maybe I need to start samplin' the stuff he has done since "Blood on the Tracks"? After all, if his early music touched the blood and skin and bone of the young buck, maybe his later stuff can nourish me as I creak, cough and crap myself into the twilight years?

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Just found out that the ridiculous 11:15am Sunday morning ko for City v Everton this weekend has been arranged due to the financial gain to be made, by both clubs, in China. Sun Jihai and whatever the Evertonian is called - Lee Tie or something, are such a draw that Manchester City are quite prepared to offset the gate receipts for the TV rights.

Short-sighted twats. I predict a very low - 34,000-ish - crowd.

Hey There Robert Zimmerman, I Wrote This Blog For You

So, who watched the first part of the Bobfest tonight? How was it for you? Personally I thought that Mr Zimmerman's involvement humanised him to an extent that shocks - after three decades of wilfull obscurantism, I suddenly feel warm feelings. He's dropped all the daft shite and started telling the truth. I was torn. After all, I've not spoken to him for thirty years. We fell out just after "Blood On The Tracks". Things were said. Looks were cast. To make things worse, he seemed to parody himself wherever he went. It was over.

It would have been '64 or '65 when I first registered him. I'd heard "Blowin' In The Wind" but it never really resonated. Mind you I mostly heard it by Peter, Paul and Mary on Two-Way Family Favourites. The acceptable face of political protest. I'd just - at the age of nine - discovered the Beatles and the Stones. Twee shite, championed by the likes of Pete Seeger (ostentatious bearded prick I would've thought at the time - if I had possessed the vocabulary), I could do without. After all, hadn't I and my schoolmates spent an excrutiating three terms listening to a newly qualified teacher who fancied himself as the next Dave Van Ronk? But, the times they were-a-changin'. Newly created - and, indeed, experienced, testerone was cursing through the barely formed nooks and crannies of my pubescent body. Lookin' back - I was more than ready for something totally new.

It was a trip to Scarborough from Manchester. '64 or '65. Quite a trip in those days. Four hours plus. It was a Morris minor. Hand-painted green with yellow wheels as I remember, but I couldn't give a fuck. It was a car and it was a holiday.

The A64. Early summer. One of those days that just shone and shone and shone. Glorious. Petrol stations providing "Premium" and "Regular".

"A shot of Redex Sir"?

I can't remember what radio station was on in the car, but Mr Tambourine Man came on........and I was gone. What a strange song. Dylan, tonight, mentioned a 78 of an old folk song, one that pulled at something deep within him at a really early age. It resonated. I remembered. Within minutes - in my mind's eye - my Mam and Dad were disecting "Mr Tambourine Man" and pronouncing it the biggest pile of shite they had ever heard. I can hear my Dad to this day saying "How the bloody hell can you play a song on a tambourine"? I was disappointed in my parents - but especially my Dad. Wan't he supposed to be the musician of the family?

However, I thought it was the most marvellous thing I had ever heard in my life (after "She Loves You"). One man. One acoustic guitar (forget the shite "vibe" playing), this is essentially one man's voice, guitar and, sadly, harmonica. The day after it was there again, in all its 8 minutes of glory, spurting out of the crappest tranny on the beach. I was sold.

Can't wait for tomorrow now. My head's full of Bob.

One Too Many Mornings

We kept happening upon sculptures like the one on the left as we trolled through the alleys, backstreets, squares and innards of Venice. Severed heads lay in the middle of main thoroughfares. Strange obelisks appeared where you least expected to find them. Huge balls of wool, amorphous blobs scattered like playdough and all surrounded by architecture to die for.

We ambled down to the waterfront near San Marco and took a left away from the madness. After a while I decided to sit and admire the view across the lagoon. Dearest set off for a solo snoop round the shops walk. After fifteen minutes or so I was aware of something huge floating across the waterscape. It was a massive - and I mean fuckin' massive - pristine, "yacht"; although the word "yacht" did not do it justice. It was a mini city. Five stories above the water line and God knows how many below.

We later found out it was Abramovich's. I guess only someone with the dizzy fortune he has could afford to run a city-on-the-sea like that.

As I sat there pondering the colossal wealth of this shady individual, I began to consider the effect of his billions on English footie. Soon I had moved on from Abramovich and onto the real destroyer of the game I love. Murdoch. Actually that should be Fuckin'Murdoch. An odious, loathsome, amoral twat who would disembowel his own relatives if he thought it would make him even richer and more powerful.

This prick - I continued my train of thought - is responsible for all those stupid kick off times and day of match changes. This prick is responsible for idiotic fixtures such as Portsmouth v Newcastle on a Wednesday night with a 7:45pm start. This prick bought and sold the FA way back when. Sky and the Premiership almost seem like the same entity. Watch Sky Sports News and you would never know a viable and successful football league ever existed in this country before Fuckin'Murdock spotted his cash cow and milked it for all it was worth. We hear of "the most prolific goalscorer in the Premiership", "most clean sheets in the Premiership". Suddenly all previous statistics and data seems to have been airbrushed out of history. Stalin would be proud.

Anyway I arrive home and - shock of shocks - the FA are worried about falling attendencies and claims that the Premiership is a boring load of shite because nobody can, without Abramovich-like investment, compete with the top three, and the rest are that shit scared of the financial implications of relegation that their first priority is not to lose. Factor in the exorbitant prices paid for tickets and it's not hard to see where the problems are.

Next thing, I log onto City's website to discover that our game against Everton in a few weeks has been moved and we now can enjoy the experience of an 11:15AM kick off ON A SUNDAY MORNING!. WTF?

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Oh no - what is going on with the world? Am I destined to spend the rest of my life watching the Great Religious War of the 21st century played out on my TV every night like I used to watch the Great Ideological War of the late 20th century in my youth. Everywhere I look it's fuckin' Sharia this and Holy that. Everywhere I look I see more and more belief in fuckin' fairy stories. I was shocked rigid a few weeks ago after spotting a local church having an extension built. It can now probably house 60 devout bigots smug in their heaven-here-I-come certanties, but a church that can hold 2,000??? In Britain??? In 2005???

Perhaps it's time for the rational among us to start becoming religious leaders of our own? I mean, you don't have to believe or owt like that, and it could be a nice little earner given the growth of the permanently bewildered over the past years.

Then again, perhaps not.

Ars Long Vita Brevis

I've been all cultural this past week.

From Bellini to Braque, from Canaletto to Chagall I've stood and pondered the nature of Art and Artists. I've wrestled with concepts as far removed as action painting and the Venetian school. I've contemplated the effect the coming of photography had on the essentially hitherto pictorial nature of painting and drawing. In short, I've been cerebral.

Dearest went shopping. An artistic statement in itself.

What I did discover as I perused the collections in Venice's Guggenheim and Gallerie dell'Accademia is that I much prefer modern art to the overblown canvasses of Tintoretto and co.

Matisse, Picasso, Klee, Ernst and the rest, I think you're great. Who'd a thunk it?

Venice though. What a place - and to think I wasn't really looking forward to going. Yeah it's expensive but not that expensive given the fact that everything has to be transported via barge from the mainland.

The glory of not encountering a car or any of them irritating scooters/mopeds that continentals take great delight in whizzin' about the place on was an added bonus.

You could walk everywhere but we often opted for the Vaporetto up and down the Grand Canal. Cheap and quick-ish, if a little noisy. The only thing I would berate the place for is the speed with which most restaraunts and bars close up of an evening. Pretty much dead after 10:00pm. Sort it Venice!

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In other news there is no other news because I haven't seen a newspaper or heard a radio or TV all week. Until today that is.

I should be at Eastlands today watching the Blues and Bolton scrap it out but I'm full of a cold so Dearest has taken my place. So I log on to BBC's website for online comms and peruse photographs taken at the day's Premiership matches and who do I spot in the glorious sky blue shirt but Freddy Flintoff. Now I admired the man before but I can assure you he has just acquired God like status in my eyes. Shame about the smoking though - not much of a role model is it?

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Incidentally I don't believe this for a moment. "Let me go to the house of my Father" indeed. I reckon he said something along the lines of ahh, shit, I'm finally kicking the bucket and deep down I know that it's all been a load of twaddle, but that twaddle kept me in house and home most of my adult life.

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Saturday night. September and they're selling Christmas cards in the supermarkets.

September.

Your Move

Not content with his less-than-adequate reponse to the disaster unfolding in the Deep South, President Monkey Smirk now decides to lead his own investigation into his own federal agencies failures. You've got to admire a man with that much brass neck.

It's shame he didn't read this copy of The National Geographic from October 2004. It predicts and explains why the horror that has occured along the gulf coast happened. Surprisingly it doesn't blame a wrathful God intent on retribution as a result of Gay Festivals, Abortion and general hedonism, but 100% science. The study of the natural world and mankinds' effect upon it.

I've got a feeling there'll be more references to "Acts of God" than "Acts of the petro-chemical Industry" or "Inactivity of Congress".

We'll see.

I keep hearing this old Randy Newman song in my head.

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangelne

CHORUS

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."

CHORUS

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Dearest and I are off to Venice on Monday. Can't say spending five days in a sinking (and, I am led to believe, stinking) city is as attractive a proposition as it originally sounded given the events of the past week. It's going to cost an arm and leg too by all accounts. Everybody is giving us advice:

"For fuck's sake don't get a gondola, you won't be able to afford your plane fare home."

"Jesus. Venice? You better take your own food and one of those camping stoves to cook it on. Either that or don't eat for five days"

But the one that really broke my heart:-

"A complete week of sobriety will do you good, 'cos you won't be able to afford any drink."

Say it ain't so.

When The Levee Breaks

How long do you think it will be before the inquiry into the shambles that masqueraded as "relief" publishes its findings? How many of the culpable will still be in public office? How many will still be president?

I can understand the inabilty to grasp the seriousness of the situation. I can understand Bush making speeches about getting the oil pipeline back online, I find it a trait of all governments to keep the markets calm. I can understand the attempts to placate a voracious media baying for copy.

What I can't understand is how local as well as federal government allowed people to carry on losing their lives in the days follwing Katrina when they could, with very little effort, have done something about it.

That, for me, is sinister.

And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

For now.

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I've had to arse about with my template and republish everything in order to get everything looking like it used to do. I haven't got a clue what happened. One minute everything's OK, the next......

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Whilst we were quaffing in the pub a couple of weeks ago, we started waxing nostalgic about our favourite "bog standard" British meals. In the end, after some truly inspiring speeches in favour of this dish or that, a consensus emerged.

Fried egg and chips with bread and butter and a steaming mug of tea was undoubtedly top of the pops. They had to be proper chips mind. Not chippy chips. Not frozen chips and certainly not fuckin' oven chips. No, they had to be proper chips made from freshly peeled spuds and chipped so they are chunky and ready for the waiting fat.

When a chip butty is made, the best butter should be dripping from the bread, greasing up fingers and thumbs.

The face should be wreathed in smiles.

The next thing I know, Dearest has extended an invitation for all and sundry to come round "for a British" on Saturday night.

I was secretly ecstatic. Dearest, in a fit of "healthy living" had retired our chip pan about 5 years ago. Many's the night I've forlornly dreamt of egg with proper chips as I was presented with yet another emaciated conconction devoid of character.

So, Saturday night out came the chip pan, round came the mates and we all tucked into one of the best meals we've had in years. We all agreed that familiarity breeds contempt and anywhere else in the world such a dish would revered for the truly representative indigenous cuisine that it is.

Certain diners finished off with tinned fruit salad topped with tinned Carnation cream for that authentic 1950s/1960s dining experience.

I've convinced Dearest that thick cut, deep fried chips are, on the whole, less full of fat than the thin bits of crap we are usually fed. So it looks like the chip pan stays for the time being.

Yay!

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I love this latest advertisement for 3G.

I love this as well.