You Can Never Hold Back Spring

See that? On the left? Well, that's my Album Of The Year!!

Not Springsteen - although, for me, he was a CLOSE second. Certainly not Dylan - although the initial euphoria made me hope and pray - and, perhaps, invest too much "genius" into, what is essentially an old man singing and playing basic blues, in the end I had to accept it for what it was.

Perhaps in a few years the "proper" music critics will realise that the very wonderful 1st volume of "Chronicles" does not necessarily mean a great album will follow. We'll see.

The Waits' album though is a mishmash of tear-jerkers, rockers, sea shanties, Kurt Weil-like ruminations and general Tom-ness. Youngest and Mrs Youngest bought it for me and I can't explain just how receptive I am to the bitter-sweet gorgeousness that is Mr Waits, when he's on form. Bar room ballads accompanied by accordians, wheezing harmoniums, banjos, overstrung pianos, guitars, brass, mandolins, ramshackle percussion and a voice like "sand and glue".

What more could you ask for?

Incidentally, he's been "on-form" most of his entire life.

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They also bought us tickets to see Seth Lakeman in February. I haven't heard that much - but what I have I like. Looking forward to it.

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Eldest and his newly acquired Geordie "proto-Mrs Eldest" presented me with Shaun Goater's autobiography, a Tommy Cooper DVD (I've always loved him) and this:-

Woodstock! The Director's cut! An extra 40 minutes of "brand new footage".

Sadly the Hendrix footage exacerbates his poor performance. The Who though, once again shine through - what a fucking band they were!

1969 (I think?) The Who were playing The Free Trade Hall in Manchester. My mate and I had tickets. To say we were looking forward to it was an understatement. It was The Who in their pomp. "Tommy", "The Who Sell Out", plus all the hits.........

My mate though, decides that strong drink will be needed and, as we were only sixteen at the time, Whisky Mac (probably 14% proof - a combination of Whisky and Green Ginger Ale) was the ideal pre-gig tipple.

"Fuck off Graham" I replied when he proferred the syrupy shite, "I've come to watch the band, not end up vomiting all over the audience."

Graham was not to be deterred though as he had renounced society - what with his waist-length blond hair, his Victorian drummer boy's jacket (purchased a few month's earlier on our first trip to Portobello Road) and his packing in of school that very term.

So, as we trundled towards the centre of Manchester on the 76, this scourge of the establishment downs the full bottle.

Miraculously, it appeared he was OK by the time we reached the guy on the doors of the venerable Hall, and this is after a walk of half-a-mile from Piccadilly to the Fields of Peterloo. We edged through the crowds of infinitely older, trendier folk than us. Up and up and up and up and up and up. The Gods they call it. They should've called it something mountainous. I got vertigo and I was sober. God knows what Timothy Leary's Acolyte - in his Hippie zenith experienced.

I can't remember a support act - but it was a long time ago - in fact, I can't find a reference to this gig anywhere on the net. Could it have been a year later or earlier? A different gig? At the Free Trade Hall? I doubt it. Although it was a terrifically long time ago.

Anyway - I remember The Who coming on stage to rapturous applause. I remember (I think) power chords from Townshend. I certainly remember my " best friend" saying "I'm gonna be sick".

We were sat in seats angled at 45 degrees almost. When it came it drenched ten to twenty seats in front us us. I slammed his exploding head down into the footwell. He was strong with the strength that drink-induced projectile-vomiting bestows. Up it came. Time and time and time again. The more I forced his miniscule pate down, the more he reappeared and the more the audience were sprayed.

I don't know how we got out alive - all I know is I wasted my ticket. A ticket I had queued up for hours for.

Years later my "mate" ended up inside for dealing. Like a prick I still visited him in one of Her Majesty's finest.

The hedonistic twat nearly got me arrested but, being the loyal fucker I tend to be.......I still never thought he was takin' the piss. After all, smoking a joint in full view of the guards during a visit was perfectly natural in his world by then - and which "screw" would admit that dope was rife in the establishment he was passing time in?

Until the woman he called his "partner" - the same one I picked up and drove a 400 mile round trip weekend after weekend (with no offer of "petrol money") to see him in his cell - OD'd not long after he was released.

Soon after he phoned up and asked if he could live in my loft.

"You won't know I'm there" he reasoned.

"And where are you going to shit, shave, piss and cook Graham?"

When you have a wife, two kids under the age of fifteen, a job and a mortgage, self-indulgent druggies like the best-mate-I-first-met-on-my-first-day-at-school need to be dropped like stones.

He really did have an intelligence about him that I think a hell of a lot of Grammar School kids from the 60s who ended up doing degrees had. How they dealt with it in the years that followed was another matter. Glass ceilings, Monty Python:-



Happy New Year everbody....Everwhere.....

Gone

I've just noticed that the last post before one has been overwritten by the last post. I presume it was an oversight on my part.

And You And I.....

I have a "moleskine" that I jot and draw in because, these days, the World is tilting on its axis so far that I'm finding it hard to hang on. Consequently these pages are getting neglected. Sorry. But, there ya go!

I think that the decision has been made that my Dad - MY DAD! Is going to have to go into a home. He is beyond the world the rest of us live in. He's in pain and my Mam isn't strong enough to pick him up, never mind pick him up and wipe his arse at the same time. I get calls most days to come and pick him up - it's making me inefibly sad to see him. Gaunt, devoid of joy. Incontinent. Moribund.

All these emotions are heightened by the disgrace that is Xmas. Enforced fuckin' jollity - wall to wall. I HATE IT! I did before - but the ability of it to EMPHASISE the shite in folks' lives makes me hate it even more. It's not religion though - I'll give you that. It's Capitalism, red, in tooth and claw.

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And, so....onto The Pogues at the MEN Arena 16th Dec 2006. (Supported by the Saw Doctors). We started off 'round the European Markets in the centre of Manchester. We ate Moroccan at a great stall down Brazenose Street - not far from the statue of Abraham Lincoln. Chicken breast, onion, tomatoes, peas, spices avec salad, garlic sauce and pitta bread - all for £3.50 and all of it wonderful.

We then perambulated towards the MEN Arena. Where we first encountered the piss-poor sound while the Saw Doctors were on. Although, for both Doctors and The Pogues, I don't think the "sound" was the primary concern.

All the crowd were interested in was jigging and crowd-surfing. But, for those of us who were brought up on the music it was a grave disappointment. The place is too big for the nuances of any music - apart from, perhaps, Meatloaf or Grand Funk Railroad. Celtic traditional music - in my opinion - suffers more than most in the huge arena. That and the insidious marketing of all things Irish, from bars to bodhrans, reduces everything to the "Craic". Magnify that a thousandfold and the whole thing becomes a pissed up 17 year-old's idea of heaven. Everything else dies on the vine.

A gig to forget. Although Dearest enjoyed herself thoroughly. She quite rightly ditched me to go dancin' in the seats behind with some classy Tipperary women.

Shane MacGowan - peacock-chested with his new teeth - constantly staggered off the stage and left the rest of the band to fill in. Without MacGowan and his his songs, that band is average. The highlights were:-

The Broad Majestic Shannon

A Pair Of Brown Eyes

A Rainy Night in Soho (magnificent)

Dirty Ol' Town

And, obviously, "A Fairytale of New York". Jem Finer's daughter - sister - wife - cousin.....well, her second name was Finer - sang the Kirsty MacColl bit as the fake snow fell and the everyone (well almost everyone) held their mobile phones aloft in a strangely Sci-Fi pastiche of the lighters of days gone by.

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Over the weekend I have read Joe Boyd's wonderful autobiography "White Bicycles".

Now, this man has been one of my heroes since the late sixties. He produced Nick Drake, John Martyn, Richard Thompson, Fairport Convention and many other Island recording stars. Witchseason Productions - who remembers that logo?

What I didn't know was that the Ivy League educated hipster had organised concerts by the likes of Lonnie Johnson and the Rev Gary Davis out of his own pocket for a few friends - who all chipped in - when he was about 17!. He ended up - straight from college organising a European tour of blues greats in the early 60s. Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. Later he was a tour manager for the likes of Roland Kirk, Dudu Pukwana, Coleman Hawkins and John Lee Hooker. He worked with Duke Ellington!!

When he finally shipped up in Britain at the tail-end of austerity, he fell-in with the Watersons, Martin Carthiy, Anne Briggs, Paul Simon and many, many others.

I've loved his roster of artists from the first time I heard them, but I never knew that he was sound engineer who didn't turn it down in the face of Pete Seegar and Theodore Bikel's "requests" at the Newport Jazz and Folk Festival 1964 as Dylan appeared on stage with his electric band.

Respect Mr Boyd. Respect.

Buy it now:-

"The best book I've read about music in years" - Brian Eno

"Fascinating, capturing and enthralling - what a life, and what a way to write it" - Charlie Gillett

And. Crucially.

"Joe Boyd knows" - Kate Bush.

I Get Up, I Get Down.........

First, the good news. This evil twat has finally popped his clogs.

Y'know, it's at times like this I wish I believed. Because I'd love to think this bastard was roasting in hell.

I would also love to imagine this porcine fucker being momentarliy reunited with Victor Jara before he said Hi to the fire and brimstone. Pinochet that is - not Victor.

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So, you sit there thinking all's well with the world.

Two hours later and a significant group of people have voted the Queen's grandaughter as "Sports Personality of the Year".

What a fuckin' joke! I hope the Beeb is hanging its head in shame.

I hope Zara Phillips has the humility to realise and accept what's going on.

She leads a molly-coddled life. True sportspeople of the year have struggled against adversity.

Who the fuck voted for her?

Seriously though, don't you think it's scary?

Pastaman Vibration

I've found religion.

Big. Time.

Now I too can take comfort in a belief system every bit as ludicrous as Christianity, Islam, Judaesm and all the rest of the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. I too can adopt a smug, self righteous, "knowing" smirk when confronted with non-believers.

Y'know I never thought it would happen. I was always a rational soul who sneered at the medievil nonsense spouted by Rabbis, Bishops, Imams and Popes alike. It just goes to show - the Creator does move in mysterious ways. Praise be.

Furthermore, not only have I seen the light but I've actively converted a number of people to my religion. They have adopted its teachings wholeheartedly and, in at least one case, have bought the t-shirt.

For I have become a Pastafarian.

Us Pastafarians believe that an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, including a mountain, trees and a midget. Pastafarian heaven has beer volcanoes as far as the eye can see and stripper factories.

All evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM tests Pastafarians' faith by making things look older than they are. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 11,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

According to the Pastafarian belief system, pirates are "absolute divine beings" and the original Pastafarians. Their image as "thieves and outcasts" is misinformation spread by Christian theologians in the Middle Ages. Pastafarianism says that they were in fact "peace-loving explorers and spreaders of good will" who distributed candy to children.

As the Pirates' numbers have decreased over the centuries, we can observe a corresponding increase in Global Warming. Ergo an increase in pirates will stem and eventually pull back global warming.

It all sounds good to me - and it does make a serious point. See the Flying Spaghetti Monster page on Wikipedia to get the full facts and, who knows you too could be "touched by His noodly appendage".

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In other news I've just booked a weekend in Cologne as a birthday treat for Dearest. £70 foor two return flights and 185 euros for a basic double bedroom in a central hotel.

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A couple of the blogs I peruse have become "infected" with cowardly twats leaving anonymous derogatory comments. Both Yorkshire Pudding and Demob Happy Teacher have been affected. Why? What's the point? If I was that brassed off with the content of a blog (rather than, say, the Government, World Poverty, Global Warming or even Jeremy Kyle) I'd have to question my existence. If I was that brassed off and I didn't have enough courage to even semi-identify myself, I think I would just crawl under a rock and die.

There's a nice guy from Scotland who v-blogs on YouTube who, this very week has opened his mouth on this very issue - although, to be fair, it's not as anonymous on video. Nevertheless there are still a significant number of humans making the effort to slag folk off. What on Earth do you think they gain?

Have a listen to Mr PeriUrban:-