Today I got up, carried a load of boxes down the stairs, packed the van and then had to go back to bed for a couple of hours. I need to get back down the pool as soon as I get back to Cardiff. I know I’m pregnant and all that but this is ridiculous.
Heard the new Streets single today. I love the Streets, I mean really love them. ‘Blinded By the Lights’ and ‘Weak Become Heroes’ are two of the best drug songs ever written (drug songs are usually shit). Mike Skinner can be funny and thought provoking at the same time, great music, Ok the last album wasn’t as good as the first two but it was still pretty good. I like this single although I don’t think the video is going to be a great comfort to those unfortunate souls who will be chucked out of their own homes by the banks over the next two, possibly dismal, years.
Playing in Cardiff tomorrow and then back here for the rest of our stuff and then back to our lovely house in Canton. We’re so looking forward to being on our own again even though we’ve had a great time here. I’ll sum up the last six months next week when we land. Safe!
Marylou and I spent thursday morning at Akira’s house singing and playing guitar on this big song he has called ‘The Answer to the Anti-life Equation’ a composition that veers from melancholic introspection to big beat hip hop and a strange bit that I haven’t got me head round yet. Sounds like something off ‘OK Computer’ which is not what you’d expect from Adam which is always what you can expect from Adam. Jeres came round to work on his Son of King Rebel album and we sang harmonies on ‘I Don’t Love Jesus No More’ which has an ace chorus, I can’t wait to hear the finished thing. Adam works hard, I think he had three or four sessions going on that day. Respect. I made everyone breakfast and Adam poured scalding coffee all over his hand and cooker. Sweet.
Then Mary and I drove over to Clapton to see Stacey and he kids and show them the DVD we got from the 4D scan place which freaked the kids out and bored me to tears. When Penny told us she had seventeen minutes of footage what she meant was that she had three minutes of footage repeated six times. Poor. He’s a lovely wee orange blob though, I think we’re going to like him. I’ve known Stacey’s kids since the day they were born and I love them even though Betsi is always trying to get me involved in dollhouse games and Hank doesn’t appear to own any clothes.
Cait and Pete are away so a couple of her younger siblings threw a party which was still going when we got up the next morning. It was full of Cambridge nobs and the music was intensely bad. If you’re trying to sleep at four in the morning and the Stereophonics are grating away at punishing volumes then pray there is no shotgun in the house because if there is somebody is going down. Nobody died and the police didn’t come so it wasn’t really a party, more of a debate with booze. There was a serious amount of alcohol being consumed, they are that age where it doesn’t touch the sides. I get giddy on a couple of Kronies nowadays so hats off to ‘em. Apparently Jimmy, Cait’s teenage brother, got his fruity little leather satchel on at 7am, announced he was an important banker and set off down the hill towards Crouch End. Now that’s class. Jimmy is studying Theology at Cambridge and has spent his whole summer holidays studying the Bible so a breakdown was deffo on the cards. He calls me ‘lad’. When he’s speaking to me I can never work out if he thinks that I’m his Grandad or if he thinks that he’s my Grandad.
I was up until three doing this weeks illustration for the Times which involved a Tory MP seated at a kitchen table with his family with his head blown off in front of a depiction of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus (ahh) in her arms only I’d put Thatchers face on her and Cameron’s face on him. There is no way they’re going to accept it but I submitted it anyway because I’m a curly haired sleepy rebel.
So after not much sleep I had to climb into the back of a BBC cab which picked it’s way through the morning traffic before arriving at White City and the home of the British Broadcasting Company where I was to talk about Bandstocks on Radio 5’s Victoria Derbyshire’s show. I was there early and I had downed two huge coffees by the time I, Bandstocks founder, Andrew Lewis and fellow Bandstocks artist, Jersey Budd were ushered into the studio a good half an hour after we were due on. We then had to listen to the news, weather, sport and traffic before being introduced. With precious little time left to explain something relatively simple but new (new is hard to explain to most people it seems) we were interrupted almost immediately by Derbyshire reading out the breaking news story that was this year contestants on Strictly Come Dancing. After she had read it out she asked me why I had had my head in my hands throughout. What I wanted to say was that in doing what she had just done, interrupted a discussion on a new way of presenting music that benefits both the Artist and the music lover to read out a list of low rent ‘celebrities’ that are appearing on some reality tv show she had shone a light on what is so badly wrong with our culture, or lack therof, today. But I didn’t. I dunno, maybe I bottled it, maybe I didn’t want to waste precious time arguing but I mumbled something about not recognising most of the names (not true) and holding a torch for Cherie Lunghi (I’m afraid that is true).
So finally we were on, I don’t remember much about it. They played a couple of Boo Radleys songs which was absurd and some woman texted in to say that good music will always win through and why should she pay for our recording costs. I don’t know who she thinks pays for recording costs now but it sure ain’t the bands or the labels. That one question worried me, are people really that dumb? Are they happy to fund record company execs coke habits rather than be a part of the whole experience. She’s happy to pay a tenner for a record that won’t make money for her or the band but won’t countenance paying a tenner for a record where both she and the band could make money, where owning the record and having her name on the sleeve is the very least she could expect. i don’t want to get evangelical about this, that was never my attention but complacency and fear of the unknown are two things I cannot abide so I might have to start standing on mountaintops wrapped in a sheet, wielding a mighty shitty stick and chucking about lightening bolts of righteous fury. I’ll need to rethink my hair though, it’s not being taken seriously for the artistic statement that it immutably is.
Afterwards, still angry, which surprised me, I met up with Marylou. Her embrace chased my dark thoughts down Great Portland Street and kicked the shit out of them in some dark alley full of cardboard boxes and fire escapes. Then we met up with my old friend Keefo and his lovely wife Jen. We had lunch in the Clachan where Keefo and I have been going since the mid nineties. We talked about babies (they have a young boy named Hamish who, at the advanced age of two, is a sturdy and handsome wee chap) and Joy Division and Bandstocks and Queen and Fleet Foxes and the Creation book (not the Bible) and babies again. Once home I checked my mail and my illustration had been accepted without further comment which saved me some time which we used by passing out cold on the bed for a couple of hours.
Then to Hackney for dinner at a friend’s house. Nicki is an interior designer and a friend of Mary’s from Cardiff. She cooked a lovely meal and we met some ace people and I’m afraid I got drunk and had to be taken home and put to bed. Amen.
I’m playing an acoustic set on Sunday at the Lansdowne in Canton, just round the corner from my house (unfortunately I don’t live there so I’ll be sleeping in the carpark). Joining me on stage will be the luminescent Marylou plus bump. That’s a power trio.
The posters say that I’m actually djing at Friday’s ‘Dub in the Pub’ event but when I found out there was a stage with a microphone I wanted some of that action and the organisers very kindly agreed.
So 7.00 on Sunday it is. The rest of the festival should be ace as well, the Lansdowne is a big friendly pub and there will be Pieministers for all!
Would you look at that. That l’il fella there looks just like my gran, except she wasn’t orange. Well, she had a tinge when she overdid it on the Vitamin C tablets but mainly she was Gran coloured. Aww, I miss my Gran, she’s been dead for twenty five years but I remember her laugh and her tablets and her bunions. Wouldn’t it be great if we saw each other when I died. Ah well, I’ll settle for an eternity of decent kip, that will be sweet.
Marylou and I paid for one of those fancy 4D scans and it was worth every penny. You only get two scans during the whole nine months and in both of them it looks like you’ve sired a flump (this is for people without kids obviously) so for peace of mind and a healthy dose of future shock, a 4 Dimensional scan is the business. The machines were invented by, wait for it, PIXAR! Yep, Buzz Lightyear shows you into a small room, slaps jelly over your bump (not mine of course, although it looked like fun) and points his magic bellyscope at your baby and there he is, swimming around in glue and shite, throwing gang signs and sticking his foot in his mouth. it’s ace! It wasn’t really Buzz (had you guessed?), it was the most enthusiastic lady in the world and her name was Penny. Fuck me, you’d think it was the first time she’d seen a baby. Of course, her performance helps you decide which pack you’ll buy. I don’t fall for such tricks of course, I’ve been around the block a fair few times. We bought the Bumper Gold Premium Pack with an extra DVD of Polly screaming ‘IT’S GOT A HEAD! OH MY GOD! IT’S GOT FEET!
Look! he’s sucking his thumb. What a baby..
Thanks for all the advice about animation, all of it completely useless. I’ve sorted it now with my big brain.
Tomorrow we go see my old pal Akira the Don. Mary is singing on one of his new epic Hip-Prog tracks, can’t wait. If you don’t know him, check him out. He is a beautiful and clever man and he’s going to save us all (he tells me). He’s going to start by eating properly and pulling his trousers up. Watch his space.
This week I’m going to sign the contract with Bandstocks. Thanks to all those who responded with advice, warnings, love and threats, it will all be taken on board. I think I would regret it if I didn’t do it, if I signed with another label and went through all the same old shit once more. For those who don’t know what I’m on about it’s all here. I will post a F.A.Q about it soon. I’ve never done one before, do I wait until they are F.A.Q’s or do I second guess what people will want to know and put them up first? I’m leaning towards the latter.
So, two months to earn fifty grand. Two months to raise more money than I’ve managed in ten years. I guess it’s down to whether or not people are as tired of the industry ’system’ as the people involved in Bandstocks are and if so, whether they are prepared to commit to and contribute towards some kind of change or are happy merely download their music for free. I have never worried too much about illegal downloading, I’ve nabbed the odd thing or two myself when my patience won’t countenance a two day wait from Amazon, Eil or Ebay. I’m not proud and I make sure to buy whatever it is if I like it but that’s a whole other issue and I’ll write about it some other time. For me, personally, it’s an ideal setup. Everything is transparent, you know exactly, down to the last penny, where your money has gone and hopefully you may even make it back whereas I get to continue making music without having to go cap in hand to the suits. I can release stuff on vinyl, include handwritten lyric sheets, include artwork etc so that when you buy an album from me you won’t feel ripped off. I sound like a bloody door to door salesman now don’t I? I was one once, for two dismal weeks in back in the late eighties when I was about eighteen. I was unemployed, unemployable, and answered an ad in the paper for one of those ‘Travel the country and earn £100 a week’ (a fortune then) ads. There was nothing happening jobwise, Sice and I would go to the job centre regularly and stare at the solitary card on the wall advertising a post for a panel beater at something like ten grand a day (or so it seemed). We resolved to find out what the hell a panel beater was and how we would go about becoming one but always ended up back in on of our bedrooms, trying to work out the chords to ‘Jean’s Not Happening’ by The Pale Fountains.
I got an interview for the job, it was in Southport. My dad drove me up there and I said I’d see him back home the following day (the company were putting us up in a hotel, things were looking good). My interview lasted about five minutes, I think they just wanted to see if I could speak English and I was given a room that I was to share with three or four other lads. That night they took us to a nightclub and got us hammered, it was the best job I’d ever had and I still didn’t know what it was. The next day though, instead of going home we were driven to Banbury near Oxford and given an intensive training course in door to door sales or, as it turned out, bullying old women and pressurising the vulnerable into buying our smoke alarms. I was useless, utterly useless. I would knock at a door, after seven hours of traipsing the freezing streets of Oxford, some old dear would answer and I could smell dinner cooking and hear Coronation St starting somewhere behind her and I would feel dreadfully homesick. I’d give some half hearted pitch and then be on my way down the path before she could say ‘Sorry son, I can’t afford…’. I hated myself for even asking. I sold two in two weeks, to a couple of insane people who would have bought whatever it was I had in my pocket.
We stayed in a small compound in Banbury, after the first week we were told that our £100 pounds would be minus the cost of the Southport Hotel, the Banbury rooms, food and kit leaving us with practically nothing. We had to shoplift food the week after and I had had enough. A few of us were planning on doing a runner but they caught wind of it, finally agreeing to drive us back to Liverpool where they dropped us as far away from the city centre as they could and that was that. I arrived home, skint and depressed, the future seemed so bleak back then. I borrowed a couple of quid from my brother, Calum, called at Sice’s and went to the pub.
I think I’m doing alright at the Times. Last week they rang and asked me illustrate Ken Russell’s column which will appear tomorrow and when Caitlin went on holiday they asked me to illustrate her replacements column. This week she wrote about the English and their bicycles.
I’m trying to animate a video for one of the songs from the album but I’m absolutely clueless. I’m trying animate photoshop layers in Premiere. Any ideas?
Marylou and I are moving back to Cardiff this week. We haven’t been able to find somewhere to live that we really like and we’re desperate for some time alone and so going to have the baby in our lovely house in Canton. We’ve been so lucky here, living with Cait and her family and we’re going to miss them very much. We’re putting the Cardiff house up for sale at Christmas and hopefully we’ll be back in London as soon as possible. Mary is well and full of energy, she’s working on a new website at the minute. It was a mistake to try and combine our business site with my music one so all of this will be far less confusing within the next few weeks.
I’ve been reading Adam Ant’s biography over the last couple of days. I’m astounded by how driven that man was. As a kid I loved his records from ‘Dirk Wears White Sox’ onwards. I might be meeting him to talk about songwriting soon. Even if nothing comes of it, and I’ve never met anyone who I’ve wanted to write with before (except Akira the Don), at least I’ll be able to talk about music for an hour or so with somebody who was a big part of my childhood.
I drove down with Mary in the van late Thursday night, getting to the Green Man festival site around midnight. Pete and Cait and the kids were already there as were our friends Nathan, Vicki and their kids, Martha and Ingrid. I deffo drank too much and smoked (idiot) but saw some ace bands and met up with many friends such as ZWOLF, Dr Ben, Vendettas, Big P, Jon, the gloriously named Jimmy Bell, The Civil War Bear, Teflon Monkey, Bernie, Mel, Kim, Mel and Kim, Schnorbitz, Crav, Angh, Furries, Ifans, Elvis, Spenkins.. the list goes on. Green Man is where all my friends go every year. It’s ace.
I’ve written about some of the bands on the Review page. It rains every year at Green Man and this year they tried switching the dates a week earlier. Friday was a beautiful day filled with warm sun but things turned very nasty indeed on the Saturday and it pissed down for pretty much the whole day. I spent most of the day in the cottage and the rest of it in the Bear Inn in Crickhowell. Sunday was a bit better and Marylou and I skidded around the place, watching bands and eating some of the fine food they have on offer.
We got back late afternoon yesterday and slept for a few hours. I stayed up most of the night reading David Cavanagh’s Creation book which I’ve never read and which I will talk about another time.
Five years ago I received a call asking me to play at the second Greenman festival. The first had completely passed me by but since nobody was offering me gigs then I readily agreed. The festival was ace. A handful of gentle, bearded folk with lots of kids running around and acts like Alisdair Roberts, Four Tet and The Earlies playing amidst the soft rain, it was small enough to navigate (nobody has ever been lost at a Greenman festival) but just big enough that you could get out of your cake without upsetting anybody. I’ve been every year since and even though it has become much bigger (the first one, in 2003, was attended by 350 people. In 2008 there must have been ten times that number). The mixture of folk, electronica and random esoterica is far more interesting than the usual festival lineups of identikit indie bands and commercial heavyweights.
Jo and Danny, the organisers, had been members of the indie scene in the late eighties before it was seduced by money, cocaine and fame and have used their love of music and their experience in putting on bands (they used to run the Buzz Club in Aldershot) to create an experience completely lacking in cynicism, violence, corporate interference and the usual multi tier backstage pass shenanigans that are the hallmark of most major festivals. They are lovely people too, enthusiastic, generous and, for the time being, completely committed to ensuring the festival remains purely about the artist and their audience.
Over the past five years I’ve seen incredible performances from Bonnie Prince Billy, The Earlies, Dead Meadow, Bert Jansch, Pentangle, Richard James and this year didn’t disappoint. The Cave Singers were the act that I was most looking forward to seeing and they were great. Knee slapping, beard totin’ tunes sung by a guy who sounds like a girl with a guys voice.
The Fuck Buttons were disappointing. I’ve been playing one fuzzy note from a laptop for decades and it took two of them ages to do very little. Kling Klang would have been so much better.
Oh yeah. Music that moves.
I loved the first North Sea Radio Orchestra album and they were better this year than last. Then they were lost in the big tent but somehow managed to overcome that this year. Maybe it’s just that I was standing a little closer to the stage. Spiritualised were ok but relied heavily on the ballads and their performance was a lost opportunity for a crowd who wanted to finish off the night with a display of Astaire footed abandon. Threatmantics, playing early on Friday, were the best I’ve seen them. Lurching between, Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine, The Specials and a host of others using a guitar, drumkit and viola, they left me breathless.
I was standing in the courtyard of the Green Man cafe waiting for Mary to finish watching The Peth (who, it must be said, were utter shite and need to sort out their priorities. People don’t but tickets to see a singer who’s fucked his voice up so completely that he could only muster a bellow akin to a stricken yak. It’s alike a guitarist chopping his arm off just before he’s due on) with a beer in my hand when two people walked on the small stage and started playing. Wildbirds and Peacedrums (and what an ace name that is) are a couple of Swedes who make a free soul racket that had me transfixed. At times it was difficult to believe that there were only two of them up there.
I checked out the dance tent on the Sunday night and, as usual, it was Andy Votel playing undanceable psych music to a handful of his mates. For somebody with a supposedly wide ranging taste in musical styles, his sets always sound to me like two bands at the most. I called it a festival and slid back down the muddy hill and to bed.
Spent Friday night in the house with Marylou, Pete and Cait and our old friend Ben and his lovely wife Robyn. I’ve known Ben since the mid-nineties when he signed a band I loved, 60ft Dolls and some crap that I didn’t love at all. He’s a very funny man and it was very late when I stumbled into my room. I was in no fit state to drive to Cardiff the following day so Mary had to. We stopped at Reading services and I bought enough food to feed a family of ten (elephants) all of which I scoffed. I don’t know what is going on with me at the moment. I’m supposed to be getting myself cleaned up for when the baby gatecrashes my do-what-I-fucking-like life but I’m drinking and eating and smoking like it was my last year on earth.
We rehearsed at the new Music Box in Cardiff with the band. there are six of us; Me, Marylou, Big P on bass, Rhodri on organ/guitar/pedal steel, Bernie on drums and Danny who I’d asked to help out for a couple of gigs on guitar/vocals. After rehearsals we had a drink or two at our old local, Chapter Arts Centre, with Tom (aka ZWOLF) who was also on the bill in Cardiff.
I think we’re going to have to move back to Cardiff to have the baby which is disappointing but with seven weeks to go before the birth we need to settle and prepare. We’re putting the house up for sale and hopefully we’ll be back in London early next year.
The gig at Clwb Ifor Bach in Cardiff was ace. It’s seven or eight years since I first played there and I’ve done solo gigs, bravecaptain band gigs, electronic gigs and dj’d more times than I care to remember. I used to regularly DJ there about five years ago with my friend James (We were called PopAssHeadSets after a line in a Kool Keith song) where we would play anything that was stupidly loud, from Kid 606 to the Velvets. I’ve been kicked out, passed out, fucked up and knocked down in every room on every floor. When I first moved to Cardiff after my marriage broke up I was there very night drinking gallons of vodka and Red Bull and never sleeping. I’ve seen some of the best gigs I’ve ever seen there and I’ll always be fond of the place.
The setlist for the gig was;
The Dead of Winter
Darwin’s Tree
Bear Lake
Running
Why You Gotta Bring Me All This Rain?
Orpheus Lament
Pontcanna Stone
Tired and Broke and Black and Blue
Goldrush ‘49
The space was very cramped and the vocals weren’t too clear through he monitors but soundman, Ben, was very helpful and we did ok. The place was pretty packed although, as is the case in Cardiff, some people were at the gig to talk very loudly to their friends while the bands played. The supports were both great if completely different. The MeMeMes played tuneful downbeat pop with songs about sorrow and the frustration inherent in fancying people who turn out to be gay. ZWOLF on the other hand wields a laptop, bass and guitar and propels darkness and distort into the crowd. I think I filmed some of their sets, I’ll have a look and upload if I have.
After the gig we met up with old friends and drank until the wee hours (Not Mary of course). We were supposed to be having an early night because I had a meeting in Chiswick (London) the next morning but, as usual, the drinking won and we arrived home at around three.
The meeting was with a publishing company who are interested in my writing songs for other people. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years but never really had the opportunity so I’m hoping that it comes together. Afterwards we crawled up the snailpaced horror that is the North Circular and arrived home to help Eavie celebrate her fifth birthday. Her talented mother had made the most incredible Dalek cake which is still repeating on me two days later. We grabbed a couple of hours sleep then tubed it over to the West End for soundcheck. We were playing at The Social, another venue I’ve spent quite a bit of time at over the years. I’ve never stood on the stage though and couldn’t believe that I was contemplating playing with the band. There was just enough room for Marylou and I but the sound was fantastic. We chatted with Huw Stephens who I’ve known since he was a teenager and we met up with some more old friends (Steve Wood who designed all the Boo’s sleeves, Mark and Dick from Wichita, Keith Cameron and Akira the Don) and then it was time to play. We played almost all the songs we had done the night before, Goldrush ‘49 doesn’t sound that great with just the two of us. The place was packed and the first few songs we performed to absolute silence which really makes a difference.
I went for a quiet drink with Keith at another pub and then met Mary back at the gig. We had a couple of drinks with Akira and Charlotte and then caught the bus back home.
