David Crosby Forever

Mary and I watched some David Crosby stuff on youtube last night. We’ve always loved him, those eyes, that fucking voice.

Word to the Machine.

I don’t seem to have any time to put word to the machine at the moment. The days are crowded with things to do. Artwork for the album is almost finished, thanks to Dubai Dave who, unfortunately, is not as dodgy as Mary’s monicker for him would otherwise suggest. I have a folder somewhere full of photographs that I took while making the record but they are lost to me at the moment so they won’t appear on the sleeve which, as I’m sure you will agree, is most unfortunate. If I find them I’ll stick them up here so fear not! You’ll be able to look at pictures of me sweating and singing out of tune to your hearts content.

A couple of weeks ago an illustration that I did for the Times received a number of complaints from Christian members of our community including this one from a Mr Brin Dunsire from Princes Risborough.

Please note this as a formal complaint about Martin Carr’s graphic associated with Caitlin Moran’s article about the 1970’s in the issue of 27th April.

You (and Mr Carr) may be tired of hearing this point being made by Christians, but it bears repeating nonetheless; can you genuinely state that you would have no hesitation in publishing a picture of the prophet Mohammed with a pig’s face inserted, if it suited the pure purpose of mocking religion, and the only thing that is stopping you is the fear of possible violence ? Because if your reply would be “ No, that’s not the only reason, it is not right for us to cause gratuitous and unnecessary offence to religious people” then you should not be using illustrations like this simply because they are “only Christian” and you can get away with it without being threatened. What do you say ?

I say nothing Mr Dunsire, if I can’t believe you have nothing better to do than write letters such as this then I would be foolish to become involved in a debate with you, theological, sociological or otherwise.

Actually, fuck it, while we’re here..

I found Caitlin’s column difficult to illustrate that week. I don’t why this is, some weeks the image jumps out at you as you read through but I couldn’t find anything suitable, no overreaching theme that needed illustrating. I decided to focus on a throwaway line she had written about a time traveling gorilla. Hang on, let me find it…

“Going back to the 1970s could help tackle global warming, researchers claim. Well, yes. We’ve all seen ‘Quantum Leap’. Of course Dr Sam Beckett leaping back to 1973, into the body of a climate-campaigning gorilla capable of sign-language, who touches the heart of the young George W Bush forever, could help. That’s not in doubt. We know that.”

Ok, that’s illustration gold right there and who cares whether it fits in with everything else she says. Like the May Fly the page lives for a day before returning to dust and looking at the wider picture, at the daily injustices meted out by uncaring, corrupt, inept politicians, the poverty, the violence, the greed, war, starvation etc It’s not that important. Not really.

The illustration, as you can see, is of a time traveling gorilla using sign language to teach the young George Bush about the benefits of protecting our beautiful planet. It was called ‘Greenilla’. It has nothing to do with religion. I have nothing to do with religion. I’m not an atheist either, I’m not involved. Nor do I think that it’s ‘cool and amusing to mock the images associated with religious belief’. I’m forty years old, I don’t think anything is ‘cool’ (except for maybe Stuart Hall). I love religious images, songs, buildings. I love people who deemed their immense talents to be a gift from a higher being, Diego Maradona, Christopher Wren, Mahalia Jackson etc but I don’t believe what they believe and I see nothing in the various icons that I’ve collected over the years but their manifest beauty. Even if I were willing to guide you through the minutiae of my thought processes, I couldn’t do it. Inspiration works at speeds many, many times faster than light. I threw some images together until it looked like I wanted it to, that’s all I did and if that offends you, I don’t care. Obviously the sub-editors at the Times feel the same way as I hand my illustration in three days before publication.

And you’re damn right I wouldn’t put a pigs head on Mohammed. I’m scared just to type it out. I think visually and as there is no visual representation of Mohammed permitted, the thought would never occur to me. I didn’t stick an apes head on Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, I pushed pixels around a screen until they were ordered in such a way that I liked.

It’s all in your mind, not mine.

10 QUESTIONS - Caitlin Moran

This week I telekinetically winged ten questions over to the force of mouthture that is Caitlin Moran. Caitlin used to write for Melody Maker and now writes for The Times and appears on TV spouting rubbish about crap. I first met her in Dublin at the beginning of 1994; I was trying to eat my dinner without interrupting an almost perpetual influx of beer and cigarettes and she was standing on the table, on the table mind, shouting her damn fool head off. I thought she was a nob, Queen Nob, but within hours of that we were best friends and I love her to bits. She has done much for me and my family but despite earning over a million pounds a year and living in a castle she still can’t beat me in a Beatles quiz, not even the ones where she writes the questions (her favourite kind of quiz). She can talk on any subject for at least ten minutes, makes a mean Victoria Sponge and has trained her youngest child to torment me, possibly into an early grave. Beautiful, funny and clever, it’s the only thing we both agree on.

1. Where are you? Describe your surroundings.

I am in my kitchen, which is based around the themes of RED, CAFFIENE and ORANGES SLOWLY ROTTING IN THE FRUIT BOWL MAKING A BAD SMELL. On the fridge there’s a torn-out picture of Michael Sheen looking sexy as Brian Clough. All the women of the house are enjoying how confusing this is.

2. Which childhood experience has had the biggest effect on your writing?

At the age of thirteen, through long and tortuous events too tedious to go into, I believed that I had brought about the downfall of my family, who were very poor, and in a precarious situation. For the first month after my indiscretion, I would run an answer the doorbell whenever it rang, believing that if it were the bailiffs, I might be able to simply talk them out of it, using my considerable charm, before my parents found out. When I realised that I might occasionally have to leave the house – thus leaving the entire family in peril – I decided I would simply have to earn enough money to save us all, so I started writing a minimum of 2000 words every day, until I’d finished a book. I couldn’t believe I’d finished a book at the age of fourteen! And then, when it was accepted for publication, I couldn’t believe that my desperate desire to save my family with a humourous childrens’ novel had succeeded! Then they told me I’d only get £1600 for it, and I realised I might need to switch to Plan B. Ponzi schemes.

3. Yesterday, Sonny and I explored a few back alleys in Grangetown with my camera, looking for peeling paint and arcane graffiti.
On one wall somebody had sprayed, in blue paint, ‘1996 The Year of Progressive House’. Is that how you remember that year?

I spent all of 1996 extremely stoned, in the first year of the relationship with the man who is now my husband. We became so indolent with marijuana that we used to lower a basket out of the window when the pizza-man came, so we didn’t have to go down two flights of stairs. He would put the pizzas and the change from £20 in the basket, and we would haul it back up again. As a consequence, 1996 was the year I became so fat I spent all summer wearing a nightie and a pair of Nike hi-tops, because I thought a chunky shoe would make my legs look thinner, by contrast.

4. In the style of Twitter (104 words max). What are you most afraid of?

The kind of insanity where you become very fat and shit yrself every time you make a joke.

5. Cheese or Chocolate?

CHEESE. This week - Comte. Waxy yet slightly crunchy, with salt crystals. And a celery-salt biscuit on the side. The Moran family is famous for having invented the dish “Cheese on Cheese.” It even has a theme-song (singing the words “cheese on cheese” to the tune of “Girls On Film” by Duran Duran.)

6. “Man, these things are instant imagination” Says Winston in Paul Beatty’s ‘Tuff’ as he polishes his gun on the stoop

Do you have a single muse or totem, an object/idea/memory/person that inspires all your work?

Yes. Russell Crowe in Master and Commander, shouting “Never mind the manouvres – just go straight at them!” Alan Coren’s advice: “The first idea that occurs to you, will have occurred to everyone. The second idea that occurs to you, will have already also occurred to the clever people. But your third idea – only you will have had that one.”

7. Your first book was published when you were only fifteen. You’re thirty four now , how is the second one coming on?

*pious face* I’ve written three of the most important stories of my life: my marriage, and the early years of my two children, Dora and Eavie. You cheeky fuck. Anyway I’m turning out pissing 5000 words a week for Rupert Murdoch – I haven’t got time to menstruate, let alone write a book. Get off my fucking back. Holy mother of God.

8. Ok, here’s your big shitty stick. Who you going to beat with it?

All the people Ben Goldacre is annoyed with in Bad Science. He seems to have researched their shitness very thoroughly.

9. What happens after we die?

When I was seven, I used to think you might get your own planet, and be God of it. Now I suspect you just rot in the ground like an old dog, but I haven’t told the kids yet. They think they’re off to Disneyland.

10. I think everybody is aware that it was totally your fault Kurt Cobain killed himself. What other pivotal roles have you played in era defining moments of popular culture?

I broke Brett Anderson’s toilet cistern.

–

TEN QUESTIONS

Coming soon, new feature!

Drum roll, drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ( well how do you spell the noise a drum roll makes?)

I ask interesting people of my acquaintance ten questions and they give us the benefit of their immutable wisdom.

Not necessarily famous people either.

Each one will come complete with illustration of said sage, by me.

Upcoming interrogatees include

Alan McGee
Mogwai
Akira The Don
My Mum (I haven’t actually asked her yet)
Adam from Swervedriver
My mate Jeres

and many more..

I’ll probably do it every two weeks.

Full of Life

The panoramic function on my phone (LG Renoir) is pretty cool is it not? Just roll your eyes and say ‘Yes Martin’, indulge me.

Yes Martin

Good, now; I was going to write about what I’ve been up to the past week but I can’t get it in any kind of order so I’ll just start writing and see where I end up. It’s 7.01am and I’ve been up for a couple of hours now, rendering the vocals that Mary and I recorded for Akira the Don’s new album, ‘The Life Equation’, last night. He had wanted a huge rabble rousing chorus but as it was only Mary and I with a baby upstairs in bed, snoring his chubby little face off, he wasn’t going to get that; so we sang a sixteen bar vocal arrangement that I hope he fits in somewhere.

When Mary was overdue with Sonny, she booked three sessions at the local chinese herbal place. they reckoned that they would relax her enough for him to pop out without us having to go to hospital for an induction (he was born at home, in a pool). I like that, ‘Induction’, like there’s a guy waiting with a clipboard when he’s born, showing him where the photocopier is and how to smoke a fag without dropping his pint. Anyway, after the second session she went into labour and we haven’t slept or washed since. I was in Music Box studios when she rang me. I panicked and bought eight caramel Freddoes, just in case the gas and air didn’t show up.

So we were owed one session and Mary booked it one for me yesterday because I’ve been run down and I’ve been suffering from bad headaches and mouth ulcers and all manners of coughs and colds. I pretty sure that I would be much healthier if I could sleep for more than three hours at a time, I have no concept of day or night any more. Sometimes I’ll go to bed at nine and be up again at half two, wondering where everybody is. I’ve given up drinking coffee though and immediately I’ve felt much, much better.

I had a brief consultation where it was solemnly announced that I was not going to die, then taken upstairs for acupuncture (head and ankle) and a full body massage which was nowhere near as sexy as it sounds, quite the opposite. All my bad ghosts and shitty-ass chi were brusquely ushered out from my body in a frenzied series of slaps and rubs. It was like being patted down by a drunk Rhino.

I felt better after anyway, pathetically grateful for the lie down more than anything. Then I came home and mopped the floor, the roar of the Ninian Park crowd, gone now, never to return, keeping me company. Mary and Sonny were at Ikea, again! I’m sure they’re both having an affair, she’s meeting up with some big Swedish bloke who isn’t tired and fat all the time while he gets thrown up in the air and has his little big tum tickled by another dad who, again, isn’t fat and tired all the time. I mean, how many times can you go to the same shop? What are they selling? Crack?

The artwork for ‘Ye Gods’ is being done this week, I spent a few hours sifting through photographs from last year earlier in the week. We have literally thousands of photographs from last year alone. The ones I took on our trip to Norfolk last April are my favourites. It was such a beautiful week, Mary was pregnant, the weather was gorgeous and everywhere we went we listened to the Fleet Foxes album. Actually it couldn’t have been April because the European Championships would be on when we got back to the house where we would cook dinner with fresh foodstuffs we had bought and I would drink Leffe and play my guitar and read about William Blake. The whole place was really, I dunno, seventeenth century, which is right up my alley. I know I took photographs when we were recording the album but I can’t find them anywhere. Hmmm.

I’m working on a Flow Machines remix this week, a track from their excellent first album which you can cop here. I’m getting behind on the Black Serpent Choir album but there are more urgent things I need to get sorted first.

Sonny spent the night in hospital last Monday. He developed croup very quickly early on in the evening. We thought it might be an asthma attack, Mary suffers from asthma, and took him in. It was scary seeing him in there with all those machines, especially as he was born at home and we’d never seen him in a hospital. He’s fine now, it’s 9.04am now. Since I started writing this he’s been up, had his nappy changed, eaten his breakfast and has gone back to bed for a bit. HE IS ME IN 1996!

Ok, will upload more music soon. Love y’all.

I’m an electron, you’re a proton

‘Sorry if this is huge’ was the subject line in a mail I received from my friend Mark the other day. At first I thought he was referring to the size of the file he had sent along with the mail; maybe he was but listening to the track I realised that he knew, and not many people know me as he does, how much I would love this song, how it would be already a part of me even though I’d never heard it before. As the song wraps it’s arms around me, sinking itself into my core, never to leave, I am struck by, not only it’s beauty but by how powerful a friendship can be when used correctly. Mark and I have the pretty much the same relationship as the one that me and Sice have. It’s closer than friendship and we have been through times when we can barely talk to each other, when we wish that we’d never met but we’ll always be linked by what we’ve been through, linked by the forces that attracted us to each other in the first place and, like electrons and protons, it is our differences that bind as much as the things that we share. Sice and I hardly ever agreed about anything. When we were kids we argued like fuck but nobody could make me laugh like him and vice versa.

I met Mark one night in Planet X. He worked part time at Pink Moon records in Liverpool which, alongside Probe, was where I bought all my records during my teenage years. Over a bottle of Newcastle Brown (me) and a pint of, I’m guessing now, Strongbow (him), we shouted band names at each other for an hour in a frenzied state of mutual indie lust. He was tall with long blonde hair and had a beautiful girlfriend and lived on Falkner Square which was pretty much the same street as me as I lived on Huskisson Street which led off the square, up towards the colossal pile of Woolton Sandstone that is Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, always partially obscured by a miasmic shroud. Canning was a magical place to live in 1989; rent was cheap, the sun splattered, wide Georgian streets were almost always empty and I would walk for hours without seeing anyone else. Time didn’t exist, or rather all of time was right there, at that time and the drugs we took gave everything a jeweled sparkle, a glistening dew that almost made you forget that you had no money, no job, no future. Nowhere to go and nothing to do.

He came to see us play, we thought we sounded like the end of the world through a fuzz pedal, he thought we sounded like Biff Bang Pow. I thought him and his girlfriend were the most sophisticated people I had ever met. They had dinner parties and went to see rude french films down the 051. When I was employed I would have less money that when I was on the dole and I would knock on their door at all hours looking for money for the ferry over the River Mersey, to Birkenhead and the dreaded Land Registry. He became my muse, when I wrote songs I would write them with him in mind, my target audience. (’Best Lose the Fear’, ‘January’, ‘the Monk Jumps Over The Wall’, ‘Captain America’ have all been written for or about him.) We both wanted out of Liverpool, London was where we were headed, Creation Records, Rough Trade Records, The Town & Country Club, Dingwalls, The NME… he lent us our train fare the day we signed for Rough Trade, we were always skint.

I ended up in London first, I think Mark may have been working a fast food place in LA at the time. Even though London has been the only place in the UK I’ve ever wanted to live I’ve somehow managed to always mess it up and I’ve only lived there maybe four years in the last twenty. By the end of 1991 we were both there. I was living just off Highgate Road, on Dartmouth Park Road and I think he was in Notting Hill, working at the Record and Tape Exchange. He used to come on tour with us, never a popular decision within the band. Why should Martin bring a friend along? Well, I needed him, I didn’t want to do it without him. Then he was at Rough Trade and when they went down I helped him (not that he needed it) get a job at Creation records. The jigsaw was complete. You can go anywhere and do anything if you really want it, everything seemed easy back then - we love Creation let’s get on board there, we should have a hit record, let’s write one etc

Now he runs a respected record company which, more observant readers may have noticed, I’m not on. It’s not something we’ve ever talked about but I guess I don’t sell enough records and I’m too old and difficult and it’s not called the record business, the music industry for nothing. I don’t remember the last time I saw him, Green Man maybe? Reading back I realise that I haven’t even scraped the surface of what we’ve been through together, what we mean to each others lives.

I’ll leave it there, all I want is for you to listen to this song and while you do so, think about your friends. Sounds like I’m working for an ad agency doesn’t it? Forgive me, it’s early.

Sixto Rodriguez - Sugar Man

Rodriguez Website

Sixto Rodriguez - Sugar Man

I know I shouldn’t post other peoples stuff. If anyone is offended and/or feeling particularly litigious, let me know and I’ll take it down.

Thank You

Hey, thanks so much for all your offers of help, I am awed by your generosity. I can assure you that I don’t deserve it but will take full advantage anyway because, as Phil Oakey sang in lines immutable; ‘I’m only Human/of flesh and blood I’m made’. Ok, so that’s that sorted, I haven’t actually replied to anyone yet, I’m still reeling. Most of you are woefully overqualified, all I wanted was for someone to do a spot of hoovering and look after Sonny while I nip down the bookies.

Worked in the studio today on a Black Serpent Choir track called ‘New Brighton Baths 1983′ which will mean nothing to some and everything to a very few. Hopefully the music should bring all those disparate parts together, if not it would make a great theme tune for a cerebral Sunday night arts show (BBC4 commissioners take NOTE!). Later Mary, Sonny and I drove round to see a very old friend of mine, Mark Waring, who used to sing in the band that gave The Boo Radleys their very first break. They were called The Dandelion Adventure and they were awesome. I’ll stick a track up sometime if I can find the time to rip one off vinyl. Let’s face it, it would have to be the all conquering ‘Speed Trials’ although ‘Infant Child Gutter Vulgar’ would be close.

photo by Gill Caven

The year was 1989, so very long ago. We were playing fifth on the bill at a Planet X all dayer, headlined by The Senseless Things. We were awful, an utter shambles, all of which we blamed, naturally, on our drummer. This is the cowards that we were, listen… We hired a manager on the spot and told him to go sack the drummer. Unbefuckinglievable.

Anyway, the Dandelion Adventure, who had obviously got us confused with one of the other bands, thought that we were ace and took us on tour with them. Nine of us in the back of a transit, starving to death and listening to ‘Baby You’re Just You’ by the Pastels over and over again. We played our first London show at a pub in Stockton (Queens Head? Arms? Foof?) and Harlow Square and, I can’t remember anywhere else. Later on Mark managed Cornershop and worked at Domino, it was great to see him. Tonight I received a mail from another member, Ajay, who tour manages now (Dinosaur Jr, MBV etc). After twenty years I am so grateful to them. They rule.

It’s 11pm, I have to go to bed. So strange going to bed so early. Much to do tomorrow, records out soon, exciting times ahead.

Sleep tight.
Friday Morning - I located an MP3 through my friend Anthony (DJ Scissorkicks, Collapsed Lung) on Twitter who was the teenage promoter ay Harlow Square the night we turned up unannounced with the Dandelion Adventure. He later produced the first bravecaptain recordings ‘Captain America, Let’s Stick Together and ‘Bravecaptain’s Blues’. All these wonderful links that intertwine around the rotted old stump that is me.

The Dandelion Adventure - Speed Trials

Help Wanted!

Hey, I don’t know if this is the right way to go about these things but I am desperately behind in most if the things I need to do. Mainly artwork/layout stuff. I’m knee deep in childcare/recording and nothing is getting done on the label side of things. If anybody wants to help me out and is handy with the old photshop/illustrator/indesign side of things and doesn’t mind talking to music business scaries then please, get in touch and we’ll have a chat. I have no money at the minute but that will hopefully change soon and I will try and repay anyway I can. Somebody not too far away would be great but not essential. Thanks!

Wh’appen?

Ok, I’m back. Sorry about the delay in transmission. A million excuses; all of them rubbish, all of them true..

We had our child on October 17th, seems like ten years ago now. He’s a boy, Sonny, and he’s beautiful.

Ok, enough. Since Christmas I’ve recorded most of what will be the second Black Serpent Choir album. (I can’t access this myspace page anymore. I can’t remember the login details, any ideas?) I recorded the first one three years ago when Akira the Don and I were talking about making an album together (we still talk about making an album together). I recorded these tracks that for reasons I can’t recall (I think we were both busy with our own records) were never used.

One Saturday evening, not long after, Mary left for work and I was left here with the long evening stretching invitingly before me. I always felt like a teenager on a Saturday evening. Mary would be at work for five hours and all that time was my very own to do with what I wished. Sometimes I would go and sit in the bar (she worked in the local arts cinema which is also where we used to drink) and get drunk while waiting for her, other times I would smoke or take mushrooms, read, record, photoshop or play GTA. When you are a creative person you are never bored. I love to make something out of nothing. This night, however, I had been looking at bands profiles on Myspace and decided I would use the discarded tracks and form a band. I thought of a name, The Black Serpent Choir, and made the page, inviting everyone I knew to join me. I tried to keep my identity a secret but quite a few people guessed immediately either because of the music or just the images and influences that I used.

The tracks were very popular and were picked up and played on Bethan Elfyn’s and Adam Walton’s radio shows. I did a session for Adam Walton and was asked to play at Cardiff’s Buffalo bar. I still hadn’t told anybody the band was my doing and I vehemently denied all involvment whenever asked. For the gig I roped in two mates who are performance artists and taught them basic laptop skills and we spent a week rehearsing the set. For the gig they wore masks and alter boy gowns and Mary made some amazing BSC logo’d laptop covers. When I walked in tthat night I finally convinced everyone that I was not in the band (people had assumed that it was me under beneath one of the costumes the band were wearing on stage). It would have been perfect if one of the laptops hadn’t malfunctioned. Of course I had to go up and help them out.

They were still ace though and it is bizarre watching yourself play, I wholly recommend it.

Anyway, I got into other things and forgot about The Black Serpent Choir for awhile until I had recorded the Martin Carr album (out soon!). I love the album but I missed making an electronic racket and decided that I would now make records under two banners to satisfy myself and my needs.

The first album will be available very soon from the shop that will appear here sometime in the next couple of months. Here you’ll be able to buy most of the bravecaptain releases, the Martin Carr album and The Black Serpent Choir album.

These will all be released on my own label, Sonny Boy Records and distributed digitally through The State 51 Conspiracy. There will be no physical copies available at first. I know, that sucks.

So keep coming back for udates on that. I’ll also drop the odd download link to stuff I’m working on. Don’t believe me, eh? OK, follow this link and grab an early version of a track I’m working on for the second Black Serpent Choir album - Six White Horses.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/odyzht

Don’t forget to leave a comment!

Love

Martin

This Site

Sorry I’ve not posted for so long. I have been all over the place with the baby and stuff but I’m also trying to change this site which doesn’t work for me - too big. I’m hoping to sort this out as soon as possible. Stay tuned.

Martin x