‘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.
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.
