Hey, I said at the start of this that it wouldn’t all be boring famous people (Famous people reading this; I don’t mean you’re boring I mean the other famous people. You know who I mean, yeah, them). It’s about people I love or who have had some impact on my life. I first met Corin in 1997 in a club in Boston. His band, The Pills, were supporting The Boo Radleys and, from what I can recall of that long drunken journey into night, we became the best of friends, bonding over Beatles, booze and Baudelaire ( the last being fiction of course, included merely for alliterative kicks). We’ve seen each other a few times since then, Corin and his family have visited us in London and Cardiff and Mary and I have been over to Somerville, Mass to stay with them. A couple of years ago, just after I killed bravecaptain with a swift but meaningful blow to the back of his screwcurl head, Corin organised a few gigs up and down the East Coast. Some were acoustic sets in Coffee Houses and some were normal club gigs. Corin played bass, organised everything and I got drunk and played out of time, forgetting words, tunes, chords and my own name along the way. (I didn’t play again for a long time after that, didn’t do any music. I bought a camera and started sticking images together, waiting for the sounds to return). Otherwise, we make do with transatlantic mails, phonecalls and the occasional random telepathia. He also introduced me to Al fucking Kooper! Serious, we went to his house and everything (’Martin, are you sniffing my records’? Al said to me at one point. I was).
Corin was a member of Boston power pop band, The Pills. He released a solo album full melancholic self doubt and beauty . He also does an ace ukulele version of ‘Head Over Heels’ by Tears for Fears, a song we both love. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Darcey and their son, Harrison (The Bee).
I love him.
1. Where are you? Describe your immediate surroundings.
I’m in my stu- stu- studio-otherwise known as the spare bedroom upstairs. I’m surrounded by a Jawa’s phalanx of outdated gear: an RMI electro piano such as Linda McCartney played with Wings, A Hofner bass just like the one her less-known husband played in some band, an analog 8 track recorder, guitars everywhere, thousands of albums and books teetering on over- burdened shelves, a morass of wires and a Fender vibro champ. I’ve got a poster on the wall from when the Pills played in Barcelona and a painting that you gave me.
2. Which Beatle wife would you be?
Oooh, that’s a rough one. I’ll discount wives who were not wives during the Beatle years, so no Olivia or Barbara. I mean, Patti was so cute, but did you read her book? Oofa. Linda had the best marriage, but the worst British accent. Cynthia, I think, is the one to be- even with the shitty end to her marriage. She was there for the all the best parts. Could I be Astrud instead? 3. “Why count the days..” writes Dostoevsky in ‘The Brothers Karamazov’,
“..when even one day is enough for a man to know all happiness.”
What would be your perfect day?
I’ve had a number of perfect days with you and Mary, so I totally dig on old Fyoder’s sentiment (and his travel guides are ace). Actually, lately I’ve been getting really fruity for trees. Me and the wee man have been doing these Sunday hikes in the woods near our house. There’s this big reservoir in a grove of pines and we take our trusty bulldog Pretzel for protection against wild beasties. It’s just beautiful back there: there’s a certain quietness that is unique to a pine grove and the way the sun shimmers through the tops of the trees is very magical. Harrison loves to walk along the edge of the reservoir and he has so many questions, but we usually end up talking about trees. He can identify pine, white birch, dogwood and “the mighty oak”. When we come out of the woods, there’s a huge open space called the sheep fold where people bring their dogs to run. Sometimes, there are a hundred dogs there and one expects to see Steve Winwood in a tweed overcoat with a bunch of Irish wolfhounds. Anyway, if we can find a poo- free spot, Harrison and I lay down and describe the clouds to each other and let Pretzel romp himself into a froth. After a couple of hours, we go home and tell Darcey about our adventures and that’s a pretty perfect day. Sometimes there are snacks.
4. You have been given a box containing infinite song components.
Which of these components would you use to construct the perfect song?
Oh man, I wish. I’d take two parts “wild mercury sound”, a splash of “teenage symphony to God”, the sound of Christianity vanishing and shrinking, a spoonful of truth and then hopefully, somehow add one part originality. That last ingredient is where I always fall short.
5. What was the best job, outside of music, that you ever had?
For 5 years, when I was in my early 20’s, I drove tourists around in big orange trolleys and gave tours of Boston and Cambridge- a fine balance of historical ephemera and ludicrous humor (Ted Kennedy jokes= tips). I was in a continuous loop for 5 years and had this amazing relationship with the city where I got to know every nook and cranny, every meter maid on the route. All the restaurants would give us free food to mention them, it was great. I gave thousands of tours and I think I still hold the record for making the most tips in one day ($304). We had our hats overturned for tips and a little sign above asking for them (which I would do the drum fills from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” on to make sure nobody missed). At one point, I realized that I had become the greatest trolley tour guide in the world. I could get away with unbelievable things on the trolley. Tourists would just do whatever I asked; I convinced a group of guests to follow me off the trolley to go swimming fully clothed in the reflecting pool at the Christian Science Center. I got a whole group of people to yell out “We’re not wearing any pants” during a live newscast the Governor was giving on the steps of the state house. I would stop the trolley and take the whole group for ice cream. One time, when the trolley was full, a blustery red-faced woman yelled at me and said “I demand a ride” and I told her there was a broom in the back. Her husband died laughing.
I was also playing in a band that did a lot of shows in New York at the time and I would get home, take a shower and go directly to work, so I would occasionally have to pull over to “adjust my mirrors” and go vomit in an alleyway before continuing the tour. The entire trolley company was crazy drunkards and many of the ticket sellers were Irish girls with very flexible morals. One time I was giving the tour, looking at the guests in the mirror above me, when in the back row I spotted a familiar face. I kept looking back and discovered Robin Williams sitting in the very last seat with a hoodie on. I made the secret Mork from Ork handshake sign at him and he put his fingers against his lips. I continued with my regular routine and at the end, as he exited, he whispered “You’re a funny motherfucker” in my ear and put $50 in my hat.
6. You live near Boston which, as we are all aware, was named after the ages ago rock band. Have you ever bumped into a Boston?
I do not like the rock band Boston, I do not think they are wicked pissa, no suh. However, when I first moved here, at the tender age of 18, my Mom and I went to the Hard Rock Cafe- we are simple country folk so looking at Prince’s purple cape & boots is quite exotic for us- and I recognized Tom Scholz sitting at a nearby table. Up to that point, the only famous musician I had ever spoken to was hometown hero Daryll Hall and it went well, so I figured I had a knack for it and went over to say hello. I nervously approached and introduced myself, said that I had just moved to Boston to go to music college and he was relatively gracious and wished me luck. We talked briefly about how he made the first Boston album in his apartment with cables running out to a mobile truck to transfer the tapes. It was a perfectly valid interaction, but I didn’t know what else to say. There was an uncomfortable eternity where I tried to “hang” and, grasping for straws, I said to the man who took 8 years between albums “So, what are you working on now?” and he looked right at me and said “Right now I’m just working on trying to eat my lunch” and I slithered away humiliated.
7. I’ve had this headache for weeks now, I’ve taken pills, given up my piano lessons and tried not to stress too much about money and stuff.
What would your advice be?
Despite your magnificent 3-D coiffure, I have long feared that your head will be your un-doing. So much good comes out of it that I can’t recommend a replacement unit, you may just have to soldier on with the one you’ve got. Have you seen a cranium doctor? Regarding worry, there is a case to be made for that being quite reasonable.
8. I know you’ve visited the UK a couple of times. If you had to describe this country and it’s people to an interplanetary researcher what would you say?
That’s a pretty big question. I mean, you know I love you little spotty buggers, but how to put it in words? You know, when I saw that travel show about the guys fishing in Cornwall with their little day boats, I wanted to live there. And when we played in Aberdeen and I spent the night in a hammock surrounded by rabbits, I wanted to move to Aberdeen. And when I saw Leslie Ash in the garden shed in Quadrophenia, I wanted to move to Brighton. And the first time I was ever in Liverpool, it felt like coming home. And certainly there is no more exciting city than London. I guess the question is really more about the people and I suppose you must have as many douchebags as we do, but I’ve never met them. There’s a certain something to English people that can only comes from there having always been an England. You have better table manners than us, for one thing, and the sense of sarcasm without malice is most endearing. Ultimately, you have to respect a culture that reserves a warm spot in their collective hearts for complete loons.
9. What is your favourite time of day?
Whenever I see an e-mail from you in my inbox! Let’s see, I have gotten up to pee at 4:11 AM every night for the last 25 days, so that must be my favorite time of day. I really like that little zone right before I fall asleep when everything gets all cosmic and half- dreamy.
10. The football season is drawing to a close. Tragically, Manchester Utd have won the Premiership. What do
you think of Liverpool’s chances next season?
I feel like Kevin Garnett and Leon Poe’s knee injuries prevented the Celtics from being serious contenders against the Magic in the semi- finals (although it’s arguable whether they would have had any chance at all against Cleveland if they had won the series). Coach Rivers’ reliance on his starters and reluctance to use the bench led to Paul Pierce being ineffectual in game 7 and, coupled with Ray Allen’s inconsistent performance throughout, really blew their chances and fans have a right to question those decisions. I mean, we have a strong bench and two starters with injuries. Why wear them out?
I guess that, reading the above on the day between Friday and Sunday, it would appear to be obvious, immutable even, that today was a Saturday but having been a freelance musician/illustrator (or whatever it is I do nowadays) for the past eighteen years every day is Saturday, every night is Friday night. That’s not necessarily a good thing. The weeks and months slip beneath one’s feet, blurring and drifting without the weekend anchor to root you to any kind of calender. The body clock is fucked, birthdays are forgotten and whole seasons are missed. Do we have seasons anymore? Yesterday was warm and sunny, I was waiting for Mary after swimming last night and people were out in short sleeves and the tiny skirts and yet there are Christmas Trees in the windows of many of the bars around Cardiff.
Christmas Trees? Wasn’t it August three weeks ago?
The reason today feels different is because we’ve had so much work this week. As well as the whole Bandstocks thing, I’ve had my illustration for the Times, a commissioned illustration to finish and a design/layout job for Los Campesinos that we accepted even though we’ve never done any layout work before and it meant having to put ourselves through intensive crash course lessons in various software we’ve never used. we did it though, finished last night which is why I feel light as a feather this morning. That’s not to say I don’t work hard normally, it’s just that my brain was having to work in a different way. We need as much work as we can at the minute, we’re about to go from being a freewheelin’ couple to being a family on low income. It’s exciting though, I remember trudging to work in Birkenhead,twenty years ago, thinking that my entire life was mapped out in front of me in a dismal grey, formless sludge. I was determined to find the escape hatch and I did, not having to go into that office every day, to work for people and concepts that were alien to me, is the single greatest victory of my life and even if I have to go back, if things don’t work out, then at least I have tasted the air on a weekday morning in February, with nowhere to go, no-one to see, no bells to ring and no buttons to push. Somedays I would alight at Hamilton Square Station and walk in the opposite direction, take the ferry over to Liverpool and wander the streets, looking in windows and dreaming in Squares. Is that what I want from my son? I have no idea what I want for him. To be safe, warm and happy, that’ll do for now.
I worked in the red building (top). A place so dull that this was the only image of it I could find on the web.
So this week I’ve been staring at my computer for twelve hours a day, I’ve got a permanent headache and I’m crazier than a shithouse rat but I know things that I didn’t know at the beginning of the week and that’s what it’s all about. I forgot to mention in my last post that I’d seen my friend Adam last week. Adam used to be in a band called Swervedriver who were one of my favourites at the time (’Ravedown’ still sounds amazing) and we are good mates. He’s lived in the States for the last few years and we haven’t seen much of each other but he was in Cardiff to mix his album with Charlie Francis and Mary and I drove over to Roath to hang out for a while and listen to some of the (ace) tracks he was working on. He invited us to the Swervie reform gig at the Scala on Tuesday but, despite us having been in London that day, we didn’t make it. We went back to Cait’s to pick up the last of our stuff and I had a meeting with my manager. We left Cardiff at about six thirty am, got to Cait’s around ten and then I spent three hours packing and loading the van. After tubing it to Farringdon and then Hackney Wick (to view a not very nice flat) we got back to Caits around seven thirty, completely fucked. Cait made us some dinner -she is such a great lady- and then I drove back to Cardiff getting in around eleven. I slept well that night.
Mary had some breastfeeding workshops this week which was good practice for driving to the hospital. Her belly is huge now and she’s uncomfortable but she’s working hard and I’m immensely proud of her. It’s her birthday on Monday and I have no money to take her out of buy her anything nice, that’s not a great feeling. I’ll have to put a ribbon around the cat.
Gareth from Los Campesinos came over on Thursday to go through the DVD booklet that we’re working on. He’s a lovely lad, he was telling us that he’d been watching old Top of The Pops clips on youtube which brought visions of The Regents, Tourists and Pan’s People to my mind but he was talking about Blur and Oasis! Eh? I’m more than twice his age, fuck. He was lamenting the fact that there has been no real credible scene since Britpop which I had always considered a laughable concept. Bad music with no positive or maverick agenda, an establishment scene. But he would have been seven or eight at the time and I was in my mid to late twenties and the whole thing felt very silly. Mind you, I think that Two Tone was a worldwide revolution when in fact it was probably two or three records and some fucking great badges.
A friend of mine is pitching for some monument sculpture thing in the Valleys somewhere and he’s asked me to come up with a six note melody for bells. I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. I said yes though, of course I did. Always say YES!
My friend Miki sent me a couple fo great youtube things this week.
So last Thursday I took my new ‘I only drink wine like a grown up’ experiment to the Conway Pub in Pontcanna. With the beautiful Marylou on my arm, I strolled up the rain sodden streets full of confidence in my new found ability to drink responsibly and looking forward to meeting our friends, Jo and Danny, Carl, Ashli, Dickie Jim and Bronwen and The Civil War Bear (who has shaved his beard off! Oh cruel, twisted fate!). I approached the bar, asked for a large glass of red wine and waited to be tarred and feathered. To my amazement, a rather drinkable number was placed in front of me with nary a mocking whisper. I settled in my seat and engaged in my usual erudite meanderings, sounding and looking for all the world like some cerebral academic like Bertrand Russell or Basil Brush; time passed as has become it’s habit (except when Mark Ronson is on and then it just stops and even starts going slightly backwards) and I was snuggled smugly in the snug, snagged on a line of wine and fine conversation. Booting out time is when things started going awry. Instead of going home I decided that I wanted another adult glass of grown up drink and ended up at a friends house drinking wine until it ran out, then beer, then brandy with a spliff chaser. So I ended up, once more on the kitchen floor with little Chickpea telling me what a disgrace I was. And she was right.
It’s a good plan, it just needs refining.
I had a bit of a meltdown at the start of the week, the enormity of what I’m trying to do coupled with the thousand plus miles I’d driven the week before caught up with me and sapped my energy completely. I would write an email, have a bit of a cry and then write another one and so on, soon passed though and by Wednesday I was fighting fit once more. We started swimming again this week which helped enormously. I love swimming and I love our pool which isn’t one of those horrible chlorine efforts, it’s a swish hydroelasticatedclockwork jobbie and you can drink pints of it while swimming without being sick, result! On Wednesday we stepped out of the exit at around ten pm and walked into Paul fucking Daniels!* Eh?
Maybe i should stop drinking so much pool water.
I’ve been listening to Marvin’s album this week, ‘Devil in the Distance’. I did a few gigs with Marvin when we were both playing with Akira the Don a couple of years ago. It’s a great album, with none of the tiresome cliches and studied machismo that much of Hip Hop is ridden with nowadays. As all good first albums do, it deals with schooldays, parents and the environment that he grew up in (Brixton). It’s funny and it’s ace, just like Marvin. Check it!
Mary and I were on Adam Walton’s BBC radio show last night. Adam has been a constant supporter of my music for longer than either of us care to remember (we’re actually too old to remember much of anything) and we love being on his show. He’s the funniest man we know and has us in stitches for most of the time we’re off air (and sometimes on). He’s also a rather ace writer and photographer as you can see on his blog.
We performed ‘Bear Lake’ and ‘Darwin’s Tree’ and I waffled, rather badly Marylou tells me, about Bandstocks for a bit. Anyway, you can hear the whole thing here. He also plays some ace music, he always does.
Afterwards we had a quick glass of grown up wine in Chapter with our friends Fionna the Lady Adventurer, Tom, Chill and Bethan. Afterwards we stood outside and chatted, the party was split into two camps. The girls talked about babies, responsibility and the universal, lifelong struggle of sisterhood while us blokes enthused about computer games. We’re a simple breed but lovable in a waggy dog kinda way.
This morning the chimney sweep came round and stuck his big brush up me dirty chimney pipe. I don’t see anything funny about that, it was really exciting. Look!
So last week I signed the Bandstocks contract and made the move back to Cardiff. In some ways it is a backwards step but time was running out and it is great to be back in our house with all our shit and our little welsh cat, Chickpea. The move took two trips and I’ve still got to go back and get more stuff. I don’t know how we manage to accumulate so much crap, it’s like she’s made of velcro and I’m made of sticky tape.
It’s been one hell of a year though. In the last twelve months I’ve learned to drive, stopped smoking (except for a couple of wee blips), recorded an album, got pregnant (kind of) started a business, started working for a national newspaper, spent six months living in somebody else’s house, sold art from a market stall and grown a rather splendid fro. No wonder I can’t stop napping.
The bandstocks thing (and you must be tired of hearing about this now) is going to be hard, hard work. I need to do something drastic, such as doing an acoustic tour with a new born baby, if I’m going to spread the word. It would be worth it though, if it came off. No question about that at all.
The house was spotless when we got back which we were very grateful for, not just the fact that all we had to do was unpack and settle back in but for the fact that we put our trust into people we didn’t know that well and that trust proved to be well founded. It means we’ll trust again which makes the world, even if it’s just an infinitesimal degree, a better place.
We drove back to Liverpool over the weekend to see my mum and check out the huge La Machine spider that was already crawling through the city. I had been in London a couple of summers ago and have always regretted not seeing the Sultan’s Elephant and Giant Little Girl that wandered through it’s broad avenues.
Just before Birmingham we encountered the worst weather I’ve ever had to drive through. The traffic on the M5 slowed to about thirty mph and I couldn’t see a fucking thing. It was ace! We met up with my mum at Lime Street and headed off to look for the Spider. We didn’t have to search for long. Church Street was rammed and helicopters buzzed overhead, I squeezed my through the crowds while Mary and my mum watched from further up the street. It looked incredible and was a beautiful golden colour. There was a bloke in front of me with his brolly in everybody’s way even though, as I pointed out to him, it wasn’t raining and he had no hair. I HATE umberellas, when I am king etc
I didn’t see any movement from the spider which was disappointing but a policemen told me that it would be on the move a bit later on so we walked down to the docks and had a ridiculously overpriced drink in one of the bars down there. We chatted and watched the sun disappear behind the old warehouses. I took some pictures, it’s ages since I’ve been out with my camera, I need to get back into the habit.
Later we made our way back up Hanover Street for another look. I tried to remember where Planet X was, the place where we spent most of our days in the late eighties and supported bands like Primal Scream when they came through Liverpool, but everything has changed so much. I narrowed it down to a couple of doorways and shut my eyes and tried to recall the distant senses and foggy sounds of twenty years ago.
Back at the top of Church Street we stood near the place where we thought the spider would end up. There was a large enclosure with huge pipes around which a mass of people waited patiently, we were beyond that, near a cordon of coppers who were stopping people from getting any closer which was frustrating. We waited anyway, and waited, and waited.
An hour later I could see the giant legs winding up the street followed by a live band that were being transported in individual cranes, high above the crowd. It was just getting dark and the noise of the spider, the crowd and the music was gripping. It was genuinely exciting, it would have been even better if we had been closer.
It stopped within the enclosure and had a kind of water fight with the pipes that were shooting out flames, that bit didn’t look too impressive but then, just as I was getting a bit bored and started wondering how the hell we were going to get through this massive crowd, the security people started yelling at us to move back and the gates came down and the fucking thing started walking through us. It was unbelievable, the noise and the spectacle of this 50ft wooden/mechanical arachnid stalking over our heads followed by a horde of musicians banging away in the sky was thrilling as hardly anything ever is these days.
And then it was gone and everyone just stood there grinning and clapping and why isn’t there more magic in the world? If it doesn’t exist then let’s invent it. This was the least cynical, genuine piece of theatre I’ve seen for a long, long tome and it didn’t cost me a penny. And I think about the times we stumbled around those same streets, out of our heads on acid, imagine if we’d have seen a giant spider, a real one I mean. We’d never have gone home again.
We went up the hill towards the Philarmonic, past Roscoe Street where I once had a flat and had dinner in a fantastic French Restaurant. I’ve given up beer (yeah right, let’s see how long this lasts) and have decided to become a wino so my mum and I drank a bottle of Merlot while Mary gorged on, er, soda water. We put my mum in a cab and drove ourselves back to the house where my mum got the photo boxes out so that Mary could laugh at my baby pictures. Honestly, you’ve never seen a head like it. I drank a bottle of Rioja (I could get used to this) and fell into bed about half two.
The following morning we went for a walk in the Breck. It used to be the grounds of a large mansion but was dug out to build the nearby motorway. It’s now an overgrown spot with rocky outcrops and I spent much of my childhood down here.
My mum had never seen the place which I couldn’t believe. I wanted to climb Granny’s Rock which we used to do whenever we came down. I hadn’t set foot in the place for over twenty five years and it didn’t look any different except maybe it was a bit wilder. I didn’t get to the top of Granny’s Rock, I’m too fat and old and scared but I gave it a go, it’s not even that high. All the old handholds are there and my hands and feet knew where to go after all these years.
I have many dreams about this place, or rather this place is the venue for much of my dreaming. It was also completely deserted. Wallasey feels like a ghost town to me, there are thousands of houses, hundreds of shops but I don’t know where all the people are. I hated living here as a youth and don’t like to spend much time here even now but a trip to the old school was in order and we trudged up to Liscard to see if St Albans was still standing. Walking up one of the roads approaching the school with the water tower in the distance felt really weird, like nothing had happened inbetween.
I was here from 1976-1979, I don’t remember fighting the punk wars but we did have a legendary Jubilee party at which the whole school had the biggest food fight I’ve ever been a part of. We got away with it as well, what were they going to do? Cane us all? Come to think of it, we were punk as fuck.
They’ve had new windows put in and the entrance is a bit different and the playground has completely changed but I guess you should expect that. We also walked past the small fence outside the second hand car lot that I would spend half an hour each day jumping over as a seven year old with too much energy. I lasted three this time. Not minutes, times.
Then it was back home for some serious napping, lunch and telly. We kissed my mum goodbye and hit the motorway. This will be my mum’s first Grandchild and she is VERY EXCITED. We haven’t told her that she is bringing him up yet, we don’t want her going overboard with gratitude.
We stopped off in Stafford to see Boo who is married to Mary’s brother, Muffin (who also happens to be MY HERO!). She had a van full of baby clothes, car seats, blow up swimming things and all kinds of stuff that the baby will need; how ace is that? She had also, with the help of her two wee girls, Hannah Banana and Gracie Goggins (I’m not making this up) made us some lush cornflake and marshmallow cakes. Result.
The subsequent drive home was long and poor Marylou was uncomfortable throughout. Still, we listened to Chet Baker all the way and nothing is ever hard when Chet sings.
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!
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!
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.
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.
