November 2nd 2003

Have you noticed anything different? If you haven’t looked at this site before you won’t have, but let me assure you that it was a mess. So we’ve done the virtual equivalent of Changing Rooms and we’ve got a team out in the garden right now, fuck-arsing about with a lot of leftover MDF and some cans of car spray, making some ART. In England that’s what art is – something that any twat can do with anything that’s otherwise useless and redundant – oh, and it helps if the person doing it (the artist) is useless and redundant too. And if it's a Professional Project with Funding, a few workshops for pensioners and dispossessed children have to be incorporated otherwise it just isn’t art.

I’ve glad we’ve got that sorted out - it might all be beside the point, but experience has lead me to believe that just about everything is beside the point anyway.

Roaming around this sight via the snazzy icons is going to be a bit like booking into a hotel at a Spanish resort and finding that it’s only half-built. That’s exactly the case here. I think I may have said that before, and I may have made some sort of empty promises involving a discography and a biography. Never mind – perhaps I should go into politics.

I’m not going to make any promises about regular updates – as you can see from the little live dates box (which has probably just scrolled off the top of your screen) I’m a bit busy. Tomorrow it’s Leeds where I’m going to be in contest with John Otway. He may be taller than me but I’m hoping to outclass him.

Last Thursday I outclassed myself at the Boogaloo in Highgate. It was fine apart from a sofa-load of rich kids with no manners whatsoever who drunkenly yacked at each other all the way through my readings. I felt like a fucking TV set or a video – except that you can’t rewind me or flick between channels. I wish those kind of people had gigs of their own that I could go to. Then maybe they’d start to understand what a drag they are.

Apart from that it was a triumph. I met some people from a New York band called The Star Spangles and a guy called Warren from an English band called Police & Thieves. They're as young as I was when I started out and they even dressed like I did. They’ve put me on the guest list for all their gigs. Unfortunately I’m going to see the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club on the night they’re playing at the Metro in Oxford Street (November 11th). If everybody else wouldn’t mind standing in for me that night I’d appreciate it and I’m sure they would too. I’m going to go and see The Star Spangles and Police & Thieves somewhere else because I can’t pass up an opportunity to see the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club again. They make me wish that the Len Bright Combo still existed.

And speaking of the Len Bright Combo, I hope a few people are enjoying the re-release. I hope everybody's buying it or I’m going to have the bailiffs in before I’ve finished the new record which is coming along at a slightly slower pace than slowly. I reckon we’ll have it out by next March.

I hope you like the new look site – we’ve got the wonderful Karen Hibberd to thank for putting it together from my crummy Paint programme graphics. I tricked her into it with offers of dinners and she’s done a great job. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

I’m now going to cut the ribbon.