news

15 August 2005

I don't know where this year's gone so far. I've been meaning to change this site for most of it and more - I thought it was about time. The last version looked a bit corporate. The front page of this one looks more like an accident. The rest of it probably looks just as mock-corporate as the other one and the whole thing goes into a chaotic mess of different styles where I couldn't be bothered to change everything. After a while it affects your eye sight in the way that wanking's suppose to. There's a joke in there about websites and wankers but I can't be bothered to formulate it. They say that in an urban area you're never more than six feet away from a rat. Andrew Weatherall maintains that in Shoreditch you're never more than six feet away from a rat or a website designer.
Anyway, I've put in a few lyrics and stuff about the songs - there's a lot of it to do but I'll just keep adding to it. And I've finally organised something approaching a comprehensive discography - it was a bit depressing in a way - I started to think that if I'd been paid all the royalties that are due on that lot I'd be a rich man now. And then I could have employed a website designer and learned how to join in.

I haven't really got time at the moment to go into a vitriolic diatribe along the lines of the Live_8_/_Live_Aid_/_Glastonbury_/_Coldplay one which was so popular. But then again I went to the Summer Sundae festival in Leicester yesterday. I only went to see Yo La Tengo - they were kind enough to invite me along and I was very happy to see them. Before they went on I saw a band called Alfie who nearly impressed me but then I couldn't be bothered - I mean, they didn't knock me off my feet but with a little effort I could have convinced myself that I liked them a bit. But that's the spirit of Indie really, isn't it? Not really liking anything but being supportive - resulting in a lot of dubious 7" singles pressed up in Czechoslovakia, a shoe box full of the things, unplayed in those cloudy transparent plastic bags they always come in.
There were a lot of girls there who were really too old to be wearing hair slides. There were a lot of younger girls too - they didn't look as though they really knew what was going on so they busied themselves sending text messages. They got drunk on cheap cider and talked loudly over the music in in shrill, lispy voices while their boyfriends tried to look like band members.
Yo La Tengo really shone through because they're not afraid of their own oddness and idiosyncrasy. They had a tough slot, they were onstage at half past seven, just too early for the lights. Patti Smith headlined and I found it disheartening to see the whole arena full to capacity for her when it had been relatively sparse for Yo La Tengo who are a far superior act.
The worst thing about Patti Smith & Her Band has to be the drummer who made me wince, cringe and cover my ears. He played like a music shop employee, every beat was wrung out with bitterness and insensitivity. The good thing was Tom Verlaine who sat on a chair at the back. He seemed to be the only one who was really listening to what was going on and playing accordingly. His guitar playing was eerie and chilling and he left loads of space (which the drummer filled up).
We had a look through the window of their tour bus. There was a book lying on the table. I was expecting it to be a well-thumbed anthology of Baudelaire's poems but it was a novel by (I think) David Dunbar. I can't imagine that life aboard the Patti Smith tour bus is much fun - a lot of grey hair and grumpiness. But then I could be describing myself so I'd better shut up before I get in trouble.
Anyway, I had a great time hanging out with James, Ira and Georgia. I only wish I'd been playing there myself. But I don't play much these days - most of my gigs get cancelled. The latest cancelletions are the Damned Festival on the August Bank Holiday weekend, the Electric Prunes tour (as a direct consequence of the Damned Festival cancellation) and the rescheduled Salford date on September 22nd. But I am playing at Spitz in London on Wednesday night. After that I may never play again.

21 August 2005
Last Wednesday's gig at Spitz turned into a bit of a nightmare. I had to do an interview with Sean Rowley at BBC Radio London in the afternoon so that meant setting off horribly early, driving into the middle of London and paying the extortionate eight pound congestion charge which mysteriously turned into a ten pound charge when I finally paid it online. There's a fine for not paying it - around sixty quid and that goes up to something horrific if you don't pay it almost immediately. So you'd think they'd make it really easy to pay but they don't. There aren't any signs telling you where to pay it and most of the likely shops have stopped doing it because it's apparently too much trouble for very little return. God help any foreign tourists, ones that can't speak English. But I suppose they can just fuck off home without paying it and hope that interpol are busy elsewhere. That was an aside really - I just wanted to say how much I loathe the congestion charge. It isn't about relieving congestion and lowering pollution levels - if it was they'd lower the cost of public transport and make the services more efficient, provide cheap out of town parking and quite possibly re-nationalise the railways... Norwich City Council are trying to introduce the congestion charge for Norwich. I think they think it'll make them appear more cutting edge. They should just provide a reliable bus service but there's nothing cutting edge about a reliable bus service. Anyway, the BBC provided a parking space so it wasn't too bad, and Sean Rowley (who was standing in for Robert Elms) was fine and apparently Whole Wide World was voted the second best Stiff Record by the listeners. Of course I wanted to know what the number one was - Alison by Elvis Costello. I was appalled. Whole Wide World is a much better record and I said so on air. Other people may disagree but that's their problem. I drove to Shoreditch afterwards and got there way too early because congestion charging really does work so there were fuck all cars on the road. I thought I was going to have to call a mortgage broker to arrange the finance to pay the parking but I found a secret NCP and stuck the car in there. It cost two pounds an hour until seven pm and only two pounds for the rest of the night. So I got away with only eight pounds for parking. Last time I was in London, visiting the American Embassy to get a work permit, it cost four pounds an hour to stick it on a meter. I had to go by car because the appointment was for eight in the morning - the trains won't get you there from Norfolk that early and I didn't want to sleep on somebody's sofa.

That's really quite enough about the getting there - I'm only going on about it because I can hardly bring myself to talk about the gig. It was a fucking nightmare. There were far too many acts on the bill and some of them weren't very good. When I finally got to it, at about eleven o'clock, everyone was either tired or pissed-up. Or both. And the sound onstage wasn't very good. The audience had lost concentration and it was made worse by a fat dwarf in a Hawaiian shirt who started cavorting about in front of the stage with a gang of like-minded arseholes. There was nothing anyone could do about it because the dwarf was the promoter. I think the whole evening was an ego trip for him. There - that's another person who hates me now. And I'm trying to be nice here.

But it was extremely difficult to do what I do with this spastic cabaret going on in front of me. They didn't enhance the event with their stupidity, they just pissed a lot of people off. And because of that, and being knackered from hanging around for hours I felt I didn't play anything like as well as I do normally.
It strengthened my resolve to take the cancellation of the Electric Prunes tour (which I'd been looking forward to) as a blessing in disguise. I've decided to take it easy for a while, just do the odd gig here and there and think about what I'd like to do next. It's a bit hard on the bank balance but it's better than burning out.
Having said that the date in Lincolnshire this weekend that was the Damned Get Lost Festival is still sort of going ahead. I'm doing a set on Saturday night about nine o'clock. I think the admission's free. You can get the details from the live page and there's a link to the venue's site. Saturday night in Lincolnshire doesn't sound like a lot of fun but I have an idea it might turn out all right.

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15 August 2005