3 November 2005

It must be obvious to everybody by now that I'm not taking my career at all seriously - if I was I would have updated the site, not left it for two and a half months without a word of explanation. Well, time flies when you're not have fun and the time has all flown away and I don't know where it's gone. I can't tell you what I've been doing because I'm sure I can't quite remember - it's alright, I haven't gone back on the piss or anything, just clocked off for a while but I'm bursting out of this bubble now and getting ready to go on tour with the usual confusion that entails. What I mean is that the house is going to turn into a depot - a place of discarded guitar strings and dirty clothes and diesel receipts and demo CDs given to me by well-meaning but naive and desperate would-be recording artists. But I'm working on some new ideas and revisiting a few old songs because, although I don't want to pander to the masses, I realise that a lot of the Damned's audience may very possibly belong to what we could term the haemorrhoid generation, which is a polite way of saying that they're all a bit old (as I am myself these days except that I haven't got haemorrhoids), old enough that is to afford the monumental admission charge and therefore fully entitled to value for money in that I'm going to play the odd thing that some of them might recognise from those balmy old seventies. I'm a bit proud of that last sentence, it was a whole paragraph long, worthy indeed of the man who has been described as the A J P Taylor of rock , Alan Clayson. Which is a neat way of bringing me on to my next topic. (A topic by the way is what you study at university these days - if someone tells me they're doing a degree course I generally reply: 'Oh really? - on what topic?' And before anyone complains it isn't a reflection on the student's intelligences and abilities, more a kick against the government for making people pay exorbitant sums of money in return for a half-arsed education - anyone can get a degree if you lower the standards enough and convince people to put themselves into crippling debt on the promise of job prospects they'll probably never even get close to.) Christ I'm losing my grip - Alan Clayson - I'm playing on Saturday at the 12 Bar in my capacity as his backing band. I'm a big fan of his work and Alan and I are close friends. Usually when he plays live he falls to pieces magnificently and comes out of it absolutely triumphant. I've always felt that my part in it was to try and hold it together as best as I can. My predessesor, Dick Taylor of the Pretty Things described playing with Alan as like running down a steep staircase with no handrail. I think that about sums it up. But for Saturday (and Monday as well on a barge in Battersea) Alan assures me that he's got it all under control and all I have to do is flesh out enhance as I feel fit. We haven't played together for about three years and there hasn't been time for a rehearsal so I think it's going to be enthralling. You can find out all about Alan by visiting www.alanclayson.com and by coming to the 12 Bar in London's bustling Denmark Street. But only if you're nearby - I wouldn't expect you to catch an aeroplane or anything. And if you go on his site, which I really think you should, you can look on the left hand side under guests, click on wremembers and read my account of the Alan Clayson phenomenon. I don't know what else I can tell you apart from all that. I didn't go out much for a few months but I'm catching up now. I saw the Super Furry Animals at UEA which was OK but I think it was the first night of their tour so it wasn't outright brilliant. Pretty damned good though. I saw the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at the Junction in Cambridge the other week. That was fabulous as is their new album. Seeing them always makes me feel wistful for what the Len Bright Combo could have amounted to if we hadn't been pissing around with little PA systems and under-powered vintage amplifiers. I saw Dead Men Walking at the Waterfront in Norwich last week. They were disconcertingly eighties which isn't their fault - it just happens that that's where they come from but for me the eighties felt like the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of what I could laughingly call civilisation. (If you can remember the eighties you were there er, maan.) It was only alleviated by the birth of my wonderful daughter, Luci, by the advent of the Len Bright Combo, and by working with Mickey Gallagher and Norman Watt Roy in the Captains Of Industry (but only if I remove the dreadful Go! Discs record label from the mix). But I was most impressed by Captain Sensible who isn't of course from the eighties - he started in the seventies with me at the Go! Discfully dreadful Stiff Records. I think Captain Sensible is a unique and misunderstood human being. He's incredibly charismatic, he's a very talented and highly under-rated musician and as long as he's sober which it seems he is most of the time these days, he's a charming, funny and intelligent man both onstage and off. So I'm looking forward to the Damned tour - I think it might all be a good laugh with any luck. The night after Dead Men Walking I was back at the Waterfront for Wilko Johnson and John Otway in support of an extremely bland blues group called The Hamsters. The Hamsters seem to have trotted into the foreground without anybody noticing except for a gang of tubby middle-aged biker men who really should be told that they've gone beyond the point where long hair and tight trousers are a realistic proposition. They should also have their leather waistcoats confiscated and melted down to provide heating for the elderly. The Hamsters do Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top. They're not exactly a tribute band - ZZ Top and Jimi Hendrix is just where they get their repertoire from - plus a few blues and boogie blandouts that may well be their own compositions. I don't get it - why Jimi Hendrix and ZZ Top - why not Funkadelic and the Carpenters, it's almost a good name for a group. Or Nine Inch Nails and the Archies. It doesn't make sense. At best it's lazy and idiotic. The only connection I can make is that Jimi Hendrix once said in an interview that his favourite guitar player was the bloke in ZZ Top. That maybe so but he was probably just trying to answer some stupid who's your favourite guitar player question and he happened to have seen ZZ Top the night before so that was the first answer that popped into his head. It's certainly no basis for forming a group. I don't know how they could dare to play after Wilko, Norman and Monti who must be the most exciting three piece on the circuit. I'd better stop there before I get in trouble.

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