my life as a artist
| Calendar |
|---|
You are viewing the archive, containing all posts older than 12 day(s). To return to the front page, click here.
she makes lunch just like a woman
Thursday 17th May 2007 11:33 PM
Last night I performed at a Bob Dylan tribute gig, in celebration of his sixty-sixth birthday.
'I came to a low place of darkness and swamp
The bendy-bus ran through the centre of town
I locked up my bike to a post on the rise
Went into the Welly just to wash my throat down
A man called Chris approached me for a gig
I knew right away he was not ordinary
He said we're looking for someone to sing Mister Big
I said 'I aint got no talent', he said 'It aint necessary'
We set off that night for the Post Office club
I gave him my bike-clips and he gave me his word
I said ' Will you pay my bus fare?' he said 'Yes, and a pint!'
I said 'That's the best news that I've ever heard!'
I remember doing one for his fiftieth. That night there was a quiz, won by a table of bobologists from Halifax, who scored twenty-eight out of thirty, considerably more, in my opinion, than Bob himself would have scored.
Those bobologists from Halifax, in their bobniscience, would be among the first to agree that Bob's sixty-sixth birthday has far more significance than his sixty-fifth. As the age for retirement, and a free bus-pass, sixty-five has some significance in the mundane, sublunary world of work and finance, but sixty-six is heavy with a cosmic meaning, especially for those that know. Those blokes from Halifax probably know. I don't.
I do know that sixty-six is two times thirty-three, which is the number of years of Christ's life and the highest degree in freemasonry. If you add Highway 51 to thirty three, you get eighty four, then take away five believers, obviously, and that leaves you seventy nine, which is the number of verses in Gates of Eden.
One of the most interesting times in Dylan's career was when he went electric. Up unto that point he had been iconic as 'man with guitar', a shamanic bard, a mystical troubadour. His duty was to hurl mighty words of white light and wisdom, against the demon controlled structures of the planet, and play a bit of dodgy harmonica.
Dylan's wholesome curly-haired-folk-singer image changed dramatically when he released Electric Lay Lady Layland. The first time he performed the new electric stuff was at the Newport folk festival, and they couldn't take it. If it had been in Newport, Gwent, he might have got away with it, but it was in Newport, Pembrokeshire, and at that time the folk festival was nearer to an Eisteddfod. After listening to a few harp recitals and some choral stuff, mainly in Welsh, the audience of local farmers couldn't really cope with 'Leopard skin pill box hat', turned up to eleven. On the live recording of the gig there's a bit between numbers where someone from the audience shouts out, in a strong Welsh accent, 'Could you turn it down a bit, please, Bob? It's a bit loud isn't it?'
Quick as a flash, Bob replies. 'I don't believe you! You're a liar'
During his time in Wales he wrote Rainy Day Women, Buckets of Rain, Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Before the Flood, Shelter from the Storm, Idiot Wind and Hurricane. (and of course, Llanrhaedr-am-mochnant Woman on my Mind)
His bravery and inventiveness are really impressive. I was watching 'Don't Look Back', a film about the 1965 tour of the UK, and at one point, he's in a room, and Alan Price is playing a George Formby number on the piano. I think it was 'Leaning on a Lamppost'. You could see Dylan's hawk-like eyes taking it all in, and less than one month later, he wrote 'Its all right ma, turned out nice again'
He's looking well for his age. I think it's because he's made of really high quality leather. The same leather that Mother Theresa was made of, and Keith Richards. They say he's one of the hardest wearing guys in showbusiness.
When I was about ten, my dad used to make us smoke dope and listen to Dylan. Cannabis was really cheap in the West Riding in the mid-sixties, and the coalman used to deliver ours. We'd get two sacks a week, one of Afghani and one of Nepalese temple balls, which I suppose would be the equivalent of ovals.
Every evening, 'after us teas', he go up to the stereogram, which was made of half an acre of teak forest and the size of a small saloon car, and line up Dylan's first five albums on the autochanger. Then he'd go down to the cellar and come back with a coal-scuttle full of sticky, black lumps of hash, and he'd thump it down onto the carpet and say, 'I'm off to t'pub… and ah want to see that smoked afore ah get 'ome!'… and by God, we had to!
Now I'm older, I'm grateful to my dad for his firm and unusual guidance, although at the time, it played havoc with my eleven-plus. It's forty years later, and sadly, my dad's gone, and so has the stereogram, and sadly, so has the coal-scuttle, but I'm still here, and so is Bob, who's birthday is next week . I don't think I'll bother getting him anything. After all, he's got everything he needs, he's an artist, he don't look back.
l
Posted 11:33 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
bye bye blair
Friday 11th May 2007 10:15 PM
When Tony Blair speaks
he often pauses
between phrases,
sometimes for ages.
I think he thinks it gives him
some sort of gravitas
whereas
I don't.
Pathocracy is government by psychopaths, which, unfortunately, is very fashionable these days. To be a head of state it helps to be charismatic and have a mad, staring left eye… or in the case of Putin, two dead ones. I don't think Gordon Brown quite fits the bill, so I expect we'll get given that nice Mr Cameron instead.
Tomorrow morning I might fly to Monaco with my mum, and play roulette in the Hotel Royale. If we win loads of money and become existentially disgusted, we might smoke crack cocaine and play 'chicken' with really sharp knives. It'd be a change for both of us.
If we don't go to Monaco, we'll go to the car-boot sale at the race-course. I'm looking for a replacement tap for my sink and anything else that I think could bring some sense of beauty and meaning into my life for under a fiver.
The tap I've got at the moment is not sexually compatible with a hosepipe so I'm looking for something a bit more priapic. My garden, the Sitting Buckets of Babylon, needs regular watering and jugging's too slow. Also, in a few months, when the vegetables are firm, ripe and tempting, if the government come and try and take them away from me, I'll be able to hold them at bay with the hosepipe until I come up with a more long-term solution.
No two-bit, blood-sucking, global elite elected pathocracy will ever take my broad beans! I'll eat them there and then, and if they arrest me and put me in custody, or custard, I'll break wind and they'll have to let me go.
Maybe I should grow some artichokes.
Posted 10:15 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink
human racecourse
Sunday 6th May 2007 10:04 PM
Yesterday morning went to a car-boot sale with my mum. I bought an Ecuadorean cardigan for £3, an outside TV aerial for £1:50 and a 'powerfull hair-clipper for the hole family' for 50p. Last night I invited the 'hole' family round to enjoy the newly-found high-definition pictures on my television. While they were enjoying the individual bristles on Wayne Rooney's five o'clock shadow, I shaved all their heads with the 'powerfull' hair-clippers, and so they wouldn't feel the cold, I cut the Ecuadorean cardigan up into 6" squares and stuck them onto the tops of their heads with blu-tack. My mum's square had a chunky wooden button on it, right in the middle, and it looked really jazzy, so she says she's going to keep it on until her hair grows back a bit. Now I know it works, I might tidy some of the chickens up.
Posted 10:04 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
I dug duggleby
Friday 4th May 2007 10:50 PM
When I was 20, in 1977, I thought that the world was going to end in ten years. I still believe it.
'….lip-stick shaped tube things continue to rain and cause screaming pain, and the arctic stains from silver blue to bloody red…'
That was Trevor Macdonald on News at Ten, singing a Jimi Hendrix song , while we looked at pictures of Mogadishu burning. He's got a surprisingly smooth Sam Cooke sort of voice, not entirely appropriate for a Hendrix song, but with Paxman tootling on his Stratocaster in the background, it sort of worked. As pictures of the embattled capital rolled on, Trevor and Jeremy segued seamlessly into 'Someone's house is burning.'
Paxman's fingers blurred up the fretboard… 'take it to Westminster Bridge man!' whispered Trevor appreciatively. When the normally avuncular Trevor got to the lyric,
'... I asked my friend, 'where is that black smoke coming from?' He just coughed and changed the subject, and said, I guess it might snow some..,' Paxman hit the wah-wah pedal and howled in a jagged storm of electronic ecstasy. It was the best News at Ten they've had on for ages.
Even though my mum once threw herself under the king's horse in the name of universal suffrage, I failed to vote in the local elections. I feel a sense of shame when I consider her gentle, hoof-scarred face. I might get her a KFC mums-night-off bucket.
Talking of buckets, (my most recent phrase, and possibly my next album), I'm getting my garden together. It will be the eighth wonder of the world, the Sitting Buckets of Babylon, and will be my trailer-trash Eden. I'll try and work in harmony with the prevailing terrestrial, solar and astral energies, whenever possible, but just in case, I'll dig some of Mark's donkey poo in as well.
I like to dig Radio 4 when I dig the garden and yesterday I really dug Vincent Duggleby on Money Box Live. He was singing a Steve Miller song, and Gordon Brown, who was taking time out from the arrogant pipsqueakery of politics, was giving it big licks on a telecaster.( Money Box Live is so much better than Money Box. Money Box seems half-dead in comparison). Vincent's singing voice had a surprisingly powerful rasp to it, not unlike Howling Wolf or Captain Beefheart. I like to think that Gordon was smiling as he dug Duggleby's words.
'You-oo-oo-oo, run for the money,
You don't even know about wild mountain honey'
Posted 10:50 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink
doolittle did little today
Thursday 3rd May 2007 11:34 PM
'Look!.. I respect you. I want you to be free and to express yourself but this is no life for you. We can't live together in this caravan. You're the outdoor type. You're very beautiful in your own way, but ultimately you're irritating, and sometimes your disgusting. When I came in just then, you spat on that cake deliberately, externally digested it, and now you're sucking it all up.'
Because I live on my own, and it's nice to chat, I spend a lot of time talking to animals and insects. Being a vegetarian I get along with chickens and cows quite well. It's often difficult to find areas of common interest but last week I borrowed the DVD of 'Chicken Run', bought some hemp seed, and invited the chickens round to the caravan to chill. Some of the bantams became distressed during the action scenes and there was shit absolutely everywhere, but it was a great night.
The cows, two Belgian blues, mother and daughter, are very self-contained, almost aloof, but occasionally they amble over to chat. They like me to tell them of my time in India and about their exalted status within Hindu culture. Last week I was stroking the mother, over the fence, and we talked of our hopes for Manchester United in the second leg in Milan. She told me that one of her cousin's was Rio Ferdinand's sofa.
Abi, the sheep-dog asleep-dog, has the kind eyes of a saint and is a hundred million dog years old. We talk of love and rabbits. Poppy is young, fond and foolish and I tell her propaganda stories that involve patience and calm being fabulously rewarded. So that she doesn't feel patronised I talk to her about rabbits as well.
The rabbits themselves are very poor conversationalists. They talk extremely quickly and nervously, and always about sex, and just when they're getting to the good bit, they see a dandelion and hop off.
Birds are better listeners. Yesterday there was a chaffinch sitting on the fence, just outside the window. About fifteen yards directly behind the chaffinch, in the field, was an old English bantam hen. This created the optical illusion of the birds being the same size. (bit like the sun and moon). When I explained the surreal and comedic effect of my perspective to the chaffinch he started larking around, pretending to mount the chicken. I mentioned it to the chicken the next day but she hadn't got a clue!
Now we're into May there's a few more insects around. I get on with bees and beetles but I find mosquitoes and wasps a bit aggressive. To be honest, I try not to talk to insects too much , because it can make the winter seem a bit lonely.
Posted 11:34 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink
[Front Page] | Archive Page: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]
