my life as a artist
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and the wind cries trevor
Thursday 17th January 2008 10:52 PM
I've just come back from the printers, having made the definitive copy of a freshly-minted poster for my up-coming gig at the Church House in Kirkbymoorside. The gig will feature myself, RORY MOTION, and two chanteuse, Em and B, who go out under the name of 'The Chanterelles'. I'm a bit worried that with my name being in an erect, no-nonsense, bold, firm, manly font and theirs being in a squealing, cissy, fussy, girly one, I'm going to be accused of gender stereotyping. In my heart of hearts, which is somewhere near my liver, I suspect this is true, but if I'm accused of it, I'll deny it.
The last time I played a gig at the Church House in Kirkbymoorside, was in the short, cold summer of '75, as lead ocarina player in 'The Trevor Smailsnaith Experience'. It was the year before punk tilted the music world on its axis, and rock dinosaurs like Trevor still roamed the earth. We had a lead guitarist called Eric, who used to play solos that were so long, that sometimes we had to leave him at the gig, and come back and pick him up the next morning .
Trevor, whose real name was Jet Cougar, was born in Wombleton, just down the road, so we used to play the gig at least once a month. Afterwards, we'd always stay at Mr and Mrs Cougar's house, which was a real treat after the endless nights of lonely hotel rooms. In those days, when a band went back to a hotel room, they'd usually drink and take drugs and smash it up, whereas with Trevor, we'd go back with a small tin of magnolia paint, some polyfilla and sandpaper, then drink and take drugs, and redecorate it. I believe to this day that Eric could have really made it as a plasterer.
In 1968, after the success of Trevor's first release, a psychedelic, sci-fi concept album called 'Aliens played with my willie', Trevor Smailsnaith's name became synonymous with the outpouring of hippy love-energy that was flooding North Yorkshire at the time. Despite trying to seal the doors of perception with the sand-bags of ignorance, this flood of love-energy was so deep and widespread, that many people's carpets were completely ruined.
I joined the band in 1973, by which time, unfortunately, the floodwaters of love-energy had long since receded, and been replaced with occasional damp patches of affection, mere fungal memories of love, causing unsightly stains on the dry cellar walls of indifference. In 1970, the creative harmony of the Experience had begun to suffer, following Trevor's increasing involvement with a Japanese conceptual artist from Oswaldkirk, called Betty. The following year, much against the wishes of the rest of the band, Betty took up the ocarina and became the fifth member of the Trevor Smailsnaith Experience.
During the pitiably brief, damp summer of '72, and after the dismal flop of Trevor's third album, 'Electric Dung', tensions within the band, and between Trevor and Betty, had reached breaking point. In August of that year, after Betty had discovered Trevor blocking up the holes in her ocarina, with pieces of recently invented blue-tack, she walked out on both Trevor and the band, and moved to Harrogate, where, rumour has it, she opened a tea-shop.
Despite the prevailing negative atmosphere of the times, my memories of that last Kirkbymoorside gig are good ones. I like to think that when the daffodils of Farndale are nodding their heads, it's not the wind that moves them, but it's rather that they're in the gentle mosh-pit of a spring gig, quietly digging the insistent rhythms of love-energy that still reverberate from that long, cold, hot August night in Kirkbymoorside, way back in '75.
Soon afterwards, tired of being a fading love-avatar for a generation, Trevor changed his name back to Jet, moved back in with Mr and Mrs Cougar, and got a job at the Malton bacon factory. I'm hoping he might come to the gig, if he's not working shifts.
Posted 10:52 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
not guilty
Saturday 12th January 2008 1:12 AM
Steve wants to know if this blog is called 'my life as A artist' or 'my life as AN artist'. It's the former Steve, rather in the spirit of Ernie Wise's 'the play what I wrote'. Unfortunately, on the page, it loses something, and I agree that it looks more like a typographical error than drollery. I'm probably much better live.
Jonno e-mailed me to wonder at the lack of comments on the pope blogs. Was it that nobody was reading it, or were people scared of the pope and God, or was the comment box not working?
I now know that Steve, Hooth and Jonno himself have read them, so it's not that. As regards people being scared of the pope and God, that's a trickier question. Personally, I'm not scared of either of them. God is an unspeakable mystery, who for poetic and practical reasons of spiritual nourishment, I have come to regard as a loving father/mother/sister/brother/second cousin/nice lady that you meet in the co-op figure, and towards whom feelings of fear would be completely inappropriate. As regards the pope, I'm not scared of him either, because I'm six foot two and go to the gym regularly, whereas he's five foot six and, as someone who's held on grimly for decades to a rigid, life-denying orthodoxy, almost certainly arthritic.
If however, life should be a bizarre cosmic joke, and existence nothing more than Noel Edmonds, and it turns out that the catholic church is telling the truth, and Ratty really is God's sole representative on earth, then not only would I be scared of Ratty, I'd be really, really scared of God as well.
I don't know if Tony Blair ever reads this blog, but seeing as he joined the catholic church a few weeks ago, he's clearly not scared of the pope, and, seeing as he then subsequently joins the board of an investment bank two weeks later, he's obviously not scared of God either.
On reflection Jonno, (and lets face it, we need some of that in this topsy-turvey, helter-skelter, bibbidi-bobbedy-boo, 'I'm completely bonkers', world of ours) I'd say there were no comments because the comment box wasn't working. The fact that Steve and Hooth have both commented today means that Kate and Sidney Pi must have fixed it, as indeed they said they would. Kate reckoned it probably just needed its nipples greasing.
Posted 1:12 AM | 2 Comments | Permalink
jesus wants us for a sunbeam
Sunday 6th January 2008 8:15 PM
Hooth comments that she doesn't think Jesus would agree with Ratty, that hell is a real place where people really burn forever in eternal flames of damnation. To be honest Hooth, I don't think Judas would either. Ratty promulgates a life-denying cosmology of such breath-taking crudity that, bearing in mind the massive influence of the Catholic church, it is as you say, not very funny.
Besides the massive carbon footprint, it's the sheer never-endingness of the punishment that I find most disturbing. If the flames of hell are so agonising, and the gnashing of teeth so terrible, surely twenty to twenty-five minutes (or thirty-five to forty minutes at a lower setting) would suffice for the gravest of sinners? But eternity? Imagine you're a catholic, and you've just endured a thousand years of uninterrupted, writhing agony, for being gay and listening to Pogues records, and you ask God to stop and he tells you that your punishment's only just begun. It'd certainly test your faith.
Posted 8:15 PM | 4 Comments | Permalink
no girls allowed
Thursday 3rd January 2008 11:13 PM
When I was at junior school, one of my mates was a German boy called Joe Ratzinger, commonly known as Ratty. Every break-time, me, Ratty and a few others would form a human chain, and walk around the playground, shouting for people to join in our game. 'Who wants to play at Abrahamic religions? No girls allowed!' we'd cry, our voices giddy with monotheism.
I always preferred playing at the newer Abrahamic religions, like Bahai and Rastafarianism, but when Ratty was there we had to play at Roman Catholicism, otherwise he'd threaten us all with Chinese wrist-burns. I'd usually be a cardinal, in charge of the inquisition, say, whereas Ratty would, infallibly, be the Pope.
Even at that tender age, he was a stickler for orthodoxy. I remember one playtime, trying to introduce elements of Rastafarianism into the Catholic doctrine, that involved smoking loads of dope and then feeling guilty about it, and he was so outraged, that he ex-communicated me until the end of break-time.
Imagine my surprise this week, then, when I saw Ratty's cheeky little face poking out of an article on the inside pages of The Times. It seems that our page three stunner has changed his name to Benedict XVI and is doing the pope thing for real! Despite the fact that he was wearing an extravagantly pointed hat that made him look a bit like a Mesopotamian fish-god, he was easily recognisable, although I did notice that since junior school days, his once adorable, puppy-dog eyes had narrowed somewhat.
Apparently, Ratty has been saying that rather than being a religious symbol to galvanise the faithful, hell is actually a real place, where people really do burn forever in the agonising flames of eternal damnation. Even in the playground, he always did make me feel a bit wishy-washy.
It's a shame that Ratty is now a declared celibate, because I honestly think that the love of a good woman could really loosen him up. Next time we meet at the 'friends reunited' bash, if he's up for it, I'm going to suggest a game of kiss chase, with girls allowed. Sometimes, pontiff's just wanna have some fun.
Posted 11:13 PM | 3 Comments | Permalink
brief encounter
Wednesday 26th December 2007 11:27 PM
Today's magic validation word is 'brief', which for the purposes of this blog, I'm taking to mean 'of short duration', rather than 'lawyer' or 'half an underpant'. Like many of my closest friends, the magic validation word is randomly generated, and somehow more susceptible to imprint from the prevailing spiritual impulses, and as a handy tool of divination, can provide a rich source of ready wisdom. As someone who likes to spin a yarn, this particular magic validation word, being an anagram of 'fibre', also provides a useful source of material.
'Hooth' writes that she would definitely not be celebrating Nimrod's birthday this year, because she's still angry with him for building the tower of Babel. Although I admire your principles, Hooth, I think demi-gods respond to encouragement, rather than chastisement, so next year I suggest that you celebrate his birthday, but do it with a bit more restraint than usual, to express your disquiet over the tower thing. The gentle chastisement of gods, like the gentle chastisement of dogs, is more effective the sooner it's administered after the misdeed, and I worry that after all this time, Nimrod won't make the connection, and will just feel confused.
Yesterday we had a family get-together at my sisters to celebrate Hercules's birthday. In the morning we tried to perform the twelve labours, but due to a temperamental Aga cooking the chicken sooner than expected, we had to do a few short-cuts. Instead of cleaning out the Augean stables, we just changed Murphy the Cat's litter tray, and hoped, by the grace of Hercules, that after a sprout-rich dinner, one of us might capture the golden stag of Artemis whilst outside on a fart-break.
This morning the Corinthians played the Russell All-stars at the Sym Balk Lane theatre of dreams. Due to seasonal family commitments, drink-related injuries, and a lack of iron and essential vitamins, both teams were severely depleted. The extra space led to an open, free-flowing match, which the Corinthians won 12-3. I was playing up front and managed to score six goals, which sounds heroic, but was more to do with work-rate. It wasn't so much a Herculean labour, more a 'big ask'.
Posted 11:27 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
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