- Country Music, Original Songs, Folk, Country Western, Alternative and Rock… Elijah Few & the Return of the Wicked Messenger

What’s wrong with animation these days? Is it an over reliance in most wholly CGI based “movies” upon Hollywood names “acting” as voices in drab, hackneyed, overblown and hastily rendered, story-less “something for everyone“ nothingness? Is it that which makes them irrelevant? Maybe. Is it the lazy directors way to make a buck?  Perhaps.
There’s a place for CGI in film, yeah, but is there a place for film in animation?
Not in my world; I just can’t stand the modern cgi stuff.

It doesn’t take a CGI expert to spot a computer rendering at 300 feet. It’s what made the characters look so lost in a sea of pixellated, invisible, green screen vapour in the Star Wars “prequels”. We want our Wookies with real fur, people. So, welcome to the beautifully decaying and bloated world of the Triplets of Belleville. Elegantly filthy and corpulent too: a faded, jaded and rusting Belle Epoque Paris meets the repugnantly ugly sensibilities of New York in a mesmerizing, plot driven, animated caper that begins with the sepia Jazz of yesteryear and weaves its way through brilliant storytelling to the distorted, atomic dada geometry of a 50’s – 60’s Quebec hybrid; with fins, cheeseburgers a l’escargot, french fries and gluttony.

The creators have a propensity for the tried, trusted, traditional and true arts of animation which shine through with just a fine dusting of particle effects to give the modern game away. So no sell out there then. No render farms sticking their oar in. No compromise. This animation is loaded with feeling, character, & very finely nuanced; whilst also being exploded into broad, vertical skyscrapers of relief, with an almost surreal Heath Robinson, strangely “fin de siecle” pencil work, gothic decay and urbanité. You can feel the human hand, and, the pencil in this FILM: the attention to detail, the care and the craft.

Gross caricature, accentuated perspective and a giant sense of the true sublime make this a mesmerizing animation where an old bag and ragtag cohorts become the stoic heroes set against the Villains of a viticultural old-school Francophile cosa nostra mafia: combining the insane mechanical failure & vertigo of a Tour de France “car chase” whilst invoking the ‘grande tragedie’ of the Melvillean sea voyage from one “scene” to the next.

Through almost silent, visual story telling, interplay wonderful dream sequences, a Dali-esque world where a metamatic European sensibility mingles with ashtray triangles, dog daydreams, jazz, intelligent luminescence AND fried, dried and refructified tadpoles in a technically massive feat of detail, obese quirkiness and steam punk narrative ideology.

Music wise this film features a triumphantly European jazz take on the Bone Machine trip; a slyly music concrete, avant garde domestic machinery trad’ jazz vibe creates moments of stunning “utility room”, ‘disraeli gear” symphony. “Yeah man!”: it’s the sound & feel of Toulouse Lautrec trapped inside Roland Kirk’s washing machine!! The succulently fawning sauvity of the sizzlingly obsequious maitre de, for example, is a cameo so Teflon coated, frictionless and wonderful it puts Errol Flyn & Brian Ferry to shame – they NEVER looked this smooth. This film, because it is far more than the usual CGI chaff, delivers most of what is missing in CGI reliant west coast animation as well as most film AND, with barely any dialogue at all.

As a friend and movie buff said, “this knocks the spots off all that bland Toy Story shit any day of the week.”

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain or simply Amélie, is a 2001 romantic comedy film. The first ten minutes of the film are at once beautiful and opulent, filled with strange wonderment, vivid yet unsaturated colour, dry narrative and an abundance of kitsch gallic charm. It feels like sinking into a beautiful underwater world of red and green, languid, undulating and hypnotic.

In a dreamlike reverie of surprise and imagination the life of Amelie, filled with the folly of suicidal pets, magnificent gnones & naivety brings itself slowly into soft, deliberate focus. Everyday nuances, idiosyncrasies, surrealistic synchronicities, tragedies and strangeitude melt into one another in the manner of a series of rich dreamlike vignettes and tableaux.

The narrative monologue heaps upon us the foibles of a condensed characterisation, vividly and simply exploded like a Picasso / cubist  painting with a reductionist eccentricity that  distorts time and  coincidence. The omniscient eye of the camera never stops moving and the observed and the observer bleed into one in a superlatively fluid and engaging son et lumiere extravaganza. The subject matter features the gentle failure of fate and destiny, the sentimental nature of memory and the seductive taste of nostalgia. It is beautiful to look at but very very saccharine indeed.

This post is going to upset a few people but it isn’t about music at all. Not the sounds recorded but rather the “FREE” business model that has been so triumphantly espoused by marketing gurus such as Seth Godin, and, in music by bands such as Radiohead. Even the Purple One (Prince) has jumped into bed with the vilest guttersnipes of journalism – is it The Mirror? ..well some piece of shit, low brow, red top rag; to give his music away. Well done. Judas.

Let us not forget that these papier mache radicals, or whatever they are, have already made a pretty penny; are in a position to bite the hand that feeds. Radiohead are a pop band – masquerading through intelligent marketing, articulate music and songs as exactly the opposite. They are one of the best pop bands in the world (I.M.H.O.) without a doubt; so why give In Rainbows away for nought, Iscariot? So they can piss in the face of the record company that made them? I don’t know; do they know? It’s too late now.

Godin is a highly intelligent and important man – we all dig his particular approach to being Purple; his business acumen, his clarity of thought and his focus: highly relevant, provocative and prescient to a vague degree. BUT, in a struggling economy – in a world that operates as a global pyramid scheme – an almost fraudulent triumph of the few over the many; whether it comes to education, food distribution, wealth, knowledge, health care and especially power, this idea of FREE is a hoax of the highest order. It’s the snake oil in the medicine cabinet; it’s the bullshit, the media, the control, the surveillance and it’s in your tapwater so to speak. I like to get paid for what I do. However in the online economy everybody wants the damn work but no-one wants to pay.

It isn’t sour grapes but it is an economic reality that the dreaded creep of de-monetisation is killing everybody and making the human being redundant. According to some this is exactly what the ‘lizards’ want. There are too many people; perhaps ‘they’ realise that the system itself is actually dead on it’s feet, bordering on collapse.



Dead people dead people. What’s the obsession with dead people? It’s pathetic, long term sentimentality dressed up as cultural nostalgia; disguised more often powered beneath a thinly veneered cash mongering. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – that’s the future; surely?

Somewhere amid the stolid ennui and drab 50`s architectural hangover of public housing, terrace drudgery and its impressive English expanse of 70′s decay, a monochromatic, glamrock, Bowie addled Ian Curtis drops offline like a broken photocopier, lost in a slow, teenage, pill-popping, post empirical breakdown; desperate to escape the concrete, the mindless cups of tea and the cookie cutter future of working class Northern doom.

This is the beginning of Anton Corbijn’s (clearly) well cut above the rest, zonked out yet fully loaded period biopic of troubled Wordsworthian conjuror and reluctant, walking medicine chest Ian Curtis. Charming period parochialism and flashes of brilliance dance like the gleaming of a shield across the screen with a subtle social commentary and an almost dreamlike documentary neo-realism.

Featuring an amazingly together, but probably fictive & unique Pistols moment, this film rises above the usual rock pop biopic manure eight miles high through soaring performances, beautifully shot sequences and absolutely stellar dialogue; somehow combining a gritty council estate of mind realism between panic attacks, unemployment and a hatred of hot dogs with the natural descent into family disintegration brought about through the vigours of being in a band. The highs, the lows, the guilt, the shit, the rubbish and the sycophantic bollocks – the vigours of keeping a promise, the failure on a personal level: it’s engaging enough to feel almost like living inside the intense dramatic narrative of your own life. If you have ever been in a gigging band North of London there is much to recognise, and, masochistically enjoy.

The sound alone receives beautiful treatment and the music, actually played by the cast, is superb. The band come across as an amazing Anglicised version of the Doors – without all the West Coast plastic trash – and as the unique messengers of New Mancunian pharmacological synth-rock and roll.

Sam Riley delivers an unbelievably convincing & metamatic Ian and Toby Kebble the fast talking Gallagher-esque, cock-sure hyperbole of their manager Gretton. The whole cast is on a slow burn. There is a delicately balanced harmony of realism and production value: no over mythologising, no glamour and  this film is almost entirely devoid of cliché.

Ian Curtis’ personal sorrow and struggle to make it from adolescence into adulthood is thoroughly and tangibly realised as he slowly and inevitably becomes a misfit in his own life. His final exit removes any polish from the cult of rock suicide and proves that in the fervour of performance and the tumult of success humanity is often the first casualty – that the power of music performance bends reality beyond its true perspective. This is a f**king fantastic film that is so good it absolutely aches with plangent, almost tactile realism and could stand up on its own if it was about nobody at all. As it is, it’s about Ian Curtis and Joy Division and also about the best music film around.

Being an artist is a bit like being on the run. Not from yourself or even from the law; not always from the cliches of tortured absinthe and psilocybin soaked outsider nightmares on the edge of sanity, society, reality and relegation to the infinitessimal depths of obscurity’s abyss. It’s more often about fleeing compromise, the nasty white envelopes from the bank and that ugly grip of responsibility’s black hand. It’s a foolhardy game, a minor war of attrition in the psyche between self belief, worth, recognition, ego and the inferno of fame and fortune. Everyone wants to set the world on fire, and we all have flint in our souls, but seas of regret and the menacing, damp, earthen creep of age soil our wayward journey and leave us shipwrecked upon strange shores time and again.To this end I have begun to paint and the journey starts right here.

Stop.

these video recording were made off the cuff, no rehearsal and no tune up, some time in 2007. I wrote the songs in 05-06.
thanks to Balantino for lending me the old guitar. and matt for letting me live on the lounge floor.

Lots of new photographs from a trip around Aotearoa are appearing on the photo page

I have removed all of the previous 24 months ELIJAH FEW recording sessions mixes until the project is finished. What is left here are the basic song ideas and demos, recorded into cameras, tape decks, laptops as I traveled around – more often raw, unmixed, unrehearsed, immediate and completely unproduced.

(lyrics on way)

So go on down to that big old river
and sit on down amongst a million lonely stones
all tired and old, muddy coloured
its no good driftwood company

There’s a storm rolling in
inking up the sky
downwind

So she goes down to the edge of the water
And fills up here pockets with stones
Whilst behind her crippled daughter
Weeps and moans

There’s a storm rolling in
inking up the sky
downwind

three bells toll in the clock tower warning
waters gonna rise by the hour of morning
moon goes down while the wind blows up some meaner weather
black top seeds rattle the Rakaia river

There’s a storm rolling in
inking up the sky
downwind

She slowly sinks into the fast flowing water
pulled way down by the weight and the cold
there’s no prayer and no way we ought to
let anybody know

There’s a storm rolling in
inking up the sky
downwind

Meet me where the waters freeze
beside the telegraph trees
and set your crosses free down upon the water
go call the priest say a prayer down in the canyon
her rusty chair hidden by the chapel abandoned

There’s a storm rolling in
inking up the sky
downwind

…and there beneath the blue of the water
eyes shining like the moon on the stones
eyes smiling the crippled daughter
as her mother walks home

There’s a storm rolling in vengeance in the sky, downwind
you were warned vengeance in the sky
vengeance in the sky

Shine a light. Well, it aint no euphemism.

At first I thought it was saved by Buddy Guy’s vocals, Richards’ face, Jagger’s gob iron (that means harmonica baby) and the rock steady, self effacing solidity of Charlie Watts combined with the amazing Woody. That’s Ronnie Wood of course, who, proves exactly why he was stolen from the Faces and given an offer that was probably impossible to refuse. That was aeons ago but he can certainly paint: with a guitar too. It’s a paintbrush of gargantuan proportions though with these fellers – they’ve been to the moon and back.

Bill Clinton introduces the band and a member of the crowd gives it the cigar treatment. It smacks of big-business but 45 odd years in any business has got to make it big. And initially seems a loose performance, a bunch of scruffy, ragamuffin, raven like millionaires; taking them back to Richmond in ’63 (my old man said they were terrible); suffering from the usual all-star guitar-jam over subscription and self indulgence as a dark circled Jack White is wheeled out for the ‘yoof’ (he was so incredible with Jeff Beck in London; though far less ‘Hackneyed’!). Oh yeah…what’s happening? It looks as though the hot chicks in the front 5 rows have been hired from Models One – by Bill Wyman, because he isn’t playing. But the backing band, including the stellar Bobby Keys are on form. I saw the Stones in 91? at Wembley and they blew the f**king sky clean off. The truth is it just gets better and better. Hotter and Hotter. Seeming far too well lit at the beginning, especially for a giant boudoir (is that a film thing?). Ron Wood sounds so damn good, especially on that reverse head Firebird and the old strat’ – it’s a slow burner of a gig and ultimately it’s still pretty f**king brilliant – despite being RUINED by a ridiculous audio mix that makes very little sense of Richards’ guitar, overexposing it in places. There isn’t much Guinness about which is odd, cause I met Ronnies’ driver in the nineties and he was made of that stuff…and more…

They’re a clever bunch, don’t ever think it was any other way dude, and they know exactly what they’re doing despite the swagger. These cats are too smart to die.

An absolutely stunning array of guitars, and clothes, are borne across the gig as an almost emaciated Sir Mick Jagger, ermine absconded in fear, but telecaster ahoy, preens, poses, perennial vanity perpetuate, prances and oscillates his way through the set: “You made the goat man cry” he wails. Poor Satan – he might have the best tunes but he can’t dance half as well Mick. He’s the xxxx ghost of Spike Milligan in Michael Jackson’s body.

Richards sings and it’s an ode to joy, hilarious but brilliant, beautiful too, in an almost self reflexive parody of decay, a carbon copy of my old man’s ancient south London bricklayer, just as comical, humble, track marks (I mean warts) and all, he delivers some stellar moments in rhythm guitar whilst smirking behind the evil twin. Thank God for Christina Aguilera – what an arse (ask Keith); apologies again, I meant voice.

But Jagger is great – the whole thing is all a bit tongue in cheek, and Keith even looks like he’s trying to remember which song he’s going to sing at one point, ‘cause strangely it ain’t “Happy”. He is however, amazing: like Max Miller, like Chaplin. They were once but they aren’t ordinary people anymore, these Rolling Stones.

I listened to it through a mono guitar amp which gave the whole thing a very honest, up close and dirty, directional sound, unlike it should sound in the cinema, as though Keith were right here in the room – you’ve got to wonder what the onstage monitor mix is really like.

The film should have really been called “Million Dollar Smile” because you can see it in their Faces: “I love this!” Richards seems to effortlessly convey, as he always does – and there goes another 500k or so. That’s what makes them Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the world, and the most downright real and honest. It’s great to see the Union Jack flying in the big Apple (“I hope THEY don’t get back together”) because understandably God might bless the Americas and although their greatest gift  to the world was ‘the blues’ (not FREEDOM);  he actually lives in the South East Surrey Delta.

And he owns a bloody great library.

The “extra” material is absolutely magnificent and it is worth seeing the film for this alone; I’m not a director – why is it an extra? Especially Paint it Black featuring Brian Jones’ ghost on guitar and Undercover of the Night. Rock the Hell On. Get the film out. Break out the vino, and rip a string off the tele’, but just don’t get yaself arrested in Toronto. Very Awesome and if you get to a chance to see them  – go.

The character of Bad Blake takes Jeff Bridges back, very briefly, to the Lebowski bowling alley for one more whiskey soaked, sweaty and alcoholically haemorrhoidal performance for a small crowd of old local cowboys and girls before he embarks on a biscuits and gravy tour heading for the horizon to follow an inebriated and swaggering sun as it slips, slides and tumbles beneath the horizon.

Blake is no bowler though but a washed out country singer whose rusty star is both faded, yet still feted, as he drives from one small time gig to another in his ageing Silverado. A chain-smoking but heart-warming slob of Dude-esque proportions; overweight, cynical yet sanguine, Blake just about survives on his back catalogue, eking a marginal living in the poverty stricken cryptography of his own myth. Bridges even breaks the frame for a split second; but it doesn’t matter, Bad Blake, despite his all too human fallibility and cliched propensities remains a charming wreck of a man and Bridges is as hypnotic as warm apple pie and French vanilla ice cream.

Beautifully shot with the rich, faded glamour, old glory, and stylized nostalgia of country and western mythology the entire cast (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Harry Zinn, Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell) turn in an engagingly magnetic performance built around T-Bone Burnett’s awesome songwriting, Bridges’ magnificent portrait and a solid, albeit atypical story. Humourous, human and real, if you’ve ever loved, forgiven, failed, or maybe even been saved this one’s for you. If you haven’t it is still a fantastic film and the music is great.

In the Electric Mist sees Tommy Lee Jones in great form, stoically marching like a haggard cadaver in an intoxicating and strange pursuit of truth where gritty, seedy, stark southern realism – greed, alcoholism and sexual depravity – collide with hoodoo surrealism, the sinister ghosts of Gettysburg and an unnerving swamp blues mysticism through the often complex and twisted poetry of a series of gruesome murders. John Goodman is also on the boil, capturing with tasteless aplomb the tacky and vile character of a greedmonger with support from ‘old southern dog’ Levon Helm. If you would enjoy a heady and unnerving mix of American folk lore, gumshoe detective thriller and the failure of the human condition delivered through the visual and spoken vernacular of the deep south then this one’s for you – a hurricane in slow motion.

The Cool Coffins Blog is here – in all its ridiculous and dying glory!

The problems of recording. Apparently you are only supposed to be as good as your last recording, but what if no-one pays any attention to your latest effort at all? What is it like to be remembered most predominantly for something you achieved aeons ago?

Horrible…but seriously though if someone kept on banging on about something you had achieved ten years ago, let alone 30, you would be mortified and quite frankly bored and bemused by it. It might continue paying the mortgage, but really, that’s all you’d want from it. Any musician knows that by the time you’ve written the stuff, been to the studio, and recorded the songs you’ve more than likely moved on as an artist/band etc.; but has the audience? Probably not – cause they’ve just got the damn recording…at which time you are usually tired of and ready to move on from? Yes, it might be paying the mortgage but aren’t you a much more developed and experienced artist than the one who cut your “wonderful tonight”, or your “Purple Haze”. Dying is not always the most appropriate solution to this problem for some of us.

Ladies and Gentleman,  Good afternoon and welcome;

Charlie J. Underwood is my name and custom caskets and coffins are my game. Since  about 1895 my forebears, and now I, have maintained a tradition of building bespoke caskets, coffins, cabinets and boxes for celebrities and tastemakers, world-changers and even dictators and mostly for those beautiful people who just wish to go out in style.

We have even worked with the desperate, the mad and the “original”! Even despots such as Hol Hotta the Gauger have benefited from our custom work. Because if you can’t go out in a blaze of glory you can at least go out in a flash and a puff of smoke. Life maybe short but style is forever…
In those days they used to say that if you can’t have it all you can still go out “under wood”!
SO, how did I become a custom casket, coffin and bespoke cabinet maker?

I came into this business entirely by accident. My great great grandfather, Washington Underwood, journeyed to the Indian subcontinent where he had attempted to forge an empire from an exotic coffee bean given to him by an Ethiopean mystic. During a nasty bout of malaria my grandfather’s heartbeat was irreversibly changed and he could speak only with a stutter.

One afternoon during a fracas with the Governor’s men in Ganjam, Orissa my fathers heart finally gave up the ghost and he met his untimely end.

Drawing his sabre high and clutching his sacred grounds, he fell backward into a well and expired. The remainder of the family were thrown below with feral cats and left to starve.

When the bodies were returned home my blind father, Zedoch Underwood, crafted caskets of exquisite design…a tradition that I continue, nobly and slowly to this very day. A tradition that I now can offer to you.

Eternally Yours,

Charlie Underwood.

Back in ’45, with the Western war over and only a minor fracas with some shrapnel to show for it, and God above, if I`d been an inch taller I would have lost my head altogether, I was motorcycling east through Hungary and Romania with the intent of reaching Persia as quickly as possible. BUT by the time I`d made it to the Black Sea the bloody Americans, AND, the Nazis were on my trail and here’s why…

On entering Poland on foot I had stolen an American Indian 741 motorcycle and, murphys law, close to freedom and the Slovakian border Nazi Officers from Dr. Wachter’s unit in Krakow, ambushed and arrested me.

I thought I was doomed but my luck turned and in the bloody fire fight that followed I found, would you believe it, in the safe of the now bullet riddled Dr. Wachter’s office, a sacred copy of the Zoroastrian Gathas hymns which, Lady Luck smiling down upon me, I knew I could trade with the Persian Shah Mohammed Pahlavi for a very handsome stipend indeed.

I commandeered a leaky bucket of a sailboat tub named the “Tyranena” and endeavoured to cross the Black Sea. Well , that’s another adventure altogether, and to cut a long story short I entered safely, disguised as a Latvian aristocrat into the Persian Court carrying the sacred Gathas tablets, and into the favour of the Shah. It was here in the Crimson Court of the King, that I learnt the sacred recipe of the holy pomegranate and the golden chicken…

To my mind it’s the best chicken recipe in the world and I`ll I share this gift from the gods above here, with you, very soon.

Sincerely yours,

Charlie Underwood.

In late 1882 – ’83 my great great uncle Obadiah Underwood left Montpellier, Vermont under the midnight moon, and blasting through New Hampshire upon his brother Lafayette’s stallion “The Lieutenant”, made haste to Rhode Island where he stowed away upon a merchant vessel heading for the Indian subcontinent. Uncle Sam was getting into all sorts of trouble in a new depression or the “Rich Mans Panic” as it was often called and HE said it was, “All acause o’ them damned devil curs’d trains…And those greedy sons of bitches politicians!”

Obadiah was a blaggard: a tricktser, a womaniser, an alcoholic gambler of ill repute and a self proclaimed expert of many arts but truth be told, he was in fact a master of only two – making caskets and telling lies. From his harlot mother he had also inherited a huge arrogance, a laziness of character and a taste beyond his means for the epicurean.

When the depression hit hard he was in the Saloon Bar with his cronies drinking and playing at cards:
“… no need for a coffin builder of reputation to sully his “workin’ art” with the penniless dead of a hungry, filthy, misguided mob. They aint got no gold in their teeth!”

Of course in those days a man could lose his life over a drap of old rhye and Obadiah’s refusal to make an affordable casket was not to be taken lightly…A specialist could oft be found swinging from the nearest oak if the general consensus judged his work a touch on the expensive side of a little too costly. Still, he was not one to bow to no man’s code nor another’s inferior manufacture or material design -  ‘Badiah, did what he usually had to do;  he upped sticks and left town.

He, after all, and according only to his own testament, had been the lone custom manufacturer of the James family’s greatest outlaw, Jessie Woodson’s casket; and thus would not bring himself to work on the cheap. No matter how poor, lowly or desperate his customers.

Anyway this Obadiah was a superstitious man and he always carried about his person a Smith and Wesson model 3 and his deceased father’s glass eye which he said “could look deep in the future”.

One day he said he looked through the eye and saw a plague of bad fortune in the form of cholera, smallpox, malaria, AND the yellow fever visited upon the children of the European nobility, AND, when the Great Comet appeared in the sky he knew his American days were numbered, and that’s another reason why he stowed away – to make his fortune from the small, white bones and sorrow of the European royalty.

Whilst onboard the merchant vessel he came across the famous Oriental, gold-mining midget Yeffer-San whom he employed as his valet and retainer, for he could not breakfast, abroad alone, in the company of the nobility and offered a cut of the future mercantile for each child’s casket. Yeffer-San in time though, would also come to feature as the perfect casket template for the newly deceased children of the European elite. I`ll be filling you in, as is my business, in a forthcoming post!

Yours Eternally,

Charlie Underwood.

Back in `88 my eccentric great “uncle” the taxidermist Kerrington Quazi-Pots (he had married into the family – obviously) told me a rather amusing bitter-sweet story regarding his late grandfather Gastonbard Farris Pots (the self proclaimed inventor of the Digby Sandwich) and the tragedies that befell him the previous summer. “If only we’d have known you then Charlie, you could have whipped something together tout suite… Something suitable. Something jaunty for the little feller.” We were sitting in the luxuriant English garden of the Bog and Toad in West Witherington. He went on…

Gastonbard Farris had been betrothed to his good lady wife Ethel for 62 years although, it was, eventually, an unhappy marriage because Gaston, after a serious brush with lightning on the moors one night had become wholly asexual; albeit, with a disturbing penchant for both dwarfism and amputation…BUT…anyway..I digress….

Well, tragedy of tragedies Gastonbard had returned one late summer evening from a few pints too many of  “Dabger Best Colostomy” at the Thieves’ Fingers public house to find Ethel as dead as a doornail, face down in the small, murky deep of the gratuitously ornate Koi carp pond at the end of their garish yellow patio. She had had a preponderence for hats and their dainty, delicate tissue filled boxes.

Around her lay the fractured smithereens of several of Gaston’s 350 treasured golden gnomes, just to run sour salty insult into the bitter-sweet injury. Of course with the mixed emotions of his wife’s death and fascinating speudo-amputational destruction of the gnomes Gaston retreated into himself for awhile in search of something he was never quite able to find. Nor should have for that matter. Barry Judd the constables son came and filled it in. The pond; not Gaston’s fragile, egg shell mind that is. He traipsed wet concrete throughout the house as there was no access outside and Gaston didn’t care; besides – he “…weren’t chargin nothin’ and it wont hurt none.”

A few weeks passed and Gaston, lost in the loneliness of the bungalow, and unable to cope turned to drink, nothing too exotic, just his own urine, and conversed day and night with his beloved gnomes – most of which were now missing an appendage or two. Naturally EVERYONE was worried about his physical and mental health so the youngest nephews Froderique and Hughlow, with their bauble clad mother Phregenia Sputtles, took it upon themselves to find a young puppy to keep Uncle Gaston company.

Phregenia drove her white and gold Honda to Buttersley Dogs Home and successfully managed to pick up the worlds only three legged pekinese pug labradoodle whom they imaginatively named Plog…And by god it was an ugly thing; almost ugly enough to scare away water itself! But not quite.
Gaston’s 88th birthday soon came around and the family assembled at his house for the great big cheer up: “….it’s been his worst year ever Hughlow…” Phregenia muttered, “so you just be on your best behaviour…AND DON’T DRINK ANYTHING indoors.” Absent minded to the Nth degree both children had minds like sieves – incapable of holding much at all. ell, nothing important anyway.
Hughlow and Dallas set up their small but inflatable paddling pool in the backyard and while it filled they marched inside for some Digby sandwiches. Gaston appeared to mumbler obscenities during the first quarter of the Liverpool match and both Houston and Dallas were beside themselves with excitement about their SURPRISE and protege; the amazingly ugly puplet Plog. Hopping about and darting to and fro’ like a man on hot coals Hughlow waved his water wings like a troubled hen: “Please,  let me, let me!!”.
“SSshhhh. Not yet Hughlow; no. BEEE QUUIET!” Ephregenia quipped, “There are more Digbies coming.” At this point in time a knock at the door announced the arrival of the neighbours Crecil and Franny. Crecil and Franny had twenty years on Gaston, were twice as unkempt AND well and truly as close to being through the exit in God’s Waiting Room as one could be and retain living breath. They thought the golden gnomes were icons of Beelzebub. But then again, they thought wheelie bins were part of an extra terrestrial conspiracy.

Froderique produced another round of soggy sandwiches alongside a garish orange Tupper of stale looking and fetid pork rinds that resembled a dust rolled pile of elephants toenails at which Gaston finally broke from his torpor; and they tucked in to the tune of another goal from the boys in Red.  “Bloody Communists and Lefties! Churchill knew what were good for ‘em.” he hissed and sank back into his seat, pork rinds about his chops and lapsing back into a “state” of nigh unconsciousness.
“Okay boys; now’s the time…” Ephregenia quietly squawked in exasperation. “Time for the ess, you, are, pee, are, eye , ess, ee. ”

Hughlow leapt to his feet like a man who had sat upon an impromptu hedgehog.

“Yes, Yes!” He shrieked with glee. “Let’s!”

Frederique put down his Digby and nonchalantly rose to his feet with the smug air of a greasy political victor: “But justwhere is Plog?” he enquired, smart-arse that he was.

“Yes where is he boys, where have you hidden him?” Phregenia quizzed, her furrowed brow curling about her hooky, over-made face.

“I…don’t…know…” Hughlow quivered back in almost-unison,  looking into his feet as though the Wayward pup might emerge from them at any given moment. He had been the dogs chief consort and protector throughout these early, innocent, puppy fat days. It was a succulent time of laughter and play, camaraderie – solidarity. They were best chums!

“Well, hurry up and find him. For God’s Sake.”
A search of epic proportions began; upstairs, downstairs, in the cupboards, beneath the sink, the drawers, wardrobes, tallboys and compactums, in the utility room, in fact, everywhere. Amongst Gaston’s collections of crap that he  had been hoarding in every room. Amongst his pickling jars. Amongst the litter. Amongst the mouldy clothes of his deceased  wife. Amongst the dusty crevices of his life. Amongst the dust, that remained, of his wife. But to no avail. Plog had “..vanished into thin air.” according to Froderique. They stood around in the hovel of Gaston’s lounge, dumb, like stupid useless statues to the tune of his oblivious, rhinocerous snore. Phregenia had had enough.

“Come on kids, lets go – we can come back in half an hour I’m sure that hound’s here somewhere – probably buried under Gaston’s crap. ffff…I need a cafe-au-lait.” She looped her snakeskin handbag across one shoulder and, with her long dirty green fingernails, stroked young Hughlow’s scruffy head: “Frody!” He was molding a sandwich into a tacky ball or turnip, cheese and vinegar. “Come ON!” Marching to the front door, her gold heel snared and took castaway old dirty tissue from happier “hatbox” times in Gaston’s life. Out the front they filed like a miniature model army; Phrenegia, Froderique and Hughlow backing up the rear. Froderique threw his cheese ball, like a grenade, over the twisted fence,  into the neighbour’s garden.

“Frody for gods sake! I’ll remove your bloody privileges!”
“Can we have an ice cream?” Hughlow asked, “I`m thirsty?”

Their voices grew more distant and charmingly remote. Like a fading memory, like last year when things were alot better. As though time itself were dissembling. When things were alright and none of these stupid interfering nincompoops had crawled out of the woodwork. When the milk still came in a bottle. When we won the cricket. That’s it. When the cricket was played properly. Well; that is what HE thought; smiling intermittently and chuckling half guiltily into his sleeve; and watched, the clear motionless afternoon moon, and the  soggy white, gently circling, furry body of Plog, in the weeping pool. The tiny fresh pink tongue, like the first dahlias of a spring fresh sprung, and the motionless ebony set button eyes. Very, very slowly Gaston turned off the tap.

————————————————————————————————————————-

“Would you like another?” Kerrington asked and lit his church-warden.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“Another Quaggles Best?”
“No, I`ll have a Bad Elf this time, yes, a Bad Elf”
“Hahaha” he laughed, “Hahahaha” like a gargling drain and emptied his bowl into the large blue ceramic ashtray, “A good choice my man.”
“Well, a toast to the children Hughlow and Froderique and the old fudder too, good on him I say!”
“Yes, yes” Kerrington laughed as he slipped into the doorway of the saloon, “He died the very next week.  Killed by one of the gnomes in a bizarre bath tub incident…”

————————————————————————————————————————-

The Digby sandwich is a rather unusual sandwich requiring a very few simple ingredients and some rather strange processes. It is not a recipe recommended here by myself, Charlie Underwood, but I will reprint it for your amusement and delectation:

1. Cathedral City cheddar – marinade for as long as you can stand in the tepid juice of turnips.

2. Vinegar.

3. Grate your cheese into two slices of toast and sprinkle liberally with vinegar – add salt petre to taste.

Good morrow everybody,

Last week I came back from my trip into the woods and celebrated with an indulgent feast at the birthday of my distant cousin Belzer Herrison. I had brought back some fine timbers from the heart of the untouched forest – straight and true & free from the curse of knots and checks with the intention of fashioning them into a fine set of shelves to display my late, great uncles collection of ephemera, gewgaws, odds and sods, ‘wossanames’ and what-have-you’s. Belzer had always reminded me of Cyrano or the Monyet Belanda, but his charm was legendary.

We met up at Three Sheets for a few wee drams of Lavagulan’s finest 18 year old Scotch and headed out to meet the rest of the gang at the L’olonnaise Bar and Grill. As we lit out into the street Belzer eulogised about the old days in Moostissoostikwan – he would row the old boat across the water to an island where Shaky Harry would still old style likker: a recipe of raw alcohol, burnt sugar, a little chewing tobacco and a touch of gunpowder. He drank like a fish back then, but couldn’t swim. Belzer’s wife, Victoria was busy meanwhile delivering the liqourice and mint birthday cake she had ordered from Heaven, Custard & Co. in town.

With a rack of the legendary L’olonnaise Pirate ribs, salade couler and pomme frites due on the next wind I set about reacquainting myself with the distant family. What a house of horrors! Falling out of the ugly tree they’d hit every branch on the way down.
Most had the unfortunate blessing of Belzer’s unique cleft chin and hideously dimpled and pocked carrot-nose, the wiry ginger locks and bilious complexion coupled with a personality vacuum they were yet to fill, as had he, with compensating character.

Belzer’s Gran’pa Brigadier “Solly” “Brig” Solomon sat at the head, but he was silent and hadn’t spake a word in months – he`d always been a long faced, miserable old git; even after they took his adenoids out BUT he was thoroughly sour these days: he’d been very ill for months with the dreaded mu ognob lurgy…something about a witchdoctor’s curse in Bzuzu, a rhinocerous and a set of bathroom taps.

That’s not to say the young ones weren’t stupid and recalcitrant as well as bloody ugly; not to say their mouths weren’t working overtime – they bickered and shrieked like gulls about a bag of chips, swore like troopers and upon the food’s arrival fought like scurvy mongrels over each others repasts. I ordered another Lavagulan while Belzer regaled me with more tales of his time in the Carrot Valley. By the time the ribs arrived I was on my fourth glass and Belzer on his sixth. And justly so, the delinquents were in complete uproar.

Suddenly!
The table exploded – the food started to fly.
And that’s when Brigadier Solomon forced himself to his feet like a broken robot and promptly collapsed face first onto his Texas Style Chicken Armadillo’s: alternating layers of bacon and cheese sliced into laminated chicken breasts soaked in the latest chef’s effluent.
Again and Suddenly!
Everything stopped. Silence.
“At last!” I thought to myself as the paramedics lifted the Brig from his dinner “Some peace and quiet.” But for a few whispers the celebrations were over. As Brigadier Solomon rolled by I couldn’t help looking into his empty eyes, frozen with fear, thinking to myself  “…he’s a gonner this time; six foot one by three and a half, white, chrome furniture, with the Union Jack”. Looking askance at the oikish children Belzer whispered into my ear, “It’s been a long time coming Charlie, but the old buzzard’ll probably make it through for another month of misery…’nother whiskey?”
“Yes, why not?” I gazed around at everyone’s half finished meals and said nothing at all: the blaggards at the table next to us had accepted from the waitress and were stuffing into their eager mouths between fits of laughter and plastic glasses of cheap wine  Belzer’s liquorice and mint birthday cake.

Ah, Hello again and greetings!
Apologies to our regular readers for the absence in coffin related news but I have been off in the primeval swamps taking time out to learn the burial and preservation techniques of the Nib-Nab peoples in Gamibya. The Nib-Nabs use the heated blood of the Arachnocampa fungus gnat intravenously blown into the bloodstream through a finely sharpened micro bamboo to preserve their recently deceased and the results are bright green flourescent glowing cadavers which they hang like strange insectoid coccoons from the trees around their camps. It was a very very interesting trip.
I’m wondering if any of my future clients might want a perspex casket and the Nib-Nab treatment?

Cheers,
Charlie Underwood

Back in ’68 I attended a funeral for a friend, as I had hand made an exquisite, pearlescent white casket for his deceased daughter Angelina. I had spent sometime hand crafting a carriage of the finest calibre, purple silk lined – scented and decorated with frangipani, for her passing into a better world.

Her untimely end was a tragedy, an utter tragedy, and that’s a story in itself and one to rival that of Shakespeare’s Juliet and no less sorrowfull – it seemed as though a river of tears were cried on this day…

After the sorrow of the service, I said my goodbyes, made my way back to my car, and journeying home decided to stop for a stiff drink, a highball, or maybe an aged Islay Lagavulin at the Nobody Inn in Diddiscombleigh.

I set my self up in the saloon, ordered a double and was about to light a cuban cigar when I noticed, hanging upon the finial of the chair one of the strangest hats I had ever witnessed. I was about to pick it up when a disheveled and curled up old man came bowling in from the public bar, fixed me with a steely eye, and grinned a sly tombstone filled excuse for a smile revealing as he did, his amber teeth be-streaked with tobacco, tar and a dark, foaming stout.

“Oh, is that your hat?” I asked peevishly…

The Stranger:
“Yea… it is, most certainly, mine…”

Charlie Underwood:
“I could never wear a hat like that. It’s rather strange, is it a…”

The Stranger:
“Ha, Well I gotta mustard yellow broad brim top hat but it ain’t fit for public consumption…”

Charlie Underwood:
“Well I`ll tell you about my old hat…

The Stranger:
“Wait, I’ll tell yer ’bout mine first, you see,

“Once I had a hat for a whole twenty years; a trilby in style, light tanned felt, with white striped band; with a blue feather, a peacocks feather!
I loved that hat `twas my pride and joy I tell ya!

When I bought it I run out inta the road, turned it upside down and pushed out the creases so as it had a nice tall, rounded top, like a kind of derby hat, then threw it on the dust and stamped on it several…ripped the band off…any good hat needs some serious wear and tear, dontcha think ? You have to kick it up and down the road, till it just lays there lookin` all furtive and ready for the wearing….”

I looked down and observed The Stranger’s misshapen boots, they were obviously the Family Boots, passed from father to son and so on, and so on – ad infinitum – well, or so I thought. THEN, he suddenly grabbed my wrist, took hold of my cigar, sucked on it like a drowning man, exhaled a cloud of thick dirty smoke and continued with his story….

“Anyways the salesman well he thought I was as mad as a box of frogs and so did my dear old mother. She HATED it. Hated it with the vengeance of a pygmy! Anyway after around twenty years a-wearing the old treasure she offered me a new wheelbarrow and a hundred pounds for the hat, so figurin’ I could use the barrow and drink the rest I gave in and took the dough – I was fair skint back then I tell you’s.

“…” I couldnt get a word in edgeways…

Anyways, long after the shine o’ the coin had gone from my pocket I was in the attic huntin mice when I discovers she never threw it out and next day I figured to get that hat back out of the attic, out of the dusty old loft. Needless, it was like meeting an old friend from way back.

I sipped my Lagavulin, considered the wasted stump of my cigar and wondered exactly when, or if the stranger had ever, or last encountered a warm bath or shower.

Well, time goes by and she caught me out wearing it around town one day and she threatened to cut it in two, she was on fire about it, especially after the deal with the moolah. I pleaded and pleaded like a convicted man waitin for the gallows, pleaded for the hat`s life; got down on my knees like a preacher. BUT…..

She was ADMANT!
The hat had to go.
“BUT What about Lars?” I asked;

He`d always been one to love that hat, liked the tattered brim and the dogteeth pattern on the lining. I mean it had a hatmaker stamp an’ all from up town in London. Even offered me his favourite sow for it too! Finally after I was yelling like the devil for an hour, cussing and shouting profanities, about saving the hats life we struck ourselves a deal: I didn’t forfeit the money, Lars became the sole beneficiary, took the hat back to his lodgings and everyone was HAPPY, dontcha know.

He drained his handle of stout and unceremoniously dumped it onto the bar, banging it three times like a judge his gavel…
“Nobby…?” He howled like an old dog bayin at the moon; “Nobby..more stout Nobby!”

Few years passed by and I hadn`t seen old Lars for awhile and I`d never come across another hat that I really liked, hats were disappearing. Sometimes I thought it might be the aliens or even the wolves out on Bodmin….but people started worrying about their hair and other crazy modernistic stuff like that. Lars said he was going back to Canada were things were “hunky dory”.

AS I heard it, his mother picked him up from the railroad station…

“Where did you get that disgusting hat?” She asked.

Old tightlipped Lars; he never even gave her the courtesy of an answer.
And, SHE, the sly old fox never said nothing else about it.
No matter – he was gonna wear that hat of mine come rain or shine.

SO winter comes along and with it the evenings drawing in. The snow started in to settling on the top of the mountain and the creek with a thin veil of ice on its surface, so, Shaky Harry brought the medicine round and up from the still, and soon, soon after on the last January weekend Willow George Blackfeet, the half-indian, brought the lumber for the range and the fire. Things were startin’ to look mighty fine..but then the Devil played his hand so to speak.

Well you see, in the winter it was mighty hard to keep a hand steady at the mill and day previous Lars cuts his hand in the small bandsaw at the mill. God did that hurt him bad, badder than a shot wound so he leaves that hat at home thinking he just couldn’t see past the brim, nor adjust it properly one handed, and he sure dint wanta go losing a whole hand `specially not least in the cold season. It was looking just like a piece of old gristle, chewed up and nasty, like a piece of tough fat that even the old dog Byron wouldn’t try an’ eat.

Anyway Lars comes back home that night, expectin’ pork and beans ready on the table and Mama in the rocking chair, BUT , he only smleed the whiff of something queer!

“Oh sweet jesus and son…of…a…bitch; Mother what have you done?” he whispered to the God up in the ceiling and sat right on down and tried to arm himself up with the sharp knife and a spoon.
He was hellish hungry, like a coyote drunk-wild on the trail of a wholesome, one legged turkey.
…there it was, smoking gently, toasting like a piglet, gently, over the fire – the HAT!

He was a proper good ole mate though cause, you know, no matter how damn hungry and famished with the cold he was, he just couldn`t bring himself down to eat it though, not like his sour old Mother, with her lips smacking and tuckin` right in with a big grin on her face. And that’s how I came to get this new ‘un’ see…it was a brand spanker and awful fine back in the day…

…he snapped up the dirty old thing, pulled it down over his ears and passed out, albeit, in a very, casual and dusty way beside the roaring fire…

blood like cold needles that slide in my veins
you fell from heaven in the yellow rain
steal the flowers of the day
singing fragments of a tender song
black embers of a time now gone, burning embers
crosses and candlesticks, conquests and cathedrals now forgotten

little grey angels surround all your gallows
little grey angels surround all you girl
they all scatter just like shadows
they all shadows you cant hold on…to

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Possible opportunity to play in front of the city’s Music, media , film and advertising hotshots at the biggest shindig of the year….a real chance to shine. Most of the countries leading musicians will be in the crowd.

Thank you to Seth for speaking directly to me this morning, you have confirmed my course of action!

The concert was a great success:  The Wicked Messenger Returns and Rakaia River Murder performed in front of a couple of hundred people who really enjoyed the music. In the broad context of the concert the songs stood out as being unique, different and unexpected. Tyna Keenan put in a great acoustic performance as well with alot of humour and alot of soul. Thanks to everyone, and here’s to getting some more paying concert action in the future!

The wisest friend I have right now is a homeless drifter; he lives on the western hill, in the freezing, blasting wind, the rain and the cold. He has one bag, some thermal clothes, a hat, a sleeping bag…and that’s all. He has drifted around, since 1988 perhaps, from Greenwich London to Australia were he worked the tables as a croupier in some big shot joints and finally washed up here in New Zealand . He’s an artist, a highly knowledgeable and capable raconteur and a man of strange experiences – wonderful colloquialisms, aphorisms, self penned epithets and general wizened language….a creator of worlds. He is almost beyond caring – about himself. He accepts the slings and arrow of outrageous fortune, the vicissitudes of time’s smarting grip and the Devil’s fork with the sanguine air of a battle worn Lieutenant General at the Charge of the Light Brigade. He must have fallen out of the unlucky tree and hit every branch on the way down; when he hit the ground he still had a smile on his face. He’s up there in the cold and wet right now, under that silent, howling, watery crescent moon beneath the old granite remnants of Waterloo bridge, a tiny slice of home, of London – out here 35,000 kilometres away. Fighting his own personal, quiet battle to make it through each day. He doesn’t ask for nothing. He doesn’t want for much. He’s as honest as the day is true and the night is dark. He’s never been a criminal and he’s probably lost out for it. Alot of the things he says are filled with the quantum genius of a pandimensional time traveler like Jesus or an Elijah and he’d give his right arm to help you out if he could. And these are the people you need.

Who are the people in your life that really make it worthwhile? The fuckwitted, selfish arsehole, charlatan with the flash car, job, suit, contract etcetera (to hide behind) and a big mouth full of hollow promises, bullshit and posturing? Or that guy down the street with the big heart on his sleeve and absolutely nothing to prove, with nothing to win or lose?

If I had an ounce of happiness he wouldn’t borrow it, beg for it, lie, cheat or steal for it, nor find a way to buy into it, divide it, or even hide it. Just smile about it, laugh about it, share it around a little…let it grow, let it glow, let it all go…and smile a little, laugh alot…

When I wrote The Prince of Cats and Little Grey Angels I had, as usual, made long pages of notes, ideas, poetry, non sequiturs etctera: most of what I throw away from the song would make a fine series of strange vignettes alone…I’m thinking of creating a new section for these entitled

“I went to sleep a tramp and woke up a God.” or “If you’ve got an ounce of happiness they’ll want that too.”

Drowning ants fall from the ceiling, freezing water`s somehow leaking and the floor`s too cold for kneeling; in unsuccessfully appealing… to some god. Blood like cold needles that slide; in my veins – corpse candles hanging in the trees and circling stones.
“I never had the shine of a coin in my pocket” the road mender sighed and every one laughed blood, a hundred sagging mouths.

those Eyes that never left the ground,
no-one made a single lonely sound – around
the skeleton people with tight yellow skin.
sleepin` all day, on heroin,
the neighbours only found him
when the buzzards fill’d the sky.
pouring all the kerosene
in your singing eyes

ONE day
the ground will swallow you up -
ONE day
in the tear blown eyes of god
 you ain’t nothing but dust,

so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
sing a sad sad song ,if you aint got long

I watched you break the furniture, the french flags in tatters
the guns from your battles warm & beating
lazy beside you, your head in the stream…lazy beside you your head in the stream…
lazy beside you your head in the stream…

a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long
a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long

frosted glass hangs about her,
& guilty men leave the graves of their fathers;
are stringing up the children
and
 for heaven’s sakes why?

the neighbours only found them
aft’ the buzzards fill’d the sky.
cause in the tear blown eyes of god you aint nothing but dust.
so take a look around, because the circus has left town
and all the heroes are gathering rust, gathering rust…

———–

I’ll call down the bad in the sky to destroy you and I know I can,
there are demons everywhere and I’ll let them in….
a curse on you, a curse on your house and everyone in it.
I`ll be screaming into the sky from the highest mountain
and down by the sea, I`ll whisper it into the ear of the tide….
it will last for ever, and sail around your life until it sinks….
you want to beware of it, it`ll chase you down and eat you from the inside out.

All the bars are drunk right dry
now Napoleon’s come here to die
with a sacred codex, that everybody else…seems to…know
pour yourself another bourbon and wait until the timeball come down
old ghosts’ll dance the rattle-bones in prison cells across the town
beneath the chapel that’s falling down
we all fall down, we all fall down.

“But that was back in ’69 when the  Queen of Bath went down the sink”
Mack Says: “Yowa goddamned liar!” and then storms outside to think,
But back in the bar with a cluster of stars he has stolen from the trinket sky
“Never turn your back on a drink!” Says Mack, but we all know that’s a lie

In walks the local providore who’s brought his cross to bear
And drags behind a broken anchor, a sextant and a broken square
Where rusty hulls of dying fleets are drowning in the Irish bar
the guitar maker plays the barb wire whilst speaking to his guitar

Silent Russian sailors are drinking poison in the seafront hotel
Flaking paint dolls head lampshades glimmer for a different clientele
Gramophonic histories from broken trombones groan their mysteries
to the people that know me well.

IS there half a chance for love to learn
god have a heart to give
everywhere I look I see people burn
love have a life to live

after the tide when all the light burnt out
land fill up the sky with sea
fire rains down to drown the path to love
what is within is all without
in truth, certainty and doubt

IS there half a chance for love to learn
god have a heart to give
everywhere I look I see people burn
love have a life to live

then I asked the lord in love
where had he been
when the times in life were hard
you said you’d walk beside me
through one and many guide me

he said suffer unto me
for forever so to sleep
hurt hammers nails through hearts and into hands
this is your land, the promised land
living in the eye of a nedle

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It was one friday morning three years ago
when he appeared the way a cigarette smokes
a name of warning, a lonely sermon about the war
with the truth
He said “theres only them and us, the good lord above
And now; just me and you”

Sho.. he was standing at the side of the road when I come around the curve standin there face and no face, hangdog determined and calm too like he done desperated himself up for the last time.

[break - fall, break - fall, break - fall]
[for the last time, to take the last chance, for the last last time]

With Blood yellowed eyes and dirty nailed hands
We sealed with signs our terrible plans
Lord strike me down
You dance with the devil else you don’t dance at all
In Jackson town

[break - fall, break - fall, break - fall]
[for the last time, to take the last chance, for the last last time]

Fate and circumstance had brought us together
But memory believes before knowing remembers
I coulda bit my tongue in two when he shot her down
Love and hate is all we got, all we really need
And all we believe.

Take two stolen pistols down that dirty old road
Past a pillar of salt and a yella column of smoke
Hi Ho Silver lightning and away we go, Hi Ho, Hi Ho

A bloodless coward and a prodigal son
A one armed messenger with the rebels gun
Get outta here Judas, you’ll kill us all
(he shot me down)

So sing a song of six cents
And a pocket full of rye
Hoist me like a mainsail…HI HO HI HO HI HO
Swinging through the sky
Onward christian soldiers
Marching as to war
“I never meant to kill her”
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
(lord forgive me , please forgive me now)
Stamping out the glory
(lead us not into temptation)
Stamping out the glory
(And forgive us our sins)

Sho.. he was standing at the side of the road when I come around the curve standin there face and no face, hangdog determined and calm too like he done desperated himself up for the last time.

Hallelujah’s not enough
What does it feel like?
With so much trouble in the world
An` no matter how hard we try
What does it feel like…really breathing?
To fill up the sky….with broken stones
you know you cant lay down and die now and you know you’re not alone so
Don’t be a liar now because written on the water in a world gone wrong….

We’re golden, yeah, and i`m holding; on (what are you singing?)
Storms will come, yes in this world gone wrong
So bring them on – yeah.
There`s no dishonour in wanting to be free,
so sing along:

golden hearts, in a world gone wrong, burning hearts (what are you singing?)
broken hearts, empty hearts can sing
on.

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
We laid our wheels down to the road – we`ll fight forever lay our souls down to the road
We’ll get the hell out of forever in this bucket of old ghosts – we`ll fight together burning flags and gold
triumphant shining in your tear blown eyes
Glory and despair
all your banners, all your lies…

golden light shining through in your smile
in your smile, golden lights,
in your smile

What does it feel like…really breathing?
To fill up the sky….with stolen gold
you know cant lay down and die now and you know you’re not alone so
Don’t be lying to yourself now because written on the water in a world gone wrong….

golden hearts, in a world gone wrong, burning hearts (what are you singing?)
broken hearts, empty hearts can sing
on.
golden heart.
burning heart.
shine on through.
broken heart.
burning heart.

golden hearts all gone wrong. golden hearts all alone. golden hearts.broken hearts.
what are you singing ? shine on through
(scattered on the road lonely bleeding)

(mumbled:Is it the wine on the lips of women you havent met
Or the salt petre match of the cigarette
The blood stained red of the tv set
The white and the blues
that you cant forget…)

Back down from heaven Elijah brought the widows sun
Raven fed by demons fighting
Pursued by Ahabs demon jezebel
On Saianai the winds did chime farewell
Set forth a plague of birds that flew into the sun
And with earthquake fire murdered demons thereupon

Dem bones dem bones
Gottem on the inside Why not on the outside
Dem bones dem bones
Why not on the outside Gottem on the inside

For forty nights in silent hollow heart he hid
From the death threats fled of Princess Hate
And her King Jealousy, who kneels & curses……..
Crowned in barbs his violent verses whilst he prays…….
And in defiance of this prophecy I burn

Dem bones dem bones
Gottem on the inside Why not on the outside
Dem bones dem bones
Why not on the outside Gottem on the inside
So tell me what you know
Well you reap just what you sow
Your words they burn like bones, falling off the world

Across the waters trailing chariots of fire
A whirlwind blew from out the sun
Ascending true into his god look down upon
Her broken body burning in the parking lot
Feast upon by hellhound wailing like a thousand dogs

Dem bones bem bones
Gottem on the inside Why not on the outside
Dem bones dem bones
Why not on the outside Gottem on the inside
And tell them what you`ve learned, the prophecy returns…..
Returns…..

(theres a musick in the ole bones yet, yayuh, a musicking the ole bones yet…)

The conversation thus ignored flies on up towards the yellow ceiling
Cant decipher being bored, cant decode this desperate feeling
Whilst the truth fights the trash on the garage floor
Between the rotten old chairs and the broke down doors
And the rusty old cars, that rot out on the lawn
And I just don’t care
Really I don’t anymore

You say we`re all equal but some more equal than others
Who does the judging and as your god discovers
Your history is all lies and all your truths are whores
Call all your prophets, call your disciples call them to your cause
Your suffering fathers and all your surrogate mothers
To wash all your dishes and sort out the cupboards
The kids start to fight and the rain beats the shutters
Theres a howling in the wind for Jacqueline, but she only mutters,
Strange cries in the kitchen the antenna just stutters
Smoke ourselves to death outside whilst the rain fills the gutters…

And of course you`re just so, over it all, and you say I don’t give nothing
back at all
Oh mercy me, bad luck designed
Oh mercy me, bad luck design, my destiny

Three sisters in the distance their resistance fills my eyes
They fight the amber rain, whilst silently we drive
I’m waiting at the station for the future to arrive
In this desperate situation the conversation… slowly dries
There`s Jesus at the crossroads hanging out to dry
Abandoned by his god baptized in thorns and lies
And even that kids got something to say
When the arguments don’t go your way
Its okay I`ll leave all my faults here at the door
You can stamp them all out as they creep across the floor

Guess it`s just a change you’re going through, guess its got something
to do with the moon
Oh mercy me bad luck designed
Oh mercy me bad luck design

I think the house is talking to me, asking me to leave
Your fucking friends who hang around are just old buildings falling down
Falling down.

Flick the switch turn off the machine
Cauterise my soul and set me free
Please god help me I can’t breathe

I only want to see the sun
Collide with space and
Slowly burn away

Cant we heal?
Can we repair?
It Hurts so bad, hurts so bad.

Dont try to cut the wires
Dont try to cut the wires
Dont cry
Life support it isnt life
Life support it’s just a lie.

Let not your heart
be so sad baby
Jesus gonna meet me in the air

Meet me in the air, in the air
you know my time is soon
meet me in the air
we’ll meet behind the moon

Ive been trying to reach you
in the mountains and the sky
in the distant echo of my memory
its no shame for you to cry

meet me in the air you know my time aint long
meet me in the air baby
soon I will be gone

up in the clouds upon a white horse shining
steadfast, faithful and true
eyes aflame and with a head of many crowns
and with a name that no-one knew

meet me in the air
you know my time is gone
meet me in the air baby

you know my time is gone

My first encounter with big country outside of Europe was in Washington State. The sheer scale of the western country seemed to surpass anything before. The vast distances and spaces seemed immeasurable and the mountains even further beyond seemed impossible. We drove an old bronco out beyond Loomis and up into the mountains. Across a huge mid-alpine plain with one lonely old shed and climbed some more, high into the trees, a treacherous primitive road, littered with old rusty machinery from another era and pockmarked with bullet holes. We were walking up toward the summit at the end of the track when the temperature suddenly dropped, a heavy, heavy snow started falling; thick and fast. It only took five minutes before the ground was white. Visibility was poor, about 20 metres, If I guess correct. “We gotta get moving! Fast.” Dewayne was shouting from up the track. We threw our guns into the back of the Bronco and started the treacherous journey to the ground. I was thinking about the invisible drop into hundreds of metres of nothing at the side of the track. I was thinking about Dewaynes driving. I was thinking about THE SHINING.

I once met a girl in a Sauna, told her I was a musician, she invited me back to her place; besotted with fame, glory, cinema and singing. She played her music, it was all wrong, she couldn’t sing, the lyrics were meaningless. She read some of her screenplay – it was plotless, unfinished rubbish and she couldn’t tell me what it was actually about. She popped some pills and told me she was an actress destined for great things. Apart from being on the unwholesome and anorexic side of thin she was also mildly delusional. Her imaginary world existed quite wholly and was manifested through her sacred laptop. It would deliver her into the welcoming arms of global success and wealth; her screenplay was going straight to Scorcese or Jackson or some other cinematic mogul. She was going to ring them up and email it through. No sweat, it was going to be that easy for her. I slyly asked if she had Bob Dylan`s number `cause I  just wanted a quick chat.

I met her again six months later in a different city and her laptop had been stolen, and now she couldn’t write. I laughed, sardonically, I laughed out loud, said she oughta use a pen, it would help her, the theft was a gift in disguise. A chance to write properly, a chance to become productive, a chance to lose that fucking laptop-reliant-cant-face-reality-mindset. Its very easy to think you are working when you aren’t, being productive when really you aren`t. The mind has a great way of tricking itself, like an ear will always try to hear in tune or in time, to make sense from disparate, dissonant elements. She said,

“What the fuk do you know you`re hardly famous are you?”

No one worth a damn is doing anything for those reasons. I laughed again and left. It`s easy on a long journey like art or music or in developing your life’s work, your oeuvre, or discovering and beginning your mission to become waylaid by bad reasoning, to taste a bit of glory and start doing things for all the wrong reasons. If you are involved in something just for the glory, the fame, the gold and all that other “rockstar bullshit” you will probably fail. I spent the nineties working so damn hard and furiously towards some kind of selfish ego-driven success but it was only when I finally relaxed and started to do things for all the right, altruistic, selfless reasons that things started to come together. I started doing things for no reason at all in fact. I threw my ego away; smashed my old life and self to pieces, picked up the good bits and hit the road on a Kerouacian road trip mission of discovery with no real plan apart from the experience itself.

Live in Brighton circa 04.

Unfortunately they didn’t sound like the NEU of Hallogallo. Although it was a  very good live mixing performance, the overall timbre of the sound seemed marred by an over reliance upon digital technology, complexity, an overfrenetic proficiency in mixing, manipulation and the sounds it tends to produce. There were some great moments but in the same way that NEU have always seemed like CAN’S conservative brother, their modern show felt like a paper tiger. More soon.

Apparently, “the White Stripes saved rock and roll from the deathlike grip of Britney Spears in the 90`s”. Total. Bullshit. I can’t name names but the S.O.B. who came up with that one needs his head read.

Rock and Roll has never been on goddamned holiday in any of its nefarious or even more saccharine forms. In England in the U.K. the Nineties period proved a massively tumultuous period of rapid social change and upheaval underpinned with themes of social revolution, unrest, a national and evolving drug counter-culture and a genuine music underground all supported by a never ending kaleidoscope of Anglo-American musical crosscurrents, change and styles: grunge, brit-pop, shoegaze, baggy, hip-hop, house, rave, acid house, garage, techno, dub, space-rock (version 3?), techno-punk etcetera…etcetera.

Satan threw down his guitar, stayed home with some phat chronic an Atrai S.T. and bust his evil moves out across the surface of a Roland Groovebox but it didn’t matter he was still taking no prisoners and creating martyrs.

….Madchester…New york….Seattle….Camden….L.A…..or a field in Gloucestershire – that’s where it all came together. Do you remember when your Sister threw a party and 5000 people turned from as far afield as Birmingham? From bloody Scotland. Hitchhiking down the M6 with a photocopied ticket, a couple of E’s, and a mind that had quite recently and quite simply, just lately, been blown to merry fucking bits. Funded and powered by illegal narcotics, pharmaceuticals and whatever else anyone could get their hands on for kicks, the decade itself was set to self destruct. Maybe the Police got their kicks out of violence: bashing the crusties, moving the REAL filth, the youthful, the unemployed and the lazy; sending in the horses when the New Agers stuck around too long for the wealthy landowners. God Bless the Hippies? They were about as Green as a burning tyre in an Iraqi oil fire. God bless the NIMBY’s too. It was all still kicking in 1997 despite the government’s abolishment of public groups greater than 3 people – what a fucking riot? And what were seen to be the social ills of the time, ACID for example,  through a range of laws and the sudden disappearance from the press of anything to do with the counter culture,  the underground, or even the Shamen. Extinguish the lot m’lud. And what have we got now. Smoke Free Rock Quest. Quaint. and SHIT. I haven’t seen an ashtray for 7 years.

Did the White Stripes Save Rock and Roll in the mid to late 90`s? No f**king way.

Anyway some of White’s lyrics are spectacularly inventive without being too contrived; as many modern songwriters seem to be – as is some of his guitar work. Occasionally they fall down, as with Son House’s Death Letter; a schoolboy error. And the bullshit “garage” song with the LEGO video. It’s got no bollocks to it, and I mean in a PISTOLS sense – the video won a few awards though so it must have been good for the director, his lackeys, the Record Company cronies and a few other f&^%s laying about who needed an easy accolade or two. Dont forget the spotty dudez on the apple macs who put it together. Hell yeah!

…But on the whole they often deliver. Icky Thump – bloody heck – why can’t I pimp myself out? In a world of increasing homogeneity and gratuitous eulogising of the mediocre by the media simply for the sake of it it’s a beautiful sight to behold aberrations to the norm’ especially in the form of unique and uncompromising talent. When the marketing machine itself seems to become more a part of the product it promotes than the product itself, when the inherent qualitites of individuality have been crushed under the weight of commercialism and when all the corners have been knocked off, rounded down and filed into a useless dust by the “machine” then what is there left of real, intrinsic value. Luckily some artists are born with a respect for their art and instrument and a no holds barred approach to quality control. But SELLING OUT is actually freaking hard to do. Achieving both – magnificent.

Would it be true to say their production emphasises old school performance ethics over cut and paste digital laziness together with a clear and natural songwriting bias, and the sonic embrace of analogue equipment and techniques? Always Healthy. More music should be recorded on 2 inch tape & the like. Whether they saved rock and roll or not, which they didn’t, only malodorous & elitist platitudes say “it aint blues”, “it’s manufactured”; Admittedly Son House is unsurpassable.

The entire blues tradition is built from begging, borrowing, stealing, re-appropriating and ya’ll know it…
The same could have been said regarding the Stripes about Led Zeppelin in 1969. Critics probably did. I’m not saying they are equal, however.
Much blues seems to rely upon the cult of personality and myth most probably because much of it is so motif driven and intertextually incestuous it could even be argued that it therefore ceases to have much originality beyond the stylistic brilliance of the delivery/performance whatsoever. Perhaps that’s why there’s no shortage of blues greats to chose from and perhaps that’s why the Stripes can speak to a young modern audience. Undoubtedly their record company have the intelligence to serve them up in the right way – there are only a few performers who really fell out of heaven…(little richard, elvis etc.)
MUch of Dylan’s oeuvre is also a complete re-appropriation of numerous blues/folk/traditional works – and that’s the polite synonym for plagiarism. No one is really adding to the lexicon, it isn’t possible – we live in an increasingly intertextual musical world of only 12 notes. As you know I saw them in London with Jeff Beck and they were tight, on fire and white hot…shit hot, as we used to say, not shite hot – there’s a difference.

Son House’s unsurpassable Death Letter should be sent into space, or buried in a time capsule as it encapsulates almost perfectly the human condition…No one will ever come near it.

But what irritates more than anything else is
everyone banging on about Robert Johnson – none of you are even listening to him at the right speed:

As usual Jeff Beck treats us to some great tonal and highly controlled guitar playing….but you just cant trust him to do anything too damn predictable, which in itself is an accolade. Symptomatic of much orchestral collaboration is “the dreadful and woeful opera cover”. There is very little that Beck has ever recorded that hasn’t proved edgy enough in one way or another to warrant admiration of the highest order but this may change that – but only momentarily. It’s no ditty or rag either this piece, and it’s certainly an emotional country mile from the “classical LITE wish wash” of the usual pop crossover M.O.R. bollocks. However, for those of us who don’t dig Puccini it’s a bitter-sweet pill to swallow. Me? I’ve never turned down the Beck medicine. BUT in a world populated with so much laudible, deific and majestically titan classical music and where previously Beck has proved his mettle pairing his incandescent skills with great cover choices from the traditional ‘Greensleeves’, ‘Nadia’ by Nitin Sawhney, ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers’ by Stevie Wonder and ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ by Mingus or delivered such sublime pieces as ‘Where Were You’, etcetera etcetera he has chosen Nessun Dorma, which just feels a little bit hackneyed, overblown, populist and bromidic. After such a brilliant performance at Ronnie Scots what the hell is going on here? Nothing that can’t be forgiven. It’s more than likely that in the live situation this could really flow like water and cut like sunlight through the trees. It just sounded so measured and deliberate on the recording: at least he’s always doing something new. Some Gesualdo please Mr. Beck. Or Handel. Or Bach. Or…

That’s the soulful sound of Darren Watson, a resonator, a valve mike and a truckload of talent turning up the heat!

Last year I had the lucky chance to interview Darren Watson when I was writing for the Jamarama Guitar Blog and this year I was lucky enough to see Darren just recently cooking up some great blues tunes at the Ruby Lounge in Wellington whilst enjoying some fine, fine ales amongst the company of like minded blues rock afficionados.

What particularly caught my attention was Darren’s band. They were tighter than two coats of paint, never overplayed and the bass man was definitely off the hook – as fluid as a lavalamp in zero gravity.

Darren also cooked up some serious glass finger bottleneck on the stratocaster that really had the place buzzing. Every now and then the band segued into classic guitar motifs, such as Jimi Hendrix‘ melody hook from Third Stone From the Sun; and, I was pleased to see Darren bashing the ole guitar with his fist every now and then to generate some feedback. Something we can ALL relate to. It was a versatile set and a great show with plenty of varied pace and Darren’s range, tone and fidelity are something else – not only that Darren Watson is a great guy so go to his show – say “hello”, and  check out his records at www.darrenwatson.com.

[click to continue...]

Say hello
If you’re passing her by
If youre not stopping then kiss her gooddbye

Say goodbye sundown sunflower
through everybody seems to shine
and though you cant believe it, she can help you see it, only love
will heal in time
through the one and many become divine, you’re ready she can heal your worried mind.

A long time ago, in the back of my mind
In the back of beyond, I smiled all the time
And why is it so I miss her sweet smile
She shone like the sun and made me divine

Say goodbye sundown sunflower
through everybody seems to shine
through the one become divine only love will heal in time

…look out for this in your friends – do they change colour around money? if so – ditch them.

Don’t limit yourself and think that playing the guitar is all about technique – and don’t for one second think that
open tunings are really all about slide guitar glass finger playing. The idiosyncratic style of seminal folk maestro, peace messenger and Woodstock Festival icon Richie Havens illustrates a far more expressive and luminous, emotionally complex language born of a primitive, feeling based approach to music and the guitar that speaks effortless volumes. Havens is as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky when he picks up the guitar and he plays it like he means it, like he can save us all with it.

His opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock festival in New York is something so inspirational to behold it’s nothing short of a call to arms, the divine fiat heralding the apocalypse, the second coming, the end of time encapsulating all the hopes, dreams, tragedies and fears of the festival, the decade, the generation and the human race. It is an epic moment in musical time.

Coming on first at the Woodstock Festival Havens held the audience mesmerised and was called back for encore after encore. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual “Motherless Child” that became “Freedom”. By the tiem Hendrix headlined at the end of the festival playing the apocalyptic “Star Spangled Banner” to a thinning crowd, it was all over. At the end of the day when you pick up that guitar, you have to play it like you mean it, make it yours and own it; no matter how you play it.

…some dreams are destined to become the ephemeral, transient, fleeting, angels of the imagination, or fragile, brittle, creatures of clay… Not all seraphs effloresce into beautiful flying colour; some may fly but fall earthbound from heaven – the filthy offspring of rotting flesh cast to the wind…

Lists: ‘handy’, convenient; essential for buying vegetables, but absolutely hopeless when it comes to music, that is of course unless you ARE a vegetable…All too indicative and symptomatic of the atrophied, leprous A.D.H.D. riddled malaise of the modern mind which when flooded with such a multiplicity of choices, can’t make up its own….mind…..anyway…nevermind…
I thought I would have a go at listing a few favourite records of the decade about to close…it was difficult…very difficult…After 5 minutes I began thinking in terms of genres, then I began thinking about exactly where I was between the mock apocalypse of the millenium and circa 2005: in hell, for a while approximately. Then I began to consider artists I liked, those whose music I wanted to buy and not steal, those who were cool, those who were not..the usual self indulgent, self reflexive rubbish. During the latter half of  the decade I had been on the other side of the world with nothing much at all and had more or less stopped buying music listening to music mostly made prior to the millenium – 30`s, 40`s, 50`s, 60`, 70`s, 80` and 90`s…ad I mean from the previous 4 centuries as well…so what I am listening to….

Cheik Lho – lamp fall – click here
Dunjen – ta det lungt – click here
The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered – click here
Various – now is the winter of our discount tents – click here
Radiohead – in rainbows
Townes Van Zandt – texas rain – click here

Facebook -are they really keeping all that conversational crap ? BUT it’s better than lonliness isn’t it?
Is it? Or does all that social media bullshit just mean we have huge internet bills, no real friends and another dirty habit?
At an interactive shindig last week a very smug and “high on my own geek bullshit job” ad-rat in a cheap suit told me that web 3.o is on the way. Man, I had to laugh:

“Well, maybe 2.5″
“Does that mean its only half fucking baked?”

Apparently A.I. means “sites” themselves will “do the talking”; sounds great. BUT will they do the dishes and mow the lawn too? I haven’t visited many sites intelligent enough yet to make toast. The concept of a “site” really s(l)ums it up as an area of containment, but what the hell, we’ve built most aspects of our culture to contain and imprison, like our cities.

Unless one is reading being trapped in 2d is poor experientially: transforming electric into magnetic or other energy forms means we can permeate the air with data and subsequently  display information in “air”  or in mind: then we will be free from the tyranny of the screen/device; able ultimately to control/manipulate/communicate data in a telepathic omnisphere. Which is problematic -  at what level is thought language (signs and signifiers)? “Machines” using organic chemical reactions could match speeds of (self?) reflexive sentience. In what could be an organic/digital/biological symbiotic technolosphere people universally connected through thought consciousness create infinitely realtime instantaneous “social networks” (freed from hardware/ownership/cost/expense/control -or trapped by them) meaning natural collective egalitarian change effected through consensual ideas at the speed of the synaptic / immediate…heads will explode.
Sometimes though when I look at our dirty, filthy world with its entrenched notions of war and violence, a “media” focus upon shallow consumerism, greed, an industrial complex that values fossil fuels and pollution combined with disease, inequality, suffering and overpopulation, plus our inability to coexist with each other and the hollow conceit of our self annointment as “king of the animals”, and the privilege of the few over the may then I think we are, if not as a species, but as governments/controlling bodies dumb, selfish and stupid enough to f*&k it up.

If there was ever a soul sacrifice made to the celestial guitar gods, it was Hendrix himself…exploding into flames at the Monterey Festival; Hendrix burnt away in a three year vapour trail of psychedelic drugs, hard touring, alcohol, groupies, invention, and innovation – notwithstanding the management, money and alleged mafia troubles that followed in his infinitely surfed wake.

If you are baffled by the countless re-iterations and compilations floating endlessly around; the remixes and terrible bastardisations such as the “Midnight Lightning” album (Alan Douglas hiring modern musicians), or “Loose Ends” (which clearly showcases shallow greed in using out-takes from the cutting room floor), add to this the blatant mis-branding of Hendrix’ work with Curtis Knight and the many more myriad compilations on offer – take heed herein…

To help you navigate the shark infested waters of the Hendrix legacy here are 6 Essential Hendrix albums that distill the the soaring, expressive talent and vision of Hendrix’ legacy both live and in the studio…

1.Are you Experienced – 1st album – : FIRE & BRIMSTONE

The Jimi Hendrix Experience first album fuses gritty rock, psychedelia and feedback in a blistering rocket fuelled journey to the centre of the cosmos. This is as close to ‘classic’ rock as Hendrix gets with pumping riffs, weird chromatic guitar solo’s (“Purple Haze”) and a lyrical disposition (especially in “The Wind Cries Mary”) that combines Dylanesque surrealism with the hip acid talk of the American Summer of Psychedelic Love. This album is filled with triumphant feelings of revolution, victory and optimism, which burn like bright flags amongst a speudo-existentialist spacescape that flirts with ideas of depression and death beyond time. It’s a fervent and heady mix of grass roots psychedelia and Jimi’s earthy hands on approach to tonal exploration, distortion, feedback and elemental urgency on the guitar ensures it burns white hot, like magnesium at midnight.

2.Axis Bold As Love – 2nd album – : WATER

Despite leaving the original mastertapes of side one in a London Taxicab The Experience Second album is another triumph.

The second Experience album leans more heavily towards a more complex lyrical mysticism and lucid poetics with songwriting of a more deliberate meaning and intent in opposition to the hard rock rattle and hum combustion or interstellar immediacy of its feedback soaked predecessor. Hendrix also blends the fervant science fiction, metaphysics and exploratory lyricism of his psychedelic ideology and imagination with a more refined approach to instrumentation and a more nuanced style. The tentative, fragile lyrical tragedy of “Castles Made of Sand” hones more Dylanesque metaphor through the collapsing time of backwards guitar, whilst “If 6 was Nine” screams the experimental battle cry of the counter culture, like the dissembling miles of a bullet from a revolutionaries’ musket in slow motion.

Hendrix of course still manages to coax never before heard techniques and sounds from his guitar, more melodic jazz funk influences (from his R&B chitlin’ circuit days) whilst channeling his mysticism and revelatory existentialism across a range of genres. There are unmissable ballads that exemplify the fragile duality of the time; the hopes and fears, the real and the unreal as much as showcase his unique melody / chord phrasing: the birdsong love poem Little Wing and the homesick art-rock of Spanish Castle Magic. The final track Bold as Love is arguably one of the greatest arrangements of synaesthetic, lyrical metaphor, melodic rhythm guitar and majestic lead ever written and recorded.

There’s a similar re-appraisal/review to this just appeared on Rollingstone.com here. Read it.

3. Electric Ladyland – 3rd album – : TRANSCENDENTAL

Take the previous two Jimi Hendrix Experience albums and throw in some voodoo blues, low down groove, funk, rock and roll, orchestration and then blend into a transcendental, love apocalypse masterpiece of songwriting, guitar playing prowess, musical exploration, ufology, time travel and the foreboding sense that the world is coming to an end. The sheer emotional intent of the guitar playing alone on this double album  absolutely shines through as Hendrix delivers masterpiece after expressive masterpiece.
The stellar guitar piece “Come On” hermetically seals Hendrix’ Rock and Roll prowess, expression and technique beyond time and space as he launches through a blistering high octane guitar marathon whereas “Voodoo Chile”, featuring Steve Winwood, pushes the blues guitar envelope to the end of the universe and back again with such archetypal and quintessentially natural phrasing wrapped within a live studio performance that literally kicks out the jams and destroys them.  “The Burning of the Midnight Lamp” features more sonic experimentation recorded in a vacuum of depression, until it breaks into a vivid and wildly oscillating wah wah solo while “Gypsy Eyes” conjures up the rattling bones of African witchcraft with Hendrix’ dead blues spirit traversing the ghostplane in search of his lost love.

On “Long Hot Summer Night” Jimi fuses colourful story telling with more achingly soulful and fluid guitar then amplifies Bob Dylan’s skeletal masterpiece “All Along the Watchtower” with the sonic emotional import and smouldering sound and fury of God and some of the most memorable guitar playing ever.

By the time we reach side three Hendrix extends his themes into the soulfull jazz grooves of a “Rainy Day” before embarking on the ambitious philosophical, revelatory opus of “1983′s” melodic escape from the apocalypse into the sea. Through an undulating series of musical meditations, phrases and undeniable hook sequences that range from delicate washing tremelo descents beneath the tides to swinging grooves, the war chaos noise of the machines above, and heraldic anthemics of emotional release and salvation; Hendrix single handedly invents ambient and closes the chapter on the decade with an ambitious contemporary guitar symphony. The musicianship from all throughout is unparalleled and this record doesn’t date because of its scope, resounding energy and ambition. If you were to own one Hendrix disc, this is it.

4. Nine to the Universe – studio jams – rare jazz-blues improvisations – awesome and tight

This is what happens when Jimi Hendrix rocks into the studio to have a jam and the sonic results are absolutely off the hook. With more of a leaning towards  a modal approach to the guitar Jimi proves that literally everything is in his hands as he manipulates his stratocaster and amp to deliver a huge tonal range within the context of a progressive jazz-blues fusion jam session. If you are new to Hendrix this might be a little too like abstract expressionism for you but if you’re looking to expand your musical expression on the guitar without resorting to gratuitous effects and cheap tricks this is a great place to start taking lessons from the master.

5. Band of Gypsys – live – the once in a lifetime guitar mastery of epic sonic genius that is machine gun

After disbanding the original experience Hendrix returns to New York with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox to deliver a more loosely organised series of extended songs and groove laden hooks centred around the opposing themes of war and peace. Never to be underestimated, Hendrix is at the peak of his sonic creativity and effortlessly recreates the sonic palette and experience of the Vietnam war on Machine Gun, producing some of the most mesmerising guitar tones in the history of rock in an astonishingly complete performance. Hendrix flaunts acres of infinite sustain and tonal feedback control, combined with tremelo induced ufology and science fiction sounds in an engaging live performance that proves EXACTLY why he is history’s most mind blowing rock instrumentalist.  Hendrix’ intent though is not only to transport you into a world of complete sonic guitar mastery but also to inspire spiritually through the kyuss of great hooks, timing and melody (Power to Love).

6. The Jimi Hendrix Concerts – a great compilation of live recordings

This collection of recordings showcases the original experience at their best and includes the absolutely monumentous tonal mastery and feedback genius of Are You Experienced performed live – possibly another one of the greatest moments in guitar history. You can hear the feedback soaked guitar bouncing off the back of the auditorium and feel the hairs stand up on the back of your neck too as Jimi manipulates his signal in ways that the original studio recording could never achieve. This has to be heard to be believed. This is what the Experience sound like live on a great night and they’re absolutely burning it up. If you cant get this disc then get the LIVE AT WINTERLAND album instead.

7. Beautiful People  – If 60`s were 90`s

Some old friends of mine throw the War Heroes offcuts into the remix liquidiser to repackage Hendrix for the early 90`s chillaxation-house groove scene. If you like the idea of Hendrix with “modern” beats then this might be right up your street. The stand out cuts are “Get Your Mind Together” and “Sea Eventually”. Remixes with PM Dawn sounded absolutely incredible at the time but never officially materialised. If you want your Hendrix licks, melodies and riffs  served up in a dreamy, groovy back-beat sauce with a focus upon the nouvelle cuisine sampling of a chillaxed club mix then this is the gelato h’ors d’oeuvre you’re after. Rilly Groovy. Rilly, Rilly Groovy.

Back in the late seventies, prior to the arrival of PUNK ROCK, with its garland of spit, safety pins, anarchy, piss, shit and the dirty, unkempt rebellion of anti-authoritarian posturing, Steve Hillage took the psychedelia of the late 60`s and infused it with the kind of production techniques it really deserved. Hillage took multitracking, phasing, and sequences of fractalised incandescent echoes to a new level and combined them with more formal song based hooks and ideas with a lexicon firmly focused upon metaphysics and what everyone nowadays calls new age spiritualism. What makes his music even more interesting is that it occupies a holistic space somewhere amongst Pink Floyd and the Canturbury sensibilities of remarkable song writers such as pyschedelic pioneers Kevin Ayres and formidable lyricist Syd Barrett.

Despite his psychological unravelling Barrett’s songwriting capabilities remain some of the most superlative, exciting, individual and exceptional in the history of English music – after the Beatles. And,  although there is very much to be lauded in Pink Floyds work many ascertain that without Barrett they became nothing more than the exegesis of Waters’ paranoia and latterly nothing more than a Gilmour solo act.

Towards the dying days of the 70’s Hillage’s progressive guitar-rock and psychedelic fusion leanings helped build a reputation that became synonymous with spacey, ambient soundscapes and musical “excursions”. 1978’s Green album, which was co-produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason is an exemplary and landmark recording in this respect that, with both power and sensitivity focuses upon a pantheistic ecological message of oneness, salvation and elevation. Of course Hillages “hippie” music was eclipsed, perhaps even smashed into a dust, by the D.I.Y. auto destructive madness of anarchy, punk rock and “dissent” at the end of the decade. Via way of Can, Kraftwerk and Faust the echoes of the Steve Hillage sound remained immortalised in the consciousness of a whole new generation in the UK dance scene and “Festival” bands like The Ozric Tentacles. Ten years after Hillage released “Green” the Ozrics and a host of tripped out, acid soaked bedroom beat messiahs, pill poppin’ D.J.`s. in the fields, across the hills and the clubs together with the “sorted” radio stations pioneered a new wave of acid soaked, techno space grooves into the 90`s “dance” and festival scene updated with hard pounding beats, shifting time signatures, the use of eastern and exotic modes and instruments. After the collapse of Thatcherite ethics in the 80`s the British music underground, fuelled by political unrest and the flood of drug fired madness exploded across the media and across the country in revolutionary fervour. Looking back from here, you can clearly see the high tide mark etched across the British landscape and we’re now living after the flood….

The Decade from Hell is drawing to a close…

…this one has been an indictment of humanity, and one that cast a curse across the death of the American dream and the end of the American century before it. One in which they dug up the fathers of freedom and the ideals of liberty and justice, made of them straw martyrs; soaked in the oil and blood of heroes, innocents, war and greed; lay them out to burn for all of us to witness. God bless the American corpse. The Devil take the warmongers, the banks, the silent few…

It’s been a decade of increasing surveillance, political correctness in the name of control and the slow insidious exercise of government interference into our lives. Controls on alcohol, smoking, parenting, the internet, drugs, medicines, war. What a f**king waste of time…and all the while the rotten American dream weeps bloodied yellow stars and failure across the pages of history and poisons the global economy…A decade of complacency. Of interference. Of economic & ecological suicide; Of pride and hate and greed.

I spent time in the great American Northwest. Beautiful rolling plains, mighty snow capped mountains, the grand Columbia river and vast damming ahievements to man’s stature. A topology of god and a testament to the wilderness. I shot a lot of brass from alot of fine firearms, drank strong beers in the bars and quality bourbon with Sheriffs and Huntsmen, ate like a king, high on the hog. The British American coalition in Iraq was strong. At dusk fragrant logsmoke filled the crisp cool air, before the dark ink of night time’s star filled chasm descended and a bright sun exploded from the horizon, trees, eagle soaring  at dawn. All the while gold and yellow stars hung from the  windows of the neighbours smalltown windows. In memory of those killed in service abroad. Two stars hung from the porch of the house flying Old Glory at the bottom of the street.

“Im not exactly sure why the hell they were over there – fighting for what I can’t say, I am an American and a patriot – that my sons died for nothing?”

Desolation angels everywhere….I’m on the road, thank god for freedom; after the sting of disappointment and the hard earthquake work of a tectonic shift is gone comes the mellifluous colour-tones and taste of time, motion; mountain, river and ocean, vision and celebration, dedication and devotion.

Be the water – you cant stay in one place too long but unlike the million raindrops falling on the glass around you  – avoid the path of least resistance. Take the difficult road and be prepared to die for what you believe in…risk everything to complete your vision…just to write and breathe; songs, messages, art that eat worlds…

Take me back up the country.

I’m off the road;  and, beautiful as it is, the city seems wholly a vestibule of aspiration and dysfunctional bullshit – will kill your soul, tie you down and limit your consciousness.I will not reduce my music; my self to soundbites; will not compromise; will continue to self doubt; will continue with fits of madness; will do what I want and when; will believe, trust and exist nothing but the whole; will accept the demon; will re-purpose the music altruistically; will not rest; will be patient; will make mistakes; will enjoy the journey; will fight fire with fire & I will burn in hell for it all….

A friend writes of songwriting, and I`m presuming he means  quality songwriting of prescient import like Townes Van Zandt or Bob Dylan…and in quality writing I prefer to mean writers like Faulkner,  Steinbeck, TS Eliot, Shakespeare and the like? Certain genres create different spheres of discipline though it is true – but if we consider Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan to be the hyperion of writing achievement then I don`t think just anyone can do it and I don`t think everyone has something to say. Certainly not of value. Alot of people substitute melody, production  or style for lyrical content and allow marketing in all its myriad guises to persuade them of qualities that are simply nonexistant. We live in a world in which people are increasingly ignorant of history, sacrifice, emotion, trauma and the hurt of others. We live in a world divided into those who think and feel with their hearts and minds and those who think they can feel. Some people have a god given talent with a pen and it clearly shows they have been around and experienced what life has to offer -  without this experience there is nothing to offer the song writing pantheon but secondhand echoes  and dull inarticulate reflections of life`s mirror.

More on songwriting here.

We separate ourselves through a broken language from the surrounding milieu. Both bird and tree are the same. A guest here says god is an astronaut – if he is; then his ship must be in for repairs or he has abandoned us for a cleaner, less f*&^ked up planet and people elsewhere? Do the quantum notions of great astrophysical thinkers, the musings of Von Daniken or the ‘superstition’ of pagan systems offer us any further respite?

How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?

Make your life a labour of love… a cluster of stars; there is no fast track to glory…victory comes not from a simple strategy but from passion, love, necessity – fire. An eternal fight for meaning over mediocrity…years on a ghostly ship and no end in sight look for reflections dancing across the surface of the mighty river. Pieces of the puzzle do not fall immediately from the sky but people appear intermittently in the mist upon the horizon….like the terminal moraine of vast and varied existence on the edges…but that would be futile. We do not have the time for that.

What is writing real emotions? Being able to operate on a median level, taking your experience – the place, the settings, the immediate, the transient fleeting glimpses of the past, the literatures of your own belonging and fusing them together with an imagination that gleams like the flashing of a shield.

You’ve gotta be able to shine….and listen to the rivers speaking.

I first saw House when I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and,  it changed everything for me.

House`s sounds are characteristically steam driven rhythmic explorations of disturbingly apocryphal and intense gothic desolation, loss, isolation and spiritual retribution. His early experience as a baptist preacher
bleeds through and informs his vocals empowering them with an incantatory, mesmeric resonance that borders on Native American shamanism. House`s lexicon occupies a position of such emotional lucidity and trail blazing acuity that much of what followed after him could be viewed as incomplete, inchoate gestural cliches. It was House who, speaking to awe-struck young blues fans in the 1960s, spread the legend that Johnson had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical powers…but he musta been talking about hisself.

I got a letter this mornin, how do you reckon it read?
It said, “Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead”

So, I grabbed up my suitcase, and took off down the road
When I got there she was layin on a coolin’ board

Well, I walked up right close, looked down in her face
Said, the good ol’ gal got to lay here ’til the Judgment Day

Looked like there was 10,000 people standin’ round the buryin’ ground
I didn’t know I loved her ’til they began to let her down

You know I didn’t feel so bad, ’til the good ol’ sun went down
I didn’t have a soul to throw my arms around

You know, it’s hard to love someone that don’t love you
Ain’t no satisfaction, don’t care what in the world you do

You know, love’s a hard ol’ fall, make you do things you don’t wanna do
Love sometimes leaves you feeling sad and blue

The mighty Son House. The real deal; spent the first half of his life in the Steam Age and the later half working on the New York Central Rail line. If this man`s music doesn’t move you – nothing will. You must be dead. In my humble opinion Son House is the greatest blues player of all time…

House was born in 1886 (officially) 1902 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and in his mid twenties, inspired by Willie Wilson, he bought a guitar and played alongside Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Son House even spent time on Parchman Farm for killing a man in self defence.

House`s sounds are characteristically steam driven rhythmic explorations of disturbingly apocryphal and intense gothic desolation, loss, isolation and spiritual retribution.  His early experience as a baptist preacher bleeds through and informs his vocals empowering them with an incantatory, mesmeric resonance that borders on Native American shamanism.

House`s lexicon occupies a position of such emotional lucidity and trail blazing acuity that much of what followed after him could be viewed as incomplete, inchoate gestural cliches.

This is the voice of the Wicked Messenger, when he rolls back into town.

In the sixties people were mobilised against the war in vietnam, youth culture was finding it`s footing…but the world has been reduced to a quintessence of dust & there`s a recession – perhaps it`s economical, perhaps it`s intellectual, perhaps it`s at the heart of everything, Mr. Kurtz – quantum thought, belief and mysticism. Does anyone read Kerouac or Steinbeck?  What the heck? Is everyone wrapped up in a load of irreverent Hollywood plastic surgery necrophiliac celebrity lifestyle televisual bullshit? Another day another city…. or, lost in the wilderness writing lyrics of disposition and seeking unification through re-immersion, or reconnection with landscape…Mindless plastic hollywood necrophiliac overload? No one forces you to watch that rubbish. No one forces you to regurgitate the rain forest burgers down at McWombles. The world is dying, you are dying: who gives a damn? Designer labels will save your anorexic ass. You’re toxic. Generation Y.
W.T.F? 5 year olds treated like adults. bullshit.

Religious people have told me that this is a music of god and called me to play in their church. They are right but Amerindian pantheism, paganism and the church of biosphere is more important to me than allegiance to some mere singular “god” – or vain organised form of deceit – Maybe its all imagined in the solipsistic mind of god – we`re just a part of the universe, emboldened enough to consider self, although more than mere particles held together electrically, an experience – I don`t want to be their damnéd messenger.

Another weekend of recording & mixing is fast approaching – we`re looking to retrack and track as much as possible – songs we tracked a few months back with a plank of a guitar prior to our involvement with Music Planet in Wellington.

“It`s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with mobile phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self identity. It`s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that`s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that…” Bob Dylan.

Everybody has a love-hate relationship with plenty of things. I think we all do – if we`ve got our heads turned on at all. Acceptance of things because they are new or modern is a blind faith & preserve of shallow, hollow hearted fools. Just recently I read a Dylan interview in the Sunday Times, & although Dylan is around twice my age, I have to completely echo and agree with his sentiments.

Technology has so much to offer and yet can take so much away, remove us from real experience and right now perhaps, it`s creating a generation of automaton`s who live their lives through the vile excreta of mass media. A generation that can`t read or write and with no comprehension of the ideals of individualism, courage , rebellion and struggle. We have to fight homogenisation – everywhere on every level.

After a couple of weeks off playing an electric I decided to fire up my under the desk guitar rig which consists of a loopstation, a delay and a distortion box into a Music Man amp. After four hours it was about midnight and I was pretty burnt out but I whipped through the footage real quick and here are some random guitar snacks for anyone who gives a damn….

I watched the Motorcycle Diaries yesterday. I had no idea that Che Guevara was killed in 1967 – that wasn`t so long ago; and with the help of an American Government Agency apparently. Disgusting. Heroes, freedom fighters, mystics and warriors of consciousness from Jesus to Geronimo, Byron, Malcolm X and more have been persecuted and ripped up by the snarling rats of the “establishment”…

Kennedy and Lennon shot down like dogs in the street by parasitic filth and an explosion of increasingly sophisticated advertising together with media, intellectual, and parabolic corporate ownership of the intangible and esoteric: land, time and space- Exxon, Clear Channel, SKY and god knows what else; to help us all feel good while our minds are repossessed and our lands are ripped up.

Since 1967 So much has changed but the human machine. Ugly homogenisation of towns and village streets across the U.K. by monolithic edifices of corporate greed, the blight of surveillance, drunkenness, violence and crime are all allies in an unconscious response…
Travelling around the South Island in New Zealand convinced me that there is a reasonable argument for fighting against eco-terrorism, exploitation and standing up against irrelevant modernisation and the damaging pollutants more often than not labelled as improvement or whatever else bullshit lexicon beaurocrats and other official madmen can use to subvert, bend and lie about the truth. Does anyone care? There are people out there who do; let`s connect.
Our relationship with the land is an integral part of our consciousness. The land is not capable of a lie. More soon.

your DNA possesses and encodes evolutionary time…….the ancient “church” is everywhere; that is everywhere we haven`t desecrated it with base architectures and  pollutants often incorrectly disguised beneath a veneer of language such as “progress”, “industry”, “change” and more. Water is the carrier and light is the messenger.

Liberte, equality, Egalite…
freedom, equality, egalitarianism; the hypotheses of European Revolutionaries remain still only ideals encoded into arbitrary signs. I recently picked up a copy of the 1962 Freedom Movement songbook – unity & music were at the centre of social change.

Well, its a dirty old world we live in and music is dirty business that`s for sure.  Is it possible to separate your art and your integrity, your ego and your conscience from the business of your product?

Sure. There`s no product without a business model or a channel behind it. Similarly there`s no revolution without subscribers to it`s system of belief or even it`s system of belief marketing. [click to continue...]

a “method” of songwriting? Of course there is no one method, subject, genre, approach or way; no set of rules, no map or compass and that`s what makes songs so fantastical,  interesting, different, invaluable. One mans turgid, drone is another mans celestially illuminated supernova of clustered genius. ZEN.

Watching No Direction Home I was not surprised to learn that Dylan himself had methods or ways – visit the library, search and research, read the classics, look through old newspapers &cetera. I happened to be watching the film with someone of Dylans age, who was there in the early Sixties and I was highly surprised when he commented: “I had no idea he worked so hard to produce that material. I thought he just did it.”

Well, it is true that in a way song will “just come together” but you have to have that kernel of an inspirational idea and Conrad quite succinctly elucidates this in his metaphor at the beginning of Heart of Darkness :

“…Marlow was not typical … and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of those misty haloes that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

So, the meaning is illuminated by context rather than the immediately internal and this works on many levels. It is quite clear in listening to Dylan`s earlier material that the personal musical & lyrical context from within which he writes is one encompassing the earliest blues/folk forms both lyrically and sonically, but also that of popular Fifties music and movies. If you want to make these connections yourself you can do no wrong in listening to Smithsonion Folkways collections and reading Michael Gray`s “Song and Dance Man III – the art of Bob Dylan”. My personal feeling is that a great song should have at its core narrative elements, be borne of some sublime experience, a time and a place, historicism, meter and rhyme but these are only elementals. But no matter how hard I try to ignore it I feel the real context within which a song operates, the luminescent, spectral halo of moonshine is the mind of the reader/listener.

[[Use what you've got to capture fleeting moments and ideas - if you've got a hook use your telephone, if you can get to a computer just video your performance. Move damn fast, get your idea down and review. improvise a song & threw it together -  move fast `cause the world is moving quicker than you are - also that way, you can dodge the bullets. Get the right tools for you. If you wanna write a song, write it , SO don`t write a song about the equipment, the set up, don`t let that get in your way. You can`t feel a mixing desk, you can`t emote a machine or elaborate a microphone set up - leave that for  Ron, later on.]]

This of course is not to imply Roland Barthes `Dead Author` but it`s worth considering if it is actually possible to free a text from the socio-historical tyranny of its author or the Intentional Fallacy ? What of the contexts from which the listener emerges ?

IF then the author`s meanings and intentions are wholly irrelevent then is it mere coincidence that texts which upon the face appear pared down and oblique e.g. Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger”, speak such vast volumes to so many ? The Wesley Harding album exudes a reductionism as though Dylan had taken complex song-mythologies and fed them through some kind of shredder or put them on a fast diet.

If the song [as narrative] is to be freed in this way then surely it would be a previously unheard song from an artist unknown to the reader? Bob Dylan has intimated that he is merely a cipher, that the songs came from the ether and in some way every song one writes does appear or concretise through some kind of osmosis – but he is talking specifically from within the realm of the rock cliche perhaps. And he has a track record within which his material effloresces.

THE TRUTH ABOUT really great SONGWRITING is that it HAS NOTHING TO DO with industry, money, production, success, acceptance…

The truth about great SONGWRITING is that it HAS EVERYTHING to do with PEOPLE, and their stories, OUR STORIES, the past the present and the future. It’s about having something important to say about matters greater than oneself.  AND a song can be whatever you want it to be as long as you mean it; that way a song takes on an energy and a life of it’s own beyond the here and now.

It’s that simple. Like riding a bicycle.

You still have to find inspiration, play an instrument, form a melody…have something different to say, especially if your material will be a verisimilar material of ideas, rather than some bland, insipid, secondhand, wallpaper. Sitting in front of a ghastly can sometimes be stultifying; inspiration comes from elsewhere – NEVER directly from the machine or its environment. Its just a box. Machinery will never replace the emotional complexities and responses of people – not least until we start building “machines” from things like proteins or cellular material, utilising chemical reactions rather than the simplicity of binary. Imagine the speed and capabilities. ON or OFF is that as complex as we can make it? Perhaps what makes us human is that we are blessed with self awareness and from that springs the capability for evolutionary ideas. So, simply put, maybe you want your song to have inspirational and therefore human qualities and that requires an inspired writer, someone who lives on the edges. Someone with an idea. It doesn`t have to be the biggest idea, or the best idea but it ought to be your idea, one that you OWN. The kernel of an idea will more likely come from an experience external to the writing medium itself; a book or a painting or a conversation or a place. It may be melody, one word, a name, a sound, an event, a roadsign…it`s up to you to find it…a guitar listens as well as talks too, so you have to feed it the best poetry you can. If not just stay at home and listen to the microwave or type something into google and get the kind of dull, dry, paint by numbers songwriting advice; a sawdust that will just smother your flame and leave the taste of boredom in your mouth.

After four years with no acoustic guitar writing songs on borrowed planks and often times on my beloved stratocaster with a collection of maybe 6 guitars left to decay, rot, decline and gather dust, rust and cobweb somewhere in an empty cupboard on the other side of the earth I have finally found a plank for myself. Its a simple rather than a complex machine…An old hofner F-hole!  Fortunately the gods here have smiled upon me and hooked me up with Mojo Sound in Wellington for recording with some pricey pricey guitars…

With a mellow, aged, ochre, molasses and diesel sound this baby is just built for percussive, skiffle styles, slide lead lines. It`s great even if it rattles like tthe eeth in an old desert lost skull, and the actions higher than god…

Ive been using my phone for years now to record stuff ..modern technology makes me sick.

Ive just started working on a new song with this new blues guitar but I can`t.

I`m surrounded by more technology right now than used to launch the hubble telescope, video cameras, sound interfaces, computers – windows and mac, photo cameras, mixing desks, amplifiers, electronic drums, p.a.`s and I cant record a single damn riff into any of it…so I`m using my mobile phone and I wish I had a cassette recorder…complexity is the enemy of creativity…

“Blood like cold needles that slide in my veins
You fell from heaven in the yellow rain
Stealing the crimson flowers of day
Black embers shone of a time now gone
crosses & candlesticks, conquests, cathedrals now forgotten”

aeons ago, almost another lifetime – arriving on the plains with a guitar, a bicycle and a rucksack 6 months in the fields taught me the titan majesty of mountains & rivers. I traveled around as much as I could and I slowly built  talismans and people, gifts, and found objects into a huge feathered dream catcher onto the rear view mirror of my van which was my accommodation on excursions across the island…

Four years have passed -  working in a city, a beautiful city, flying to the capital to record songs that came out of the  rivers, mountains, hills and plains…but, this beautiful florid city is sucking the life out of me…I need to work to pay for the recordings, to work in the city to make enough money, but it doesn`t make any sense…

Here are the contents of the slowly assembled “dream machine” mosaic of minds and matter:

…rekiie healers handmade amulet as gift, antique remnants of barcelona spain cathedral prayer beads-rosary the crucifix lost, amerindian ex-girlfriends animal gift from 1999, southshore plastic toy handgrenade, 2006 kaitorete feathers from long walk, emo cow print new brighton bracelet plus two brass bracelets unknown origin, maori doll wellington, plastic sun amulet mid-canturbury plains `06, paua earing and purple feather (now decayed) (both found objects), silver watchchain early 20th century from U.K., american indian silver handmade ring – white feather, working pocket watch trinket originally japan from friend (returned). semi-precious rock collection from Longford river, Waikakahi/Jacobs Bay/Rangitata & Rakaia bed/Motukatuka point – Pauau from Wahine Park, Purau and east coast S.island bays shells…

Alot of people substitute melody, production  or style for lyrical content and allow marketing in all its myriad guises to persuade them of qualities that are simply nonexistant. We live in a world in which people are increasingly ignorant of history, sacrifice, emotion, trauma and the hurt of others. We live in a world divided into those who think and feel with their hearts and minds and those who think they can feel.

Some people have a god given talent with a pen and it clearly shows they have been around and experienced what life has to offer -  without this experience there is nothing to offer the song writing pantheon but second hand echoes and dull, inarticulate reflections of life`s mirror.

The last recording sessions went well again with the presence of the underworld, the invisible and the unholy taunting us from the ruins of forgotten lives and lessons. We re-tracked  the guitar parts for Rakaia River a third time and breezed through the anthemic You Lost It All in no time at all. Film Broadcast quality hardware combined with ultra sensonic microphones and expensive Martin timber really makes a difference. Messing about with a slide, in natural open tuning can be pretty good fun…

The song Architecture of Destiny is an loosely constructed homage to the autistic, but multidimensional City of Glass, The sublime House of Leaves, Beckford`s Vathek and intertwines the everyday, matter of fact relational breakdown, difference and decay within the broader context of an “architecture” of pre-ordained bad luck. I journeyed today with a psychic to an abandoned school built in the early 20th Century;
We live in a  supranatural world.

Click here for a slideshow.

There`s obviously a supernatural tradition innate to the blues lyric and the historical context from which the early blues pioneers emerged.

It`s a subject of great interest both for its pseudo religious supranatural leanings and the degree to which this tradition has been perpetuated… The lone artist, soaked in liquour, absinthe and opium, an artist struggling with, for or against the elements or humanity in defiance of tradition, change, oppression -a freedom fighter channelling the forces of good or evil through a talismanic or demoniacal engagement to the guitar, the pen or the cause. A vocal tradition hoodoo-esque, incantational, evangelical, proselytising, confessional, mean, base or sexual…it’s blue.

Messing about using a loop recorder to play all the instruments…
Maybe read the rest of this short little story whilst having a listen…click more below.
One of the few things I brought with me was a hat; an old `50`s or 60`s black felt trilby with a real makers (paper) stamp inside the worn leather band & it stank. It had a straight sided crown and a slight pinch at the front with a flat curled brim. I took it from the tar stained, tobacco honking, yellow ceiling collection above the bar at Ye Olde Thurlowe Arms and I drove all around, like a hobo,  wearing it. I never saw another one here. And I never saw another public house like that one. I spoke to Yankee Paal, about hats and here`s just how it went, god’s honest truth….

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Paal: “Oh is that your hat?”
Jake: “Yeah man…”
Paal: “I could never wear a hat like that.”
Jake: “Ha, Well I gotta mustard yellow broad brim top hat but it ain’t fit for public consumption…”
Paal:  “Well I`ll tell you about my old hat…”

“Once I had a hat for a whole twenty years; trilby style, light tan felt, white striped band; with a blue feather. I loved that hat. When I bought it I flipped it upside down and pushed out the crease so it had a nice tall, rounded top, like a derby hat, then threw it on the floor and stamped on it a few times…ripped the band off…any good hat needs some serious wear and tear, you have to kick it up and down the road.

Anyway the salesman thought I was mad and so did my mother. She HATED it. Anyway after around twenty years wearing the battered old thing she offered me a thousand bucks for the hat, so I gave in and took the money – I was broke. Anyway she never threw it out and one day I figured to get that hat back out of the attic, out of the dusty old loft. Needless, it was like meeting an old friend from way back.

Well, time goes by and she caught me out wearing it around town one day and she threatened to cut it in two, she was on fire about it, especially after the deal with the money. I pleaded and pleaded for the hat`s life; almost got down on my knees. She was adamant. The hat had to go. What about Lars? I asked; he`d always loved that hat, loved the tattered brim and the tatty lining. We struck ourselves a deal: I didn’t forfeit the money, Lars took the hat and everyone was happy.

Few years passed and I hadn`t seen Lars for awhile and I`d never come across another hat that I really liked, hats were disappearing. Back in Canada Lars said things were hunky dory. His mother picked him up from the airport.

“Where did you get that disgusting hat?” She asked. He never even gave her the courtesy of an answer. And, she never said nothing else about it. No matter – he was gonna wear that hat of mine come rain or shine.

Winter comes along and with it the evenings drawing in. The snow started in to settling on the top of the mountain and the creek with a thin veil of ice on its surface, so, Shaky Harry brought the medicine round and soon, soon after on the last January weekend Willow George brought the lumber for the range and the fire. Day Previous Lars cuts his hand in the small bandsaw at the mill. God did that hurt him so he left that hat at home thinking he just couldn`t see past the brim properly and he sure didn`t want to lose a whole hand `specially not in the cold season. Anyway back home that night, pork and beans ready on the table and Mama in the rocking chair, there it was, smoking gently over the fire. Aw Dennis “I`m so sorry” he whispered to the God up in the ceiling and sat right on down and armed himself up with the sharp knife and spoon. He was hellish hungry, like a lost dog on the trail of a toothesome chicken.

He just couldn`t bring himself down to eat it though, not like his old Ma’ , lips smacking and tuckin` right in with a big grin on her face.

We`re using the custom martin guitar to re-record the Rakaia River acoustic guitar tracks and there`s a world of difference. We`re also using Jamesons Irish Whiskey as it gives a warm, mellow tone – this music is made by authentic musicians who play with their boots off and their glasses loaded. Our mix is beginning to sound exceptionally smooth, with complex flavours of toasted wood, spice and sherry, superbly mellowed by time…Elijah Few recommends Jamesons Irish whisky, and, for Scotch The Balvenie and Lagavulin. Now it would be easy to suggest that the mystical otherness of the whiskey has infused our recording with the warmth and oak mellowed manuka tones we`ve been seeking but the fact of the matter is that  now we`re using 8 grands worth of acoustic honey.

Thanks to Pete at Music Planet here in Wellington we’ve just picked up the Aston Martin of Martin guitars – a custom model Martin valued at around 8 thousand dollars. This particular Martin has an acoustic tone that is smooth, rich and highly natural; bright, lively and warm with an entirely even response across the strings. Its a breeze to play and when simply strumming an E chord resonates with rich, manuka, gently oscillating overtones.

Robert Johnson; there`s a lot of hoodoo wrapped up around the man, in particular that he sold his soul to the devil down at the crossroads in Clarksdale. Originally, Son House suggested, Johnson was not regarded as a good musician at all but after the trade with Satan he returned with the blazing skills and blues mastery of a demi-god. Much of the early blues protagonists framed their content within the context of african american hoodoo/religious belief wrapped up in the historical context of migratory diaspora and most of the cliches of the blues narrative are more culturally rich in meaning than they might at first appear. The simple cliche alone of “the highway” is extrapolated and interpolated by numerous artists over the last 90 years by Bob Dylan alone many times across his recorded work. A great bridging work for the blues to the present date is Michael Gray’s ‘Song and Dance Man III’, which illustrated Dylan`s reappropriation of the blues through other song forms.

The narrative and folk tales, the telling of lies or competitive tales, the healthily obscene “putting in the dozens”, the long and witty toasts and the epigrammatic rhyming couplets which enliven the conversation of folk negro and harlem hipster alike, have their reflections in the blues.

Paul Oliver`s book “Conversation with the Blues” (1965)

There`s a great thesis here about the concept of the Trickster, which leads me onto what I`ve talked about previously with regards to Radioheads re-appropriation of the blues through a series of post modern metaphors and the Sublime. Eric Clapton himself has suggested that Johnson`s cross tempo work is unparalleled and Johnny Winter makes use of this technique also.

In the following video Eric Clapton, another “guitar hero” whose early songwriting capabilities and exploration of new genres (e.g. Cale & Marley) seems to be wholly forgotten now, talks about Robert Johnson and plays “Stones in the Passway”.

It`s a great place to start exploring what Robert Johnson has to offer and why he is who he is. It also illuminates the sheer technique, the impact of the unusual, that is often confused with something arcane, mythical, metaphysical, divine and otherworldly or more specifically in the blues with superstition, an encounter with the Devil or other dark force and the conceit of a conspirational universe.  It’s also interesting to note that the cross tempo section Eric Clapton discusses is a technique that many artists have plagiarised or emulated: Johnny Winter and Rory Gallagher have used it in varying degrees throughout their careers.

At any rate as much as Johnson’s technique was formidable and undeniably unique recordings have always sounded odd: his voice always seemed pitched too high and anyone who owns a gramophone knows that speed is ultimately the choice of the listener. Anyway, it seems that we may been listening to Robert Johnson at too many revolutions.
Touched.co.uk are offering Steady Rollin’ Man – 24 tracks of Robert Johnson slowed down – click here. I.M.H.O. this is the way Robert Johnson should sound and you can read all about it here.

What is it about old guitars, old planks, old timber, old gold even? Who knows? Analogue or digital? I`d definitely rather listen to an L.P. or even better still a 78 on my gramophone.

If you write from experience you will develop a sense of place, character, a message, tone, symbolism, imagery, and figurative language, metaphor and simile. Ignore everybody and never even consider any filthy dirty money. Remember though the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry…..alot of  “learning” would get in the way, that alot of equipment, amplifiers, effects, preconceived notions, riffs, hooks, rhythms and ideas just don`t even help with writing a song. It`s like writing, you can pin it down to a set of motifs, a set of ideas, devices and techniques…but these alone do not a great piece of work create. You need genuine experience. Remove from view all the pillars in your sight. I find the hardest guitars to play, and don`t mess about with any kind of notions of playing finesse as you can see in the video on my other posts. Writing a song aint about playing the guitar.

WE live in an age of surveillance and ORWELLIAN control by drug companies, oil companies, banks; telecommunications companies and systems – a world in which the basic inheritance of life such as air, water, LAND, speech, time and perception are increasingly monopolised, trademarked and owned by the few. My life and my work is informed by an increasingly rare commodity – FREEDOM. You can find it between the leaves of a thousand years of knowledge…

A book is a bomb. A book is a time machine.
A book is a recruitment device. A book is mantra. A book is terror.
A book is enlightenment. A book is life. A book is death.
A house of Leaves and a city of Glass.

…at the end of my time, the mother of pearl crucifix I wore around my neck for a decade had cracked and broken – on my last journey through the gorge cast my crucifix into the waters …When I came back into the countryside the following year,  the river welcomed me in high flood, submerging islands, wreaking havoc. I was inspired by true tales – real lives. sometimes anger and the devil will blind and trick you; choose the way of the gun and a vengeful Miltonic god or cast yourself asunder, through the tides.

Loneliness, happiness and in between. Back in time when I lived on the other side (of the world) I sat in an interview and watched the twin towers exploding in outrageous fury right in front of my eyes.

Much like the Kennedy assassination we all knew there were going to be a few survivors, scapegoats, betrayal, fury, greed and a litany of lies, hollow promises and bitter recrimination. Every time I drive by that twisted, burnt, heat melted, white hot new york metal, the skeletal remains, the old bony fingers pointing helplessly skyward into space, to a god looking down upon the shame and the deceit, the lies, the cowardice and the damage done to the hearts of every man woman and child alive, breathing and capable of now understanding what a hollow piece of rock we inhabit, and what a terrible thing we have doe to ourselves.

I usually write out about four pages of spontaneous poetry or material and work backwards from there. Some of the material comes directly from headlines recollected from memory. Betrayal, fury , suspicion and greed came through the television. I try not to watch it.

I spent at least 6 months, more like a year, cutting down the words, ridding them of complexity, making them simple and making them count.

[your television will help you objectify our gross global cultural output: there is very little beyond the smattering of charity, hope and faith except for violence, sex, death, destruction, greed, monopolising, pollution and a vast modern ACEDIA.]

911. kennedy. CIA. FBI.

Money should be the last thing on your mind when you pick up a guitar. F**k the money. If you get any, give it away. video features from 2005 The Way of the Gun – recorded live , with no rehearsal and no tune up.

I wrote previously here about perfectionism. My recent day long recording session with a plank of a guitar, a boiling hot studio, a strange routing to the desk, lack of sleep, the pressure of fast, fast decision making regarding choosing and recording guitar parts, the arrangement of these plus the vocals and the lyrics, the tempo of the song and the need to get on a plane at the end of the day, (which meant not using a Martin acoustic) all added up to a situation which was not ideal. Ideally I’d like a Martin acoustic, plus my Strat into two Session amplifiers for a great stereo mix. But hell who wants to let go of their Martin and leave it to the vicissitudes of baggage handling, not me no way.Anyway, this is just the preliminary working arrangement

The point is that looking for perfection can often become a barrier to achievement and it applies to everything. You have to do what needs to be done sometimes. Its like playing a gig with a hangover  – turn it on like a tap or go home. Every test is a test created only by yourself.

Perfect takes forever, Good takes time, Shit takes 5 minutes. It`s the fourth time around.

You can`t make something out of nothing, but too much nothing will make a man feel ill at ease. Worldly possessions; you cant take them with you. But this is the 21st century too. Better be sure to put a value on the things you really care about, because at the end of the day, nothing material counts for jack shit. Look after your soul and travel light. Ignore the media and don’t buy any of their crap. Suddenly I own too much and then Suddenly everything evaporates. Maybe I bought into myself too much.

1.fender stratocaster, leads, pedals, small amp, pair of cans, small midi keyboard
2.laptop, hardrive, leads, mbox mini
3.Small pile of books
4. small car
5. Bicycle x 2
6. rucksack with clothes, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 caps, 1 broad brim hat
7. large collection of rocks, pauau, and 1 cactus.
8. couple of paintings, a few pictures, mobile telephone
9. pile of cd`s including Subterranean Homesick Blues, 6 cassette tapes, Big Lebowski & Dylan other side of the mirror dvd
10. battered hofner side guitar

Having said all that it sure is uncomfortable without table, chairs, or bed. Sadly though at the end of the day you only have yourself; and yourself to blame. That last breath you breathe is gonna be mighty lonely but at least its brief. There`s only the in between. Truth might get in the way of a good story, but life’s cold hard realities will never get in the way of a good song…

jug jazz, blooze infused, dirty earbash, folk country, streetside hicksville freakshow. Howlin`  Troutmask intertronic groove message 40 feet beneath the dirty city space. Jack Kerouac in the vicinity listening to a scanner ….

I`m currently working in the studio as a composer; this blog – which by the way is not meant to be a “How to make it in the music industry” deal , or a “How to make a record” or “album” or become a “popstar” effort.

It`s more aligned with a why it takes forever. I managed quite royally to fail, fail and fail repeatedly. This time I’m hoping I’m in a position to get things a little more right but in a metafictional, metaphysical and intertextual way everything I`ve ever done is everything Im doing now and vice versa. UNderstand that and maybe it`s a step towards understanding the universe. One thing is for sure  it isn`t about money, fame, glory, free rides , or whatever. I never spent years and years jamming in dirty studios, living in smelly windowless rehearsal rooms in filthy industrial areas, working manual jobs for money or glory. I only ever did it because I owed it to my guitar

I`m pretty fond of anecdotes, they sound so great; but then again is there any truth in them? Who knows. Most of life is conversation and therefore prone to becoming anecdotal. Some people live off them. Some people live inside them. Some people foolishly become them. Anyway I cant remember who said it; it was either Keith Richards, Jeff Beck or someone similar and Ive paraphrased it and embellished it myself over the years:

“I dont like the idea of my guitar signal floating around in the air man. Otherwise I`d record in space.”

What`s interesting is that during the last Elijah Recording session because of some weird routing anomaly problems my guitar signal took a rather tortuous and circuitous route to tape (hard drive). Here it is:

1. Guitar 2. Into transmitter. 3. Through air. 4. Into 2nd transmitter. 5. Into Sound Devices recorder.

6. Into Pro Tools interface. 7. Into desk & Computer.

I think thats it.

Flew into GRUNGE city. The drive from Seattle down to San Francisco California and especially Mount Shasta is awesome. It`s great to be on the coast ! Last time I was up in Washington state I was fortunate enough to spend sometime in the mountains with a Winchester rifle. I love America.

Hyperbusy – city to city. more sleep needed.

For a while now (last Ten Years) I`ve been really into the Jeff Beck road to guitar sounds and that`s a simple dirty old fuzz pedal (hot cake anyone?) into a great amp. Got my stratocaster bridge set up in a unique way so its a bit of a bastard to play too, you have to earn everything with it – you don`t have to fight it but it doesnt give too much away either. The vastly tactile approach of a used stratocaster has all the character and excitement of a divining rod in a lightning storm as far as I`m concerned.

I’ve been really keen on using AWARD SESSION amps since I first tried one in 1990-91. I finally got my hands on one in 1999. They were known as the British Mesa Boogie and Clapton used them on his album Behind the Sun. I bought another session since for stereo. It’s alot easier than carting a couple of twins and a cabinet around.

My Space is one of the most popular destinations for musicians. I`ve used it; but never to listen to anyone`s music really – it just fails miserably for that. What is clever is that despite having a clunky interface with a fairly poor usability quotient the site is popular. Why? Probably because it allows its users to develop and customise an identity and to talk sh** with each other.
Now, this is not a post about My Space being a large spam portal run by a huge global media corps of greedy manipulative suits tracking the populace or any other dark practices. What this post is about is the fact that success on  My Space is inversely proportional to communication efficacy. It`s very simple: the more friends you have the less likely any of your messages will stand out. If you bulletin 500 friends and each of these friends have 500 friends then your bulletin has a very slim chance of being noticed.

Yeah – thats right. The more “friends” you`ve got , the less successful any bulletin will be, lost in a sea of meaningless, ubiquitous, homogenous bulletins that all look the same.

I received an email just today regarding my comments on My Space and how it was actually a poor platform for audio distribution. Some people did not like this. Well, unless you are Lilly Allen who seems to have the fucking thing sewn up quite nicely  (an example of the industry using social media to continue the interruptive model of blanket advertising) how can it work? To my mind anything that makes it onto the front of My Space warrants ignoring because it must have be paid for. And there`s so much damn stuff – the new this , the next that, god it`s boring.
SO for those of you who think my space really works consider this:

If you want to hide a tree – hide it in the forest.

No-one has anything much to really say, unless it’s to complain; babies cry, people come and go, dogs sniff. There are the late, the tidy, the punctual, the forlorn, the forgotten and the frequent.The professionals looking slick adjust their chunky watches and loosen their ties. The youth pretend it isn’t happening: bullet proof they are.

The Depature lounge. Are you ready for take off? You might never come down. Do the ghosts of the dead in crashed airliners roam endlessly like a broken malfunctioning Jesus across the watery surfaces of the worlds carnivorous oceans? Or do they drown too, leaving their traumatised bodies in the great deep watery grave?

Flight 666 is currently boarding destination Davey Jones’ Locker. This is the Last Call for passenger Jake Edwards – please make your way to gate 888 immediately.

The plane is late and there are a lot of people sweating it out in the departure lounge. It’s hot and humid. I’ve flown hundreds of times but the more frequently I do it lately the less I trust the technology.

On the ground observing aeroplanes in the southern sky, they appear so low, look so surreal, impossible, too huge as though the whole thing is some elaborate sham, some kind of fake illusory moon landing confidence trick. I’m not ready yet to make my departure from the planet. I haven’t finished. I don’t want my body torn to ribbons at 500mph in an explosion of water-concrete, shearing shards of metal.

The emergency position is just a convenient way of ensuring that your spine is driven quick-fast into and through your skull and brain when you hit the ground. Lean forward, place your head between your arms brace yourself against the seat in front…and relax. Leave your seat in the upright position and keep your seatbelt on so we can identify you quickly and easily, by row and number… This is the inconvenient, tiring bullshit I’m putting myself through just to get a few songs done.

In the studio my personal choice is to never settle for just a click track – always use a rhythm section if you can. At the check in I want an option for a parachute but just settle for getting stung another 25 bucks because of my guitar instead.

Good morning everybody Welcome aboard todays flight 666 I am captain Ahab and we will be cruising at an altitude of 35,000 feet but don’t worry we have issued each and everyone of you with a small yellow life jacket should we plummet mercilessly like a comet from the calm blue mediterranean sky toward earth below.

I need to get a few more expensive guitars & I’m still finding it “challenging” throwing away 20 years of blues styled guitar techniques and sonics when it comes to modern studio work…. Just lately I’m looking at a 2000 year old kauri parlour bodied hand made 6 string with a narrow neck. It costs 2000 dollars so that’s a dollar per year for the wood. Not bad and nearly as old as I feel after a week of media work and flying back and forth. Reach under your seat. As long as I’m floating dead in the water my lifejacket will help the clean up teams pick me out.

Dehydration air conditioning

…using a really strange routing into the desk  and thrown away all of yesterdays tracking & hopefully with an intense days work we can get this demo off the ground. It`s 6.44 and we`ve finished tracking all the acoustic and all the lead and rhythm parts on the electric guitar, the stratocaster plus and the plank in one day. Oh and basic drums and some rough bass as well. It`s been intense and very hot. The original title is the RAKAIA RIVER MURDER. While everyone else has been chilling out on the beach in front of the studio we`ve been inside laying down as much creative work as we can, fighting the increasing humidity and working up a sweat. It has definitely been worth it. I havent time to listen to the demo mix because I need to eat something and get on the plane. Here are a few pictures.

Another busy day in the studio. After yeserdays warm up re-tracked all the acoustic parts on the dreadful plank which I`ve been fighting all damn weekend. Play it, tune it, play it, tune it &cetera….like I mentioned in an earlier post – yeah I`m going to burn it come the winter months even if I have to pay  for the priviledge and the pleasure.

We`ll be using Mojo’s Martins next time…

- is human emotion merely temporal expression?

The original acoustic parts were laid down on the dirt cheap,tree-trunk, low-end, low-performance, collection of guitar shaped, firewood you can see here in the center picture. I`m saving it for winter, when these recordings are done and I`m going to toss it in the fire where it belongs.

Some seriously expensive SCHOEPS microphones in a multi million dollar environment. The pressure was on for me to sing and play 4 tracks that I hadn`t played in a year.

The Rakaia River Murder,
Wicked Messenger Returns,
The Architecture of Destiny,
Life Support,

… there is nothing more dangerous than a book.

A book is a bomb. A book is a time machine.
A book is a recruitment device. A book is mantra. A book is terror.
A book is enlightenment. A book is life. A book is death.
&cetera

read – change your life, open your head up like psilocybin and travel across the universe. If you aren`t forever changed, go back and find books that work.  If you think books aren`t one of the secrets to understanding the universe then you are wrong…. the work of the cosmos, that’s secret number one.

Genius is a word that`s bandied around these days as though it`s something that`s free, something to be found in the bottom of a packet of cornflakes. Not that rare gleaming like the flashing of a comet in the surface of a calderan lake. Unfortunately we live in an age of arch-mediocrity masquerading as noesis…….mostly through the perceived synonymity of marketing and meritocracy.
Achieving genius is often paraphrased as being “99 percent perspiration and 100 percent inspiration”.

A genius is a person who successfully applies a previously unknown technique in the production of a work of art, science or calculation, or who masters and personalizes a known technique. A genius typically possesses great intelligence or remarkable abilities in a specific subject, or shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect and/or ability, especially in the production of creative and original work, something that has never been seen or evaluated previously. Traits often associated with genius include strong individuality, imagination, uniqueness, and innovative drive.

Achieving genius is more like evaporation, like boiling water. It takes more energy for water temperature to lift from 99 degrees to 100 degrees than to reach 99 degress from ambient temperature.
There`s a vast difference between “almost” and “all”; that extra last percent is worth 100 times the 99 that went before.

I`m nearly healed enough to get back out the guitar and start cooking a little; so much about dynamic playing for me comes from posture, which is only a part of the way you relate to an instrument, not forgetting attitude, focus, flexibilty and tone. Having good ears isn`t just about what you play either, it`s about listening to the producer, listening to the client and really getting to grips with THEIR vision – if you can assimilate that into the right stylistic lexicon you are onto a winner. What makes it exciting is that it`s not a precise science but an emotional one; like any literary conceit multifaceted and fractal but what usually happens is you pick up the instrument and the client says….I need some of that. You have to distill their emotional connection to the song….So back into a studio and this is what I will be doing.

I spent the weekend swimming with friends off the epic East coast ocean, beneath the stars above the rivermouth and Honey  Bay. Extra thanks to Pete who aqualunged for half an hour to return with crayfish which we all cooked, fresh on the beach fire: an iconic day at the beach…Sleeping on the clifftop above the spit and exploring the startlingly varied coastline of geographical collapse and debris, collecting stunning Abalone shells, plus swimming and cooking al fresco is a great way to recover from the clinical confines of ten days in the studio. Sure there`s a correlation between the rhythmic waves of the ocean and differing states of consciousness. No television, no telephones, no problem -  god.

Contrary to popular belief Studio time is intense, demanding, unsociable and very hard work requiring high creativity coupled with an unusually high level of productivity. You have to know your stuff, think very fast and turn on your skills like a tap. You need vision, experience, technical capability and imagination, but also need to work within the clients remit. The key is in manipulating your own strengths to fit within the overall vision of the project but it`s no different from any client engagement. `Listen and listen good`, there is no room for ego, only for brilliance. You don`t have to bury your personality beneath a lacklustre, formulaic veneer but flair, discipline, enthusiasm and professionalism are key elements. In a way you’ve either got it or you ain’t…but you can always improve your chances.

Do what you want – in music, art, work, wherever possible. If someone notices that`s great. But, if they dont , so what? You are still doing what you want. No man is an island and it`s always great to be involved in a scene, NOT a CLIQUE, a scene. Cliques are unhealthy, stagnant, dead end waters, tired, old, lugubrious and baleful – they tend to kill off creativity in their own incestuous way. A scene is open. A clique is egotists high on their own smug bullshit. Ego kills: you cannot do it all on your own no matter how good you are. Some hide behind loquacious blaggardry, specious claims of achievement, almost sociopathic tendencies and cetera. BE surrounded by PEOPLE who actually care about you. People who are beautiful on the inside. You need to care very deeply about the people around you and also about yourself if you really want whatever you are doing to fly. If vague posturising, bandwagon jumping and self centred goals are what drives your vision, prepare yourself for failure…If you have something great be prepared to forgive those around you…One of the deadly traps hidden along the road to creative success:  Perfectionism.

… I have been blasted in the stomach with a 12 gauge shotgun. An almost constant fiery, burning sensation and high loss of mobility means I`m reduced to lying or sitting down and minimal movement. Sometimes movement is nigh on impossible but I`m improving already, although my wallet is dead. The anaesthetic rapidly sent me into a state of amnesia and suspended animation with no recall or recollection whatsoever, to awake feeling euphoric, because of the morphine /heroin but several hours later began to wear off, resultant in burning, aching pain and low mobility. What is interesting about some amnesiacs is that those with a damaged hippocampus cannot imagine the future, cannot use past experiences to construct possible future scenarios. I have 150mg of Codeine to get through each day (plus panadeine) and anti-inflammatory drugs. Codeine is an alkaloid found in opium and other poppy saps like Papaver bracteatum the Iranian poppy.

Dell`s new blog. In the brave new world there is no ‘career’ as far as I can see, no job for life and therefore no reason to want either of these things. I’ve been moving around, relying upon my wits and the luck of the draw. Work here, work there. We live in an unstable existential world… if you think you’ve got a future, you’re the lucky one. I can remember when I was paid for things I performed, created, action and movement, thought. Not paid to sit inside a cube. Someone toss a grenade in there please.

I think there are different degrees to what being a digital nomad means obviously. Sometimes it isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. If you want the low down on hardcore tenets, principles and reasoning head over here. I dont believe a word of it, the human being is becoming phased out of the economy, redundant – unless he is a number in a foreign oil war game somewhere on the other side of the screen.

Fluctuations of the employment market, the rise and fall of firms, design tools, software and technologies going out of fashion, salaries, working hard, being laid off because a rat in a suit couldn`t sell the product properly…all of these things helpto bring into focus and really question what we should already be suspicious of, that is, there is no centre, certainty, regularity, guarantee or even sphere to exist within but rather that turning away from conventional paths and forging your own is the way forward. It doesn’t suit everybody, the sacrifices are huge, you pay one way or another for whatever lifestyle you choose….but one thing is for sure, happiness is available, if you can define it, if you want it and the digital revolution may have brought freedom, expression, creativity and the power to choose to those who want it…just remember to look through the window and observe the real world passing you by…

Change the world or go home.
What does it really mean? nothing at all.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 15th century changed the world, fed the Renaissance and powered the scientific revolution – where once the pre-Copernican earth was a flat disc in a heliocentric universe it was now a mere spherical satellite at the dependent mercy of the ever raging Sun, the death of God, Aristotelian physics, and the triumph of Paine’s Age of Reason.

Gutenberg’s invention also precipitates the archetype of mass communication where publishing power remains squarely in the hands of the elite. If we consider that modern advertising perhaps had its foundation in the military propaganda created during World War One, but was really born through the spread of television in America, propagated through the NBC introduction of the commercial break rather than a single programme sponsor then technologies such as television and radio support elitism & further transform media into commercial opportunity.

The current media overload, saturation, and the whole ad` space shouting match basically means that advertising and marketing has been forced to evolve from the interruptive, intermittent, high frequency, WOW factor linearity of the early Fifties and the ungainly mass media signals of print, billboards, radio-television commercials, and even online banners to Permission based programmes that build upon reciprocal loyalty, and in doing so ethically and respectfully, create greater permission and therefore increasing opportunities.

Intelligent conversational media projects illuminate just how smart, positive and responsive technology becomes socially responsible, or even how mobile technologies, for example an iPhone or digital camera are intrinsically creating new social fabric; that both social change and technology seem to have become reciprocal entities built upon choice, consent, collaboration and inherent networks that grow smarter & faster. The mobile phone may provide the next truly big ad space, and perhaps bolster a new elite in Telecommunications companies.

Social media sites depend upon integrating technology with and creating interaction and conversation between people to build shared-meanings, values, dialogue and to challenge inertia through the power of collaborative conscience (embedded in the web) to create change. Closed social habitats like MySpace hinge upon the almost televisual, hermetic relegation of choice, freedom, movement, compatibility, independence, and transparency to concepts of audience numbers & advertising. Okay most social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace are economically neutral, but that`s perhaps because they are closed social habitats; contained, linear and dependent upon a traditional & therefore traffic fed advertising model. This is obviously a catch 22 for them and hard to resolve both technically and economically – membership dependent and selling poor quality, non personalised interference and static – these sites feel hideously outmoded already but, no-one knows quite how to step up to the next rung.
If only they could all talk to each other simultaneously…

Apart from having a ridiculously pretentious name – which these days sounds about as refreshing as New Labour, or perhaps New Prosthetic – what is it with ambient media? If used correctly ambient could really challenge traditional forms and create new, dynamic messages. In effect it`s merely the same old advertising in new non-traditional places. At your dentist, on your beermat, bus ticket, plasma screen at airport… The thing is it just cannot deliver on the level of personalisation and control we already expect to encounter and don’t receive in real life or on the interweb. Perhaps it`s too guerilla for some companies, perhaps it’s too  hard to track the impact, make it accountable, deliver the figures, too expensive – it takes a leap of faith….and until supratechnologies such as digital paper, digital air even, universal unlimited bandwidth wi-fi and intelligence/choice/personalisation really arrive, and twist our  heads into knots, still a fucking clumsy old fashioned pile of ugly screens and boxes plastered around the place; it’s the leprosy of the advertising world.

Most ambient hardware quite rightly collects nothing much more than the attention of vandals; kiosks filled with Coca-Cola and chewing gum, dogged with errors and built like monolithic storm trooper Daleks the screens were so high only giants could read their intended messages. Yeah the ambient medium is different but it`s still essentially someone shouting in your face. In this sense all advertising is subliminal programming and will become ever more nefarious in attempts to command our attention.

The mobile phone will probably represent the next breakthrough in advertising space inheriting the internet`s latest “intelligent strategies”. Mobile companies are probably looking forward to a time when their virtual real estate becomes the most sought after. But again there is still no excuse for poor quality advertising even if it is highly targeted – we are resistant to bland, poorly encoded messages.

If I want to be advertised to I`d like it to be so personalised, so INVISIBLE: I choose it myself and moreover when I want it too. Myspace take note, your advertising is crass, vulgar and irritating, it is still SPAM. Anyway, when it comes to selecting a platform for your art think on this: if you want to hide a tree – hide it in a forest. Advertising ceases to become so irritating the moment it is targeted at exactly the right prospect through the right means. But this vision encapsulates a nightmare of Orwellian implications.

… it happened around 1995.

I attended University in the 90′s, wrote with an inkwell and fountain pen; a what ? Okay a pen….on paper…..Anyway; I emerged from the classical enclaves of academia to a world where the stylus was invisible, mobile phones illiterally ubiquitous and a preternatural digital goldrush heralded by neu-optimism and championed by dot com VC up-starts, code-yuppies and hipper than hip web-dee-zynaahz with blue hair threatened to kill itself off at 11.59pm, 1999, Millenium time. In those 3 years  the planet had become quite wholly unrecognisable and obviously inoperable; until 12.01 p.m. 2000, when the BUG thing emerged as an expensive hoax of sorts. Change. Change. Change. Where was the planetary “change-management team”?  Nowhere! Can traditional business and advertising respond intelligently, to infiltrate and/or build exclusive tribes, deliver products, accountability, honesty, to drop that shout in your face old fashioned advertising pitch? Or die a slow lingering death in the invisible centre of nowhere trying to look cool while flogging a dead horse? We`ll find out.

The web 2.o social media phenomenon is looking “economically neutral”. Until it slowly fills back up with advertising  and turns in on himself. Maybe, maybe so, but, these sites allow the idea and word virus to propagate quickly and speedily, to build connections from the previously dissolute, to exist without traditional CENTRES of exchange…Web 2.0 perhaps embodies a need to make more real world sense, utility,  and impact from the online one- to create purpose, meaning, fullfilment and change from the individual through to the global; distances collapse and old fashioned models dissolve. For the creators of these ideas, the scions of change, evolution is inevitable? One day these “faster than market” networks will become truly multilateral, instantaneous, conversational and so responsive and adaptive to communities that they may become like thought.

Does this mark the death knell of the individual as a component in a useful society?

…life made more sense when we paid for DOING things that could be properly measured, not just for f**king around on yawn…facebook.

I just had the pleasure of watching Smoke only twelve years too late. If you fancy mixing the intertwining intertextuality of Paul Auster`s genius, the engaging idiosyncrasy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest, the cinematography of Down By Law with Mercurial storytelling and superlative acting performance then this one`s for you;baby. If you dig mixing metafictional metaphor with True tales of American Life then, man you`ll dig it the most. Loose identities, shifting nomenclature, fantastic dialogue,  realism & character shine through this film made with stolen cameras and shot by the blind. Harold Perrineau (the awesome Mercutio in Luhrmann`s Romeo And Juliet), Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Forest Whitaker, Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing & Victor Argo are directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster (screenplay).

[click to continue...]

I used to own a Hendrix biography, an interesting part of which was mention of Hendrix` fascination with Bob Dylan. Buying a copy of “John Wesley Harding” rather than food is a noble move as far as I can discern and wholly more palatable than a trip to Walmart. Helps to keep the fashionably thin look too. But Hendrix` is often eclipsed by his own guitar focused genius and I’d like to offer some feedback on why Jimi Hendrix is actually a man of ideas who, beginning with the simple ideas of other worldliness such as UFOLOGY,  extended his sonic, lyrical and experiental palette to encompass and map a far more complex journey, beyond playing the guitar, that is both personal and political.

That Hendrix was able at points in his career, such as the Machine Gun performance on the Band of Gypsies Live film and record, to encompass the entire journey into singular moments is testament to his greatness not only a a guitarist but also as an artist per se – at points like these Hendrix is able even to dispense with vocabulary itself and really paint with sound.

What is more interesting is the broad transition from Are You Experienced ( A.Y.E. ) to Axis:Bold as Love and beyond to Electric Ladyland especially in terms of Hendrix` lyrical expression, lexical development and what appears to be efforts to develop coherent meaning and make sense of “the experience” rather than simply to detail “the experience” itself.

To illuminate; the song “Are you Experienced” Hendrix` eponymous first album opener takes Dylan`s “Like A Rolling Stone” and makes it a call to action, a call to begin “the experience”.

I know, I know
you’ll probably scream and cry
That your little world won’t let you go
But who in your measly little world are trying to prove that
You’re made out of gold and -a can’t be sold.

So-er, Are You Experienced?
Ah! Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have

The subject of Dylan`s Rolling Stone and the failure expressed therein upon so many levels, to understand, to see or gain awareness is offered here a solution directly through “experience”. The “er”`s and “-a”s have a distinctively Dylanesque time and feel no doubt.

More traditional blues lyric cliche content  (Highway Chile) or simple psychedelia (Purple Haze) all but disappears on the Axis disc. “If 6 was Nine” furthermore introduces politics and social commentary into the equation. I`d say the Axis album represents a move away from a perspective of psychedelia towards one of entheogenic purpose.

The song “Bold As Love” most especially marks a continuing departure from the fundamentally direct, acid soaked expressionism of A.Y.E. and a move towards defining a more positive, transcendental cosmology beyond simple psychedelia, time or space and extend earlier natural metaphor and imagery as found in “Wind Cries Mary” and “Third Stone from the Sun” towards a development of meaning or perhaps a system of belief.

This finds its logical conclusion in the third and final album “Electric Ladyland”; especially side three and the song “1983″. One might argue that “1983″ actually represents a defeat in the face of real world concerns, that the hope of defining such a meaning or system of belief had failed – war  still raged upon the land mass – and escape into the sea to avoid holocaust the only conclusion – OR,  that submersion into what is ostensibly another dimension beneath the waves represents a triumph of consciousness, belief and will over political and physical impossibilities.

Strangely enough certain parts of the piece 1983 bear melodic parallels with the Chilites chicago sound.

On the album “Electric Ladyland” we find a song such as “Voodoo Chile” formulating a pantheistic fusion and microcosmic omniscience in an attempt to reach enlightenment – lyrically it perhaps metafictionally encapsulates the journey from “Are you Experienced” through to “Electric Ladyland”.

In “Voodoo Chile” Hendrix takes the traditional blues structure and explodes it using the tonal and expressive palette later heard in Machine Gun. Lyrically beginning with traditional hoodoo, blues and gypsy superstition, fiery moons, night time birth, and resuscitation from strange instantaneous death Hendrix fuses and describes the intervention of messengers or gods in animal form, lions and eagles, from traditional AmerIndian and European paganism, a journey through infinity, science, and space (“Venus”, “Jupiter”), love, desire, union, transcribes the transcendent microcosmic omnipresence of his mind and finally the collapse of civilisation.

This post is in its infancy, this is as much as I can write before breakfast. I am going to expand this post to try and examine the movement across Hendrix` three studio albums from psychedelic rock to entheogenic purpose, the formulation of successful meaning and understanding with a few glances in Bob Dylan`s direction – can “the experience” form a remedy? If a visionary artist like Hendrix looks to the oeuvre of Dylan then maybe we all should….

Played a few numbers last night by Jimmy Buffet,  Jerry Jeff Walker & Bob. Quality song material. Interesting to consider the parallels and dissimilarities between the sentimental American iconography of Dylan`s cannon and that of Jerry Jeff Walkers lyrics – for instance Eastern Avenue River Railway Blues.

The early 20th Century Hobo Folksinger Itinerant features but tonally Walkers perspective is different, perhaps more urbane, positing the protagonist trapped within the urban wasteland seeking escape through the boxcar. More later perhaps: I have to take a deeper look inside Walker`s catalogue. In (a lazy) comparison the Dylan protagonist would be moving or not moving from an opposite direction.

“Where another man`s life might begin is exactly where mine ends.”  I am a Lonesome Hobo, Bob Dylan.

Dylan positions the OUTSIDER within the traditional outsider contexts. Riding the rails.

Click here for some great articles on Dylan`s use of melody, lexicon, voice, blues tradition etcetera & are easier to consume than Michael Gray`s exhaustive Song and Dance Man III. Radiohead by contrast position the outsider existentially within all of us and more occasionally it seems within a technology that is at the root of this loss of self, disconnection, otherness. If not at the root technology serves, as in Iron Lung to highlight the futility and tragedy of the human condition. Technology that serves as a control mechanism through surveillance, technology that replaces metaphysics? Escaping an existential life of Orwellian nightmare seems only possible in the In Rainbows song Videotape through suicide perhaps? (“I can`t do it face to face”) or death with videotape judgement or a video record in (8-bit) red, blue and green…is it syllogism?

Radiohead perhaps make their modernism plain through a vacuum where romantic ideals, icons, traditional themes and historicism would once have been evident but have been replaced by songs that metafictionally recreate a bleak, unwholesome, wasteland of soulless corporate control, governmental, terror, solipsism and lonely existentialism? There are echoes of the traditional gothic sublime across the In Rainbows recordings but as usual concrete themes seem obscure.

Briefly, it`s interesting to note the sense of the Sublime (Edmund Burke) in the Lyrics of Radiohead`s “In Rainbows”  – particularly  the use of gargantuan scale – there is “falling off” in three songs that I have noticed thus far.

This spatial exaggeration and use of outsized objects reminds me of  “Castle of Otranto” and “House of Leaves” (Mark Z. Danielewski / Horace Walpole respectively).

A house of cards, an organization, structure, consciousness even,  or plan that is weak, fragile and liable to collapse. Household objects suddenly take on vast proportions at a particular junction in the song:

“Fall off the table and get swept under” – House of Cards by Radiohead.

Similarly in “Weird Fishes”, which is highly spatial, the protagonist falls off the end of a (pre-copernican?) earth. There is also a parallel between Hendrix` “1983″ (Electric Ladyland side C) and “Weird Fishes” in overall schemata – escaping through immersion into the depths of the sea.

Listening to B-sides from several Radiohead singles – e.g. “Melatonin”, “Pearly”, “Lozenge of Love”, and  “A Reminder” the effect of the In rainbows record isn`t surprising at all. Stereogum.com suggest that “Radiohead’s lexicon is all about bureaucrats telling you you can’t succeed.”

If lyrically perhaps Dylan is singing the 20th century song of ideas – themes of money, women, class, race, politics etcetera, where would  a modern band like Radiohead be lyrically? Radiohead’s modern antihero illustrates/transforms the song of ideas into a song of images…? Have songs moved away from ideas to images? They would be closer to Paul Auster`s City of Glass than Frank Norris? ..maybe not.  Dylan`s seems to be interested in romantic ideals:

The 19th Century Western Pioneer, The early 20th Century Hobo Folksinger Itinerant, The enigmatic Poet,  Wordsmith and balladeer, a Pioneer of  “cosmic consciousness”, the political dissenter and Angry Young Man…There are degrees to which these stereotypes may have been imposed upon the artist, perhaps most wholly by the media….because, primarily the lexicography and musical style of Dylan reveals an understanding of blues and folk forms reinvented (lyrically) in the post war plastic of the 60`s. Dylan`s a good advert for intertextuality, but, times are increasingly intertextual. Is there a tendency in modern music lyrics toward ….anaesthetised, minimal, modern to the point of being hard, tableaux Keatsean samples for a world with a short attention span ?

I was reading Hank Williams blog about the music business here. Its an interesting page & Hank suggests that traditionally record labels act in a very fiscal sense, much like banks…..

Hank says “there are precious few artist that are anything close to successful (i.e. at minimum able to sustain themselves from just their artistry) without having had a label deal.”

Responses include the accurate and sharp:

“...this is because there are many artists who are not really artists… and they fail in ‘engaging’ their audience.They are romantic lifestylers whose communicative ability is too poor to even reveal that they have nothing much to communicate, other than their self-deluded visions of artistic significance. Their self-awareness is too meagre to allow them to see that their art is inspired by their inner emptiness…..

Given the masses of drivel that the creatively mute pump out, the real challenge is identifying the ‘real artists’ … the artists who perceive the world in a different way, and have the ability to communicate that and engage/enlighten their audience.”

And,

“In a related vein, a research aricle recently published by HBS found that the “long tail” phenom is a steeper curve – meaning the disparity between big artists and developing acts is even greater. All the choice creates too much noise in the system for most people – so even more just default to the hits.”

Plus,

“I think one of our biggest problems has been losing this relationship where record sales determined air play over the past couple decades.The funding model worked because it was a real meritocracy where cream could rise to the top. Nobody being able to afford cattle anymore puts a pretty big damper on the future for cream.”

This is what I have to say about THE COST ACCOUNTANT BLUES:

What`s happening here ? Too often people equate financial success with artistic merit. You either do what you love or you are wasting your time whether you get paid or not. What`s fascinating is doing what you want musically, when you want with no smallprint, no middleman, no obligations, no genre limitations, no debt, no big flash production &cetera….I think it`s called freedom but freedom/expression is not concomitant with quality. The unsigned bands want to be signed, the signed bands want to be unsigned – you have to laugh…And even the great and good sometimes miss the boat. Exactly how does Jandek pay the bills ?

Yes, there seems an awful lot of (money) great production skill invested into polishing artists – producers are the intelligent, skilled, elite here. We`ve all heard fantastic records from bands who can`t really even play – that`s production. But we also hear great records from highly talented artists of genuine capability.

Some artists get it all right somehow and none of it is as easy as anybody thinks.

And yes, the industry gives us some material that might be considered overly crass – but no-one forces you to listen to it. Supply and demand or Hype and Advertising – these are diminishing factors perhaps. Is the affordability of technology + cheap global publishing inversely proportional to a musical meritocracy ? Sounds like a specious contradiction to me. Okay we have a hyperconnected world with an almost infinitesimal multitude of choices and no discernible quality control. Is that not an improvement on the old fashioned paternal linear model where you tended to buy from a chart, or to put it more transparently, an oligarchy.

Maybe music shouldn`t be ceaselessly commoditised ? Record companies need to enter the “new conversation” that is occurring globally, but the nature of traditional companies themselves is now very much under threat. (Perhaps we are beyond No Logo and moved on into a realm of utter mistrust, or connectivity [?] means that we just don`t need or rely upon those dark satanic corporate mills any more ?).But then again, surely the cream will still always rise to the top. Will it become the place of the (formerly known as) “record companies” in these perilous future-times to begin to have to find and produce the most exciting, challenging and BEST new work ? Maybe not, find it yourself, IF YOU CAN, and pay less for it – sounds okay to me. But I know that Highway 61 Revisited cannot be recorded and produced in anyone`s bedroom, not even Bob`s.

So fundamentally nothing sounds as good as something that has been well produced – I take a terrible recording of a two dollar guitar with a weak vocal on a dodgy old-cassette to my producer. He plugs in a mic` gives me a decent plank to strum and 1 hour later we`ve got some very high quality audio, hooks, lines, he`s got the skills to pay the bills etcetera….

This model works: I go and get my inspiration, write, record low-fi, go back home, refine, compress, alter, play-around with my ideas, lyrically, musically, sonically etcetera but I cant get that magic production quality out of it without his input. Similarly he needs my song, chords, idea, hooks, lyrics, riffs etcetera to really get cooking. You find a producer who digs your material – you are onto a winner. He lives in a shiny, clean, hi-tech, capital city, with vast screens, bigger machines and chrome plated dreams – I spent the last 3 years living a loose, disorganised hobo-esque itinerant lifestyle on floors, besides rivers, in vans, on the road, drifting around a long way from home…you get the picture. I want to write songs with a sense of urgency, lyricism but also a sense of place / historicism, songs of time and place, narrative, and experience – you cant really do that withoutgetting out there, you have to experience something.

Can a company still survive delivering superior quality product amid a sea of mediocrity ? Hope so – because it makes a change from concentrating upon the bottom line + creating closed cyclic channels. As an aside; Radiohead cut the ropes/walked the plank and surely their label had previously aided their growth. That the label published a “best of” in some tawdry tit for tat retaliation simply proves that human nature doesn`t change even when the world does. People want money. People are deluded. People are greedy. People get lucky. Some people dont. Lets face facts: we live in an era of Bob Dylan coffee mugs and other kitsch – does Bob control this tawdry marketing of gewgaws? Surely not ? Does Bob care ? Who cares. No-one cares. Life is expensive, cheap and short – mortgages are long and stultifying. IS it nostalgia that suggests stars were real stars in days of yore and that nowadays they have been simmered, reduced, garnished and served vacuously up as mass market commoditised Pop Idol media fodder and being often, therefore, irrelevant crapola?