You're Gonna Burn!

One of the UK's dilemmas in past years was that all its best homegrown musical talent had gestated on the dole. Unemployment had given bands space to develop, time to reflect and a burning ambition to escape the confines of an otherwise routine life (depending on where they grew up).
So when Tony Blair was crowing about Cool Britannia and inviting the Gallagher brothers to Number 10, he was also making their like extinct by ushering in draconian benefit cuts.
The legacy of such policy decisions is clearly evident today as now we mostly have bands populated by Oxbridge toffs like Keane and Mumford and Sons. Hey ho!
Back in the 90s I was one such pre-Blair dole-ite soul. When the Dead Fly Studios closed its doors, I engaged in the quaint game of spending my time in creative activity (with Poisoned Electrick Head) whilst living on a pittance, then once a fortnight feigning an air of defeat and sub-intellect to sign for my sustenance. It was a cat and mouse affair, the canny approach being to just to play along with every new incentive - Jobclub weeks, interviews and eventually Work Placement. After a week of preparatory CV writing, workshops and badly executed state brainwashing, we were offered a list of participating host enterprises. My pal and drummer Bill, was also in this intake of unmentionables (which alleviated the boredom factor immeasurably) and opted for Parks and Gardens,being an outdoor physical kind of guy and imagining (quite rightly) that it afforded many possibilities of bunking off for unscheduled fag breaks, between the leaves sweeping.
I myself opted for Arts and Crafts at the Community Centre (as PEH guitarist Phil was already there, producing items to be sold for charity). It was the kind of work normally carried out by prisoners of her majesty (lower case deliberate) or the mentally handicapped.
At this stage in time we had collectively released two albums,one of which had charted at number 11 in the Indie Charts, but we could not speak of this and had to play dumb; an act all involved were happy to buy into.
Upon arrival in the Craft Room, I was shown the various activities, and introduced to one I knew little about having never tried it - Pyrography. The friendly but somewhat patronising woman in charge of new inmates demonstrated this new art to me, by grabbing a scrap piece of wood and sellotaping a piece of paper onto it. The paper bore a crude image of an owl on it and I mean crude. She then took a machine,equally basic, consisting of a metal box with a cable attached to it. On the end of the cable was a pen-like appendage with a thin metal tip. On the box were a numbered dial and a big switch, which when she clicked it on, glowed red, as did the wire tip of the pen. She explained with great seriousness that the dial must always be set to seven. Always seven, not six, not eight, seven. She then commenced to follow the lines of the owl with the pen, the heat of the tip burning through the paper and onto the wood. Plumes of smoke swirled up as the red tip scorched its way round, and when she'd finished you know what was on the wood? A crude picture of an owl and I mean crude.
She handed me the tool and told me to get a feel for it for a while, so I grabbed an offcut and began playing with the device. Despite the ominous warnings, hordes of Satan's undead didn't rise up through the floor when I adjusted the dial, it simply made it hotter or colder. It was an odd thing, like a pencil but backwards somehow. If you kept it still it made a big black mark but if you kept it moving it you could create shading, slowing down to get darker tones. You could do dot-shading, lines,cross hatching, but if you drifted off the smoke would float up and it was ruined. you could even blow on the tip to cool it down while you got your position. I was hooked.
I asked the boss woman if I could do my own design and she said sure, just photocopy a picture;they had carbon paper to trace an outline onto the wood. In my lunch break I went to the newsagents and bought a music mag (the now defunct 'Select' if I remember well). I scoured the pages and found a great black and white shot of The Prodigy's Keith Flint. Well he's a firestarter I thought so why not?
Then I set to work, spending as long as I could on the tracing part despite itching to get to the burning stage.
As long as you were doing something they left you alone, probably figuring it kept you off the streets commiting crimes and doing drugs, and somebody might buy your efforts, so I worked undisturbed for a few hours. After a while the boss woman came to check on me, "So how are you getting o..ooo...eeee..errr!" Then she bounded off and moments later came back with the manager of the Community Centre. They both stood staring at the wood and then at me. I was either a witch or the Jimi Hendrix of the pyrography tool. The manager then loudly announced that no-one but me was to go near that machine for the rest of my stay, which I then passed happily burning away.
They gave me MDF to work with (a semi-synthetic chipboard material), the fumes of which, I've since discovered are carcinogenic, so there's a lawsuit waiting to happen when I get around to it.
Staff members of the building would come to me brandishing photos of family members, footballers and pets, and I was free to create pictures for myself or for friends.
One bloke I knew in gainful employment, asked me to do one for his daughter, saying he would pay me what it was worth. Upon receiving it he asked me to furnish him with a supplier and a price for one of the machines and he would buy me my own. The centre gave me the details and despite the seventy quid price tag he didn't bat an eyelid, he just said I needed to have one, then went off and got it. This gesture of kindness, humanity, vision and a host of other stuff has never been forgotten even if his name has (I think it was Keith, you've all met his like, unassuming, shy, heart the size of a planet) and I can't thank him enough.
So, irony of ironies, I came out of my work placement with a new skill (which I still practice to this day), and despite the government rhetoric, that was NEVER their intention with these things, they just inadvertantly picked on the wrong guy.

Life is a Mini-Series

Recently I've started identifying with the stuff I'm doing, or even worse, letting it identify me. In the past my attitude was " It's all a big adventure story and I'm the leading character" - like those comics you could have made where you put your kid's photo on a superhero's body, and all the dialogue said "Hey! (insert kid's name here) We have to save the Earth!" and the kid had the same expression in every frame.

I used to buzz off the strange situations I found myself in, whether it be explaining UK culture to a room full of different nationalities, or doing 'The Full Monty' on the roof of a Spanish restaurant, or being pelted with human shit by Dutch anarchist squatters, or doing a crappy job knocking on doors at night in bad weather, or suddenly coming to in a chair in the car park of a Superclub, dressed as a robot.

I used to think I did these things so I would have a wealth of after-dinner anecdotes I could trot out in mixed company, thus making myself appear interesting and exotic (and that is nice sometimes), but I realise now I do them for my own benefit because my life is a mini-series, and I'm not only the lead role but the scriptwriter and director as well. And unlike the viewers, I don't have the option to change channels or switch off, I just have to accept that Season 3 isn't a patch on the one before, and hope that the storylines pick up again...and while I'm not averse to the odd ratings-boost ploy, I'm not wild about so many main characters being killed off lately if I'm honest.

But pick up they will, believe you me, unless I start acting my age, thinking I am my job, and forgetting how to buzz off the most ordinary and everyday things, as well as the oddball and bizarre.
Because they're happening to me, in my very own mini-series.

Childhood's End

It wasn't finding out there was no Father Christmas, or hearing my father use the 'F' word at a long pub urinal when he was talking to my Uncle Les at a family wedding, little realising I was further along in earshot (he's never to my knowledge uttered a single profanity in the family home, despite forty years in the glass factory, where I'm sure it was obligatory...a man of principle).

No. The day my childhood truly died was just a few weeks after the man in question did the same - Jimmy Saville.
To understand the collossal impact of him you have to have grown up in the late 60s/early 70s. He was the wacky presenter of Top Of The Pops, already standing out as a bizarre cigar-toting peroxide bug eyed one-off amongst his bearded Blue Peter presenter-type colleagues.
And then there was 'Jim'll Fix It' -  a TV show where he used his God-like influence to make kids' dreams come true, with a wave of cigar smoke and a winning charm. The most striking thing about him is that he just "was". Other celebrities had achieved fame through some skill or role (though these days, the situation has reversed itself, with deplorable people lunging straight at celebrity status, thinking the rest will fill itself in as they go along), but Jimmy's skill was being Jimmy Saville. A role he excelled at - the millionaire with the common touch, a charmer of young and old, rich and poor, who consorted with royalty, government ministers and celebrities. A psychedelic Mother Theresa who devoted his life to charitable works, at the personal expense of wife and children and the rest, tirelessly jogging the length and breadth of the UK to rase money for sick kids.
When he died I was truly upset, feeling we'd lost a decent altruistic and unique human being.

Everybody knew him, or felt they did. He was a benign mischeivous sprite who could go anywhere and was welcome everywhere, because for him the normal rules didn't apply. He'd "effortlessly" rewritten them, then sat back smoking a big cigar like he owned the planet.
Maybe he'd observed how people in foam-rubber animal suits at theme parks could grab, tickle and do as they pleased, and transformed himself into the human equivalent. A simple trick, but one which gave him an All-Areas Pass to the highest echelons of Society and Power, and once invited in there, they were all guilty by association, for how could they admit they'd willingly welcomed in The Beast?
Fame and Privilege are mere suits to put on, but the truly evil weild a power that transcends the acting and is bone-marrow deep. Like Rasputin, The Mafia and The Krays before him, Saville part charmed and part intimidated his way in. They would now have us believe that like a vulgar gatecrasher at a Society Ball, he was tolerated rather than cause a scene ejecting him.
Princes, Heads of State and Media Moguls didn't have the slightest idea that he was preying on the sick, vulnerable and innocent like a depraved peroxide vampire. Which means they either are woefully unfit for the positions they hold, or that they knew all along and didn't really care, after all it was only us at risk.
Now howzabout that then guys and gals?

1978 - White Dopes on Punk

Compiling a 1978 New Wave radio show recently got me thinking about those days, back when I was fourteen. I was too young for Punk's genesis (how often do you see those two words together?) in 1976 and its explosion in 1977. Oh, I knew about it; it was in the Daily Mirror, but I'm pretty sure I was at a Jubilee street party when the Pistols were commandeering a boat down the Thames playing 'God Save the Queen'. I wouldn't have forgone free butties and pies to show alliegance to a pop record, not at thirteen.
But it was 1978 when I started tuning in - when kids at school were telling you smugly that it was already all over. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? But how could it be all over? Great records were still coming out , though you had to be careful who you declared your love of a Buzzcocks song to. Punk, despite being supposedly all over was an exclusive club; they'd paid the membership subs and the doors were closed. And ironically Punk also belonged to the bully boys and knuckleheads who saw it as a glorification of violence. You couldn't just "like" Punk, you had to "be" a Punk and cover your blazer in safety pins, headbutt a teacher and set fire to the bike sheds.

It was a confusing time. Despite our non-proximity to London, and no-one being remotely old enough, if you hadn't seen the Pistols at The 100 club or The Screen on the Green in '76, you weren't fit to burn. Yet at the same time, comedy punk songs like 'Jilted John' and 'Kill' by Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias were taken at face value and treated with the same reverence as Anarchy in the UK.
Nobody had much of a quality filter, we just wanted Punk and if it was on pink vinyl even better.

Once I was seen as a black-market purchaser from the older lads I was accepted and allowed in, no bondage keks required. And My God! It was exciting! Certain records were elevated to Holy Grail status - New Rose, Spiral Scratch, Anarchy on EMI. I bought 'Damned Damned Damned' from a guy who a year earlier wanted nothing more than to beat me senseless, yet here we were meeting furtively in the corridor, examining the merchandise - Stiff Records, authentic! Money changing hands. I remember physically shaking from that encounter, not from the fear of this underworld dealing but from the sheer excitement generated by the disc I held in my hands.

You could pledge alliegance to the groups you loved with little badges on your blazer lapels, and furious debates raged about which groups were "Punk" or not. Were the Ramones Punk? Then how come they looked like rockers and had (eeek!) long hair? And The Tubes? They had a song about punks but it sounded like Glam Rock. It was a veritable minefield. Then once 1979 kicked in it got really complicated. The Jam, were they suddenly Mod now? The Specials and Two Tone, I like it but that's Mod too and we are genetically predisposed to hate them...no, it's Ska, that's alright. The Human League, Tubeway Army, and where the hell were Devo coming from?
But it was all good and in the end we decided we were just gonna like what we liked, screw the tribal dividing lines that the grebos and gimps clung to desperately, and screw the disdain of the rugger buggers - they were all into Yes and Elton John anyway. Yup, 1978 a mighty fine year!

Kroft Original

My biggest fear as a kid was being ordinary. Every story involved a kid who people thought was ordinary, but he had some secret power or key to a hidden world. He could transform, become microscopic, converse with inanimate objects, jump somehow into a painting and interact with its inhabitants and have epic adventures, yet when he came back he'd only been gone half an hour. Gran, or Great Uncle Silas or someone (they never lived with their parents these kids - always some eccentric relative) would say, "Oh there you are! Been to the park have we?" without looking up, engrossed in a dusty encyclopedia, in a study with a table-globe and a parrot.

That's what I wanted. I needn't have worried, as kids we were anything but ordinary. Heriditary genetics had blessed us with crazy afro hair, in a Northern town with an ethnic population of zero. And there were five of us. My sister was the oldest, and being a girl, long curly hair was an advantage, but not so for four little lads in the 70s. We may as well have had targets on our backs. Plus we lived in what was arguably the roughest street in town - Raglan Street.
The kid next door was named 'Boo Boo'; that's how his parents addressed him! His mam would shout him in from the street, "Boo Boo! Get here! Your tea's ready!" His inexplicably conventionally-named younger brother Eddie was the archetypal weasely henchman, there to egg him on and revel in his beastly acts. Years later I picked up a local newspaper and there was Boo Boo looking out at me. He'd escaped from prison custody on a hospital visit and the public were being warned not to approach him.

Probably also to blame for my yearnings for special-ness were the Kroft Brothers - not some other local psychos, but creators of mindbending 60s kids' TV. HR Pufnstuf was their most famous show but they made some others; all involving the ordinary kid in the magical world.

Maybe it's not too late for me. I'm staring at this can of beer right now on the train and the ring-pull is a goatee-bearded wise cyclops beckoning me in. Suddenly I miniaturise and I'm whooshed down the hole to 'BeersVille'. I meet freaky animated characters like Mayor Froth, the Bubbles Bunch and the Hip Hop Hops (who do a rap every episode, Oompa Loompa style), who all live on Yeaster Island in the middle of the Golden Sea.
"He came from The Hole in the Sky! Maybe he can explain why our world keeps getting smaller with The Great Tippy Tippy Ness!" The Hip Hop Hops fire up on cue -
"Once there was darkness/ then there was light/ and the bubbling fizzyness raged all night/ 'til The Great Tippy Tippy Ness swept it away/ as The Hole in the Sky gets further away".
I don't know what to tell the little guys. A few swigs and it could all be over, we won't even make it to a second season, let alone a trilogy. There will be no Lord of the Ring Pulls.

Well it could be worse Mayor Froth. In a distant universe far far away, there's an abandoned half-drunk can at a student party with a cig-butt in it, whose inhabitants live on it, and fret about the steady loss of fizz. The rich live on the bouyant filter end, the less affluent on the white bit, and only a fool would venture towards the deadly strands...

Wind Up Working in a Call Centre

'Wind Up Working in a Gas Station' - Frank Zappa

The Zappa song title could be applied to any dead-end job, but lends itself particularly well to the Call Centre - it even has the same number of syllables (and note to the Zappa estate, I'm quoting the song title, not the lyrics, so you can't have all my worldly goods and my first-born just yet).
They are the Dante's Inferno of gainful employment, but like schools and prisons, also a fascinating laboratory of Life. And now I find myself working in one. Go figure, as they say Stateside.
So what are the downsides? The staff? No, all human life is there, especially if multiple languages are involved. The hours? Yeah, well they can suck but thankfully weekends are no longer required at my place. The bosses? Go figure. The customers? Bingo!
I work with the UK market so we're dealing with a particular strain of warped. And it's not their fault. In the past the Brits were the best customers on the planet, polite to the point of self-harm. Even if they weren't happy with the service, if a waitress asked if everything was alright, they would trot out "Oh yes thanks!" in a knee-jerk Pavlovian auto-response with plastic smiles, then grumble and mutter as she walked away.
And then the BBC stepped in. At first there was a quirky 70s show that dealt with consumer rights called 'That's Life'. It tried hard to be serious and outraged about shoddy builders and non-existent refunds, but couldn't help slipping into self parody and eye-rolling,and then after sniggering at bawdy misprints in newspaper ads, a man came on with a yorkshire terrier that could say "sausages".

Then along came Anne Robinson with her show 'Watchdog'. Consumer rights now outranked human rights on every Home Counties suburban fridge-magnet agenda. You had a right to good service and if you didn't get it you could bloody well insist on it - and that's swearing! Suddenly the meek weren't just inheriting the Earth, they were demanding a discount on the wonky extension they'd had built on it. Anne was so good at playing frosty House Matron that they gave her her own quiz show (The Weakest Link), transforming her into a Nazi-Dominatrix-Darth Vader. Believing her own hype, she rapidly developed from being playfully stern to outright offensive to contestants, accusing the fat girl of eating her own body weight in pies, and baiting the Goth for lack of social skills. But she doesn't mean it viewers because she always gives us that saucy theatrical wink at the end.

Now the Watchdog generation are firmly entrenched. I can hear it over the phone, from the multi-tasking mother of three who addresses the entire world like they're a dozy teenager who didn't put his sports kit in the wash basket. She's crying out for a t-shirt that says "As if I don't have enough to do already!" She needs this item for her son's birthday, that's why she only ordered it two days ago. The condescending veiled insults and audible sighs soon give way to frustration, blame-shifting, ultimatums and abuse.
The Mackie-D generation have been programmed to expect their slightest whim to be catered for, or God Dang! They'll go elsewhere! The sheer miracle of clicking a few buttons on the tube on the way home, and voila it's ordered, paid for and on its way, seems to have passed them by. Thank God I live in a country where customer service consists of being barely tolerated and largely ignored.

Yellow Dog Day Afternoon

Riding into work on the train on a balmy hot day in what some might call Indian Summer, I saw a yellow dog lounging on a shed roof in the sunshine. It was a brief glance, but enough to make out a contented languishing beast, who'd realised that on a day like this there were few better things to do than kick back, relax and watch the world go by.
I envied him his wisdom and lack of agenda.What thoughts go through a yellow dog's mind when basking on a low sloping roof? Nostalgic reveries of puppyhood? What he was was going to eat later? (Ah! Dogfood! Excellent!). Fear of the future? (What am I gonna do when I can no longer fetch the stick?).
No, I think we can surmise that it was none of these things, he wasn't fretting over doing, not done and to do, he was just being dog, and that's what I envied about him the most (and no, I don't yearn to lick my own balls and shit in the street, you lot at the back are always lowering the tone...)

As a postscript, he'd sneaked into my life earlier when the night before, on a TV quiz that rewards obscure knowledge (Pointless, BBC, if you're interested), the question was - Name the bands with colours in their name that recorded these songs. Amongst the Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath titles was an obscure track called 'Just One More Night', by you've guessed it (as I did!) 'Yellow Dog'. (My wife was duly impressed at my recollection of this obscure number).

As a post-postscript, I compile a monthly New Wave streaming radio ('Totally Wired', at Radio Rectangle, if you're interested) and guess what track I played? Yep, that obscure Deep Purple B-side - 'I Can Lick My Own Balls'.

Pistols at Dusk (vintage post - 2010)

If you're a regular reader of my blog (who am I kidding?) you may recall last week, refering to Les Ardentes festival I said: "the odds of some paranoia-fuelled face-painted diplomatic incident are raised threefold. " Have a look, it was in the previous post. Never mind the public, I should read it on a regular basis and save myself some grief. But any way here's how it panned out...
"You'll always find us out to lunch"
I spent the Sunday in a variety of suits, jackets etc. introducing the bands, and always took a moment to introduce myself to the artist(s), asking if they had any special requirements to include. Most of them just said do what you want, the introduction concept is alien to the U.K. certainly and probably other places, but in mainland Europe it's a tradition. Either way, I met polite friendly people who appreciated being consulted, and felt I was doing my job with some finesse. It helped that I was English as well, as most of the bands were UK/US origin.
I'd been dying to silver up and present bands in my current 'Android 80' look, but the fierce temperatures throughout the weekend prevented it, until after seven pm on the last day.
When I hit the stage as chrome-headed saville row-bot it went down a storm, but it's not like a hat that you can take off, once in place it's there for the night, so I spent the time between spots waliking amongst the crowd.
After introducing 'Archive' I had the best part of two hours before introducing P.I.L., and it had been intimated to me that no introduction was necessary on their part. So, I figured let's find out and if that's the case, then I'll hit the shower and enjoy the show. I went backstage and found the P.I.L. dressing rooms. They were flimsy pre-fab cabins and it was easy to look through the gap between door and wall to see inside, and all three were empty. Obviously it was dinner time, so I returned to the festival and watched a bit of the show.
"There's no point in asking you'll get no reply"
Common sense would've left it at that, but if truth be known I wanted to meet John Lydon and I'd been nipping at the Jack Daniels all day, so off I trooped to the dressing rooms again.
Upon arriving I peeked in the first and saw naught but a booze-strewn table (sorry this is all going a bit Goldilocks...well more Silverhead and the three punks), in the second a member of the band seemed to be throwing something over the partition, and in the third Mr Lydon was throwing it back. His laughing expression was that of a child blissfully lost in playful reverie, my trepidation had been unfounded, I was in for another pleasant encounter. Wrong. I knocked on the door and it flimsily swung open. He came toward me and I said "Scuse me John..." His expression went through a range of confusion, rage, outrage and confusion again all in a matter of seconds before settling into the one we all know and love. I'd not even considered my appearance, having been like that for the last four hours, but I'm sure it didn't help matters. He gave me the look - you know the one, that paint-stripping venomous stare immortalised in the "Anarchy..." clip, then started shouting "Out! Out! Out!" I stuttered to explain, he cut me off with "Leave! and I'm being polite..." but his face was saying run for your life.
I left.
20 minutes later I found myself at the back of the stage, still not knowing if my services were required, but unable to leave in case they should be, and frankly not relishing the next few minutes. The band and entourage arrived in one car, and a guy known as Rambo began clearing the area of dispensable personnel. Myself and the stage manager were allowed to stay. A second car arrived and J.L. emerged, climbing the steps and pacing like a caged animal. He made no eye contact with anyone, then I was swiftly directed centre -stage to say my piece. I gave them a rousing introduction then legged it...

Surburban Robot album (vintage post - 2010)

Finally finished the solo album a few weeks ago and the finished master with some little changes was done at the weekend. It will be released in October on Freaksville records and here's a track by track guide :
ED BISHOP: An instrumental opener in honour of the platinum-haired actor who portrayed Ed Straker in the cult Gerry Anderson show ‘U.F.O.’ Ed fought alien invaders from a secret nerve centre beneath a film studios, surrounded himself with catsuit-clad space vixens and drove a De Lorean before they existed. He also smoked and drank like a space-age Richard Harris. This eerie tune encapsulates 70s kids’ TV weirdness in all its demented glory.
POP IDOL: A cautionary torch song tale of TV talent show desperation. A scabrous vitriolic attack on today’s wannabee instant fame culture delivered in a velvet-gloved cabaret croon. Susan Boyle meets Kurt Cobain in ITV hell.
PUNK’S NOT DEAD: A Glitter Band electro stomp, reminiscent of early Human League, putting the boot into shallow capitalist culture, designer labels and the slow eradication of individualism.
DAVID BOWIE HAD A DISCOTHEQUE: An instant disco dancefloor classic, documenting Bowie’s uber-cool club, staffed entirely by pop celebrities. A cheeky nod to Ottowan’s ‘D.I.S.C.O’, the Trammps’ ‘Disco Inferno’ and Georgio Moroder’s ‘I Feel Love’. Featuring Clairvoyant on lead vocal.
V.I.P.: A swipe at the heady seductive atmosphere lurking behind the all-areas-pass. Where being very important can be yours… at a price. So rub shoulders with the band and cast disparaging looks at the oiks below in the regular seats, while sipping Moet & Chandon from crystal flutes.Just don’t forget your wristband.
SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK BLUES: Bob Dylan’s classic tune of drug-raid paranoia, re-tooled by the replicants from ‘Blade Runner’ and put in a blender with Sonic the Hedgehog, and Devo played at twice the speed. Johnny’s in the basement,eating Soylent Green…
GAME OVER: Android gets serious with a sombre view of the dystopian future that the powers that be seem determined to usher in, with or without our consent. A wake-up call for the media-drugged masses before we’re all bar-coded, neutered and monitored 24/7 by a Big Brother state so insidious that death will be an escape and freedom a distant memory. I’m not shitting you, and I can’t stop it on my own, so switch off ‘Britain’s got Talent’ and switch on your survival instincts.
WE LOVE DRUGS: Don’t we just. Whether we revel in their legality while it lasts, or pour scorn and condemnation on those who choose the ones that have fallen out of favour, altered consciousness is not going away. Your legally elected moral representative, through the current governmental system is probably high as a kite in a back room somewhere, laughing at us as we speak; if he can. The hypocrisy is laughable at best, so enjoy this bad trip tune exploring the dark side of psychic surfing. It was a lot of fun to put this side to music. On the next album I’m going to explore the positive side, unless they jail me first.
IT’S JUST A RIDE: And at the end of it all it’s just a ride isn’t it? Bill Hicks summed it all up succinctly. It’s just a ride. Powerful people are putting all their lifes’ energies into ruining yours. Dickheads. They will die as surely as we will and their only legacy will be mass-induced misery. Knobheads. Fuck them and enjoy the ride with your family and friends. A euphoric two-fingers instrumental with a smile to close the album.
Feedback has been positive from the PUNK'S NOT DEAD radio edit, less so from Belgian radio stations who are reluctant to play it, but this we expected. Nonetheless we continue to push and cajole contacts in mediaworld.
(Surburban Robot will be re-released in October 2014)

Dour Festival with UFO Goes UFA (vintage post - 2008)

Being frontman with 'UFO goes UFA' is big on laughs. You get to wear your own costume, write your own lyrics, record, release and perform, with all the ease of a Playstation game, except it's for real.
My accidental encounter with the Freaksville label made all this possible, and led to a hassle-free project that we improvised on the hoof, recorded at lightspeed and inexplicably got Kramer of Butthole Surfers/Ween/Galaxie 500 fame to produce.
In the same renegade spirit, gigs materialised, which we approach with the same wild-eyed abandon. One of which was Belgium's Dour Festival, in its 20th anniversary and surely the country's best loved and most eclectic outdoor extravaganza. I had a one-day pass in my pocket intended for my wife that i'd been unable to give away, so I was looking for hardship cases by the entrance but sadly found none - well not the entrance we had to use, but there was some poor soul picking up rubbish by waste containers. It's not all glamour backstage.
We were due to play at 13:00 on the Saturday, arguably not the best slot, but what the hell, a big tent and that vast expanse of stage that major label artists consider home, yet to us mere mortals appears obscenely spacious.
Food was well organised for participating acts, but involved a minibus ride to a local school and a sit-down meal, and as we had an hour to play with, including soundcheck, we decided to venture onsite for a quick burger. I'm not one for eating much before a gig, frankly my digestive system goes into fight or flight mode, so i opted for a banana from the Fruit Stall. Imagine my consternation when it emerged it was a "Smoothie fruit drink" experience. I eyed the fruit enviously, pleaded my case as an artist in a tight corner, and like Eddie Murphy in 'Beverly Hills Cop' got a free banana through guile and charm (you don't remember? he stuffs it up somebody's exhaust pipe to incapacitate the car - me, i just ate the bastard, and it hit the spot -they even threw in a free strawberry )
Back at the stage we did a quick soundcheck, and ritually my arse went. Don't mock, it's a terrifying prospect treading the boards, fear keeps you sharp. It also has you running to the nearest backstage portaloo, which unlike onsite is relatively clean and well stocked with loo roll.
But not this one, strange, it had been earlier. Time was ticking and it dawned on me that my only option was the ticket with a street value of 40 euros, though at that moment its value was immeasurably higher.
I'm not proud of it but you need this kind of irony to give you some onstage edge, especially as my exit collided with a girl with armfulls of bog -roll to restock it.
We rolled out to an audience of none -somewhere in the second number somebody remembered to remove the barrier they erect at night to close off that part of the site, and then people began to trickle in. They mostly stayed, and we even got an encore.
I'm pleased, it was a hell of a gig for that time of the day, and afterwards we did some interviews for TV and Radio, where we talked utter bollocks, because we're not a "real band", but in so many ways that liberty makes us 10 times "real-er" than most.

Mr Sunnyshine

Mr Sunnyshine crawled out of my psyche one day. He's a monkey of the fez-wearing cymbal-playing variety, and he runs a bar in my house. When I'm out. His regular customers are the Pea and the Bean, the Pig in Jeans (who mis-heard a Stevie Wonder lyric - "Ma Cherie Amour, pretty as a pig in jeans") and the local feral cats Meringue and Sooty.
Like all bars, trouble can sometimes flare up (often in the form of the Cheese Brothers) but bouncer Jimmy the Hotdog - a terra-cotta coloured rolled-up mattress from under the stairs, can take care of business. There's also Mouth, a wooden statue from Botswana who writes lyrics for Coldplay.
So where did all this come from? Well, my wife was suffering from acute depression and I was trying all kinds of spirit-lifting ploys to bolster the pharmaceutical efforts. So I came up with a little song:
A little green pea lived on a dish
with his friend Eugene a little red bean
and they rolled on the dish next to the spoon
and every night they looked at the moon
and the moon said
little green pea come and live with me
and little red bean you can come too
so they slid down the spoon and landed on the moon
and everybody had some tea
Then one morning we were watching TV in bed, and a shaft of sunlight came glinting through the window, just as a toy monkey was onscreen. My cry of "It's Mr Sunnyshine" was mis-construed, but in a joyously cosmic way.
The rest is history, as is a scrappy cartoon strip that I recently found again, having written it off as lost when moving house.
So it seems Mr Sunnyshine may be due for a comeback...

Hippie!

It's a long story (and one I won't go into now) but some years back I found myself in the enviable job of stage presenter at Belgian music festival 'Les Ardentes', an event of no small consequence, with big name artists (Morrissey, Pharrell, PIL). My role, then as today; simply to introduce the acts dressed in whatever bizarre outfit I could conjure up.
This year me and Laurent, my co-presenter, decided to dress as hippies for a Brazilian psych band 'Boogarins'. After re-enacting the Woodstock "Give me an F, give me a U" speech to a small bemused lunchtime crowd, we ambled offstage and I decided to stay and watch some of the excellent band.
My outfit consisted of striped elastic pants, boots, a purple eye-wrenching psychedelic shirt, ethnic waistcoat, various belts, buckles and beads, aviator shades, and topped off with a blonde Brian Jones wig with flowery bandana. I looked the dog's bollocks - the height of Astbury.
With some hours to spare before changing for the next act I decided to wander around the site for a bit, and that's when a strange thing happened. A beatific bliss descended on me. I was at a rock festival and my attire seemed to channel the primal seminal spirit of the Summer of Love. My gait became loose, my mood euphoric, my mind unshackled from trivial concerns. Refracting sunshine bounced through my shades and I simply wanted to love everyone. The people I encountered smiled at me, digging the vibe.
Festivals today are rife with sponsorship and brand whore plugging, tugging at the kids with promotional trinkets - mobile phone hats, temporary soft drink tattoos, selfie booths, but for a few hours I felt like the real spirit of festival was emanating from me like some walking time-portal from 1960s San Francisco.I wanted us all to twist,groove and frug in an acid daze, because, damn' wasn't that the idea?
Professionalism won out in the end, as I had other work to do (lots of it mad, fun and plain bonkers) and I had to prise myself out of that costume,but I could've stayed in that get-up all day man.

Khan's Oot !

I always thought "burying the bone" was a euphemism, but in "The Free Republic of Outremeuse" (a bohemian quarter over the river) they take it to a whole other level. The 15th of August (The Assumption) is predominantly a Catholic feast, but here, some centuries ago it mutated into a three day pagan folkloric blow-out drinking orgy.
On the day of the 15th, giant puppets of historical figures lumber down the streets - Charlemagne, Bishops and Kings, and local folk-hero Tchantches - a mineworker born between two cobblestones in the 8th century (there's a statue on the spot). His hobbies include drinking Peket and headbutting.
Ah! Peket! The local gin variant, now flavoured to disguise its rank taste. During the Quinze Aout the streets of Outremeuse run with the stuff, every bar, café and shop window heaves with thimble-size plastic glasses of every hue. Five for six euros, six for five euros, who knows? Who cares, just throw it down your neck, we'll be well oiled in no time and bouncing off the walls of the narrow streets.
Brass bands play cacophonous dissonant tunes, like that scene in 'Animal House' when Stork leads the marching band down a cul-de-sac, trombones buckling against the walls. Sousaphones are fitted with beer holders. Do they ever play when they're not seeing double? And they don't just mangle the classics, suddenly they're squeezing out a sozzled version of 'Seven Nation Army', the trumpeters playing one-handed, the other clutching a plastic glass of pilsner and a hangover. Should've taken it easy the night before, but nobody does on the 14th; everyone's a flailing mess.
On the 16th it's the last day of the festival, tinged with sadness. So to mark the occasion they stage a mock funeral. "Mati l'Ohe" (Matthew the Bone), a pig's bone, is carried out in his own miniature casket, a bottle of peket beside him.
The gathered throng outside the Tchantches Museum are dressed in funeral attire - frockcoats, top hats, lace and veils. Beefy cross-dressing men ham it up (no pun intended Matty) as grieving widows. Every mourner is armed with that essential requiem accessory - a stick of celery. Matty appears with his cortège and the fake sobbing and wailing begins. The funeral band play a sombre death march, which suddenly changes into a new Orleans carnival stomp, as two hundred sticks of celery are held aloft in unison and waved frantically. It's like 'Live and Let Die' meets 'Day of the Triffids'.
A meandering stop-start procession ensues, the band leading the way (God help us). Random stops are made for no reason, other than to whirl Matty 'round in a vortex of celery stalks and Oom Pah Pah.
Eventually he reaches his final resting place in front of the Tchantches statue, where he is ceremoniously cremated, amid red smoke bombs, much pretend weeping and more peket.

If you ever find yourself in Liège in mid-August, put on your best black suit, grab a stick of celery and get down to the "Quinze Aout", you won't look at the Virgin Mary quite the same again.