So, an occasional reminisce through the time vaults, back to the Dead Fly Rehearsal Rooms - the St Helens practice place of notoriety and legend, created and curated by myself and Bun - and a look at some of its clients.
Post Mortem were a Punk band from Rainhill, comprising of Dink on guitar, Paddy on bass, drummer Dave, and Mike on vocals - better known by his stage name Doctor Death.
Doctor Death wore a top hat and bore the black-and-white voodoo skull make-up of Baron Samedi from 'Live and Let Die'.
Their gigs were memorable affairs; Doctor Death was fond of dropping his keks and sticking the microphone up his arse - a routine that seldom endeared him to the other singer when they were the support band. I remember one show, when cries for an encore were refused on the grounds that, after soldiering on for some time with just the one, Dink no longer had any strings left on his guitar. Another time, Paddy played with a dead cat gaffer-taped to his leg. He'd found it by the side of the road on the way to the gig.
In 1985, a 'Live Aid' concert was organised at the St Helens Rugby Club, featuring local bands. My and Bun's band 'Academy of Unrest' played, along with many others (In From the Storm, Dixie Cartoon, The Saviours(?)..) and including Post Mortem, or so we thought.Then early on in the evening it was announced that they wouldn't be playing as Doctor Death had been in a serious car crash and rushed to hospital.
The show must go on and did, albeit under this black cloud. Some time later, the compere's speech about famine and Bob Geldof was cut short by a battered, concussed and probably medicated Doctor Death, who staggered down the aisle to the stage, head in bandages like Basil Fawlty in 'The Germans', and screamed "Rumours of my death are unfounded!"
They were no less unpredictable in the practice room. One time the good Doctor came to my office and said "Bri, when you have a minute, can you come to our room?", then bounded off again. A minute or so later, I went to see what they needed, and Doctor Death said "Oh, nothing. we've just all wiped our dicks over the door handle".
On another occasion, shortly after we'd put signs up in the rooms, kindly asking people to use the bins provided, I went in the room to find black scorch-marks up the wall where the poster had been.
The Post Mortem boys' explanation for this was "Spontaneous Combustion".
They ran me ragged with their antics, but behind their Marks Brothers chaos was a genuine affection for the poor sod running the practice rooms. The local music scene is less rich without such eccentric characters, with their songs about Myra Hyndley, and Doctor Death's idea of a love song - "I love my Mammy Baby, but she's got metal legs".
If anyone can correct me on the "facts" in this blog, please do so as it was some time ago, and the mind plays tricks...though not as many as Post Mortem did.
The Eyeball
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Monday, 19 January 2015
A Man out of Time
As I cruise along on the double-decker train towards Amsterdam for a well-deserved break and a Kraftwerk concert (OK, I admit it, I lost a little enthusiasm when Florian Schneider left, leaving only Ralf from the classic line-up, but it's still my favourite night out) I feel like a man out of time with his surroundings.
Swigging on a black beer can - once it was tattoos, but now the black can is the true mark of the outsider - the Ace of Spades of beers, (tattoos are so ubiquitous now they are as synonymous with rebellion as 'Songs of Praise') my recently acquired crombie type coat hanging by my side, replete with its leather collar and various zips, and writing in a notepad with a biro, I practically belong in a museum.
The girl sitting alongside me has a laptop on the go, and a smartphone in her lap, and keeps alternating between the two. One must have better connection or signal.
I do have a rather intelligent phone in my pocket, recently bequeathed to me by my wife, but I'm still a little shakey on how to access my stored contacts. I can ring out on it, but if it rings I don't know how to answer so I just call the person back.
Apparently this train has free wi-fi but the girl by my side is struggling to take advantage of it, so what chance do I have?
I feel like a simpleton, easily entertained by pen and paper, like a Victorian child spellbound by a hoop and stick, oblivious to the X-Box hanging out of the pocket of his tattered britches.
All around me, people are talking into little boxes, checking on restaurant reservations and tonight's plans. This steel mobile sausage presents no barrier to the bustling outside world. A few seats down some people are talking to each other; their batteries must need recharging.
Bowing to my own self-imposed social pressure, my second beer is a regular one, and with just over an hour to go before arrival, it's a question to ponder as to when to crack it.
The ticket guard suddenly appears, and to access my ticket I have to remove the smartphone thingy from my pocket, thus shattering the up to this point, well maintained illusion that I time travelled in from 1978.
Once he moves on I find that with a bit of poking around I suddenly have "trein wi-fi". Ya boo! Cyberspace girl, I'm hitchiking on the Information Superhighway! Suddenly I have Facebook access, yet I'm on a train! Does anyone have anything of any import to say or share? No. The novelty wears off and I'm strangely drawn back to the notebook and biro.
I crack the second can, regretting not buying another black beast, but enjoying the fact that I'm out of the soul-destroying Orwellian nightmare workplace for a few days, plus I'm meeting my wife and some old friends at the other end, so clattering out of the train like a sozzled tramp is not good form. I am not in the Poisoned Electrick Head anymore. The days of going through passport control on all-fours are behind me now.
We're going to "eat" - drinking's less interesting cousin. Evidently we grew up when I wasn't looking.
Swigging on a black beer can - once it was tattoos, but now the black can is the true mark of the outsider - the Ace of Spades of beers, (tattoos are so ubiquitous now they are as synonymous with rebellion as 'Songs of Praise') my recently acquired crombie type coat hanging by my side, replete with its leather collar and various zips, and writing in a notepad with a biro, I practically belong in a museum.
The girl sitting alongside me has a laptop on the go, and a smartphone in her lap, and keeps alternating between the two. One must have better connection or signal.
I do have a rather intelligent phone in my pocket, recently bequeathed to me by my wife, but I'm still a little shakey on how to access my stored contacts. I can ring out on it, but if it rings I don't know how to answer so I just call the person back.
Apparently this train has free wi-fi but the girl by my side is struggling to take advantage of it, so what chance do I have?
I feel like a simpleton, easily entertained by pen and paper, like a Victorian child spellbound by a hoop and stick, oblivious to the X-Box hanging out of the pocket of his tattered britches.
All around me, people are talking into little boxes, checking on restaurant reservations and tonight's plans. This steel mobile sausage presents no barrier to the bustling outside world. A few seats down some people are talking to each other; their batteries must need recharging.
Bowing to my own self-imposed social pressure, my second beer is a regular one, and with just over an hour to go before arrival, it's a question to ponder as to when to crack it.
The ticket guard suddenly appears, and to access my ticket I have to remove the smartphone thingy from my pocket, thus shattering the up to this point, well maintained illusion that I time travelled in from 1978.
Once he moves on I find that with a bit of poking around I suddenly have "trein wi-fi". Ya boo! Cyberspace girl, I'm hitchiking on the Information Superhighway! Suddenly I have Facebook access, yet I'm on a train! Does anyone have anything of any import to say or share? No. The novelty wears off and I'm strangely drawn back to the notebook and biro.
I crack the second can, regretting not buying another black beast, but enjoying the fact that I'm out of the soul-destroying Orwellian nightmare workplace for a few days, plus I'm meeting my wife and some old friends at the other end, so clattering out of the train like a sozzled tramp is not good form. I am not in the Poisoned Electrick Head anymore. The days of going through passport control on all-fours are behind me now.
We're going to "eat" - drinking's less interesting cousin. Evidently we grew up when I wasn't looking.
Thursday, 15 January 2015
Food for Thought
I read about a guy the other day who gave up food for Lent. Sounds extreme I know,when most people give up digestive biscuits or sugar in their tea. So how did he do it? He replaced food with Belgian Trappist beers, and was also allowed soup and fruit juice. It got me thinking, (oh boy did it, and am I in the optimum neck of the woods to try such a thing!), as to how much eating food is an automatic act; how little thought goes into it.
What if "they" discovered it was bad for you? Trends are moving towards super-nutrient foods like 'Soylent' (yes, named after the film Soylent Green, and it's grisly subtext, and much as I hate marketing men, Don Draper aside, that was a stroke of genius), and the instant knee-jerk reaction is, "Oh No! Your teeth would go blunt, your stomach would shrink to the size of a peanut and your jaw would hang slack like an interbred hillbilly squeal-like-a-pig retard.
But bizarrely, in this culture of fearmongering no-one ever worries about the strain eating might be putting on the body. With jogging addicts, their knees eventually pack in, manual workers have back problems in their later years, but with the digestive system we can hammer it non-stop, gastric juices bubbling away, chewing, swallowing, squeezing it out through the colon like an organic scatalogical toothpaste tube, and not expect a jot of wear and tear.
Seems to me the odd day of liquid diet could be a good thing (and before you start I don't mean down The Turk's Head Tavern). All proteins, nutrients and vitamins easily absorbed into the organism, nothing solid to break down.
Wind, indigestion, constipation, heartburn, nausea, lethargy - all symptoms of solid fuel. With liquid fuel you might float along, super efficient with boundless energy. I don't know, I'm just putting it out there.
And no-one says you have to give up the pleasure of eating, maybe a combination of the two. Maybe eating's got a bit high-fallutin full of itself. Imagine going to a petrol station where a series of overdressed preening flunkeys poured small amounts of diesel into your car at protracted intervals, from silver jugs, whilst cheesy music played under soft lighting, and the whole thing took three hours and cost three times as much.
Plus we're all guilty of eating only because we have to, absently cramming a piece of toast in while simultaneously stuffing clothes into a hold-all with one eye on the breakfast news.
Just some food for thought.
What if "they" discovered it was bad for you? Trends are moving towards super-nutrient foods like 'Soylent' (yes, named after the film Soylent Green, and it's grisly subtext, and much as I hate marketing men, Don Draper aside, that was a stroke of genius), and the instant knee-jerk reaction is, "Oh No! Your teeth would go blunt, your stomach would shrink to the size of a peanut and your jaw would hang slack like an interbred hillbilly squeal-like-a-pig retard.
But bizarrely, in this culture of fearmongering no-one ever worries about the strain eating might be putting on the body. With jogging addicts, their knees eventually pack in, manual workers have back problems in their later years, but with the digestive system we can hammer it non-stop, gastric juices bubbling away, chewing, swallowing, squeezing it out through the colon like an organic scatalogical toothpaste tube, and not expect a jot of wear and tear.
Seems to me the odd day of liquid diet could be a good thing (and before you start I don't mean down The Turk's Head Tavern). All proteins, nutrients and vitamins easily absorbed into the organism, nothing solid to break down.
Wind, indigestion, constipation, heartburn, nausea, lethargy - all symptoms of solid fuel. With liquid fuel you might float along, super efficient with boundless energy. I don't know, I'm just putting it out there.
And no-one says you have to give up the pleasure of eating, maybe a combination of the two. Maybe eating's got a bit high-fallutin full of itself. Imagine going to a petrol station where a series of overdressed preening flunkeys poured small amounts of diesel into your car at protracted intervals, from silver jugs, whilst cheesy music played under soft lighting, and the whole thing took three hours and cost three times as much.
Plus we're all guilty of eating only because we have to, absently cramming a piece of toast in while simultaneously stuffing clothes into a hold-all with one eye on the breakfast news.
Just some food for thought.
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