Lost Dog, Cockfosters Road

I saw your dog this afternoon, big old guy, heading towards Hadley Wood Road along Cockfosters Road. I couldn't find your house to tell you.
Hope you find him.

Pussy Riot: Feminist Sunday Breakfast Posting

Hats off to Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot for actively challenging Putin- how brave they are! I know there is a strong belief in Russia that the elections were rigged but it's a scary place to say so, and two of the band have been jailed (for hooliganism, I think). They have broken into churches, the Kremlin, you name it, and performed in the name of protest; and now the Church has come out in favour of them.
This is what punk was for (and don't forget the original women punks, Laura Barton (below)!
And this level of political action is as important as the Suffragettes were to the rights of women in the 20th Century, something that we should never forget.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/03/pussy-riot-kremlin-protest-riot-grrrl
Along those lines, listen to the conversation between Krissi Murison, Lucy O'Brien and Caroline Coon here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01d0g3n

The Complimentary Insult

I didn't understand that the famous German producer Giorgio Moroder made those chugging disco bass grooves on a sequencing machine, and when I wrote 24 Hours I was trying to mimic a bass line like the one on  I Feel Love by Donna Summer. It was knackering to play live and I only just made it to the end of the recording. It was about as close as The Chefs could get to sounding groovy.
I took a copy along to the Moonlight Club in West Hampstead; we had a residency there and because we could get in free, I practically lived there in the evenings because it was warmer and more friendly than my sad little bedsit.
The DJ there, who was quite a hippyish chap, was very keen on The Chefs and I thought he would play the single; he took it from me that night, played it, and handed it back with an air of disappointment.
'Ugh! That sounds just like Donna Summer!', he declared.
Naturally, I was thrilled to bits.
(Actually, it grew on him and he did play it quite a lot in the end).

Guitar Weekend

Four places left, next weekend in Dumfries and Galloway!
http://www.songwritingweekends.co.uk/

The New Religion: Saturday Morning Rant

For a long time now, I have felt that the internet has replaced the role of God; worshippers ask questions of it and sheep-like, they follow the Guidance, regardless of how silly it is. Now we put our trust in Cloud technology; up in the 'sky', the Cloud will take care of everything; don't worry!
How sweet that we materialise a deity in this way! And there are so many different religions... the Alpha Applers, whose places of worship are white and shiny and ultra-designed to reflect just how clever and smart they (we!) are, with the Jesus figure of the late Steve Jobs benignly designing our lives so that we can smugly pat ourselves on the back every time we buy a new product.
PC World: the jolly, orange, pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap warehouses, churches of cheaper-ness, big Catholic gathering places that accept everyone so long as they agree to the Terms and Conditions, even the Applers when they sneak in for a bit of comfort and colour.
Of course, hissing away insidiously underneath it all, often invisible but always feared, is the devil himself: internet pornography, keeping the whole thing going with its masked and sinister presence and tempting hideousness.
The human race has constructed a massive technological mirror of faith and belief; its hymns are three-minute-forty-five technology-dependent pop songs with the machinery of faith embedded into them, its evangelists are the enthusiasts who tell us we must have this and we must have that... without realising it, we are swept away on a sea of fervent commitment that we laugh at in other cultures but fail to see in ourselves.

Cutie Patootie

Thanks to Wilky for this snippet of candy floss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNAsoBgJmd4

Chinese Cream Crackers

I used to buy every nice tin that I saw, and the poor Offsprogs used to eat all sorts of odd biscuity things. I resisted this because it is huge and there was no way I was going to eat my way through them all before they went soft and stale. I threw away most of the printed tins I had collected over the years when I moved house although the odd one managed to escape when I wasn't looking.
This is the first night off I've had for ages. Normally when I'm in I am writing lectures. I am listening to the album Poetry and Rhyme to see if I can remember the lyrics for the tour in April. I have found lots of songs that I have never released, and I probably have another album if I tweak some of the lyrics a bit and work out what the weirdo chords are.
There are three humungously high piles of books on the floor; I've been raiding Amazon for second hand copies of all the academic books I needed (all my lectures have been ten years out of date- no, not really!). Now what do I do with them? I have read so much since January that words are literally spilling out of my ears and I have to collect them and stuff them back into the books they have crept out of. Little black caterpillars, wriggling around disobediently.
The house is alive with sneaking tins, scattered words, empty teacups, lounging guitars and Thompson and Morgan flower catalogues (they seem to be sending one a day at the moment, all full of Titchmarsh's choices. Once I recorded an entire Gardener's World, which I was going to orchestrate and make into a musical. I still have it one day and yes... I'll do it!).
There is no chocolate, however.

Man

I don't know if you can see this clearly but the man sitting down in the cafe looks as though he has materialised out of the painting on the left- a man with a shiny head and a white shirt seen from above.
When I looked away, he had gone, absorbed back into the painting he had materialised from in order to have a cuppa.

Girls and Gangsta Rap

Well, this is how I understand the seemingly incomprehensible ability of some women to listen to Gansta Rap and get beyond its lyrics and aggression.
On the way back from the Critical Beats symposium yesterday, I realised that I know the lyrics of Girls by the Moments and Whatnauts completely off by heart. I sang it to the darkened traffic on the M25:
' Girls, I like them fat, I like them thin, some skinny, some tall, I'd like to get to know them all...
Oh the ones that ain't so goodlookin' they're the ones that do the best cookin'...'
Insidious, innit? Music can deliver all sorts of messages to us and slip them in through the back door. I mentioned this in a posting a while ago and it's really helping me to understand the appeal of rap, which I hear as 'shouting'. Having divorced recently as well as rearing two teenagers, this timbre is not what I want to hear at all.
Back to Girls for another listen before I continue writing the lecture on reception theory.....

She-Bop-a-Lula

To celebrate the third edition of Lucy O'Brien's brilliantly comprehensive book She-Bop, an exhibition of photographs of female musicians taken by 50 women photographers launched last night at The Strand Gallery, 32 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6BP.
The exhibition is selling prints in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer Charity; entry is free and it is open from 11 a.m. till 7,  seven days a week (6 p.m. Sundays).
Carline Coon's wonderful picture of a tousled Ari is there, and some other amazing work (a superb one of Cilla Black looking gamine and gangly while drinking a cup of tea on a sofa, Sade next to Billie Holliday, Adele... so many of them are there!)
Caroline invited me, and we had a good catch-up over a pizza afterwards. Lucy was busy and glowing with excitement; Kerstin Rodgers, once a photographer and now a pop-up dinner party organiser, was there too. I haven't seen her for years and she told me she had submitted a photo she took of me holding a chicken at Vauxhall City Farm in the 1980s; it wasn't accepted but I remember the day very well- we went for a drink at the Vauxhall Tavern afterwards, much to the surprise of several quizzical clones who drifted past at night-club breakfast-time (probably about 3.30 p.m.) dressed in white vests and humungous moustaches.
The picture was published in one of those colourful mags that prints lyrics to songs. Kerstin took some really glamorous ones in her mum's house, too. Rob Diament was there: he used to be a student at the University of the West, and is now running a gallery in Hoxton. It was nice to see him again; he said that some of the songs he's written while at the University had been of TV programmes, and he is thinkingof starting to write songs again. I spoke to a very nice woman who is thinking of writing a book on Playboy magazine. It was a busy and buzzing evening!
Over our pizza, we debriefed. What an honour for Caroline to be part of this exhibition: it is a very unusual and powerful concept that includes both staged and spontaneous photography. Caroline not only documented the people she photographed, but also the spirit of the age, and I am delighted that she has agreed the use of her photograph of Tessa again on the cover of the paperback book.
Go, go, go, give money to the charity by buying the catalogue for a fiver, or if you are rich, but a print for 200 quid!
www.thestrandgallery.co.uk
www.shebopalula.co.uk

David's Record Store, Letchworth

On Friday 20th April I will be at David's Record Store in Letchworth from 7.30 p.m. t play some music and talk about the book. There will be copies of The Chefs CD available (I think) and also copes of the new version of The Lost Women of Rock Music.
http://www.davids-music.co.uk/

Memory Dual Carriageway

Haven't been posting much: I have been tired and life has been busy and probably quite boring in terms of blogging.
I have just been watching the BBC 4 programme on disco. I had read reviews of it and took to iPlayer to watch but I didn't think it was that good and I have turned it off. Well- it got to the BeeGees, that set of hairstyles atop squeaky voices, and my ears said 'No!'.
It triggered loads of memories of working at Sherry's nightclub in Brighton- must have been 1976 or early 1977, I think, just before punk flooded down from London. I'd gone to ask for a job; they were convinced that I was under 18 but they let me work in the burger section serving up slabs of ghastly meat on disintegrating buns with a sniff of chips at the side- I think that allowed them to have a particular sort of drinks license. I used to go home smelling of hot fat with a couple of 50 pence pieces jingling in my pocket because I got sent out to collect glasses every half an hour and if you looked on the floor by the bar you found all the loose change that had fallen out of the pockets of the eager drinkers.
Harry the doorman with high, black crinkled hair, dead eyes and a smart black suit used to break up the regular handbag fights at closing time and he sort of looked out for me.
I ended up checking in the coats, listening in to migrant workers selling girls to each other (if a girl fancied one of them and he didn't fancy her, he's sell her to his friend). They told horrific stories about the factories they worked in, in Shoreham along the coast: bits flying off machines and knocking limbs off, that sort of thing.
The music was pre-disco, much poppier than the music played by the brilliant DJ in the Art College Basement (wonder what happened to him? This was pre-Cresswell) or the amazing sounds (Manu Dibango and Philly soul) played at the Concorde on the seafront.
There were go-go dancers, and there was a great atmosphere all night, from the relative quiet at the beginning to the thronging crowd dancing themselves stupid under the red lights, the clumsily-painted plaster statues sprouting out of the walls with fags in their gobs, and the final bit of exhausted quiet after everyone left and we waited for the taxis to take us home in the cavernous and litter-strewn aftermath.
These 'simple' jobs (like working in clubs and pubs or shops) have a great dynamic, a beginning, middle and end. Professional jobs don't have that: they take up every waking moment if you let them, and drive you to an early grave (if you let them). Bits of them drip from one day to the next; you are never 'finished'; there is always something to be tweaked, improved, communicated. Anxiety runs like blood through the corridors  and email upon email builds up, stack upon stack, heading towards the last straw on the camel's back.
I used to love working in a shop too: early morning, no punters, have a cup of tea and get everything ready. Then the routine of people in ones and twos, building up to a busy crowd, till the end of the day when you lock the door and cash up. I like to see the street cleaners just after dawn, the people with hidden lives that you don't see. At that time of day the world belongs to whoever wants it; buildings tell you that they are going to outlive their owners and snigger at the ridiculousness of it all. Birds mingle with cats, and night mingles with day as the latest revellers stagger home on the same pavements as the earliest workers.
I cleaned guesthouses (condoms poked down the back of the dressing tables); washed up in a French restaurant (garlic butter up my arms: it floated on top of the water); served breakfasts in the Bedford Hotel on the seafront (pervy businessman trying to get me to feel his leg). I worked in a little antique shop called Quiet Chuckle some Saturdays (bit too quiet: I don't think we sold anything much). I worked on the door at The Alhambra whenever I could (you got to see the bands free).
And then of course, I joined a punk band, and went home every night covered in beer that people threw over us. Never spit: I think that came a couple of years later, thank goodness.

Unfortunate Boblet Placement

Fave Sorta Plant

It's an iris Katharine Hodgkin, or an umbrella, or a flower that someone has scribbled on, or a mini-triffid.....

Caroline Coon's Amazing Painting

Look at this fantastic painting by Caroline Coon, entitled Fight for Democracy. The filming is by Gina Birch.
http://goo.gl/aGwzg