self portrait of a artist

Wednesday 12th October 2011 10:58 PM

Thought I'd better post a blog in case you were wondering…. musing…. maybe even fretting… about my existence. (I know I have). Maybe you thought I was being held against my will somewhere, or perhaps was unable to type, having lost both my hands in a really bad hand accident. Maybe you thought I'd decided that life was just 'music and movement and mime' in the big hall, and was being a tree.

In case there's any doubt as to my continuing presence in this geometric whirligig of love, I've posted a self portrait that I did the other evening. The cat's called Eric, and is, as far as I can work out, imaginary.

Posted 10:58 PM | 10 Comments | Permalink

mindless minorities

Friday 26th August 2011 11:41 PM

So, a small group of marginalised young tearaways, fuelled by alcohol and an exaggerated sense of their own entitlement, start smashing up other peoples property……some of you already know where I'm going here….. We are of course talking about the Bullingdon Club, a motley assortment of Oxford University students who affiliate for the purposes of piggery and nihilism, and who over the years have trashed various restaurants, smashed car windscreens and done other things that sit uneasily with ambitions of high office. Their anthem, or catch-phrase if you like, is 'Buller, Buller, Buller, Buller, Buller, Buller, We are the famous Bullingdon Club and we don't give a fuck!'

Noted alumni from 1987 include our present prime minister David Cameron, his chancellor George Osborne and the lord mayor of London, Boris Johnson. While already routinely vacuous in their utterances, their previous membership of said club gives an especially hollow ring to their present spoutings on the current riots.

Obviously there are differences between the two sets of malcontent mayhem merchants. The Bullingdon rioters, for instance, if they'd just trashed a restaurant that they might want to go to again, would often leave bundles of cash behind as reparation, whereas this definitely wasn't a feature of this month's late-night shopping shenanigans in London, mainly, according to sociologists, because many of the troublemakers were brought up in family units that didn't have the influence of a fabulously wealthy father.

Also the organisation of the events would have been very different. In 1987 I imagine the Bullingdon boys would have pre-arranged the time and venue of their riotous assembly by the employment of native runners and suchlike, whereas last weeks robbery-with-yobbery-but-no-sign-of-bobbery was apparently arranged on social networking sites like 'Face-mask' and 'Such-like'.

The main difference of course is that many of this month's rioters have been prosecuted, and many of them have also shown remorse, whereas the crimes of the Bullingdon club have barely been acknowledged. When I use the word 'crime' here, I do so deliberately, because I say to you, right honourable members of my blog-community, that smashing other people's property, is, let's make no mistake here, simply 100% complete and utter absolutely pure,unadulterated fun.

Last month the City of Westminster police's "counter terrorist focus desk" made the following statement:

"Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police."

As an anarchist myself this put me in a tricky position. I live in York, and even though the call was from the City of Westminster police, the shocking fact is that if I took a train, I could be in London in less than two hours, for less than the price of a small saloon car. In this endless fictional fight against terrorism it's better to be safe than sorry, and supreme caution must be our bywords, so in the wider interests of national security I've decided that tomorrow I'm going to hand myself in at the police station on the Fulford Road, and come clean with the information I've got on anarchists.

I'm going to explain to the desk-sergeant that as an anarchist I don't think of myself as an agent of discord and that my belief in the possibility of a leaderless state is necessarily based on the premise that kindness and consideration are core elements of human nature. If it's the same desk-sergeant that I reported my last bike-theft to, I suspect that this sort of talk will make him feel a bit uncomfortable, so I'm going to wear my cardboard pyramid hat, and make sure that when I'm talking to him that I align myself on a north/south axis.

The base of this hat is eighteen inches square, and each corner angles at 51 degrees 52 minutes towards the capstone, which is a perfectly aligned octahedral quartz crystal. The main body of the pyramid is covered in a thin layer of sticky-backed cork paper, making it light and fashionable and suitable for any summer occasion. Not only does the hat look great, but the pyramidal shape and the crystal, that help to make it so stylish and comfortable, also help to turn it into a highly efficient orgone generator.

Having an instrument that radiates positive vibrations from the conscious universal energy field can be a real boon when dealing with authority figures, and I'm hoping that not only will the desk-sergeant's organs of spiritual perception be awakened by it, but that at the same time he'll also respect me on a social level for having a really attractive hat.

Posted 11:41 PM | 6 Comments | Permalink

I aint gonna work on Worthy farm no more

Monday 4th July 2011 6:32 PM

I'm pleased to report that taking a couple of years off from the Glastonbury festival, as a protest, has had some unexpected benefits. It's difficult to gauge the incremental changes to so vast an event when you're in the middle of it, so returning after an interval gave me some valuable perspective. In the few years before the break, struggling with the increasing corporatisation of the festival, I never really knew if I wanted to be there or not. Now I know. I am at peace. Praise the Lord!

Mud-pie preparation started early on Wednesday morning. There were already plenty of people in the mixing-bowl, each wearing their mixing-blade wellies, and when God simply added water, the churning began. By Thursday evening the mix was heavy going, and the half-mile walk to my first gig, carrying a metallophone and a guitar, left me with calf-muscles like a Nepalese sherpa.

The performance was in the 'Spirit of 71' area, which was comprised of an antique clothes stall, mud, a main stage and a small café stage. I was booked to do an hour-long spoken word set on the café stage at 9pm, and the organisers decided that simultaneously, on the main stage, thirty yards away, it would be a good idea to play some ear-shattering, liver-juggling techno music. Maybe it was their idea of contrast.

The techno-demon's heartbeat of hell was so loud that I had to deliver my material with the same exaggerated articulation that Lancashire mill-workers had to use when conversing over the din of the machinery. By an act of grace, this grotesque facial manoeuvring somehow served as a prayer, and within minutes I felt the comforting presence and guidance of a mighty cosmic power, and knew that I was being protected by the ascended soul of that exalted being, who, when he walked this earth, was known as Les Dawson. Luckily, as well as Les and some other non-corporeal helpers, I had some faithful fans in there, and their enthusiasm and patience was so encouraging that it ended up being a good gig. Afterwards BOOM I was supposed to BOOM do a set with BOOM the Travelling BOOM Libraries but BOOM this was a-BOOM-bandoned BOOM after five songs BOOM because we couldn't BOOM hear each other BOOM or ourselves.

On Friday the rain was fitful and the mud-pie mix was now smooth and creamy, its bland uniformity occasionally textured with the odd wallet and mobile phone, its glistening surface rippling in accordance with the prevailing sound-waves of the nearest bowel-wrenching mega-bass-boom sound-system, which in the spirit of democracy seemed to be owned by even the humblest tea-shop. That evening, on the scarred battlefield of Cacophony, rather than go over the top and witness the pitiful waste of so many young lives experiencing the sheer horror and mindless futility of U2, I retreated to my tent. On my way back through the Green Futures field I noticed that the 'Squall' anarchist magazine yurt had been replaced by a shiny David Attenborough eugenics stall. When I got to my flimsy tissue home I put in a pair of squashy yellow earplugs, boiled up a pot of jasmine tea, got into bed, rolled a pyramid-shaped joint, and did the Guardian crossword.

On Saturday God added the last of the water to his mix, and when he saw how firm the peaked minarets of mud were that towered over the glutinous mass of wellie-sucking delay, he saw that the mix was good, and ready, and lo, he began to cook it.

My second gig of the festival was in the voluminous 3,500 capacity cabaret tent in the early evening and was scheduled to follow Four Puffs and a Piano. Their regular appearances on the Jonathon Ross show have made them very popular with middle-management types, and the tent was completely rammed, right up to the backside and beyond the flaps. As soon as they'd finished with a rousing chorus of 'We Take It Up The Arse', roughly 3,450 members of the audience promptly got up and left the marquee, presumably in search of other telly-gods, leaving me with a stunned, thin smear of fifty brutalised souls.

Even though I'd noticed that these days this particular cabaret tent audience seemed to prefer material about the triumph of science and bum-holes, I persisted with my hippy foolishness, and, alas, died on my foolish hippy arse. Later that evening, rather than go and see Coldplay on the pyramid stage, me and my brother Nick went back to our tents and ate some plain yoghurt.

On Sunday God set the oven to solar gas-mark 7, and for the first time in my admittedly shaky memory, a famous Glastonbury mud-pie was actually baked. Hurray! That evening I had another gig in the dreaded cabaret tent. In previous years it had always been a pleasurable, tribal affair and often the highlight of my performing year, but this time, for the first time, and probably the last time, in the new spirit of Glastonbury 2011, I opted to give them my corporate set. (It's the set I do when I feel culturally estranged. The secret is not to mention spiritual paradigm shifts). Although I felt no warmth or cheer coming back at me, my brother Nick said it went down OK.

Afterwards, in the lovely warm evening, beneath a thin mist of special glasto-chemtrails, we set off to the refreshingly sane Buddhafields café to dine on dahl and brown rice. As we walked across the mud-pie's sandal-smoothed pastry, the distant, bouncing bass-boom of Beyonce told us that something else was cooking. Yes, it was her sexuality as a frozen shrink-wrapped ready-meal being micro-waved on the pyramid stage. DING!

Amidst the sham and drudgery of all this enforced bliss there were still people having a go. Sam, with his Magic Hat Sauna is one of the few remaining Warriors of the Guttering Candle still working at the festival, and to him I offer a full damp-towel salute.

As far as the festival as a (w)hole goes, despite the few sporadic acts of brave resistance, I fear the war is lost. I'm sorry to say that the same white-collared conservative, the one that flashed down the street pointing his plastic finger at Jimi Hendrix, all those years ago, has somehow managed to take control of the Glastonbury festival, and turn it into a TV programme. It's a shame that when he sanitised it, he never thought to include the toilets.

Posted 6:32 PM | 13 Comments | Permalink

still moving

Sunday 12th June 2011 9:09 PM

On Sunday 19^th June I'm doing a gig at the Grand Opera House in York along with some other comics, and, there's no easy way to say this, a psychological illusionist. The headliner is Steve Day, 'a truly unique comedian - warm, witty and engaging whilst dealing with the dilemmas of being a deaf man in a hearing world'. I gigged with him in Scarborough and he's good..

It's a fund-raiser for the Arts Barge Project, which is a loosely knit, yet sturdy, warm and windproof assemblage of interesting persons interested in providing a performance space, on a barge, on the River Ouse in York. As a decorative thread in this oddly fashionable pullover of ambition, I urge you to try us on. We're made of 100% organic, pure mixed fibres, so we won't go sloppy and baggy on youââ'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â¦

The following week I'm performing at the Glastonbury Festival again, having declined the invitation to the last two as a protest against the increasing corporatisation of the event. In 2009 I told Michael and Emily Eavis that I couldn't perform at the same event as Lady Gaga, and gave them the ultimatum that it was either her or me. They chose Lady Gaga. Last year I told them it was either Snoop Snoop Doggy Dog Dog or me. They chose Snoop Snoop Doggy Dog Dog. This year I told them I'd only do the gig if they promised to book Beyonce, U2 and the Wombles, and insisted that two out of the three wouldn't be good enough, it had to be all of them. Thankfully they saw sense.

Besides my usual booking in the cabaret tent I've been invited to perform on the Spirit of 71 café stage. It's a new stage to celebrate the festival's 40^th anniversary, and the idea is to have some of the original artists playing, along with other acts who embody the impractical but ultimately rewarding ethos of those times. I'm doing an hour by myself at 7pm on Thursday followed by an hour with an exquisitely pared down version of the 'Travelling Libraries', featuring my brother Nick on mandolin and Steve 'mm, he's lovely' Marshall on keyboards and everything.

I'm telling you all this so you know I'm out there doing it, because my recent lack of web presence could have suggested to some people that I'd given up showbiz, become obese, shaved all my body hair off and gone to live in a bed-sit in Pocklington. I haven't done any of those things, although to be honest, in the wee small hours, when the warp and weft of creation is not so tightly woven, I sometimes find a couple of them strangely attractive.

Posted 9:09 PM | 7 Comments | Permalink

but she breakfasts like a little girl

Thursday 26th May 2011 11:33 PM

On Tuesday night I took part in a gig in York to celebrate the life and works of Bob Dylan. I'm sure that there were thousands of other similar events taking place all over the globe that evening. People write university theses on him and there's been over a thousand different books written about him, and amazingly he's not even dead. Not only isn't he not dead, in the last picture I saw of him he looked like Douglas Fairbanks Junior playing Zorro.

I've really enjoyed all the Dylan related media stuff this week and especially the Martin Scorcese documentary on BBC2. Bob was variously referred to as having the ear of a generation, the voice of a generation and the conscience of a generation. Some even said he was the heart, lungs and urogenitary tract of a generation, but to be honest, not many.

It was also widely acknowledged that he had his finger on the pulse of a generation. The documentary showed a wild assortment of bohemian, beatnik, artists, musicians and poets, all wandering around New York's Greenwich village in the early sixties, all desperately searching for the pulse of a generation. Of course none of them could find it, mainly because Bob had his finger on it, and he wouldn't let anyone else look at it.

I once met a genuine beatnik in Afghanistan in 1975. He'd gone there from New York in 1963 and had unfortunately got preserved in a local jail for twelve years. Although his soul and spirit had evolved during that time, culturally speaking he was as fresh as the day he was canned. I had the good fortune to drink sweet mint tea with him in the Pardeeso restaurant in Herat, and am delighted to report that he wore a beret and referred to humans as 'cats'. At the time that felt more exotic to me than the nearby Buddahs of Bamian.

Seeing footage of Alan Ginsberg in the documentary, I think he might have been a beatnik as well. He was on a stage intoning stream-of-consciousness poetry dressed only in a pair of off-taupe underpants. He had quite a following apparently, although they say he didn't get much work in schools.

Standing out from the array of often tubercular talking-heads was a refreshingly robust Irishman called Tom Clancy. Interviewed forty years on he didn't look much different from the sixties clips, and I think he might have been wearing the same sensible, white, heavy with lanoline, cable-knit, Arran-style sweater. He reckoned that Bob was a shaman and that all his songs are channelled from the fourth dimension. (It's said that Chris de Burghs songs are also channelled, but sadly from the second dimension).

The way that Bob bobbed in 1965 has endured as a template for cool for over 45 years, and since then, despite an involvement in born-again Christianity and a recording with the Frog Chorus, I think he's stayed pretty cool. I didn't bother buying him anything for his birthday this year, because he's got everything he needs, he's an artist, and he don't look bad for 70.

Posted 11:33 PM | 7 Comments | Permalink