my life as a artist
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mysteries
Friday 18th May 2007 11:54 PM
Why is the milk of a red cow white, if it only eats green grass? My mother has sung this question to me for nearly fifty years and I still don't know the answer. I would have imagined it to be a sort of greeny red colour, almost brown. Maybe they bleach it. I'm hoping my mum will tell me the answer soon.
Last night some aliens from the star system of Sirius landed in the field between the caravan park and the golf-course, and came round and watched the EUFA cup final between Espanyol and Sevilla on channel 5. In space they can only watch the matches that are broadcast on satellite, so if there's an important match that's only on terrestrial, they have to come to Earth to watch it. One of them brought a packet of Pringles, which unfortunately had lost a lot of it's crispness through too much inter-dimensional space travel, but was nevertheless a thoughtful gesture. I did wonder if they were going to perform sexual experiments on me, so a packet of Pringles was a nice surprise.
A couple of them got quite pissed on some organic tempranillo that I got on offer from the co-op, but as Sevilla, 'their team', won 3-1 on penalties, they were fine. Except for a bit of radioactive slime on the sofa they were no trouble at all. Before they left, they gave me a piece of super hi-tech laser communication hardware. They said if I reverse-engineered it I could patent it and make a few bob. I gave them a Tupperware container for their Pringles.
As I walked them to their spaceship, (mainly to stop them mutilating Mark's cows) I marvelled at the passion that the game of football engenders in the hearts of so many varied sentient beings across the universe. I suggested that next time they came we could arrange a game. Me and my mates could be Man United and they could be Spaceman United.
Posted 11:54 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink
she makes lunch just like a woman
Thursday 17th May 2007 11:33 PM
Last night I performed at a Bob Dylan tribute gig, in celebration of his sixty-sixth birthday.
'I came to a low place of darkness and swamp
The bendy-bus ran through the centre of town
I locked up my bike to a post on the rise
Went into the Welly just to wash my throat down
A man called Chris approached me for a gig
I knew right away he was not ordinary
He said we're looking for someone to sing Mister Big
I said 'I aint got no talent', he said 'It aint necessary'
We set off that night for the Post Office club
I gave him my bike-clips and he gave me his word
I said ' Will you pay my bus fare?' he said 'Yes, and a pint!'
I said 'That's the best news that I've ever heard!'
I remember doing one for his fiftieth. That night there was a quiz, won by a table of bobologists from Halifax, who scored twenty-eight out of thirty, considerably more, in my opinion, than Bob himself would have scored.
Those bobologists from Halifax, in their bobniscience, would be among the first to agree that Bob's sixty-sixth birthday has far more significance than his sixty-fifth. As the age for retirement, and a free bus-pass, sixty-five has some significance in the mundane, sublunary world of work and finance, but sixty-six is heavy with a cosmic meaning, especially for those that know. Those blokes from Halifax probably know. I don't.
I do know that sixty-six is two times thirty-three, which is the number of years of Christ's life and the highest degree in freemasonry. If you add Highway 51 to thirty three, you get eighty four, then take away five believers, obviously, and that leaves you seventy nine, which is the number of verses in Gates of Eden.
One of the most interesting times in Dylan's career was when he went electric. Up unto that point he had been iconic as 'man with guitar', a shamanic bard, a mystical troubadour. His duty was to hurl mighty words of white light and wisdom, against the demon controlled structures of the planet, and play a bit of dodgy harmonica.
Dylan's wholesome curly-haired-folk-singer image changed dramatically when he released Electric Lay Lady Layland. The first time he performed the new electric stuff was at the Newport folk festival, and they couldn't take it. If it had been in Newport, Gwent, he might have got away with it, but it was in Newport, Pembrokeshire, and at that time the folk festival was nearer to an Eisteddfod. After listening to a few harp recitals and some choral stuff, mainly in Welsh, the audience of local farmers couldn't really cope with 'Leopard skin pill box hat', turned up to eleven. On the live recording of the gig there's a bit between numbers where someone from the audience shouts out, in a strong Welsh accent, 'Could you turn it down a bit, please, Bob? It's a bit loud isn't it?'
Quick as a flash, Bob replies. 'I don't believe you! You're a liar'
During his time in Wales he wrote Rainy Day Women, Buckets of Rain, Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Before the Flood, Shelter from the Storm, Idiot Wind and Hurricane. (and of course, Llanrhaedr-am-mochnant Woman on my Mind)
His bravery and inventiveness are really impressive. I was watching 'Don't Look Back', a film about the 1965 tour of the UK, and at one point, he's in a room, and Alan Price is playing a George Formby number on the piano. I think it was 'Leaning on a Lamppost'. You could see Dylan's hawk-like eyes taking it all in, and less than one month later, he wrote 'Its all right ma, turned out nice again'
He's looking well for his age. I think it's because he's made of really high quality leather. The same leather that Mother Theresa was made of, and Keith Richards. They say he's one of the hardest wearing guys in showbusiness.
When I was about ten, my dad used to make us smoke dope and listen to Dylan. Cannabis was really cheap in the West Riding in the mid-sixties, and the coalman used to deliver ours. We'd get two sacks a week, one of Afghani and one of Nepalese temple balls, which I suppose would be the equivalent of ovals.
Every evening, 'after us teas', he go up to the stereogram, which was made of half an acre of teak forest and the size of a small saloon car, and line up Dylan's first five albums on the autochanger. Then he'd go down to the cellar and come back with a coal-scuttle full of sticky, black lumps of hash, and he'd thump it down onto the carpet and say, 'I'm off to t'pub… and ah want to see that smoked afore ah get 'ome!'… and by God, we had to!
Now I'm older, I'm grateful to my dad for his firm and unusual guidance, although at the time, it played havoc with my eleven-plus. It's forty years later, and sadly, my dad's gone, and so has the stereogram, and sadly, so has the coal-scuttle, but I'm still here, and so is Bob, who's birthday is next week . I don't think I'll bother getting him anything. After all, he's got everything he needs, he's an artist, he don't look back.
l
Posted 11:33 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
bye bye blair
Friday 11th May 2007 10:15 PM
When Tony Blair speaks
he often pauses
between phrases,
sometimes for ages.
I think he thinks it gives him
some sort of gravitas
whereas
I don't.
Pathocracy is government by psychopaths, which, unfortunately, is very fashionable these days. To be a head of state it helps to be charismatic and have a mad, staring left eye… or in the case of Putin, two dead ones. I don't think Gordon Brown quite fits the bill, so I expect we'll get given that nice Mr Cameron instead.
Tomorrow morning I might fly to Monaco with my mum, and play roulette in the Hotel Royale. If we win loads of money and become existentially disgusted, we might smoke crack cocaine and play 'chicken' with really sharp knives. It'd be a change for both of us.
If we don't go to Monaco, we'll go to the car-boot sale at the race-course. I'm looking for a replacement tap for my sink and anything else that I think could bring some sense of beauty and meaning into my life for under a fiver.
The tap I've got at the moment is not sexually compatible with a hosepipe so I'm looking for something a bit more priapic. My garden, the Sitting Buckets of Babylon, needs regular watering and jugging's too slow. Also, in a few months, when the vegetables are firm, ripe and tempting, if the government come and try and take them away from me, I'll be able to hold them at bay with the hosepipe until I come up with a more long-term solution.
No two-bit, blood-sucking, global elite elected pathocracy will ever take my broad beans! I'll eat them there and then, and if they arrest me and put me in custody, or custard, I'll break wind and they'll have to let me go.
Maybe I should grow some artichokes.
Posted 10:15 PM | 1 Comments | Permalink
human racecourse
Sunday 6th May 2007 10:04 PM
Yesterday morning went to a car-boot sale with my mum. I bought an Ecuadorean cardigan for £3, an outside TV aerial for £1:50 and a 'powerfull hair-clipper for the hole family' for 50p. Last night I invited the 'hole' family round to enjoy the newly-found high-definition pictures on my television. While they were enjoying the individual bristles on Wayne Rooney's five o'clock shadow, I shaved all their heads with the 'powerfull' hair-clippers, and so they wouldn't feel the cold, I cut the Ecuadorean cardigan up into 6" squares and stuck them onto the tops of their heads with blu-tack. My mum's square had a chunky wooden button on it, right in the middle, and it looked really jazzy, so she says she's going to keep it on until her hair grows back a bit. Now I know it works, I might tidy some of the chickens up.
Posted 10:04 PM | 2 Comments | Permalink
I dug duggleby
Friday 4th May 2007 10:50 PM
When I was 20, in 1977, I thought that the world was going to end in ten years. I still believe it.
'….lip-stick shaped tube things continue to rain and cause screaming pain, and the arctic stains from silver blue to bloody red…'
That was Trevor Macdonald on News at Ten, singing a Jimi Hendrix song , while we looked at pictures of Mogadishu burning. He's got a surprisingly smooth Sam Cooke sort of voice, not entirely appropriate for a Hendrix song, but with Paxman tootling on his Stratocaster in the background, it sort of worked. As pictures of the embattled capital rolled on, Trevor and Jeremy segued seamlessly into 'Someone's house is burning.'
Paxman's fingers blurred up the fretboard… 'take it to Westminster Bridge man!' whispered Trevor appreciatively. When the normally avuncular Trevor got to the lyric,
'... I asked my friend, 'where is that black smoke coming from?' He just coughed and changed the subject, and said, I guess it might snow some..,' Paxman hit the wah-wah pedal and howled in a jagged storm of electronic ecstasy. It was the best News at Ten they've had on for ages.
Even though my mum once threw herself under the king's horse in the name of universal suffrage, I failed to vote in the local elections. I feel a sense of shame when I consider her gentle, hoof-scarred face. I might get her a KFC mums-night-off bucket.
Talking of buckets, (my most recent phrase, and possibly my next album), I'm getting my garden together. It will be the eighth wonder of the world, the Sitting Buckets of Babylon, and will be my trailer-trash Eden. I'll try and work in harmony with the prevailing terrestrial, solar and astral energies, whenever possible, but just in case, I'll dig some of Mark's donkey poo in as well.
I like to dig Radio 4 when I dig the garden and yesterday I really dug Vincent Duggleby on Money Box Live. He was singing a Steve Miller song, and Gordon Brown, who was taking time out from the arrogant pipsqueakery of politics, was giving it big licks on a telecaster.( Money Box Live is so much better than Money Box. Money Box seems half-dead in comparison). Vincent's singing voice had a surprisingly powerful rasp to it, not unlike Howling Wolf or Captain Beefheart. I like to think that Gordon was smiling as he dug Duggleby's words.
'You-oo-oo-oo, run for the money,
You don't even know about wild mountain honey'
Posted 10:50 PM | 0 Comments | Permalink
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