my life as a artist
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'
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