Send In The Clowns

Bit of a diversion tonight, albeit it a brief one, into the realm of the personal. I know, it’s the kind of self-indulgent, solipsistic non-content that I usually wouldn’t choose to strew across this page like so much disgusting, half-eaten McDonald’s almost-food cast aside on Dunfermline High Street late of a Saturday afternoon...but I feel the need to explain the current lengthy gaps between postings.

Life can be a strange learning experience. Sometimes it takes a severe shock to make you realise that, over the course of the last 15 to 20 years, and in a variety of contexts, you’ve slowly subsumed yourself so much into other people’s patterns of behaving and thinking (because it seemed like the best thing to do at the time, or what the assorted ’significant others’ wanted/expected/’needed’ from you, etc) that you’ve pretty much forgotten who ’you’ are. Or, indeed, once were - assuming that you’d ever begun to work it out in the first place.

Now, I appreciate that this is definitely the kind of issue that, (a bit like cancer, if we’re brutally honest - only in an infinitely more trivial and self-pityingly whingeing way, of course) - fits the tag, "Rich Countries’ Disease", perfectly. If you’re having to do a 5-mile round-trip to get to the nearest water supply that’s only partially contaminated with gastric parasites, then, frankly, you’ve got a lot more pressing things to deal with, and we, who sit warm and comfortable in front of our computer screens, moaning about our service provider’s paucity of service provision can’t even begin to imagine what such a life must be like.

Still, being possessed of a cosy modern existence, it’s the reason I’ve been far too self-absorbed, and anywhere-but-in-the-mood to come up with a dollop of vaguely-music-related ’humour’ so far this week.

Sometimes, again, it takes a severe shock to make you fully aware that the person you thought for nearly a decade was going to be your future, has decided instead that you have become part of their past - and did so some time ago.

I received that sort of shock last week. I was probably still partly in denial, trying to protect myself from the full implications of my marriage ending late last year. Now, that’s simply not an option. The disorientation from having a well-worn identity suddenly stripped-away has largely gone, but has left me having to confront my self-concept head-on.

I know who I was. It’s precisely who I am now, and who I might be that are proving more difficult to pin down.

So, sorry for not keeping-up any semblance of blogging regularity. Or gags. Promise I’ll try harder next time.

Bad Moon Rising

[This blog is currently being brought to you in conjunction with pseudo-ephedrine - something I wouldn’t have touched back in the days when I was a competitive sporty type, but is now fully available for my personal use, and is doing an excellent job of keeping me upright.]

No gags today, for a change. If you’re ok with that, then we’ll begin...

Back in February, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon issued a rather disturbing statement regarding freedom of expression:

"The Secretary-General strongly believes that freedom of expression should be exercised responsibly and in a way that respects all religious beliefs."

Now, this in itself wasn’t the most earth-shattering of news. His predecessor, Kofi Annan, had peddled an almost identical line, "...the freedom of the press should always be exercised in a way that fully respects the religious beliefs and tenets of all religions." So the current Sec-Gen. was just continuing with the party line, even if it was an utterly nonsensical and wholly impractical one in the first place. (I hope that no-one reading this would fail to understand the impossibility of complying with either statement? Quite apart from the inherent problem of deciding the order of precedence when faced with an enormous range of competing - often mutually exclusive - religious beliefs, it suggests that these beliefs belong to a unique category of ideas: ideas which should not be subjected to ’disrespect’, simply because they claim derivation from a supposedly ’divine’ source. Possibly more on this later, depends where this ends up going, and how much time I have).

Now, it could be argued in his defence that he was merely trying to make soothing noises to smooth down the feathers of various Islamic states, who were at the time in the grip of "Mo-toon fever" part 2. (And here, here, and here.) That, however, doesn’t address the already-detailed issues arising from the wording of the statement, or the question of to what extent any of us have an immediate right to be ’offended’. Things, unfortunately, have just become a bit worse...

The United Nations Human Rights Council have succumbed to pressure from the usual suspects to pass a (non-binding, thankfully) resolution regarding "Combating defamation of religions" (scroll down till that heading comes up). Part of the rigmarole contains this wonderful piece of utter cant from the Saudi Arabian representative (my italics throughout):

"ABDULWAHAB ABDULSALAM ATTAR (Saudi Arabia) said last year had witnessed a series of immoral practices targeting beliefs and cultures... It was regrettable that there were false interpretations of freedom of religion and expression. This must not lead to any hatred by touching on sacred teachings. There were teachings which had called for tolerance and acceptance. International instruments had guaranteed the right to expression, but had also placed obligations on everybody to exercise this right. This did not mean to ignore any prejudices against Muslims, as seen in the Western media. Saudi Arabia called for tolerance of all religions and called on the international community to respect Muslims and their feelings in accordance with all monotheistic religions. The draft resolution recalled the preservation of this respect."

Ah yes, that bastion of religious tolerance, Saudi Arabia, gets to decide what constitutes "immorality", "false interpretation of freedom of religion and expression", and the definition of "sacred teachings" - presumably including incontrovertible proof of their ’sacred’ nature. Nice. Glad to see such important concepts are in safe hands...

But what, you might ask, exactly does this have to do with musicians or the music industry (ostensibly the main subject of this blog)? Bear with me. We’ll get there...

Now, that might be yet another U.N. resolution we can all happily ignore, but then they also went and stuck the "Special Rapporteur" in charge of promoting / supporting freedom of expression with having "To report on instances in which the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination …". Now that is binding, and some of the consequences are spelled-out here.

Again, we might not be too bothered if it was an isolated incident of U.N. internal political shenanigans - after all, the "Religious Defamation" resolution, for instance, would violate the U.S. constitution, so couldn’t possibly be applied over there. Except that (here in the UK, anyway), it’s just another part of what should be a rather worrying trend - especially for those of us in the creative arts.

We’ve seen the dear old Church of England do a u-turn on the repeal of the blasphemy laws (they suddenly decided they wanted something more specific installed in their place, something that would protect them from "disrespect"), and the Vatican joining up with Islam (yes, you read that correctly - two deeply antithetical belief systems working together) to fight "offences against religion", saying that freedom of expression should "not be taken as a pretext for offending religions, convictions, religious symbols and everything that is considered sacred." (Whether they now intend to retrospectively burn effigies of David Hume and stage widespread riots against his teachings is presently unknown. Ah. Sorry, that was a gag, which makes me a liar. Ah well, fires of hell for me, then...)

Then we have that lovely man, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, calling for greater ’liberty of conscience’ for those of a religious bent, while at the same time seeking to impose his peculiar brand of ’ethics’ upon doctors. (Let’s not forget, whenever we’re considering the latest moral pronouncements of Cardinal O’Conman (sic), that he personally protected known paedophile priests while he was the Bishop of Arundel & Brighton. As I said, charming fellow).

Personally speaking, I have no truck with supernaturalisms of any sort (you’d probably guessed that much by this point). I do, however, support anyone’s right to believe whatever they want in private, even holocaust deniers (by their failed libel cases shall ye counter them). The difficulties start, inevitably, when someone takes it into their heads they have the right to tell everyone else how to live their lives, right down to the smallest detail, because their all-powerful, invisible deity (or deities, of course) - or, more usually, the book that has allegedly been written at that deity’s behest - has told them to...with a sliding-scale of prescribed punishments for heretics and non-adherents - ranging from mild social ostracism to death, depending on the deity / book in question. (e.g. The last person to be hanged for blasphemy in Scotland was Thomas Aikenhead, in 1697).

In which case, I reserve the right to subject their beliefs to the most rigorous scrutiny, and mock them roundly when they are patently absurd (e.g. ’Young Earth Creationism’, Scientology), or oppressive (e.g. Islamists, the Baptist "gays are an abomination" crowd, Ultra-Orthodox Jews who assault women on buses, etc,etc..there are far too many to mention in this category, though almost all of them seem to have it in for women to some degree). It would seem, though, that the assorted religions are starting to work together (against the evil secularists) so that they can have their cake and shovel it in like they’re genetically immune to obesity and heart disease.

And this is where it could affect we musicians (sorry it took so long to get here)...it’s clear they want a situation where it’s fine for them to preach whatever they wish from their beloved "sacred" texts, while stifling any criticism that they deem "disrespectful" of their beliefs. Ok, this isn’t going to be the greatest issue for your wee teeny-pop bands singing "Lovely, lovely lurve" songs, sure, but there are plenty of ’serious’ / ’political’ songwriters out there, and if the religionists continue to push this "demand for respect" agenda hard enough, we could well see artists being taken to court simply for telling the truth. And while it can be fantastic publicity (and a bit of a giggle) to have a few fundies standing outside a gig protesting, the threat of serious legal bills will scare a lot of record companies into censoring their output (c.f. Janet Jackson’s ’superbowl nipple’).

Quite aside from that, and the (very real) possibility of death threats from the extreme end of the spectrum, it’s worth remembering that no matter where you live, your material is almost certainly available in territories with very different beliefs & laws, which could also affect touring considerations, particularly when it comes to the cost of public liability insurance, or venue security - and not just along the obvious lines of "avoid religious states", either. Who could forget the ’fun’ the Birmingham Rep. Theatre had a few years back, when some Sikhs decided they were "offended" by the play, "Behzti" ?

Yes, I know it hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a very real threat to our freedom of expression looming on the horizon. To (badly) rehash a famous (and apparently highly variable) poem:

"First they came for the Cartoonists, but I was not a Cartoonist, so I said nothing...."

Name Of The Game

My dear friend Martin has been a very busy chap with his songwriting recently, and is in the process of putting a band together with which to inflict them upon the good citizens of Edinburgh (for starters - next stop Auchterarder!). Alas, he has been struck by the eternal quandary - what to call the damned thing?

My first response (being one of those conscripted for the project) was that, since he’s the front man, and has written all the material, maybe we should just go out under his name? This has, it must be said, worked perfectly well for a great many highly successful artists and their audiences. As a punter, you pretty much know what brand you’re getting (even if it is that inadvisable mid-career shift into Balinese folk-orientated yodelling that’s been the downfall of so many...), and I’ve not heard too many people complaining that Peter Gabriel’s / John Martyn’s / K.T. tunstall’s / even Katie Melua’s (the ultimate example of "The bland leading the band"...? oh yes, madam, had to work hard to get a gag that bad in, but always worth the effort) etc,etc backing musicians’ names and fizzogs weren’t plastered all over the gig poster/album cover/etc.

We ’backing musicians’ (c’mon, I’m a bass player, and don’t suffer from delusions of grandeur - I know my place! ) also tend not to be quite as ’pretty’ or otherwise appealing / ’interesting’ as the star attraction (i.e. we can nip off to the loo without being followed by photographers trying to catch a glimpse of us with our kecks round our ankles, busily snorting the rim-block...not that I’ve ever been involved in anything of that nature, goodness me, no ), so can have a long-term musical existence without the attendent loss of personal privacy. (Of course in my case, this is achieved by an almost complete absence of commercial ’success’. Or, in fact, any current recording/gigging profile at all. Me own fault for spawning progeny, I reckons...).

Another reasonable naming option would be to follow the jazz example, and go down the "Martin Lennon Trio / Quartet / Stonking Great Massively Expensive Band" route, although it’s not really appropriate for the rootsy / bluesy / dirt-under-yer-collar style of music. Which is a shame, because I had such high hopes for "The Martin Lennon Jolly Minstrel Three", I really did.

The trouble is, since he’s going to insist upon subsuming his identity within a group (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing - I like the first Tin Machine album, I really do! ), I’m not going to be much use to him when it comes to the name-calling - anything serious I try to come up with sounds either incredibly portentously idiotic, or simply totally genre-inappropriate...usually both. As a result, my ideas always collapse, rapidly, into the realms of unfit-for-purpose daftness and inanity - as you’re (inevitably - you probably guessed where this post was heading a while back, didn’t you?) about to find out.

Here, (in best Blue Peter tradition), are a few I made earlier that have been callously spurned and rejected (often by me, the instant after they leapt, unbidden, into my head ). In most cases it should be fairly obvious as to why:

"Age Before Beauty", "All Our Own Hair", "The Prostrate Prostates", "Sanatogen Supermen", "Moobs Alert", "Early-Bird Buffet Gigolos", "One Big Slipper" (in case there’s still somebody, somewhere in the world, who doesn’t know this gag, it’s a Billy Connolly routine which I’m sadly unable to provide a YouTube link for), "Shouting At The Radio", "Applied Gerontology Unit"...all disqualified for possibly being accurate descriptions of the physically ’mature’ nature of the band members...

Of course, it’s just going to be massively downhill from there...let’s start the next lot by going a little bit ’metal’ (although let’s be honest, it’s almost an un-parody-able genre, so one small addition to the canon should suffice):

"Demon Whores of the 13th Circle", "Slightly Soiled", "Your Cousin’s Old Enough" (a little too ’Country’..? ), "Braw Neeps" (a Scottish "Smashing Pumpkins" tribute band), "Spam Tackle" (as in the nearly-meat-like foodstuff, rather than vexatious junk email), "Portaloo Sunrise", "Fiddler At The Doors of Dusk", "Too Much Tongue (for your Mama)", "Accidental Mouthful of Frogspawn", "Koala Rampage"...I’ll stop there - it’s for the best.

N.B. All these names are, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, free and available for anyone who wants ’em. Although you know that does mean you’re probably borderline certifiable, ok? I wonder what Martin will think of the great album title I’ve got for him - "The Sheep Stands Up On Leith Walk" ? Sounds like a winner to me...

Somewhere But Yesterday

*WARNING*

The following post contains material that could be described as "prog-tastic", "prog-errific", and even "prog-tabulous". This may cause distress to small children, domestic animals, and anyone with a known risk of anaphylactic shock upon hearing the words "25-minute track", "concept album", or "if you like early Genesis, you’ll love this". The author shall not be held responsible for any ill effects brought on by the further reading of this post (including headaches, nausea, dizziness, flatulence, sudden growth of improbable facial hair, ’air-drumming’ in 7/4, believing that Jon Andersons’s lyrics actually make sense, becoming strangely unattractive to 99.53% of the population, failing to realise that "Thick As A Brick" was Ian Anderson taking the piss [brilliantly, it has to be said], and feeling strangely cheated when a song only has two (or fewer) oblique references to:
a) semi-apocryphal figures from ancient history
b) ’astral projection’ [or any other equally-unproven ’supernatural’ phenomenon]
c) ’The Lord of The Rings’.)

Right then - not my fault from here on in, so don’t try blaming me if you develop an overwhelming urge to buy the entire Gentle Giant back catalogue.

14 years (you have no idea how much it hurt writing that) after the release of Citizen Cain’s album "Somewhere But Yesterday" (no, not a clue, I had no responsibility for the titles, song lyrics, etc), I was cheerfully searching away for something entirely unrelated when I stumbled upon one of my fellow ’ex-Citizens’ - Alistair MacGregor, guitarist extraordinaire, who emigrated to Ozland soon after the album was done, and is now a full-time function band muso - and doing very well, too by the looks of it...

This, of course, brought back all sorts of memories - completely knackering, thrice-weekly band rehearsals in (drummer) Nick’s basement, down in the ’peeling-and-fading-Victorian-seaside-resort charms’ of Portobello; sometimes struggling with the 85% of the basslines (’where the feck’s it going next? aaarggh!’) that were written by Stewart, the (musically hyperactive) keyboard player; and above all else, the great month we spent out at Splitlevel Studios recording the damned thing.

Admittedly, this did involve a lot of sitting around, listening intently for tiny variations between mixes...which, when one of the tracks does, indeed, run for over 25 minutes - there’s a lesson in there, maybe - can feel as if entire years of your life have ebbed away through the control-room floor...but then for that same track, there was the childish fun of building an unfeasibly large and (dangerously) unstable pile of everything unbreakable I could lay my hands on in the studio, just so that we could create as ’authentic’ a sound of a garden wall being demolished as possible. Being a musician can be *such* hard work, sometimes.

[Would you believe that the last copy of this album I saw on Amazon UK was going for over £60??
Nice to see someone making some money out of it at last]

Then there was the night we finished-up just in time to spend half-an-hour standing around outside, completely oblivious to the cold, gazing up in awe at the Leonids meteor shower (Splitlevel is outside Edinburgh, and round one side of the cottages you can be almost entirely shielded from light pollution, so the effect was pretty spectacular). Appropriately for a prog band, our sense of timing was "most bonus", as Neil, (producer, and owner of Splitlevel) was wont to say.

It was also the only occasion my flute tootling has been recorded for posteriority - all 20 seconds or so of it. Mind you, it is the only real bit of flute on the album - the rest was all done by Stewart using samples - not that any of the reviews it’s had over the years spotted the difference, which says a lot about...er..something. Either the reviewers’ ears, my playing, or the quality of synthetic woodwind in the early 90’s. And since it couldn’t possibly be my playing, well...

I’m still slightly bemused by some of the (often bizarrely over-the-top positive) things people have said about it (yeah, I’ve ’googled’ it - a bit sad & needy, yes, but then it’s the only "proper" CD I've made), and I hate the lazy Mike Rutherford comparisons (I’ve never been much of a fan of his, to be honest) some folk have made when it came to the bass playing (doesn’t sound anything like him...well, except for those bits where it sort of does...but I didn’t write those bits), but my personal favourite comment I’ve come across thus far is:

"WOOOORGH! This is it! - Utter utter prog - on toast! - In progginess terms this is drinking undiluted Ribena from the bottle!"

Is it entirely surprising they’re from Holland?

Still, maybe there’s more to this ’ex-proggers-in-function bands’ business than meets the eye...Alistair’s doing the business in Ultra Violet, both Nick & I were in WildGeese...

If you ever find yourself on a cruise ship, and come across a wee (slightly podgy, with a receding hairline) keyboard player, who occasionally slips bits of Marillion in to alleviate his boredom, well...you never know...? And if he’s working in a duo with a guy who sings ’60’s standards’ in the style of early Peter Gabriel...

p.s. I love prog. Give me great steaming wodges of it, church organs, complex time signature-changes, massive pretensions and all. Sorry, just felt that needing saying, in case I’d given the wrong impression above. I even still enjoy listening to "Somewhere But Yesterday" - even the bit where I got my part right, while Stewart’s playing was slightly off, but it ends-up sounding like I’m the one who cocked up. Not at all annoyed about that, even after (sigh) 14 years.

What's Going On?

Evening all, (and perhaps even sundry). Been a while, hasn't it? This blog nonsense of mine is becoming almost as rare as Scotland beating England at rugby - oh, but hang on, that's exactly what happened today - and far more comprehensively than the scoreline suggested, too. Anyway, I'm writing this at the behest of my mate Martin, (who finally has some of his great new songs on-line!), although I must say he seems to be in something of a 'minority of one' where my blogging's concerned - I've hacked-out 39 posts, about 600-odd (very odd) individual folk have visited from over 20 countries (only 19 States of America to date though, but I have had contact from Aruba!), and nobody (except him) bothered to have a stab at the "Classic Soul Quiz Question"...

Ah well. I'm secretly working on some vague musical ideas of my own, which might eventually wend their way myspace-wards, and since I only have very limited time - after the kids are in bed and the flat is showing a passing acquaintance with the concept of tidiness, but before my eyes start closing involuntarily - something has to give way. 'Something' most likely being these witterings - but then, the viewing stats suggest that won't be the greatest loss the world has ever suffered...

Ok, then. Well, before I offer up the answer (that has precisely zero people in a hystrionic frenzy of antici...............pation!), a quick mention of something else that's largely Martin's fault.

Apparently, I'm in a King Crimson-related video on YouTube. Not, unfortunately, in any kind of impressive-performing-of-difficult-music sense, rather footage of a 1973/74 line-up King Crimson reunion-cum-Discipline Global Mobile album launch in London back in 1997. Martin (who had been fab and secured the tickets) and I traipsed down there on the night bus from Edinburgh, an unusually unpleasant, (not to mention almost entirely sleep-free) experience, complete with a 'Night Of The Living Dead' stop-off halfway-down the M6. (Not the most exciting zombie flick ever made - a bus-load of brain-dead semi-humans shuffles across a motorway bridge in search of the service station café, where they consume cups of an unidentifiable brown sludgy liquid in complete silence, before re-tracing their steps, and vanishing southwards into the night. About as interesting as an Andy Warhol movie, only with better dialogue and acting.)

Anyway, for anyone who's daft enough to want to see it (and to be fair, there are some snatches of Mr. Fripp being humourous, Tony Levin playing a Ned Steinberger EUB, John Whetton playing acoustic guitar and singing "Book of Saturday" in a most impressive manner, which are worth a gander), click here! I make several appearances in the last 30 seconds (starting at about 9'30"), chatting with Tony Geballe (who's a great guitarist, and a very nice man!), and asking Tony Levin a question of such spectacular banality, it's a good thing the audio track fails to pick it up. In case there's any confusion, I'm wearing a light reddish-brown 'ethnic' collarless shirt (my favourite shirt for over a decade!), and have severely short hair (I'd just had my shoulder-length ponytail chopped-off, and remember still being very aware of its absence - it's surprising just how much heat insulation hair can provide). Oh, to be 11 years younger again...

That'll do with the procrastination, onwards to the Great Answer!! What was it that all those incredible soul/funk artists had (still have, at time of writing) in common?

None of them ever had a 'number one' hit record in the UK.

Yes, yes, less than earth-shattering, but at least slightly surprising, I hope you'll agree? And yes, I know - they were much bigger stars in the USA, but still...

It all started when another (I've got a couple of spares locked away in the attic) mate of mine, Neil, and I were idly browsing around on the ChartStats website, and he thought he'd find out exactly how big a hit Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools" had been. Imagine our shock (and a little bit of awe), when it transpired that this all-time classic had scaled the dizzy heights of...number 37!! This spurred us on to further investigation into the record-buying habits of the British public - "Respect" only made number 10, "Think" got to 26, and "Spanish Harlem" up to 14. (Now, it could be claimed that she did, in fact, make the top spot - but only thanks to 1987's [terrible] George Michael vehicle "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", and that's almost as far from 'classic soul' as it gets, so it was disqualified...)

I decided that this was a topic worth pursuing (there was nothing on telly the next evening), and the more I looked for details of 'classic' songs, the stranger it got - the original release of "My Girl" by The Temptations spent a single week in the chart, stalling at number 43. (It did, however, finally get them up to no.2 in 1992, thanks to Dan Ackroyd's cloyingly dreadful film of the same name...sorry, but I think I'm actually physically allergic to Macaulay Culkin). Their 1973 version (arguably the best-known?) of "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" bailed out at no.14. "Soul Man" couldn't get Sam and Dave higher than no. 24 in 1967. That oft-requested-at-gigs ode to utter despair, "Sitting On the Dock of The Bay" came closer, reaching no.3, a position equalled in 1970 when Edwin Starr questioned the utility of "War". "Dancing in the Streets" needed two bites of the cherry (no.28 in 1964) to climb to no.4 for Martha & the Vandellas in 1969. Still, that's better than the "Godfather of Soul" ever managed.

Unbelievably (to me, anyway), James Brown's biggest hit was "Living In America", which peaked at no.5 in 1986. This was a feat that Brummie comedian Jasper Carrott had achieved 11 years previously with "Funky Moped". In fact, 1975 was a fine year for 'funky'-themed comedy songs, because The Goodies got one place higher singing "Funky Gibbon" (a true classic in its own right, it has to be said!). 1966's "I Got You" fizzled out at a pretty miserable no. 29, and "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine)" - not the world's greatest song title, really - collapsed at a distinctly unsexy no. 32, four years later.

And then we can turn to the artists that only hit the top spot once, in spite of many classic songs to their names - The Supremes, for instance, with "Baby Love" (first time around, in 1964), Smokey Robinson ("Tears of a Clown"), or Marvin Gaye (it should be obvious which song it was in his case). Sticking with the sublime Mr. Gaye, "(Sexual) Healing" may have (briefly) touched no.4, but how come "Let's Get It On" only made it as high as no.31? And as for the great song that's the title of this post...an incredible number 80...!?! Even Stevie Wonder, for all his earlier brilliance, had to wait until 1984's (frankly, musically quite tedious with anodyne lyrics) "I Just Called To Say I Love You" before he got an actual chart-topper.

It's made all the worse when you realise that back in the "classic soul" era, (1971 to be precise), "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" by Middle of The Road, (where's a lorry with failed brakes when you need one?), spent five whole weeks at no. 1 (and more than 8 bloody months in the chart, finally dropping-out at no. 48).

What the hell were my parents' generation thinking?

Still, we did redeem ourselves slightly when, in 1984, the nightmarish combination of Janet Jackson and Cliff Richard teamed up to offer us the sheer unmitigated horror of "Two To The Power". How did it fare?

Three weeks in the charts, with a high point of no. 83.

So we aren't completely devoid of taste, after all...

Before I go, I've always wanted to start an internet rumour (the more ridiculous the better), and since controversial politics seems to be the only way to draw attention to oneself these days, I offer you this (please feel free to pass it on to anyone you think might be half-way gullible enough):

There was a YouTube video that was uploaded on Feb 29th, that featured Barack Obama, tied to an office chair, being spanked, whipped and generally dominated by a leather-clad Hillary Clinton, while a third person, whose physique appeared identical that of John McCain (wearing only a gimp mask and a pair of powder-blue socks) watched. (Always include little details like the colour of the socks - the conspiracy nuts love that sort of thing). The video was only online for a matter of minutes before it got pulled, and neither YouTube, nor any of the alleged participants, have been willing to answer questions about it. Three of the major US networks are 'known' (a favourite 'woo'-believers word) to have copies of the footage, but since they're part of the 'mainstream media keep-us-in-the-dark, protect-the-establishment' conspiracy, they're denying all knowledge of its existence. All links, etc, to the video have, naturally, been deleted by those who are 'in control' of the web...

Now, who can prove it didn't happen?

All the best, for the time being, from this small corner of sub-standard reality.

Sleepless

Dear folks who read these blurblings from time to time, (or stumble across them by accident, and stare at the fish-bass-wielding author's picture with a mixture of bewilderment and disappointment, thinking "huh? This isn't 'the difference between bflat and double bflat tuba'. Man, [insert your most detested search engine here] sucks!" - a genuine search query, by the way, that saw some poor Parisian thrown in the direction of my nonsense), I'm afraid that if you were expecting this to be the usual, insomnia-conquering mountain of prose, then I'm going to disappoint you. (cue sound f.x. of crowd cheering wildly, 21-gun salute, fireworks, etc.)

Owing to 'mini-primate no.2' failing to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time (that being an absolute maximum) for the last couple of weeks, I'm currently experiencing a complete absence of energy, creativity, and motivation - especially when both the kids are finally in bed, and I've got time to sit down and inflict this nonsense on the world. I had a relatively interesting (I thought) topic all researched and raring to go, along with a couple of other bits and pieces that might have been mildly amusing, but every time I've sat down...ahhhh..what was the point? Why bother? Have some mental vegetating time instead...which is desperately self-indulgent, self-pitying, and highly indisciplined (apparently there are 'specialist practitioners' who can provide 'stern correction' for the latter problem, but I'm not a great fan of pain, and they can be, so I am told, quite expensive...personal trainers, I mean. Who else could you possibly have been thinking of?).

While we're on the subject of mini-primates, I got a bit of a shock a couple of days ago...you see, I assumed (never a good start) that, after all the nappy-changing experience I've had, nothing that burst forth from a baby's bum could mount a serious assault on my olfactory senses. "Surely", I (foolishly) thought, "Surely I must be innured to the smell of poo by now, yea even that which is most noisomely pungent, and in its noxiousness can be likened only to a rotting marmoset, or some other such creature of low habits and base uncleanliness". (Apologies for possibly besmirching the reputation of all marmosets, who may well be most fastidious in their habits regarding hygiene - it just sounded like a good 'comedy animal' name...). Well, tiny man proved me oh-so-very-very-wrong - several times over the course of the day, in fact - with offerings that smelled so acrid I almost lost all of my appetite for chocolate (!)...along with the remnants of my last couple of meals. Quite incredible what chemicals these kids can synthesise in their guts...and a little worrying, considering he eats exactly what I do - so I haven't exactly got anyone else (or their food) to blame.

Now, before anyone accuses me of exaggeration (perish the thought), I've dealt with some very pungent odours in my time - clearing-out a blocked drain at the back of a tenement block in Edinburgh, elbow-deep in a mixture of other people's chip-pan grease and hair, springs to mind (partly because I did it more than once - well, it was either that, or pay inordinate sums of cash to a plumber), as does having to replace a toilet outflow pipe that had slowly become fully 'backed-up' over the course of several days. A period, alas, when no-one in the house was suffering from constipation... Yet even that was no match for a toddler's nappy...!

Right, going to end this small slice of irrelevance with a literal 'pop' quiz:

What do Aretha Franklin, Sly & The Family Stone, Edwin Starr, The Temptations, Al Green, Sam & Dave, Gladys Knight (with all, any, or even none of her 'Pips'), Wilson Pickett, The Isley Brothers, Otis Redding, Martha & The Vandellas, and James Brown all have in common ? (apart from the bleedin' obvious, naturally)

All shall be revealed (although most of you probably know the answer already, in which case it'll be a huge anticlimax - mind you, that might be compensated-for by your feelings of vast smugness at being a know-it-all smarty-pants - who can say?) in my next post, which should appear (everything standing as it does, currently)...ohh..I don't know?..sometime before christmas?

All Lovers Are Deranged

"Roses are red, violets are blue,
I'm 'romantically-challenged', how about you?"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Yes, the horrendous trial-by-greetings card that is the 14th of February has reared its ugly little head, and half the world seems swathed in pink and red. Sales of helium-filled balloon hearts, nauseatingly-cutesy teddy bears, anatomically-suggestive chocolates and (environmentally damaging? a couple of reports on supplies from Colombia and India) roses have had their annual peak, and, thanks also to that amazing invention, 'booze', some people (who on any other day stood no chance whatsoever) will tonight actually achieve their lifelong (so far) ambition of a "pity shag" from the otherwise entirely unobtainable object of their affections.

I always hated St. Valentine's Day when I was a teenager - when everyone around me would enquire "how many did you get?", while clutching an improbably large stack of envelopes, to which I'd (truthfully, but with sinking self-esteem) answer "Well, I got one"...but all the time I'd know, secretly, that it had been posted by my mum...and I've never really changed my mind about the whole concept. (For anyone wishing to recreate this 'hormones-and-acne' feeling for themselves by way of an experiment, I recommend listening to the "Dark Side of the Moon", for a general air of melancholy, while reading something like "A History of the Indians of the United States", by Angie Debo, for intermittent troughs of deeper gloom. But always keep a Billy Connolly cd at the ready, in case you take it just a little too far...).

So, in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, I thought I'd compile yet another song list, this time of tunes which are steadfastly opposed to the plastic schmaltz we're being bombarded with. What follows are ten of my (entirely personal) favourite "Dear retail outlet marketing department, yes, I'm a bit of a sad loser, kindly stop rubbing my face in it" tracks, ranging from 'mild yearning' through to 'downright scary', hopefully with a small stop-off at 'slightly wistful' along the way.

[Disclaimer: The author does not, at any time, claim that this is a 'definitive' list, or that these songs are, in any way,shape or form, somehow 'better' than alternative songs the reader may prefer (however lacking in musical taste the reader thusly may appear to be). He also denies any responsibility for the faint odour of 'cheese' that might surround one (or more) of his selections. He has a blocked-up nose, and anyway, was on holiday at the time when it didn't happen, so it must be all your fault instead. Glad we could clear that up so easily..]

1. WHY - Annie Lennox
Beautiful voice, beautiful song (co-written by ex-Jethro Tull keyboard player, Peter-John Vitesse in case anyone cared), wonderful words, and all very sad. A perfect start!

2. FOOL FOR YOUR LOVING - Whitesnake
Complete shuddering change of genre for this 1980 hit (it got to no.13) for David Coverdale's half-ex-Deep Purple, heavy-blues-rockers. Twin guitars, and Jon Lord's organ to boot - a rifftastic declaration of personal growth!

3. GUTE NACHT (video) - from 'Winterreise' (translation) by Franz Schubert
Ah, the cold!, the snow! - our poor hero has been cast out of his girlfriend's house, and is left to wander the icy paths in the darkness, wondering what the feck went wrong. Or something like that, anyway - maybe a trifle more nuanced, perhaps? This was my party piece (in days of yore), and I always loved that it had an opera's worth of emotion packed into less than 6 minutes. I still annoy the kids with a (now very poor) rendition from time to time...

4. I WANT YOU - Elvis Costello
This song seems quite pleasant at first, but slowly drags you into a deranged world of obsession and violent desire. The appropriately off-kilter (and out-of-tune) guitar solo perfectly fits the mood. Visceral and more than a little disturbing.

5. ANGELINE - John Martyn
A gentler tone here, the singer pleading with (mysterious? manipulative? plain annoying?) Angeline, imploring that whatever she chooses to do in the immediate future, "it really won't matter" as long as he can spend some precious time with her now. No matter the outcome, you just know it's going to end messily...

6. LOVE ON THE ROCKS WITH NO ICE - The Darkness
Forget the body-hugging spandex catsuits, make the effort to look beyond the double-entendres and jokiness of many of his songs, and you'll find that Justin Hawkins has a very fine (if quirky - and what's wrong with that?) way with lyrics. Here, he combines depressingly honest domestic detail with old-school rock- a damn hard trick to pull off, but one he manages with aplomb.

7. WE'RE GOING WRONG - Cream
The title pretty much says it all for this one! Not a great deal going-on lyrically, but Ginger Baker's slightly ominous, muted tom rolls build the musical tension expertly. Brilliantly claustrophobic.

8. HALLELUJAH JORDAN - Hothouse Flowers
A bouncy, rollicking, dance-yer-arse-off Irish-soul-band rendition of that age-old story: boy meets girl, girl decides to go off with flash git, boy drinks himself to death.

9. ONE OF MY TURNS - Pink Floyd
Now this was a tough choice. Soooo many Pink Floyd songs to choose from that could have made it into the list...but this (well, the first half, anyway, before it gets loud & psychotic) is probably Roger Waters at his bleakest. "Day after day, love turns grey, Like the skin of a dying man". Yep...if it's miserable you're after, that'll pretty much do it every time.

10. WASHING OF THE WATER - PETER GABRIEL
There are very few songs which have ever moved me to tears. This continues to be one of them. (YouTube video here)

Well. That's probably enough jollity and romantification to be getting-on with until next February 14th. Not that I've got anything against all the folk who are happily paired (or tripled? quadrupled? I'm not judging) off, and adore the whole "hearts 'n' flowers" thing. Oh no. It's a wonderful country to be in...I just seem to have left my passport in the pocket of my other jacket...

p.s. 10 'muso' points to anyone who recognises the source for this post's title without using Google!

p.p.s. In the spirit of 'always wanting to go back and tinker some more with the effects settings' that I'm hopelessly prone to, I've been picking-over this list for the last couple of days. Trouble is, there are so many great 'love going wrong', 'love gone wrong', and 'love gone wrong, come back again and man, was that a mistake!' songs that I couldn't help wondering whether these were properly representative of...umm...me, I suppose. Here, then, are a few alternative takes, any one of which might have made its way onto the album:

11. PIBROCH (CAP IN HAND) - Jethro Tull
One of Ian Anderson's many fine stories where, to quote the man himself, "he never quite gets the girl". In this instance, our simple hero, having finally summoned-up the courage to declare his hand, tragically discovers that he's too late...

12. SHE'S LEAVING ME BECAUSE SHE REALLY WANTS TO - Lyle Lovett
Again, a very hard choice to make. It could have been the cool cynicism of "M-O-N-E-Y", or something sad, yet hard, like "Black and Blue"...but in the end, it just had to be this one. This guy (who is, to my over-tired and malfunctioning mind, anyway, the country equivalent of Elvis Costello) always writes cleverly, elegantly, and honestly.

13. WATER OF LOVE - Dire Straits
Forget the world-straddling stadium tours, the hordes of 'Princess Di'-lookalike fans, the mounds of discarded sweatbands - when they first emerged, blinking, into the cold light of the UK music scene, Dire Straits played stripped-down, 'who cares if it's cool?' guitar music with what might be termed 'mild case of urban depression' lyrics. Although quite what the lines "Took a stone from my soul, when I was lame, Just so you could make me tame" (in 'Six-Blade Knife') mean, I haven't a bleedin' clue. If anyone out there can shed some light on this...please?? anyone??

14. HERE'S A QUARTER (CALL SOMEONE WHO CARES) - Travis Tritt
We all have different ways of responding when a relationship falls apart....

15. CHICKS DIG JERKS - Marblehead Johnson (aka the late, great, Bill Hicks)
Just thought I'd finish off with something to make us blokes feel better...sort of. (You can listen to this track here.) For anyone unfortunate enough not to be aware of the brilliance of Bill Hicks, this is a good place to start. Enjoy!

Sound Advice

I don't know about you, (dims lights), but tonight, (pauses to light candles, turn on Marvin Gaye cd), I'm feeling....sexy (cue sound f.x. of 'seductive' growling noises, interrupted a hacking coughing fit which spoils the mood somewhat). And here's why:

"A truly great name in British amplification makes its return to the UK. Sound City Mark 6 Series are valve amps - glowing, glowering and growling. These amps are not "sound-a-like" or "Valve-o-tronic" (or whatever). These are the real deal."

Sound good? Like what you've read so far? I'll bet you do, you naughty, naughty people. But wait, there's more:

"All feature 12AX7 preamp valves for that fantastic "hooligan" British tone...with EL84 power-amp section valves"

Phwoarrr!! "hooligan" tone, eh? Has that got your nipples a bit perky, hmm? Does 'guitar porn' get much better than this? And it can be yours for a mere £249.99 (possibility of a cash discount - nudge, nudge, wink ,wink, need I say more?) They go on to say:

"The 1x10 SC20C is perfect for practice or recording - or crank it up and listen to that warm, edgy "broken-up" distortion that only valves can deliver."

Errrrr.....no. (cue s.f.x. of needle scraping across a record, cars screeching to a halt, emergency sirens blaring...you get the idea). No, I'm afraid it really, really, isn't. Perfect, I mean. Not for anything, in any musical shape or form. Not even half-decent, I'm afraid. This, you see, is a prime example of shop website advertising exploiting a long-standing guitarists' prejudice filter. As George Orwell might have put it, (if he'd had long hair, a dyed goatee and a 'Woodstock' stare), "Valve amps good, Valve stacks better". This mantra, in varying forms, has been repeated so many times over the years in highly reputable guitar magazines (oh, ok, and in shoddily-produced, cruddy ones too), that it has become something of a golden rule, a mighty Law of Amplification, whose greatness and obvious truth shall not be questioned.

Indeed, when it comes to the absolute top-end of the market, I'd have to concede that yes, massive valve stacks sound fabulous. Only a tiny fraction of the planet's guitarists will ever play in a space large enough to warrant them, (not that that stops some folk - I recall being in a medium-sized pub in Edinburgh's Cowgate one night, when the band [of deafness-fanatics, apparently] pitched up with a matched pair of 100w Marshall full stacks - turned up to 11, of course. The bass player [poor sod] had a 400w Trace set-up, and might as well not have been plugged-in, for not a low-end note could be heard. In fact, nothing was audible, except over-loud, under-talented banal rock riffage - even shouting drinks orders at the bar staff at a range of less than 2 feet wasn't working, so we left. You could still make out the band over half a mile away...), and possess sufficient roadies so as to avoid the otherwise inevitable long-term back problems. But still, the sound they make is tremendous, agreed. Extrapolating down, however, as many are wont to do, and regarding anything valve-based as being instantly and inevitably superior to the transistor alternative, well...now that ain't so clever. Come with me, dear reader, to an extremely wet day (yeah, so many to choose from around here! ) about a month ago, where I am in the Edinburgh branch of the UK's largest instrument retailer, about to encounter the aforementioned Sound City 20-watt valve beast for the first time...

Now, I was genuinely interested in this amp. It appeared to be small enough to be portable (and not take up too much space in an already-cluttered flat ), yet loud enough for rehearsal/small gigs, the price was decent (I actually had some money ), and, of course, it was all valve - the 'holy grail' was potentially purchasable!

(Before we go any further, I'd like to assert that I am in no way, nor ever have been, an 'amp snob'. If it sounds good, then it is good, as far as I'm concerned, irrespective of circuitry, speaker or manufacturer's logo. Hey, I'll even stand up in court and swear that I've heard players making pleasing noises with Peavey Bandits, ok? But still...this little baby was all valve...!! )

As per usual, I chose a medium-cheap guitar to test it with, (c.f. the Marshall Artist & Hamer guitar I found in York - "Southbound Again", January 10th), and my eyes lit upon a Spector Arc6 Pro hanging near the checkout. I'd had a bash on a couple of their basses, which were entirely-moderate-but-looked-nice, and the guitar was reduced from £399 to £199 (same as the Hamer), so it seemed ideally suited for the job.

This, as it turned out, was my first mistake. Down in York, the Hamer had proved to be an excellent piece of kit, and the marriage of it and the Artist was nothing less than a spectacular experience. Unfortunately, the Spector was, not to put too fine a point on it, crap. Well, to be fair, the first one I used was technically broken, (no sound from the bridge pickup), not plain crap. The neck felt fine, and the neck pickup worked ok. The second one, alas, had two working pickups, but an unpleasant problem around the nut area on the lowest two strings, and tedious intonation/holding tuning issues. This didn't reflect well either on Spector's (Chinese) factory quality control (some guy out the back chain-smoking, pausing only to nod vigorously whenever someone came out and stuck a guitar under his nose?), or on the shop's basic stock maintenance. Probably a bit of both.

Still, the guitar difficulties could be worked-around. Shame the same couldn't be said for the amplifier. It was....well...terrible. To use an appallingly obvious gag, it was the biggest let-down since Tony Blair...oh dear. That was cheap, wasn't it? About the same quality as the amp, all things considered.

I'm not even sure where to start when it comes to listing its myriad faults and deficiencies. The tone was so treble-heavy, the only way to get any kind of full-bodied sound out of it was to crank the bass knob up to about 9 o'clock (having no numerical indicators on the top panel may be a 'cool' bit of design, but is howlingly impractical when trying to fine-tune amp settings...grrrr), while shoving the treble and middle under half-way. (I've no idea what frequency the mid-range is centred on, except that it's not the right one). This applied equally whether playing clean, or engaging the angry-bee-in-a-biscuit-tin-of-fizz overdrive, whose control leapt from 'none' to 'great steaming buckets' in the space of roughly a millimetre. (Incidentally, nothing I tried with the guitar - pickup selection, winding the tone back, etc - made the slightest bit of improvement.) "Warm, edgy, 'broken up' distortion" my hairy backside!

Did someone simply fit the wrong potentiometer? I mean, how badly do you have to design and build your circuit board to rob an all-valve amp of, well, its inherent 'valve-ishness'? (Or should that be 'valve-osity'? ) This dreadfulness was carried-through to the reverb, which again, went from zero to 'drops of water landing in a pool at the back of a very, very large cave' with the tiniest of movements.

After 20 minutes of increasing frustration with the beast, one of the staff came over (a trying-ever-so-hard-to-be 'cool' Liverpudlian - I think ? - with a pop-kid 'McFly' hairdo that he was at least ten years too old for), and asked me what I thought of the Mark 6. Choking back the desire to be ruthlessly honest, I said it was 'disappointing' and 'not very versatile'. With a facial expression that conveyed his utter horror and contempt (simultaneously, which is pretty tricky), he countered with "Yeah, well, it has a very particular sound, you know? It's great for Britpop and that...". Well, that sealed it for me. Britpop. A dead-end musical sub-genre that was, I thought, well and truly deceased a few years ago...and a damn good thing too, frankly. Nice use of the word 'particular', too...not a definition I'd ever come across before, obviously, but then we should always be open to new ideas...

So, that was a complete bust then. Ah, well. I'm not complaining - I'm ever-so-slightly-tearing Sound City a new one, maybe, but not complaining as such - as of two days ago, I became the delighted owner of a Session Duette, 60-watt (LOUD! ), 1x12" totally solid-state amp from the late 1980s. Sure, it's currently in the hands of the local repair guru, having a well-deserved overhaul (scratchy pots, one of the ridiculously tiny wires inside the accutronics reverb unit has 'eroded', etc,etc), but what an incredible device! In one 10-minute session, without touching the tone (only treble & bass, but that's all this baby needs ) controls, I was able to take it from a 'Rolling Stones' bluesy crunch, through early Clapton into Cream, then on to AC/DC, Motorhead, and up into 80's hair metal, merely by increasing the overdrive level. Now that is versatility. And it sounded bloody amazing through the entire range - with nary a valve in sight. It wouldn't quite stray into Nightwish/Amberian Dawn territory, sure, but give it a break - it's twenty years old, and anyway, that's what pedals are for!

The clean channel is almost scarily clean - I prefer a slightly 'warmer', Marshall-ish 'clean' myself, but it's ideal for plugging effects boards into, so who's moaning? Plus it has an effects loop, and two guitarists can plug in at the same time - the amp channels are completely discrete. Oh, and did I mention the price? Less than half the cost of the Sound City (say that using a generic 'Sean Connery' impression and you'll have summed-it up pretty accurately ), including postage. Good old Ebay. Examples pop up quite regularly, as does its slightly smaller predecessor, the Rockette 30 - as used by Eric Clapton, on the 'August' album, apparently - and the 'daddy' of the Session range, the wonderful "Sessionette 75".

Award-Session stopped making amps for a while, but they're back in business now, and all their products are definitely worth a listen. Head honcho, Stewart Ward, has very interesting views (some may say 'controversial' - I couldn't possibly comment ) about amplification, and if you, like me, aren't an electronics genius (complete ignoramus in my case), simply want to know more, or are curious about an alternative take to 'valves rule' hegemony, then you could do a lot worse than click here, and see what the man has to say.

He does, after all, build a mean little amp - what better reason could you need?

It Was A Very Good Year

Well, actually it wasn't. Not when I was seventeen, anyway. 1986 will go down in history as one of the generally-less-successful orbits of the sun that the planet's had, especially if you're considering the period since we daft humans stopped having massive, ideologically-motivated wars on a global scale - opting for downsizing and using proxy dictators/states seemed like a much better bet at the time. The year started badly with Phil Lynnot's death, then millions of us watched the space shuttle 'Challenger' blow up (22 years ago today - it doesn't seem possible that it was so long ago). Things continued downhill when Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, was assassinated (still unsolved), then Libyan agents blew up a disco in Berlin...which was swiftly followed by American air strikes against Libya, facilitated by the (ever-radiant and delightful) Margaret Thatcher, of course - these followed their usual pattern of successfully hitting some military targets, while simultaneously blowing-up purely residential areas, (including, on this occasion, Western embassies in Tripoli). All this and it was still only April...

Violence was something of a recurring theme for the year, with aeroplanes being bombed by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and hijacked by Palestinians in Karachi (the folk who chucked a hand grenade in amongst the terrified passengers, as I recall). South Africa's white-minority-rule apartheid regime launched military raids on foreign cities thought to be harbouring African National Congress 'bases', but the (charming, fragrant) Mrs. T yet again ruled-out sanctions against P.W. Botha's racist government. Another great follower of democratic principles, 'Dr.' (merely honorary, bestowed by that bastion of intellectual rigour, Bob Jones University, South Carolina - his "Reverend" status is equally flimsy) Ian Paisley called on Northern Ireland's protestants to prepare for "civil war", and to make a "show of force" on the streets, culminating in rioting in Portadown. The head of Renault, Georges Besse, was murdered by a couple of ultra-leftist terrorists (seemingly because he restored the company's fortunes by means of mass redundancies), but across in Chile, that evil old tyrant, General Pinochet, somehow managed to avoid any serious injury despite coming under sustained assault from a heavily-armed bunch of neo-Marxist guerillas.

As a small counter-balance to this litany of woe, however, we should remember that 1986 was the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union, as Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika" (restructuring) and "glasnost" (openness) started up in earnest, with the return of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Andrei Sakharov from internal exile being a major event. Plus there were high-profile ministerial resignations over leaks and back-stabbing surrounding the Westland Helicopters affair (Leon Brittan, Michael Heseltine), and who could possibly want to forget the start of Jeffrey ("liar, liar, pants on fire") Archer's woes, when he was photographed paying money to a prostitute, in a bid to keep her from going to the press. (For anyone who doesn't know what happened next - already fabulously wealthy by writing [well, coming up with some of the basic ideas, anyway - who did the actual writing is highly debatable] lowest-common-denominator-tripe novels, he sued for libel, won record damages, got a peerage from John Major for charitable fundraising - that later proved to be [like so much else in his life] grossly exaggerated and largely illusory, did some dodgy share dealing, and finally was nicked for perjury and perverting the course of justice relating to the original libel trial. Is now regarded as the finest public liar Britain has ever known [Tony Blair came close, but couldn't quite land the top spot], and a source of cheap laughs for lazy stand-ups throughout the land...oh, but not me of course. Perish the thought.)

We also found out just how crooked Ronald Reagan's chums could be, thanks to the "Iran-Contra / Ollie North-and-his-red-hot-shredder" scandal, the Guinness "false-accounting-conspiracy-and-mysteriously-self-healing-alzheimer's" inquiry commenced, and cunning (but dangerous) cult founder L. Ron Hubbard shuffled off this mortal coil (or did he?? Anyone got Tom Cruise's mobile number? I'm sure he'd be able to clear that one up in between the sporadic irrational rants...)

On the other hand, this was the year when George W. Bush turned 40, gave up drinking and had a 'spiritual awakening' - and just look how that has panned-out.

For me, personally, 1986 wasn't great, but then I was a hormonally-imbalanced, over-energetic, girlfriend-free-zone (desperation is never attractive), whose self-confidence was in inverse proportion to his (plentiful) acne (at least now I can grow a beard, which solves half the personal pulchritudity problems...only half, mind). Fortunately for me, there was a refuge, a wee sanctuary where I could hang around for hours (when I wasn't doing ridiculous amounts of sport), trying not to get in the way or clutter the place up too much.

This was the incredible shop-of-arcane-wonders known as "Live Music", situated on Candlemaker Row in Edinburgh (I think it was on the site of the "red shop on the right" in the picture, but could be completely wrong. It's happened before...it'll undoubtedly happen again. With increasing frequency, as the senses dull and the brain addles further...), owned and run with a quixoitic disregard for capitalistic, profit-based business models by a pair of very fine guitarists, Mike & Steve Park. They were a boon to the low-budget musician, giving overly-generous trade-in valuations, and accepting piles of oddly disparate junk in their desire to shift some of the stock. Trouble was, the shop was full (usually far too full - trying to take a guitar off the wall, or an amp from out of the window, sometimes seemed like a mountaineering enterprise worthy of Tenzing Norgay - who, incidentally, died in 1986) of great "classic" stuff (Marshall and Orange stacks, early 1970's Les Pauls, Colorsound Fuzz pedals, a different Sessionette 75 every week,etc,etc), mixed with weird-but-expensive bits of gear, like a John Birch custom model, a Bond Electraglide guitar, or even, for a while, an enormous upright bass banjo. (The sort of equipment, in other words, that everyone wants to fondle, but are highly unlikely to purchase). Alas, almost none of the customers ever had much in the way of spare cash, so the shop became virtually a charitable institution for the keen-but-impoverished local muso fraternity.

What it provided for me, though, was a musical learning environment of the highest order. Where else could I have had the opportunity to sit and listen to all the older (semi) pro's who'd wander in, pick up an interesting guitar and rip through a selection of styles, then stop and chat with whoever else was in while the next guy took a turn? This was where my abiding love of blues was truly born, where I discovered that the (original) Fender Esprit was the greatest Gibson guitar ever made, and where, one day, a large, bearded, and definitely pissed guy came in, with a leopard-print-clad middle-aged peroxide blonde in tow. He blethered away completely incoherently with/at Mike Park very happily for about half-an-hour, then declared his intention to return to the Greyfriars Bobby's bar, where he had been previously ensconced.

I thought nothing of this at the time, but a year or so later, freshly back from university, I was in the shop enthusing about John Martyn, whose music I'd recently been introduced to by a mate, when Mike said, "You know, you've met him, yeah?". Which stopped me in my tracks a bit, because I'd no idea what he was talking about. I probably said nothing more eloquent than "Eh?" in response to this, because I was truly befuddled. He then reminded me of the encounter many moons before with...ah, you're there ahead of me, aren't you? Fair enough. Yep, turned out the big drunk dude was the incredible Mr. Martyn himself. Ah well. As with so many things in life, if only I'd known earlier what I know now...I'd have used every last penny I had to buy up old Marshall valve combos, which were going horrifically out-of-fashion at the time (a decade of Peavey "giant-bee-in-a-tin-can" noises ahoy!), and made a bloody fortune when the guitar-playing world finally came to its senses a few years ago...

Live Music, inevitably, eventually went the way of all good things. The name remains, but it's under completely new ownership, over near the King's Theatre. It's a perfectly good wee shop, with friendly staff, and sometimes an interesting second-hand item or two, but it could never replace the dimly-lit, cramped (and slightly smelly) delight that was the old place, back in 1986.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad year, after all...?

p.s. Mike Park can still be seen and heard on stage, playing with Edinburgh blues legends Blues N' Trouble (if you scroll down, he's the guy with the green tele) - you can catch them at the Darlington Arts Centre, Friday 7th March, 8pm. £10 a ticket - bargain! Oh, and if you do go, say "Hi" to him from me - he'll not have a clue what you're on about, stare at you blankly, and think you're odd, but it's the thought that counts.

White Wedding

Gentle reader, 'tis time to put aside your daily cares and woes, and take a step sidewards into the world of whimsy and conjecture once more. Which, for anyone who has stumbled upon this blog by accident, (best Google search to land here by mistake so far: "example of a bad ambition" ), is a very good thing, since I was otherwise intending to explain in great detail the reasons behind my boundless love of small, independent instrument shops - dredging out chunks of my far-from-exciting teenage years (& psyche) in the process, and ending with a bit of an onslaught against one particular branch of a national retail chain (in the UK). Oh, and I was going to rip the piss out of the terrible guitar & amp I happened upon while I was there, but I'll save it all until next week instead. Consider yourselves fortunate, indeed!

Instead, let's re-examine a subject I touched upon briefly in "What Do You Want From Me", back in September - gloriously inappropriate songs for bands to play at weddings. This was prompted by an evening spent with a couple of close friends, one of them recounting the tale of his band kicking off a wedding reception with a spirited rendition of "Bad Moon Rising", which, as the song went on, and the gist of the lyrics slowly sank in, earned them ever-filthier looks from the bride's parents.

So we started trying to compile a setlist of songs that really shouldn't make an appearance, although I must confess a significant proportion of the WildGeese repertoire undoubtedly fell into this category, and it certainly never stopped us - and when you consider that one of our most-requested songs at weddings was Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer", well...

Anyway, since this had amused us no end, (although I'm not sure how much their neighbours enjoyed some of our more alcoholically-enhanced-harmonies), I decided to share our comedic delusions with the wider world. But that raised a few problems - it was far too easy, for instance, to think of songs that would be simply gratuitously offensive to a "family" audience, so that meant losing some of our top selections from that night. Goodbye then, alas, to South Park's jaw-droppingly-obscene, yet perkily-brilliant 'Broadway showstopper', "Uncle F*cka" [Warning: Links to YouTube video, which isn't appropriate for small children, folk at work, the socially conservative, or indeed anyone who believes that a few anglo-saxon words being used in adult-orientated comedy are more dangerous to the well-being of the populace than the effects of poverty, violence or organised religion through the ages], Leather Nun's "Fist F*ckers Associated", whole inevitable swathes of "death metal", "black metal", "goregrind", and various strands of "gangsta" (c)rap, etc,etc, etc.)

Then we come to the little ditties that wouldn't work because of their genres' stylistic conventions - the entirety of "Supper's Ready" by Genesis, perhaps, or Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick"...or anything I've ever played on . (I know, there are weddings where half the crowd would be well up for "Tales From Topographic Oceans" in all it's pomp and majesty, or possibly even "21st Century Schizoid Man", but I'm afraid it's the middle of the distribution curve we're looking at here. Sorry. Plus they're just a bit bloody difficult to play! I mean, think of the poor, struggling musicians, please! ) This also knocks out a host of promising material from artists like Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, Leonard Cohen, Captain Beefheart and so forth. A huge shame, yes, because they have all made a number of potentially excellent wedding-reception-wrecking records (try saying that 5 times quickly when you've got a mouth full of asparagus), but still too easy.

Which, to give the appearance of fairness and consistency, must apply to the overtly fertile ground of Country (& maybe even Western), sad to say. Yep, that's right, no romantic ballads like "(Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth) I'm Kissing You Goodbye" (John Denver), Lyle Lovett's cheerily up-tempo "L.A. County" [even though it does have a wedding as the main subject matter...if you don't know the song, let's just say it doesn't end well for the 'happy couple'], or virtually half of Hank Williams Snr.'s deeply-personally-troubled output. (Have to give a quick honourable mention to "I've Been Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart" [Johnny Cash] as a song title of sheer apposite brilliance).

In the end, I decided upon a strict set of (entirely arbitrary) criteria:
1) The song must have been a "Top 40" hit in the UK (the higher the better)
2) It has to have some passing relevance to weddings/"mawwidge"/domestic bliss/everlasting love, etc,etc. You get the general idea...
3) It must be "playable" by a moderately-talented (!) wedding covers band.
4) It's not a "novelty"/"comedy" song. Which, fortunately, rules out Joe Dolce's "Shaddap You Face", the "Birdy Song" (don't you just wish you could erase the nightmare from your mind?) by The Tweets, and "Agadoo" (or "Do The Conga" - take yer pick, they're both execrable) by Black Lace.

This improved matters no end - now I had a challenge! Before I reveal my selections, I'd just like to point out that I didn't let my personal taste in music get in the way of a semi-decent gag (usually buried in the lyrics, but sometimes the title did the job) at any point, even though listing certain songs, bands, and individual artistes did necessitate the placement of a spittoon in close proximity to the computer. See if you can guess which ones caused me the greatest mental discomfort...

In no particular running order:

1) "Bad Moon Rising" (Creedence Clearwater Revival - #1, 1969)
2) "Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter" (Iron Maiden - #1, 1991)
3) "It's All Over Now" (Rolling Stones - #1, 1964)
4) "Don't Stand So Close To Me" (Police - #1, 1980)
5) "Like A Virgin" (Madonna - #3, 1984)
6) "I Want To Break Free" (Queen - #3, 1984)
7) "Tainted Love" (Soft Cell - #1, 1981)
8) "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?" [insert obvious response here] (Culture Club - #1, 1982)
9) "Don't Leave Me This Way" (Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes - #5, 1975)
10) "Tragedy" (Bee Gees - #1, 1979)
11) "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." [you knew it had to be in there! ] (Tammy Wynette - #12, 1975)
12) "With Or Without You" (U2 - #4, 1987)
13) "Don't Marry Her (F*ck Me)" (The Beautiful South - #8, 1996)
14) "Shotgun Wedding" (Rod Stewart - #21, 1993)
15) "Wedding Bells" (Godley & Creme - #7, 1981)
16) "Caught Out There (I Hate You So Much Right Now)" (Kelis - #4, 2000)
17) "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" (Sting - #26, 1985)
18) "White Wedding" (Billy Idol - #6, 1985)
19) "Here I Go Again (On My Own)" (Whitesnake - #9, 1987)
20) "(You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me) Lucille" (Kenny Rogers - #1, 1977)
21) "Love Will tear Us Apart" (Joy Division - #13, 1980)
22) "Love Is Only A Feeling" (The Darkness - #5, 2004)
23) "You Have Placed A Chill In My Heart" (Eurythmics - #16, 1988)
24) "Kiss The Bride" (Elton John - #20, 1983)
25) "Poison" (Alice Cooper - #2, 1989)
26) "Evil Woman" (Electric Light Orchestra - #10, 1976)
27) "The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)" (The Jam - #2, 1982)
28) "November Rain" (Guns N' Roses - #4, 1992)
29) "Send In The Clowns" (Judy Collins -# 6, 1975)
30) "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (The Righteous Brothers - #1, 1965)

Encores:
1) "Without You" (Harry Nilsson - #1, 1972)
2) "Haitian Divorce" (Steely Dan -#17, 1977)
3) "Paranoid" (Black Sabbath - #4, 1970)

There. Buckets of human suffering, misery, and anger - all packaged in a wide variety of song styles to ensure there's something for (nearly) everyone. And you can dance to most of them - what more could anyone possibly want?

Now, who knows someone who's getting married sometime soon? Might just have to get me a band together....

p.s. Big kudos to the incredible labour of love that is ChartStats for being a scarily comprehensive (and fascinating) data source.