unfashionable music…david cassidy…10cc

a funny thing about music is people are often willing to say they hate something they actually like, or vice versa, simply for the social validation.
some folk who would like to belong in rock n roll or the arts in general, are prone to adopting certain radical stances purely for the branding…
but it’s a cheap shot that doesn’t ring true to a keen ear….
it’s called *false edge credentials*

yesterday i read a new term  *trendsexual*… i instantly knew what kind of calculating character that would be.

i’d like to untrend myself by telling you i went to see 10cc last week instead of dexys midnight runners.
it was a huge mistake,and i regretted it five minutes after excitingly booking the tickets,when i eventually realized it wasn’t the four original members…just one!
the really dull one…i wanted the interesting ones… lol creme and kevin godley,although kevin did come on for ten minutes to wave and sing a few, like some bloody guest.
they wouldn’t refund my tickets,but what really pissed me off was the photo used to sell this show was an old one of the original foursome.
still…i settled down and decided the albert hall is a great place to go,even if it was to watch a sodding covers band.

i remember at the height of punk rock in 1977 i was listening to a 10cc album called*how dare you*…not a good look.
i’d just discovered marijuana, and at three in the morning i could be found laying on the floor marveling at any music that had some sort of sonic creativity.
i was convinced the makers of these records were all smoking the weed as well,and so i created an imaginary bond in my head between myself and those artists.
it was easy to believe they were making music for young stoners like me to turn on to..and sometimes they actually were.

i was a sixteen/seventeen year old nightclub disc jockey at this time in edinburgh,
and the interesting thing was people would turn up in their punky trendy bondage suits from a london vivienne westwood shop,but they’d be dancing to barry white..
infact,if i were to put a ramones or sex pistols record on,it would clear the floor,and i’d have to fade the record fast and put on bryan ferry or elton john with kiki dee singing *don’t go breaking my heart* to get all these folk in their punk gear dancing again….now THAT’S the truth about 1977 outside of london,thank you very much.
i learned very quickly that fashion and music,even if they are joined at the hip, aren’t always singing off the same page.
this helped me relax ..it taught me to take things with a pinch of salt, and to feel free to like what i like.

at the height of punk i was also fond of a david cassidy record called *the higher they climb*.i wasn’t even aware that it was good because bruce johnson of the beach boys produced it .
there was just this really nice cry to the mans voice. 
it’s the sound of man who’s not feeling or behaving too victorious.


check these out if you like.
 

stanley booth – the true life adventures of the rolling stones

i went to a one off screening of the rolling stones *gimme shelter* earlier in the week.
like many music lovers i’d already seen a lot of it on youtube…still, there’s nothing like seeing a thing like that in an actual cinema,
but the other reason i went is because stanley booth was attending and talking …do you know of stanley?
he wrote theeeee book on the rolling stones,and it reads like a well crafted beat novel… stanley’s own life is ram packed with intense experience.
he overdosed in gracelands with elvis…was in the studio with otis redding when he recorded*dock of the bay* three days before the plane crash…
he got crushed by a lumber truck..had seizures in the process of coming off drugs..jail …
got chucked out of a ray charles concert for being a white boy who dared to sit with his black school friends during the days of segregation…
one time while flying high on acid ,he fell from a waterfall in georgia ,broke his back and went into a dark period of painkiller addiction..
heaven help the man,cause even though he goes way out there,he’s still very much a consummate writer…
he wrote the first ever serious piece on elvis presley for vanity fair,but my my..this man knows what dark days are.
he literally ran for the hills,where he went into hiding for ten years.

as i maneuvered towards my seat, i could see stanley was already sitting slap bang in the middle front row [i too love the front row]
stanley’s in his seventies,but looks much older cause he hasn’t exactly lived like a doris….he was all by himself…no one shielding him but himself…dead cool.
a couple of hours later after the film and conversation,he signed my book.
i’m not sure if i’ve ever walked up to anyone and asked them to sign a book for me before…and i very nearly bottled out, for at this stage in his life he pretty much has the air of someone like william burroughs. 

gimme shelter’s a remarkable movie…it follows the stones round america through 1969 where stanley was given full access.
he would sit behind keith richards amplifier on each night of the tour and soak up the whole drama.
the film builds towards the menace of the altamont festival which marks the end of the hippy summer of love when someone gets killed ..It’s the most unsettling,chaotic,menacing piece of live rock n roll footage i’ve ever seen…it’s a miracle that anything got filmed and recorded at all.
in those times [for better or worse], rock n roll had none of todays security or structure, so the stones relied on hells angels to get them on the stage or hold the crowd back.
the stage was the size of a pool table,with thirty thousand fans high on good/bad acid or whatever else…hungry for some action. 
the gorgeous looking and great sounding concert footage is cut up with inserts of hotel rooms..business dealings..plus them recording on the hallowed ground of muscle shoals studio.

there’s also a wild section of tina turner opening for them at madison square garden..
she does this amazing thing of transforming her microphone into a cock..and it’s a cock that she definitely wants…
the lady does this without loosing one inch of her dignity.
y’know people think the young jagger copped all his moves from james brown,but that fast nodding of the head thing he does was totally ripped from tina turner.
make no mistake.
check tina for her *technique* right here.
my favourite moments are of a hairy caveman biker strung too far out on speed or something during the concert, where he looks like he’s ready to rip his own neck off with his two bear hands….
the camera really pulled out the terrible beauty of that…
i wish i could find that piece on youtube so i could show it to you,
but i do have this  …
i’ve been watching this clip for years and just love it…
the utter satisfaction on those boys faces, knowing they’d recorded the most beautiful piece of music.
charlie watts is a doll here…


i left that cinema glad to be alive..
outside it must have been raining earlier..
it was warm….i tripped out mildly for the millionth time on how the soho neon reflects in the drenched sidewalks and roadways.

thanks for making the long trek over to london stanley…safe ride home to savannah

david hockney

every time i ambled past the royal college of art there was this huge line of people ..
it never ended…day after day…week after week,it just never seemed to fade…
so yesterday me and my man took a deep breath and finally got in there,resigned to at least a one hour wait outside in the cold…
but then within five minutes, this gorgeous ever so tall girl came over and said she had two tickets to sell cause her friends hadn’t turned up…
she said she’d been walking slowly up and down the line , and picked us out cause we looked *the type*.
and oddly enough, i had decided to wear brand new jet black corduroy with highly polished chelsea boots for the perfect art gallery moment.
pretentious?… definitely… joyously so.
pretentious people are simply those who have ideas above their station in this life.
without pretense,there would have been no eye liner’d young elvis..or little richard…or david bowie.

before we went into the royal college of art, i gazed at the big blow up flag of hockney with paintbrush in one hand , plus another in the other..
great clothes and shoes,that nudged me into thinking how he has more appeal than most of todays jock-ish pop stars.
he also has a good face..always did..at every stage of his life,he looks fantastic…he fits the skin he’s in.

y’know it’s a great thing to see people do their best work in later years.
this is very very life affirming, cause there are many unhappy uncreative inert folk out there who would attempt to fill your heart with their hopelessness..
there’s a self defeating notion in culture that says we must peak early…and there’s a lot of cases that nearly prove the point,
but for those who stay willing,skills along with sensibilities accumulate over the years, which means later in life they can get work done fast by getting things right quicker…
more importantly they don’t loose the joy or desire to work.
their days have structure with a level of calm for the work to get done.
this surely must be the case with david hockney,cause one thing that blows your mind about that exhibition is the absolute quality and amount of work he’s done for this show…not one frame was weak…  none of it was overshadowed by his early familiar work.

another thing that charms me about his pictures is how effortless they look.
there’s surely a load of technique at work,but it’s downplayed behind an almost childlike stroke.
you get such a sure sense of height,depth and space…and joy.
i guess all that time painting the vast canyons on the west side of america set him up for painting those deep rolling hills of yorkshire too.
then there’s all this charged vivid colour…he uses pink or purple on a road, or blue for a tree, yet it always renders in a convincing way.
he captures billowing wind..light..time of day..season…all very elemental…. never in a boring geography teacher kind of way…it’s as groovy as it gets.

i left that show thinking how photography really set painters free to be interpreters of what they see,rather than feeling any pressure to paint things too literally.
also the way david hockney consolidated a friendly relationship between painting and photography is a clue to the measure of the man…
wide open…wide open to whatever he can use…those other things he’d done using digital video cameras or the ipad were very engaging too..
you could see he even had his own certain ipad stroke from using the little stylus on the glass screen.

as we wondered out past the gift shop selling all the hockney merchandise, i smiled at seeing one of his forest paintings on an otherwise bog standard tray you’d eat your supper off..
for THIRTY QUID……
and they were selling like hot cakes..just like a rock star sells the t-shirts.
this show will generate millions and millions as it travels around the world in the future.
i’m not afraid to say i do love the financial power of art…
it’s the biggest fingers up to those small minded money grubbers who trivialize art  … especially during these credit crunch days .

i love how *credit crunch* translated into arty french is *craquement de credit*… it sounds better when you say it that way.

marriage or civil partnership

i can’t actually remember the date we got civil partnered…

march.. april…..five maybe six years ago.

but i do have this photograph taken of us after the paperwork,that took all of fifteen minutes.

we’re certainly not gonna subject each other to the pressure of an *anniversary* anyway…

the frilly old word that it is.

avoiding the shrill bollox of christmas is hard enough.

 

funny story…one day i was passing by that convention centre in islington around the time gay civil partnerships became legal..

they were doing a number on it,so i sauntered in for a nosey… t’was hilarious…

all these chintzy business’s hopping on the gayer bandwagon…

holiday agents for honeymoons…gift shops..wedding tailors..

but the best was this catering company who were touting their finger food for the perfect wedding reception.

they had this big metal cone,and at the top of it was a hole that shat out hot melting chocolate…

you then jabbed a marshmallow on to the end of a poker, and smeared it into the steaming brown molten crap as it flooded down the sides of the metal cone…

how i laughed…..and in my mind it somehow crystalized the whole over egged sickly sweet idea of *the wedding* (gay or straight)

 

i could never call my partner *husband*… it seems so daft to me…it just doesn’t fly..

why would i want to imitate the template of the heterogeneric way?

that would be a missed opportunity to carve out a whole new road of our own .

equality is one thing…but passed a certain point, i’m more interested in the idea of new possibilities.

for that i need to be free of the fusty old church..i already know jesus fuckin loves me to bits …

and even if he didn’t,as long as me and my buggerluggs partner are happy in our home,we won’t need anyones blessing anyway.

 

i like the term civil partnership a whole lot more than marriage…

it’s new and fresh..it’s free of cultural / religious baggage…

it’s wide open for us to carve out a bespoke road ahead for ourselves on our own terms.

so no honeymoons…no weddings…no anniversaries…no pressure…just good times…joy on toast.

i only wish for civil partnerships to be available to any combination of heterosexuals as well…now THAT would be equality.

 

i love my partner…but more importantly,i actually like him..

i have seen mainstream marriages where they proclaim their never ending love for each other,but they don’t actually *like* each other…

this horrifies me…the very acceptance of that..and there’s a lot of it about readers.

to *like* your partner is the thing… the word *love* is a bit tricky…and in the wrong hands it’s an abstraction used for all sorts of manipulation.

when i say i love my partner,it’s really just another word for empathy..

the deep empathy for him that has gradually grown in my mind over the quarter of a century we’ve been together.

so instead of proclaiming a profound empathy for my partner..i just say i love him…i know exactly what love is.

 

phil spector *special needs*

today phil spector was denied an appeal for his crime..that’s it…for life.

the gloating conformists love the idea of the remarkable ones,who when in melt down,come under the same rule as everyone else.the ones prone to envy love the level playing field of that…it makes them feel good..it makes them feel comfortable …they can cozily conclude that the over achievers are finally no different from themselves…they’d like to think that for all of the talent…money..and colourful living,that they’re somehow just the same as everyone else…but it’s simply not true….there are huge differences…for one thing,most haven’t got the fire in the belly to do the great work that makes people go *WOW*…most aren’t prepared to put their life on the line for something as abstract as art…nearly everyone opts out for the safeness of an unremarkable life…for most,the ridicule is something to be very scared of…and that’s why talented over achievers are different…that’s why they do deserve special treatment..they leave a world with a lasting legacy and currency that can be tapped into for decades after their demise..

there’s a place where i do feel the mainstream,and the remarkable are the same… neither need be punished when they loose the plot…better if all were healed..i know that sounds a trifle hippy dippy,but punishment often seems such a low base over rated solution to things..it’s heartbreaking how phil spector arrived at his dangerous state of mind..he was humiliated at school beyond belief for looking a bit geeky and having different interests…..many times they pushed him down in the urinal and pissed on him..literally…imagine that as a teenager?..a gang of your own peer group urinating in your face during lunch break..things like that tend to stick…especially if it’s a delicate artistic personality with a lot of potential…it’s really no wonder he became a paranoid control freak, obsessed with making a huge mark during his own lifetime.

for decades phil spector was a walking time bomb.paid doctors were free to hand out all sorts of sloppy medication,just like they did for so many others…but now that the shit has hit the fan, a deal could be done…phil spector could be set free under certain conditions..no guns…no booze…no sloppy meds…just therapy…WORK…music…love…future currency.

so i find it completely artless and heavy handed that someone like phil spector is left to rot in a cage.it also lacks in a sense of resourcefulness…spector’s a dying breed of artist…his skills are disappearing in a world where they’re still relevant …god,it’s amazing how places of learning will often give money to any rancid slab of old show business to come and give *a masterclass*,yet a remarkable one who has loads to pass on is left rotting in a cage…he’s a gold nugget of the american heritage.i’m told the average age of an everyday prison officer is under forty…to him,phil spector is just some old record producer dude.

i thought we were in a deep recession.why can’t we free up a little bit of that prison budget and put a key man to good work?..keep the dream alive and all that…make some music and a little more history …it amazes me how the lawyers who get paid obscene amounts of cash can’t get something like that to stick.heaven knows america thrives on it’s own beautiful retro-isms..and yet a key source in the shaping of a very thing that gives future currency, is left to die in a cage without passing on any of the skills? there aren’t many of those men left.that sound phil spector gets has become a high aesthetic…young modern producers still refer to it…you can hear it in a recent amy winehouse record..it echoes onwards….phil spector’s skill is remarkable.it involves a deep knowledge of sound and musical composition…he shaped it..he could pass that on to the youngsters in all its detail…but no..we’re just too invested in the concept of punishment.

no one hates guns more than me..my own father pulled one on himself,so i understand how grim those machines are,but it really flipped me out today when i learned how the mad genius was left to rot in jail…for me it’s such a total lack of imagination and resourcefulness.

forgive me..it’s late..can’t sleep…long live rock and roll.

dead rock star money

am i the only one who laughed rather than felt angry when sony instantly doubled the price of whitney downloads the moment she slipped away?

what i found even funnier was how they said it was *mistakenly mispriced*….. such a lie.

the only mistake they made was making an apology at all.

if i was sony…..this is the statement i would have written.

yes folks…we deliberately doubled the price of whitney houston records..

please don’t even begin to accuse us of exploitation,because frankly,that’s the deal we entered into with the dear departed girl in the first place.

we gave her unspeakable amounts of money upfront,and in return,we get to*exploit* the product for the term of the agreement…

so dearest pop pickers..if you have a problem with all that, i suggest you spend ten years working in our grinding business affairs department,

cause these are tough times for us at sony…

we had a devastating earthquake in japan which buggered things up terribly…

we were once trailblazers with our walkman personal stereo,and even though we had the technology in place,we lost all our thunder to a company called apple..

and frankly,

for the last bunch of years in business terms, whitney’s been a crashing bore,

so now that she’s passed over to the other side,her newfound deathly aura is a marketing departments dream…

so please let us get on with our jobs of making the money…

that’s what we are… that’s what we do ..

spank us and call us judy,but it beats building bombs sweethearts….

moreover,we’d like you to know,as each one of our deeply annoying high maintenance recording artists inevitably snuffs out,we will exploit their catalogues to the max as well….

it’s a real shame that paul simon and bruce springsteen are in such rude health,cause to be honest ,no one seems to care about anything new they’re doing….

how typical that leonard cohen..the one looking most frail,is the only one delivering anything fresh that people want to hear while he’s alive….

isn’t that just the way?…

pretty little box sets coming soon..

sony entertainment.

as quentin crisp once said…”swim with the tide,only faster”.

death … fame and whitney houston

i loathed the sound of whitney houston records.the power ballad shlock she peddled out ad nauseum represented everything i hated about the late 20th century record business.it was only later when whitney got some dirt under her fingernails that i truly warmed to her music…and now that she’s dead i’m suddenly in love with all the shlock i hated from her in the first place.finally her voice reaches me like the bald high flying eagle it always was.

death..talent and fame are quite a cocktail.

the question i keep asking myself is if whitney or whoever else would have been any less of a mess without success…and the answer i arrive at is no…fame could surely only distract any us from ourselves for a while.fame on one hand seems like such a wonderful life changing gift.the chance to spread the wings and explore possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t be in place…a team of paid people giving your life added momentum…but what about the near inevitable inertia? how long would it take for any of us in a special situation,to perceive of it in normalised terms?.. how long before our own capacity for boredom catches up with any of us?.. how long before you stop feeling grateful? how long before dreams morph into mere schedule and responsibility?

hats off to anyone in this life who fully maintains their fragile sense of wonder.

in our flawed and human skins it takes things far more commonplace besides fame or fortune to develop a dangerous drug habit.(boredom..lonliness..fear..to name a few).

i hope that thought crosses the mind of all those mean virtuous folk who will say whitney squandered the gift she was given… i say well done whitney..it’s a damn shame you died so young,but you did more in your short time on earth than most of us.