GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

What does it profit a man’s soul to engage in a charity record ? Not much if The U2/Green Day Saints Are Coming hook up and Strummerville (various Indie types including LIbs Reunited Mystery Jets Guillemots etc) version of Janie Jones is anything to go by. But if its a good cause people tend to hold their nose and put in the ear plugs and smile sweetly. Remember the dreadful DO They Know Its Christmas remake? People saying it wasn’t a patch on the original. Yeah, like the original was on anyone’s top tunes list. Far more soul enriching to do like Bruce Springsteen . Keep the best track on your (repackaged album) until the day before you play the first New Orleans jazz festival after Katrina. DRop the recording - a rewritten version of How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live - free on the internet the day before the show. And, Christ, what a show. Tears all around and that song as reconfigured by Bruce - its the sound of a fightback, of spitting in the face of the shameful elite who use New Orleans as a playground, but leave its people to die and fester when they need help. I doubt I’ll see a more impassioned and moving show than Springsteen’s at Jazz Fest for a looooong time. It had depth and meaning, it strengthened the soul. That is something better than charity So a question - the greatest charity record of all time? Any suggestions?

BBC1 Thursday October 19th 2006 8.55 am Is it the height of the surreal to wake up to this ? Spike Milligan’s widow is on breakfast TV promoting a new book based on Spike’s secret Box 18. Cue for an archive clip. Spike is at the News desk in a Friends of the Earth T shirt. Two figures behind him, either side, one in a Lions Head mask they are singing Land Of Hope And Glory. Is this what Spike and pal Prince Charles had cooked up together in the event of a takeover by the truly absurd? Where tree huggers of the UK unite and take over ? In front of Spike is an apple and there is a hole in his desk alongside. “Many people in the world today are facing hunger,” he says. A hand comes through the hole and goes for the apple, as he does so. Quick, as a Democracy bringing Ordinance dropping Ally bombing raid, Spike picks up a mallet and smashes the hand. Comedy as a prophetic symbol of the blithely hypocrital! 9.16 Same channel Property Programme with very annoying bald Cockney geezer focusses on students looking for “a pad” in the big smoke , the instrumental opening from London Calling as background music. The song had a prophetic undercurrent but Strummer/Jones could never have forseen this. A small mercy the programme makers - and this viewer - switch off before the vocal line kicks in.

With the gloves off in the divorce of the season - the media cant beleeeeive its luck - it seems that Sir Paul always had regard for tough independently minded women, capable of playing dirty when required. Before Heather Mills divorce bombshell arrived on his doorstep its fair to assume that few things vexed Paul McCartney more than the state of the business end of his publishing empire - ie ownership of The Beatles classic canon residing in the hands of others. It wasn’t really until the 60s dust cloud had cleared that Paul and the by now estranged John Lennon realised exactly what sort of mess the publishing contracts they had signed had left them in. Though apart both Lennon and McCartney were still yoked to their Northern Song contract. Both now took to composing with their respective partners, Yoko and Linda. This not only gave them the benefit of new creative input but also insured that half the royalties to new songs did not go to Northern Songs. But publishers , like insurer loss adjusters, dont accept things on face value, particularly when large sums are at stake. When the first Paul and Linda joint composition Another Day (as in composed under the influence of “a joint”, perhaps?) went to number one in 1971, Lew Grade, the ATV Chairman who owned Northern Songs, filed suit alleging that the Lovely Linda was not, in fact, a genuine songwriting collaborator. We are into surreal territory here and it is to do with the inanity of songwriting law and copy right. So there’s money involved if Linda can are can’t be said to have written the song. But surely the fact is that putting up with this piece of chap. Being his sainted other , housemate, long suffering, or not, etc Surely Linda was an ENABLER. As vital to Paul’s upkeep as eggs spam and the rest of a mam. Anyway…. Jack Gill The ATV Financial director once boasted that buying Northern Songs, from Dick James, took only 5 minutes. As ATV prepared to take the matter to court Gill attempted to explain to Linda that the company had no knowledge of her as a writer . The lovely Linda’s response was to spit in his face, according to the story printed on Page 98 of Northern Songs : The True Story Of The Beatles Song Publishing Empire By Brian Southall and Rupert Perry (Omnibus Press 2006 £19.95). “if you knew Jack Gill you would be shocked - because there was no finer gentleman than Jack, ” says former ATV man Sam Trust. Sam Trust ! What a name for someone in the cut throat world of song publishing.