GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

Ole miserablemotormouthPete has been bad mouthing himself and others (Dylan, the Stones) for being too old to play live. Is he planning to start a youngsters academy? Move into the Macca market? A remarkable talker, Pete. I saw him in a trance in Hard Rock `Cafe 2005 tour launch talking about how he gets his performing power from the crowd. And werent the (choreographed ahead of time) video shots during Hyde Park of one intention? To write large the message to the drunken hordes. Pete Townshend, rock artiste. Sting style old muso re-investigation for a classical piece ahoy, Grandad.

You can go hear the Beatles in a lot of places. You can talk about em to a lot of people. But when you gotta reeally know about the Beatles, who you gonna call? Sherman, the dub producer. And Sherman will bring onto you choice delicacies that will once again cause you to kneel at The Fab’s author’s altar. Consider something, if you will. Known as , Yer Blues Take 17, an alternative mix from something called The Peter Sellars Tape a track on one of the 2CDS on the Sherman gifted Alternative WHite Album. I mean NEVER was the awesome chasm that had grown between John and Paul expressed more clearly than that what opens up tween John’s absolute flaming Iggyeatshit negation on Yer Blues* And Paul’s ABSOLUTELY PATHETIC LOVE ME PLEASE TROUBADOUR DESPERATION on the do do do do do do, here we go, up the hill, mother,bridge of Mother Nature’s Son. On the mono mix of Mother Nature’s Son the chasm just heightens. Paul is left naked, unadorned AND over exposed - as the hopalong pop star, unable to kick without his other leg. Mother, Asher, Lennon, Linda, Heather and Hell.** The real nowhere man WITHOUT AN OTHER NUMBER. The fact that the monomix is the one chosen by the Alternative White Album compiler might make you think it was a rep from Lennon’s orbit that compiled it. Like the two sides were breifing against each other Like the Gordon Brown and Tony Blair of Britpop . Onto the grave. And beyond. Does Gordon in moment’s of Shakespearian despair sing Help ? *(“feel so suicidal, even hate that rock n roll,” he roars - in the middle of the bloodiest, flying fucking whirlwind of raging rockingroll sharpnel imaginable) ** I jest! Wings had some fine - if ultimately senseless - moments and I lie about the compiler’s intentions here. Can You Take Me Back is a much better song than the one*** it was produced during the sessions for. ***I Will

Claudia Lennear, the Ikette who was reputedly the inspiration behind Brown Sugar - that outrageous song combining slavery and cunnilingus - has been rescued from the Warner vaults and had her version of Allen Toussaint’s Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky (from Now On) and put on the astonishing Warners What It Is Funk Soul And Rare Grooves 1967 - 1977 4CD collection.. Claudia has a part in Michael Cimino’s Clint Eastwood starring Thunderbolt And Lightfoot and the track recorded by producer Ian Samwell (now is this the ex Yardbird that produced Cat Stevens or The British rocker what wrote Cliff Richard’s Move It ?) was on her 1973 album Phew! What a scorcher. (to be said in an Alan Partridge voice)

Spoke with Matt Bellamy of Muse on the phone, from his Italian Lake Como Retreat yesterday - always a pleasure to talk to Matt. Not least because you can be sure you are speaking to someone at least as paranoid as you are. But I have seen enough this week to know that there’s a big fightback taking place amongst the free thinking and open minded denizens of the music loving populace. Big enough to allay the concern Matt expressed about the boy band plague. ITEM ONE Seth Lakeman at The Scala Tuesday 17th October Seth’s the real real deal, his family musical roots exemplified by presence of the dapper bruv, rhythm guitarist and musical director, Sean in his band. The percussive force of Seth’s crew is something to behold. I mean if you’re thinking folk is all smooth and yodelling and whatever think again. Seth’s footstomping fiddle style is the kick in the engine room, parlayed and excitated by the brilliant Cormac (a grinning Irish wizard on a head scratching but musically abundant selection of percussion instruments from around the world) and the redoubtable Ben Nicholls on stand up bass. Ben is such a giant of a musician - figuratively and actually - just built in to the bass like a Mingus man and christ when these guys all four of them let loose and really go for it I swear on my vinyl copy of Modern Times that they be sounding like a supersonic yawling and intensified Led Zeppelin. Among many other things. It always feels good to shake a real musicians paw ..I grabbed Allen Toussaint’s palm in a hotel lobby in New Orleans earlier this year and , I swear, I could feel gold and the colours of a rainbow surge up my arm (shaking the hand of Glen Campbell’s drummer when he played the Palladium some years ago ,on the other hand, was like a dead goldfish). So it was great to shake Ben’s big meaty paw, I got a feeling of reassurance and substance - the sort you get through the music. ITEM TWO Jamie T at The Barfly Wednesday 18th October First things first. Attending this dump makes me long for the soon come days of smoke free London gigs. But it does have the astonishing instrument shop Rays alongside (with this on their doorstep how come the Britpop masseive aint been tempted to incorporate some interesting bells, flutes and whistles, or even stringed Vietnammese instruments into their mix? Anyways JT - a skinny streak of nothing with 3 singles and a a harder edged male Lily Allen tag behind him - made it bearable. He usually plays solo but his band must be the most Clash alike mothers on the block. And he has the spit style rap mixed with that gnarled and barking Strummer heart song down to a (Jamie) T!! Very excitating and, as with the Seth gig, all the evidence of a happening scene in attendance. Then just as The Clash comparisons were a racing through my head the fella went an dropped a quote from Complete Control into the mix! God bless his grinning, spotty face. Billy Bragg is the link factor tween these two (JT does a New England cover, Seth is duetting with the Barking Bard soonish) but Bragg was inspired by the Clash and in the week that Chris Salewicz’s Redemption Song was launched I sure got the feeling that with these two show something OF Strummer’s spirit was alive and out there. That is to say - the bastards didn’t win. And its not over yet.