GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

Just received this from the Residents Association locally. This is a London wide problem, I’ve been told by others Certainly it is ongoing here in ye Ole not so far east - the Middle East? - of London. A switch round from the NF shit that used to go on round the hood but no less sick, sad, random and scary…. Dear Friends, A white male walking along with his girlfirend was knifed by a gang of Asian youths at 8 pm Tues evening. There were two witnesses to the attack and the police and ambulances arrived with speed. Also I have been told that there was a second mugging on Columbia Rd last week. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Linda The tune is Aaron Neville Hercules

The Tune is Little Richard singing Ripp It Up (and Bawl tonight) Lying on the bed upstairs watching this Harvey G reality TV shit I’m about to get back to the White Stripes, maybe Patti Smith, maybe something. Every so often I’m getting electro c-c-c-c-c-convulsion in the heart - kindo of weird, this feeling. And that infernal tap tap tapping like the Raven in the Edgar Allen Poe story. What is that fucking sound? It is echoing like a warning, a ticking time bomb or something. The Is Iggy and Stooges Gimme Danger I get up go to the landing and I see the source - a drip drip drip on the aliminium stepladder leaning gainst the wall on the landing. And the source is a ceiling crack dripping water, along a line that is going straight to and around the light fitting. And the secret tune is Joy Division Shadowplay Up the step ladder, through the hatch, into the loft and what do you see? The light there, once switched on from the wet switch, the bulb is red swollen angry cracking and a fizzing and giving off a distinct CHARGE. Thats what I SAW anyway. Little crackles of watery power thrilling me nerves ends. You should try this shit! Even with a teeq and orange it still keeps a raging 3 hours later, 3 hours after the black plastric tank is a spitting and a snarling and a boiling maybe. Wull it looks like something that requires PROFESSIONAL HELP and weell I am fucked if I know what to do. The tune is The Pop Group We Are All Prostitutes There must be a plumber I think and of course there is, not too far in the mental furniture is Andy Fyfe’s pal Dave Ripp. Dave Ripp The Rock n Roll Plumber!! Dave dun George Harrison’s pipes. This guy is the real shit! The tune is Carl Perkins/George Harrison Blue Suede Shoes Carl perkins and Friends I phone and Dave, who gave me his card MONTHS ago, at Fiona’s birthday and said “Everybody needs a plumber at some point in their life.” How right he was! What ensued was like a 99 reality TV show only instead of trying to save a life I’m trying to save a house, a boiler and address a kinda live water/ electric fluid interface which seems, on the face of it, none too healthy. “You don’t know how close you came to killing yourself,” Dave tells me. Apparently the specs have changed since the heating plumbing here was done in 1989. Nearly 20 years ago, innit. Recently a woman in same situation killed herself the tank exploded , live electric water poured through the ceiling the tank melt came through ceiling and fell on her but we sorted it ou the secret sacred tunes that insue are Leonard Cohen The Future Son Volt The Picture “I know when we get there we’ll find mercy” Marvin Gaye Mercy Mercy Me The Ecology Sam Cooke Wonderful World. George Perkins Cryin’ In The Streets Nat King Cole Sweet Lorraine John Coltrane A Love Supreme and Leadbelly Goodnight, Irene

I go pick up a copy of the Joe documentary from Anna. There’s a dark blue gash on the wall opposite, a postcard from Grenada, and a brochure for a Latin music fest. Michael Buble wants to do a Bossa Nova album, loves latin music, has a 60 something Brazillian guitarist on his album. Good shit. Back home from Anna’s I was and I was hoping to groove on the smart formalism of White Stripes to get me out of wherever I was - but for some reason - professional interest/pique/jealousy - had to go instead for the tv fix. There was a Harvey Goldsmith starring reality show on telly. Samanatha Mumba on come back trail. This show was like some ludicrous indicator of what is wrong with the music business, its taste, its economic model, its priorities. (Harvey telling Samanatha she has to pick someone out and sing to them as if she wants to make love to them perticularly striking. Nothing Buble doesn’t do of course but Mumba ain’t no Buble.) The tune is Sex Pistols Anarchy In The Uk.

I might aswell turn gay now, for what I am about to say but Its wonderful to hear Michael talk illustrating it with lots of bursts of vocal prowess, blowing magic little vowels, like you can see channeling Frank, Louis Armstrong, more.You can almost see bubbles (bubles?), rounded like smoke rings, shaped in the air when he does that. Susan said he sung her a new tune, which one?, live accompanied by the backing track on an ipod. Jesus, what a gift that man has… Soon we were to be in the air…Hugs in the carpark and a promise from that I shall appear in his dance cage onstage at Albert Hall early this year. I am your beeyatch Mike I tell him. Just say what ya need, brother. Must get the thong out of the dry cleaners. The tune is Evelyn Champagne King Make My Love Come Down

When we left Susan she was off to see live jazz in LA, one of Buble’s band blowing hard. Bobby Darin singing Mack The Knife Michael Buble is a mensch, so tender. He loves the hugs, on being introduced to him it seems the most natural thing in the world to hug a man who has laid his heart so markedly on the line. He liked the reasurance because, incredibly we wwere the first interviewers who have heard the album. Michael was holding court in a Studio City side restaurant, the day before he had been playing at a $160,000 a table or a ticket Ali Charity Dinner with Sharon Stone and others on a table closest to him. When he started singing his rapturous Me And Mrs Mrs Jones interpretation, the celebs were laughing, no idea what Michael could do with Guilty Pleasure cheese. going into a sliding way up the sighing orgasmifying diaphragm scale, when he gets to “Me A an andMrs Jones Mrs jones” jump off Rigsby need not apply. The restaurant has the lovely, long, low level level lines you could imagine Frank and Co there passing an afternoon. Or a weekend. Or a week on whiskey and grass lockdown The night before Penny told of meeting Frank when she was doing PR for him or associates circa 1995. She got classic Frank, kicking out at a photographer, actually calling him a Ratfink, but it was all a mistaken identity. Funny all those late period Frank mini portraits - like in Flanagan’s U2 End of The World Thing - of a man angry and confused, embattled, even, a little emperor with a sad looking toupee. But still Frank the bearer of dreams, the revealer of hearts, Thanatos in a Tuxedo. The tune is Frank Sinatra Its A Lonely Old Town…

You dont want to go round making the offer to give some webspace to just anyone. Certainly not some high placed members of the LA Fashionista. Get the skinny? Lerry, corpulent, greasy, brother of some other more famous brother? Kind of like a big fat snake in the garden of evil he was, Massaging his hairy belly in the bright midday. And the song here is The Doors Soul Kitchen Some small headed little thing, a smear of a mouth, sweet,someteen or other , lolling like a Lolita. And he points them out - all them lazy, lovely bawdies, he says. John Prine : Dear Abby

On the face of it Call me Irresponsible, the third Michael Buble album isn’t going to excite critical plaudits. I can tick the prejudices off one by one that the album will face because until I heard the album - just now – I had em. And before I list em - why do I not have them now ? Because I heard Michael perform vocal miracles, and I heard a tear inducing, lighter than air, melt into the heart, graceful and wounding, miraculously tender and seamlessly soaring version of Always On My Mind that on second time round made me think this might not just be on par with..this might be BETTER than Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson’s versions. Jesus this is NOT possible, is it? I mean this is one of my favourite songs of all time. Somewhere it is like its title in there, Always On My Mind, a part of the emotional DNA and how can it be that … A balladeer who weighs in heavy on the cover versions Michael Parkinson’s Canadian counterpart to Cullum A Sub Rat Packer who will never be more than a dutiful custodian of Golden Age Of Croon, no matter how consummate his singing. How can it be that he should make this song breath, like a fossilised creature suddenly reforming, lungs starting to function going off into a new place and space in the imagination. Surely surely its not possible for someone to reinvest a song like Always of My Mind with new wings, meaning, a whole new inner life. Surely it would take a particular type of greatness to make that possible. Well all those dudes that think they know singing – every last Jeff Buckley fan, every lover of soul, Van Morrison, Dame Kiri Tawana and that annoying opera woman Garrett, every one with an ear for a voice - has to hear this, has to listen to it and tell me that Buble is not as great a singer, not as much a master of control, curlicues, breathing in and out, caressing the linements of grief and desire, as can be heard right now. His take is phenomenal so gentle and so audacious. It is so awe inspiring yet deferential to the nature of the melody, the lasting imprint of the words. It is swoon time when you hear it. How often does even exceptional interpretive singing do this? You knew how great the song was. But you never thought that someone could have lived and concentrated that long to make it no act of concentration at all, just a Zen swoop and fall, rise and withdrawing, such a gentle but complete and sweeping assimilation of its totality. Oh …it is greatness, wonder, the feeling openheart incarnate…. And its not just a lone remarkable track on the album. Everywhere the richness the mastery and the ease but instinctive intelligence of Buble can be heard. His candour is there too in sparkling originals – Lost and Everything. Allowing him to sit in the Parkistained corner is not an option. It is a silly and demeaning loss. So the news is this - as of now Buble’s Always On My Mind has knocked Richard Thompson’s Tempted off the top slot in the Greatest Cover Version of alltime chart. Who would have believed it ? And thanks to Messrs Lowe and Tennant but, really, chaps there is no need to apply. And Willie, Sister Bobbie, the great Mickey Raphael? Might be time to call a family band meeting. And in rock n roll heaven be sure a King is shedding tears of relief and joy. Someone has come across the borderland of the heart and taken the burden, the care, the history of a song and made it in his own image. Whooah!

DYLAN AND JACKSON AT THE GATES OF EDEN(DALE) THED EDENDALE IN LOS FELIZ VICINITY - this gaff is the place to be if you want real chat, old Hollywood history and the whole Tom Mix ( a first time on screen cowboy) story. Its there in the black and white on the wall mounted photo display. Silver and mercury embossed originals with autographs and dedications – written by Tom himself – to his horse. You feel the years fall away you are back in the The Tune is The Raconteurs – Steady as She Goes. This was the space in the desert where they first gathered to make the first silents back early 20th century . The heat the light the moving celluloid flickering in front of us. Back when it all meant some and Stroheim and Welles and Ford and Bunuel were incoming. SOUND CLIP Ween doing the Americana Bonzo Dog band thang with Fancy Pants from the album Quebec. Out on da patio Julien Davies of Vinformation Vinsanity (the guy Paul Giammetti plays in Sideways) was giving it the large one on the slightly corked front – whites AND reds - and I was breaking my non drinking duck as Jon Patterson, movie critique supreme, of the Cardy Ann and others, told the tale of the on off Youtubeclip featuring David O Russell shouting Lily Tomlin out on the set of I Heart Huckabees with Dustin Hoffman sloping off sheepishly in the background. Julie with petrol green streaks in her hair was our waitress for the evening. Proving they do still do the service thing with élan, the Yanks. Sound Clip The Kinks Village Green Preservation Society. Andy nearly did himself a mischief break dancing waiting for the taxi but, truss restabilised, hip locked back into place, he dusted himself off with the ease of a man whose better days are still to come. Even though ones behind him have been especially greatawready. What a body of great men were assembled. The Great Alan Jackson, the only British journalist who has interviewed Bob Dylan – TWICE! – in the last 10 years. Its so good to know that Bob dun Alan twice, Bobbores might have been aghast. (Why not me, me , me Bob? They could be heard crying). An attitude that reminds me of a chap corralled recently on a Djing night. This chap had a more than a moment in the annals of Britpop and one of dem there gathered infront of his console was asking for his email address, to exchange playlists with him or some such shit, some such UNASKED for shit. ANNNOUNCEMENT – if this blog falls into that category for you just send back the posting detail with a NO /UNSUBSCRIBE/ FUCK YOURSELF SIDEWAYS reply. Anyway the Djing expopstar chap said he didn’t have an email address which the fan was aghast to hear. Being a polite retiring type the ex popstar didn’t answer to the question “why not?” “because I don’t want emails from people like you”. So it is with Bob, anyone who knows his music will know that its defined by a curiosity for the wider world. Not a curiosity for the navel fluff examining BObbore massive that gather round the fundament of his art like barnacles to a rock. That’s why Bob and Alan liking each other makes complete moral and logical sense. They are linked by a common decency and genuineness many other in their respective trades lack. Tunes weren’t on the the agenda but JD’s grapey greatness proved to be matched with a nose for the arcane actualite and certain subtleties and refinements in the ouevre of Johnny Moped (“stick it in her lug hole/Stick it In her other parts). Stick that in your stickering campaign Mister and Mrs Gore. Todays tune, todays blow it out your ass and stick on yer blog tune is Everyday I Have To Cry Some by Arthur Alexander from the 1993 Lonely Just Like Me album. Keep it country as Alison and Keiran might say…… And the philosophical tract is Bill Hicks Australia from LoveLaughterAndTruth. “I’m Jack The Ripper, no I’m Jack The Ripper, we’re all Jackthefuckingripper”

AL GORE BONO ETC - now with added playlist Went to Vermont for the first time. Not the place - the restaurant in Los Angles opposite a Los Feliz Taco Stand. It had been an exhausting 24 hours and it wasn’t over yet. Shining diamond solace was found in the very DIAMOND sparkling eyes of the one bred from the one that broke the heart strings, coming in strong, in the nineteen seven tee frees and seven tee fives. Mister Lowell George’s daughter Inara - musically abundant at the mo with 3 or 4 excellent projects including her solo hook. Inara’s avidness talking of the animal kingdom was sure a pleasing respite from the unmitigated self-preening that goes on hereabouts. Grinning Rick Rubin bred moonies holding court like some Emperors of Spoilt Brat “Art”. What is Rubin, this emperor of everything, going to do to with Bono’s ego when he gets a hold of it? Set it in aspic and make us quiver to our liver at the frightful gaucheness of Ballymun Blarney? I would expect its more n possible. Bono will use the relationship to polish off some lines of not worthiness in the light of the Johnny Cash saviour arrival at U2 command control central. And amen to that. All stand. Or kneel/Neil (McCormick) and prey. On the corpses of a culture ripe for the plucking will the unworthy feast. Elvis, Cash, MlK, BB King. Oops this one’s still warm… The tune is Clarence Carter Soul Deep We await the U2 Rubin goobin with trepidation… meanwhile the fashionistas are creeping us out at the upper Sunset Marquis cottage poolside. It’s a hot day in March and retinue of crotch exposing flat chested chickenstock, with the inevitable beer bellied stroking ugly older men in tow, are catching the rays. Spreading the legs and ordering chicken patties. Talking on the phone. Wiggling the buns “She’s got a great bawdy,” he says stroking the ass of some uber myth nymph. All around the pounding of drills, the cutting of concrete tiles, the blades a-whizzing, the sun beating down. It’s a building site backdrop to a sort of creeping sleaze fest. The Tune Here Is West of Hollywood by Steely Dan The Amazing Alex Osman - beatific and rising above it all -returning with the best sort of interview, the most interesting perspective, a singularly sharp star in the city of impending gloomy night and no nothingness. Link have delivered the goods. Alex is upgraded. In actuality and in the collective consciousness. The tune is Van Morrison Sense Of Wonder So it was nice to talk of the humanness of Chimps, the mystery of frogs, the trouble with skunks and raccoons with the daughter of the man that wrote The tune her is Long Distance, Love. And her easy natural grace and flair of her hand on Alex, something to see. Then the English PR posed a question of preference. Deadly serious he was asking for a preference between penetration by a curly pig penis and the oral relief administering to a horse cock so large it would be hard to insert the appendage into a mouth, even one that was wide open. Such is the sign of a supturating culture of a hopelessly vacuous whats it all for effluentathon. Such is the cuntree that produces the team we watch in a Santa Monica English pub being roundly humiliated by Israel. WE sit beneath a pic of Noel Gallagehr and give the money collector (a Scot) 20 dollars for 50 minutes of tedium inducing English footer. Back at the poolside the Sunset Marquis is like a building site the long delayed pool refurb like the scene of the murder covered in white plasticated tarpaulin. The delay seems to be because of some Design/Organization/Ability and Desire to complete problem. Meanwhile the hotel is robbed of its focus and you are left to ogle and gape at the extraordinary cavalcade of freaks and reptiles that move through the lobby. Ross Halfin, whose photos are all over the lobby, gives the shocking news of a crash involving Others of our number whisked here from Londiminium jet lagged and onto the street, crossing the road and bang. Lights out blood. Cedar Sina Hospital. Jet lag is a reality dude. One things for sure - burning the airmiles in the quest for copy as easily engendered on the phone will, if Al Gore, or his ilk, ever gets in, result in the much less easy passage of journos and Prs (pronounced P arse) cross the continental divide ending. BY which time it may not be the world that Al is trying to save… but time itself. I want to tell you a Gorey…. The Tune is James Brown Public Enemy NUmber 1

Beware the 23rd of March because you will awake in a strange hotel at the top of the hill at the end o f the freeway in the city of Angels. But there are no Angels here at the top of the hill at the Luxe Los Angeles, which is miles from where it’s happening. It being whatever it is - LA Fashion Week in general and in this specific journo’s case The Linkin Park promo trail. Later today I will sit down with some aggregation or other of the Metal phenomenon – artist illustrators, rappers, Nu metal figureheads branching out on 3rd album with mega selling producer Rick Rubin. That’s the background skinny the actual music will be presented on a ”loop” listening session at the hotel sequestered for the interviews. The much-vaunted change of direction revealed for all to hear. If it’s half as good as this mornings scouring wake up refresher Lovin Spoonful’s On The Road Again (Jesus these guys covered such an emotional template they are so right in the Steely Dan first 3 albums fashion). I’ll be happy I could tell you the hotel where this momentous event will be happening what it is but I’d have to scream at you in big long shorts to a mixture of fucking rocking beats and rap samples VERY VERY VERY FUCKING LOUD DUDE. And then kill you. But I have been told there’ll be croissants and coffee too. Not exactly what the hungover jetlagged journo requires – the caffeine buzz. Or is? Take it as it comes. And wonder.. Whatever happened to the old way of doing things? Was it all Harleys roaring into the hotel lobby, mounds of white powder rather than pastries, legless lead singers that arrived with a retinue of scantily dressed babes rather than business advisors? Ahh mythical days. Possibly. At the airport the guy at desk told us Michael Jackson had checked in the day before with his kids, covered in blankets. A well adjusted life evidently stretching out before them all the way to Never Never land. Does McCartney actually think that signing up with the Coffee selling chain is going to make people give an extra shit about his new (not fab)_ gear? Can’t you just get over it pal, starting trying to look at the future or at least the present and realise that with that tune Yesterday. You mumbled a mouthful wrote your fate down in words. Must the long-suffering public be asked to carry your weight once again etc. Are we gonna hear a sob story soon about how he has to pay to get his copyrights back from Jacko. Couched in some help me save the planet bollocks? Obviously the suspense is killing Beware big self-important men who are out to save the world part 254. So Madonna has announced that – should he run – she will publically support Al Gore for the Presidency of the US. That’s the same Al Gore whose wife ran the stickering anti rock and rap campaign in the 80s. You know - back when Madonna was an edgy culture challenging threat – a target in Tipper Gore’s sights. Gore’s Oscar Winning Movie is – oh don’t the irony is killing – a favourite among the JET set class. Very popular on business class video screens apparently. Folk getting tearful over the (imported) cheese course. Madonna’s threat/promise plays into the Joe Strummer dictat “who fucks nuns will later join the church”. Maybe AL “only one voting day to save the planet” Gore reckons his warnings about Almeggedon will mean folk will have to vote for him. Five words Al - Bob Hope. And No Hope. You choose your medicine and you take it, I guess. Or not. Very annoyed that The Independent Thursday March 23rd 2007 page 5 gives Doctor David Colquhoun, a London based pharmacologist, free reign to spurt some of the medical lobby’s ongoing anti homeopathy drive. According to Colquhoun one of the problems with homeopathy is that it uses words “borrowed from science’. Such as? “Force and energy they are used in a way that has no scientific meaning whatsoever.” Well EXCUUUUUU-SSSSE ME! “Science” (Is that science PLC you vested interest protecting weasel?) owns words does it? When did it corral them up and put them in the science camp? What a load of hogwash. Haven’t you ears haven’t you heard Spank Rock, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Clash, Public Enemy, ad infibloodynitum? Haven’t they all got as great a right to OWN the energy and power words as a self important self appointed lobby of pharmaceutically funded fucks? Just curious