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