So … Dad and me. Apologies to mum and Phil for getting left out of this one but (a) it's a "dad and me" post to complement Mme. B's "mum and me" post, and (b) you both have stacks of humiliating and awful photos of me so I have to be careful what I post about you (dammit) and while dad's carousing in the Halls of Valhalla, he doesn't have access to a scanner.
So … Let's start in 1956. Katie noted yesterday that dad was "very stylish". Well here he is modelling the latest accessories for the man about Malta in the fifties. Fifty years ahead of his time with the "manbag".
And here's dad and me back in '58 (or thereabouts).
Yesterday's cleaned up shot. That's Mdina behind him and the Mediterranean in the distance. It's all high-rise and hotels now, but if you look closely you can see a horse and cart in the middle distance on the left.
When Elvis ruled the world. I love this photo.
Of course, dad wasn't the only stylish man-about-town in the family … This is me hanging about for him outside the fire station where he was a volunteer fireman.
How cute was I back then?
Screw you guys; I'm going home.
Like father, like son.
Er … Like father, like son. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Inspired by Mme. Benaut's babelicious post this morning (photos of herself and her mum today and twenty-five years ago), I started digging around for similar photos of dad and myself.
Inevitably this led to hours of rummaging through old albums and I came across this one of him sitting on a fence by the side of the road just outside Mdina in Malta.
I'll post the proper post tomorrow but this morning I decided it was time to rescue this photo from the ravages of time.
Before … in a somewhat sorry state.
After … feeling much better.
If anyone doesn't have a copy of Photoshop (even the cut-down version) out there, go buy it now. From putting the photo in the scanner to saving the finished thing for the blog took a little under twenty minutes. And it was tremendous fun, too. Put it on your shopping list.
I'm still brain-dead with nothing in my head worth writing about, but at least I am feeling a bit better this evening. The black dog is back in the kennel.
Here's some smiley, happy music to dance to while I cook dinner.
I've always loved this girl's accent. Perhaps my Colonial friends can tell me which part of the Colonies she hails from? She mentions Arizona but I don't know American accents from a hole in the ground.
Having been juggling the start of the busy season at the office (with nineteen - count the fuckers - contracts starting on sites all around the country, averaging £2.5million each) with weeks of cramming hard for my end of year Japanese exams (the final two of which I sat last night), I can smell burning and suspect that I may have fried my brain.
Add to that a panicky morning when we found that one of the girls in the office had gone missing (she'd changed for a party before leaving the office yesterday and all her stuff was still here this morning). Her daughter confirmed that she had not returned home and she could not be found by friend nor relative nor fellow party-goer and had switched off her phone. Cue the police …
Hey ho … All in all a pretty shitty morning until she just called in, having woken up in an old deckchair in her elderly parents' shed, several miles from her home, "feeling a little sick and feverish" … Ha! I should hope so! Bloody kids!
Anyhoo … I'm emotionally trashed at the moment so I'll have to do the blog rounds when I get home tonight. Talk amongst yourselves …
Hey ho. It's Thursday, so I suppose it's time to make some noise.
This week it's more crap from some old Cheese Mechanics' gig. Well, you seemed to like 'em last week so you can suffer for it this week.
Please excuse the couple of seconds of squealing feedback in the middle but it sounds like a drunk fell on the mixing desk (a not uncommon occurrence).
Yeah, I know it's summer but I'm still in a foul mood.
What the fuck is wrong with humans that we feel compelled to get depressed? What possible evolutionary advantage does that give us? And if it turns out not to be evolutionary but God-given, what kind of sicko deity would stick that one on us? Fuck, fuck, fuck …
Can you tell I'm not feeling especially chipper today?
What's wrong with Mondays? That's what I want to know. They always used to do it on Mondays. Regular as clockwork. Four weeks out of every five, some inconsiderate fucker would jump under a train. Always on Monday. Always on my line. Always in Essex (which at least is understandable; anyone finding themselves in Essex is bound to feel suicidal).
Today is Tuesday and we have just had two of the selfish little buggers (so far).
I've offered before and I repeat the offer here: if you feel like killing yourself by jumping under a train on my line, come and see me first. I'll be happy to kill you myself and be saved the hours of delays. Plus - if I'm feeling generous - your relatives will have something to bury; not just a few gristly lumps in a plastic bucket and a damp patch on the verge where the rest of you has been hosed off the tracks. Oh, and if they're going to leave flowers, tell them to leave plastic ones; it gets so dismally depressing seeing the piles of rotting vegetation festering there for weeks (though the sad little helium balloon at the Manningtree daughter/mother double jump was pretty funny).
Surely nothing in life could be so bad that dying in Essex seems preferable. If you really feel you have to top yourself, go and do it somewhere nice. Just don't do it on my line you inconsiderate bastards!
Well, the English summer is doing its worst outside; lashing, horizontal rain and squally gales are thrashing the trees around in my back garden and performing drum-rolls on the windows so it's a good day to snuggle down on the sofa, wrap myself in a duvet and grab something big and Russian off the bookshelves.
So today - if you're fed up with the heat wherever you are - come join me watching the rain and chill out while I wallow unapologetically in the glory of the man who gave us "The Birth Of The Cool".
Three tracks to choose from (though if you have a soul you'll settle in with a coffee and listen to all of them). All are from the greatest album ever made by anyone, anywhere; Miles' "Kind Of Blue" and they match my mood perfectly today.
Track one is a live version of "So What", probably the coolest of cool tracks.
Track two (no video) is the first take of "Flamenco Sketches" which features my favourite piano solo of all time; master of sensitivity Bill Evans breaks my heart all over again every time I hear it.
Track three (also no video) is Blue In Green. Miles' first note tears me apart.
May I abuse my longitudinal position and be the first to wish our lovely Robyn a Happy Birthday?
Woohoo! and Yaaay!
Criminally over-talented; Creative Director, writer, musician, artist, crafter, graphic designer, all-round smartyboots, mother to two of the most heart-stoppingly gorgeous girls on the planet, my oldest and bestest blogpal and a truly beautiful person, inside and out. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBYN!!!!!! XOXOX
Pop over to her blog and invade her comments box with birthday wishes.
Just for today, the word "party" is a verb. Go for it!
There it was, splashed across all the papers this morning; a big, shiny, purple Jeff Koons balloon flower "on the lawn in St.James's Park, London, where it will remain on display until it is auctioned off on Monday."
So … Off I toddled to the park. Could I find it? Could I buggery! "Ah," said the park attendant. "It's not coming until tomorrow." "So where did the papers get their photos?" "Dunno … But it wasn't here."
Hey, fucking ho. I wandered back to the office and took a closer look at the photos in the papers. Hang on a mo … Some of the photos had buildings in the background. There are no buildings like that anywhere near the park. This one had it sitting in the water. The only thing sitting in the lake was a bunch of birds. Swizz! Fucking crap journalists!
I'm as grumpy and unimpressed as old Mister Pelican, especially as it will only be there for the weekend while I'm in Norfolk so I'll miss it.
It's Thursday, so it must be time to make a racket.
You've already heard how my sanity band "Cheese Mechanics" could play delicate, subtle and elegant blues. That was our Doctor Jeckyll side. Put us in front of an audience and we were another animal altogether.
Here's a mouldering slice of stinky blue cheese from a typical Cheese Mechanics' gig. The phrases: "Cheese Mechanics' gig" and "shambolic cacophony" were born conjoined twins and this song is no different, with Neil shouting for a key change after the guitar solo and me being the only one to hear him. It takes Steve and Michael a couple of majestically dissonant bars to catch up with things. That was the peril of never rehearsing anything and making it all up as we went along, but that was also the pure joy of it all.
Right at the end, Steve yells "We're gonna slow it down a little bit." Which was usually his cue for a Ramones-stlye ONETWOTHREEFOUR and the band slamming into something ridiculously fast and loud. Sure, we were crap; we were shambolic; we were as rackety as an old motorbike engine but we had so much fun. That's what a sanity band is all about.
Neil (seen here in a quieter moment with Old Dive) is singing and blowing harp on this one. Or rather he's having a good old shout.
So: Racket number twelve: Cheese Mechanics' cacophonous, lumbering stumble through "Any Way You Want".
As any fule kno, I'm a sucker for postwar American kitsch. And Katie's wonderful vintage postcard blog, Katiefornia, is my opium den of choice whenever I need to feed my habit for "noir" era Americana.
From the forties to the sixties, American design was a riot of wonderfully tacky, over-the-top signs with exuberantly joyous fonts, bright colours and sharp angles; there were big, handsome cars sporting acres of chrome trim and smart white-wall tyres; and the ladies … sigh … the dresses were fabulous, darling! Simply divine.
Today's postcard (stolen from Katie) just gave me a fit of the giggles. Ostensibly a view of the Columbia River from Washington's Evergreen Highway, what we are actually witnessing is a gangland execution by the American equivalent of the W.I.
Not many people know of the Women's Institute's stranglehold on organised crime. The Mafia are bumbling amateurs in comparison (men can't multi-task for a start). Sure, they still raise funds by making jam to sell at fêtes, but that's just a front. Next time you spot 'em hawking chutney from a stall at your local church fundraiser try whispering to one of the little old dears that you'd "like to see the Godmother about a favour."
Anyhoo; what we have here is a W.I. "hit" on a client who hasn't ponied up. This poor guy isn't taking a photo; he's praying for mercy …
"I promise ya. Just gimme one more day and I'll getcha money, Lady. Please! I'm beggin' ya!"
"Sorry, Mo; we ain't a charity."
"Er … But I thought …"
"Okay, so technically we are a charity but that's not the point. The point is: it's time to die, motherfucker."
My copious and effusive thanks battle against the prevailing winds to cross the Atlantic and land on Savannah's front lawn. Her delightful little movie meme has once again saved me from the horrors of blogstipation.
So, switch off your mobile phone, stiff-arm the twat munching popcorn in your ear (if that doesn't work, tip his bucket of cola into his lap), plant your knees firmly in the back of the person sitting in front (to keep your shoes off the sticky floor); it's movie time!
1. One movie that made you laugh: "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you!" Of course, it's the wonderful Young Frankenstein.
2. One movie that made you cry: Sheesh! I'll blub at anything! I have a huge collection of old black and white movies that are guaranteed to make me cry like a baby on rainy Saturday afternoons (kinky, maybe, but as long as I do it in the privacy of my own home …). Brief Encounter, poor Sydney Carton at the end of A Tale Of Two Cities, Magwich's death in Great Expectations, the list is way too long to write here. Just narrowing it down to one "blub" movie is far too difficult so let's pick a random weepy moment … Cool! My random pick says
"Forget it, Jake … It's Chinatown …" (cue lovely trumpet and great retro end credits).
3. One movie you loved when you were a child: Fantasia did it for me. Apparently the pink elephants from Dumbo freaked me out when I was four … perhaps a prophetic foresight of drinking habits to come.
4. One movie you’ve seen more than once: The one I've probably watched the most (an obscene amount of times) is Doctor Strangelove (Or How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb).
Still relevant today (probably even more so) and still gut-sprainingly hilarious.
5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it: Die Hard 4 (Ouch! That hurt just typing it). Well, not "loved" exactly, but it didn't suck anywhere near as much as I expected and yes, I actually enjoyed it. And it has Flyleaf's "I'm So Sick" in it, which has gotta count for something.
6. One movie you hated: The American desecrations of Get Carter and The Italian Job … oh, and anything with Nicholas Cage in it.
"Oi, Stallone!
You're a big man, but you're out of shape."
7. One movie that scared you: The original Japanese "Ring"; the bit where the two girls are all alone in the house with "the telephone". Holy shit.
8. One movie that bored you: Andy Warhol's 24 hour long "Empire". We saw it at college one weekend in the blacked-out common room. Actually, it wasn't that boring as we partied through half of it and slept through the rest, waking up to enjoy the last few hours crashed on a floor full of junk food, beer, girls and dope.
9. One movie that made you happy: Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Doctor Strangelove always cheers me up, but the movie that is guaranteed to leave me with a warm glow is another nuclear annihilation flick (I'm a child of the Cold War), the incomparably splendid The Bed Sitting Room.
What a beautiful little film that was. I can't find a copy on DVD for love nor money, dammit!
10. One movie that made you miserable: Anything that those masters of child-exploitation, the beard-hating Disney Corporation made after the wonderful Jungle Book. Just watch the heart-stoppingly beautiful Japanese masterpiece Spirited Away (don't you fucking DARE watch the dubbed version! Read the subtitles and listen to the Japanese or I'll come round and slap you so hard) to see how Disney could have turned out had they not sold Walt's soul to crass commercialism on an obscene scale.
11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see: Showgirls. 'Nuff said.
12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with: Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) in the fabulously sleazy 1970's noir of the same name.
13. The last movie you saw: Last night - as there was only boring footie on the telly - I watched my favourite noir; singled out by the US government as "the number one menace to American youth in 1955", starring a scenery-chewing Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer and the debut screen appearance (nude) of Cloris Leachman (tying this neatly to my first choice in this meme, where she plays Frau Blücher … cue sound of horses neighing in terror); that glorious "va-va-voom" of a movie, Kiss Me Deadly.
Fantastic!
14. The next movie you hope to see: A remake of The Running Man; only this time as a real-life documentary where George Bush (both of 'em), Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are dropped in a remote area of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border with only their lies to defend themselves with and are hunted down, tortured and slaughtered for our entertainment. Add a Keystone Kops style soundtrack and we've got a winner.
I'll finish this meme with an appeal: If anyone knows where I can get hold of The Bed Sitting Room and Charley Varrick on DVD (Region 2; not the US versions), PLEASE let me know.
After a week of crap on the railways, I am about to try to get to work. If I don't appear later I am stuck on a train somewhere. In the meantime …
Now that Shan is safely away from an internet connection for the week I can safely post one of my favourite songs of all time, Shellac's gloriously heartfelt "Prayer To God".
With the possible exception of Jilted John's "Jilted John", this is the best song ever written about being dumped (an expert writes).
While Jilted John plays it for laughs …
She said "Listen John, I love you But there's this bloke I fancy" …
and
I was so upset that I cried All the way to the chip shop.
Steve Albini takes black humour to dark depths hitherto unplumbed.
I love this song so fucking much! There's no video so don't bother watching it. Just sing along!
To the one true God above: here is my prayer - not the first you've heard, but the first I wrote. (not the first, but the others were a long time ago). There are two people here, and I want you to kill them. Her - she can go quietly, by disease or a blow to the base of her neck, where her necklaces close, where her garments come together, where I used to lay my face... That's where you oughta kill her, in that particular place. Him - just fucking kill him, I don't care if it hurts. Yes I do, I want it to, fucking kill him but first make him cry like a woman, (no particular woman), let him hold out hope that someone or other might come then fucking kill him Fucking kill him. Kill him already, kill him. Fucking kill him, fucking kill him, Kill him already, kill him. Fucking kill him, fucking kill him, Kill him already, kill him. Just fucking kill him! Fucking kill him, Fucking kill him already, kill him. Ah Fucking kill him, fucking kill him, Kill him already, kill him. Kill him already, kill him already Kill him, fucking kill him. Just fucking kill him, fuckin kill him, Kill him already, kill him. Fuckin kill him, kill him, Fucking kill him already, kill him.
Kill him, fucking kill him, Kill him, just fucking kill him. Kill him already, kill him already, Kill him. Amen.
How heartfelt and true. That "No particular woman" line cracks me up every time. Hee hee hee.
You know me; I love Japanese food. Well the other day, Joy invited me along to a business start-up centre in Norwich where her friends Jong Carmona (Filipino cook) and Isko Papica (Japanese Teppanyaki chef) were launching their new catering venture combining the best of Filipino and Japanese cuisine.
Woo and very definitely Hoo!
I'd not tried Filipino food before but what Jong and Isko served up got my tastebuds so excited I've been frantically downloading recipes and planning a raid on the Asian food market.
Holy frijole! What a glorious combination of orgasmic taste and texture!
Here are some of the dishes that were new to me:
Beef Kaldereta Pork Sisig Pansit Sweet cassava cake Tocino Embutido Lumpia and that's not counting all the yummy sushi and Japanese goodies I eagerly wolfed down, jostling at table with a cross section of Norwich's great and good.
The lovely folk from BBC Voices were filming us happily demolishing plate after plate of exquisite yumminess. Here's their cameraman making a movie of some food in the background behind Isko, Jong and Joy as we helped prepare last minute things.
Joy takes photos for the guys.
And here's just a tiny sample of the mountain of yumminess we gratefully devoured.
I wish Jong and Isko every success with their new venture and I must also add a huge thank you to our lovely Joy for educating me in the delights of Filipino cuisine.
Here's a lovely song to sing along to while your mouth waters; good old Uncle David with his splendid band - including the unutterably fabulous Gail-Ann Dorsey on bass - belting out Wild Is The Wind.
Sing along: "With your kiss, my life begins. You're Spring to me … All things to me. Etc."
Just a quickie as I'm about to drive into the city for breakfast and shopping (it's not just a girly thang; some guys are born to shop and I'm one of 'em).
I went to see Tony's joyously disgraceful excuse for a band play last night (you remember? The worst and most shambolic band in the world?) and was totally disappointed to find them sounding tight, together and professional. "What the hell's wrong with you guys" I protested. Turns out that they have relatives over from Australia and they've been practicing hard for a month to "get good" for them. I'm not quite sure how long I could handle them being listenable but they assure me that next month they will return to the stumbling, out-of tune, shambolic cacophony that I love.
And talk of cacophony brings me to one of my favourite bands and a song that is definitely "shaping my summer": the monstrously splendid My Bloody Valentine playing "Only Shallow". Rumour has it that they're having a reunion this year. I can't wait! Anybody who loves "Lost In Translation" will recognise this sound as their frontman Kevin Shields provided the soundtrack and sprinkled some MBV all over it.
Delicious, trance-like, dreamy Heaven. Dance away your heartache …
Well, what a wonderful week it has been for users of Notwork Rail.
On Monday evening (having suffered the inevitable five hour journey in to work due to "over-running engineering works"), the train behind mine managed to snag and tear down over a mile of overhead electric wire. This is the same section that got torn down several times last year … and the year before … etc. The reason being that - while the line in Norfolk and Suffolk only dates back to the 1960s - the line through cheapskate Essex has not been replaced since before WWII. Add to that the fact that upon privatisation of the railways, the new owners got rid of 60,000 (yes, you heard) maintenance workers across the country and paid themselves obscenely huge bonuses with the money saved. Since then - as any glance at the news will tell you - we have suffered the most catastrophic decline in rail travel standards in history. Quite apart from the spate of disastrous crashes with their huge loss of life, the timetables have been padded so much that it now takes longer to travel the route by electric "Fast Inter-City" service than it did in the age of steam (true).
Anyhoo … Back to this week. Notwork Rail (a) Immediately put out a statement vigorously denying that lack of maintenance on pre-war infrastructure was anything other than a good thing for everybody, and (b) Took three days to repair it, and (c) Announced that the taxpayer will be forced to foot the bill for replacing all the crappy old overhead wires (the maintenance budget for which disappeared into their bonuses) and that the work would not get done until 2012 at the earliest. I am lucky in that I can work from home, but a lot of people cannot and risk losing their jobs because of this.
Inevitably: Shortly before the repairs were finished, the cage of a poorly maintained cherry-picker sheared off its arm and came crashing down onto the tracks, carrying the three maintenance workers inside it straight to hospital by air ambulance and halting all repair work.
Hey ho … They at last announced that repairs were complete late yesterday and stated that "a full service is running, with delays and cancellations due to the disruption", which – a quick check of the realtime information website revealed - actually meant only a third of trains were running and they were being delayed by hours ("full service my arse").
And this morning it was revealed to us happy commuters that a freight train derailed late last night (on poorly maintained track) halfway to London and that - should I be interested in getting to work - my usual three-and-a-half hour journey to the office would involve replacement buses and would take over five hours, with no guarantee I would get home tonight.
So … Many apologies for getting that out of my system.
Here, to calm my savage breast and as part of my "songs that are shaping my summer" meme, is the lovely Joni (with the lovely Jaco on bass) performing Coyote.
Quick recap: A few weeks back, in a sealed-up box lurking in an unexplored backwater of my attic, I found over a hundred tapes that I thought were lost decades ago; tapes of Old Dive dicking around in various bands and studios and even stuff recorded back at school (on wax cylinder and clay tablet).
You've endured some of the school stuff; now here's one of the first things I recorded when I got hold of an old Tascam Porta 02, 4-track cassette recorder, known back in the Cretaceous Period as a "portastudio".
Sheesh! Even typing that word takes me way, way back in geological time.
This was my very first home studio set-up, from around the early 1980s, I think. Starting at the far end (this is gonna get soooo boring) are a bunch of reverbs and EQs, then the portastudio; the whitish thing is a classic Roland TR 505 drum machine and in front of that is the Boss Dr. Rhythm beat box that I think is being used on this track. Then there's a DI box sitting on a Marshall preamp and an old analogue chorus rack unit. Under the desk is a spring reverb box, my old wah-wah pedal and a stomp-box compressor. A more primitive recording set up could not be found for love nor money, but it was quite advanced back then.
This is what is currently cluttering up one of the spare bedrooms. Boys, eh? We grow old but we never grow up. And yes, I still have those ratty old drum machines. I like retro crap. These days I use Lexicon reverbs though, because I discovered that you get what you pay for.
Many apologies for the quality of this crappy little recording, but it's been sitting in a box in several different attics for decades and so has lost a lot of its clarity; in fact the guitar track almost completely cuts out for a couple of beats somewhere in the middle.
Before I learned to programme the drum machine (you know how it is: get the thing out of the box and play with it; who bothers with reading the manual?), it seems I just set it to play a dull, thudding plod of a rhythm, added a very basic bass and rhythm guitar track and then just improvised a load of bluesy tosh over the top.
This one has "Vindaloo Blue" written on the case, so I must have recorded it after losing a fight with a particularly vicious curry (Don't let the bottom fall out of your world; have a vindaloo and let the world fall out of your bottom). It seems I played it straight through, making it up as I went along; one part clean channel, one part overdriven channel on the Marshall and then some embarrassingly corny twatting about at the end where I overdubbed a second guitar part (oh, dear).
This must have been one of the first things I recorded as I was obviously too impatient to bother with a decent backing track or indeed to do any more than one take.
So … I've had to suffer it; now it's your turn. Vindaloo Blue.
If anyone wants to listen to something a tad less amateurish, here are links to Dive's Thursday Rackets to date:
Big it up for Notwork Rail (calling themselves "Network Rail" is just asking for trouble). Their spectacular incompetence has once again given me a week of working at home as the overhead train lines between here and London are currently laying on the ground in bits. This comes in the same week as they announced six-figure "productivity" related bonuses for the bosses of the company who have presided over the most catastrophic decline in railway standards in human history.
But then who am I to complain? I'm sitting in my comfy chair, necking Cuban coffee; the sun is shining, the early summer breeze off the sea is blowing cool Heaven through my windows and I didn't have to get up at 4:40AM this morning and suffer the commute from Hell.
Tomorrow you will have to endure another track from the prehistory of Dive, but today - as I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to say - it is time to continue my meme theme of "songs that are shaping my summer". At the top of my most played tracks on the iPod, there are always a few dozen (okay, a couple of hundred) Steely Dan songs. I've been a rabid and unapologetic Dan Fan since "Do It Again" in 1971. They appeared just after The Beatles split up and ever since that moment I have gratefully suckled at the teat of Dan.
I could have chosen any one of a hundred Dan tunes to kick off my summer, but for today I'm heading back to the tragically unhip days of back-combed hair, rolled-up jacket sleeves and Miami Vice. This is as close to disco as I get so make the most of it. I like the home-made video, too, even though he gets a few words wrong.
So, cut yourself a line of blow and chill out to "Glamour Profession"; a glorious slice of typically cynical Dan sleaze. Rub it on like suntan lotion (make sure and smear it into all of those awkward, hard-to-reach crevices) and let the incomparable groove carry you into summer.
If anybody on the planet doesn't own a copy of "Gaucho", go buy it now. The übercool guitar on the outtro is by guest guitarist Steve Khan in case anyone other than me was wondering.
Yesterday we had our monthly waste of a morning: the departmental meeting (the meeting where you enter sane and depart mental … yeah, I know I've done that one before but it still makes me laugh).
Actually, it was much shorter and far more enlightening than usual; having spent five minutes dealing with business we sat around talking about biscuits. The boss was on some golf course enjoying what he described as a "strategic away-day". We spent a few minutes discussing whether that phrase might possibly be translatable into English and the only meaning we could ascribe to it was that the boss not being here is good for the office. I tabled that and it was unanimously agreed on and entered into the minutes.
We will now discover if CJ actually reads his minutes or just files them without bothering. An hour's discussion of the merits of different types of biscuit and a vote on his uselessness might make interesting reading for him. As soon as we'd finished off all the food we broke up the meeting and so had a much more productive day than usual, thereby confirming the efficacy of the "strategic away-day". When I next see the boss I might suggest that he take a "strategic away-life", which would improve our efficiency no end.
Right. Back to the fragmented, day-by-day meme of the songs that are "shaping my summer". This is the time of year when I find myself listening to "commercial stuff" that I would sniffily reject at any other time of the year; stuff that some of you might actually like (though that could well change later in the week).
So here's a happy, smiley, summery tune from the lovely Gary Clark; mostly of Scotland but occasionally of Richard's flat in Norwich. I've not seen him in years (the bugger got married and went to live in France) and this video dates the track appallingly, but it's still a lovely song and I've lately found myself breezing along the Embankment beside the Thames singing it at passers-by. It's called "Freefloating" and it does what it says on the tin. Find it on the CD "Ten Short Songs About Love." It's still available.
Sing along: "I love somebody wild and young and free … etc."
A couple of memes for a Monday. One from Betty and one from Maria.
First up: Betty's musical meme: Post seven songs that you're really into right now. It doesn't matter if they're crap, but they should be the ones that are shaping your summer.
Seven songs are a bit much to listen to one after the other while you're cruising blogs, so I'm going to post mine one at a time in the hope that somebody will actually take the time to listen to them. I'm also selling out and simply posting YouTube clips. Don't worry; it's only for a few days.
I checked the recently played songs on my iPod to see what has been "shaping my summer" and was pleasantly surprised to find this up near the top.
So … I'll start my intermittent and stuttering "meme spread over a week or so" with the man I have idolised since 1963 and a gorgeous song to start anybody's summer: "Bless You".
This was on the wonderful "Walls and Bridges" album in the mid-seventies, though the guy who made the video obviously only has the Menlove Avenue compilation CD. If you've not got them already, go and buy either album and make me (and Yoko) happy.
This is luscious, gorgeous and reeking of warm summer days. It also has Jesse Ed Davis on guitar which is always a good thing.
Sit back, chill out and start your summer here.
Now while you listen to that, it's Maria's turn. Much more meme-ish … A bunch of stupid questions for a Monday morning.
TECHNOLOGY Q: What is your wallpaper on your computer? Which computer? I have seven Macs on the go at the mo. I have a bunch of my 3D work on most of them, some Japanese scenes at work, but my favourite desktop is on my old indigo iMac in the studio and is this wonderful shot I stole from Katie's blog.
Q: How many televisions do you have in your house? I didn't have any for around fifteen years. Now I have a big, flattie in the living room to play GTA4 on and watch old movies and a tiny old portable in the bedroom to get the news at five in the morning while I'm drying my hair. I can only get four channels and those intermittently, so as soon as they turn the analogue signal off in a year or so I'll go back to having no TV. I hate TV. Though I did enjoy watching Harrison Birtwhistle's new opera "The Minotaur" on BBC2 on Saturday night. Sure, it was on the radio, too, but the cozzies were worth watching, so yes, I guess I'm still a TV slut until things go all-digital.
BIOLOGY Q: Are you right handed or left handed? Right handed.
Q:Have you ever had anything removed from your body? Appendix, bits of teeth and jaw, some yucky fluids, but mostly I just get the piss taken out of me.
Q: What is the last heavy item you lifted? My fat ass out of bed this morning.
Q: Have you ever been knocked out? Yup. By a door, a car, a motley selection of hard surfaces and several anæsthetists.
BULLSHIT-OLOGY Q: If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die? I'll be choosing that day, so yes, I'll know it in advance.
Q: If you could change your name, what would you change it to? Something else. Possibly Slartibartfast. Probably not Chet or Marylou.
Q: What color do you think looks best on you? Black looks least bad.
Q: Have you ever swallowed a non-food item? Hell, yes. Where's the fun in just eating food?
DARE-OLOGY Q: Would you kiss a member of the same sex for 100 dollars? Of course I would. And I'd bang Johnny Depp for free.
Q: Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for 200,000$? Not a chance. I'm a musician, for fuck's sake.
Q: Would you never blog again for 50,000$? I'll stop blogging when I get bored with it. Besides; $50,000? What's that gonna buy these days? A tank of gas?
Q: Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for 1,000$? Bring it on! This is the man who loves chili eating contests; my record is sixteen raw, scotch-bonnet chilis, well munched before swallowing (I only stopped because I ran out of chilis). If food isn't hot enough to make my eyeballs bleed I don't wanna know.
Q: Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for a million dollars? No, but I'd do it for fun. When we played the game "If you were a serial killer, who would you kill?" I decided I would be "The Comb-over Killer". I'd target men with comb-overs and simply walk up and shoot them in the head. Those fuckwits don't deserve to live. It would be a mercy killing and a valuable service to taste and decency. No jury would ever convict me.
DUMB-OLOGY Q: What is in your left pocket? I have no idea. I'm naked and my pockets are upstairs in the wardrobe.
Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie? Ask someone who gives a shit.
Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house? Carpet. I live in a cold climate.
Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower? Who the fuck sits in a shower? I stand. Unless I've slipped on my ass, of course. Then I'll sit and run through a few choice phrases from my Profanisaurus.
Q: How many pairs of flip flops do you own? None. Life's too short to be seen in flip-flops. Unless you're Joy … she even wears hers in the snow!
LAST-OLOGY Q: Last person who texted you? Nobody has ever texted me, and nobody ever will. Nor will I ever text anybody. The word "text" is not a verb on Planet Dive. There are no mobile phones here, either. Don't try to bring one into my house unless you're feeling particularly frisky and it is well greased, 'cos it's going straight up your ass.
Q: Last person who called you? Gosh, I can't remember. I think it was Chris, around three weeks ago, to tell me he was on his way over to pick me up when we went to the Aussie Pink Floyd Show at the university. You know I have my phone on mute most of the time. I hate telephones.
Q: Last person you hugged? Lucy, Saturday.
FAVOURITE-OLOGY Q: Number? 13
Q: Season? Spring. So that's my enjoyment over for another year.
Q: Color? Black. Stupid question, really.
CURRENT-OLOGY Q: Missing someone? I never miss.
Q: Mood? Black with the occasional flash of blue.
Q: Listening to? Nothing. It's absolutely silent out here today. Not enough wind to stir the trees and the birds are too busy feeding chicks to sit and sing. No cars, no planes, no stupid fucking people … Lovely.
Q: Worrying about? Nothing. What the fuck is the point of worrying about anything? Shit will happen. You will cope with it or you will die. Why worry?
Q: Wearing? My saggy old skin. A frown. Oh, and my glasses.
RANDOM-OLOGY Q: First place you went this morning? The bathroom.
Q: What can you not wait to do? Well, I've got the ironing to do later. Then there's death. The rest I'll just take as it comes.
Q: Do you smile often? Not so much that it would unnerve passers-by.
Q: Are you a friendly person? Of course. I love everybody unreservedly. La-la-la. Happy, friendly me. Yeah, right.
The Devastating Man that is my baby brother Phil - aka Full, The Monkey God.
He has a birthday today! Yaaaay! And probably Woohoo, too!
To celebrate this momentous occasion, I will risk his eternal wrath and present you with a pictorial snapshot of the evolution of The Monkey God, from small animal sacrifice to full blown simian deity.
Big Pants! One day I woke up to find this strange, frog-like balloon alien in the pram. In olden days, nappies were lead-lined and got changed once a month. There's about a fortnight's worth in there.
Don't fuck with me!
Not long after the end of rationing, in post-war austerity Britain, iced lollies were made from offal, putty and grit. Phil's admirable food-snobbery started here.
Those gloves again. Back then, masturbation deterrence started early. That was a seriously great trike, though.
And then it all went wrong …
How did that cute little boy grow up to become the founder member of splendid rhythm and blues combo The Dubious Brothers?
And skinny, too! What a bastard!
Phil is a drummer. But he's also an excellent bassist - as seen here … if a little studious-looking - and a totally awesome guitar player.
Anyhoo … Happy Birthday, Phil! My baby brother.
You know I hate YouTube, but I couldn't resist this. Skip the first minute or so (unless you're a gay man in which case simply revel in the fabness of Babs). It's around a minute and a half in that this gets very wrong indeed and veers off into pædo-pervy territory in a quite hilariously inappropriate manner.
So to honour Phil's birthday, sing along with Babs as she belts out one of my favourite songs of all time: "I'm five, I'm five, I'm a big girl now, I'm five, etc …"
Then pop on over to Phil's blog and wish him a happy birthday.
I've been looking after Charlie and Fern for the past couple of weeks while Jerry's been away in Germany.
He's back now and brought me some lovely bottles of wine as usual. Then I got home today to find Fern waiting for me on the doorstep. As I opened the door she jumped inside and deposited The Gift Of Frog on my carpet.
I love frogs. This one was totally unharmed, so having thanked Fern and shooed her out I carried it down the the bottom of the garden and let it go under some damp, dense shrubbery.
The reason for today's utterly pointless post (pointless for non-frog-fetishists, anyway) is that I am preparing a doozy of a post for tomorrow. Be warned. Wear appropriate protective clothing.
Thank goodness for Maria. She rides to my rescue again, armed with yet another meme to cure my bloggers' block.
The Alphabet Meme.
A is for your age:
Forty-nine. Shit!
B is for your burger of choice:
Gack! I've never been in (let alone put into my mouth) a Mc.D. Or a KFC or a Pizza Hut or any other junk food craporium and I never will. So "burger of choice" would be "none".
C is for the car that you drive:
Small. Black. Cute. Sexy.
D is for dog's name:
I'm a dogless person so I'll choose my favourite blog-dog: Hassan's wonderful, übercute eater of Savannah's glasses (twice), Ghostface Killah.
E is for an essential item you use each day:
The Interweb.
F is for your favourite television show:
I don't do telly. I do, however, have a bunch of DVDs of shows I watch on my Mac. From the States: Frasier, The Simpsons, Buffy. From the UK: Black Books, Green Wing, Phoenix Nights. Choose from one of those.
G is for favourite game:
Usually chess, though Scrabble if I'm feeling pedantic and I want to yell at stupid people. Oh, and GTA4 when I get home from a shitty commute … There are times when one simply has no option but to tool up and gun the fuck out of the world.
H is for hometown:
Imtarfa in Malta, according to my birth certificate, but I don't remember it. My current hometown is anywhere with no mobile phone reception.
I is for instruments played:
Everything except the oboe. I can't raise a squeak out of one of those fuckers, even with Dizzy Gillespie cheeks. I don't think anyone can actually play the oboe; they're just faking it. They sit there and mime while somebody under their chair squeezes farts out of a rat. Any oboe players out there want to give me a clue how to get the stupid thing started?
J is for favourite juice:
Why, lady-juice of course. Hee hee … OW!
K is for what you'd like to kick:
Everything and everybody. Hard!
L is for last restaurant you dined at:
The new Wasabi that just opened on Victoria Street in Westminster. Andy treated me as thanks for teaching him how to cheat at work.
M is for your favourite Muppet:
Beaker. Suave, sophisticated. I model my dating technique on him.
N is for number of piercings you have:
None. I have sufficient holes in my body, thank you very much. They cause enough trouble as it is.
O is for overnight hospital stays:
Sheesh. Er … One biggie when my appendix burst and I got peritonitis. That was a whole bunch of no fun. And several more for various things. I'm too old to remember most of them.
P is for people you were with today:
The usual idiots on the train. The usual idiots on the tube. The usual idiots in the office. Nathalie in the deli.
Q is for what you do in quiet times:
Read. Chill. Vegetate. Concentrate really hard on trying to grow fins.
R is for regrets:
Holy crap! I have the world's largest collection of regrets. I manage to pick up several new ones every day. Let's just say "life."
S is for status:
Fat, ugly, balding, middle-aged sad bastard who lives alone and is likely to stay that way.
T is for time you woke up today:
Don't remind me. 4:40AM as usual; just before the alarms start shrieking at me.
U is for what you consider unique:
My cheery, optimistic view of the universe and my deep love of the people in it.
V is for favourite vegetable:
I kinda like Keira Knightley.
W is for your worst habit:
Blogging. Or kidding myself that one day a woman will find me attractive enough not to point and laugh.
X is for x-rays you have had:
I think I've managed to collect the whole set over the decades.
Y is for yummy food you ate today:
It's not lunchtime yet, so fat all. Today, it'll be a toss up between sashimi and seafood noodles; depends on which places have the shortest queues.
Z is for zodiac sign:
I don't do star signs. What month is the sign of the Grumpy Old Fucker? That'll be me.
This time with Michael on electric piano and vocals. A version of B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone" from one of the Sunday Blues Club sessions.
I love this version because Laurie plays such a subtle, sublime, sensual, sinuous, sexy sax solo. He is a master of understatement and his phrasing at the start of the second verse of his sax break gives me the chills every time I hear it. I'm playing Old Les on this one in case anyone's remotely interested.
Next week - or maybe even before, if I can't think of anything else to write about - I will be dipping into the box of strangeness that I found up in the attic for more of the musical prehistory of Dive. Be warned.
No photo of me this week, you'll be glad to hear.
Instead, here's one of mum taken last night with Martin Taylor, one of the world's finest jazz guitar players and a hero of mine. You'll know from the past that mum is a member of The Mad Bints and is always off at gigs. When she phoned me to say "I'm off to see Martin Taylor. Have you heard of him? What's he like?" I almost died of jealously! I played her his "Kiss and Tell" album and she went "Wow!" It was too late to get me a ticket by then, but next time I'll be there to see him.
In the meantime, enjoy Laurie's lovely sax on The Thrill Is Gone.
I'm way too busy to write anything coherent, let alone ranty today, so here's a photo of the rear end of Westminster Abbey in the rain yesterday to illustrate the joys of an English summer.
For anyone remotely interested, if you threw a rock over the tree on the left you'd probably break a window in my office … unless you throw like a girl.
Yup; another lyric title; this time good ol' Frank Zappa. "Disco Boy … Run to the toilet and comb your hair." To take my mind off the pain in my foot, Katie had me singing "Disco Inferno" at three o'clock this morning (see yesterday's comments). Which kinda helped …
But it also reminded me that I have never really understood the strange beast that is the "discotheque."
Of course, back in the golden age of my youth there was no such thing and life was blissful in the Garden of Eden. People danced to live bands. They talked and socialised in the intervals between sets. Life was intercoursingly groovy. People even wanted to listen to a bunch of teenagers playing Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes and Focus songs.
And then it all went poo-shaped.
I remember the first time I met a discotheque. It was the early seventies and we had been having problems in the band with girls inexplicably wanting to listen to David Cassidy and "go down the disco" in preference to watching a spotty kid in glasses play a twenty minute guitar solo. I still can't figure that one out. Sigh …
Much against my better judgement I decided to see what was so wonderful about this "new craze" that would drag girls away from real music. So I got dressed up in my best flares and a flowery shirt with a collar that would not look out of place billowing from the mast of an America's Cup racing yacht. To which spectacular sartorial splendour I added the indescribable aroma of Brüt (the ad for which had elderly boxer Henry Cooper growling "Splash it on all over!" … probably not the most alluring image for teenage girls). Thus rendered as irresistible as I could be to the fair sex I ventured forth and … er … bicycled into town.
Where I forked over perfectly good money (something I still resent having had to do) only to find myself in a large, dark room with some flashing lights and somebody playing records loudly.
What the fuck?
People were actually PAYING to have someone play records at them? I could go home and do that. With far better records!
So I did.
I've never been in another one. My drummer couldn't figure it out either. "I mean what the fuck's that all about? It just goes THUD - CLAP - THUD - CLAP on and on and on. Where's the skill in that? It could just as well be a bloody machine." Prophetic words indeed. I have quite a collection of drum machines.
Years later I found myself booked to play in a grown-ups' disco, or what was termed a "night club". It's the only time I've ever been in one of those, too.
My idea of a good time would never even come CLOSE to … er … jigging up and down in a sweaty crowd in the dark, having people scream into my ear to be heard whilst paying more for a round of drinks than I did for my car.
Somebody PLEASE tell me: What the fuck is the point of discos and nightclubs? Why do people go there? To scream at strangers in a dark room? To get covered in beer and sweat? It can't be to socialise as you can't see or hear one another. Help me out here. What's the story?
It's not just that I'm old; I felt the same way at thirteen. Sometimes I feel that not only was I born in the wrong decade, I was born into the wrong species.
Er … I was just draining the potatoes and somehow contrived to spill boiling water over my foot. It is not pretty and it fucking hurts. If it gets any nastier I'm off to the NHS drop-in centre (I'm buggered if I'm going to wait three hours at the hospital, watching the flesh peel off).
I'll let you know the result tomorrow. In the meantime amuse yourselves with "hopping" jokes at my expense.
So … Let's start in 1956.
And here's dad and me back in '58 (or thereabouts).
Yesterday's cleaned up shot.
When Elvis ruled the world.
Of course, dad wasn't the only stylish man-about-town in the family …
How cute was I back then?
Screw you guys; I'm going home.
Like father, like son.
Er … Like father, like son.
Better days, with Ana in Portugal.
Dad as Buddha.
