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Sun 5th May The wedding we played in Sweden on Wednesday was incredibly entertaining, with countless songs & performances from all corners. The father of the bride even sang a version of She's Leaving Home by the Beatles, accompanied by a barbershop group in chef hats, it was fantastic. We recorded this down by the river on a smartphone, it's another song from forthcoming album 7 Love Rivals: Meanwhile, I've began writing Love Rivals, the musical.. trilogy.. yes I know. |
Mon 29th April Off to Stockholm in the morning, and we'll definitely post a video performance from there. This is how new JEEPS track Cornermoon is sounding right now, and yes I know that Laura Stevenson mentions Lucky Strikes in her new record, but if you remember I posted the lyrics to this long before her album was released.. and mine's a better line anyway :p |
Thu 25th April I'm using this time off from social obligations to be productive; drinking green tea made with off the boil (70°) water & watching my ABBA In Japan DVD. There's a word in Swedish, Osvenk, which is used to compliment something for being refreshingly foreign. The word Svensk (Swedish) can be used by the Swedes as an insult, therefore it's opposite has positive connotations. ABBA In Japan, however, is so wonderful that I hope I become Supersvensk when I visit Stockholm again next week. Agnetha actually had a new album out last month (the single When You Really Loved Someone is a truly decent modern pop song, and her old recording of If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind is one of my all-time favourites) and has finally suggested she's up for an ABBA reuinion (you heard it here first!) Great timing, we arrive on Sweden's bonfire night, their celebration that the winter is over. Praise the blessed Pagans. THERE ARE NO GODS There are no gods, and you can please yourself have a game of tennis, go out in the car, do some shopping, sit and talk, talk, talk with a cigarette browning your fingers. There are no gods, and you can please yourself - go and please yourself - But leave me alone, leave me alone, to myself! and then in the room, whose is the presence that makes the air so still and lovely to me? Who is it that softly touches the sides of my breast and touches me over the heart so that my heart beats soothed, soothed, soothed and at peace? Who is it smooths the bed-sheets like the cool smooth ocean where the fishes rest on edge in their own dream? Who is it that clasps and kneads my naked feet, till they unfold, till all is well, till all is utterly well? the lotus-lilies of the feet! I tell you, it is no woman, it is no man, for I am alone. And I fall asleep with the gods, the gods that are not, or that are according to the soul's desire, like a pool into which we plunge, or do not plunge. D.H Lawrence |
Thu 25th April Springtime & Summertime hit London simultaneously this week, one late & one early, and the two seasonal flames have lit our local folk from truly illuminating perspectives. I just took a little walk through the park, returning with a two pinter of whole milk from Tesco, spinning it like Robocop round my newly healed trigger finger, and humanity seemed in quite a respectable state for once. Today is the first day, and the last, in which we have no visitors to the nuthouse. |
Wed 24th April We played a daytime venue at Portobello market on Saturday, I'm working on two new JEEPS songs that feature the new organ, and I start giving guitar lessons again later today 'cos I'm completely broke. Most people think that most other people's work is completely useless. Off to Sweden on Tue. New Laura Stevenson & The Cans album is out, sounds splendid on first listen except for that unfortunate single called Runner. Quite a lot of great new music in fact; Blue Jeans by Bigott, Push The Sky Away by Nick Cave, even the new Flaming Lips album was a pleasant surprise taking us comfortably away from the disaster of Do You Realise? etc. Wow, I've never had so little to say for myself. I look very old today, like a long-wandering native of some lost & crumbling strait. This lukewarm revival, that sub-alpine repose. The dolorous cleric loses his sublime queen, to a rogue rook by candlelight, and vows to play nevermore. "Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell." |
Mon 22nd April I feel like I aught to write a pamphlet on the politics of threesomes. Without guidelines, certain pitfalls have, until now, been narrowly avoided by chance alone. Others have been plunged into, headlong & pell-mell. If one finds oneself in the middle of the bed, for example, after such an exchange, and one can't sleep on one's back, what options are available so as to avoid being seen to taking a preference for one party over the other? It is dilemmas of this ilk that confound my hard earned bliss, and I think I have some answers to share on the matter. |
Mon 22nd April To Women, As Far As I'm Concerned The feelings I don't have I don't have. The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have. The felings you say you have, you don't have. The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have. The feelings people ought to have, they never have. If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven't got them So if you want either of us to feel anything at all you'd better abandon all idea of feelings altogether. D.H. Lawrence. |
Wed 17th April So many pretty girls, so many broken lightbulbs. So this is what it means to have a home. Instincts that still can betray us. I'm so happy I could build a meadow out of matchsticks. Played a lovely open mic in a local hotel basement, it's like a cabaret enclosure down there. I should get a camera, innit. It's strange to feel so inspired but at the same time poor in words & incantations. Honey vocabulary melodies seep out of a whisker-wide wound & into the dusty carpet that muffles this empty hallway hereabouts. Where is the unclumsy ultrasound? I clasp a thick blade of grass between my thumbs, and dip the whole ensemble deep into a medley of syrups & straw. Inevitable 19th Century lake-swimming, a tree left standing, front crawl to another backwater. Love is so tall & thin. Tall & thin, thin & tall, Love is this & love is all. But love has wings! So wide & white! What more we need we need not cite. |
Tue 16th April Acoustic daytime show in London this Saturday 20th April, 3pm, more info soon. |
Mon 15th April JEEPS is back to being a two-piece for the moment, but hopefully a recording of the full band that played recent shows will be available before long. The mini-tour was quite ridiculous, as you'd expect, but certainly an experience. I'm only sorry that I can't share stories with you, maybe I'll start taking pictures instead & you can piece together what happened from those. The contents of a camera would be news to me, after nights spent moseying with intent through England's dark town rectangles of grass & granite, primed to plunge shimmering kisses from backwater stars stunned asunder. I've applied for bar work round here to try fix up some deep dark holes that have appeared in my wallet. Glendale Nuthouse has acquired a beautiful two-tier pedal organ which appears to be from the 1950s, and until I get a song together on that we'll be catching up on sneaking down the psychiatric summer house to bring you videos like this Beat Happening cover: |