We have a gig tonight, in preparation for which I have cleaned the kitchen and now I'm baking some bread. I wonder if that is what the Rolling Stones do before they perform? I wonder if Charlie Watts still cuts his own hair? I remember reading in a drum magazine that he did, very well dressed that Charlie Watts. Do you think Mick Jagger taunts him about it? Do I think Mick Jagger taunts him about it? So many questions.
The shaker previously mentioned has been dropped. It sounded ok, but what I am doing now sounds better. Better is better, on the whole. Of course you can simply say something is better, but just because you say something is the case it does not actually make it true. This is a very important lesson for children to learn and also important for skilled liars. And firemen. Just because they say that your house is on fire it is best to make sure for yourself. They might just want to soak all your possesions for kicks.
We seem to be having our gigs about 2 weeks apart at the moment, which is havng an odd effect on my perception of time. Either we had a gig a week ago or we're having one next week. I find the months are progressing quite quickly as a result and I don't want Christmas just yet. I have not got anyone a present yet and the shops will be closed. The washing is not in and the geese need fattening. Pandemonium ensues.
To accompany this temporal loosening I have been reading Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels recently and I am on my third in a row. If anyone can tell me what is going on I would be quite pleased if they told me, so far I have manged to work out that a plane with a propeller was mentioned in one of them. And a Rolls Royce. I am sure that it will all make sense in the end, but the bewilderment I experience when reading the books is spilling over into real life. You begin to doubt that there is any causality involved in people communicating and sense is only an illusion. I can't live like that; how will I be able to order food in a restuarant? How will I be able to ask directions to the butchers? How can I go into a pub and buy lager from some guy who I don't even know who is telling me it is lager but he might be explaining how to grout tiles and I won't know and end up drinking a glass of vimto thinking I need a shoe horn to get into my new brothel creepers to do the gardening at some stately home which the National Trust think Winston Churchill was born in but in fact turns out to be the crash site of an alien artifact the original use of which has been lost in the mists of time just like the instructions to the fax machine at work which spews adverts for mobile phones onto the floor so that when I walk past in my running spikes they stick to the soles of my feet and people think I wipe my arse with A4 paper?
In case you want to play "Spot the Song" tonight here is our setlist:
1. Car Crash
2. Cloud
3. Jaw
4. Lay it down
5.Hotel whose name I forget
6. Any/All/Some
7. Substance
8. All my life I give you nothing you want more
9. Mile High
The beef is defrosting. Must be in attendance.
All the best.
10 comments:
if 'baking bread' is jazz slang for prepping intravenous narcotics in readiness for insertion into blood streams then I would say 'yes the rolling stones, or at least keith, definitely did do just that.' If you were just putting dough in the make things hot machine and then taking bread out and wondering where all the dough went then i'd say 'no the rolling stones probably didn't do that, but abba may well have done.'
Whilst you were doing your gig on the 12th Satori Version 1. was rehearsing for its reunion event on the 13th in Cilycwm. Hughes the Booze, Morriston Burns and Mr A J Lewis BA(hons) gave a rip-roaring set of acoustic frenzy that had the hard-bitten farmers crying into their beer. Frictionless Guitar would have been proud to spot his riff for Dream Factory being neatly installed within the Version 1. Dream Factory (which Matthew took lead vocals on). Hotel 38 and Train Song, both familiar to the Frickman, got a good seeing to as well. What a weekend!!!!!
Oh yes, Jerry Cornelius. What can one say? Have you gotten round to The Condition Of Muzak yet? Hmmmm. My jury is still out on the whole Moorcock thing. Byzantium Endures is quite good. Behold the Man is interesting. All that Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum stuff is total fluff in my opinion. Dancers at the End of Time books are sporadically amusing. I think the JC novels are very much of their time (as are most things)but they haven't aged that well. I was thinking of re-reading Condition of Muzak again; I really liked it when I first read it (circa. 1979) but just because it skipped all over the place and seemed ultra exotic for a 15 year old. I don't know whether an older, cynical me would enjoy it now. I can confirm that I definitely didn't get the point in my youth but, as is the nature of youth, I just enjoyed the ride.
I bet Rhysaurus has been showing you his Moorcock. Is that where your'e getting the stuff from? Tell him to lend you some proper books. His own work is far more interesting. The trouble with a lot of them late sixties and seventies experimental writers is that they were so busy trying to open the envelope that they forgot to buy any stamps, most of the work went missing and, with the lack of a forwarding address, remained in a state between sent and un-sent. I was trying to read Gravity's Rainbow again recently until I finally had to admit that it was really a bit shit. Don't get me wrong, I love experimental work (Robbe-Grillet, Coover, Ishiguro) but you just reach a point where you have to say "you (Pyncheon and Moorcock) are doing my head in with your relentless disconnected narrative and spastic prose!"
As Mr A J Lewis BA (hons) very neatly, accurately and succinctly stated above, the original original (even pre-Monkeychops) version of Satori had a reunion bonding session in Cilycwm at the weekend.
I turned up at 4pm on Saturday. We rehearsed for 6 hours (having not played together for 7 and a half years) and came out the other side with 19 songs intact.
The next night was the gig and we did all 19 songs plus three more that we jammed on the spot.
Loads of covers of course, but also loads of fun.
Unfortunately I was far too crap to be able to work out 'Gay Messiah' by Rufus Wainwright, which Mr A J Lewis BA (hons), was a bit upset about(I could only get the verse chords and got totally lost in the chorus).
Nonetheless it was the best weekend I've had in a very long time, the first gig I've done since I last jammed with Satori in the Chattery (back when there was still a certain Frictionless individual playing t'bass with the band), and quite probably the most fun that one can have with one's clothes on.
Bless you and all who sail in you Mr A J Lewis BA (hons) and you too Mr Burns, you are both wonderful men with wonderful families... (even if one of your wives keeps trying to get you to bum each other for her drunken entertainment).
...(and I hope you don't mind me bastardising your Dream Factory riff for an alternative arrangement of the original arrangement of Dream Factory Mr Frick...)
Why, that all sounds dandy. I almost feel like I was actually there.
Yes Moose, I was ramming my veins with scag. But it's ok for me because I am middle class. There are some people, however, who should probably leave well alone....
Coincidentally I've just written a story (finished today) in which Anthony Lewis is the narrator. Apart from that single fact, it's not an experimental piece though. The members of Satori get a mention, of course. So does Peter Hammill, Chris Squire and Dave Stewart of Egg and National Health. Emerson, Lake and Palmer are there too, etc. The story is called 'Cracking Nuts with Jan Hammer' and I'll e-mail it to Anthony and Stuart (and anyone else who wants it) in a day or two.
I'm going to write a story about a 2 foot high Rick Wakeman and Robert Fripp wearing tiny versions of standard miner's garb and committing random mischief, such as stealing unattended tools and food. It will be called the Proggy Knockers.
Proggy Knockers! That is THE funniest and cleverest thing you have ever written (and maybe said). Ever since that last fucking shit gig at the twatting Tav I have been singing two of your songs quite a lot - One goes "should've layed it down? (or let?) whatever it's my current favourite and I like your cockney kinksy pop song which I can't remember the name of but you say "at all" at probably more than one point.
That's the funniest thing? I've been wasting my time....
Don't listen to A.J., he doesn't even like chocolate or The Wicker Man...
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