Spotified

So I'm spotified. All it takes is Julie to pop out for some reason or another and a bottle of whisky before a visit to mum and dad tomorrow, plus a bit of evening sunshine. So it's as below, plus of course the most awful bands I hate to like when I'm spotified. Simple Minds are possibly the worst, but I do remember them resounding across Lake Garda one evening about ten years ago sun setting etc, just the most magnificent thump across the water. I defy anyone not love the chunka chunka chunka guitar bit in Alive and Kicking (but of course we should respect the drummer more). Of course the lead singer's a twat.

What to play next? (I'm rockin' man) When else do you get the chance to listen to 'Waterfront'?

Come in come out of the rain- utter bollocks - but brilliant. I could easily fall off my designer (Dutch 1960's SS with peach uphol) chair if it didn't have nice designer arms.

Next it's the Passions 'I'm in Love with a German Film Star' bloody brilliant. Hope the neighbours approve. I always think I'm educatin'. What next? Refill the drink...and it's Gordon Lightfoot's 'Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'. Non drinkers will not understand this. Once I was in a tent on the top of some hills in Scotland in a force 10 gale with a couple of Liverpudlian girls for warmth and that song played on our tiny little radio. I think it was the Cheviots.

Of course, to follow, a live version of 'Back in the Saddle Again' Aerosmith's finest hour.

I'll conclude with Killing Joke (Requiem) the loudest band I ever heard...or maybe some 'Sisters'

LP's

I appear to be on a bit of a frenzy on e-bay- for old records- LP's as we used to call them. I feel they need to be snapped up- so all those record's I almost bought, or listened to as stoned as we could get in each other's bedrooms, are suddenly back in focus. How about a bit of Focus! or an original Hawkwind 'In Search of Space' with a kind of exploding cover, latterly a bit of Joe Satriani (blue dream) or Rush (obviously). It's all down to the new shelves.

I've had it with diagrams

I've had it with diagrams. I was sitting there in a meeting yesterday as it was explained that this rectangle represented a 'cloud' and exaggerated sets inside it 'centres'. It doesn't really matter what else it might have meant, but probably, if followed through, some misery to me at least having to fit in one or another of said catagories. Diagrams are abstract, but they attempt to define in basic terms, so if they are wrong, then you are in real trouble. However, architects love bloody diagrams for some reason, they can look a bit thoughtful and imaginative. But what happens if they are actually totally misleading? Maybe there is no need for a diagram at all! (I'd like to be able to draw you a diagram of my research methods but it's so obvious I'm not going to bother).

So I said

'Cloud is not a good name'

This is because cloud becomes cloudy which is vague and indistinct and you can't see through it and it signifies bad beer at best. It also implies rain and shadow and 'lonely as'.

Then I said

'And anyway that is not a drawing of a cloud, which should, diagram wise, be fluffy with rounded perimeters intersecting. You've drawn a pitch, maybe a field!'

This would seem to me to be the justification for my needing to leave the meeting early.

When plotting futures, which may indeed be murky, at least be careful with your words and lines.

Royal Wedding Balls

Bethnal Green is alive with elaborate plans to avoid the Royal Wedding at all costs. Julie and I have got ourselves an 11am train out of Kings Cross, Scott and Vanessa have gone further, an eight hour bus ride up to Scotland, anything not to have to suffer it and it's nauseating commentary. Much to the shock of seemingly everybody familywise, this house is not royalist (we just can't stand it) but we find ourselves in interesting company; Planet Rock have just advised that they won't broadcast anything with a whiff of Windsor about it on Friday- probably Hell's Bell's will find itself on the playlist, D. I. V. O. R. C. E maybe? I'm rather hoping for some dissent, like Goth Day at Disneyland when they all wear their black and snarl at Snow White.

I notice another epicentre of agony is happening at the EXCELL centre at the same time in docklands; the infernal Grand Designs show. I cannot imagine a room much worse than one full of hopeful couples planning their dream houses and looking for correspondence courses in project management whilst perusing turf fucking roofs. I would immediately find myself in the bar where no doubt fiesty Bulgarian chicks doll out semi lethal mojitos to the desperately realistic.

Will Self rather good

A quote from the LRB on our return from St Albans (land of the mentally dead and financially not too bad thank you very much). The excellent Will Self on some fucking half wit's idea of a good place called Aerotropolis (throughly Chicago School of MEconomics, thoroughly to be despised by all good people (not those listening to Yes Songs):

'After trekking through Dubai you don't have to be a Platonist to conclude that anything that aesthetically revolting must not simply be amoral, but bad.'

Subscribe to London Review of Books you clever folk.

So good to be home in my chair with accessories.

WoaH WOAH!!

WoaH WOAH!! (The David Lee Roth volume is also a book to be read in one sitting preferably playing 'Panama' repeatedly at full volume). The crazy bastard wont let you go. It's F16 with afterburners all the way, it's Leerjet Hercules- the godlike Roth, the leopard skinned loincloth in stratospheric ascent, and stratospheric sort of descent (JUMP!) no mmmmention of druggggggs hardly at all, Just a gigolo man, in a low-rider, down the fucking Amazon without a paddle, it's bones, bandages, bondage all the way, and the guy makes a point of washing every inch of the stage on his hands and knees before a tour just by himself to 'get perspective' 'create spiritual balance' hell I don't know. Whatever it is he is, it's wonderful thing.

He also points out, between eulogies to Al Jolson and the Bee Gees (!!), that Aeroskiths (sic - there is a problem here you might start speaking a la Roth and no longer be comprehended by anyone at all) best record is 'Back in the Saddle' from 'Rocks', and I agree, the godlike Roth is right, starfighter, shooting star...whatever.

White Line Fever

Lemmy's book is very good. Appropriate to the title it should ideally be read in one sitting with the sun shining as it is today, but with the blinds down, and appropriate liquid refreshment through the afternoon. It is the most straight forward rock and roll biography you can imagine, and the word sanguine comes to mind continually when it comes to his view on life so far. Lemmy was never rescued by aristocrats, rock or otherwise (marking him rather above Keef in this respect) and has simply tread the boards, the real rock and roll cowboy, hating suits, the business, having a laugh with his mates, leading the band, turning up on time, sacking those who lost it, being sacked, doing the shit. It turns out he wasn't turfed out of Hawkwind for being a poor bass player, but for doing the wrong drugs, and funnily enough, the one thing Lemmy does not wallow around in the text here, is anything to do with drugs, because, one assumes, speed is just part of his way, and therefore irrelevant to the real concerns of the day- which is usually 'putting on a good show'. This is an extremely astute textual move, and most refreshing in itself.

Now I'm going back on e-bay to see if I should really buy that vintage copy of 'Space Ritual'.