Pointless

Celebrity, let’s repeat the word again…Celebrity, don’t you just hate that word. Personally I despise the word, the meaning behind it and often the people who create it, those that celebrate it and most of all the individuals that are supposed to be one. The cult of Celebrity has to be one of the most pointless, vacuous, inane creations every laid upon modern mankind.

They are meaningless, a pile of shit on the sole of modern culture.

 I have thought about this and what it might really mean to be a Celebrity and I think I know the answer. .

You have had to appear on TV for a maximum of about two minutes this includes any television show or channel from all over the world, maybe even some kind of viral YouTube video. Maybe you are a large breasted model or a shamed politician, perhaps a sportsperson or someone with a talking dog (who cares !).

You must be prepared to look at complete prat (most of the time), you must speak in words and sentences that only refer to the show or shows you may have appeared in (or acted in…acting that’s a moot point).

You must have around three brains cells and think that everybody really thinks that what you do really, really matters all the time. You must, I repeat must be on Twitter (why wasn’t it named Twatter) and finally for money you will prostitute yourself and perform anything that is required of you by the lords of the great unseen. The Unseen are the people who actually watch, dress, read and care about what celebrities do every day of their pointless, uncreative lives. Oh how the Unseen  love the X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, that Jungle shite where they eat grubs and piss in the woods, Big Brother, Dancing on Ice, Splash.. the list is endless although I think it may have reached it’s nadir when I saw Celebrity Bake Off advertised in the schedules recently (yes a programme now where celebrities can bake on TV rather than actual people who may be rather good at it and want to possibly have a career in the industry)  but that’s OK because it’s for ‘Comic Relief’ (not OK for me it isn’t, plus I’m so bored with Comic Relief and Children In Need , what about real charities that are suffering in these depressed economic times).

So please  STOP IT NOW- RIGHT NOW before I put my foot through my flat screen and forever save my soul from these parasites that make me squirm and shout out loud with all the frustration I can feel inside, please go and leave me to my TV watching and newspaper reading  in peace. 

Enjoy Brothers & Sisters.

Wrinkle Neck Mules - Stone Above Your Head

Damon Bramblett - Falling Apart

Glossary - Little Caney

Dan Bern - Lou Gehrig's Disease

Winter Is Coming

Winter has arrived, it’s snowing today and austerity is still upon us. The current government wants to cap benefits, cap pensions, cap pay increases and then try and build thousands of homes on our green and pleasant land.

I turned 52 today and supposedly I will live forever according to my government again , well a lot longer apparently than if I was born a hundred years earlier rather than the at the beginning of the swinging sixties. Therefore they say I can work longer, save more and receive 144 pounds a week when I finally retire but at a much later date than I had assumed when I was thirty.

So even though it’s my birthday today, I shall lock the front door, pull the curtains, have a steaming cup of tea and listen to the late Vic Chesnutt. 

Enjoy

 

Vic Chesnutt - Stay Inside

Vic Chesnutt - Gravity Of The Situation

Vic Chesnutt - Guilty By Association

The Wrong Thing To Do

Due to my recent absence from work I had kind of lost the muse lately and couldn’t really think of a subject that appealed to me and I had nothing I felt that I really needed to get out of my system. Therefore I had no rants about Christmas commerciality to publish or the new religion of shopping to appease the gods of retail, no observations on the state of politics today or maybe even an odd moan about the parking issues outside my home, nothing, I had absolutely nothing to say.

So instead I thought keep it to music, it’s always all about the music, now this can be difficult for me choosing a subject on music that might interest others, something that might amuse or confuse anyone who is actually looking at this blog. Therefore I started looking into my music collection and thought about the sometimes ridiculous names groups and artists often decide to call themselves whether they might make a one-off recording and are therefore never heard of again or some that might have stuck around and actually made career whilst keeping the original name they had decided upon.

Pancho Villa

 

Below is a relatively small list of artists I found scattered across my music folders. What a music chart they would create and I’m sure you would agree that these would beat any current  itunes download chart or any top twenty chart rundown on a popular digital radio station (though you probaby wouldn't !).

The Dinks

 

There are four songs below but if you want to hear anymore from these wonderful names then leave me a comment….

Enjoy

The Bambi Molesters

The Dead Milkmen

Pancho Villa & The Bandits

S.C.U.M

Sir Rich & The Spanking Club

The Real Nasty

Pepper Rabbit

The Murderer’s Accordian

Lion & The Leprechauns

Howard Ice Berg & The Titanics

Dennis The Fox

The Ape Quartet

The Dinks

Gutterball

The Magic Christian

Untouchable Machine Shop

Matthew And The Atlas

Drunk On Crutches

Wee Willie & Winks

Ras Michael And The Sons Of Negus

The Brothers Comatose

Lafayette Yarborough

Brylan ‘Legs’ Walker with his Walkin’ Talkin’ Sax

The Gongettes

Frank Chickens

Diane Cluck

The Moongooners

Sir Bald Diddley & His Right Honourable Big Wigs

Mud, Blood And Beer

Henry’s Funeral Shoe

Jack Ruby & The Black Disciples

Peanut Faircloth with The Log Cabin Boys

Crippled Black Phoenix

The Mustard Men

 

The Brothers Comatose - Pine Box

The Dinks - Knocka Knocka Mow Mow

Mud, Blood And Beer - Lucy

Pancho Villa And The Bandits - Ain't That Bad

Soldiers Get Strange

I am not working at the moment so I have had the chance to spend a little extra time in bed. Now even though I’m off I still wake up at virtually the same time every day, the only difference being I don’t have to go to work. This has led me to lie there some mornings recently allowing random thoughts and feelings to enter my head and today was no exception and I started thinking how as child I was fascinated by war and fighting. I expect this is a period every young boy might go through and I was certainly no exception. I remember reading Sad Sack comics and going into the local paper shop to buy war comics such as Commando for a couple of pence or maybe a shilling I can’t remember the price.

Commando magazine was still being published even as late as 2007 when it reached the milestone of 4000 editions and it’s hard to imagine how they can keep filling page after page of brave English ‘Tommies’ fighting the evil Nazi empire after all these years. I avidly read books on great military battles and military uniforms but my absolute favourite playthings were Airfix toy soldiers and miniatures. Now somewhere up in my loft I still have a large plastic bag full of Airfix soldiers and these are one relic from my childhood that I could not be parted from. They remain there gathering dust but when I was young I played battle games with them nearly every day. My Grandad used to paint them and when I saw the film ‘Waterloo’ which Christopher Plummer as Wellington and Rod Steiger as Napolean I was hooked again on the Napoleanic and Spanish Peninsular wars and I would often spend hours recreating the defence of the Hougoumont Chateau at Waterloo with figures all painted by my Grandad including the kilts on the Scottish Regiments.

 

Happy days

Enjoy  

JJ Grey & Mofro - War

Reverend John Wilkins - On The Battlefield

The Godfathers - Birth School Work Death

Death By Unga Bunga

I can’t confess that I am an expert on Politics and I never went to University as a young man but as I have moved through the decades of my life I have built up certain opinions and beliefs. One of these beliefs is that I am happy to be proud of many things (obviously not everything!) regarding the country where I live without being overtly nationalistic or where I get to the point that I distrust every newcomer to my country as a corrosive influence from outside or someone who will be detrimental to the lifestyle that I have accustomed myself too and the same lifestyle that I am sure many people enjoy, of course I do not.

 

Now what really annoys me is the way we (e.g. the government, our society ??) let’s everything be sold off for a king’s shilling to the highest bidder and offers no protectionist policies whatsoever. Lately Penguin (yes Penquin Books !! the unique and treasured Penquin Books) have been sold/merged with Random House Publishing a German company and also my beloved Branston Pickle is now owned by a Japanese conglomerate. I’ve seen HP Sauce sold abroad and Cadbury’s taken over by Nestle (they will always be Nestles to me). I have nothing against either Germany or Japan or any of its citizens I just feel passionately that these brands remain British owned and British made and then they should be sold everywhere as a purely British product. The trouble is the whole world is now seen as a global village with no borders  and apparently these outdated opinions don’t matter anymore but to me they do matter and they should matter more too others as well. I love Marmite,  Branston Pickle, Cheddar Cheese, HP Sauce, Sarsons Vinegar, choclate etc  but as a country we do not value these products and we seem quite happy to see factories and jobs move abroad  to produce these products, make huge profits and sell it back to us without a whimper of protest.

Well shame on us all I say.

Let's enjoy some music...

Woody Guthrie - Do Re Mi (Recorded By Alan Lomax)

Ry Cooder - Money Honey

The Mummies - Food, Sickles and Girls

Music Music Music

‘Music was my first love and it will be my last ‘, so sang John Miles and really he could have been singing about me or any other serious muso on this planet. Some people might give you this as a definition :- A muso is a person who is obsessed with music. Their record collection will contain music and artists nobody else has heard of. This would not be entirely accurate but it bears more than a great deal of the real truth in my case and I have been obsessed by music since about the age of 10 or 11 years old. I remember listening to my family’s Top Of The Pops compilations, records by Alf Garnett aka Warren Mitchell singing first and second world war songs and music hall classics, listening to the charts on Sunday evenings replayed on a reel to reel tape recorder mostly compared by Jimmy Savile (oh dear !!!) and also hearing my dear old Granddad singing off-key ditties and his unique versions from the music hall in his armchair while he rolled his own cigarettes and we all watched Hawaii 5-O on the television. I remember buying my first single from Woolworths, it was Mungo Jerry’s ‘Baby Jump’ and my first proper LP was T.Rex’s ‘Bolan Boogie’. I can recall the thrill of buying Dr Feelgood’s ‘Down By The Jetty’ and realising it was recorded in mono not stereo. I even lusted over the sexy female model covers of the early Roxy Music albums, I can remember watching Johnny Winter somewhere on whatever channel it was on at the time and then rushing out to buy his first drugs free comeback effort ‘Still Alive & Well’ and then playing it non- stop for weeks on end, I can recall dancing on my bed to Mud’s ‘Tiger Feet’ and having my first real kiss to Mott’s ‘All The Young Dudes’.    I remember being fascinated by a fold-out Vertigo records LP from Juicy Lucy and wondering why did Status Quo have their previous album covers embossed on the back of each new album release. Why did I have an album by Tony Williams Lifetime and one by the Carry On Team singing novelty songs and why was Ernie the Fastest Milkman In The West by Benny Hill not regarded as one of the truly great modern English Folk Songs  ? So as I have said before I have been obsessed for years and at various periods collected over 2000 LP’s, 500 cassettes, 1000 CD’s, various minidiscs, occasional eight tracks and boxes of 45’s. Now after years of buying, selling and culling I have about 1000 LP’s left, no cassettes anymore, about 100 CD’s and around 60,000 mp3’s – yes I went digital a few years back for storage purposes mainly and yes because I do love ‘ the shuffle’ on all my media devices. So I really cannot capture in four tracks my career as a musicologist (sounds like I was somehow aiming to be the new Alan Lomax) but seriously folks below is some music that I have always regarded very highly and will go back to even while I’m trying to capture, listen to and file whatever else hits my musical radar on a daily basis.

Johnnie Allan - Promised Land

Question Mark & The Mysterians - 96 Tears

The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Marked Deck

Palace Bros - Ohio River Boat Song

Caravans, Council Estates and Class

.

I spent last weekend in a caravan at a holiday centre in the North East of England. This was my second of such adventures this year as I had been previously enticed by an offer of some collectable vouchers in a daily newspaper offering luxury caravan breaks at bargain prices. I hadn’t enjoyed the first one in July very much so I was not particularly looking forward to this one either but the difference being this break was over a weekend not a week this time around. Due to a change in circumstances we arrived on the Saturday morning rather than the designated check-in on Friday evening. Saturday night proved to be quite an experience for me and is not something I shall ever want repeated, for me it was as if I had moved to a sink estate overnight. I am not a snob and see myself as somewhat lower Middle Class in the so-called class pecking order that still pervades this country where I live. I have always worked, my parents have always worked and my grandparents all worked their whole lives and we have never been poor, never missed paying bills or mortgages and I have been brought up to be respectable, have good manners and be considerate of others. These attributes were certainly absent from a minority of my fellow caravan park dwellers on Saturday night and caused me to exhibit feelings of anger, extreme annoyance and exasperation as time moved into the early hours of Sunday morning. I have sworn never to darken the doors of one of these holiday destinations again as in my normal life I spend quite a bit of time avoiding people often labelled as a ‘chav’.

I know a lot of the media intelligentsia think that ‘chav’ is a demeaning word for the Working Class but to me it does not so much sum up a class more a certain type of individual behaviour that has become more prevalent year after year since the fall of Thatcher and then the rise and fall of Blair & Brown. I personally think these people are clueless, stupid and don’t deserve to be included in any class system breakdown whatsoever. They are thick, feral and a fucking blight that festers in the concrete council estate undergrowth that has been allowed to grow like mould in a petri dish with successive governments ignoring the issues and focusing more on looking upwards in the class chain towards the major capitalist corporations and financial bully boys rather than actually trying to bring some decency and a change of philosophy for people at the other extreme end of society instead of leaving them to rely on benefits and charitable benevolence with no decent future prospects in sight other than a weekend trip to a caravan park every now and again……………

Enjoy

 

 

Steve & The Holidays - Unemployment

Albertina Walker & The Caravans - Put A Little Love In Your Heart

Blitzen Trapper - Country Caravan

William Bell - Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday

catl - Working Man Soul