THE NEWS (IN BRIEF)

I have some hideous...disease. It hurts. So I'll keep this brief.

More tomorrow. If I survive The Night of The Sombre Black Moon.

1) The kids round our way have taken to wearing some sort of glo-stik type contraptions inside their hoodies at night, so that their faces are luminated from within the hood. It's pretty lo-budget cinematic-looking and spooky; a logical extrapolation from putting the damn things underneath their cars.

The ones I've seen so far have mostly been a ghastly-(yet also kinda girly-) looking purple/mauve day-glo colour. Perhaps they are girls.

I thought a ghoulish green-glo - or the more trad bluish UV variant - would be creepier and more logical, but what the fuck do I know. I still think Tuxedomoon were pretty good.

I expect kids have been wearing these in London for the last 8 or 9 years.

2) Apparently Van Morrison has just fathered another child. This concept scares me quite a lot, if I'm honest. The idea that the Morrison bloodline might continue on through this century is quite an unpleasant thing to grok. The whole sordid affair sounds like some ill-considered sequel to The Omen.

Omen VIII: The Child of Van.

The creature - sorry, baby - is almost certainly scoring an average of 9.8 on the Ugly Scale. Poor little fucker; it's not his fault.

You can't pick your parents.

3) I have been working. On things...

One of them is a prose / short-story featuring Rose O'Rion, a character I co-created with the mighty Dylan Teague for 2000AD many years ago. The last thing I wrote featuring her was, errrm, 12, 13 years ago - just as I started to get ill. I fumbled the ball badly back then, for various reasons - so this is an attempt to finally do right by her, add some layers to the character and so on.



Anyway, I'm hoping that the story will appear some time next year. More on that if'n when. I'm also hoping to coax Dylan into doing an illo to go with the story - y'know, in the style of one of those old school Pulp SF mags, where stories were often accompanied by an illustration featuring a scene from the story ("Ikthar yelled a warning as the Magnetosphere hurtled towards them.") - tho. obviously I'm thinking of something a bit more modern in this instance lol. It'll be great if this comes together.

Also, been tinkering with a couple of scripts for Open University. Well, I call 'em scripts - they're tiny, to be honest, and more like scriptments where I make a series of dialogue / action suggestions to 2ND FADE and he - quite rightly - cpmpletely ignores them lol.

Seriously, though, he's been doing a great art.job on this and I'm really looking forward to seeing these strips in print at some point. I think some of you will really enjoy this.

I've got a couple other short strip concepts that I've been developing recently and which are now ready to go, but I'm struggling to find the right artists for them, ie people whose style fit the strips and who have actually got some spare time to have a crack at them. Obviously, anyone who's any good is busy making a living and if you're developing something, ie don't actually have a paying venue lined up yet, then folks are understandably unwilling to give up their free time.

Also, been twatting around with some CD cover art in the last couple days. My Non-Boutique Nano-label is almost ready to go. Inaugeral release and all that. Just writing some sort of Anti-Press Release thing for the label, except I'm sick now and need some soup.

Wife's been working, so I've been sat in the corner, hoping the kids will go away while I read some old 1963 issues of The Flash in an attempt to motivate myself. You can't beat John Broome.

4) Happy New Something-or-Other.

When I've stopped gasping for air like a beached lung-fish I'll be ringing some of you. (No, not you, certainly not, not after that incident with the, err, biscuits...)

5) Music. Soon. I promise.

I MA O / ZE

RAY STEVENS YULETIDE JAM-OUT

Got a, uh, soft spot for Ray Stevens - the true King of Novelty (Country) Records.

"The Streak":



"Bridget the Midget (Queen of the Blues)":



"Misty":

REPETITION, REPETITION

Here's a couple of quick examples of the Repetitive Iteration thing I was talking about in the last post, plucked randomly from my phone. I get a strange aesthetic braintingle pleasure from such things; the idea of Multiplicity, of Spectra of Variance is a kinda turn-on for me:






Also, I've become mildly obsessed (too strong a word, perhaps; fascinated might be better...) by the idea of the Vatican Police Force. Also, this. (Shoulda known the Swiss would be mixed up in it somewhere!)

Heh. They have their own cars and everything:





I promise to start blogging about music again soon. Honest.

BAR-B-Q-POPE IN THE SEA OF ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES, ETC

The BBC's Christmas Day Tea-Time News was kinda surreal I thought:

They showed the aborted Christmas Eve attack on the Pope (apparently the same woman tried it on Christmas Eve last year; there's a pattern emerging here; let's hope it becomes an annual event: next year a flash mob!) - with a cadre of shades n black-suited MIB-pope-securitat piling in, no-doubt yelling "Pope down! Pope down! into their throat-mics... then followed it up with a fast-flash montage of attacks on the Pope and his predecessors that - sorry if yr a Catholic - made me involuntarily laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of it. Random shots of different Marks of the Popemobile; multiple-POVs from phone, CCTV and media cameras: Popes in jeopardy, dozens of the bastards - different eras, different skullcaps and crooks, different haircuts/shoes/crow-lined eyes - Popes disappearing under piles of bodyguards, ducking down behind bullet-proof glass, pious half-smile still intact as bullets whistle past him/them, psychotics coming at His Holyness shrieking schizoabuse ("Satan, Satan! I smite thee, Lord of Flies! Pigfilth!"), C of E black ops specialists and Methodist assassins armed with ghurka-knives, garottes, grenade-belts, etc charging at a transchronal procession of crosstime Popes...on and on: a plethora of Popes. A Popetagion.

(Am I allowed to say "aborted"?)

I have a thing about re-iterations - fast repeats of the same thing (but with minute variations) - it triggers a circuit in my head that causes some inner vista to kaleidoscope outwards until it fills up my head and propels me into some endless Sea of Possibilities populated by an infinite mathematical series of variants, analogues, partial duplicates, imperfect doppelgangers. It makes me go: ARRRRRRGH!!! THERE'S SOOOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING!!!!!

But I don't. Ever. Want. It. To. Stop.

It feels sooo good. So don't take it personally, Pope Versace or whatever Holy Nonsense yr called.

The paint colour-charts in B&Q have a similar effect on me ("How can there be sooo many colours"). I cried when DC got rid of Earth-2, Earth-3, etc. It...it was so...so...reductionist. So Narrow-Band.

After the Pope's little contretemps they showed a clip of The Queen emerging from her local church on Christmas Morning and bugger me if the organ music coming from inside didn't sound like the intro to "Light My Fire" by The Doors.

I've had "Bar-B-Q Pope" by The Butthole Surfers going through my head for the last 24 hours:

"They shot the Pope,
They shot his ass.
He's holdin' out.
That's where it's at.
Yay! Yay! Yaaaay!
Yay! Yay! Yaaaay!

I went behind my van last night.
I woke up sad.
They shot the Pope,
They shot the Pope's ass.
They shot the Pope and I feel good.
Yay! Yay! Yaaaay!
Yay! Yay! Yaaaay!"

HE'S ON HIS WAY

Have you been good?

THE RESIDENTS: "DUMBO, THE CLOWN (WHO LOVED CHRISTMAS)

Here's The Residents (and Fred Frith) to help you celebrate Christmas:

THE OFFICIAL KID SHIRT CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Just back from thrashing my wife n kids at Christmas Bingo. I am currently wearing a party-hat that declares that I am - oh yes indeed - The Christmas Bingo King. This will now remain on my head until decorum dictates otherwise....

Apologies for the lack of bloggage in last few days, but been trying to finish up a couple of project-things before Christmas - have completely failed lol, but they're getting there, so never mind...also, had to attend to a couple of personal family type things - nothing heavy, but...well, you know, there's never enough time...

Some friends are coming round this evening, so have just sneaked off for a few minutes to bash this out.

Speaking of friends...collected some lovely parcels from the post-office today from various muckers and creative-allies, for which I thank you - you know who you are - and if you haven't heard from me, then I apologise, but I'll be mailing and phoning a few close friends soon as I'm able. At the moment I kinda feel like reaching out to some old and dear friends who I've neglected recently. Like I said, there's never enough time.

So now it's time to make some time.

Some terrific records n CDs have just arrived recently in what is traditionally a 'dead' time of the year for the Music Biz (or what remains of it), but these are all braodcasts from the margins, from the frontiers that sit beyond the smouldering remains of Pop and Rock. I'll be posting on some of these over the next few days. Some of these have been made by people that I'm proud to call friends. It's inspiring to me that folks're still bashing out stuff that's so great whilst the mainstream continues to implode around our ears.

Here's to you, you crazy mad fuckers. All of you out there in the shadows, writing and recording and creating.

Long may you run.

All that remains is for me to wish you all - and that's ALL of you - my handful of regular comments-box-botherers, occasional visiters and newcomers, distant friends and passing strangers -

a very merry Christmas (or whatever it is you might celebrate) and a healthy, happy and prosperous Noo Year.

Worse 'em!

SIGNS #4

Hmm. Time for some more signs, I think.

MY WIFE, ON OCCUPATION-BASED MANUFACTURED POP ACTS

My wife, Chris, on excellent form this morning:

"Y'know," she said, "Instead of The Priests or The Soldiers, maybe bloody Simon Cowell or someone should put together some *proper* occupation-based bands like The Janitors or The Dustbin Men or...or..." (mental cogs whirring ) "...The Striking Postmen."

Me (looking up from relative safety of the kitchen table): "There should be one called The Writers..."

Chris (witheringly): "Well, if there was, then no one one would bloody hear what you were singing, because you'd all be staring at your navels..."

RIP DAN O'BANNON

*Sigh* I expect we've all got a favourite Dan O'Bannon Moment; some of you maybe even a whole bunch of them. I still remember reading "The Long Tomorrow" - the comic strip he did w/ Moebius in Metal Hurlant in '77, like it was, well, yesterday.

Cheers, Dan. Thanks for all those...moments.

I'M NOT THAT FUSSED ABOUT SIBELIUS

Over the last 25+ years I've made a handful of efforts to get down w/ Sibelius, but tbh I'm not really feeling it in the main. It just doesn't bite me.

It's too, I dunno, pastoral...tho maybe that's the wrong word - okay, too representational or something. It's like the musical equivalent of quasi abstract art - the stuff that you see in seaside craft shops that initially look like really bad Rothkos, but then you suddenly realise "Oh, fuck, it's just a beach..." Or that's a piece of seaweed on shingle painted with a bit of an Impressionistic blur. Or that triangle is just a boat sail, you know what I mean.

Soon as I know what something is I immediately lose interest. It's like a very poor puzzle has been solved too quickly.

I have the same problem with a whole bunch of early 20th century music, not just Sibelius - but assorted pastoralists and Welshmen - it just doesn't pull me in. You listen to it and think: oh, right, this passage is supposed to be sunlight glistening on water; that bit is dark clouds parting over a moor; that's some birds; oh, great, now some horsemen have arrived.

I just can't be doing with it. It's like listening to a galleryful of bad paintings.

I'm not a fan of v. early twentieth century art either; my tastes in both music and art seem to get increasingly excitable and overwraught as we hit the nineteen o'teens, then there's a load of strands I really, really like that you can trace n track through the middle part of the two-ought century, but it all seems mostly to fizzle out for me in the late 70s/early 80s, when composition re-embraced Romanticism and Art became increasingly Conceptualised, but w/out an nth of the wit and invention of DuChamp. I lose it somewhere around neo-Geo. I guess I'm just an unreconstituted Modernist. Or summat.

If you go backwards from about 1909, there's not much I that I really like in art or music til you hit the Baroque. Then it gets increasingly interesting for me as things get more Medievalised and alien-looking/sounding. There's all sorts of odd symbols, techniques and references in play. I don't like it when I understand things.

Still, Sibelius.

On paper he should theoretically tick a lot of boxes for me:

1) He's Finnish.
2) "Tone Poems" - anything with the word "tone" in it makes me go all swoony, girly and moderne.
3) He's inspired by mythic/epic folklore cycles, ie the Kalevala.
4) He's Finnish.

I mean, those are all very good things indeed and I'm getting kinda horny just thinking about them, but when I actually listen to the music I immediately go soft. Sorry, Sibelius.

My latest attempt at giving Sibelius the benefit of the doubt (godammit, I keep thinking that I should, y'know, like him...) involved this beautiful double-css that a friend gave me (along w/ a carrier-bag of other Classical tapes - none of which I like much in the slightest), and which has become a very-loved totem in its own right, if only for the lovely scuffed packaging...



So, when I convene The Sunday Morning Drawing Club (which mostly involves me and my daughters just sitting down and drawing at the kitchen-table) this is sometimes the soundtrack. While it's playing the girls randomly jump down and run round the room pretending to be water-nymphs inbetween drawing robotic snowmen and bus-sized bars of chocolate. Which is cool.

The music works best for me as a background thing, played (as I've said numerous times before) at near-subliminal volume-levels as if on a partially-defunct radio tuned to a 1956 Light Entertainment Station. Best of all is when the tape-player's batteries begin running down and the music takes on a James Leyland Kirby kinda stretched-tape wobble grotesqueness that inches towards being 'sad' in some way. That's my favourite way of playing Sibelius.

Yeah, I know, I'm a fucking heathen.

There's one piece by him that I heard sometime earlier in the year - but I forget what it's called because I'm shit like that - where the first 40, 50 seconds are kinda atonal and sour-sounding - strings hovering over each other, rubbing against each in an unexpected manner...but the moment doesn't last long; straight after that, a flight of seagulls suddenly fly up the side of a stark, slate-grey cliff and a woman appears, waving her hanky at a ship somewhere out at sea...

I think you can make the rest up yourself.

RIP Teletext.

End of an era. Or something.

RIP GENE BARRY

Little picture, big actor.

Burke's Law, The Name of The Game, the definitive version of "War of The Worlds": all a big part of my childhood.

RIP, fella.

ON THE PURSUIT OF "VISAGE" BY LUCIANO BERIO

Is it possible, I'm wondering - is it actually fucking possible - to own too many vinyl versions of Berio's "Visage"...?

How many is enough? How many is too much?

It's the laughs that get me - the hisses and the snorrrks; the sighs and the unwords; the trills n the throbs. It's an incredibly sexual piece.

Sexy, but hysterical. I should've included it in my Ontological Hysteria Mix a while back. Maybe I did.

But how many versions are there? How many editions, performances?

CDs don't count, NaxosKids. And click-trawling the internet for copies like Woebot is just a cop out - this is a tale of deferred pleasure (and pain) - the story of a desperate sirensongcry that has echoed out down thru the decades; the ultimate electronic cocktease.

That wailing voice just, y'know, begging for it...

No, you need to pound some serious pavement, sniff it out in obscure Welsh charity-shops or Norfolk village fetes. It's there still, waiting for you. But you need to work at it. Put some effort in.

Don't tell my wife, but I've, uh, paid for it in the past and I... I'm not ashamed. The least was 50p; the most was £1.99. I don't live in London, suckers.

Years will go by between catching sight of this record in the raw, but it's never far from your mind, is it? C'mon, 'fess up; you're amongst friends here. It's just a piece of music.

I first heard it in '72? '73? A 'progressive' music-teacher (he had biiig lambchop side-burns) gave us pencils and a sheet of paper and told us to "draw what we saw in our heads" while he played it to us. My God, what was he thinking of, doing that to a bunch of pre-pubescent boys? (Maybe he had papers to mark or was nursing a hangover, I dunno) But, boy, did I ever draw!!

Then, at Yeovil College, my Stockhausen n Berio-jonesin' pal Dave Furber played me a copy and I thought waitaminute this sounds kinda familiar...my balls had dropped by that point and, ummmm, this was a woman's voice that spoke to me down thru the ages (very loudly and shrill-ly) of need and frustration, of want and desire. It was funny, sexy and horrible, all at once. Like a Lynch movie.

Somehow Berio had made a piece of viral music. He had invoked some sort of Endless Eternal Need, had awoken sexcircuits in our heads...

And you - you want it now too, don't you? My God, you want it so badly.

But just how long are you willing to wait?

How much are you prepared to pay?

How much is too much?

How much do you need, baby?

J-LO'S NEW POOL

McRAWLIX OVERLAY

JACK ROSE TRIBUTE BROADCAST

Some more music for ya:

A rather nice "Tribute to Jack Rose" Broadcast from WFMU 91.1. via Wire man Derek: @derekwalmsley

"Rather nice" - gah, could I get any more twee-ly 'English'? I'll be writing fucking poetry next. In blue biro on my arm.

Deduct -10 Bourgeois Points!

Still, cool mix. My kids like it.

SCULPTURE LIVE

Sculpture, recorded live at Bad Timing, The Portland, Cambridge, UK: 30/11/2009 via @tapebox.

A tape/drone/wonkcrete cut-up party. Lovely stuff!

LISTLESS: THERE IS NO ALBUM OF THE DECADE

Me, over on Loki's blog, talking about why I don't - can't! - have an Album of the Decade.

Haven't posted on Idiot's Guide To Dreaming for a while, but it makes sense to post this piece there for a whole daft raft o'reasons. One is because Nick and Loki had already started a quasi-thread there, but - mostly - well, sometimes it's just good to be amongst your friends.

I'm still pretty uncomfortable talking about some of the bad shit that happened to me in the early part of the 00s - it feels self-indulgent and, well y'know...like I'm trying to score sympathy-points, being a drama-queen or making some fucking obscure point about something or other. I still carry a lot of guilt and discomfort about this shit (and the bad stuff that preceded it), but I have to peel some of this dead skin off of me.

This is all kinda awkward and personal, but tbh this is the lightweight version. The really bad stuff I'm saving for either my memoirs or the grave lol.

I've had an, uh, interesting life, I guess.

If I could change one thing about that period tho it would be the fact that my wife had to suffer it with me. Without that illness, I wouldn't be who or what I am today, so - in a very weird way - I'm oddly thankful for having gone through it. It gave me the gift of a second life.

But I'm not thankful for the terrible burden it put on her. That's the one thing I'd change.

Burroughs spent a large chunk of his life "writing [his] way out of trouble." I've only spent the second half of this decade trying to do it. It's working out okay for me, I guess, but I've still got a long road ahead. A lot of words I still need to write down.

Like the rest of you, I'm just making this shit up as I go along.

FRACTAL FICTION

Fractal Fiction, a collaborative webcomic from Emperor and some artist/letterer pals.

Off to a v. promising start.

"SKY ROCKETS IN FLIGHT"

The recent weird spiral lights seen over Norway...



...are likely to be a failed Russian Bulava missile test. (via @Nemonymity )

Now this reminds me of a very early Tales of Suspense Iron Man story in the early 60's where a failed Stark Industries missile launch ended up with the rocket spiraling off out of control. A guidance system chasing its own tail. Moving in ever-decreasing circles.



I don't have the issue in question (too old/too expensive) otherwise I'd scan it - but I'm sure there's a Kirby/Heck picture of a damaged rocket turning a slow spiral - tho I may have a reprint Marvel Collectors Items Classics with it in somewhere. I'll have a rummage.

Interestingly, the Bulava is designed to be the ultimate end-game anti-anti-missile nuke - far more dangerous than anything the Koreans or Iranians could ever even imagine, yet it never, ever gets mentioned as a WMD, threat to the American mainland, etc. Obviously, it has a few teething problems lol; perhaps wh/ is why the US government seems to be so complacently comfortable with its existence. The fact that the Russians are still aggressively developing a new generation of intercontinental nukes (funded by Gazprom revenues?) is kinda worrying when we're all supposed to be pals these days in the War against Terrorism.

Who's the intended target - countries who don't pay their gas bills?

Or is it just the Russian equivalent of the US's Star Wars program - a Cold War 2 white elephant intended to grease politicians palms and the rusting wheels of industry?

TAPEBOX

Tapebox.

WAND

Long time Kid Shirt favourite James Jackson Toth aka Wand plays an unexpected last-sec show in London tomorrow nite, courtesy of The Great Pop Supplement label.

It's at the Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon from 8pm.

Wand
Hush Arbors
Rick Tomlinson (votsw) solo

£5 on the door!!!

Can't make it - nor the FACT magazine Christmas Party - gah! - but I was very fortunate to see him, Jessica and Keith play a few years ago, so I don't feel quite so bad about it.

CORNBREADD

Via Joker:

HALF-BAKED

The Skull of W.G. Grace sculpted from dough and baked. Badly.



It looked a helluva lot more like a skull before I put it in the oven - honest! My eldest daughter thinks it looks like a dog "in a Scottish hat" lol. She's got a point.

I forgot the flour would rise n expand.

Do(ug)h!

RIP JACK ROSE

Absolutely gutted to hear that guitarist Jack Rose has died.

A heart attack, appararently. He was only 38.

Many of you probably won't have even heard of him, but take my word for it that he was a fine, fine guitarist...it ain't hype to say that he had the potential to be one of the greatest of his generation.

He made a split record a little while back with some pals of mine. And a zillion great vinyls and CDs on his own. Like I said, a major talent - even though you might not even heard of him. Check his stuff out if you haven't already.

To be cut down like that before he'd even really hit his prime, well...

Here he is playing in Falmouth, down in the depths of my spirtual homeland Cornwall (one of a handful of adventurous US sub.alt.acts who've started venturing down there to play in recent years).

Go, Jack, go!



Postscript: just in from Cory at Three-Lobed Records, who puts it far better than I ever could:

"...our dear friend Jack Rose has passed away...Jack was a warm, caring person and was always a pleasure to be around. His larger than life spirit will truly, truly be missed even more so than his inspired musical ability. Our deepest sorrow goes out to his wife."

CLOCK DVA: "4 HOURS"

"In my dream I am older
Everything is soft, out of focus
There's this sound which disturbs me."

THE AUTO-NEGATING POST

Walking back from town I had this great (but ridiculous) idea for a joke film/comic-book 'pitch' that I was gonna post or tweet later for a bit of fun, then I started realising that it was actually a pretty good, commercial hi-concept pitch lol...

Once I'd shoehorned out a coupla of the more ludicrous elements I sudddenly groked that the whole damn thing actually had some wheels (literally)...and then a really cool (and logical!) title came to me when I was taking my boots off in the kitchen and now that I've started typing this I've realised I can't actually tell you anything about the idea whatsoever, so this post becomes a sort of stupid auto-negating thing.

What a completely useless (more than usual!) waste of your time. And mine too. Lol.

Sorry.

SPACE-CAPTAIN BART DE PAEPE

More tapes from Sloow. (Hi, Bart!)

I'm a big fan of what he does; have been for ages. He has the best beard in the biz.

Of the most recent releases, the Hunting Moon css in particular caught my eye. That cover - a Stacia from Hawkwind archetype caught in felt-tip freeze-frame, heh. Croatian SpaceRockDrone.



First time I met him in the UK a while back I asked about the felt-tip pen artwork - "That must take ages," I said - but he just shrugged and said (in that Flemish Schooner Skipper voice of his): "Not as much as you'd think."

I bet he's lying. Anyway, loove the artwork, loove the releases; Sloowtapes are a coonstant Kid Shirt favoourite.

Flashback to meeting original Hawkwind drummer Terry Ollis 3 or 4 years back who autographed my copy of "In search of Space" by chuckling and saying (as he scribbled over Stacia's blurred gatefold nudeform): "Not the first time I've been on top o'Stacia....hrurrh-hruuuh-hruuuch! "

A collection of dazzling live recordings by Croatia’s heavy psych band, chasing Hawkwind, Igra Staklenih Perli and Acid Mothers Temple in an evil labyrinth of disorientating rhythms, destroying guitars, complex sax, synth awareness and celestial knowledge. 120 copies

THINGS THAT SHOULDN'T BE ON CEILINGS #1 AND #2

Please feel free to jump in here at any point...

"BLACKOUT WAS IMENSE (SIC)"

More cryptic psychocartographical manifestations from the smog-enshrouded back-street walls of Olde Yeovil Towne:



"Blackout was imense" (sic)

Well, yes, of course it would be.

Three days without blogging doth not a full-on blackout make, I feel. But still, it seems far too long since I last broke word-bread with you, my Vics Vapo-Rub inhalin' bredren.

Hmmm: what shall I do? Review a record/cassette/piece of music? A book, perhaps? Make some goofy pronouncement or misplaced prediction? Tell you of my recent misfortune and travail?

Or shall we - together - all blow hard and long 'pon The Trumpet of Plenty?