anton and the baby bounce

maybe it made no sense, the suggestion that people waves their babies or dogs in the air to "drug free," but maybe it wasn't mean to make sense, and maybe that was what made it, ultimately, make sense. but nobody waves nothin' anyway, so it was JUST FINE.

weeee played the chalk it up fest today in downtown sacramento. weee was the ant wiff allyson and tom. it wasn't as hot as it's been the past few days, so nobody baked, no cookies got burnt. i think that the ironsides set saturday night went down so well, that i was able to be a little less or a little more this or that about today's set. nice crowd, pleasant. all sitting in whatever shaded spots they could find, but nobody too close to us. and it felt a bit distant from itself, the set. still, a cool little combo we made. a few tunes from "automatic door," then a few of the songs for allyson's record. i was a little nervous for "if i could bring you trouble," which we're doing as a duet now. i haven't sung it since i wrote it, but it went ok. allyson has such an easy presence up there that it makes it un-difficult to be relaxed or weird, depending on what suits my shoes. and tom responds well to my odd cues so new songs sound Known. but i forgot to do the capo for a song or two, which meant a bit of fumbling. and i don't know what my outh was doing, talky-wise, but remind me never to mix political commentary with chalk dust. maybe my fave was "leave it with me, i'm always gentle." two voices, a drum and a guitar. oh, and a song. it's such a song! i'm not honking my own goose here, i'm just saying that it has a structure that makes sense - we just follow along and everything goes ok, like there's no room to fuck it up. so hoorah. i wish you could hear the whole allyson record - i wish it was finished and out, but you're gonna like it, i betcha.

anyway, i better go - there's another americana act waiting to use the internet...

Currently listening : Phallus Dei By Amon Duul II Release date: 2006-07-18

3:26 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

scream thy penultimate scream, sacramentoans!

hmmm. the time here on the front porch is 9:10am. not a shockingly tweaky time, even on a sunday, but i didn't sleep an inch last night. not a drop. so i'm on the front porch, all laptopped out, eyes buzzing and crossed, trying to type as if my toast depended on it.

last night's gig at old ironsides was good. really good, i think. very last minute - jerry told me friday that the headliner had dropped off the bill and asked if we could do it. got the grand old band together - steve, jeff and tom, plus the glorious allyson. lively crowd with new faces and familiar heads. loose and rough, but alright considering ain't played together in 6 months. "guru 7" sounded like music to my ears, and i was delighted to have an electric guitar coming out of the sound it made. allyson was up with us for the rest of the set, sounding good and moving it around. the whole of us had floppy fun up there, and hell, we even had girls screaming for us, and in this day and age of slow cd sales, indeed. someone commented "beatle punk" while someone else suggested we sounded like the soft boys. i think last year when i was in town and playing with the band, i was determined to show off the mostest modernest psychedelic antsounds i could find - loads of tunes from "village" and "drug free." last night was a little more of a mixed bag, with older tunes and fresh meat mixing in a german summer salad of sorts. i do think, howeverish, that "drug free" went on longer than we've ever done it before. maybe that's it - never end it. four chords forever. allyson said that from now on, every gig will be like paris. that show did set a high standard. but yeah, it was good to be here in this town we call sacramento. funny though - when i'm in england, sacto is home. when i'm here, it's elsewhere i need to be. flip a couple coins for me! but thanks for last night.

Currently listening : The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan By Bob Dylan Release date: 1990-10-25

4:09 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The Prince of Chairs speak again - Brighton of KevKepDino

no names, no sordid details following. i had decided POSSIBLY to retire from typing. i'm sick of me, sick of my own complaint, sick of spelling out weak versions of grand gigs gone wrong. and now i'll add that again, as it was in the beginning, i'm soaked with tears to think that the lines between personal and public and private are as blurry as if they was written by the biblers theyself. if i've caused any offense in these recent weeks, i do almost sincerely apologise/apologize. i'm a delighter of hearts, not a divider of twats! nay, i'm here to bring joy and to jangle the 12 strings of your summertown guitars, matron! all the throwin' down and the tedious descent into self-parody, it's all gotta stop, bra. we only have a few years left on this planet, we gotta rise up while we still have our shoes and boots on. god is good! life is for the leakers! i could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

BUT, i gotta say hello and give mad props, innit, to my dear mates from the states who did come alllll the way to merrie england for to do the brighton rock! err, kevin seconds and kepi and dino are over here on tour and we met up at the hobgoblin to discuss the role of relativism in discordant melisma (2006-2008) and also to simply get down and boogie! as ever, a great gig. kepi had dino on bass and kevin on cardboard box drums. i was recruited to play the rather handily handy piano, though it was a challenge, as it was tuned a whole step higher. this meant a bit of mental na di mean MENTAL, innit!) transposing on the spot. cor! crikey! biscuits and crisps! kepi is always entertaining and i love his songs. can do no wrong. good crowd, candle-lit punks. kev's set included a gorgeous handful of tunes from his newest album, which pleased the wee outta me. a newer song, something about bicycle polo in midtown sactown was another hit. a few 7 Seconds tunes to please the fans, and that was that! top notch songwritery from kep and kev, a lovely night. spent yesterday with the gang wandering town and throwing rocks at the sea. good times, high fives, hugs and such and easy reminder of how good it can be sometimes.

don't worry, i'll be back to bitching and Les Grande Complainte soon enough, i bet!

gratefully,

the namer of things

Currently listening : The Spotlight Kid/Clear Spot By Captain Beefheart Release date: 1990-10-19

12:29 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Hello/Goodbye in a London basement, we hardly knew ye 1967 innit.
Current mood: moody. bitchy. dependent. correct. grainy.

grunt. grumble. i don't really sigh much, i don't think, but perhaps even a sigh here is fine, after the grumble but before the grrrr. oh, this moderne ayge is so fast-paced and independent. as in indie, of course. i want to start up a label called dependent records, just to annoy myself.

i want to be making music that sells to the crowd but turns they on in fantastic ways. i want to figure out the secret and form four groups and become managers. i wish i want. why? why not? what about meeeeeeeee? i was aiming for the new next dylan about 400 years ago, but i'm keen to settle for the donovan of lower realms if anyone will have me.

what's the damn key to this nonsense? i've been toying with the idea of dropping these gig-by-gig acoountings. readership is down, and i'm tired of my own bitching. i worry about cosmic pollution. does EVERYONE in the world HAVE to form a band and put out cds? a friend of mine wrote, somewhere ONLINE, that she finds people who don't have a web presence to be creepy. somat like that. now, see, i find it creepy that she finds it creepy! in fact, i've been having that recurring dream that i don't doubt many of you share. it's the dream where we unplug and live free in a cave somewhere, unwired and internet-free. course the cave is actually just the front room with an olde-fashioned television blaring away full-time, as it was back in the days of the bible. dude - i'm so olde-skoo. did i say i'm tired of my own bitching?


my set last night at the slaughtered lamb. ummm... i had jon, ollie and rob from stornoway backing me. that was great, very relaxed. i love stornoway. very much. truly wonderful band, great songs, completely musical and mysterious and open. horse heads and songs of longing. but back to me. anton barbeau, cult-heroes' cult hero. translation - not a single person paid to see me last night. i mean, loads of folks in the room, but not an ant-fan to be found, lorna and storns aside. and cd sales? jon's brother bought an "automatic door" and jon bought a "drug free" for their mum, who'd been keen to hear the album since stewart lee's review. cult heroes' cult-hero means i'm selling cds to the band that are gracious enough to back me up. hell, i'm on stewart lee's guest list and i make records with godly rockers, but no one comes to my gigs sometimes. see, the recent port mahon gig was the other sided coin here. nice crowd, many antfans, cds and money and praise and smug satisfaction from the artiste hisself. but last night in london was me trying not to say "shut the fuck up!" to the crowd. i did "shhhh" the australian's but they didn't notice! no "banana" so maybe that was the reason nobody loved me enough. boooooo hooooo hooooooo wah wah wah! sometimes (like right now!) i want to overhaul the anton act - shave off the proverbial eyebrows and start fresh. be part of a band. did i mention stornoway? how can they be SOOOO good? and such a band. brian is a brilliant frontguy, but there's no question that it's a magic combo.

banana! not like it was a terrible set, it was just that i couldn't get too far beyond the noise of the inattentives. lorna said that there were loads of people listening, but i explained that from the stage, you can't hear THEM - only the ones who were as loud as the band. but is it just the way? some nights are perfect, some are dumb. some nights make me want to retire into my "studio years" period. except i know that as "cult-heroes' cult-hero," i need to be out cultivating ANYTHING i can find allll the time! readership is DOWN, sisters and brothers! maybe i sell more records than i realize. i mean, it's not like they're unselling. it's one disk at a time, but slowly the trickle turns to steam. i try to sound positive, forward march. and half the time i see the clouds for the trees. but the thought of trying to win over all the bearded "independents" of this too too solid world wears me OUT! yet, and this is a big yet, the true ART that i'm supposed to be doing is so often lost in the back of my head. it's all about the crowds, the sales, the setlist. give me back my flag! can i please have my own stornoway? can i be in a band and play all the good bits when no one's looking? i mean, dang - as i've said, i play with the most amazing musicians alll the time. i'm lucky as hell in that regard. but i get tired of just being stuck with me. it's morrell avenue all over again! ha ha ha ha! "as i walked up that hill in my beatlest boots..."

shhhhhhh!

Currently listening : American Gothic By Kepi Release date: 2008-05-06

11:37 PM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Oxford double-slam yam yam.

again in cambridge. cold and possibly rainy. ah - summer! the folk festival is happening nearby and if the wind is right tonight should be able to hear joan armatrading's set!

but back so suddenly to ME!

oxford friday night at the port mahon. new promoters, good lads indeed. but weird that the windows of the port ain't there no more. when windows vanish is not naturalle. but all of me friends were there... give or take. but there's a certain gig in ox that happens time to time, and this were one, where i see so many people dear to me, and fan-heads and all the messy rest. oxford is my place, innit, and it's more a homecoming to do a gig like this at the port than probably gigging in me olde sacramento. anyway - i picked an oldies-meets-goldies set, and was quite pleased to have done such. still started with "guru 7" - this song grounds me, sets a space for me in the room. and since it's the first track up on myspace, people can say "oh, uh..." but then to "mahjong dijon" for the second gig running. into that song right now - maybe i'll put it up, innit. mark b requested "waterbugs and beetles," and i added "heather" and "magazine street" to the ancient bagism. for so long i've had attitude about my older songs, or sometimes it's attitude about older me (and them younger, higher notes that are moving out of range!). i'm either trying to sell whatever records are freshest or am trying to lay heavy the 21st century guru vibe or whatever. but since glasgow, i've drifted back into my own catalogue of songs - sooooo many good songs, much better than having this gimmick or that. friday's crowd was right for the setlist. familiar folks who knew my stuff and have heard "automatic door" tracks many times. did a couple from this album, and even happier to see how so many songs fit with each other. a bit wired and also possibly de-hamfisted on guitar from playing weeks and weeks of piano again, i felt pretty excited to be strumming like a fiend. so often i burn out on the troubadour from califor doing his baggy banana thing. again. strum strum. but into it this time. sound guy did a good job and my guitar sounded right. yeah, a good fun gig, one i was really happy with. still am! great crowd of friends and good faces. sold cds, got names on the list, got paid - all them things too. hooray!

next up next day, was arcane festival. now last year's fest, for me anyway, was a bit of a drag. main prob was having the dj tent blasting full-on (with nobody in it!!!) while we on the acoustic stage struggled our tits off to be heard. i felt seriously "old skoo" in a bad way - like stupid musician having no understanding that the DJ IS GOD. ok - bitch bitch! i cut my set short, nobody cared anyway. blah. but this year... well, still loads of problems with sound and such, but much more enjoyable scene. a triumph, even. this year the dj tent was moved far enough away to not be a problem, except instead of just the one music stage, they had two. the main stage and the mystic stage. uh... the main stage being the VERY loud stage taking the place of the dj tent in volume issues! so we "mystics" were left to do battle. some of the acts, meself included, were lucky to have our sets fall in-between the bands on the big stage. other folks, like matt of the new moon, handled his long-distance pick-up band with aplomb and made the irie vibe all the more. but there seemed to be no one actually running the stage nor was there anyone doing sound! i'd helped matt sewell set up his guitar and vocal in the pa, so at least i was a little familar with the mixing board when it was my turn to rock. and i had a four-piece band, all of us except drums running through the pa! but we did it - got a good sound and i think it's safe to say, did a decent job wiff da rokk! ollie and jon from stornoway on bass and keyboards, with mark from the evenings on drums. great drummer. i'd only met him at the fest, but jon had emailed him the songs previous. i've played with ollie before - always a joy. he reminds me in a handful of ways of erik kleven. ollie's not a heavy groove player like gabe or larry or holly. ollie has a wonderful melodic sense, a touch of jazz maybe, but he always plays ear first. you can hear him on "eye kinda" - he's playing the main line, but also does a beautiful solo after the last chorus. jon is also on a couple tracks on my next record, doing vox with ollie and brian, but this was the first gig with him. in circumstances like these where we've not rehearsed and are playing together in a new grouping, i pick simple four-chord songs that we can make noise ..ed with "boncentration bamps," then to "you can move a mountain." i think "eye kinda" then "keep my face clean." a couple more from "automatic door," with "ring never bell" really stinging at a crisp twiddle. "i don't like you" is a song i often hate playing! it's so christian rock! but it's loaded with burn and we did good with it. "drug free," with bonus "banana" ending was a delight, however. i can't escape the bloody banana! the curse of the prolific songwriter is the ghost of his crimson past! i'd vowed not to do arcane festival again without a band, and i'm pretty certain this was an excellent band, a treat to play with. but of course. you knew it would be good! we all did! only thing was, with everything pushed later and later and bands seeming to play as long as they wanted, we wasn't able to actually stay to catch stornoway's set. day later and i'm really regretting this. i'm playing with them in london before i go, but really more isn't always enough with something wonderful.

but yip yip - a grand pair in my favourite 'shire. hairy!

p.s. ironic or not, to get away from yet another bad emo/metal band on the main stage, we ended up in the dj tent. and i loved it! so not my scene, but maybe i've just never had the right lasers in my eye! i mean, the music was good, the dj was having a great time, everyone was having a great time. lorna danced, i stood with one hand in pocket drinking tea and sincerely finking "alright, innit!" hell, another 20 years and i'm gonna be LOOSE!

p.p.s. - "hey jude" is a pretty good little song!

Currently listening : Past Masters, Vol. 2 By The Beatles Release date: 1990-10-25

3:21 PM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Glagow - happy mustard scones vs the heat!

yarrrrr - my first gig in scotland! 'bout bloody time! had a great night at the halt bar, part of the woodland creatures night. we'd been in scotland for almost a week already, roaming up north to see various sacred sites in and around kilmartin. temple woods, the great x - all sorts of intense rockery concentrated. and sheep! cosmic freak sheep. we'll send the photos when we can.

anyway - uh, back to glasgow. i couldn't get a real handle on the city itself. felt much thuggier than i knew what to do with. i sorta settle into most places easily enough, but glasgow had such a mix of messes going on. heavy dudes roaming the streets everywhere, smells that smelled, the famous greasy food, the junkies. and all this baking in a heatwave. me thinking "scotland=cold," i brought a couple pair of wool socks. no cotton socks. and long underwear. and my coat. etc etc! baked alive for days. the gig itself was a groove, daddio. a sweet bunch of gentle folks, in gorgeous contrast to some of what i'd seen. onstage i was sweating like a goat, and gasping for air between songs. thought i was gonna faint at one point. oddly, i could sing no prob, it was just my rambling bits between that lost me. i added "mahjong dijon" to the set, a song i haven't played often in all its years on earth. otherwise, pretty familiar set. joe kane, one of the few people i can say i've connected to directly via myspace, told me he'd written a song based on my 'king of missouri," though he thought the title of mine was "king of the zodiac," which is an epic title, no? anyway, it's great to end up in a new city and have people requesting songs by name. yeah - i was pretty happy up there, letting myself dig being dug a bit. i think it's gotten easy enough to treat gigs as just gigs. which of course they are! and maybe it's ok to let some gigs fly by. not ebery one is gonna rock, but i knew this one could/should be good, so i'd put a bit more thought into it - ran through songs in the place we was staying, made notes such as "don't talk between the first two songs." dumb things, but with my free-foam brain, notes can really help out! maybe it's the name woodland creatures, but i just wanted to pet the crowd on the head. thankfully, it was too warm for that.

before my set, joe kane's beatpop combo played. can't remember the name, but they were great. i'd really hoped to see joe do his own thing, but he's recovering from a sliced hand and can't play guitar. bass is ok, so he was the bass bloke for this band. after my set was bez - sort of an acid-inspired daniel johnson/ivor cutler hybrid. wonderful stuff, sometimes silly but pretty touching. "don't worry be happy" for the already-burned out 21st century.

went to nice 'n' sleazies after to hear various of the guys from the halt dj'ing. all sixties and seventies mainly. one fellow, just as we was splitting, suggested he were gonna put on some julian cope, and i wish we coulda stayed for that. never heard anything from "peggy suicide" blasting in a club. next time.

yeah - it was a great night, another to remind me that i do indeed like doing this and that my own attitude is half the battered pakora, triple deep fried.

Currently listening : Peggy Suicide By Julian Cope Release date: 2002-04-08

12:48 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Glass Onion, Peterborough

or maybe just the back garden at birdwood. i watched ants herding and milking aphids the other afternnon. i'm going all george harrison in ye! blackbirds, blue tits, chaffinches, wood pigeons, crows and the unknown squawkers. i'm cutting yannic patterns into the lawn, leaving long, sexy clover patches for the bees.

and then it's back inside for more piano. the silberman, days and hours of "marshmallow man" and "people like" and "quorn fingers!" turns out i stole "christina box" straight from joe jackson's "breaking us in two." check it!

i played my first gig in peterborough last friday. was ok gig, an anton gig. grooby little joint - loads of gentle freaks and some burned-out sad souls and a general atmosphere of ITness. i went on, played to a noisy crowd. threw in a few odd bones, like "dig my pig" and "eye kinda" and "i'm just a country girl," all songs going on allyson's record. good to mix the set, especially as i typical would play safe in a new joint. sometimes i'm sick of myself and if i've got a song to focus on, i'm happier. and with a noisy room, better for me to have a place to go musically. made £30 to cover costs, sold zero cds. recession? will someone please buy a MILLION anton cds soon? is there life on mars?

i'm going to glasgow for a gig. many new joints this time around, pleased about this. half a million?

Currently listening : Adventures of Keith Release date: 2008-07-29

9:37 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

anton meets and greets the criminal underworld of weymouth - choo choo!

indeed. i promised some folks back home* a few years back that i'd write up details of my gigs over in england. i've been doing this without fail since then and here i am yet again. sometimes it's easy to scribble up a flippant bit, but sometimes i know my limitations as a writer will do us no justice. this week is one of those where a ghost writer would be handy!

i've maybe mentioned the bowls of slugs and the dead birds in bags, the 300 toothbrushes, the overall "withnail" vibe. so that's settled. but the final gig this week on portland is so heavily framed by the weird wood of my strange and stranger life story of late, and there's no way to speak it clean. just accept that i'm not going to try hard to conjure much, but do fill in the gaps with any putty you can find.

we played the punch bowl, booked only a few days earlier. smallish pub, and full of hard looking dudes from the moment we set foot within. i know i look like a freak to some people, and i try to use this to advantage in situations where perhaps i ought to be more worried for my safety. and i make eye contact. despite the fact that i can barely do this whilst performing, i do look anyone and everyone in the eye, albeit with a very blank effect. i think that avoiding eye contact is more obvious and draws attention! so we set up our gear in the smallest of corners, me and tom and alan and holly. Wosp was a band name tom conjured, very nice. we started slow - my double red bull dose seemed to backfire and i felt like goo rolling up a hill. but no matter - with this band, anything sounds good. and we were off from there. we PLAY - seriously PLAY music. we take the endings of songs and turn them into micro-muscular workouts, or we twist the middle bits into disco fits. we have a great time, the audience does too. we had girls doing seagull screeches, drunk men telling us to "play something we know" and dogs wandering in for water. the lad who requested "glass of champagne" on behalf of me swindon connectors, was becoming progressively drunkerrrrrr and insisted i was the second coming of syd barrett and julian cope. i mean, this is the sort of thing that really sinks in deep for me, and he explained that he was worried that the cosmic line was in danger of wearing out except for people like me doing the real thing in this way. touching. funny, though, that with this band, we're so funny and entertaining that it never feels like the epic cosmic rock stylee of "village of the apple sun" or such. we're much more like a gang of magic dolphins balancing balls each others noses. lemme just say again how grand and groovy it is to play with alan and tom and holly. i love them as persons and together we got a groovy ting goin' ahwn, mother. you had to be there.

after, tom drove us up to see the lighthouse in the mist. yow!

saturday was my day of splitting. it was a LONG week, and one of them where i can't help but look at this strange life i'm living. playing weird pubs, being the guru 6.9.2, sleeping in a room built by charles dickens, coughing and stressed out. where is my home? it's sorta here in cambridge, but truth of the story is that lorna's ex-, wiff whom she still co-owns the house, don't want me around. and he were in town whilst i was away, with me needing to stay away until he was gone. this really wore me down. i'd be happy to play "grown up" with him and deal with things for real and proper, but it doesn't work like that. he shows up, i hide all my stuff, pretending i don't exist and then he has a go at lorna for any trace of me he can sniff. anyway, i'm doing my best to be high-road about it all, but i just wanted to come home, somewhere. i woulda walked back to sacramento if my damn bag didn't weigh so much. instead i caught tthe criminal train to oxford. seriously, the train was LOADED with criminal thugs, straight out of a movie. gotta love weymouth sometimes. one of the younger thugs had smashed someone in the face and so the train was delayed while the cops went car to car looking. meanwhile, the "gentle thuggish lads" were also moving car to car to avoid the fuzz! the guy who'd done the beating ended up in my car, changing his shirt so's to be less recognisable. his comment to me was "bit of a nightmare journey, innit." no mannnnn, i'm cool. again with the eye contact outta our dear ant. i sat there until winchester, as i figured if i got up to move i'd end up in another car with more fuckheads, and the fuckheads i was stuck seemed to figure i wasn't worth their time. not sure what they were down in weymouth for - maybe just for fun, but there were about 20 of 'em, only one who'd not been to jail yet for assault. i had my ipod in but not on, ye see.

from winchester, with a thug-free train, i carried on to oxford where i was staying for the night, again to provide lorna's ex- with one more ant-free evening. but in some ways this week had been so hard on me and the crime train didn't relax my gentle head much. got to ox, crashed at kathryn's where matt was staying. i was sleeping on cushions in the basement, thinking that despite fulfilling my cosmic destiny, i really should apply for a job digging graves or something respectable. no, life on the road is a beautiful thing. the codeine didn't help much though and my headache kept me awake most of the night. ok, the headache and my fantasies of popping Wanty in the face. did i say something earlier about taking the high road? i musta gotten SOME sleep cos i woke up feeling like a fever'd broken. i felt good and ready to carry on with my trek to home or half-home or to cambridge or whatever IT is. quorn sausage sandwiches with matt and kathryn. extra cups of tea and finally megabus. i admit that when i finally got to cambridge, my bad attititude reserfaced and i was pretty grouchy to lorna, who deserves none of this. she's kind to me, and kind to Wanty. they were together for years and i respect their wanting to remain close, but he, in my genius opinion, could do with a little growing up. pretending like i don't exist isn't gonna last long, and we can't hide alllll my gear whenever the wee prince returns. i mean, he don't live here no more! i don't know - i'm good at chewing on the arms that feed me, and i live a life right now where i'm at the mercy of others full on. and sometimes i'm just a dude. othertimes i'm a Dude, it's the balance that must be struck.

lastly, my dreams this week have been mighty and Tuned In. started with a 23 dream, then a julian cope/plectrum dream. woke up in ox having dreamt that in cambridge there was a new course being taught on the Genius of Anton Barbeau. i don't mind if i do! last night was a bizarre sequence of dreams regarding the End of Time. weird shit coming up, but it keeps my head entertained, must say!

Currently listening : Ash Ra Tempel By Ash Ra Tempel Release date: 2004-12-17

4:19 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

if thine Boot fit, beware it

i'm tired! in the post-allyson daze, it's been non-stop go go go. last night was a mighty wired gig in weymouth at the boot. schnauser rocked a psychedelic set, al and holly making wave and tremolo stringing. i was hopped up on wayyyyy too much of the enthusiasm beverage. WAYYYY too much. but it helped keep the beams shooting straight. i was doing maths AND physics, according to holly. tribute to allyson was "allyson 23" at triple speed, then a couple from her record. bringed up alan and holly and we flipped the train towards the heart of sun control. highlights included the wrong capo on "drug free." how can something so evil sound so good? three part stereo harmonies on "gentle." exact notes on the guitar, thuds and thumps. zing, my mind wandered nowehere.

i'm staying at tom's on portland. his landlady, whom i ain't met yet, collects moths, dead birds, living seagulls, slugs, toothbrishes, bottlecaps, scaffolding and dust. she paints snails. this is england and it's MINE!

Currently listening : Lodger By David Bowie Release date: 1999-09-28

1:19 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

portland soggy, portland stoned - dorset moments i never owned

after a 5 hour journey from cambridge through london to weymouth, made it onto portland for the grove school benefit fest. alan and holly were finishing up their schnauser set. it was quite grey, almost raining. last year i got there late enough to miss out on food or drink, but made sure this time to catch the free grub. and 5 cups of tea in a cold grey field does help.

our set rocked like a dog in the sky. we played a s a trio and sounded fantastic. i'd banged my head twice on the low metal tent frame above and maybe that helped. a loony set, with much more energy than actual regard for how the songs is supposed to go. and it had to be this way! after paris, what else is there? a MAD set, but a fine batch of noises. we just haves the fun, innit. alan treats "you can move a mountain" as if it was a drum solo, which, oddly, suits the track. (is someone playing "another green world" somewhere? yes! i think it's the track "spirits drifting," if that's the right title...) we mashed song into song,and for an acoustic-based trio, bringed some epic rawque. was gooooood. and in the aftermath, i had enormous, very drunk man wanting to kiss me like a lady after telling me that he felt like he was talking to the president. i know the set went well, but there are moments when the "payment" for this life is of questionable. still, more tea and a good soaking with rain and all is good and as it should be.

4:09 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment