Don't touch the monk's junk

This page has been fallow for a little while. After our freezing gig at Le Bateau I have been a wheezing snotty wreck of a man. And I have not had the mental capacity (admittedly it does not take an awful lot of mental capacity) to do a blog.

So here goes. Firstly I will assemble some subject matter in my head; the death of Captain Beefheart, the Lunar Eclipse on the shortest day for the first time in 400 years, a Steve Strange and Margi Clark duet, my lack of appropriate footwear for the current weather conditions, the interesting structure of bacteriophages, Aleister Crowley and the kids from Fame.

Secondly I will jumble all of that up and come up with some tripe or other.

Apparently Aleister Crowley advocated that his disciples practice control over their thoughts, speech and actions by choosing something they regularly do and not doing it, using the word “of” for instance, or turning left or thinking about sea urchins. The examples are mine, not Crowley’s, so they are not to be thought of as “the most evil examples in Britain”.

Upon finding out this interesting nugget of information I thought “that seems like a lark” and resolved to not do 3 three things for the space of 24 hours. These three things were, not going on Facebook, not using the word “oven” and not thinking about gardening. These might seem inconsequential and pointless things to you and you would be right. I wanted a quick win.

My 24 hour boycott of Facebook was simple. The probability of Facebook improving my mood at any given moment is probably less than 3%. The chance of it giving me a vague sense of insignificance is higher at 13%. The maths told me to do it, so I did. As a result when I checked my status the following day I saw that Captain Beefheart had died. I felt somehow responsible. So I blamed Crowley.

Not saying the word “oven” was, I admit, not the most challenging thing I could have picked. Not thinking about gardening was also fairly straightforward. I managed to stand in my kitchen and look out of the window at the garden for a substantial amount of time with neither of these things occurring. Then again I often stand in the kitchen looking out of the window for substantial periods of time without anything happening at all so I am not sure what this is indicative of. Something of occult significance probably. I blame Crowther.

The garden is under a good layer of snow at the moment, as is the rest of Liverpool, or so I am told. Where there is no snow there is ice. I have only seen one person fall over so far and that was a small child who did it very well, I doubt Buster Keaton could have done it better. When people fall over my first reaction is to feel very concerned for them. On the one hand this means that I am a good person, full of the milk of human kindness, aware of the plight of my fellow humans, a noble spirit, a good man. Nay, a God.

On the other hand it means that I miss out on laughing at people falling over, which, so I am told, is was of the oldest pleasure known to man. Given the fact that I am so good and caring and loving and wonderful and divine I want other people to experience the pleasure of watching people fall over even though I cannot experience it myself. To this end I have always neglected to buy myself appropriate footwear for this kind of weather. Consequently I increase the chances of me falling over and other people having a good laugh at my expense. At this time of year, when there are a lot of people who are suffering because they hate Christmas, you have to spread a little joy. I blame Cromwell.

What have I got left? Lunar eclipse, Steve and Margi, bacteriophages and the kids from Fame.

Right. This morning there was a Lunar Eclipse. It was the shortest day. The two have not coincided for 400 years. The last time this happened the day after the Metropolitan of Goa limited the Pastoral Jurisdiction of Nazranies to Malabar and one hundred and seventy three years and one day lafter that George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland. Wheels within wheels…..

Which leads us to the Mashemon Christmas Outing. We had a very good time. We witnessed Steve Strange singing with Margi Clark. I also witnessed Mike dancing like the kids from Fame.

All that leaves is the bateriophage. Here is a picture:

Merry Christmas.

4 dimensional Etch A Sketch gave me rickets

Wonderful gig at the Herald in Southport on the 11th of November. It was our second time there and it was a really good atmosphere. I’m certainly looking forward to getting back in the New Year.

We have another one coming up on the 26th of November in the Everyman in Liverpool. Not played there before so it will be an adventure! Thanks to Ade Jackson for asking us to play. Apart from that it looks like we will be getting the rest of the year off (bar rehearsal of course).

So how will we be spending these dark and grimy nights? There’s the next batch of songs to work on; we have 3 written but not recorded, 2 written but not arranged, 2 written but in need of rearrangement and one idea that needs expanding on. That makes 8 songs, nearly enough for another album!

We have just done an interview for the website Sevenstreets – a wonderful website all about Liverpool and what is going on in it. Hopefully we have given some reasonably intelligible (if not intelligent) answers to their questions. It will be nice to have a bit more exposure for us. It is nice to be popular after all.



That's nice that is.



The other day I saw a pair of magpies having a proper fight. They were surrounded by other magpies that, as far as I could tell, were goading them on. I didn’t know what to do; should I intervene in the style of a teacher stopping a playground brawl, or should I join in with the goading and hopefully be accepted into magpie society? I am not ashamed to say that I did the latter. It is, after all, nice to be popular. Soon I will be their King, mark my words.

They have also started hiring out my fighting pit on a Tuesday evening.

Sonata in A major

First rehearsal for two weeks tonight. I had to do without last week because I was otherwise engaged. The hiatus has had a similar effect on me to that which giving up smoking had; I am cranky, unable to concentrate and constipated. I like my weekly fix of noise and bellowing. It makes the world a brighter place and the glow lasts for just about 6 days afterwards.

Someone asked me the other day what my plans were for Mashemon and I failed to explain them in sensible way. What I should have said is:

“Plans?”

That would have sufficed surely. Instead I rambled for a bit and waved my hands about. This chap went on to ask the big question: why do you do it? On reflection and given my current condition the answer is obviously because I am addicted to making music and noise. What purer reason could a man have? Of course, people may misunderstand that statement and come to the conclusion that I have several screws loose and a live eel in my thinking bag. This prospect does not bother me today, but sometimes it does. Sometimes I do get the urge to be normal and without the glow of a recent rehearsal to buoy me up I often give in.

That said I do have a poster for our next gig on the wall of my office. Not many musicians I know do that. My thinking runs thus: if I am next to the poster then if anyone seeing the poster has any questions I will be on hand to deliver the answers in a concise and appealing fashion. However, when this has actually occurred I have been reduced to my standard response ie. rambling on and waving my hands about. What I need is a script and some kind of hand restraint.

An infinite number of monkeys and typewriters should suffice. You notice I say infinite and not roomful, as a recent coffee advert would have you believe. This coffee advert really irritates me. It irritates me so much I can’t think of a decent metaphor, I have no metaphor for the job. It irritates me so much because it is a willful misunderstanding of a very simple concept. It also implies that a roomful of monkeys and typewriters could write the complete works of Shakespeare but could not make a cup of coffee. Given the quality of the coffee I have endured from said establishment in the past they must employ a fair number of monkeys themselves.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Did you see what I did there? What a twat.

I am still digging my fighting pit and it should be ready soon. I will be in there every Tuesday night, stripped naked and oiled ready to fight all comers, no holds barred. You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me?

Oh yes and come to the gig on Saturday. If you intend coming to the fighting pit it will be a good opportunity for some trash talking. You fat turkey necked lard arsed shrew sexer. You heard me and so did your mother.

I am pushed for chives

We were on Radio Merseyside on Sunday night; Dave Monk played Dull Boy on his show, which was nice. There was a debate at the beginning of the show about the Liverpool music scene. I’m not really sure what conclusion they came to. I imagine they didn’t come to one.

I don’t know much about what is going on, beyond the fact that there is usually something of some sort going on somewhere. Sometimes someone is watching, sometimes someone is doing it by themselves. With regards to the music scene I would say this:

1. There are a lot of bands
2. There are a lot of venues

Not all of the bands are good at what they do. Some are ok. Some are poor. The same can be said about the venues. If we hypothesise that the distribution of band quality and venue quality is random then we can predict that the probability of seeing any of the following is equal:

1. A good band in a good venue
2. A good band in an ok venue
3. A good band in a poor venue
4. An ok band in a good venue
5. An ok band in an ok venue
6. An ok band in a poor venue
7. A poor band in a good venue
8. A poor band in an ok venue
9. A poor band in a poor venue

If we do randomly distribute these possibilities 1000 times we would get something like this:

However, when I used real figures, we get something a little more shocking:

That’s right people, using the figures I obtained from TIPISS last Tuesday lunchtime we can see that you are more likely to see a poor band in an ok venue than anything else.

People this is big. I urge you to do nothing about it.

My beef is buttered!

Oh I am a happy bunny. Two glowing write ups of our album. That’s a lot of nice words. I shall let it go to my head for a moment. But only a moment otherwise I shall become insufferable.

In addition to this glow I also have the additional pleasure of having set up Ronny Kong Studios MkII in the front bedroom. Everything is arranged neatly and there is a place for everything. I even have space to expand my setup. More metal boxes! More patch leads! More plugs! More dusting….

I am a bit of a technophile when it comes to recording equipment. The problem is I don’t have the spare cash to indulge myself. There are a multitude of things out there which I would love to order and possess and plug in. If only I could get away with not paying the rent for the month and not eating and not paying any bills, I would be able to satisfy my urges for at least a year. Oh well.

Two weeks until our first Death Tax Trouble extravaganza! I have been looking forward to rehearsal all week. Hopefully I will be able to get all the words to our 4, yes 4, new songs in the right place and in the right language. For those who are interested in such things our next set list will run thus:

1. Curtains
2. More
3. Facts
4. Wear & Replace
5. Lips Limbs Lungs
6. Brick
7. Being Boiled (yes, by the Human League!)
8. Dull Boy
9. Sanity Check

If you’ve acquired a copy of the album then you will notice that this set list does not include a substantial number of the songs on it. This is the inevitable result of progress! But new is good, and our new tunes are also good. Our direction of travel is now taking us from the Empirical to the Rational. If Removal Music is David Hume then this next phase is a bit more Rene Descartes. I reserve the right to retract that statement after I have thought about it a bit more. Anyhoo, maybe see you on the 25th of September.

Dancing gulls all over the park

I have been moving house. I have been putting things in boxes, putting boxes in piles, piling boxes into a van, unloading a van, moving boxes into a house and then taking things out of boxes. Last night I filled a wardrobe with bass guitars. Tonight I will find a home for a legion of socks and pants.

Our first album is out and about and people seem to like it. Tony at Liverpool Bands gave us a very nice write up, which gave my ego a very pleasant burnish. Of course, now it is finished the only thing to do it make a new one. So far we have four songs, in various states of repair. The impact of moving house will become apparent when we start recording them since I will no longer be using the carpeted dining room of an end of terrace house, but the front bedroom of a mid terrace house which has bare floorboards. I am sure this will have massive ramifications for the sound. Colossal, gigantic, enormous.

We have booked the acts for our first regular night Death, Tax, Trouble in the basement under News from Nowhere on Bold Street. It’s on the 25th of September and I would encourage you to come along and bring a carrier bag of Buckfast with you, or maybe a bottle of Crème de Menthe.

I embody the Will-to-Poop

I have been struggling with writing a press release for our new record. I have discovered that this is not an easy process. Firstly I’m not completely sure how you go about describing a record. What metaphors best sum up this thing:

It sounds like a muddy shoe
It sounds like a rotten peach
It sounds like a violent worm
It sounds like a lonely bucket
It sounds like a stranger’s car
It sounds like a badly executed perm
It sounds like a dumpy nun
It sounds like a boiled egg
It sounds like two boiled eggs
It sounds like a poo at a motorway service station
It sounds like Gene Wilder
It does not sound like Gene Wilder
It sounds like a presidential veto
It sounds like a fingerless glove

I don’t know. What I should have done is kept all those copies of Melody Maker I bought when I was a student and just cut out words from those. However, as far as I recall, the majority of the words would be “polemic”. They used that word a lot back then. I have never used it personally, apart from just then, but that is hardly using it, I simply displayed it, which is different from using it. Discuss.

Whilst I am writing this I am waiting for a response from Rocky after sending him the first draft. I hope he isn’t disappointed. Yesterday I left a message on his answer machine in what I had intended would be an Italian accent. However it came out more French than Italian. This is because, I realized, I can only do a convincing Italian accent when shouting and since I was at work at the time and the message contained the words “I will shoot you in the face” it was probably wise not to shout it. These are the things we artists have to struggle with you know.

We are playing in the shop window this Saturday. My mother is coming to see me. I am going to have to sing the words “I stink of semen” to her, as well as the rest of the street. I expect this will require some explanation afterwards, if not therapy for all concerned. These are the things we artists have to struggle with.

Like hot sauce on a cuban heel.

Last night we spent an entertaining few hours filming ourselves for the video for Sanity Check. I do not believe my hair put in a very good performance, but there’s not a lot I can do about that. My hair is self employed and if I criticize it too much it might just decide to leave and I don’t want that.

We also started work on our new cover song last night, to be unveiled on the 25th of September. I think it’s going to be pretty epic, not in terms of length but in terms of width. It’s going to have a lot of girth to it, which is a good thing so I am told.

We may have a couple of new tunes ready for September as well. One is a bit of a Krautrock steam locomotive that has made a bid for freedom, jumped the rails and is escaping down the autobahn. The other one is a bit harder to describe. It goes rurr rurr ruur, and then boodonk boodonk and then there’s a bit of nang nang nang nang nang before we get back to the rurrs. I’m sure you know what I mean.

Over the weekend I made Danish pastry. Not Danish Pastries, but pastry from a Danish recipe. It involved plain flour, bit of salt, butter and a big old dollop of cream. It was really very easy and very nice. So now, when you hear someone say “Danish Pastry” make sure you know whether they mean the puff pastry and cinnamon concoction or whether they are simply referring to a recipe from Denmark. It could save your life.

Yorrrr oveeerrr the hill riiiide naaaaw

Our gig on Tuesday is cancelled. Not too sure why, but it is fine by me. I was a bit bothered by the prospect of changing words in songs. It just didn’t sit right with me at all. So I’m glad I won’t have to do it!

Rehearsal last night and work is progressing apace on our next collection of tunes. One opus finishes, onwards to the next! So far we have three tunes, one of which we are already playing out and about and which I am yet to play properly. But that’s alright, it’s still cool. It’s nice to not have any deadlines or anything, just the opportunity to work on things and keep our creative juices flowing.

The dates have been booked for our regular music nights in Next to Nowhere on Bold Street. The first one will be on Saturday September the 25th and we are currently looking for the right acts on put on. We are open to suggestions and offers….

That is about it. I’m off to the opening of the Nerve Centre event tonight. To find out more about it, and what we will be doing, have a look here: http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/

Turf trading brings thistle risk

We are traveling to the Wirral next week to play in Jack Rabbit Slims in Hoylake on Tueday the 17th of August. 7 Waves Radio are doing a live broadcast and we are, therefore, going to be broadcast live. All fine and dandy, but I have been instructed to keep the language clean, which presents a bit of a problem.

Normally when I’m doing my thing, playing guitar and singing at the same time, I try not to concentrate too hard on what I am doing, letting all those practice sessions take over and just let it happen. As Bruce Lee says “Don’t think! Feeeeeewl.” It’s a bit like that. Disengage the rational mind. Otherwise I have a tendency to get a bit confused and forget what I’m supposed to be doing, which might result in me falling over or soiling myself or both. Now I have to remember not to sing “fuck” in Hell Jim Hell and “fucking” in Sanity Check. I’m not 100% confident that I’ll be able to remember to do that successfully.

My plan is to substitute it for another word if I remember to or, if I forget, I can say I used, thus giving me a plausible level of deniability. So far the words I have been considering are:

Fugg
Fuff
Fung
Funge
Funt
Fud

Each of which can be given an “ing” for deployment in Sanity Check:

Fugging
Fuffing
Funging
Fungeing
Funting
Fudding

I am also pondering the word Fum as in “I fummed your wife, she sucked my duck.”

What do we think? Which should I use? What’s the worst that can happen?

Drunken owl ruins tortoise race for vole jockeys

What a jolly day Thursday was. We had a nice drive up to Southport, looking at the views and the architecture. There’s some pretty intense architecture, I can tell you. The Herald was a very friendly place and I felt quite at home there. If it was not miles and miles away I would make it my regular boozer.

Vision Thing and sound man Dan made life very easy for us and they were all so nice! And they played well and made good sound respectively. So I think we will definitely be going back.

Amusing technical things which happened: somehow between doing the sound check and starting our set I managed to change my guitar sound from the reasonable mellow and muddy sound I like to something which really required the wearing of skin tight leather trousers, spiked wrist bands and a maybe a muscle vest. It was awful. What made it worse was the fact that I left it alone for about four songs. I have experienced things sounding different once the gig started before, so I assumed that it was just my ears deceiving me, or the effect of the sound bouncing of the bar maid’s head or something. But after starting our new song “Wear and Replace” and it sounding like Eddie Van Halen’s Jump (which it really shouldn’t) I accepted something was afoot.

The guitar was also very loud, so loud you could smell it. And my hair kept going in my mouth.

After we had played we watched Vision Thing do their, um, thing, and very enjoyable it was as well. All the people came to the front and there was a really warm atmosphere. I have never managed to elicit that kind of goodwill from an audience. Maybe it is my brand of deodorant that is to blame. Must be.

Our maiden album is finished and the artwork has gone to the printers. If you want one just leave a message on facebook and we will sort you out.

My broken back door blues

I have just made the mistake, as I repeatedly do, of reading the comments bit at the end of an article on a newspaper website. It said comedy is for making people laugh. It irked me did that and here is for why. I am increasingly of the opinion that there is absolutely nothing that is for anything. I will accept no exceptions. Music is not for listening to and lungs are not for breathing. They are things that just happen to be used in that capacity.

Consider the nose. Is it for breathing or is it for balancing spectacles? Or spectacles? Are they for looking or are they for keeping the bridge of your nose covered? Or art? Is it for looking at or hiding pieces of wall? Do you see the difficulty? Of course if we exclude the concept of something being for something, having a purpose or reason, then all of this goes away.

It also results in a considerable drop in anxiety about whether you are using the right something for what it is for. Cutlery is the first thing that springs to mind, although correct use of cutlery seems an anachronism these days. At least to me. Maybe I need to do more fine dining with judgmental folk. But what are fish knives for? Cutting fish? You can’t cut a fish with a fish knife!

I use my stereo as a place to empty mugs. It is very good at that, it can hold at least 8 mugs on top of the speakers. This is as it should be.

We have a gig tomorrow night and I shall be employing my new philosophy as much as society will allow. If for any reason I am observed using anything for any reason that may be construed as being what it is for, rest assured that it is either purely coincidental or because I have developed a habitual association between certain actions and certain objects. I’ll be producing a pie chart to present my findings.

Cold apple crumble

We are planning our next night of entertainment. After slogging through a bunch of gigs this summer which, I think it is fair to say, have not been well attended, we have decided to go back to where we started and hold an evening of fun and frolics in Next to Nowhere, under News from Nowhere on Bold Street in Liverpool.

We played our first gig there and it was a great night, good crowd and lots of enthusiasm. Since venturing into the outside world we’ve spent a lot of time hurriedly setting up our gear, wondering where to point the projector, sitting around waiting to go on and then, once we have played, trying to pack up as fast as we can before the next bunch get on stage. This does not make for memorable nights.

With all that in mind we have decided to do it for ourselves. We want to create a certain atmosphere, something that is equal part gentleman’s club, part discotheque. I’d like it be the sort of night where people come along, find themselves a cosy spot and just dissolve into what is going on. The sort of place you can sing along if you want to or dance if you want to but not worry whether anyone is listening or watching.

Previously these affairs have involved bringing your own liquid refreshments, and I think this has been a plus. You don’t have to queue up at the bar, you don’t have to be disappointed that they don’t serve your favorite tipple and you’ve only got yourself to blame if you pour too much down your neck and find yourself lost in a strange city bellowing at hotel staff and wondering where all your money has gone. So this is going to be just the same. Sort out your supplies, beetle on down to the venue, sit down, tune in and melt into the ether.

I wouldn’t advise anyone to bring any ether though.

We have a gig coming up this week in The Herald in Southport. I have only played in Southport once before, and that was a very different style of music. I am hoping it will be a good night. We are making our music very well at the moment, everything is falling into the right place. When it is going well I tend not to think very much, just do. It is a very liberating state of mind. The outside world does not really penetrate into your awareness; you’re just making music, pushing air out of your face and waggling your fingers. If I can find my way into that state in at least one song then I’m a happy camper.

What makes it difficult is all the faffing around you have to do before you are ready to play. At most gigs everything is hurried, you have to plug all your stuff together using leads that are impossibly tangled, even though you put them away in neat coils the last time. Sometimes things do not work and there doesn’t seem to be any reason why. Sometimes the guitar strap won’t stay attached to the guitar and you run the risk of being belted in the face by a flying headstock. Then, once you’ve gone through all this you have to reverse the process whilst the other band trample around, jumping through similar hoops.

So we are taking control of the night. I want music made by musicians who are relaxed and at ease, who don’t have to endure the pre-performance frenzy and the post-performance muddle and I want to be a musician who does not have to worry about these things as well. So that leads onto the process of finding the right musicians for the night. Pop your suggestions in a bottle. Or somewhere I can read them.

All hail this juicy plum!

Hello all,

Due to the fact that I have not been able to do this for a while Mashemon have been lacking a substantial blog for ever. We’ve been using myspace but it is a pain in the arse. Adverts everywhere, painfully drawn out logging in processes. Pictures of cow eyed, lobotomized celebrities gurning out of every available surface. So I thought we’d do this instead.

To recap then, or to inform new viewers: Mashemon are a band who make their music in the North West of England. We are two in number and the number of us is two. We use instruments and computers and we make music that goes woop, if it isn’t going woop it is going bang or fizz.

We’ve been going for about a year, we’ve played about a dozen gigs in various places to varying numbers of people. We’ve produced 3 CD singles so far and are just about to put the finishing touches to our first opus – an album by the name of Removal Music. More about that in coming days.

You can look at some videos on our website at mashemon.co.uk

Follow us on Facebook or myspace. Or twitter. That’s about your lot for today.