Hand turned sponge onion

Stayed up late watching Bernard Purdie videos on YouTube the other night. It left me looking at drum kits but thankfully I restrained myself and didn’t reach for the credit card. There is absolutely no reason for me to fill more space which I need for living in with another music related item. Where will I sleep? Where will I shit? No drums.

We have started the process of creating another EP. Bits and bobs are slowly coming together. Hopefully it won’t be as long a process as the last one, which should have taken a couple of months and ended up taking a year. That was entirely because I am so bleeding slow. At this point I will refrain from saying anything more about it because most of it won’t actually happen. When it does finally arrive you’ll never know what you missed out on. Until the 50^th Anniversary editions start coming out.

I found myself in Basingstoke the other day. It took about five hours to get there. Basingstoke has a lot of hanging baskets. I grew up not far from Basingstoke and I endured a low level feeling of dread that someone I knew from way back when would suddenly appear. I think I have shed most of my Southern England sensibilities, even though I have preserved the accent somewhat. Knowing that I was probably surrounded by Tories and UKIPpers and they might spring out and spray me with their racism and bigotry was akin to expecting the sky to fall in. Probably very unfair of me, they would be too frightened by my beard and suntan and would simply call the Police.

Basingstokian: Help! Police! There’s a terrorist walking towards the train station! He’s got a beard and is wearing a sweater that is not suitable for the weather at this time of year at this latitude!

Basingstokian Police Ossifers: Quick! To the riot van!

Me: Death to the hanging baskets!

PC Golightly: Fall back boys, he’s too strong for us!

Captain Tory Wanker: Have no fear, Captain Tory Wanker is here!

I’ll leave that there. I was going to introduce UKIP Catamite Lad but I didn’t want to insult catamites. It’s hard enough being a catamite at the best of times I imagine, without getting dragged into half-baked poorly written imaginary situations, such as the 2015 Conservative Manifesto.

I thaaank yoooooow!

Master Kung Fu with Jeremy Irons

I was watching this documentary on YouTube about Gerhard Richter and below, in the comments section someone had made a series of anti-Semitic comments about “a Jew smearing paint”. Hateful comments. Still, I had read them and now they were in my head. As I watched the documentary I could hear the words echoing in my head, tagged on to everything else that was going on.

It made me think back to when I was a child and hearing some other child say that he would think things about black people which he knew where wrong but he said the words in his head anyway. He did not believe them, he was just remembering them when prompted. So the same thing was happening to me as I watched this documentary and I wondered to myself, what are you actually supposed to do about this? Keep watching the documentary, maybe have a word with the dogs. Have a cup of coffee. Write a blog and put a ring around the thoughts so you know where they are, keep an eye on them.

Something as obvious as this, something as palpably wrong as this is an easy enough task, it has had more of an impact on my mood than anything else. However, given the incremental shades of bigotry, what bits sneak in without being noticed? A whole sump of bigotry that sloshes around all day, leaking out here and there and you don’t know about it most of the time.

When something like “a Jew smearing paint” has nothing to hang on, it falls out quickly enough, the trace it leaves is questioning; what is it like to have this anti-Semitic reflex? Change it to “a Tory smearing paint” and it will stick to me and potentially obscure something worth noticing. I know what is to have the anti-Tory reflex and there’s a good part of me that doesn’t like it. Hard not have one when so much about it seems to be true, although nothing as obtuse and lacking in subtlety as a bigoted reflexive response can ever really be true, not in my book anyway.

46 minutes in and the thought is gone and the paintings are being painted. He has a nice voice; it would be good if I could understand German but I can’t. But I. Kant. Ha ha ha.

                

Now, here's the way I see it.

In the space of a few moments you can find out how many people have died as a result of acts of violence against civilian populations which fit the current description of Terrorism. Here’s a list of place names that have suffered the worst events so far in July:

Nice, Baghdad, Dhaka, Al-Haskeh, the Mausoleum of Sayid Mohammed bin Ali al-Hadi and Aleppo.

At least 560 people have been killed in these six events, the vast majority being civilians. All of these deaths will be the result of nation states taking actions which had foreseeable consequences. To suggest that “no-one could have predicted what would happen when x did y” is not usually factually correct. To suggest that the violence we see today around the globe is not the result of the activities of nation states such as the USA, Russia, Britain, China and France is to deny all the evidence that history provides us with. It is banal, mundane and obvious. That does not stop our rulers and their mouthpieces from denying that it is the case.

Violence on an industrial scale is now the norm. The First World War made it clear enough. The Second World War showed how the process could be refined and made more efficient and varied. The Nazi Blitzkrieg, the Allied Bombing Campaign, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And the rest. The USA, Russia, Britain, China and France manufacture and sell weapons of remarkable complexity, sophistication and brutality. These weapons are being used each and every day to bring about the deaths of perfectly peaceful human beings. The situations in which they are used are the result of centuries of exploitation by a comparatively small, wealthy and powerful number of humans who are unconcerned by the steady deluge of murder.

In the 1950s, in his book The Future of Mankind, Karl Jaspers described how the USA and the West had to prevent the USSR from spreading its totalitarian regime across the globe. According to him, the resistance of totalitarianism was more important than the continued existence of the human race, since what good is being alive without freedom? Read today it seems naïve to suppose that the regimes of the West are any less totalitarian than that of the USSR. To suppose that totalitarianism must always take the form of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia is to have a distinct lack of imagination. The tools of repression and coercion are many and varied. The West exports its more homicidal tendencies to the places that it needs to exploit to acquire the raw materials necessary for its continued survival. Augusto Pinochet, Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceausescu were, one supposes, staunch supporters of freedom. Unless you happened to be from the country they were ruling. Export repression, import liberty.

North Africa and the Middle East are where we can look today to see the results of this process. The effort to secure control over oil supplies and markets for weapons has not been entirely without incident. Whether these bumps in the road are intentional or not does not diminish the opportunities they present. Given the willingness of nations to send millions of people to their deaths in the 20th Century it would take a remarkable amount of optimism to suppose that this tendency has somehow vanished. To suppose that governments would actually try to take rational steps to end the relentless, grinding, pulverising hell of it all is to suppose that they would do something that was not in their best interests. It is worth bearing in mind that your best interests as a peaceful citizen do not entirely correspond to your government’s best interests (as if you imagined that this was not the case).

Is it entirely mad to suppose that events such as we have just seen in Nice are as necessary to the process as the atrocities in Baghdad, Syria, the Gaza Strip, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen and all the rest? If the threat of violence was not felt as keenly as it is, would it be possible to continue the brutal exploitation of the rest of the world under the guise of protecting a country’s own population? At the height of the colonial period the domestic populations of the colonial powers would be either ignorant of the oppression and murder which was perpetrated by their country or sanguine about it due to ideologies of racial superiority. Now that ignorance is harder to maintain (although not that much harder) there needs to be another justification for a country’s actions, justifications such as acting in self-defence when attacked by an enemy nurtured and strengthened by the same country’s activities. And this is not a suggestion that vast conspiracies are at play behind the scenes; everything is there to see if you look.

Terrorism is not the result of some infernal immaculate conception. The terrorist attacks which have been the dominating narrative of the 21st Century so far are not without cause. The solutions so far have failed, demonstrably so. It is banal, mundane and obvious. When the next attack happens, wherever that happens to be, it is highly unlikely that the response will be anything that has not been tried so far. The certainty is that more people’s worlds will come to an end as the result an elite who are unaccountable, inaccessible and above the concerns of you and me. It is to be hoped that at some stage, before humanity succeeds in murdering itself entirely, this state of affairs will change.

Today we are emancipated from all narcissists

I finally got my copy of V. V. Barnett’s Partial Sketches: Picture Partial today. Really fascinating stuff. Big old thing, and second hand so the binding is on the way out, but there are some amazing things in it; preparatory sketches for Barnett’s main triumvirate, the Bristol Series and the UtUt Process from 1973 to 1976.

There’s a good amount of his jazz period as well, when he would address the page in the Japanese style whilst syncopating his strokes to live musicians such as Davis Huntington, Eric P Anders and Giles Pallas when they were in residence at the Down Stroke in Munich and the Penny Penny in Bremen. Unlike previous editions the quality of the pictures have been improved so that you can see the characteristic gouges and scrapes which V.V was renowned for.

Leafing through the numerous prints you can see why Barnett was called the Pollock of the Pencil when he was in his pomp. It is also clear that his flirtation with non-figurative art was brief and, from Barnett’s own notes, failed to satisfy his artistic aspirations. The collection ends with his famous sketches of the Norwich Warbler which proved to be his most enduring work and what he is best remembered for today. 

Candid chiropody photos available in L, XL and XXL

There’s a new economic Armageddon on its way apparently, this one to be caused by the mass selloff of buy to let houses, which will lead, along labyrinthine and occult pathways, to either more public service cuts and general misery or to a glorious revolution or nothing at all. There’s also word that there may be a snap general election on the way, which would be quite a thrill. Let’s see how many people vote Conservative despite all the terrible things they have done. I would imagine that a good number will still vote for them to fix everything and also to keep out the hordes of Johnny and Jane Foreigner who want to swamp Cambridge and make it smell of their spicy foreign cookery. Saint and Greavsie preserve us.

I, like many many people the world over, probably didn’t entirely understand why it all went to hell last time but have been made aware of two possible causes; that it was because the government had borrowed too much money to try and make the country a bit less shit or that “The Banks” did it by using money in new and indecipherable ways. That the national debt is higher now than it was under Labour and the country is still shit for millions of people (some of whom voted for the Tories) does not seem to invalidate the argument that it was Labour what done it, which goes to show how well the message has been sold.

Heather and I were in Liverpool on Saturday and whilst we were queuing for the cash machine at the top of Bold Street we listened to a very angry man tell his woes, at quite a high volume, to another guy who stood there patiently listening. He really was very angry indeed, the Job Centre were treating him like a fool and the old geezer in the flat above him was making a racket and would not stop for anyone. Neither he nor the man he was talking to looked well, they had the grey skin and stooped posture which you can only get if you have nothing to divert your attention from the daily grind of having no money and nothing to look forward to. It was a bloody awful picture he was painting but it did not stop two passing students stopping and filming him with their phones. Heather asked them “Are you going to post that online now? Because it would be bad if that happened to you, wouldn’t it?” They looked a bit sheepish and stopped filming. I would not put it past them to still make a spectacle of this misery.

Money has changed, or so I read yesterday in an article by Lisa Adkins called “What can Money Do?”. It used to measure the value of things and mediate the exchange of one resource with another. You’d do your work, get your wages and exchange it for something else. The money itself, for most people, wasn’t the important bit, it was what you could get with it that mattered. Now most people in the country no longer have this relationship with money, whether they realise it or not. You get your wages and the most pressing use for it is to service your debts. If you’ve not got any debts, well done, you are very clever, give yourself a pat on the back and prepare a sermon or two. For the rest of us there are not only bills to pay, food to buy so we can eat and clothes to buy so that we can keep our Sandy Balls and Cheddar Gorges hidden,  there are money men to pay off. That’s where the money gets made, not by making anything but by lending money and charging interest. I’ve often thought that I was in the wrong business, I thought that I should be in the A4 printer paper business since it has been ubiquitous for years but now I see the light and I was wrong. I should have been a loan shark, but a respectable one who just takes your stuff away and doesn’t break your knees. Or even better, doesn’t do anything to you, just keeps extracting the money for ever and ever because you can get a job which pays just enough to keep your nose above water. A successful parasite does not kill its host.

It could be said that there’s nothing about the above story that is especially hard to grasp, so it makes you wonder how so many people got into this position in the first place. I’ve met and had the pleasure of talking to people who put the blame squarely on the shoulders of people spending beyond their means and that if they weren’t such weak and flimsy creatures they would have never got themselves into this mess in the first place. People like that tend to have a pretty large blind spot when it comes to issues of control and trust. If the experts at the bank, people you expect to know about money, are saying to you “it’s ok, take out a loan, everything will be fine” then it is understandable that you would trust their judgement, they are a bank after all. And if a bank offers you a credit card there’s a good chance that you will think “it’s ok, they wouldn’t give me a credit card if it was a bad idea”. Then there’s the mortgage and the finance on the car and once you’ve got all this going, are you thriving? Have you been emancipated? No, you’ve signed away a portion of your life to some blokes in an office somewhere who do fuck all. Sorry, they sell you money and then do fuck all.

Kind of makes one feel a little vulnerable. Kind of makes a person want to find some reliable, trustworthy sort to fix everything and tell you it is alright. Who better than a selection of millionaire public school boys? Who better than a group of chinless wonders who know how the whole thing operates because daddy worked in the city and this knowledge is in their DNA? It’s not as if privileged rich arrogant white neo-liberals (or PRAWNs as I have just started calling them) have ever made life a force 10 shite gale before is it? And where’s the fun in not waking up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and gripped by the fear that your maths has failed you and there won’t be enough money in the bank to pay all the direct debits this month? That’s what makes life worth living, that burst of adrenaline, your heart pounding in your chest, that scream rising in your throat. It’s better than bungee jumping into a pit of bears wearing a suit made of salmon. It’s a real thrill. Thinking back to that man near the cash machine I may have got it all wrong; he wasn’t angry at all, he was just super stoked because of all the far out wild times he has been having. He’s grey from all the adrenaline. He’s having a fucking riot.

Here's a picture of  bear. He doesn't care. Not one bit.

Miniature Golf Strip Tease Classes

It cannot come as a surprise to learn that there is pay inequality in the UK and that the problem is getting worse.  The gap between the rich and the rest is increasing and there seems to be no indication that this trend is going to stop. If you were a cynical sort then you would think there was something going on, especially when you consider the following:

• Support for the unemployed and those who cannot work due to ill health or disability is being drastically slashed, thus making the prospect of unemployment a terrifying one.

• A rise in zero hour contracts and below inflation pay rises makes work for the majority a less and less profitable proposition.

• Personal debt increases due to low pay and the constant marketing onslaught which is the lifeblood of an economy based on the endless consumption of mass produced ephemera.

Those three factors alone would make it likely that people in precarious employment, who have amassed an amount of personal debt will accept any pay and conditions. If you have a workforce who is prepared to accept a substantial degradation of their situation as long as they can retain some kind of employment it should not be surprising when companies get away with what they can.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to get a job in the NHS and after 12 years I am in a position I would have not thought possible when I started. I put 75% of this good fortune down to the fact that I have white skin, a penis, straight teeth and good posture. I’ll lob middle class in there as well. Turning up more often than not turning up is worth another 10%, leaving me with about 15% that I can claim to be somehow down to my good judgement and competency.

There have been some shit jobs too and it was only because of working tax credits and housing benefits that I could afford to eat properly, pay my bills and buy shoes. I lived in Swansea at the time and you needed to make sure your shoes did not have holes in them from September to May because it would not stop raining and trench foot is not a good look. If I was in the same position under the current government I can imagine how life would be and it would not be pretty or very long. It isn’t hyperbole to say this either; you would need to have your head buried fairly deep to ignore the steadily rising tide of suicide. The Samaritans 2015 report, which contains data up to 2013, states that the male suicide rate is at its highest since 2001 with 19 per 100,000 men killing themselves. Given the intervening years I would be disinclined to suppose that this trend has changed substantially. Here’s a link to the report:

http://www.samaritans.org/sites/default/files/kcfinder/branches/branch-96/files/Suicide_statistics_report_2015.pdf

And the report from the Office for National Statistics is here:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_395145.pdf

The Prime Minister’s Questions session on the 27th of January saw our mighty leader David Cameron refer to the people living in abject misery in the camp in Calais, who have fled vicious and relentless violence in their own countries, as “a bunch of migrants.” This does not stand out as particularly unusual language for him, his party members and the sort of person who votes Conservative but it is disgusting all the same. Cameron seems to have a very particular view of anyone unfortunate enough not to be pleased with the general debasement of humanity and I don’t think it is entirely positive. Again, if you were a cynical sort you might suppose that he thinks you’re only really human if you’ve got a couple of million in the bank, drink the blood of virgins and sacrifice kittens to Cthulhu.

I had the good fortune to find myself sat at a table somewhere in the Midlands before Christmas. I learned that someone had a husband who wanted to be a Tory MP and wanted to bring back hanging. This wasn’t some retired Captain of Industry or Wing Commander, but a young man. Two things struck me as unusual:

A. That anyone would admit to being a Conservative.

B. That anyone would marry someone who admitted to being a Conservative.

The fact that he wanted to bring back hanging seemed to go without saying and did not really surprise me. I imagine that this reveals some deep seated prejudice I have against white middle class men who want to protect their privileged position and are happy to let the rest of the world burn. I really must work on that. The other thing that was surprising was that no one else around the table expressed any particular emotion either, if anything some seemed to think it a rather good idea. I’m not sure if the “it” they thought was a good idea was becoming a Tory MP or bringing back hanging or if they even separated the two.

On my way home I pondered the fact that back in Liverpool the chances of repeating this experience were extremely low. Does this mean that the people of Liverpool are somehow morally superior? I don’t think it does, you can hear some equally unpleasant notions being aired round this way. Rather, it shows just how thoroughly the Conservatives have shat on Liverpool over the years. This fact yields a glimmer of hope, but only a glimmer; if people really have to be covered in Tory shit, utterly immersed in the stuff, before they vote for someone else, surely that point will be passed in the next four years, unless by then they have convinced enough people that it could be worse, which is not impossible. If you demoralise and disenfranchise enough of the population, beat the will to resist out of them, then if any of them vote at all they will still be outnumbered by the minority of people you have favoured with your largesse. That’s how they won the last one, if not completely then certainly in part.

Some of the points raised in this essay are set to music in the following song by popular electro-rock beat combo Mashemon. Here’s a link to their song Great Job, which will be part of an EP to be released once I’ve done pulled my finger out and finished the last song. You’re welcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1doRz17pqQ

It’s fiction about stuff that is already there

Is it too soon yet? I might be about to put some kind of voodoo curse on things, but there’s a substantial amount of work being done. Mashemon work at that. I imagine you guessed. Whether you wanted it or not music is being made.

But why now? Why come out of hiding right now, at this stage in human history? The answer is simple; the world needs men like us to stand up, comb our hair, tighten our belts, sit down, scratch our balls and do some electro rock music. So that’s what you will be getting and by golly you’ll be thankful. When your grandchildren ask you what the most important event of the early twenty first century was you’ll be able to look them straight in their bionic eyes and without a moment’s hesitation you will be able to say to them:

“Mashemon did another record. Don’t know what they were going on about. Pass the (insert futuristic staple foodstuff). What time is it? I remember when cheese was a thing.”

Thank you for remaining in your seat and not thinking.

What’s that? What’s that you say? Some kind of tooting coming from the basement? Strange men eating salad on the bowling green? Someone wants to touch you on the knee? You want someone to touch you on the knee? What?

You were abducted by aliens? They left you on a small island in the Pacific and you had to swim home? You can talk to sea urchins? Boom bang bang boom bang bang?

Pointy fingers and electric guitars? No, surely not, not that, no not that surely not that. No.

Assessing the Cyborg/Gibbon dichotomy in modern cuisine

I’ve been existing in a state of political confusion for what seems like an awfully long time. At some stage I think my brain just stopped being able to accept the bleak truth that democracy is dead and there’s bugger all I can do about it and decided, very much in keeping with the times, to take the executive decision to just pump out white noise whenever I tried to engage rationally with the issues of the day.

This resulted in my exasperated refrain of “I blame Thatcher”. It could be argued that I wasn’t wrong, but it really meant  “I don’t understand where it all went wrong but I know she was something to do with it.”
Since the old woman died a number of good things have happened: the media went monkey-cock crazy about all the stuff that THATCHER! did and how it was great and how it was awful and how very, very divisive she was and how you have to be respectful of old dead tyrants who supported mass murderers and sold bombs to dictators. It was good because it sent me down a hyperlink rabbit hole to finally find some decent information about why things are the way they are and how neoliberalism has screwed the vast majority of us brutally, roughly and without our consent in whichever hole we were least keen on getting screwed in, be it in the post-box or up the cat-flap.

This in no way equates to the sudden acquisition of valid opinions which would necessarily stand up to intense scrutiny, but I can at least begin to find out why there seems to be no social-democratic alternative available in mainstream politics and precisely why the concept of introducing the free market into all areas of state activity is so very, very wrong.

Most of us can see what the free market gets up to. Managers with beating sticks forcing Bangladeshi sweat shop workers to go into a building that promptly falls down. That’s what the free market does. It seeks to suck the money out of your pocket in any way it possibly can and concentrate that money at the pinnacle of an impossibly high pyramid, a pyramid built from the toil of all us grinning idiotic slaves. And they do it absolutely everywhere.

The NHS is being forced to contract out its services (not new that) and private healthcare companies are taking an ever larger piece of the pie. Where does the money come from? You, you dumb monkey. Where does it go? It goes up! All the way to the filthy rich geezers (there’s a high probability that it’ll be a geezer) sat on the board and to the shareholders. And we know what the filthy rich do; they sew pigs together and fire them at the moon. They put cows on roller skates and make them joust for biscuits. They make babies drink their own tears until they turn into fish. I have no idea what the filthy rich do and I never ever will.
Local government has to do the same. We are told that this outsourcing and contracting is more efficient and better value for money and the market knows best and that all the crashes, disasters, atrocities and fish babies are not the result of giving ever longer reigns to an unprincipled greed machine, but because poor people believed that they could have nice things if they borrowed some money and it would be fine and because poor people are all lay-abouts and scroungers and criminals and that what we really need to do is stop worrying about the people who actually made off with all the cash and find a way to make people’s lives which are currently really, really shit even shitter.

None of this will be news to anyone who is actually reading this, it’s not even news to me. What I was having trouble understanding was why there did not seem to be any political alternative to what we’ve ended up with. It’s easy enough to say that all politicians are the same but it is nice to be able to put your finger on how they are all the same. Turns out it is this belief in the free market as the answer to what ails us.

Funny how, now that I’m looking at it typed out, this is what I was thinking all along but had failed to organise into a coherent statement. What will be interesting in the years left to me before I am eaten by a weaponised koala paratrooper (I’ll tell you about it sometime) is finding out what it all means and whether we will ever throw off the shackles of the unethical and uncaring free market bastard army we currently find ourselves the victims and accomplices of.

Thanks for dying Thatcher. You’ve prompted me to replace my befuddled and impotent rage with a focussed, informed and erudite impotent rage. Suck my plums.

I'm dizzy from the minty tingles!

That’s three grand nights in the Pilgrim that we’ve notched up now. We seem to be doing rather well at this caper. Z.E.B.R.A was great, sweaty and really very groovy. And I’m fairly certain he managed to hit himself in the face because he was getting so far into the groove. I too have hit myself in the face, many a time. I have also broken a deckchair because I was air-drumming so hard. I think the seeds of an excellent performance art project are right there.

Gorp were also amazing. I spent my formative years surrounded by people who liked prog-rock. I confess it was never my favourite thing in the world but Gorp’s sound had a sufficiently edgy enough to please me. And no one was wearing a cape, which was a relief. I’m the cape wearer in these parts. That night I had decided to wear a fairly preposterous garment – a jacket with tails and great big silver button things. I think I looked like sex on a stick, a pretty big stick at that. A Gallop poll found that 87% of women over 35 agreed.

The specific stick.

March is looking like it is going to be an interesting month for us. We will be doing a session for Dave Monk’s show on Radio Merseyside, which will involve acoustic guitars. I’ve got new strings on mine and everything. I even gave it a polish with a bit of Pledge. Smells like spring cleaning. Polish technology has come a long way since I was a lad. According to the label this polish can be used on wood, plastic, glass, human flesh, space, time, facts, lies, racism, cancer, birds, racist birds, porridge, electoral fraud, delusions, illusions, confusions, scandals, handles, sandals, moths, cloths, lofts, ditches, bitches, witches, snitches, hovercraft, Lovecraft, dove crap, spider-monkeys, monkey spiders, dog spiders, spiders with human heads, spiders with human hands and human heads, human heads with spider eyes, bees with lips, ducks with dicks, cows with wheels, swine in heels, lords on fire, the snooker player Stephen Maguire, knuckle dusters, scrotal fusters (look it up), snowballing, kerb crawling, grass cuttings, face fuddings (don’t look it up), anal warts and existential angst. Remember to use a clean, soft cloth.

Greater Spotted Northern Canadian Lesser Lipped Bee

We will also be playing the Threshold Festival on the 9th of March, specifically in the Roost section at about half seven in the evening, which is a definite improvement from last year when we took to the stage at roughly one in the morning, after having sound checked at about noon. It was a long and unpleasant day. Hopefully this year will be much more fun.

But wait, there’s more. This Saturday we will be playing an animal right’s benefit gig in our old haunt Next to Nowhere. It’s been a while since we were down there so that’s going to be a hoot. And the mighty Z.E.B.R.A. will be joining us!

Rounding the month off will be our 4th Pilgrim gig on the 30th. These have really gone extremely well and I’m really very proud of us for having managed to do it. Yay, go us. Mike has an informative film about glue sniffing lined up for us, which I think we would all do well to watch. Whilst I have managed to get my solvent abuse down to manageable levels recently I know some of you haven’t and it is really in your best interests to do so. It wasn’t so long ago that I was huffing a 15kg Calor Gas Butane cylinder every week, as well as the Perma Gard Expoxy Resin, Loctite Hybrid All Purpose Power Glue, Unibond Repair All Purpose 1min Power Epoxy, Evo Stik Serious Stuff Ultimate Strength Grab Adhesive and my personal favourite Mapei Ultimate Ready Mixed Supergrab Adhesive. Now I’m down to one Tipp-Ex Shake ‘n Squeeze a day. My life is my own again. If I can do it, so can you. Andy can’t, he’s got no willpower at all, but the rest of you can.

Seriously though, solvent abuse is brilliant.

Only joking.

I’m not joking.

Invitations to participate in a scandal are now being accepted

We are 8.2% of the way through 2013’s total allocation of days and we have notched up two performances so far. The second instalment of our five act farce at the Pilgrim was at least fourteen spherical inches of fun. Chris Shennan kicked things off early and was very entertaining indeed. Unfortunately he had to leave early too to go and work, which was a shame.

Some Rabbits were outstanding and they brought fruit flavoured Fox’s Glacier sweets as part of some sterling promotional punning on the name of their new single Some Foxes. We all enjoyed them very much and, what’s more, they are extremely nice people to boot. Liam Some Rabbit will be returning as a Zebra for February. I heartily recommend that you attend.

We were pretty good too. We didn’t fuck up our new song Lucky not Lucky to any great degree so I’ll put that one in the win column. We’ve got another new one on the way for the 9^th of February. See if you can pick it out from the list below:

1. Lips limbs lungs
2. Facts
3. Stone
4. Lucky not lucky
5. Donkey's Arse
6. Curtains
7. Various Propositions
8. Sanity Check

There may be a prize. There may not be a prize.

We also played at Phoenix of Avalon’s EP launch in the Lantern Theatre and we had a very nice time. It’s a very welcoming little theatre and they made us feel very at home. We also picked up a cracking review from www.liverpoolsoundandvision.co.uk.

So all in all we’ve kicked off 2013 quite well. At this point I think it is entirely appropriate to speculate as to what 2013 may hold for us. I have gazed into my crystal prosthetic scrotum and this is what the swirling mystical spermatozoa have revealed:

1. Andy will be invited to produce the next Roger Whittaker album but will turn it down after suddenly developing a terrible fear of beards.
2. Mike will tangle his leads into a knot so dense that it begins to warp the fabric of space. William Shatner will arrive to sort it all out. Andy will record William Shatner’s new album.
3. Matt will discover that it is possible to reanimate corpses using Glade plug-ins and Vimto.
4. Matt’s zombie army will take over Tuscany.
5. Mashemon will enjoy a nice holiday in Tuscany.
6. I will stop worrying and learn to love the bomb.
7. My dog will cost me another massive pile of money when she ends up in the vets after challenging an orang-utan to a gin drinking contest and getting into a fight with a Russian sailor on shore leave.
8. Mashemon will finally finish our rock opera based on Culpeper’s The Complete Herbal after cracking the difficult arrangement of Borage.
9. One of us will learn how to levitate. One of us, who can levitate already, will feel a little less special.
10. My naked arse will be projected onto the surface of the moon so that all the people of the world will be united in admiration of my hot, hot ass.

It is possible that not everything on the list will occur in 2013, some of them may be postponed until 2014 so don’t come to me with disparaging remarks this time next year because I will simply nod sagely, stroke my beard and tell you to blow it up your wazoo.

In other news: I’m pleased to say that playing my new Firebird at the last gig was very pleasant indeed. Now we’ve got Matt making bringing the twang and scratch with his Telecaster the earthier, deeper tone of the Firebird sits very nicely in the mixture. I’ve even ordered some new Bill Lawrence pickups for it, although they seem to be taking their sweet time to get here. I can only imagine that they’ve been stolen by Rock and Roll Pirates who have put them to use in their swashbuckling activities of deflowering maidens, brawling with burly Hungarians and rocking out with their cocks out.

Speaking of which, because of the low slung nature of the new guitar I can happily rock out with my cock out all the time and no one will be any the wiser, until I start playing it with my teeth. The guitar that is, I gave up those sorts of contortions when the subscriptions to my pay-per-view website hit the £1,000,000 mark and I realised that I could pack it in and avoid major back surgery. Something to bear in mind.

My mastery of the reverse lunge is unrivalled!

December’s gig went really well. We have launched our new EP and people have reported that they like it. This is a good thing to hear. I would like to think that someone, somewhere, did a little getting ready for work dance to it, or maybe did a little getting ready for bed dance. Or maybe both, if that’s the line of work they are in.

I did a little dance the other day. I think I was eating something tasty and it compelled me to do a little jig. My hips were very mobile. It was not entirely an appropriate jig.

Our next performance is a mere 10 days away and as far as doing a new song each gig is concerned we may fall at the first jump and have to be taken into the car park and put out of our misery with a brick. Things that may have caused us to fail:

1. Micro-organisms.
2. Festivities.
3. The implacable marching of time.

Of course, we may find in our two remaining rehearsals that this song comes very naturally to us and that there was nothing to worry about at all in which case the beginning of this piece will just be me scare mongering needlessly and you’ll say:

”He’s losing his mind.”

And I’ll say:

“Who are you talking to?”

Ha! See what I did there? Try to pull that shit with me buddy and I’ll have to teach you a hard lesson in the art of recognising shit that shouldn’t have been pulled. So put that shit-puller down and button your lip, wise-acre.

Another thing we may or may not be doing at the next gig is bringing along my old and rather large bass-combo to act as some kind of sub-woofer to give things a bit more bottom end. The bass amp is currently sat under my stairs, where it has been for quite some time. I’m going to get it out and turn it on tonight and see what happens. Oooh, shut your face. Filthy. Providing everything is in order with it I’ll be getting Mike to give me a hand carrying it to the van and sticking it inside. Behave. Then we’ll give it a good working over in rehearsal to make sure it will be up to the task of lasting through the next gig. Dirty!

I do hope you’ll be coming to our next night at the Pilgrim. It’ll be on Saturday the 12th of January. Doors open at 19.30 ish. Bring a friend. Bring two. Now return to whatever it was you were just doing. Except for you. Don’t do that.

Mentol rocket blast! Full & Frontal!

The expansion has been a success and we now move onto phase 8 of the plan. At least I am fairly certain this is phase 8. Things left to do this year:

1. Do our final 3 track EP for the year.
2. Do a split EP with Dass Unser so we can jettison our pop music ballast.
3. Start making preparation for what we will be up to next year.

 We’ve already got started on next year’s project and I’m confident it will be at the very least a pleasing diversion. One thing I will say is, if you haven’t got hold of anything which we’ve already done either on CD or as a download, do it before the end of the year.

Next gig is on the 19^th of October in the Lomax. We’ve got some class acts lined up, as displayed below:

It is going to be Professor Graham’s first gig with us and I am expecting you all to show him some goddamn respect. Not only is he more intelligent than you are, but he is also a professional wrestler and can probably open you up like a tin of sardines. So don’t start giving him aggro or being all up in his face because, and I am not exaggerating, he will fucking end you.

Really, I don’t know why I always have to tell you to just behave and act nice, anyone with half a brain would have learnt from the last time, but no, you just can’t help yourself. What about that butcher you were taunting last Tuesday? And that chef in the Chinese restaurant? I am not going to spend another evening in A&E waiting for you to have something else sewn up, stitched back on, pulled out or shoved back in. 

In other news: I saw my second Mock Mock Tudor house yesterday on my way to Shrewsbury. If you or anyone you know lives in a Mock Mock Tudor house I would love to meet either you or them and I woud love to love you or them even more. 

Other other news: that thing I said about these blogs happening more often: fucking lies! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAAAAAAAAAAAA!

If I let go of it for just a second we'll all be impregnated

We were trying to think of something different the other day. We are playing at the FesEvol at the The Kazimier on Saturday the 12^th of August and since we’ll be playing in the daylight we won’t have the opportunity to use the projectors. This means that we will have to rely on our own natural charm, charisma and stage presence to embellish the performance. Hmmm.

So we were thinking of ways we can do something a bit different and we pondered, stared into the middle distance, stroked our chins, made thinking noises and furrowed our brows. This is what we came up with:

1. Perform naked.
2. Get an escapologist.
3. Grow moustaches.

I think you’ll agree that’s certainly a list. As to whether the items in the list are quality items, I think the less said the better. Sometimes we come up with better ideas than this, but not this time.

If we were to be trendy zeitgeisty types, we’d put it to the vote. Except it would be a thoroughly demoralising process for all concerned no matter what the outcome was. Much like chemical warfare or the postal service.  

It’s not always easy to come up with an interesting or novel idea at the drop of a hat, although strangely enough the International Hat Dropping Championships were thought up in just that fashion. Still, relying on serendipity isn’t going to put dinner on the table or money in the bank or ducks in the pond or monkeys in the trees or fish in the sea or tassels on nipples or chips in the fryer or ground glass in the camp commandant’s mashed potatoes or Buck Rodgers in the 25^th Century. 

This effort from Geoff "Fiery" Boycott saw him lift the Chalice in 1970

What I’m saying is, if we’d had a flip chart and some pens and a day of team building exercises we might have come up with something better. So don't make the same mistake. Mashemon Inc. run a series of Action Activity Days focusing on fostering improved inter-personal team dynamics, re-balancing systemic process inequalities, providing nurture bubbles for proto-cognitive realisation gradients and facilitating non-culpable responsibility “we-states” vital in the full formation of intermeshed community zero-scale market gearing in the modern world. 

Formalising the "notion-of-us" in a respect-rhombus

Prices start at £300 per person per day. Buffet lunch and light refreshments included. Bring a change of clothing.

Ultimately it will all come down to the performance on the day. I am planning on taking one song at a time, playing the high percentage notes, keeping focussed on doing the simple stuff right and playing each ball on its merits. You simply cannot afford to make simple mistakes at this level and you should be able to clear up in one visit. Our defence is strong, we’ve been training well and Andy is getting over his groin strain. He might need a pain killing injection, but he’s a brave lad and I’m sure he’ll give 110%. As far as Mike’s upcoming trial for racism, homophobia, sexual misconduct and armed robbery is concerned, we are not making any comment at the present time. Because we’re a little scared of him. 

It's about this time of the day that I like to tell you to go and boil your head.

I saw butterflies eat flesh!

I return! Like an eel in a coracle, or a wasp in a thermos flask. I know I’ve not been getting as many posts on here as I should and I know I’ve said before that I’ll be more prolific so I’m here to tell you two things:

1. There will be more blog posts in the future
2. They will appear at a higher frequency
3. They will make less sense than ever.

You can put that in a bag and call take it to the funeral home.

Talking of funeral homes, there’s one down the road from where I live which has the most interesting exterior decoration this side of the M6. You’re all familiar with what a Tudor house looks like I presume. White walls, black beams, you might be able to summon the image in front of your mind right now. There might even be a Tudor man and Tudor woman standing outside the house. Give them a wave. Are they waving back? Try again. Anything? Probably not. Bastards. 

Oi! Big nose! Look me in the eye when you don't wave at me.

You’re also probably aware of the 20^th Century Mock-Tudor house. You know, you see them in middle-class housing estates with their black timbers and white bits of wall. There’s probably a Ford Mondeo in the drive way. Possibly a Ford Focus as well. There’s a nice couple standing outside. Give them a wave. Are they waving back? Probably not. That’s because you are too poor and they are afraid of you. If you look carefully they have both let a little bit of wee come out. 

Stop being happy and wealthy and eat your dinner.

So, we know what a Tudor house looks like, although you might be thinking of the Tudor Revival of the late 19^th and early 20^th Century. I’ll let you off this time, but my goodness you’re pushing it. One of these days we’re going to come to blows and when the punching starts I punch to maim. Not to demoralise or deter, proper horrible, brutal, nasty, ugly punches. And I’ll kick you in the balls as well. If you’re not a ball owner I’ll kick someone else in their balls and it will be all your fault. So please, just stop dicking around and pay attention. It’s your own time you’re wasting.

If I may continue. You’ve got your Tudor house and you’ve got your Mock Tudor house. Both of them involve the use of wooden beams visible on the exterior, in the Tudor house they are actually structural whereas in the Mock Tudor house they are more decorative, to give the impression of a half-timber structure.

The funeral home down the road has taken this one step further by painting on the dark timer beams. Yes, that’s right; it’s a Mock Mock Tudor building. I don’t know whether to shit myself or go blind. Suffice to say, every time I pass by I give it a round of applause.

I’m guessing that right about now you’re thinking:

 “That’s exactly the look I’ve been searching for my home. But how can someone like me ever afford to have a house like that?”

Well there’s no need to fret or sell your organs because Mashemon Property Redesign offer a wide range of exciting design possibilities for your home. With prices starting as low as £37.42 (excluding VAT) you can have the dream home you’ve always dreamed of dreaming of. Give us a call and we’ll be round in a flash. A cup of tea would be nice. White, no sugar. Thanks, sugar tits.

Parasitic Twin Cat Hats

No more gigs booked! All done and over with for a few months whilst Mike goes off to spread falafel around the country. I’m not entirely upset by this prospect. We’ve been pondering what we should do live and now is a good time to have a think and let our creative juices seep out. Of course, we’ll be reasonably careful with this creative seepage, you can’t just let it go everywhere. Unwanted creative seepage can be hazardous and shouldn’t be allowed to come into contact with certain sorts of plastic, such as polyethylene terephthalate or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. If this does occur expect significant discolouration and possibly even sonic disruption approaching 17 microconners. Remember: aural safety is everyone’s responsibility. Be pure, be vigilant, behave.

Ok, you can put your pens down now. Let’s have a little chat. As you grow older you may notice your body begins to change in certain ways. This is no cause for alarm, unless you notice the following:

1. A strange musty odour whenever you turn around too quickly.
2. A green tinge to anything that begins with a vowel.
3. A desire to worship clouds.
4. Involuntary barking at cats.
5. Assorted monkey business.
6. Stamps.

If you notice any of the above, contact your doctor immediately and ask to be referred to the Mashemon Clinic for Inexplicable Afflictions, Mushrooming and Brain Torsion where you can be seen by one of our highly skilled specialists.

Don't worry, I've trimmed it. Pass the butter.

I’d like to talk to you today specifically about Brain Torsion. This is a rapidly growing problem in people of between your age and younger, including people who were born before you. Some academics and scientists say that Brain Torsion is caused by increased atypical sensual stimulation as a result of, but not exclusively due to:

   A. Modern fabrics.
   B. Inquisitive neighbours.
   C. Heavy, clay based soil.
   D. The presence of bats.
   Q. Persistent non-sequiturs. 
   4. Undistributed middle terms in categorical syllogisms.  
  ▲. Knees.

Brain Torsion can lead to a number of symptoms, mostly undetectable but all very serious and potentially lethal, if not extremely debilitating. If you suspect that you or a loved one may have Brain Torsion follow this simple procedure. If you can answer yes to at least 2 of the following questions there is a high chance that it is unlikely that either you or your loved ones may have not developed or are in the process of developing the pre-symptomatic symptoms of someone in a post-tensioning situation, or Pre-Brain-Torisional-Tensioning to use its technical term.

Apple:          Are you or the person you are examining breathing in the same direction you or they are facing?

Orange:         Do you or the person you are examining mistake numbers for the names of fruit?

Cantaloupe:   Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn’t have fallen in love with?

Banana:         Do you remember the first time?

Pear:             Can you remember a worse time?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions then you need to contact the Mashemon Clinic immediately. Don’t even bother with your doctor, you’re too far gone and he won’t believe a word you say, even if he can understand you because right now you’re probably spouting utter gibberish.

To contact the Mashemon Clinic for Inexplicable Afflictions, Mushrooming and Brain Torsion call the number below:

Telephone:

If you cannot see the number then may God have mercy on us all because chances are you are probably.

Lemon scented crack den

The dust has settled around the Kompressor EP then. We’ve had some good reviews of the opening night here:

http://www.peterguy.merseyblogs.co.uk/2012/03/mashemon-dass-unser-so-sexual.html

and here:

http://mangoneblog.tumblr.com/post/20123960451/review-mashemon-ep-launch-saturday-17-03-12

Seba Rashii supplied a glowing review of the EP:

http://seba-rashii.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/reviewmashemon-kompressor-ep.html

And with that brief flurry it’s all gone silent. The world has spun and more important things have occurred. So rather than pine for our brief moment in the sun we’ve started planning our next release.

In their rawest form the plans are as follows:

• Another 4 track EP and accompanying gig.
• Some videos featuring actual band members in motion.
• Some web-based performances for you to cut out, keep and touch yourself to.
• A gig on a zeppelin floating over the great cities of Europe.
• The grand opening of the “Mashemon Boutique of Perversion” Fetish Emporium.

I admit that some of these events are more likely than others and I wouldn’t be so bold as to put a time scale on any of it, but I will say that the EP and videos will be done in a matter of months. The other stuff may take a little longer.

We have a gig coming up in the Zanzibar on the 4^th of May. A good slot as well, at 10.00pm. So you have plenty of time to lose your inhibitions beforehand. Apparently we will be acquiring some tickets, so get in contact via Facebook if you want one.

Tomorrow we will be attending the Record Store Day Band Fair at FACT to distribute some of the final copies of the Kompressor EP. Come along and get one while there are physical copies left. Kicks off at 2pm.

This must be one of the most sensible posts I have ever done. It is full of actual information that may be of interest and use to people. I don’t know if this bodes well. I’ll have to start concocting something opaque and obtuse as soon as possible.

When the red light is on all debauchery must cease

I was standing in the Lomax late on Saturday night, sweaty and not wearing any trousers feeling very pleased with myself, despite having cocked up the beginning of the last song, just like I said I would. Next time I might try saying “I will now play this song perfectly” and see what happens. Probably end up setting myself on fire or falling out of a moving vehicle or tipping scalding hot soup into my lap or getting my head caught in a bear trap.

The sound was brilliant, all the bands were superb, the crowd were lovely and we wiggled our fingers, flapped our jaws and waved our arms in the correct ways to get the music to come out. We managed to assemble a top notch-bill again and they all put in great performances. Well done Faded Gold, So Sexual and Dass Unser and also to Frank and his excellent team at the Lomax. Kings and Queens all.

Despite starting the musical preparations at about half past three in the afternoon and spending a fair amount of time walking backwards and forwards through the St Patrick’s Day revellers whilst carrying our heavy pieces of equipment, by the time I got on stage I was feeling remarkably chipper. I got my second wind somewhere between the stroke of ten and plugging in my guitar. Of course, if you had drawn me aside and offered me a comfy chair, a cup of tea and a slice of cake then I don’t know what would have happened but it wouldn’t have been rock and it wouldn’t have been roll.

What could be counted as rock and roll was the amount of hairspray I had used to keep my wayward barnet in good order. Earlier that day I had decided to get another haircut but, breaking with tradition, I didn’t go in, slump in the chair and express in exasperated terms that all I wanted was for them to make me beautiful. This time I went to a place on Picton Road run by a nice chap called Ken. I said “take an inch off all of it” and he did just that. Who would have thought it could be that easy? Satisfied with the job he had done I decided that I would get the damn thing to obey me for once, so I subjugated it brutally.

Another thing that might qualify was the colour of nail varnish I decided to use. Not sure of the name, but it matched my tie, which is the colour of lip stick worn by women of ill repute in BBC 2 dramas from the 1980s. You know the sort of thing, the colour of lip stick on investment bankers’ shirt collars and on the rim of martini glasses. Dennis Potter would probably have approved.

Reading back over those two paragraphs makes me wonder whether I have any repressed issues that need addressing. I’m thinking no.

Hairspray and red might make you think I looked like Robert Smith. I did not look like Robert Smith. Saw him on the telly the day after the gig and came to the conclusion that his hair isn’t quite what it used to be. It was all grey and wispy and I’m sure it kept going in his mouth whilst he was singing. I’m not one to ever say to or about another person that they should get a hair cut, but Robert, darling, I know this guy who’ll take an inch off it all and it will look faaaabulous.

So after the gig, back upstairs, getting out of my suit, I found myself trouserless , sweaty and pleased. Not in the way you’re thinking, I was by myself. And not in that way either. For gawd’s sake. I’m a human being not a lump of meat.

A lump of meat with a cracking ass. I digress.

When I came back down all the new EPs were gone, most of the people were gone and we had to begin the process of lugging stuff back round the corner to Crash Studios. Whilst I was carrying my guitar amp’s speaker cabinet I got stuck behind too slow moving lesbians with matching Mohawks. They apologised when they noticed me huffing and puffing behind them, which was very nice. The same can’t be said for the pile of botoxed and silicone boobed harridans heaped on the corner by the Lisbon who were swaying backwards and forwards and shrieking and shrieking and shrieking and shrieking and shrieking and shrieking. They just stood there swaying, an immovable Wall of Crass. I would have ploughed through the middle of them, but they seemed to tessellate so perfectly there was no gap or crevice to be seen.

As it were..

So I went around, stepped in a puddle of something icky and lumpy and cursed St Patrick and all his little wizards. Later that night I drank a glass of Château Neuf Du Pap and praised Satan for inventing the custard doughnut.

I think that sums it up perfectly.  

I am inviting molestation wearing these dungarees

I have in my hand a copy of our new creation – Kompressor the EP. I’m very pleased. It’s a quality piece of merchandise for sure.

It would not be going too far to say that making it was the most enjoyable time I have ever spent in a recording studio. I don’t tend to like recording studios; they’ve never been the most welcoming of places I find. You do your turn and beetle off to a corner and do something unobtrusive until the grownups are finished. Thankfully Andy is nice and patient and even tolerated me taking forever to do simple things properly.

Looking back over the past 2 and a bit years we have produced a lot of stuff for an unsigned band. Including the Kompressor EP, we’ve recorded and released 19 songs, all beautifully packaged and presented. There’s not a lot of people can say that. Lots of videos on youtube as well. I’m proud of what we’ve done and I don’t say that lightly. Sometimes it has been a bit frustrating because it seems that we don’t get the attention I think we deserve, but then I am biased. You’ll forgive me for that, you always do and that is because you’re a good person.

That’s why it has been particularly gratifying to have seen some good previews for the EP Launch gig this Friday in the Lomax from Sevenstreets, Double Negative and Bido Lito as well as getting a mention on Dave Monk’s Radio Merseyside show and being unsigned band of the week on Chris Currie’s show on 7 Waves Radio. That’s more attention then we’re used to and it feels really good.

Hopefully people will come along and have a great time. It’s a top notch bill and you’ll be walking away with a lovely EP. What would be even better is if everyone who took a CD came and found us on facebook and soundcloud, downloaded some more music and let us know they were enjoying it. I don’t see anything wrong in saying we all need a little affirmation now and again. 

Of course, if you’re feeling generous or you just can’t hold it in I’m always open to adulation, worship and reverence. If you feel the need to touch me you can. I have healing properties. My bath water can heal the blind and cure dysentery. Doves love me, as do rabbits and ponies. Walt Disney based Snow White on me and I have a cracking pair of buttocks.

For all these reasons and more I urge you to come and do something worthwhile with your Saturday night. Come to the Lomax, feel the warm glow of my glory, bask in it. Maybe tell someone you love them and then kiss them, with tongues. Unless they don’t want to. Always a good idea to be sure. If you’re not sure how to be sure, Mashemon have a pamphlet available called:

“When people are interested in your kisses: Know the signs!”

I wrote it. I have a success rate of nearly 83% when it comes to kissing. What’s your success rate? If it’s over 50%, congratulations! You’re not evil.

I'll bring the porcelain crotch, you supply the copper flange.

Our first gig of the year was not a solid gold success. Sometimes the stars align to make everything occur in perfect synchronisation, yielding happiness and bliss for all. Sometimes the stars align, again in perfect synchronisation, to produce a demonic shit storm that leaves you really, really tired. And shitty.

I’m sad to say the stars were arranged against us.

We’re easy going guys, us Mashemons. We like to be helpful, polite and generally genial. Smooth the way and all that. So when we heard that our gig at the Threshold festival was at 1 o’clock in the morning we dutifully swallowed our fears and got on with it. Either no one would be there or everyone would be there, so you never know. Next up we found out the sound check was at 12.30pm. A good 11 and a half hours away from our slot.

“Crikey” we said, “that’s something”.

Still, we sucked up our bellies and turned up and did our thing and went off to meditate and practice our kung-fu. And watch Liverpool’s pathetic performance against Manchester United.

We met up in the evening to pootle along to the festival and catch some of the acts. We saw The Left Hand, who were very good. We saw some other stuff, which I didn’t understand. And by not understanding I don’t mean to say that they were dealing in musical concepts which were beyond my comprehension, I mean “I don’t understand why they are here playing to these people whilst we have to wait until 1 o’clock in the morning to play to no one at all". 

It surprised me:

I once saw a Kiss Tribute band. Ronnie Barker was Gene Simmons. 100% of FACT.

We got to the Elevator bar at about 10.30pm. There were probably about 40 people in at the time. Not sure who played. But about 20% of the crowd left. Then another band, who did for another 20%. Repeat. By the time we went on there was only two punters remaining, one of whom was the redoubtable and indefatigable Tony, the power behind the excellent Liverpool Bands website and facebook page, who had come all the way from Yorkshire and had hung on to see us. We finally got on the stage at 1.30am and started playing at 1.40am. It was not a vintage performance, but we got through everything facing the right way and without any accidents. Well done us.

The sound guys seemed to enjoy it. The bar staff seemed to enjoy it, our much put-upon and abused venue liaison lady enjoyed it and Tony enjoyed it. We spread a little happiness. Well done everyone.

Am I keen to do it again? Not if the stars align in the same way. Am I disappointed that yet again we get stiffed in the scheduling department; yes I am.

Am I looking forward to tonight’s performance in the Lomax, which we organised ourselves? Sweet Jesus Corbett yes I am. I’m going to rock my prosthetic cock off. You see if I don’t.