You are allowed to enjoy this…

Someone has been raiding my dreams, for verily there is beach where all your favourite celebrities from TV, Film and music jig about lip-synching to “Let It Be” by the Beatles. This video is just brilliant on so many levels and features some of my faves too. I dare you not to sit through this without pointing at the screen at couple of times and saying “So that’s what xxx looks like now”.
Plus, it’s got John Nettles – the mighty Bergerac – in it… Sweet!

As a newsagents we deliver to an old people’s home and, obviously, from time-to-time customers in their twilight years pass on, leaving us with a bill to collect. Not a problem usually as we often get a relative come down and thank us for the service and the matter is settled.
One of our customers from the old folks’ home passed away a good few months back – not a problem, I think, it will be settled. The unusual thing about this customer was that I was forwarding the bills onto their relative in town who would come and settle the bill. Of course, being the nice guy I am, I didn’t even charge them for the stamp. Hey, I’m Mr Wonderful.
So after the passing I send out the bill to the relative expecting them to pay up and forget about it. Bills get sent out, reminders, etc but I think they might be busy dealing with the bereavement. No problem – it will settled, eventually. These things take time – be gentle – death is involved, etc.
Imagine my surprise when I get a letter from the company dealing with deceased customers probate and I am to apply as a creditor to them to get the bill settled. I was a little bit flabbergasted. Couldn’t the relative just settle the bill like they had been doing previously? It’s not a huge amount. But no – we have to apply to get our money back.
This place never ceases to amaze me…

Hey, guys! Welcome to the Big Society! We’re all in this together. We all need to tighten our belts and pull together to get this fair isle out of financial woe…
That’s the official line, anyhow. I’ve been quiet about the “Government” of late because I am completely apathetic to it. Mainly because it is a government no-one actually voted for. It is a government that represents no-one and speaks for no-one. It is a bastardised attempt to hold onto power where compromise can be non-existant and those who are hungy to hold the reins of Great Britannia are those who prostitute their own ideals themselves.
Today, we have a great example of how the coalition can only ever fail. Vince Cable, poster boy of the Lib-Dems, has come out to say that he might abstain on the bill to increase student charges, despite himself being the architect of such policy. This is a political first and underlines the fact that those at the top of the Lib-Dem power souffle are those most willing to twist and turn like a twisty turny thing in order to appear right-on with the voters.
Yet they want to please David Cameron at the same time. How can they? How can they ship out their core beliefs while staring lovingly into Cameron’s doe-eyes and promises of an equal lick of the spoon yet appeal to those who voted them into third place at the same time? They can’t. And this is why the coalition is a waste of time and why the Lib-Dems are bankrupt as a political party. It really is game over for them and if anyone out there wants to waste their vote at any election by putting their cross by the Yellow Tories, they really deserve a smack around the head to knock some sense into them.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has been dribbling sensitive information all over the place like an incontinent terrier. One piece of information that caught my eye was the different ways Gordon Brown and David Cameron have handled the Gary McKinnon hacker case. El Gordo did the political thing by keeping it low profile and trying hard to negotiating a deal with the US in order that McKinnon, if found guilty, serve his time at home rather than being extradited.
On the other hand, that ratfink Cameron has basically thrown up his hands and said to the US authorities that McKinnon is guilty and they can ship him off whilst telling the Great British Public that he is working hard to get McKinnon freed. So the two-faced toe-rag is basically selling a British citizen out. No wonder the US don’t take him seriously.

One of the things about village life (and particularly this village) is how fucking rude some of the wizened old cunts are who live here. Now if I were a brain surgeon or someone who had a job of great responsibility whose merest mistake would result in death and destruction for those involved, then I could understand that anger and vitriol of those whose lives I’ve wrecked with the slip of a scapel or poor decision behind a desk in Whitehall.

However, for my sins, I bought a newsagents shop. Yes, a shop, that predominately sells newspapers. One of the main responsibilities we have is to get newspapers to our delivery customers and this is brought about by our team of paper boys. Now, there’s a lot I can moan about in this business, but our boys aren’t one of them. They are loyal, hard-working and helpful and I will not have a word said against them. I will defend them till my last breath, because without them…well…I’d have to deliver the papers…
But seriously, we have a good team and though sometimes there might be lateness or a missed day, they are good at what they do. We support them and I believe the majority of the boys we’ve employed have either gone onto college or gotten proper jobs in the real world. I like to think that we provide a little of the foundation of that.

I am glad that I have a hands-off approach to the business today because my poor suffering mother had to deal with grumpy customer one (for gossip hounds, names and addresses will be published when I leave here – it should make tasty reading). They phoned saying that there paper was late, but no mind they would collect it. So far, so good – nothing wrong with that so far – customers sometimes appreciate that we have a “paperboy malfunction” and are gracious enough to accept it.
On seeing the customer’s car outside the shop, my mother picks up saved newspaper and magazine and delivers it to the customer who is sitting in their car. Again, so far, so good. Nothing to report here – no incident could possibly happen? This has happened before and customers usually just drive off with their papers and their delivery charge refunded.

A few minutes later customer returns to the shop, only this time she is irate. Someone has sounded their horn at her while she was sitting in her car and somehow it is all our fault. She wants retribution so she cancels her papers there and then, tells us we should fire the paper boy and then goes into a rant about how our business is worthless and shouldn’t be for sale for the amount it is. They want us to lose our money, they want us to fail, they don’t like us, etc. The final nail in the coffin is if she had the money she’d buy the business and fire the lot of us her tirade is punctuated by her calling my mother a “cow”. The incident is so quick that it is all that my mother can respond by saying that we are leaving anyway.
I have the video footage of this from our security camera and the incident only lasts about a minute, but what a minute. I always thought I was a little paranoid about this place but, for whatever reason, they really do hate us. They don’t appreciate the awful time we’ve had here or the fact that 99% of the time their papers arrive in a timely fashion and get good daily service.

The next customer step forward and does her best to calm my mother who is a little rattled by the experience. But this is one of the reasons I don’t stand down there because if anyone ever spoke to me in that fashion I think I would do them an injury.

Norfolkers are a breed to themselves – while the majority of them are friendly enough, there’s a real undercurrent of resentment, hatred and spitefulness in some of them and this extends not only to us “foreigners” but to their neighbours, their own families or anyone else out there who they perceive might have done them wrong. Whereas we might bitch and curse about the world privately or in our dark moments alone, these people act it out and often cut off their nose to spite their face.

I am glad that we are on our way… (Fingers crossed)

So I finally got around to writing and recording the titular track from the new collection. The ravages of time are obviously weighing heavy on me as I have penned some sentimental old twaddle about me and The Missus. The shame, the shame! I am losing my edge, no?
I’m not totally satisfied with it because the drum track is lacking. I was aiming for a sort of laid-back almost invisible drum track, but while my playing is meant to be behind the beat, I sometimes miss the beat, play ahead of the beat and even forget there’s even meant to be a beat there!

The Luckiest Man in the World
I might be a dreamer
I might be a fool
I might be a chancer
Who sticks to the rules
I might be a saint
I might be a sinner
I might be a loser
I’m certainly no winner
But you and me
We’ve got history
And memories
They can’t take away from me
I’ve gone to seed
And I’ve lost my hair
But you make me feel
The luckiest man in the world
I might be old
I might be jaded
You cannot argue
That my looks have faded
I might be a fighter
Who gave up the fight
I might be a guy
Who always tried to do what is right
But you and me
We’ve got history
And memories
They can’t take away from me
I’ve gone to seed
And I’ve lost my hair
But you make me feel
The luckiest man in the world

The unique thing about this slab of sonix from 1999 is that I actually played the drums throughout the whole recording. There’s only one drum loop used, the rest is just me whacking my way through pieces in my own style. I’m not a drummer, no sirree. I have aspirations to play the drums, but environmental limitations have always prevented me from having my own proper kit.

Back in 1999, I invested some of my yearly musical budget spend on a Roland SPD20, which was a eight rubber squares for me to hit and allowed me to connect footpedals, etc. At that time, I was enamoured with the idea of having an electronic drumkit because I was listening to a lot of King Crimson (Hi Sid!) and very interested in what their drummer Pat Mastelotto was doing on drums. He was using exclusively an electronic kit and I really like the sound he was making. So this was my sad, pathetic attempt to commune with my heroes and so it came to pass I had an electronic drumkit, of sorts. But it needed to be mounted on a proper drum stand for me to get any use from it.
I went to a drum shop in Walthamstow where the propreitor, a very nice old man, was very helpful. Explaining my needs, he took me to the part of the shop which dealt with all the second-hand junk and looked like something the Jawas from the first proper Star Wars film might have inhabited.

He scrabbled around amongst the steel frames and connectors and looping, arching, abandoned drum stands that had seen their day and managed to pull out this really manky tubular frame. But on inspection, and despite its appearances being diminished by a layer of thick dust after years of abandonement, I realised this percussion frame was ideal for my needs. Asking the price, the man said without hesitation “£20” and the deal was struck. And so for a very reasonable amount of cash, I had my first and only drum frame on which to mount my SPD20, its pads and snaking entanglement of connecting leads.

My SPD20-based electronic “drum kit”

While it wasn’t a fully-featured virtual drum kit in the style of the V-Drums range that Roland produces, it filled a rhythmic need in me at that point. I also couldn’t afford to invest thousands of pounds on a proper set of electronic drums when my budget was more like £500. I had this kit for about five years before I sold it on. I appears here and there, mainly providing rhythmic accentuations – cymbal splashes, touches of ethnic percussion, and very rarely (like in this instance) full blown performances.

This “START” album was originally recorded around June 1999. It was a different time, I had a different set of responsibilities, I was still living in a flat in Leytonstone and working in a proper job in the industry they call media. It was meant to be experimental, different, forward-thinking, edgy. But at the time, the limitations of my playing and my music software shone through. None of the mistakes were edited, there were bits where the music software/soundcard stretched the sound so things were a little out of sync, and parts of it sounded as if it were recorded underwater because I knew bugger all about EQ settings in the music software I was using.

START
“START” is my equivalent to Mike Oldfield’s “Hergest Ridge”. It is the album that got left at the back of the cupboard and is unloved. Until now, that is. I’ve had some real fun revisiting the tracks and “putting things right”. Luckily, all the master tracks were available and complete, so nothing was missing.

Being true to the spirit of the original, I’ve not done too many edits and left as many of the fluffs in as I can. I’ve only tightened things up a bit where before they were slightly out of synch. But everything sounds better, and it almost sounds like a new recording. I am very pleased with it now and amazed by some of the ideas going on there.
With the tracks “6s and 7s” “At the Temple” and “Working Backwards”, the drums/percussion are played by me as live. This is why those tracks have a unique feel and sound quite different to anything else I’ve done. Only “Sort it Out” features pre-recorded loops created by a piece of software called MixMan.

In the instance of “Working Backwards” I remember sitting at the kit in the flat and banging around for about ten minutes with computer recording me. Then I reviewed what I played and edited down for size down to three minutes by lopping the beginning section off. The song was then constructed around this complete rhythm track by adding bass, synth and then the melodic details until the song as we know it emerged. It was like painting a sound picture, adding layers of colour and detail until the finished work emerged.

This 2010 edition sounds like a completely new album and is worth a listen purely for my laughable drumming. I’m presenting it here as one complete piece of music, but it is divided up into 12 separate tracks all linked together.
START
Featuring:
(i) Start
(ii) 6s and 7s
(iii) Sahara
(iv) A Cool Breeze
(v) At the Temple
(vi) Sort it Out
(vii) Fireside Dreaming
(viii) Starshine Falling
(ix) An Awkward Phase
(x) Acoustique
(xi) Reflections
(xii) Finish: Working Backwards
Due to the downloads and listens I was getting for this collection, I have made an official release of it so you can now purchase CDs and downloads.
CDBABY CD PURCHASE
ITUNES PURCHASE