ELVIS: A Tribute

Thirty years ago today
Elvis Presley passed away
But I feel nothing inside
For Elvis liked his squirrels fried

He never stood on British soil
Though his British fans were loyal
They cried from Land's End to The Wirral
When Elvis choked on Secret Squirrel

The Enemies Of Reason

I don't believe in any thing
Hymns you will not hear me sing
The New Age is for silly sods
For Richard Dawkins is my god


dedicated to Neil Spencer, ex NME editor, now Observer astrologer

Is It My Imajinaysheyonnn?

I know it's commonly believed that Oasis were a remarkably original band, a breath of rocking fresh air for 1994. But here's Ride from that same year proving that their fey, middle class Oxford heads were in a remarkably similar place to those working class bonces from Burnage. Except with a more interesting guitar sound.



This is a cover of a song by sixties psychedelic band, The Creation. Both Ride and Oasis were on Creation Records. Andy Bell, one of Ride's two exciting guitar wizards, is now mainly the plodding bass player in Oasis' middle aged dadrock rhythm section.

Ride had their time in the late eighties to mid nineties shoegazing era. Oasis should have had theirs in the mid to late nineties Britpop Shitpop era. However, the Britpop Shitpop era never ended and it seems as if Oasis will Live Forever.



The Andy Bell mentioned above is not to be confused with the Andy Bell of Yazoo replacements, Erasure. Yazoo were called Yaz for the American market and are not to be confused with Yazz of The Only Way Is Up fame. Neither Erasure, Yazoo or Yazz were on Creation Records.

"Jury Service Sucks"

"No It Doesn't"

These two opposing views are part of the graffiti in the Gents cubicles. "Wee, the jury" would have been a good one but the doors are mostly filled up with "I'm bored", "They're all gulity", the usual football allegiances and the odd sexual outburst. "Twelve good men and true, have shat here before you" would have been another good one but I'm not the type to deface public property.

If you just need a piss, there are six urinals, one of which is the right height for a child. Or a dwarf. And because children can't do jury service, I'm assuming that this urinal is meant for a dwarf juror.

Jury service does, indeed, suck. You wait and you wait in a room full of strangers. You can't concentrate on your book because every few minutes names are called over the tannoy system and there's a television slap bang in the middle of the room showing daytime bloody television: alternating between antiques and property shows. Kill me now!

Even when you do get on a case, you wait and wait. You go down to your court waiting area, you get sent back up to your jurors' waiting area. Up and down, up and down, wating, waiting, waiting, whilst points of law are taken up and other cases are dealt with. "A couple of minutes" waiting in court time is three quarters of an hour in real time.

The theatre of the court sucks the juror in. You are in full view of the viewing gallery. The first day I want to shout out, Tourette's-like, take my part in the play. But I have a non-speaking part and soon learn to sit still, concentrate on what is being said, blot out the audience. Deadpan, don't react.

We take notes with court pencils. The juror next to me has an HB. I have a 2B. A 2B! I smudge my way through the first day. The one pencil sharpener between the twelve of us is useless on my 2B pencil. The second day I take my own protracting pencil to the court.

When both sides have been aired several times over and the judge has summed up what we've heard, we are sent to our room to deliberate. Gulity or not guilty? The jurors with recent meeting and seminar experience dominate proceedings. Which is just as well because it is here I find out just how shy and inarticulate I am in a roomful of people I barely know. I have spent over a week with these nice people, dismally failing to make small talk and now when it comes down to the meat and potatoes I am found severely wanting. I want to get it over and done with now! When it's my turn to talk, I stutter and blush.

We all agree, file into court and it is over and done with. We are escorted up to our jurors' assembly room and, hey presto, we are signed off! Just like that! Which I am bloody grateful for because I'd earlier heard a group of jurors saying they'd been there since February. They looked institutionalised and very down about the whole thing.

I've now got two years' respite before I start worrying about being called again. Because, as our second-time juror said to me...

"Once they've got your name..."

Those Answers In Full

The answers to Saurday's quiz in full:-

1. Jack Knit Shh = Jack Nitzsche
2. Stock Kate King Water Mann = Stock Aitken Waterman
3. Marr Tin Hairnet = Martin Hannett
4. Tree Fir Horn = Trevor Horn
5. Doctored Ray = Dr Dre
6. Fill Spectre = Phil Spector
7. Marr Tin Rush Ant = Martin Rushent
8. Timber Land = Timbaland
9. Huge Jones = Hugh Jones
10. Jar Joe More Odour = Giorgio Moroder
11. Brine Knee No = Brian Eno
12. Toe Knee Viz Con Tea = Tony Visconti

I bet you're all kicking yourselves. Well, actually I bet you're all willing me to get a bloody move on and post something more interesting. I will as soon as I'm over the man flu and back to normality. Bear with me for now.

Saturday Quiz

I'm here for a short while before I resume my responsibilities. And here's a little weekend quiz for you.

The following are twelve people or peoples. You've got to tell me who they are. They've all done the same job at some time in their lives. And most of them are bloody good at this job.

Good luck. There will be no prize for the most correct answers.

Thanks to Betty for her help and the London Lite for its inspiration.

1.





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12.

The Long Game

Ingmar Bergman, the world's greatest living filmmaker, is dead.

Director of such classics as Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Fanny By Gaslight, Bergman took films about the human condition to unsurpassed levels. The BBC News have just shown those twats French & Saunders taking the piss out of him. Bergman had a sense of humour and would not have been amused.

Thank you for my DVD collection, Ingmar.

Skol, mate!



p.s. I won't be around much for the next couple of weeks but I'll be here in spirit.

Smithers-Jones

Here we go again, its Monday at last,
He's heading for the Waterloo line,
To catch the 8 a.m. fast, its usually dead on time,
Hope it isn't late, got to be there by nine.

Well why don't you get an earlier train if you're worried about being late, you twat?

Pin stripe suit, clean shirt and tie,

I should fucking well hope your shirt's clean! We don't want no dirty smelly cunts in our office.


Stops off at the corner shop, to buy the Times
"Good morning Smithers-Jones
How's the wife and home?
Did you get the car you've been looking for?"

You seem to have a lot of time in the mornings to chat to your newsagent about your marriage, your home and your car. Christ, I wish I had all the time in the world in the mornings. Maybe if you were to cut the chat you'd get an earlier train and not have to worry about being late.

Let me get inside you, let me take control of you,
We could have some good times,
All this worry will get you down,
I'll give you a new meaning to life - I don't think so.

I don't think so, either. You're a sad, lost cause, aren't you Smithers-Jones? Part of the life-sapping system.

Sitting on the train, you're nearly there
You're part of the production line,
You're the same as him, you're like tin-sardines,
Get out of the pack, before they peel you back.

Yes, go on! Jump! Jump off the train while it's still moving! Come on, there's still time!

Arrive at the office, spot on time,
The clock on the wall hasn't yet struck nine,
"Good morning Smithers-Jones
The boss wants to see you alone
I hope it's the promotion you've been looking for."

I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. I think I can guess where this story's heading.

Let me get inside you, let me take control of you,
We could have some good times,
All this worry will get you down,
I'll give you a new meaning to life - I don't think so.

All this worry. Promotions. Getting to work on time. It ain't worth it, mate.

"Come in Smithers old boy
Take a seat, take the weight off your feet
I've some news to tell you
There's no longer a position for you -
Sorry Smithers-Jones."

Christ, that was blunt and to the point. How could the bastard do this to you? "Old boy"? You're not that fucking old, are you?

Put on the kettle and make some tea
Its all a part of feeling groovy
Put on your slippers turn on the tv
Its all a part of feeling groovy

Yeah. You feeling groovy now, Smithers-Jones? A nice cup of tea and The Generation Game?

It's time to relax, now you've worked your arse off
But the only one smilin' is the suntanned boss

Capitalist pig!

Work and work and work and work till you die
There's plenty more fish in the sea to fry

Now you're stuck behind the chip-shop counter, Smithers-Jones. Wrapping the fish 'n' chips in yesterday's Times. Maybe you should drop the "Smithers". It's only an affectation, anyway. Now you've swapped your pinstripe suit for an apron. You should never have let the bastards drag you down. But you couldn't help yourself, could you? You're part of the grinding machine. What a sad little man you are.

Surely He Must Have Something Better To Do With His Time

First of all, apologies to Kaz for persuading her that it might be worth buying a Scott Walker album. He is not to many people's taste - he's a bit of a cult, and a moody cult at that. The amount of money I've wasted on cults in the past!

I'm most of the way through Scott 2 on my chronological Scott journey. And pretty early on in this album is a song called The Amorous Humphrey Plugg. "Aha!" I said, "yet another song with a fictional man's name in the title. There must be hundreds of those."

Then I started to list them...

Pink Floyd's (Syd's) Arnold Layne
Blur's Ernold Same (narrated by Ken Livingstone to demonstrate how boring Ernold's life was)
David Watts by The Kinks or The Jam (both bands definitely with definite articles)
ELO's The Diary of Horace Wimp
Toilet Duck Walking Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode

Er, that's it. "Can you think of any more?" I ask Betty.

She got all Jonesy.

"The Supremes' Nathan Jones."
"Smithers-Jones" by The Jam.

And...that's it.

There must be more! Feel free to let me know who we're missing. It's driving me mad! (Mr Kite and other names with titles do not count, yes I'm making up the rules as I go along).

I've set myself the task to go through the lyrics of these songs and write a few lines about each of the individual characters. Unless, of course, you tell me I'm wasting my time as nobody gives a bollock about them.

D.I.S.C.O.

So Saturday night, we're watching our recording of that night's Top Of The Pops 2 Disco Special, and I'm about to fall asleep for the third time. So I turn off the tv.

Betty is disappointed as she's more awake than me and Steve Wright's just started showing the video to ABBA's Summer Night City.

But not even the beautiful Benny & Bjorn can keep me awake and we go to bed.

So Sunday night, we watch the video. B&B's stunningness doesn't diminish over the years and this is one of the highlights of the show, yes even better than Disco Duck. Betty says to me "I bet you were one of those people who did everything the NME told you to do and bought the Junior Giscombe and Linx 12 inchers. Adrian Thrills was your God."

Yes, of course, I was young and easily influenced, after all it was only a matter of a few years before that I'd seen Genesis live! Besides, those Junior and Linx songs hold up pretty well.

Sunday night is a night of fitful sleep. One dream is memorable.

I am watching the video to Summer Night City. As the band sing the following...

When the night comes with the action
I just know it's time to go
Can't resist the strange attraction
From that giant dynamo

...I see Agnetha cycling onstage for all she's worth. She's sweating like Olivia Newton John in the Physical video. Yes, she wears a headband. She's cycling because she's powering the band's instruments by means of a giant dynamo.

Go, Agnetha! Go, girl!

Mathilde

Once upon a time, when we used to have train strikes that really affected our journeys into work, I drove my workmates all the way to London. It was a hellish four hours, alleviated only by my choice of in-car listening.

"This is the Walker Brothers," I announced to my non-plussed captive audience. You see we didn't have Heart 104.2 then so the majority did not rule and I got to hear what I wanted to hear.

I never really got into Scott's solo stuff. But Betty likes him and last year she bought most of his back catalogue.

A few weeks ago we saw Alan Yentob's ("Yentob Yentob Yentob Yentob Yentob Iddle I Po" as he's known in this house) Imagine programme on Scott. Marc Almond was pontificating.

Marc Almond is the main reason I never really got into Scott Walker. Too overdramatic, I thought. Cut from the same cloth.

Then Marc said how much he hated Tilt, Scott's 1995 comeback album. So I immediately played it and loved it. And now I'm going through the solo albums from the beginning, starting with 1967's Scott.

So I'm sitting on the toilet, headphones on, at 7.15 in the morning. The first track, Mathilde is playing. I stand up, it reaches its crescendo and I flush the toilet. The flush sounds like an enthusiastic round of applause. Well deserved in my opinion.

So here's the song, introduced by a beautifully ghostly Dusty Springfield. Look at how skinny Scott's legs are! And imagine a flushing lav instead of that studio applause.






And here, to compare and contrast, is the song as performed by the song's creator, sweaty horse faced Belgian chain smoker, Jacques Brel. My best friend at the age of 8 was a handsome child. He grew up to be the spit of Jacques, though a much healthier marathon running version. This, of course, is much more authentic and rootsy. I like it but I prefer Scott's galloping take on the song. What do you think?

It's Broadstairs!

Isn't it quaint?
Oh no, it ain't,
It's Broadstairs.

A nice stick of rock?
Suck on yer cock,
It's Broadstairs.

Lovely ice cream!
A middle class dream,
It's Broadstairs.

Charles Dickens was here!
There's no fuckin' pier,
It's Broadstairs.

A return to the past!
It's gone overcast,
It's Broadstairs.

St Ives Revisited

Subsequent to my slagging the other week, St Ives in Cornwall has now been named Britain's best seaside town by a Guardian panel of experts. Broadstairs, a depressing town of which I have many unhappy memories from childhood visits, came second.

The panel of experts included Bill Bryson, Rick Stein, Esther Freud, Blake Morrison and Alan Carr. Andrew Martin, Alastair Sawday, Martin Parr, Kathryn Ferry, Candida Lycett Green, Kate Ashbrook, Paul Gogarty, Kevin Gould, Ian Jack, Andrew Kotting, Adam Nicolson, Phyllis Starkey, Jonathan Glancey and Jonathan Jones also lent their expertise to the project.

Say Cheese!

One of Gordon Brown's first tasks as Prime Minister is to cheer up a depressed nation. What with the state of education, health, housing, and the awful summer weather, Gordon is looking for something to elevate our spirits. And he thinks he's found the ideal pick-me-up.

"There was a golden age of comedy," says Gordon. "And that was the silent era, the era when two of Great Britain's greatest ever comedians, Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin, were making the world laugh until it cried."

Gordon's brainwave is to make the first ever national silent movie.

"We are the leaders in CCTV technology," says the PM. "We are a mere 1% of the world's population, yet we have in operation 25% of the world's surveillance cameras. On 23rd October 2007, I propose that we as a nation dress as our favourite silent screen star and walk in a funny manner in our streets. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has kindly agreed to dress his men and women in the uniform of the Keystone Cops for the day. He has further promised me that any arrests made on that day will be made in an amusing and slapstick way."

There is a warning, however, for any would-be Harold Lloyds.

"I am afraid that all action must be confined to ground level. Anybody found scaling a building or hanging off a large clock 300 feet in the air will be most severely dealt with by the police, after they have followed the perpetrators on a rickety old ladder."

Footage of the day's events will be available on the Government's website. Participants will be able to search for film of themselves by entering a postcode and time of day.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH

I have one of those dreams which are so real you keep waking up thinking it's really happening then go back to sleep and continue where you left off.

I am on holiday with several schoolfriends: a not uncommon occurrence in my dreams. One of the friends, a boy who was in the same class as me between the ages of 5 and 18, who I've not seen since, and who, according to his Friends Reunited profile, is now a GP as he always wanted to be, commits a murder. This is unusual in my dreams as I am the only murderer I know and I committed that murder years ago. Although I can't remember doing it, I do know there's a body beneath my patio, which is basically why we can never move house.

So the GP is a murderer, there's blood on his hands and our holiday dormitory is awaken at 6 a.m. by the FBI who have all the evidence. I can tell by my schoolfriend's eyes he wants to be caught as his life has taken a turn he never expected or wanted, he feels trapped and this is his way out.

So we look at each other, two murderers, one wanting to be convicted, the other hiding his 20 year old crime deep within his memory. I know what he did. He doesn't know what I did.

It serves him right for persuading me to see Rick Wakeman with him in 1977.

My Name Is...

You know you're getting on a bit when nobody knows how to spell your name. Nobody knows how to spell your name because your name hasn't been popular as a baby's name for 40 odd years. There just aren't any young Geoffs coming through.

So when someone asks my name, I say either...

1. "Geoffrey with a 'G'." In which case I get correspondence addressed to "Geoffery".

or...

2. "Geoffrey." In which case I receive correspondence addressed to "Jefferey".

They don't realise my name has two syllables. They think it has three. They don't listen to how I pronounce my name.

I don't mind, but if somebody at school had called me Geoffery or Jefferey I would have thought they were taking the piss. No, no two ways about it, they would have been taking the piss, maybe addressing me as if I was "little baby Geoffery." They would have been a bully so I wouldn't have said anything back, just taken it on the chin.

But that never happened as all the kids at school called me "Geoff" or "Geoffrey Bubbles Bom Bom". Which is about as affectionate as I could have hoped for.

But now I'm old and Geoffery is my official name. I am of three syllables. So you can call me Geoffery Three Syllables.

Just don't stress the middle one.

Concert For Diana

Much misunderstood, Diana. Growing up, her world was not one of Elton John, Rod Stewart, Duran Duran et al. Her musical scene was the grimier, sticky-floored world of pub rock. Doctor Feelgood were her pre-Charles favourites.

Fag in one hand, pint of snakebite in the other, the smell of sweat, beer and piss, Wilko Johnson coming at her like a 4 year old on amphetamines, his wild movement constrained by a six foot length of elastic.

The Half Moon, Putney would have been a fitting venue for a fitting pub rock tribute to the young life-loving Spencer girl.

It was corporate, soulless Wembley Stadium and James Morrison for the anaethetised wife and mother, the blandly compassionate regal superwoman.

If only they'd gone with her heart. Her heart was in dirty, sweaty rock and roll played by hard working, hard drinking Essex bits of rough.

Where were the Kursaal Flyers yesterday?

Where, indeed.

The Art Of Cornwall

Every time I've been to Cornwall I've spent some time in St Ives. Each time I go back thinking, "I'm going to like it this time." And each time I come away depressed.

Our travel bible, the Reader's Digest Touring Guide To Britain, says about St Ives, "Stone cottages tumble over each other in a maze of narrow streets. Old-world charm lured artists to the town and famous names include painter Ben Nicholson, sculptress Dame Barbara Hepworth, and potter Bernard Leach."

Famous? Not really. Van Gogh is famous.

It's the maze of narrow streets that probably get me. I like space, I hate walking in a procession of people. I don't like Brighton's lanes for the same reason.

The beaches at St Ives are pretty and the setting is lovely, but the people are on top of you.

This time we went to St Ives because it was raining on The Lizard and the Tate St Ives seemed a good place to get out of the rain. Of course it was warm and sunny in St Ives, but I'd driven there to experience the Tate for the very first time.

It was filled with several Brian Wilson themed exhibits. Excerpts from his songs were written on the walls by the paintings. There were a couple of reasonable Bridget Rileys and an ordinary Peter Blake. Nothing to write home about, just a down feeling. They weren't even playing any Beach Boys songs. Nothing for the ears, little for the eyes.

So that was my final visit to St Ives. Topped off nicely by a vicious seagull taking a chunk out of Betty's panini and an ageing hippy artist wearing a t-shirt with the words, "If it's the tourist season, why can't we shoot them?" So you were born and bred in St Ives were you, you twat?

I brought my mum home some clotted cream. The only place we could find it was Tesco's. She reminisced about her youth in Cornwall. Did I go to her old home village? No, we drove through it as we did last time as there's nothing there but a pub and some houses on a main road.

Apparently my grandparents left Cornwall for the kids' sake. Post-WW2, there just weren't the opportunities there. My mum's future would have been marrying a farmer. And she wouldn't have coped with all that farm muck.

As we left Cornwall, we drove over two chalked words on the road.

"GO HOME."

We went home.

The Last Straw

Rushing around like a blue-arsed fly all week, failing to catch up on two weeks' worth of work that piled up during my holiday, phone call after phone call, hanging on and hanging on, I have one final call to make this morning.

The phone's not answered straight away, they'll be with me as soon as possible. As is the modern way, they put some music on while I wait. It's Louis Armstrong...



WE HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

Staying Out For The Summer

Betty said wait, you'll look like a sad middle-aged man.

But I wanted a bit of a break from the mundanity so I've just been to HMV to buy the new Editors album and the debut by the Klaxons. I waited three days after Glastonbury - I'm not one of those sad middle-aged men who are totally influenced by what the youngsters are listening to. Oh no, not me. We were into the Editors at the beginning, don't you know? And the Klaxons - well, actually they were pretty good at Glasto, weren't they? "Hello, we're the Klaxons and we're from London." About time someone decent came from the capital. Not since the Kinks...

"What about the photos?" I hear you cry. Well, here's a small selection. Starting with a view of the beautiful Kynance Cove, as recommended by Murph. Dogs aren't allowed on the beach here, so I hope Murph didn't go all the way down (unlike several naughty canines we saw on our second visit here).



This is our second visit to the cove, on the last dry day of the holiday. That's lonely old me in the surf, contemplating doing a Reggie Perrin. Wouldn't it be wonderful to invent a new life for myself? Trouble is, I don't think I could convincingly wear those teeth.



This is a picture postcard view of Coverack. Aren't the flowers pretty? Coverack is a pretty good starting place for a lovely coastal walk, though not with the dramatic views of Lizard Point itself.



Finally, so you won't get too bored, here's a little barber shop in Penzance in which I didn't fancy getting a close shave. I didn't want to end up in a Geoff Pasty.