The Rockmother Returneth!

No - I'm not at work today which means I am indeed cleaning my gun and probably cleaning the bathroom and doing the washing up and tidying up and podcasting and stuff like that. Welcome back my gorgeous little bloggy dumplings. This is the first time I've had a chance to breathe let alone articulate. The above picture is courtesy of my mate Paul who has a great blog and a great eye and a lovely wife and a wonderful allottment too - he went to the St Martins show and took this - I think it's great. Thanks so much and big squashy hugs to everyone who sent out interplod when I went to camp x-ray (no - that's not me - but the 'people over the fence' that hated us because we were so loud and interrupted their tetris-a-thon that they had obviously entered for the whole weekend). Then Blogger went pants and temporarily eliminated me from all mankind - I can't believe the concern - I was genuinely touched. Thank you all very much. I've been commenting here and there when I can and downloading gargantuan amounts of podcasts to keep me sane. Still got to do Istvanski's 2nd, Bob's 88th and Jifdump's 1st - Billy's 3rd was corking and Bob's Rolling Stones one was brilliant.

I've just finished producing a live show with Beck and something else for EMI. Beck - nice band, great sound but goodness, how tiny and short is that man? Very. Took him a while to get going but when he did it was great. Performed mainly new stuff - Nausea, Cellphone. Wired up some sort of electronic calculator and played it like an instrument whilst dancing the most cool James Brown-esque shuffle. For the last track he was joined by the rather brilliant Jamie Lidell on backing vocals who almost stole the show in an old burberry mac with turquoise towel around his neck. The man is a genius. Then it was Jamie's turn to go solo - epic is all I can say. Will probably feature him in a podcast at some point. The only disappointing thing about Beck was the aggressiveness of some of the road crew. They hate film people as it has nothing to do with what they do - too much waiting around I guess. Some of them were nice and some of them were vile. But Beck's a living genius in my book - despite his odd stare and very loose way of walking like he's going to blow over in a puff of wind.

Apparently Beck is a scientologist. I have to say - I'm not a big fan of Scientology full stop - but hey - each to their own. Just don't want it thrust in my face like on Saturday afternoon in Richmond. The evil Hubbardites were doing 'stress tests' on George Street. Again, preying on the young and vulnerable. I went a bit mad and staged my own impromptu protest. I stood in front of their stall with a big bunch of flowers and shouted "these are evil evil people - do not believe their words - evil, evil. evil people". They looked a bit shocked at first and then laughed as I walked away shouting EVIL really loudly!. I suppose I must have looked a bit ridiculous but at least I did my bit. Hate them.

I almost forgot - here's a picture of half of my face and my mum at The Stones - bit out of date now but here it is:
It was quite a piece of history all round really - she hadn't seen them since 1964 at Beat City in Oxford Street and before that at the infamous pub on Eel Pie Island - that's bloody cool in my book. This time around was amazing - I never really knew what it was like to have your hair stand on end until they blasted onto the stage at Twickenham. I felt like I was glowing all over - a feeling that didn't subside for about 3 days. I was on a true Stones high! I can't think of much else to say really as it is all a bit old news apart from the fact that they all performed perfectly and Mick Jagger was an inspiration. If I can run and dance like that when I'm 63 then I will be very happy. Keef was a GOD - faultless and rakishly thin. Kindly smiling at all the fans and constantly trying to put his arm around Mick and Ronnie in such a heart-rendingly genuine way. Charlie played so tight and looked the best he has looked for a long time. It was blinding.

On that note, I'm off to do my next poohcast - tara chooks! xx