Square Eyes

Tonight - I am mainly watching extremely shit telly. I need to. I'm already halfway through Gok's Fashion Fix which will segue into the most revolting reality show for quite some time - Celebrity Rehab - oh yes!

I found this today - Chaka Khan playing the drums! Far out baby.



Normal service will be resumed by tomorrow.

The Stuff Of Nightmares

Mine. No it 's mine now.
















So Robert Mugabe gets stripped of his knighthood and it is given to Salman Rushdie instead - cue the resurgence of the fatwa that everyone forgot about...goodness...spin and politics has come a long way - especially as the move seems to be rather conveniently coinciding with the Mandela concert celebration. Naomi - naaaaaaaoooow! You can't come on stage - you can stay at the very back of the top tier because you've been bad and for god's sake don't wear that hat with my prison number on it again you cow. Amy - naaaaaaooooow! You can't meet Mr Mandela as your lifestyle isn't something we would like to align ourselves with thank you you wheezy young girl you. Well that put them in their place didn't it? The stuff of nightmares.


The politics of fear. And real fear. Fear.....and tall buildings....that rotate...on different floors...at different times. Even looking at the rather crudely put together press promo film here makes me want to cry with utter fear. The London Eye is bad enough - I spent the top third section sitting on the middle bench having to look at my fingernail in macro detail in order to block out any peripheral vision until we were 'over the hump' as it were. Hideous. Anyway - back to the Dubai 79 independently revolving floors at any one time building - very clever and supposedly energy efficient which must be a good thing but by god - how scary is it? You won't get me there - ever. I still get recurrent nightmares of driving over the West Gate bridge in Melbourne.

It is like a steep coil crossed with a rollercoaster. Try driving with vertigo - not funny. In fact, so un-funny I still dream about it but in my dream the road runs out but I always wake up on time. Funny that?

Start Monday With This And Be Happy All Week

Here is a classic - a rare longer version of Kool and the Gang's Summer Madness with vocals mixed by Roy Ayers - play it and the rest of the week will be balmy and summery and woozy - perfect.

Puppies Needed

Good god - no wonder she lost the race - sack the stylist! Can someone please get Senator Clinton a bra NOW? Well Hillary could get her own bra - a Wonderbra and enter their new competition - from D to G or something like that. Harumph - a little sizeist for those who sport a mere B cup thank you...Anyway - I am surprised LC hasn't written about this yet seeing as he is the bloggers boob man at large but I digress. Wonderbra are running a competitiion - anyone can enter. I did say boobs not moobs just in case any of my male readers were thinking this was their only chance for a long-awaited 15 minutes of moobfame. Get yourself down to 1a Leicester Square on 28th June. Once you are in you will be probably herded like a sheep that no one likes into various places to fill in a form about yourself and wait and wait and wait. Finally, it will be your turn to take your top off and have your photo taken - the emphasis being on cleavage. Yes - Wonderbra want your cleavage! Some lucky person will end up on huge billboards - a homage to the original 'hello boys' campaign as fronted by Eva Herzigova. This time it could be you (or me) or you (or me) or you.


Kiss my cleavage Wonderbra!

The Fall In The Back Of My Notebook - Discovered

I think I meant to post this in April but have only just found it scribbled and lost in the back of last months notebook. I worked with Mark E Smith and The Fall in April 2008, Iread his book and I listened to their new album. Here are my scribbled notes from that time. I have transcribed them as is grammatical errors and note-form abound.

The anticipation.
Can I pare down the rider a bit? Just 40 fags and 48 cans of Holstein Pils then? Legends aren’t often as legend-like when you eventually meet them. With legends – the stories of legend precede them. Most are often embellished or misunderstood or a misunderstanding that have two sides to the story – one often unheard. The thing I have always liked about Mark E Smith is his scary ordinariness. I always liked the fact he dressed how he did/does. He has had a lot of flak about it over the years – people seem to forget that most punks in ’76 started out dressing like that. Generally, it was because most people in bands starting out were in jobs and the bands were also born out of pub rock. Punk evolved out of pub rock. So many bands have been referred to as punk like Eddie and the Hot Rods. They weren’t ever punk – they were a pub rock band. Ian Curtis was like that. He always wore smart trousers and a shirt. Same thing.

Imperial Wax Solvent starts out very unexpectedly gently with Alton Towers. I like the off-set rhythms and the nightmarish seesaw of funfair churn. A sort of musical queasiness – it sounds bewitching and entrancing but it is really very bad and a bit sinister. I’ve Been Duped –great sound and strength of sound. Raw – can hear it. Mark can sing too – and rasp and drawl. Latchkey Kid – conjures up lots of images – the boy in Kes for some reason and my revisited feeling of putting my own key in the door knowing no one would be home for hours. A slightly sinking lonely feeling in a way.

He made an entrance – behind the curtain, pink and black carrier bag, a plastic bag. Greenaway (guitar) looking terrified, Melling looking hard and Spurr toughing it out – the energy. Quick and fast and to the point. What you see is what you get. No more. No less. Was I the only one tapping my foot? One camera operator spent the whole time dwith his mouth agape in a seizure-style skeletal grin-ace. A sort of half grin half grimace. Mark E Smith moved slowly and with measured purpose. Very relaxed. Not bothered by the criss-cross of mic cables gathering around his ankles. No one flinched when he whacked up the bass amp – that’s better. He raged through Wolf Kidult. Latchkey Kid petered out with Mark E Smith deciding enough was enough and that was it. Come on kids. I saw him secretly laughing. I like the military precision of the band. Down tools, all walk off single file. Most obedient.

Alton Towers – kaleidoscopic nausea. Always on cue – every time. Fresh, exciting and new – does what it says on the tin as endorsed by MES. I went for a walk in cyberspace . Someone has bothered to make a suitcase font of Mark E Smith’s writing. For god’s sake – what would you need that for? Anyway – I have some of my own as he very kindly signed my book for me.

Keiron M (drums) looked at one point as if he was psychically trying to tell Mark E Smith that he was dying and couldn’t keep going for much longer such was the unforgiving and endless fantastic precision of his drumming. Likewise, Spurr had gone to somewhere else in finite bass land. Eleni looked effortlessly on top of everything and stood aside while Mark had one last fiddle with the Roland. Such was the energy that I felt as if I had run over a precipice Scooby Doo style – been waggling my legs round and round for 15 mins now. Suddenly – it was all over – bang crash thud to the ground. Back to un-Fall world.
I liked it over there.

© Rockmother 2008

Five Uneasy Pieces or Pic'n'Mix (Depending On How You Look At It

5..4..3..2..1..Ready..Steady..Go! Goodness - how time flies. Here is a little synopsis of various posts that have been whirling around my head over the last two weeks. It's been a bit busy round here and I have been a bit distracted.....evidently.....by thinking about (in no particular order):

5. The prospect of being able to go to the cinema next year and watch Lemmy - The Movie. If the trailer is anything to go by I think it may be rather good despite Lemmy's terrible joke as featured below at the end of the trailer - I don't think Lemmy wears coats so cue the music, cue the tumbleweed....and be deaf forever



4. Enraged that The Daily Bloody Mirror decided to put "I lied about my gastric band op so what and now I'm all stressed out and have probably gorged on 100 packets of Ryvita because they don't make you thin anyway which is why I had the gastric band in the first place" Fern Britton - instead of beyond inspirational Pat Regan on the front page. Leave Fern Britton alone. It is pathetic. What's more newsworthy? Obviously not Pat Regan who made it to page 4. Pat Regan was an astounding person. A brilliant mother and victim of violence with the death of her eldest son that initiated her becoming active in the Mothers Against Violence campaign several years ago but ironically ended in her untimely and tragic death at the hands of her own grandson. I strongly feel that Pat Regan would have further changed law and made an even bigger and more positive difference to the current gun and knife related youth crime in this country had she lived. She already had. Truly devastating that she is no longer alive.

Pat Regan Activist Campaigner Mother 1955 - June 1 2008
Read more about Pat's phenomenal work here
Read more about Mothers Against Violence here

3. Felt a bit sad and sick seeing a heavily pregnant teenage girl with a packet of fags and mobile phone at the bus stop yesterday. She looked really defiant and was dressed in an outfit some people might deem to be 'inappropriate' for a young pregnant woman but it wasn't that that particularly bothered me - it was her attitude. She had a face of pure grump and her arm was cocked out over her bare tummy holding the fags and mobile aloft as if to say "yeah? what"?. It made me sad for the imminent baby and I wondered how many fags it had had already. Actually I wanted to cry.


2. Wondering why Peters and Lee were so funny?

And did Lenny get his glasses from the Innovations catalogue?

But why were Peters and Lee such a national joke - a bit like Mary Whitehouse or Fanny Craddock? Piley has done a nice little piece featuring Peters and Lee on Planet Mondo here.

1. Thinking about how funny a voice Annie Leibowitz has - New England clipped mixed with huge energy and excitement. A genius. See last night's Imagine here.

Lastly in the absence of a podcast which is also whirling around my head - here is a song for Friday - I dedicate it to all those either having a mid-life crisis or gorging on that popular chocolate bar Credit Crunch or both.



And some great obscure Russian poster art for a shoe factory I found.

Doors to manual darlinks - Romo Airlines - prepare for take-off.

Night night everyone.