The Flying Squad - Mission Re-Position

Uhmmm

I often think and don't do as opposed to doing and not thinking, sometimes I think and then do and on occasion I'll do and then have to identify a somewhat reasonable explanation for my idiocy.

The Event

I saw an angel once... a real one... many years ago. It appeared in a shimmering white light and had proper wings and everything. It was just as you'd imagine from descriptions of them, or as you may have seen from illustrations, and was watching over a mate of mine who was sat, asleep, in an armchair. It was a rather beautiful and touching scene.

The room was inhabited by several others, some awake and some sleeping. If any of those present witnessed our visitor none have ever said anything to me about it. Maybe they feared being ridiculed or maybe they didn't believe their eyes, maybe it was a vision for my eyes only. As it was, it took me a few years to mention it to my mate and he appeared to fully accept what I said I'd seen. He certainly didn't look at me as if I was stark raving mad and he didn't run screaming into the street, in fact he appeared more than a little pleased...

I admit, I wasn't exactly sober at the time of the event, nor was I free from narcotics - I'd been smoking opium that particular evening. Nevertheless, hallucination or not, I often think back to that moment and it gives me great comfort to think that something so wonderful is looking after him.

Everything Is Broken

"Society is broken" says King Cameron; indeed, he deems it "sick" - a simplistic statement from a simpleton.

I presume from his recent banter on all things societal we're going to have to suffer, yet again, endless debates on bringing back National Service, the hangman, the guillotine, transportation, the Divine Right of Kings, public flogging, corporal punishment, the "short, sharp, shock", Borstals, the ducking stool and chinese burns.

No doubt notions of providing cops with guns (as if they don't carry them already), reimplementing the "Sus Laws" (as if they were ever removed), prohibiting public protest (as if they don't have laws to deal with them already) and banning strikes (as if they haven't tried their hardest to do so since Maggie wore the crown) will emerge.

The idea of people being able to voice an opinion, other than that of their lords and masters, will be frowned upon and the ills of society will be firmly blamed on the poor, the ill-educated, single-parent families, the unemployed, youth, absent fathers and immigrants. It will have nothing to do with corrupt and deceitful politicians, one-dimensional policy makers, thieving bankers, criminal media moguls, heavy-handed policing, consumer culture or lack of resources for communities suffering desperate poverty and swathing cuts to much-needed social and community services. Divide and conquer has been and will remain the mantra of the ruling elite.

Me? I'm just reading Max Weber, you should try him. He's very good: "The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. One may say that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all countries of the earth, wherever the objective possibility of it is or has been given. It should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naïve idea of capitalism must be given up once and for all." (Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).

University Of Life

I've recently been informed that my life is to change beyond all recognition. It's not the first time I've had to radically rethink how change may affect my day to day routine or, indeed, affect my overall outlook on life and the values by which I lead it. However, this happening will be the most enormous change in my own personal circumstances that I've ever had to face. I know I'm not alone, millions of people experience this seismic but joyful shift everyday; and most of them cope incredibly well - I hope I do too.

The Clash - English Civil War live

The Black Keys- Sinister Kid

All That Jazz

Pinx was in no fit state, the rest of the guys were similarly indisposed as The Stone Roses’ Fools Gold pumped out of the living room’s hi-fi. Nasty prowled, all he wanted to do was play some rock ‘n’ roll. He’d find little or no satisfaction today.

Tins of Special Brew and Force Ten, empty and semi-drained, lay scattered about the place – spastically-embraced by consumed litre bottles of White Lightning. The paraphernalia of the habitual drug user littered the coffee-stained table: Reefer skins and roaches afloat ripped cigarettes and loose tobacco, noggins of squidgy black, overflowing ashtrays, a Bible, two dismembered Clipper lighters, a bong fashioned from a plastic bottle and a small plastic bag which, until recently, had contained poorly cut amphetamine.

Evidence of the absent Boozy Bill’s contribution to the night’s festivities flickered on the screen of the TV set. The pirated bluey, The Bitchbikers Guide To Hardcore Lesbian Cowgirls – a mouthful of a title if there ever was one – radiated into the room. Belvoir-Hunter, seemingly in a state of semi-consciousness, appeared hypnotised by the writhing, moaning orgy of extreme close-up coupling taking place before his barely open bloodshot eyes. 

Shimble stirred, momentarily. Cocooned upon the sofa, beneath duvet, cushions and blankets, he murmured, “you cunt, he’s gone...”

Illusions

Culture-Ideology-Politics-Society-Bondage-Class-Gender-Caste-Language-Religion-Education-Liberation-Revolution-Revelation-Protest-Reform-Conscience-Injustice-Disobedience-Oppression-Superstition-Repression-Deception-Reward-Fascism-Capitalism-Communism-Anarchism-Chaos-Acceptance-Disorder-Law-Poverty-Tyranny-Punishment-History-Empire-Nation-Democracy-War

Emma Goldman

The Only Ones - The Big Sleep

It's A Gas, Gas, Gas

Although I’d spent my childhood in the Seventies, my teenage years in the Eighties and entered adulthood at the beginning of the Nineties, my soul remained firmly planted in the beats of the Sixties. The Beatles, The Who, The Kinks and The Stones will forever be within me, and I’d never be without Zeppelin or Hendrix. Music was a passion, the radio or record player was always on at home - childhood was, to all intents and purposes, good – I even enjoyed going to school.

By the middle-to-end of the desperately unsatisfying, greedy, fascist Eighties the radio never seemed to be on quite as much and school was hateful. I was mortified at the distinct lack of creativity in mainstream pop music... Bros, for fucks sake! How had we managed to go from the Fingers demanding an Alternative Ulster, the Pistols proclaiming Anarchy In The UK and The Clash telling us about Spanish Bombs to being force fed that kind of crap?

I swapped my prized FS1E moped for a battered nylon stringed classical guitar and dog-eared book of chords at the age of seventeen. Musical ability never really came into the equation - there really was none. Noise and performance, I figured, was a preferred expression, and I dutifully set about learning the absolute basics.

It wasn't long after that I fell in with a few like-minded individuals and - after begging, borrowing and stealing equipment - we formed a band. As I was a fucking hopeless guitar player I took over the bass from an equally inept "musician" who, in turn, grabbed the vacant mic. Fortunately the drummer could drum and the now guitarist could, well, guitar. Half of us could kind of play, the other half joined in, and what a fine, radio unfriendly racket we made.

Although, over the years, I've played in other bands my fondness and high regard for the three teenagers, that I spent only a short period of time with, has never diminished. We played three gigs, made an unnerving, feedback-drenched, god awful sound and bowed out, unknown.

When Will I Be Famous - my arse!

Hubble Bubble

Bright lights, white noise, black knights and corduroys. Visionaries cloud the mind while Johnny Cash walks the line. Starfish turn against the tide - though ‘time may change you can’t change time’. Polkas, waltzes, sambas, jives, a quickstep leads to a rollercoaster ride. Joy’s divisible by the honest and the criminal; actors fake their lives - it’s unequivocal. Teddy Boys, Rude Boys, Punks and mimickers, Salinger is visible when listeners miss the interval.   

Medicine, Man!

She said, "I'll meet you when the moon is fat and the sun's at its zenith at the Crooked Crow crossroads by Starfish Meadow. I'll sit beneath the Gallows Tree, beside the unmarked graves of Little Man Big and the Bluegrass Fellow.

"Bring Stagger Lee," she said, "with his bottleneck slide - and stout Joe Sharpe with his country harp - as I'll have my fiddle and we'll play like the devil to summon up sweet Mary Jane and that charlatan, Fool Grenville."

We'd dance, then, like dervishes in the tall lush grass, singing of the traitorous that had once been among us - though, by now, had long since vanished - and we'd all take a sip from the initiates chalice. A bitter-sweet linctus of a blood-like tincture, brought to us by the Medicine Man, full of the hermit's solace.

The Black Keys "Just Got To Be"

Mojo Rising

The vacuum filled with expectant faces: students, straights and old-age pensioners; bluesmen, mods and timeless drop-outs; rockers and romantics; the sane, the insane and the mildly-traumatised. Critics whet their lips and sharpened their pencils. Static crackled and lights bedazzled. Cigarettes blazed and lager-washed lovers embraced. The heat, taste and stench of sweat-soaked bodies assaulted the senses. Lights faded, pulses quickened, blackness enveloped the writhing masses. A delicious excitement grew as a deafening cacophony rose up from the believers.

In a blinding flash they appeared. He was a snake in humanskin boots. His tongue slipped and slurred, promising to deliver the profound, as he raked an ivory Telecaster. A pause, time enough to suck in a long, deep breath; then all hell let loose... the pounding thud, rhythmic clatter and thunderous clash of drum and cymbal, the stomach-assaulting, ground-quaking rumble of eternally heavy bass and the ethereal sigh and soaring scream of two guitars in combat will forever stand testament to their mojo.

I remained as exhausted disciples flocked towards green men on illuminated exit signs, spilling out into the depths of the night. With ears still ringing I raised my all-seeing eyes, for one last time, to rest upon the high altar. Unmanned, those vessels of magic stood like statues - silent and unmoving, forever a tribute to the fevered imaginations and powerful energies of Albert Della Porta, George Smith, Clarence Leonadis Fender, Lester William Polsfuss, Jim Marshall, Lyndon Laney and Peter Traynor. The story belongs to them and to them alone; no artifice, sleight-of-hand or human devilry will ever change that.

Notes and Voices.

That sort of thing never really affected me; it needed angles. It needed to shock me, kick me in the teeth, throttle the lethargy from my body, awaken my senses and question my questions. I never had a methodology, a schematic or predetermined model – abstraction and chaos was the closest I ever wanted to come to having any sense of formula. Success and failure; love and hate; war and peace; they all have inbetweens, grey areas and confusions. There’s never just one point of view and there’s never one single ideological redemption.

The pompous, the self-righteous, the meek and the humble? They are all friends and enemies of mine, sometimes at the same time – I wouldn’t have it any other way; otherwise my perception of existence would become a futile journey across an infinitely barren and disengaging wasteland... and that is a truly lonely voyage.