Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
ramblings#75
so this washes over you. my french dog blues.
chein bleu.
Je n'ai pas peur de ce qui se trouve devant moi. Le futur est non écrit. Je suis massacre moi-même pensant, je suis tombé comme les feuilles
chein bleu.
Je n'ai pas peur de ce qui se trouve devant moi. Le futur est non écrit. Je suis massacre moi-même pensant, je suis tombé comme les feuilles
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
ramblings#74(anhourwithpeter)
this is very inspiring to me. pete doherty talking about the songs that shaped his life. i especially love the part about "free as a bird". john paul george and ringo come and pass the hours away. read the last two paragraphs. if you read it at all.
Pete:
Funny thing about the army barracks is...the shit jokes. Contradictory, i know. Likewise, i remember hearing a lot of army related songs in those formative years. Mostly about Hitler's genitalia, or lack there of, the QM's stores, and one perennial favorite that went something along the lines of, "left, right, left, right, left," which i could hear belting out from the parade square even as i put on my first ever single purchase-Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers, 'That's what i like.' Hell seeing days. Your second to last enclaves of upwardly mobile underclass muttering disciplined salute-signaled obedience to the very last enclaves of bona fide officer class ooray'Enries. The first song that made me smile behind the barbed wire and blood pool from where one 'army brat summer activity' javelin instructor had carelessly thrust his spike through a pal of mine's head was Dereck B's 'Get Down'. It was the eighties, i was eight and the bloody tape recorder ate my tape, but not before I'd sat agog many an hour, listening repetitively to the premier UK eighties hit pop artistes Derek B and Easy Q. They spoke of a long far off place called east London. The furthest east I'd been was Tottenham Court Road. They spoke of "Cuts that rumble like earthquakes", "Sticking sawn-offs up the noses of the guards" and more intriguingly to my once innocent ears, some female acquaintance who had "two big things like basketballs and down below was like Niagra Falls". The tape died, but a vision was born.
To the bemusement of my school friends and probably my family, the twelve year old junkie rocker in training was an obsessive listener to Chas and Dave Christmas Jamboree 12"s. These treasures were the North London duo's mass medley of old school music hall songs. And I'm talking about songs, a lot of which had never even been recorded, some dating back to the Virginia Plantations. They were lyrical, often melancholy, littered with single entendres and always melodic in extremis. Even as my eyes were being drawn to the volumes of war poetry in a downstairs closet, I was mesmerized by 'Harry Was A Champion','A Big Fat Fly Flew By Fat Flo's Flat', 'When You Go Down 'oppin', 'Down the Road'. There was a 'Bloomin Riot' and countless ditties about old bald heads, sticks of celery, Chinese laundries and one that later partly popped up as a crucial verse in a popular Libertines song:
"the other night i go to a ball they calls me Cinderella/and upon my coat i wears a button hole and they calls me tiny fella/next to me comes old Mother Brown, pulling up her railway socks/says to me come and have another dance cos its aint quite twelve o'clock/so off we go, round and round, but there's gonna be some trouble i know/cos i got no buttons on me trousers/and me pins ain't none too strong/hurry up Mrs. Brown I can feel it coming down, and it wont take none too long".
Somewhere between the pillows and the skies, amidst the stark satanic thrills of adolescent whimsy, there's a second hand record shop. Lets say its in Nuneaton. Lets imagine a wonky fringed fifteen year old striding purposefully towards it with his paper round money in his hand. He carried the money openly to make the record shop owner think he was gonna buy stuff, but the week before he's seen a strange apparition, a call to arms even:some right bramah had paraded out of the same shop wearing a t-shirt saying 'Shoplifters of the World Unite'. Later that day the earth collided with the sun, all the clocks started going backwards, even though they were melted and i didn't watch that evenings edition of Noel's House Party. I sat in a room bedecked with QPR memorabilia and stolen library books, a chewed up Derek B tape and a periscope from an Iraqi tank the old man brought had brought back from the Gulf...and my life changed forever. I started something I couldn't finish' cranked into life and something divine occurred to me. Within six months I had officially taken up residence inside Smiths songs. 'Well I Wonder', 'Jeanne', 'Real Around The Fountain', 'Nowhere Fast'. I think "The Boy with the thorn in his side' made me want to pick up the guitar. 'This Charming Man' quickly made me want to put it down again and then 'Rubber Ring' left me in two minds.
Moving on...Its summer 1997, I'm dossing at my Nan's flat in London NW2 working at Willesden Green cemetery. By now I'm in possession of Benny, a crappy old Spanish guitar that is causing serious rifts in the domestic politics on Nana Doll's gaff. My cousin Lee Cassidy had a flat in an opposite block. i sat gobsmacked in his kitchen before work one morning as he told me that he'd never listened to guitar music just dance, rave, jungle etc. "Hang on though Pete, hold tight..." and 'Fools Gold' by the Stone Roses blasted out across the room. Bloody Hell, what the fuck is this? I looked at my cousin and then at my feet. Oh, this must be dancing.
Peabody College, Bruce Grove, sometime in 2001. The rain was playing havoc with my attempts to finish my novel. What with the fact that my bedroom roof had just caved in. Aside from that, my girlfriend had ended another vicious row by running down Tottehnham High road in her neglige. The car i had bought off a young Dole-scrounging, heroin addicted would be superstar Johnny Borrel didn't fancy the trip (what with it being two hundred and seventy five quids worth of absolute shite) and i stood shaking awhile, the radio alarm came on and a sports reporter told me that QPR had just lost at home in front of a record crowd low. The phone rang, my jobseekers allowance key worker was calling to remind me that i needed to come in today as they had concluded their investigations into my false claims and I was to be signed off and issued with a demand to repay two years worth of benefit fraud. The phone rang again. It was B.T. They were cutting the line. I stubbed my toe on the sideboard and stumbled down the stairs, cracking my head on the record player and spinning it into life. 'Good Morning Heartache' sang Billy Holiday at slightly the wrong speed. I made two promises to myself. I'm gonna have that chord progression one day, just see if i don't. And I'm never buying a used car off Johnny Borell again.
Times and dates are now a little vague, i could bang on all day about the whens, the wheres and the whyfores of Immortal Technique's 'Fuck You', Arthur Lee and Love's 'Your Friend and Mine', 'I Wish' by Mick Whitnall, Wolfman's 'For Lovers', the theme tunes to Steptoe and Son, Fools and Horses, Rising Damp and Hancock's Half Hour, Donna Summer's 'Love to Love You Baby', 'Chaos in the courtroom' by the Bandits, 'The Modern Age' by The Strokes, but instead I'm putting my flag in the ground and its staying there forever. If this article should get edited, think only this of me; there is a corner of some skanky Victorian gaol cell, that is forever Billy Bilo's and it was there that I squashed my ear up against the crack in a door and listened to 'Free As A Bird' by the Beatles coming out of the Screw's transistor radio from the landing below.
"Turn it up Gov" I begged. He turned it down.
"What's that Doherty?"
"Can you turn the radio up please Guv".
"Listen to him, will ya, he thinks he at the Camden Palace, this is Scrubs mate".
"It's called Koko's now you fat northern cunt" I muttered under my breath.
"No" came a voice from the next cell "its definitely Scrubs".
In fairness, the prison guard in question did turn the radio back up, but the song was ending, being followed on the Capitol Gold playlist by 'Cool for Cats' by Squeeze. Well, you can't loose them all can you?
Pete:
Funny thing about the army barracks is...the shit jokes. Contradictory, i know. Likewise, i remember hearing a lot of army related songs in those formative years. Mostly about Hitler's genitalia, or lack there of, the QM's stores, and one perennial favorite that went something along the lines of, "left, right, left, right, left," which i could hear belting out from the parade square even as i put on my first ever single purchase-Jive Bunny and the Master Mixers, 'That's what i like.' Hell seeing days. Your second to last enclaves of upwardly mobile underclass muttering disciplined salute-signaled obedience to the very last enclaves of bona fide officer class ooray'Enries. The first song that made me smile behind the barbed wire and blood pool from where one 'army brat summer activity' javelin instructor had carelessly thrust his spike through a pal of mine's head was Dereck B's 'Get Down'. It was the eighties, i was eight and the bloody tape recorder ate my tape, but not before I'd sat agog many an hour, listening repetitively to the premier UK eighties hit pop artistes Derek B and Easy Q. They spoke of a long far off place called east London. The furthest east I'd been was Tottenham Court Road. They spoke of "Cuts that rumble like earthquakes", "Sticking sawn-offs up the noses of the guards" and more intriguingly to my once innocent ears, some female acquaintance who had "two big things like basketballs and down below was like Niagra Falls". The tape died, but a vision was born.
To the bemusement of my school friends and probably my family, the twelve year old junkie rocker in training was an obsessive listener to Chas and Dave Christmas Jamboree 12"s. These treasures were the North London duo's mass medley of old school music hall songs. And I'm talking about songs, a lot of which had never even been recorded, some dating back to the Virginia Plantations. They were lyrical, often melancholy, littered with single entendres and always melodic in extremis. Even as my eyes were being drawn to the volumes of war poetry in a downstairs closet, I was mesmerized by 'Harry Was A Champion','A Big Fat Fly Flew By Fat Flo's Flat', 'When You Go Down 'oppin', 'Down the Road'. There was a 'Bloomin Riot' and countless ditties about old bald heads, sticks of celery, Chinese laundries and one that later partly popped up as a crucial verse in a popular Libertines song:
"the other night i go to a ball they calls me Cinderella/and upon my coat i wears a button hole and they calls me tiny fella/next to me comes old Mother Brown, pulling up her railway socks/says to me come and have another dance cos its aint quite twelve o'clock/so off we go, round and round, but there's gonna be some trouble i know/cos i got no buttons on me trousers/and me pins ain't none too strong/hurry up Mrs. Brown I can feel it coming down, and it wont take none too long".
Somewhere between the pillows and the skies, amidst the stark satanic thrills of adolescent whimsy, there's a second hand record shop. Lets say its in Nuneaton. Lets imagine a wonky fringed fifteen year old striding purposefully towards it with his paper round money in his hand. He carried the money openly to make the record shop owner think he was gonna buy stuff, but the week before he's seen a strange apparition, a call to arms even:some right bramah had paraded out of the same shop wearing a t-shirt saying 'Shoplifters of the World Unite'. Later that day the earth collided with the sun, all the clocks started going backwards, even though they were melted and i didn't watch that evenings edition of Noel's House Party. I sat in a room bedecked with QPR memorabilia and stolen library books, a chewed up Derek B tape and a periscope from an Iraqi tank the old man brought had brought back from the Gulf...and my life changed forever. I started something I couldn't finish' cranked into life and something divine occurred to me. Within six months I had officially taken up residence inside Smiths songs. 'Well I Wonder', 'Jeanne', 'Real Around The Fountain', 'Nowhere Fast'. I think "The Boy with the thorn in his side' made me want to pick up the guitar. 'This Charming Man' quickly made me want to put it down again and then 'Rubber Ring' left me in two minds.
Moving on...Its summer 1997, I'm dossing at my Nan's flat in London NW2 working at Willesden Green cemetery. By now I'm in possession of Benny, a crappy old Spanish guitar that is causing serious rifts in the domestic politics on Nana Doll's gaff. My cousin Lee Cassidy had a flat in an opposite block. i sat gobsmacked in his kitchen before work one morning as he told me that he'd never listened to guitar music just dance, rave, jungle etc. "Hang on though Pete, hold tight..." and 'Fools Gold' by the Stone Roses blasted out across the room. Bloody Hell, what the fuck is this? I looked at my cousin and then at my feet. Oh, this must be dancing.
Peabody College, Bruce Grove, sometime in 2001. The rain was playing havoc with my attempts to finish my novel. What with the fact that my bedroom roof had just caved in. Aside from that, my girlfriend had ended another vicious row by running down Tottehnham High road in her neglige. The car i had bought off a young Dole-scrounging, heroin addicted would be superstar Johnny Borrel didn't fancy the trip (what with it being two hundred and seventy five quids worth of absolute shite) and i stood shaking awhile, the radio alarm came on and a sports reporter told me that QPR had just lost at home in front of a record crowd low. The phone rang, my jobseekers allowance key worker was calling to remind me that i needed to come in today as they had concluded their investigations into my false claims and I was to be signed off and issued with a demand to repay two years worth of benefit fraud. The phone rang again. It was B.T. They were cutting the line. I stubbed my toe on the sideboard and stumbled down the stairs, cracking my head on the record player and spinning it into life. 'Good Morning Heartache' sang Billy Holiday at slightly the wrong speed. I made two promises to myself. I'm gonna have that chord progression one day, just see if i don't. And I'm never buying a used car off Johnny Borell again.
Times and dates are now a little vague, i could bang on all day about the whens, the wheres and the whyfores of Immortal Technique's 'Fuck You', Arthur Lee and Love's 'Your Friend and Mine', 'I Wish' by Mick Whitnall, Wolfman's 'For Lovers', the theme tunes to Steptoe and Son, Fools and Horses, Rising Damp and Hancock's Half Hour, Donna Summer's 'Love to Love You Baby', 'Chaos in the courtroom' by the Bandits, 'The Modern Age' by The Strokes, but instead I'm putting my flag in the ground and its staying there forever. If this article should get edited, think only this of me; there is a corner of some skanky Victorian gaol cell, that is forever Billy Bilo's and it was there that I squashed my ear up against the crack in a door and listened to 'Free As A Bird' by the Beatles coming out of the Screw's transistor radio from the landing below.
"Turn it up Gov" I begged. He turned it down.
"What's that Doherty?"
"Can you turn the radio up please Guv".
"Listen to him, will ya, he thinks he at the Camden Palace, this is Scrubs mate".
"It's called Koko's now you fat northern cunt" I muttered under my breath.
"No" came a voice from the next cell "its definitely Scrubs".
In fairness, the prison guard in question did turn the radio back up, but the song was ending, being followed on the Capitol Gold playlist by 'Cool for Cats' by Squeeze. Well, you can't loose them all can you?
Monday, September 26, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
ramblings#72
maybe i was just an idea. a long haired rock and roll loser. with tattoos and england's dreams. but i KNOW that i was and am much more than that. and i would be sad to think i was or could be anything less.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
ramblings#71
fine that's how you want it. apparently i mean nothing. and that is why it is so fucked up. friendship wasn't ever a real intention. i'm just there to fill a void. a gap whenever you're bored. when there is nothing else going on. when its convenient. i don't know you. i have got to get out of here. i'm drowning. why couldn't you have just left?
and even if i could say or show the bottom of my soul. my fucking throbbing heart spilled all over the stage, it wouldn't mean anything to you.
get me out of here.
and even if i could say or show the bottom of my soul. my fucking throbbing heart spilled all over the stage, it wouldn't mean anything to you.
get me out of here.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
ramblings#70
you know i have really been trying. do you think it is easy? no it's not. but i have been trying my best. and for what? obviously i am the only one who cares. all of my actions seem to mean nothing. all the thought i have put into everything. the pain, the humiliation, the stress. apparently my relationship in any form doesn't really mean anything.
its a horrorshow.
its a horrorshow.
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