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.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
ramblings#69
i don't know. i don't know anymore. look at it any way you like. i don't know anymore.
you can tell me that i do. but i don't. that's probably hard to face.
you smug faced crowd with kindling eye
who cheer as soldier lads march by
sneak home and pray you'll never know
the hell where youth and laughter go
you can tell me that i do. but i don't. that's probably hard to face.
you smug faced crowd with kindling eye
who cheer as soldier lads march by
sneak home and pray you'll never know
the hell where youth and laughter go
Saturday, August 13, 2011
ramblings#68
cause its a long ways to go, a hard row to hoe
its a long way to go, but in the meantime
its a long way to go, but in the meantime
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
ramblings#66
i have to let it go. once and for all let go of the pain. i feel like if i let go of my pain, everything will be gone forever. that is not true. it has been a burden for far too long. i cant move forward being attached to it anymore. it's not letting go of my love, it's just the pain and it's at that point where all it's doing is keeping me down. lord give me the strength to let go of the pain once and for all.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
ramblings#64
pirate love? really? after everything that i lived and breathed? it's insulting.
because everything is different on the otherside. they are all authentic and you never see them outside of that show, and so they stay like that in your mind. and even all of the old pictures show them, engraved forever on the king's road as thick as thieves. but that is never the full story, and so the thing you put all of your belief in to never really existed. in the end johnny rotten wears designer clothes and has done an advert for butter. steve ignorant reformed crass. and sid vicous died.
and you just decided to pay attention?
because everything is different on the otherside. they are all authentic and you never see them outside of that show, and so they stay like that in your mind. and even all of the old pictures show them, engraved forever on the king's road as thick as thieves. but that is never the full story, and so the thing you put all of your belief in to never really existed. in the end johnny rotten wears designer clothes and has done an advert for butter. steve ignorant reformed crass. and sid vicous died.
and you just decided to pay attention?
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
ramblings#63
it's hard not to ask why is this happening to me? although that is ridiculous. comparatively i have it so easy. it just seems like everything is going wrong. it is really wearing me down.
Friday, June 24, 2011
ramblings#62
those were more liberal times as i recall. so i sit here in the evening of the day and i fear only one thing. letting my whole world come crashing down before i feel that i have given it a fair chance. oh well. as i have found no where men, it is never the way we plan it out. and when the nights have gone. tomorrow never knows.
Friday, June 17, 2011
ramblings#61
finally the hardest semester of my life is over. i cant even begin to explain how hard this time has been for me. i have a shoebox full of papers that can. where i poured out who knows what onto paper. even the memory of some of the nights i have spent in the past few months seem like such a burden. loneliness, desperation, hurt, anger, love, sadness, forgiveness, patience, joy, peace. where am i supposed to go with it all? some would never look back, keeping it hidden from sight, choosing to bury it all because of the pain that it brings with it. but i don't want to do that. i want to embrace all of my story even the parts where my back is broken. i'm still not sure how i will embrace this or where the story goes, but i do know that i keep faith. we can't take anything or anyone for granted. that's the only thing i can emphasize. so give it everything you got. my love feels so much deeper now. i used to say those words and they were so easy. i feel like they have earned so much meaning now. to everyone. i know that i am terrible at articulating the feelings that i have. i don't think i paint a 5th of the picture i want to paint in these. the only thing i want to convey is how much i love each one of you. i don't know everyone that reads this, but after all that i have been through i wouldn't want anyone to think for a single second that i don't care about them. and maybe this won't sound genuine at all because its real hard to sound sincere on the internet. but i love you. thanks for being with me the past few months. i cant thank you enough. for all that you have ever done for me. i love you.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
ramblings#60(morethoughtsonlove)
if i could paint you the most vivid portrait of love could it compare to standing beside the grand canyon at sunset? could it convey the joy felt reuniting with an old friend? the comfort of knowing you're home? the salvation of something honest and true? the warmth of a strong embrace?
we never stop growing. my love is much vaster now than it has ever been.
especially today.
i love you.
we never stop growing. my love is much vaster now than it has ever been.
especially today.
i love you.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
ramblings#59(iaintgotnohomeinthisworldanymore)
i used to enjoy coming home. i really did. it was nice visiting my family but feeling acomplished having moved out, gotten away, to be in pursuit of happiness. around august i realized i didn't like coming home anymore. seeing old friends became more tragic than anything else, (i apologize for how vain that sounds) and apart from my families, i had little interst left in tehachapi. the last couple times i have come home have been especially hard. i can't even begin to explain. though i know these are rational emotional responses, and that they may well pass, i still am haunted by the ghosts.
that midnight train keeps rollin by,
i'm so lonesome i could cry.
but i am okay. it's okay to feel this way. i don't have a home anymore. tehachapi doesn't feel like my home anymore, neither does azusa. i was reading kyle greenberg's blog a month or so ago and he quoted someone who was talking about the same feeling. maybe i know that this earth is just a tempermental place. that the kingdom is coming.
i think of woody guthrie.
now as i look around it's might plain to see
this wide and wicked world is a funny place to be
oh the gambling man is rich and the working man is poor
and i aint got no home in this world anymore
What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon.
You know. that's just what i'll do.
that midnight train keeps rollin by,
i'm so lonesome i could cry.
but i am okay. it's okay to feel this way. i don't have a home anymore. tehachapi doesn't feel like my home anymore, neither does azusa. i was reading kyle greenberg's blog a month or so ago and he quoted someone who was talking about the same feeling. maybe i know that this earth is just a tempermental place. that the kingdom is coming.
i think of woody guthrie.
now as i look around it's might plain to see
this wide and wicked world is a funny place to be
oh the gambling man is rich and the working man is poor
and i aint got no home in this world anymore
What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon.
You know. that's just what i'll do.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
ramblings#58
i don't like when my stuff get's stolen.
however it looks like some good may yet come out of this.
and that is how life goes.
i love you all.
however it looks like some good may yet come out of this.
and that is how life goes.
i love you all.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
ramblings#57
it's still a little hard to take in. it's been a hard day's night, but it looks like it's getting better.
boy am i tired.
i think that a pool party is in order in the near future. also another trip to the beach.
school gets out soon.
vowels are movin.
i can't believe how i life works.
this is the life.
believe it or not i haven't forgotten any of it.
boy am i tired.
i think that a pool party is in order in the near future. also another trip to the beach.
school gets out soon.
vowels are movin.
i can't believe how i life works.
this is the life.
believe it or not i haven't forgotten any of it.
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