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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2009.12.17  18.47 Pity The People In The Desert. Pity The People Who Had Too Much Dessert. Merry Xmas, readers. http://www.sendspace.com/file/ejgy20

	2009.08.04  16.53 A wilfully eclectic compilation of (mostly pretty upbeat) tracks of varying degrees of obscurity: http://www.sendspace.com/file/letpv2 1. Jimmy Webb - P.F. Sloan 2. The Happy Sound Of National Radio 1 3. U-Roy - Wet Vision 4. Radio 1, It's Great 5. Mark Eric - Night Of The Lions 6. Theme from Robin's Nest 7. LiLiPUT - Split 8. Dr. Schup 9. Mandalay Sein Mottah - Lover Of Smiling Girls 10. The Monkees - Mommy And Daddy (original uncensored lyrics) 11. Polydor 12. Ofo The Black Company - Allah Wakbarr 13. Katie Lee - Will To Fail 14. Mellow Candle - Sheep Season (demo version) 15. Radio 1, Good Time Music 16. The Cadets - Stranded In The Jungle 17. Pete Townshend - US Air Force Radio Ad 18. Erkin Koray - Hop Hop Gelsin (edit) 19. Good Music Every Morning, On Metro 261 20. Frank Zappa - Remington Electric Razor Radio Ad (rejected) 21. Metro 261, Hitbound 22. Pilot - Canada 23. James Brown - Dept. Of Labor Radio Ad 24. Buggles - Elstree 25. Theme from Think Of A Number 26. Robb Storme & The Whispers - Where Is My Girl 27. Going Home With 261 28. The Undisputed Truth - UFOs 29. Baba Brooks - Country Town 30. Golden American 31. Luisa Fernandez - Make Me Feel Alright 32. Radio 1, 275/285 33. Montage - I Shall Call Her Mary 34. Radio 1, Here In Your Town 35. Reinheit des Herzens - Paris Hat 7 Bruecken 36. The Rolling Stones - Rice Krispies Advert 37. Radio 1, Good Afternoon 38. "Mama" Cass Elliot - Make Your Own Kind Of Music 39. BBC Radiophonic Workshop - Take Another Look 40. Radio Nordsee International 41. The Buzz - You're Holding Me Down 42. Jaffa 43. Radio 1 On The Road 44. Muhammad Ali - Ali's Historical Theme Song 45. The Chi-Lites - There Will Never Be Any Peace (Until God Is Seated At The Conference Table) 46. Simon Mayo 47. The Lifeguards - Everybody Outta The Pool

	2009.07.20  22.17 You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue Despite my ruinous financial situation and much drama in my private life, pretty much all I've thought about for the past month or so has been space travel in general - and Apollo 11 in particular. Been re-reading all my NASA-related books, re-watching all the NASA-related documentaries, drifting around the universe on various computer programs; I changed my desktop wallpaper to a crazy shot of the Earth peeping over the shabby hull of a 1960s spaceship, the tinfoil and papier-mache crap on which we flew to the moon. I still haven't worked out quite why this stuff makes me almost teary-eyed, when I wasn't there at the time, and never will be, but yes it does. A man in possession of near-infinite quantities of The Wrong Stuff, I look up at the moon every night and can no longer see it as "something in the sky" - only as a place, as real as next door. And then the gloom sets in. Because that's more or less it, isn't it? The minute distance from here to there, one tiny step for mankind: and what's left? Nebulae like lit-up thoughts, planets buzzing with purple jungles and nine-headed birds, giant spinning pleasure palaces topped with huge glass domes, where impossibly beautiful creatures tickle each other with their tentacles - forget it. It's damn cold out there, and we'll be lucky if we make it to Mars, a place that's like the moon but orange instead of grey. Pathetic, in every sense. I've never been too bothered by living in an uncaring universe, but I go a bit mad when I feel roped in. And then I look again the old Apollo 11 footage, and I can't pay my rent and I'm half-dead, but I'm trembling along with Whitey on the moon. Still, just in time for the big anniversary... given myself the space blues.

	2009.06.22  17.43 Self-Promotion #1 I don't usually use this page to post links to things I've written. Always struck me as slightly gauche. I think I'm probably the only person in the world who feels like that, though - which means I'm losing out - and so few people come here anyway that it can't hurt, can it? http://thequietus.com/articles/01922-paul-mccartney-the-beatles-wings-the-best-of There you go then - at that slightly peculiar URL is my latest, an article on Paul McCartney's solo career which may or may not be of interest to YOU.

	2009.02.02  18.14 The green apples triggered stomach cramps Here's an account of the marathon at the 1904 Olympic Games: http://www.marathonandbeyond.com/choices/duggan.html I am not, you might say, a particular devotee of marathon running in general, but after reading this page it would be very hard to deny that the 1904 Olympic Marathon was the single most fantastic sporting event in history - a diseased hybrid of a silent movie comedy and "Wacky Races". This article was not written by someone with a natural flair for comic detail, but even so there are at least four or five genuine LOL points. Let's just say the fate of "South African Kaffir" Lentaw made me almost break a rib laughing, "apparent winner" Fred Lorz most certainly deserved some sort of medal, if not an Olympic gold, and Felix Carvajal might just be a new name to biro onto the pencil case.

	2009.01.29  15.37

	2008.12.16  01.54 Unifaun Look at these wankers. Go on, look at them. That's Genesis, performing "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight" in 1973, in case you only happen to know about good music. Yes, ha ha - I should make it clear right here, I can't bear the unthinking antipathy towards anything resembling prog rock, which far too often covers up a deep-rooted musical/ideological conservatism which is nothing to be proud of, and is partly why rrrrock is so fucked right now (a discussion for another day), and I'm not heading that way, I'm really not. Someone (a Gen-head, as they used to say) linked to this clip in a thread on the OTF music forum, and since this is a band I think about less frequently than Luv', I wanted to think about them. It's good to do this semi-regularly: find music you're vaguely aware of but have never really thought about, and freestyle. I'd like to write properly on British prog rock at some point, because British music fans' relationship with prog - the preconceptions, misconceptions and misperceptions, and where they came from and why, and the real reasons why 97% of prog really was so fucking bad, rather than "LOL trousers LOL drum solo" - is something I find vaguely fascinating. Not now, though, because now I can only watch this clip and think things like: 0:01 - Oh Christ, man, what the fuck have you got on your head? 6.27: As a pointlessly tumultuous instrumental passage finally calms down, maybe - surely! - at last this thing is ending... then Gabriel walks up to the microphone and pulls out a fucking flute. A chill runs down my spine. The funny (and infuriating) thing is that they clearly had some talent, you know? I mean, you can laugh (and if you watch that clip and don't laugh you have something to worry about, friend) but they really did have something, somewhere, glimpsed in flashes. And yet - like Peter Gabriel befouling his good looks with that fuckwitted scalp-carving - they're determined to bugger everything up as badly as possible. There's a lovely melodic feel to some of their songs, which they scribble across with stupid time changes and the like, never diverting, only distracting. PG's voice is quite appealing in places, until he starts adding those yelps and those absurd harlequin affectations, which just make him sound like a cunt. I even like the odd phrase from the lyrics, and suspect he could have come up with some reasonable absurdist English poetry, if not for that aggravating unclever cleverness, those constant lapses into silly-arsed whimsy and puns that even Elvis Costello would scratch a line through. Of course, it's hard to see much of this, because the look is so striking it's hard to get past the look: you can forgive the double-necked bass (I can see how that might have seemed agreeably freaky at the time), but Phil Collins in his Rik from "The Young Ones" dungarees, and Gabriel with a fucking lawnmower on his head, prancing around like a Flowerpot Man... Jesus fuck. Thing is, whenever one of the pretty-good bits flashed past, I thought "how would I feel if I were watching this group in 1973, without the modern frame of reference, possibly more receptive and less prejudiced?" Not because Genesis being "uncool" means anything to me - far from it, that makes me almost warm to them - but because it's hard to hear undiluted prog rock these days without a little knee-jerking, even for fans of contemporaneous music which sometimes strays very close to the line (Pink Floyd, Popol Vuh, Led Zeppelin, Zappa's "Hot Rats"). However much you may be enjoying a piece of music, the sudden appearance of a galloping, spiralling double-time arpeggio on the keyboard, or a mid-line shift in time signature (especially if into 12/6 or something equally ridiculous) elicits an almost Pavlovian response: "oh shit, it's PROG". It's fair enough in a way - those aspects of prog got a bad name because most of the time, they do indeed sound fucking rubbish - but the way they leap out, red for danger, really is unique. No other genre feels this toxic. It still amazes me how strongly we're guided sometimes (even those of us who very actively resist) by responses to music which are not our own. It goes way beyond teeny emos pretending they don't like "Umbrella" or what have you; far more subtle and sneaky. So, if you could go back in time, despite the fact that "Selling England By The Pound" would sound totally irrelevant next to the latest reggae 7", would the lack of that strong conditioned response tip the balance, and make Genesis seem acceptable on the whole? Or at least somehow... worthwhile, if just for trying something new, groping towards something that may bear fruit (after all, who knew)? Would they have received the benefit of the doubt? In other words, do they seem worse than they really are, for reasons they can't control, and we should? The answer's no, anyway. Such an air of twattishness bleeds from that clip, it's impossible to imagine it ever looked or sounded anything less than preposterous, because the cuntishness of Genesis transcends everything. Even if you didn't know that public schoolboys in tights making stupid faces and twirling their fingers equalled "cunt", it would become immediately obvious on seeing Genesis live. And if you had never been told that roaming ten-minute mini-operas full of "look-at-me" fiddly bits and po-faced flute solos were generally a bad thing, you'd find out for yourself soon enough, when Genesis leaned into "Moonlit Knight". However many sparks of real invention and effect one finds in one of these early Genesis tracks (and I've tried a few), everything else is effectively blotted out by the overwhelming smugness, and the fundamental pointlessness of it all. I'm not sure the received wisdom that prog excess = musical crime is "received wisdom" at all. I strongly suspect that it is, in fact, just plain wisdom. Unless, of course, that widdliness is so lurid and grotesque, it becomes agreeable trash (Goblin's theme from "Profondo Rosso" / when I'm feeling charitable, the truly horrible "Brain Salad Surgery"). Anyway, I was one of those people who first saw mullets, or garish hooded tops, or massive bubble trainers, and thought right there "that looks fucking shit, and in ten years no one will believe you thought you looked cool." Current version: teenage boys with their jeans pulled down at the back, exposing flabby upper arse straining against grey brushed-cotton three-for-a-fiver-in-BHS boxer shorts. If you dress like that, you could look like the young Marlon Brando and you'd still look like a fucking dick, and the same applies with Genesis: I don't care if this bit or that bit sounds really-good-actually, because this is, inescapably, twat music, and if you don't get that, you probably won't get much. Funnily enough, the one song on which they did not indulge their particular perversions, and just wrote a pop tune - "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" - is their only satisfying moment (in that pop context, even the lyrics' utter idiocy is rather endearing). I'm talking about the single version, by the way - if you find the live clip of that song on YouTube and watch the first minute (and then what happens from 2:21 to 2:29), make sure you don't have Peter Gabriel's current home address, because you WILL want to shove a tent peg through his face. According to Wikipedia, "Phil Collins performed a dance and a tambourine act during [live versions of the song], as can be seen in the Genesis: In Concert film from 1977." I think I'd like to see that dance and tambourine act, just once, just for the lulz... but hours after having an impacted wisdom tooth extracted - which split into five pieces on the first pull, requiring five more, each accompanied by a grotesque crunching sound, plus one last almighty yank which almost sent the dentist tumbling over backwards like he'd just uprooted The Enormous Turnip... not the right time. Not the right time at all. I'm not having a good week. Year. Whatever.

	2008.08.19  18.31 I saw Ray Davies on Archway Road earlier this afternoon, looking bald and stressed. About five minutes later, a mentally ill man who looked a bit like Ray Davies came up to me and said "are you police, you cunt?" No, the police don't wear trainers. Then he asked the bloke behind me.

	2008.06.07  04.14

	2007.12.07  12.05 Right Wing Rock Maybe I just don't have anything better to do these days. For some reason, the best way to take my mind off the events of this year has been to assemble a compilation of noxious and, for the most part, deservedly-obscure right wing popular songs, all of them hilarious, baffling, mind-boggling or just plain brilliant. So here it is, an early Christmas present for anyone interested, complete with sleeve notes and appallingly-Photoshopped sleeve art for you to throw away (if anyone wants to make a proper cover, please do). Thirty of the most entertainingly reactionary / conservative / rabidly right-wing songs from rock and pop history. Anything too predictable or just plain unfunny has been excluded - so no Nazi punk, no Sgt. Barry Sadler, no Rush, no Morrissey. Contains rare / archive material - so apologies for fluctuating sound quality. DOWNLOAD LINK 1 (Rapidshare): http://rapidshare.com/files/76812484/RightWingRock.zip.html DOWNLOAD LINK 2 (Megaupload): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4UXJ65M5 Tracks: 1. THE RIGHT BROTHERS - Bush Was Right World-class suckers The Right Brothers might not know what "cognitive dissonance following disconfirmed expectancy" means, but if they look it up they may just find a picture of themselves. MTV's decision not to playlist this song proved, according to the Brothers, that it is guilty of liberal bias; presumably, this also applies to the countless Clear Channel rock stations who also didn't play it. Derisive nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah guitar riff recalls the theme to 1980s ITV kids show "Your Mother Wouldn't Like It". France? WRONG! 2. ROBIN & CRYSTAL BERNARD - The Monkey Song Creationist singalong from reverend's daughters Robin & Crystal, captured from old-tyme radio by "the miracle of recording". Until a few years ago, this would have sounded hilariously archaic. Crystal, incidentally, remained in show business, appearing as KC Cunningham in "Happy Days", and later as Helen in the bafflingly long-running US sitcom "Wings". She also continued to make records, whose nauseatingly pious content suggests she never did renounce that "Monkey Song" sentiment. 3. THE STRAWBS - Part Of The Union It's perhaps the perfect punishment for The Strawbs that this piss-taking dirge was adopted by British trade unionists and sung lustily on freezing picket lines for more than a decade, without a trace of irony. It's also quite satisfying that it completely overshadows the rest of their output, which would otherwise have attained cult status but is now eschewed by self-respecting rock fans since The Strawbs are, forever more, just those "Part Of The Union" guys. True poetic justice would have the ex-Strawbs currently eking out a living in de-unionised jobs with no workers' rights; sadly, they used to make a lot of money playing Tory cabaret nights, so they're probably not. 4. JANEEN BRADY - Free Enterprise Mormon horror Janeen Brady churned out a welter of kiddy-indoctrinating claptrap in the 1980s, but this catchy ode to capitalism leads the field in sheer strangeness. From the poorly-illustrated disc-and-book set "Take Your Hat Off When The Flag Goes By". 5. THE CHARLIE DANIELS BAND - A Few More Rednecks It's a long way from "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" to this pig-eyed slop, a fine example of just how successful the American Right has been in convincing the working class that hardcore conservatism stands up for them against a moneyed Leftist "elite". The indisputably talented, Darwin-hating Mr Daniels - whose latter-day blog is a nightmare of ultra-right rhetoric - gives it his best shot ("You intellectuals may not like it, but there ain't nothing you can do"), and makes a holy fool of himself. 6. THE EXXON SINGERS - America's Way The corporate anthem - fist-chewing propaganda song voiced by hack session singers or, sometimes, actual employees of the company concerned - is still de rigeur for the self-respecting multinational, but they don't make them like this anymore. While most corporate anthems simply bang the drum for whichever company put up the money, The Exxon Singers branch out into fully-fledged paeans to rapacious capitalism, as in this unparalleled tooth-grinder. They were sometimes more strident (see track 17), but the wobbly, overblown schmaltz of "America's Way" has a charm all of its own. 7. THE SPOKESMEN - Dawn Of Correction "Maybe you can't vote boy, but man your battle stations." This conservative answer song to Barry McGuire's "Eve Of Destruction" wasn't a big hit, but it's arguably a lot more enjoyable than the ludicrously earnest original. Much has changed since then, of course - check out those anachronistic props for the UN. The sleeve notes are inspiring: "The Spokesmen are aptly named, for they represent the voice of a generation that has endured many and frequent changes, a generation that hovers on the dawn of a new and better tomorrow, with promises of many more changes. But there is good reason to feel strong confidence in the future so long as there remains the youthful optimism of tomorrow's leaders, as expressed in the words and music of THE SPOKESMEN." 8. VICTOR LUNDBERG - An Open Letter To My Teenage Son Victor was a radio newscaster from Michigan who got the bright idea that a spoken-word album of reactionary diatribes set to stirring patriotic music might go down well in the summer of love; this fatherly message starts off reasonably enough, then builds to a ghastly climax. There was actually a glut of these records in the late 60s and 70s (see track 19): see also "These Things I Believe", by the fictional John Calhoun, which sits proudly in Homer Simpson's record collection. Mr Calhoun would presumably have taken his name from the Confederate icon, in the manner of Stonewall Jackson, whose pro-war - any war - "The Minute Men Are Turning In Their Graves" narrowly missed out on inclusion here. 9. JOHN LENNON (via LINDA POLLEY) - Hussein's Butt Song Linda Polley and her husband Gerald are self-professed visitors from another planet, now living in North Dakota, who also claim to be psychics channeling the songs of John Lennon from the afterlife. It seems that in death, Lennon has abandoned his anti-establishment stance and joined the Religious Right, returning to a "back to basics" style based around Casio keyboard and nursery-rhyme phrasing, on exciting new songs such as this jaunty tribute to American military power. All things considered, it's a shame the other three Beatles didn't reform to record a backing track for this, rather than the comparatively dreary "Free As A Bird". 10. TOBY KEITH - Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American) Merle Haggard prodigy Toby Keith, The Confused American. Possibly the high water mark of Right Wing Rock, this gutbucket growl was a radio sensation back in the days of Shock And Awe, and stands, arms folded, way beyond parody. The idea of the line here "somewhere in the back" not appearing in the original draft of the lyrics as "somewhere in Iraq" is utterly inconceivable. Still, in its way, this record is surely as magnificent as it is horrific. 11. KPMG - Our Vision Of Global Strategy Who could fail to love many-tentacled accountancy and financial services firm KPMG, whose vision of global strategy involves acting as independent auditors for Accenture, Burger King, Deutsche Bank, BMW, American Express, Nestle, Bertelsmann Media Group, Citgo and Halliburton, and the surreptitious creation of illegal tax shelters in order to assist corporate clients in dodging two and a half billion dollars in taxation? Here is their stirring corporate anthem. 12. MERLE HAGGARD - The Fightin' Side Of Me "Okie From Muskogee" was deliberately over the top, but the gyppy old jailbird means every word of this one. Don't run down his country, hoss! 13. THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY - Four Jolly Labourmen In the run-up to the 1964 General Election, "The Conservative & Unionist Party Central Office" issued "Songs For Swinging Voters", a six-track flexidisc of anti-Labour singalongs. Not a single positive word for Alec Douglas-Home, but much mirth at Harold Wilson's mac (and a sideswipe at Jo Grimond for good measure). This hearty satire of the soon-to-be Government may be the only popular song in history to namecheck Dick Crossman. 14. THE JAM - Time For Truth Essentially the same as the previous track, but with swearing. "Whatever happened to the Great Empire?" fumes Tory voter Paul Weller (aged 18 and a half). The answer is that Jim Callaghan's Labour government have "turned it into manure", while simultaneously creating a "police state", in order to "rule our bodies and minds" (considering the Home Secretary at this point was Merlyn Rees, this might have made some sense had The Jam hailed from Belfast rather than Woking). While The Clash were mashing up Trotsky and Baader-Meinhof, The Jam's early stabs at political pop seem to be informed largely by what Paul heard his dad grumbling about at breakfast over a dog-eared copy of The Sun. 15. MORMON KIDS SING - I Want To Be A Mother Nothing inherently reactionary about motherhood, of course, but you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise after listening to "Mormon Kids Sing", an LP whose title guarantees Mormon-only sales as surely as if they'd called it "Everyone Who Isn't A Mormon Can Fuck Off". The Phyllis Schlafly-style agenda peeps through by the second stanza. 16. JACKIE DOLL & HIS PICKLED PEPPERS - When They Drop The Atomic Bomb While US forces battle it out in Korea, Jackie Doll has a plan to put an end to the Cold War once and for all - but heaven knows what Hawkeye Pierce would have made of it. Anyway, Jackie had the last laugh, because not only are his ideas back in fashion, but this infectious bluegrass still sounds great. 17. THE KINKS - Get Back In Line More union-bashing from 1970s England, but at least this time it's a beautiful song. Part working class rebel, part old-school conservative, Ray Davies wouldn't be quite so fascinating without his occasional lapses into Little Englanderism; one would think this anti-union line stems more from a distaste for demagogy than genuine political feeling, but it's hard to say for sure. In all honesty, when the music is as good as this, it's also hard to care. 18. THE EXXON SINGERS - Efficiency Way out of their jurisdiction, The Exxon Singers hold forth on the evils of big government and the unimpeachable majesty of laissez-faire economics. Truly chilling. 19. THE NEW CREATION - Sodom And Gomorrah Socially-illiberal Christian rock from Vancouver - lyrically, this could be the squarest record in history, but the spooky combination of tone-deaf geeks who sound like they're trying to sing without waking up the kids, and what could almost be the young Lou Reed playing guitar, makes this a tiny classic. Doing the one-guitar-and-drums thing years before The White Stripes (and indeed, looking rather like an ultra-unhip version of them), The New Creation rock, somehow. You probably wouldn't have bothered with their after show party, though. 20. CHARLES ASHMAN - An American's Answer (To Gordon Sinclair) "An American's Answer To Gordon Sinclair" is not a retort to the star of "Gregory's Girl", but to "The Americans (A Canadian's Opinion)", a 1974 novelty record by a Canadian radio presenter which spawned about 10 cover versions, a handful of parodies and countless answer songs, including this one. Gordon Sinclair's pro-US tract - a booming on-air rant backed with "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic" - is historically selective, but not really right wing as such; in his whitewashing reply, Charles Ashman's appraisal of post-war America strays so far into the realms of patriotic fantasy it could be a Washington Times editorial. I'm pretty sure this is not the same Charles Ashman who wrote a series of paperback exposes of links between the CIA and the Mafia in the 1970s; despite the aural evidence, it definitely isn't Phil Hartman. 21. LEROY VAN DYKE - Mister Professor "Mister Professor, you're well educated, I know..." Can't you just feel that "but" coming? Country sub-legend Leroy is wary of fancy book-learning, because he's heard that the American college system is a nest of commie vipers. Just the strangled delivery of the words "poor working slobs" is enough to make a dead dog smile. 22. THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY - Nationalisation Nightmare Nothing like a poor analogy for ramming home the point. Those singing Tories are back to make the case for privatisation in the lamest way imaginable, armed with their bizarre belief that privately-owned business is seamlessly efficient and entirely free of bureaucracy. The football theme, faux-prole accent and nursery-rhyme backing make it easy for the lerr clarses to understand. One is tempted to suggest that Labour's 1964 election victory can perhaps be traced directly to "Songs For Swinging Voters". 23. GILBERT O'SULLIVAN - A Woman's Place Drip-rock pioneer Gilbert is all for a woman who can make it on her own, but... 24. JOHN LENNON (via LINDA POLLEY) - Vote Republican Another posthumous Lennon classic, brought to us by the redoubtable Linda Polley, this time explaining the spiritual consequences of voting Democrat in the 2004 election. "Jesus won't take his throne, cos Hillary is such a witch!" reveals John / Linda. "If you want to have a world left, there's something that I'd strongly suggest! / If you want there to be Heaven, you'd better vote Republican!" Thankfully, the American electorate chose to heed Lennon's message, and cosmic catastrophe was averted. But for how long? "Don't you know, the Democrats are really really in a fix / Their leaders are even accusing President Bush of playing dirty politics!" 25. THE BEATLES - Taxman This track's electrifying brilliance is undimmed, but so is the Mail-reading repulsiveness of its message. Yes, the top rate of tax in mid-60s Britain looks like a misprint, and yes, it must have hurt like hell for nouveau-riche scruffbags like The Beatles. Nonetheless, the fact that George Harrison wrote his famous gripe at having to contribute towards schools and hospitals while sitting next to the swimming pool of his Esher mansion does leave a distinctly un-fab taste in the mouth. 26. JANET GREENE - Commie Lies Fired as Cinderella on WCPO's Krusty-tastic "Uncle Al Lewis Show" for refusing a trip to the casting couch, Janet Greene became involved with anticommunist profiteer Fred Schwarz, and was relaunched in 1964 as the anti-Joan Baez, a singing figurehead for Schwarz' Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. Here's how the CACC's own newsletter reviewed one Greene performance: "In a way it wouldn't be sporting to compare her to most female 'protest' folk singers, because Janet has a number of unfair advantages. For one thing she looks like a girl. Not many female protest singers can say that. And that may be what they are really protesting against, deep down... Janet does things that most protest folk singers wouldn't dream of. Like taking a bath. And like wearing clean clothes and dressing neatly and being legally married and having legitimate children and loving her country." In 1964, she was fortunate enough to share a bill with both Ronald Reagan and The Goldwaters. 27. THE GOLDWATERS - What Have You Done? In a deranged attempt to whip up support for Barry Goldwater's doomed 1964 presidential bid, the owners of a Nashville radio station took four smug, unfunny fratboys and moulded them into The Goldwaters, satirical right-wing folk sensation and general pain the ass. Their one LP, "The Goldwaters Sing Folk Songs To Bug The Liberals" (plastered throughout with the same "Top Cat" laughter track heard here) supposedly sold 200,000 copies, and was enough to secure them a tour of political meetings and Young Republicans' jive parties. "Give this album to one of your liberal 'friends'," suggests the sleeve notes. "No doubt you will convert a liberal!" 28. KEITH EVERETT - Conscientious Objectors Vietnam-era garage-folk hero Keith Everett lays into snivelling conchies, sounding mad as hell. Almost nothing is known about Keith (he's not the guy who turns up when you Google his name, anyway), but his effortless rhyming shall live long in the memory. 29. L'IL MARKIE - Diary Of An Unborn Child Evangelist Mark Ford's nauseating creation "L'il Markie" is usually somewhat chirpier than this, but here he goes in for some serious zygote anthropomorphism and ends up with what is possibly the grimmest record in the history of the world. It goes exactly where you think it's going. And then, with the closing refrain, it goes somewhere even worse. 30. THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY - John Citizen (version two) Well, there it is. Warning #1: some of these songs have been stuck in my head for months, and I really can't be held responsible if you start singing them absent-mindedly at the bus stop. Warning #2 (as pointed out, most helpfully, by someone on a forum the other day): Audioscrobbler OFF.

	2007.09.03  19.42 Eulogy My father died somewhere between midnight and 2am on the morning of August 12th. It wasn’t a shock – he’d been ill for a year, complications of diabetes annexed to fifty years of smoking. A gangrenous toe became arteriosclerosis, and arteriosclerosis became kidney failure, and kidney failure became multiple major organ failure. His stays in intensive care were getting longer, and the time between was growing shorter. Last time, he came out of hospital looking grey and skeletal, moving slowly and talking in a whisper, and was at home for less than two weeks before his lungs began to fill with fluid again. My mother was forced to call the hospital in the middle of the night, yet again, renewing her acquaintance with ambulance men who, by now, knew her by name. This time, things were different. On previous visits, he’d been optimistic in hospital once he came round, cracking jokes and talking about the future. This time he was strangely agitated, knowing that the game was up – a few days before his final admission, as my mum came in from doing the garden alone, since he was still too weak, he’d looked at her sadly and said, “you need a rest”. It was pretty obvious that next time would be the last time. She’d been told three or four times that he was about to die by different doctors in the past few months. A consultant once admitted to us that if he’d been on duty when my dad had come in, he wouldn’t have bothered with the life-support machine or the dialysis, just hooked him up to some morphine and a label saying “do not resuscitate”. Four days later, my dad was sitting up in bed eating cornflakes. This time, though, I knew what was going to happen as I got off the train at Kidderminster, where my parents had grown up and where I’d spent most of my childhood. I looked out over the old town from the top of Station Hill. Once the home of the British carpet industry, it was a cluster of dark Victorian factories, churches and pubs, a slimy old canal and a huge sugar beet processing plant that gave the south side of town a distinctive sickly smell that never seemed to go away, even on weekends. I used to lie in bed on school holidays and listen to the factory hooters. It’s all gone now: the carpet factories have been gutted, some of them converted into cheap clothes shops and wine bars, others left to stand empty and grand with all their windows smashed (because there’s nothing else to do). The canal was cleaned up, because there are no cotton barges anymore, and there are swans on it now – they glide past TK Maxx, PC World, JD Sports, and pubs that have been refurbished and renamed for a younger crowd. The twin towers of the sugar beet factory got a preservation order, but the sweet smell is long gone. Everything changes. No one sits at looms anymore, or tests textile dyes on single strands under glass. Nothing goes on forever. It was sad to see my father in hospital this time, slightly wild-eyed, agonisingly thin, with skin that was almost translucent. He hugged my mother and me, and immediately told us that he wished someone could just “turn a switch, and that would be it”. He said how much he’d enjoyed his life, how lucky he’d been to fall in love with a woman and stay in love with her for fifty years, how lucky they’d been that, after finding out that they couldn’t have children, they’d made it through the primitive adoption process of the early 1970s and finally got the son they’d always wanted. “We’ve been here, been there, done this, done that, bought this, sold that” – he punctuated it with little wails, muttering “oh boy oh boy”, as he kept remembering just what was happening, just what he had to face up to. He listed the names of all their closest family and friends, thanking them as though they were standing there around the bed, with the window open on a broken summer and a stranger coughing his heart out on the other side of a curtain. He held onto his wife and his son, faced his death and shouted about how happy he was. Since he’d decided to refuse further treatment, and the doctors had said that things weren’t going to improve this time anyway, my mum decided to bring him home to die. There’s almost nothing left of Kidderminster hospital, where my mum had all her operations, and where Dr Ball pulled shards of broken milkbottle from my knee when I was four, pointed at my “Six Million Dollar Man” T-shirt and told me to be brave like Steve Austin. Like pretty much the rest of Worcestershire, anyone who gets sick in Kidderminster has to travel to the Royal Hospital in Worcester, so that’s where my dad had been staying. They put his glasses back on, loaded him into an ambulance with a syringe driver full of morphine, and he made his last journey through the countryside where he and my mother used to go motorbike riding, whenever the weather was fine. We set up a hospital bed in the back room at home, so he could see the garden, and settled him down. I moved the CD player in there, and played him “Isle Of Capri” by Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen, his favourite tune from his youth. He could barely speak or move by this point, but he smiled unmistakably, and his thin hand began tapping out the beat on his leg. My mother beamed, sadly. As he grew weaker, I set his favourite Enya CD on repeat. Not something I’d choose to listen to, but that folky sadness, made weirdly inauthentic by glassy overproduction, seemed somehow perfect for a man dying at home with £2000 worth of medical technology attached to his arm to make sure it didn’t hurt. “Is this music alright?” I asked him. “Lovely”, he whispered back. That was the last thing he ever said to me, though it wasn’t the last thing I said to him. At about 11.45 on Saturday night, my mum was snoring on the sofa, and my dad was fast asleep from the upped dose of morphine. I checked that he was still breathing, and went up to my room to get a few hours’ sleep. At 2, the night nurse arrived, and my mum came to wake me up, in tears. While I was sleeping, there’d been a brief rainstorm – the streets were still wet. Somewhere in the middle of it, my dad had passed away. Other people’s memories are like other people’s dreams. The more you try to communicate just how special things were, the more banal they seem. They lose their power in the open spaces between us, like a blood-borne virus. Who cares that someone’s father taught them the names of the planets, and that the thought of that night, about a thousand billion years ago, can be so sharp and potent? When I was very small, he taught me to ride a bike by holding onto the back until I was steady, then letting go when I wasn’t looking. I was halfway down the street before I realised he wasn’t there anymore, but as soon as I noticed, I fell off. This time, I’ll just keep pedalling.

	2006.06.17  04.37 The Bomb In Your Life I stopped taking SSRIs last year, by tapering the dose over a period of three or four months, from late summer 2005 through to November. Ill-informed, I considered this to be a cautious tapering schedule (most doctors suggest a three-week wean, the thought of which makes me cover my eyes). Since I stopped, I've found myself in heavy and protracted SSRI withdrawal, a condition which is only half-understood but utterly devastating in more ways than it's possible to explain. Almost everyone who's tried the dubiously-named Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors (the “selectivity” of their effect on seratonin being open to question) will have experienced some form of withdrawal. Of course, on stopping anti-depressants, most people's lives don't screech to a halt and vanish for months on end, replaced by a blinding Niagara of mental and physical anguish. Many people will simply experience a quick blizzard of symptoms, from head-rushes and confusion to dizziness and stomach aches, which tend to clear up after a few days, or perhaps a few weeks. Years ago, when I hadn't been taking the things for so long, I used to go "on and off" sometimes: I'd decide to stop, go cold turkey, weather two weeks of zaps and pains and rages, then feel the same as I ever did. But even then, after a few weeks I'd start to get deeply depressed (in a way that felt strangely, ominously unfamiliar), think "oh right, this is why I needed the tablets" - and restart them. The truth is, even for people who take SSRIs for a short time and stop, that period of extreme withdrawal is not really the end. The chances are, if you take an SSRI for a few months and then get off, the "long-term" damage will be so minor, and so quickly corrected, you won't notice it. Some people just have a lucky metabolism: they can stay on these drugs for a few years, get off, feel lousy for a while, and then they're clear (a friend of mine quit Seroxat after 6 years and got away with it... except that his memory is still shot, and he has trouble concentrating on books and films to this day, two years after stopping). There's no clear pattern in who does and doesn't get hit, or how severe and long-lasting the hit turns out to be, but for a lot of long-term users especially (up to 78% according to some studies), coming off the pills doesn't just dump them back in their depressed pre-drug state, it pitches them into a hell beyond their wildest paranoia. Expecting a dull thud back down to earth, they find themselves stripped of their personality, incapable of simple mental processes, inexplicably divorced from their sense of self, clawing at their own skin, rolling on the floor screaming for whole nights at a time, planning their suicide, howling like beaten dogs at the thought of the future, and never understanding why. This isn't their life, this isn't their brain. For weeks, then months... and sometimes years. Of course, no official clinical studies have been done on the long-term use or discontinuation of SSRIs – for reasons I'll get to later – so all we have to go on is a sackload of case histories (found in online medical journals, or on the multitude of messageboards, websites and blogs full of withdrawal horror stories), and the opinions of various eminent neurologists. Because of the convoluted and unneccesarily "messy" way in which they effect the increase of seratonin, and simply because a perpetually elevated seratonin level is not a corrected "imbalance", it is an imbalance in itself (and thus in constant conflict with the body's need for homeostasis), the use of SSRIs spreads gradual havoc in the brain, the gut, the endocrine system, and elsewhere. There are hundreds of thousands of examples of the damage that being on the things can do - from weight gain and impotence all the way up to suicide and murder. But the real problem is when people try to stop. If your brain has been effectively rewired for a period of years, the removal of the drug leaves your neurochemistry and your central nervous system in the lurch. Worse, the brain on SSRIs burns its bridges. When you quit, the mechanism required to return to "normal" just isn't there any more: the body's desire for homeostasis has reshaped you around your medication. This happens in many ways - SSRIs affect cortisol levels, adrenal function, have knock-on effects on other neurotransmitters, etc etc - but the most obvious and significant is (thought to be) the effect on seratonin receptors. A massively elevated seratonin level, brought about by these particular drugs, gives the brain's own seratonin system an easy ride. The effect is created not by producing extra seratonin, but by blocking the re-uptake of seratonin, resulting in the same stuff circulating endlessly in your brain: this effectively bypasses the natural neurological process. So, like the unused leg muscles of the chairbound, a large portion of your seratonin receptors begin to waste away. You don't notice, because in your brain the level stays high - but when you remove the drug and attempt to go back to producing the stuff naturally, you have a big problem. Not everyone experiences this large-scale downregulation, but it can happen to some people after three months' use; after 5 years it's likely; after 10 years, it's pretty much inevitable. So in withdrawal, you simply don't have the ability to feel "happy" or "calm" or any of the other emotions for which seratonin is chiefly responsible. Beyond that, no one is certain of the precise neurological pattern, except that your brain chemistry now feels closer to that of a rat than a human being. Whatever, nothing can then "calm you down" or "sort you out"; it's like thumping a torch fitted with a dead battery, expecting the light to come on. You no longer have the physical means to experience pleasant emotions of any kind. When you do catch flashes of positivity, they're more or less blotted out by the constant wash of anxiety, like a 24/7 borderline panic attack, that is associated with critically low levels of seratonin. The psychological, emotional aspect is the worst part of heavy withdrawal. In my lowest, most insanely depressed moments, before I ever touched an antidepressant, I couldn't have imagined the horrors of the last year. I don't care to provide any examples of where it's taken me, as these things are to be learnt from, not re-lived. Let's just say that I've had to be tough, in ways no one needs to understand. Usually, things like anxiety, depression, paranoia, panic, loss of confidence, terror - while they can be uncontrollable - are natural emotions that result from bad systems of thought, external pressures, or other factors that can eventually be modified or eliminated. In other words, there is always hope... and however hopeless you feel, this is always acknowledged on some basic level. Withdrawal is different - these feelings are your natural condition, the only language your brain understands. It alters your sense of self, poisons your memories, snuffs out the closest thing you had to God. The only comparison I can think of, in this sense, is a bad LSD trip, although it's not a similar feeling (though maybe it is rather similar for the many people who experience massive derealization and depersonalization in withdrawal, which I managed to avoid). It's too deep to touch: a kind of implosion of consciousness. Chemically, it's actually very close to a really bad Ecstasy comedown: that is, if you'd taken a low dose of Ecstasy every day for the last ten years. Worse, you lose a part of your soul. I'm writing coherently now, but whatever made me a "good" or creative writer has vanished, hopefully not forever. The ability to use language is compromised by memory loss and poor concentration, so finding the correct word is hard enough, never mind the best word. The real problem is the dampening of creativity - I used to "feel" the words as I went along, something that's hard to explain and doubtless sounds laughably pseudy, but anyone who writes a lot will probably identify with it... something to do with being caught in the flow of writing, a feel for what you're doing. You have to "see" the whole of a sentence or paragraph all at once, the way a good footballer can "see" the whole of the pitch before he chooses a pass. Whatever - that's gone. What little I've managed to write recently has taken four evenings where it would once have taken an hour and a half. Concentration is shattered, too, so reading is ruined as badly as writing. Shame, really. But there's a physical price to pay as well. Basic physical withdrawal symptoms include incapacitating dizziness, crippling gut pain (90% of the body's seratonin receptors are in the stomach), sudden and excruciating arthritis in random joints, elevated heartrate up to 130bpm or more, distorted sexual function (which can vary wildly in different people, from extreme premature ejaculation to a total loss of sensation in the genital area, and is sometimes permanent), muscle aches, jerks and spasms, endless headaches, intolerance of alcohol, drugs or caffeine, cardiovascular problems that can make your veins stand out like mooring rope and ache like hell... it goes on. These are pretty rough for a couple of weeks. After seven, eight, nine months, they start to get, y'know, old. I don't want to give the impression that all of this is irreversible, or that it's getting worse. Don't get me wrong, everything I'm describing has improved over time. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be writing this. The brain does have a great capacity to heal itself – unfortunately, being the most complex organ in the body, it's also the slowest to heal. There's a hell of a long way to go, even to catch up with the morose, bitter man I was a year ago, never mind the slightly sullen but open-minded youth I have to somehow reconnect with. And I should stress that this doesn't happen to absolutely everyone. It's impossible to come off SSRIs after many years without some pretty grim stuff happening, but it's not "usually" as bad as this. It can sometimes be a lot worse (ask the woman whose entire digestive system collapsed after tapering off venlafaxine, or the many people who've got no better at all, after being off all antidepressants for over two years). But I think, in the overall scheme of things, I got hit pretty hard. This is important, not least because I wouldn't want to discourage anyone reading this, who currently takes SSRIs, from quitting - not that it really matters, as SSRIs don't work forever, and at some point between three and ten years users start getting withdrawal symptoms while they're still taking them, and will have no choice but to get off (which is what happened to me). However, getting off should be done slower than you could possibly imagine, and this is information which is not widely known. I took three and a half months: bad move. I now understand that I should have spent about a year tapering, shaving milligrams off my pills at a time, going down by a few mg roughly once a month. It's likely that would have spared me the worst – it seems to help most people. Then again, like I say, not everyone gets it like this. But it does happen to a lot of people. I mean, really a lot (if you want to see SSRI withdrawal in action, go here and take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9n12rVH640 ). The cruellest thing for naive patients who have genuine trust in the sagacity and integrity of doctors is the way much of the medical profession still thinks withdrawal doesn't exist. Doctors' egos often refuse to acknowledge what's in front of them if it confounds their preconceptions: going to their trusted GP, people suffering are often told the symptoms are "all in their head" (har har) or worse, "your original depression returning". Funnily enough, this latter gambit has surprised more than a few of the people who were never depressed, and were originally put on SSRIs for insomnia, or to quit smoking, or for carpal tunnel syndrome (this kind of off-label prescription happens more in the US than Britain, where it is slightly frowned upon). In the eyes of the medical profession, most withdrawal symptoms won't be linked directly to the withdrawal of the drug – because despite the same symptoms being seen over and over again in people suffering long-term withdrawal, none are listed on the drug's packaging, or in those heavy reference books which doctors peruse when they're out of their depth. None of this ever surprised me, as I've always been on the side of Moliere when it comes to those overpaid butchers, but I really feel for the kind of folk whose trust in their doctor is essential to their sense of security. Of course, it's ludicrous to expect a GP to be an expert on every single drug they prescribe; all they really have to go on is the medical literature. The medical literature is bizarrely insistent that "any withdrawal effects are mild, and should resolve in 2 to 3 weeks." Neither of those points are true, and these drugs have been around since the end of the 1980s. Where's the problem? In fact, the problem is capitalism. The bitter old Marxist in me knew it all along. Still, there's something genuinely shocking, if not surprising, about this. Pharmaceutical companies - which are, incidentally, second only to oil companies in the hearts of the Bush administration - remain relentless in their promotion of SSRIs, and equally dauntless in their public and legal defence of them. Quite a few withdrawal sufferers, and those whose family members have inexplicably killed themselves or others while taking the pills, have made a tidy sum from drug firms, who prefer to settle out of court. This is because - surprise - there are an awful lot of uncomfortable facts they'd rather keep off the agenda. For example, we know that there was an alarming amount of suicidal behaviour in the human trials of pretty much every SSRI. This is generally explained away as being the natural behaviour pattern of depressed people, as though you couldn't get 100 depressives in one place for a few weeks without some of them trying to top themselves. Yet they'd managed to live their entire lives up to that point without ending it all, so it's odd how their eventual "decision" coincided with ingestion of a drug that is supposed to treat depression, and that the rate of suicide attempts and suicidal ideation among these "treated" depressives suddenly rose to many, many times that of untreated depressives - in the space of six to eight weeks. The fact that in some of the test results completed suicides were marked as having "dropped out" of the experiment - thus removing them from the final data - is enlightening. And of course, in clinical drug trials you don't just use a group suffering from the ailment the drug is intended to treat (in this case depression), you also have a healthy volunteer group, who are there to test the toxicity of the new drug, rather than it's efficacy. This phenomenon also occurred in the healthy volunteer group. For one of the SSRIs, there were actually more suicides among the healthy volunteers than the depressed ones. Studies that show decreased suicide rates where these drugs are prescribed are often dubious: the original, uncensored clinical trial data tells its own story. We know all this now – these things were mostly rooted out by a British doctor who was granted access to the records of several pharmaceutical companies while battling them in court - but we didn't know it at the time. This is because drug firms are not forced to submit all the details of their clinical trials; they're at liberty to make public as much or as little as they like. That may not be what the law says (it's fuzzy on this point, having been loosened by recent legislation), but it's how it happens. In other words: let's say there's a new disease which causes people to grow feathers, and you can see a billion-dollar opportunity in inventing a drug to cure it. You run 10 trials on the same drug. In eight of them, everybody turns into a duck; in the other two it's all great. You can file away the duck results, submit the two successful tests as your data, and get the drug approved. Later, if statistically significant numbers of patients start growing wings and a bill, you can find ways to argue that this is nothing to do with your drug, and though your position may take a battering (a “black box warning” of increased suicidality was recently added to SSRIs in America, after a stream of court cases), you probably won't lose your product. Now, if people turn into ducks after withdrawing from your product, you're laughing - you claim that this merely proves that the patient needs your drug. There are, as I mentioned earlier, no clinical studies on the long-term effects of SSRI use, because these initial trials lasted 6 to 8 weeks – despite the fact that the drugs are often prescribed for decades at a time. Similarly, there's nothing on withdrawal, because after a few days off the medicine, the volunteer is sent home and nothing is followed up: the experiment is over. Ultimately, the reason doctors don't know about withdrawal is because the drug companies are denying it exists - at least in public. Some confidential sales-force memos leaked from the US branch of GlaxoSmithKline, the people who brought you Seroxat (or Paxil to our American friends), prove that they are actually well aware of it. One of them stresses the importance of using withdrawal symptoms to get patients back onto the drug, rather than allowing the symptoms themselves to become the issue. "Let's face it," it says, "in the end the only thing the anxious and agitated patient will be asking is 'WHERE'S MY PAXIL???'" This is illustrated with a cartoon of a woman sat at her desk, throwing a pile of papers in the air and screaming. Another pretty much speaks for itself:

	2006.04.14  05.26

	2005.12.25  21.44 Goodwill To Every Last Man Jack Of Them Christmas with my parents again. Every year it hurts, but it's good too, knowing that one still has the power to tilt some light into other lives, instead of fucking them up at worst, dulling their cheer at best. So back to the nest. At least I get fed, and the bathroom's warm. They've been worried about me. I went to the 24 hour garage this afternoon, after a middling walk alone looking at deep stagnant pools between here and the old sugar beet factory. I knew I had to go to the garage for two reasons - firstly, my innate support for the underdog has adapted to my current state and toned itself down a little, so I felt obliged to go in there and tip the poor sods working on Christmas Day (they'd mentioned they were open 24 hours over Xmas last time I went in there, and when I asked who had to do the shift, the bloke said "Me - Christmas Eve, 10pm to 6am." Triple time, I asked him? "Yeah." Still, eight hours on triple time on a garage attendant's wages is still only about 100 quid, so I wouldn't have felt good about not going in there and depositing 40p in the staff's festive tips box). Secondly, I had a craving for a bottle of Yop. So, on the way down to the garage, I passed a very red-faced bloke indeed, stumble-running onto the forecourt out of breath, eyes rolling in their sockets and a hunted look about him. The guy was about to drop. "Run out of fags, geez?" he said - London slang in a Black Country accent. Rather than admit to the Yop thing, I said yes. "Yeah," he nodded. "I've run out of Red Bull." I wondered whether it should be me out of my face for Christmas, pointless but high. It would be better than this. Surely, if I am to be in my thirties after all, but still have nothing to really give (to a woman, or a child, or the world in general), I should be snuffling for meaning round hedonism's arse. It was, after all, what I was attempting for most of the last ten years (until hedonism became something I either couldn't afford or wasn't invited to). But hedonism is no replacement for life, or for the noble parts of life - which doesn't mean it's anti-life, just that it has to have a place. And I know this, because doing it when no other part of your life is working is invariably a disaster (unless you were doomed from birth and know no better). If this means I have to sit like a Christian for now, sparsely furnished with any kind of fun - apart from guzzling red wine in the evening times - then perhaps I should learn to respect that somehow. Deal with the passing of... youth? something? anything? ... before a new moon. I could be very wrong. But anyway. A very merry Christmas to you at home. Those who feel at home and those who don't.

	2005.12.03  04.23 Not only is my new flat on the same street I used to live on, it's actually a one bedroom flat rather than a bedsit, for... well, some way over £100 a week, but still some way under £150. I figured there'd be a catch, and there are a few: the bedroom is colder than outdoors (despite being the only room in the flat that's double glazed), and although there's no real damp visible on the walls, it reeks of something sweet and mildewy, although that smell is starting to subside a little now I've been in there for a while, so it might have been partly to do with the place having stood empty for a while. Still getting into my clothes though. There's no central heating, it's all electric fires, and they run off a coin meter which is perpetually hungry (it's costing just under £2 a day to run the whole flat). This is ok in the front room, which is large and beautiful and everything I could have asked for, but it does mean the kitchen and the bedroom (as well as the shared bathroom) are rather like a meat freezer at the moment. Also, although I have my own mattress, the bed provided looks like a medieval torture implement, and is not exactly new - there's a plaque on the side that says "Bedmakers to HM The King". But in general, yeah, it's a place, and it's nowhere near the worst place I've lived. I have yet to find out whether the council will pay the rent, though, and if I have to put in a tenner a week out of my dole, AND feed the meter, then a new crisis looms. Never mind. Sadly, it wasn't a case of moving in and feeling great. I spent most of the first week sitting alone on the sofa shivering and staring into space, alternating with outbursts of unpleasant emotion. A lot of my hair has fallen out, to the point that it's now impossible for me to entirely cover the top of my head without holes appearing (I could have handled a nice steady recedence from the temples, but I am instead getting "The Zidane", which is notoriously hard to make good). I'm considering shaving my head, but I worry that the combination of a funny shaped skull, large, lugubrious features, and a head that's proportionately slightly too big for my body will make that into a disaster... a rest-of-my-life disaster. Hilariously, the loss of whatever looks I had is currently more of a crisis than the previous period of homelessness. The doctor put me straight back on SSRIs after I broke down in her surgery like a twat. So those five months battling crippling withdrawal were all for nothing. Then I stopped taking them after three days because the side effects were unbearable - jackhammer heartbeat keeping me awake, panic attacks, dizziness, mania. Worse than coming off the old ones. Not sure where that leaves me. Apart from penniless, ill, and suddenly ugly for the rest of my life, but with a cold, sickly-smelling bed at least. The front room really is very nice, though. You should come round sometime. Someone. Please. Ha.

	2005.09.28  14.24 Dog Needs Home I have to be out of my flat in 12 days. What I need is a bedsit/studio in Highgate or very close, with plenty of storage, for £140 a week or less (less, really). Apparently, the concept of renting one room for less than £590 a month makes estate agents laugh... but then, they can afford to. If you have a spare room going, or you know someone who does, please do get in touch. Not just a place I can live in, either - at this rate I'm going to need a place to stay temporarily while I carry on looking.

	2005.09.06  02.06 The Comedy Of Jam Lyrics - An Occasional Series "TIME FOR TRUTH" This unusual song is from the first Jam album, written in 1977 when Paul Weller was 18. Now that in itself lets him off the hook slightly, as few 18-year-olds are going to be able to write a convincing political song, especially those whose formal education has been in the British Secondary Modern system, where even the brightest kids spend half the week doing metalwork. But nonetheless, "Time For Truth" is so appalling, it deserves closer examination. Presumably, the idea to write a song directly challenging the government came from Weller's then-heroes The Clash - but whereas Strummer stuffed his lyrics with slogans and soundbites pinched from a slew of left-wing or anti-establishment sources (Marx and Lenin, Jamaican and London rastas, South American communist guerrilas, a dash of Baader-Meinhoff), you have to suspect that Paul's song has its roots in whatever he heard his dad grumbling about over breakfast, as he flipped through a dog-eared copy of The Sun (mind you, these were the darkest days of the Callaghan government - grumbling was hardly unreasonable). What makes the song vaguely interesting, rather than just inadvertently hilarious, is the way you can see Weller's natural lefty politics gestating beneath the layers of ignorance. The self-proclaimed teenage Tory Royalist tut-tuts at the Labour 'police state' (while the Right in general raged against the strength of organised labour, and howled for greater police powers). Elsewhere on the LP he growls about the lack of new council houses and the growing gap between rich and poor. In interviews, he made it clear that he just couldn't wait to get out there and vote Conservative, to sort this shit out once and for all. What you trying to say that haven't tried to say before? You're just another red balloon with a lot of hot gas - why don't you fuck off? I love this line. Callaghan should have made a speech where he said "no Paul, why don't YOU fuck off?" And you think you've got it worked out And you think you've got it made And you're trying to play the hero But you never walk home in the dark Just five short years later, the death of Olof Palme would prove that Jim knew something Paul didn't. I think it's time for truth And the truth is you've lost, uncle Jimmy Admit your failure and decline with honour while you can The first great malapropism (of many) in The Jam's lyrics; does he mean resign? Go to the country? Whatever, it's a pretty safe bet he doesn't mean 'decline'. And you think you've got it sussed out - ha! And you think that we're brainwashed - no way! And you're trying for a police state So you can rule our bodies and minds Recently declassified documents from 1977 meetings of the 'Lib-Lab Pact' do indeed disclose plans to 'brainwash' the country, in order to 'rule their bodies and minds', but it's thought this project was the baby of David Steel. In the end, the idea was shelved on account of the dustman's strike. Whatever happened to the great Empire? You bastards have turned it into manure - Tell the young to stick together now One of the most puzzling of the young Weller's many non-sequiturs. Opinions vary on what exactly happened to the great Empire, the most common view being that by the early part of the 20th century, the sheer cost of maintaining the colonies, as well as the added strain of slaughtering recalcitrant locals, outweighed the revenue generated by controlling other countries' natural and human resources and siphoning off the profit. Weller is not the only commentator to take the view that it was "turned into manure" by no-good centre-lefties, but few others made their name in the "punk explosion" of the late 1970s. The solution proposed - that the young should 'stick together now' - sounds alarmingly like a veiled call for fascism. What else could it mean? This would clash somewhat with Paul's resentment of the 'police state' - so if there's any other way in which the young sticking together (now) could rebuild the 'Great Empire', that's probably what he means. I bet you sleep at night with silk sheets and a clean mind While killers roam the streets in numbers, dressed in blue And you're trying to hide it from us But you know what I mean Yeah, Paul, everyone knows what you mean. Bring forward those six pigs We wanna see them swing so high I was almost disappointed when I found out that this didn't refer to the Birmingham Six - which would have been too perfect a cherry on top - neither is it "sex pigs", which would at least have sounded funny. In fact, it's a reference to Liddle Towers being kicked to death in police custody, quite a hot topic among punks at the time (cf Angelic Upstarts' "The Murder Of Liddle Towers"). It is a tribute to the clarity and sharpness of the young Weller's writing that this only becomes clear when you realise that what he's shouting after these lines is in fact "Liddle Towers!", presumably in invisible parentheses. So in summary, Weller's anti-Callaghan song, for all it's effing and blinding, contains only two reasons why its subject is a bad man (real reasons, that is, not things like being "a red balloon"). The first is that he has silk sheets on his bed - which would indeed suggest a certain hypocrisy after all that beer and sandwiches. Unfortunately, the damning power of this fact is slightly weakened by the fact that Paul just made it up. The second is that Uncle Jimmy is responsible for crazed regiments of murderous bobbies, slaughtering the populace with brutal efficiency. In fact, the Home Secretary at the time was Merlyn Rees, fresh from a dubious spell in Northern Ireland, where he was 'credited' with creating something not too dissimilar to Weller's grim visions of a police state - but since it was one of the remaining crumbs of the 'Great Empire', Paul presumably favoured a tough stance on Ulster (perhaps with Republicans kept in check by young people in England 'sticking together now') - but it's hard to see how, say, racist policemen beating black men to death was a direct result of soft-left Government policy, except in Paul's spiky, aggressive head. Still, he was backing the right horse by "voting Conservative in the next election": when we compare the police response to picketing during the Winter Of Discontent with the police response to the Miners' Strike, or the Wapping pickets, we can only thank Margaret Thatcher for steering us clear of Weller's teenage nightmare. "CARNABY STREET" One might look at the lyrics to "Time For Truth" and wonder why neither of his fellow bandmembers - both a few years older than Paul - questioned what on Earth he thought he was doing. Part of the answer can be found in Rick Buckler's face - like an amateur boxer without the charm and brains - and the rest is found in lyrics like these, which Bruce Foxton was writing around the same time. Take a look at the great street It don't seem the same Remember how great it should be Ten short years, and the hub, the very nub of Swinging London stood desolate. A wasteland of glow-in-the-dark blow-up skeletons, Taiwanese imitation RayBans and lousy T-shirts that were all you got when your folks went to London. An angry Bruce, in his flared mohair suit, mullet trailing behind him, stomps past "Soccer Scene" with murder in his eye. He has a plan, a vision: one day the great street will once more be full of raccoon-pattern shoes, plastic macs that dissolve into napalm three seconds after brushing against a naked flame, and fake Ben Sherman shirts stitched together in a sweat miasma by a four-year-old Indonesian girl, the HIV-positive semen of her fat laughing boss still pouring out of her badly bruised arse. Bruce knows, because he has seen the future. Within three years, The Merc would open its doors for the first time. Shops are full of fashion People told what they want Oh shit, hang on. Right, forget what we just said - the fashion is the bad part of Carnaby Street, because it just means people being told what they want. We should probably assume, then, for now, that Carnaby Street once qualified for greatness in Foxton's eyes due to the excellence of the beans on toast available in its numerous greasy spoons. The street that was a part of the British Monarchy British Monarchy Burke's study of the peerage does confirm this - Carnaby Street was nineteenth in line to the throne until 1971, when the succession was altered to remove the loophole that allowed parts of Westminster full Royal privilege. It is thought that Carnaby Street still receives monies from the Civil List, although it has to share them with Ganton Street. Who wants kaftans and all that? We don't need them now I've never, ever listened to Bruce sing this line without laughing. He sounds so... hot and bothered. Why should we accept the change And buy clothes of today? Now that's an interesting question. Why indeed should we accept the change? Not only do we not need kaftans and all that, but maybe we should just stick with kaftans and all that. Better than being told what you want. To be fair, The Jam did follow a Third Way on this issue, dressing neither in kaftans and all that, nor in anything resembling the clothes of 1977. Kids repel the change and Bring back the street Shops filled by whole nations Carnaby Street Carnaby Street Bruce, mate. Start by writing down your thoughts on a piece of paper. The street is a mirror For our country Reflects the rise and fall Of our nation To be honest, as someone who has just stressed his dislike for fashion, Bruce will have explain to me in what other way Carnaby Street reflects the 'rise and fall' of Britain. Or indeed what 'rise and fall' he could be talking about that happened between the early Sixties and the late Seventies, that didn't involve fashion. The street that was a legend Is a mockery A part of the British tradition Gone down the drain You don't need no glass ball To see it's faults Now I've thought about this. What kind of 'glass ball' do you use to see the faults in something? The only one I could think of was the glass ball in a spirit level, with the little bubble in it. Bruce, then, must be protesting that Carnaby Street is no longer as level as it used to be, to the extent that this is visible to the naked eye without using a spirit level. The British tradition of nice, smooth, non-sloping streets is going down the drain, thanks to things like fashion, and kaftans and all that. Take a walk along that street And you'll see what I mean More to the point, take a walk along that street while pushing a pushchair and you'd better be sure baby is strapped in tight. But yeah, Bruce, everyone sees what you mean.

	2005.07.22  16.44 HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/07/19/bmneil19.xml At first I thought "you shouldn't laugh, it's not nice to make fun of people this stupid." Then I remembered what this guy gets paid for, and how much he gets paid, and suddenly instead of laughing, I wanted to get three coppers to sit on him and pump five bullets into his head.

	2005.05.31  04.20 In celebration of the rogue plural in the newly-released Chesney Hawkes "Greatest Hits" Collection There's a shop on Holloway Road, on the corner of the street on which I used to live, which sells posh mock-antique fireplaces to people who live at least a mile or two south of Holloway Road. It's called something like "Chesney's Antique Fireplace Warehouse". When living on that street, if ever I happened to be bringing a young lady back to my house late at night, I'd always point to it in passing and tell them that it was Chesney Hawkes' shop, which he opened after the hit dried up. Sadly every single one failed the test and believed it wholesale. In retrospect, it's quite clear that this was a wholly unreliable test anyway, because thinking about it, it's perfectly plausible that it could have been his shop. Anyway, this uncharitable karma bit me in the ass shortly before I moved out of the area, when one night a girl looked disinterested and said "Who's Chesney Hawkes?" I felt like one presumably would if a taxi driver referred to one's wife as "your lovely daughter". Yes I'm feeling a little bit better thank you.

	2005.04.28  00.37 Saturday night, from 6pm, in The Boogaloo. Near Highgate tube, for any distant readers who may want to visit. Presents not expected.

	2005.04.25  04.10 It's my birthday next Saturday. Does anyone want to come out for a drink?

	2005.01.16  22.43 And spray-painted onto a bus stop near Old Street roundabout: "WELSH SHAM"

	2005.01.12  15.55 after discussing with a friend how modern-day women's fashion is stolen from old-time prostitutes It's taken this long, but I'm only now beginning to feel offended by the sign-off on Belle De Jour's weblog: "If I could add one thing, it would be this: don't ever turn down pleasure because you were afraid of what other people might say." Which more or less sums up the problem that's blighted my entire life. For some of us, life is little more than a constant search for pleasure - or more precisely, a search for other people who might facilitate it. That sentence effectively finished whatever manufactured mystery there may have been over the true gender of BDJ, as far as I was concerned, for who but a woman would so casually reference the idea of "turning down pleasure", a concept so wholly alien to men it's laughable? Forgive the dusting down of this old hobby horse, but it's kind of relevant here. As a child, I was fascinated by the stories of cultural renegades in other times, outraging civilised society with their licentious carrying on, pushing back the limits of morality, reinventing hedonism, all that. But what they never mention is that, assuming you were male, this cost money. As a historical female, that choice was open to you as it is now: the limits of sensual possibility hang open like snapped scissors. All you have to do is grab the sharp end. But I never quite understood what was so great about generations of male poets, painters, novelists and bored aristos handing their easy money to generations of prostitutes. It's easy to say, but if I were female I'd be able to extend my philosophy of life as far as I'd like, and be praised, and have fun, and probably get a book deal for my trouble (if I were to pretend I was extending my philosophy of life as far as I'd like, I'd be even more popular). As it is, I just get called a sleazeball, and that's despite a lifelong refusal to pay for sex, based on the conviction that the other party's/parties' pleasure is the most important thing, and a near-religious regard for the purity and eternal goodness of filthy (but very mutual) fucking. People look at me like I just breathed out a bubble with a dragon in it when I point out that this seems unfair. I say: the reason I like women who like to be depraved for free is not because I'm cheap.

	2005.01.06  15.50 The Past Is A Pest Today's chew: friendships with ex-lovers. An ex has (humanely) struck me from her friends' list, and it looks as though our vague intention of civilised co-existence was just so much powder in the draught. It's just too tricky. I've no wish to discuss the personal detail here, although there's not much of it. What's really intriguing me today is the issue of post-love friendships in general, and their usefulness or otherwise - never been something I've done, in all honesty. What the younger set call 'fuckbuddies', it's different: when I meet a woman who maybe I used to sleep with on a casual, friendly basis, nothing could be nicer. It reminds me of when Cilla Black or someone reunites the winning FA Cup team of 1951, or brothers in arms from Arnhem or Dunkirk. However long it's been, you have an instant connection, a shared memory / private smiles, and even if they're now married or what have you, the mood is euphoric and sweet. I'll take that as a sign that it's nothing I do in bed, or as a friend, that causes ex-girlfriends to avoid me so passionately, or else take rooms overlooking my window and set up camp with a Thermos and a sniper rifle. That's something of a relief at least. But yes, ex-girlfriends are a problem, largely because being male, I tend not to fall out of love with them. And gentleman readers will know what I mean - it's not a question of carrying torches, or an inability to move on in life, it's the simple fact that when a man falls in love, there's no mechanism to stop it (whereas women seem to be able to think themselves out of love alarmingly easily... at least, it looks easy). There's also the male tendency to self-mythologize, the film-of-your-life approach, which has every past relationship as a symbol of something you did wrong, or a time that can't be recaptured. I honestly don't believe that women function like this: while they might usually be the dreamier and more emotional party in a relationship, once the circus packs up they have an enviable knack for self-preservation, and their skill at "getting over" things is phenomenal. Men are forever playing Hamlet: nothing is forgotten, everything fits, it all means something. So I don't understand it when men I know are friendly with ex-girlfriends. There always seems to be an element of tragedy. Or masochism, which I'm not wired for. How I ever thought I could do it, I don't know - perhaps it's a good thing that the decision is generally made for me. It would be fine if one's love life was a journey (~of self-discovery / ~from A to B), bad parts of yourself jettisoned like dead fuel tanks, women going with them, found clinging to the smoking shell in a Texas field. But (to borrow simon_price's phrase for circular nights on the internet) it's more like being a polar bear in a bad zoo. Always checking the same bowl, everything familiar yet distant, constantly finding your own shit blocking your path, always wondering if one day someone will leave the gate open.

	2005.01.06  15.34 The reason I'm currently listening to Theolonious Monk is that my life is basically like this: