As I'm sure you've probably all gathered by now, there is no real reason for me to continue using this Livejournal. However, my account will remain active and I will still be reading other people's, so please do keep me on your friends list if you want me to still be involved in your blog or community.

As for my own writing, there are two options open to you:

1. http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&friendID=173012326

This is the blog that exists on my MySpace profile, focussing mostly on poetry and writing - a lot of the content on here has been mirrored over there for the last few months, and you can expect it to continue in the same vain. Nobody will be missing out on my "fantastic" observations on these artistic areas as a result, and I may find time to do the odd personal entry as well if I'm tempted. I'm planning a jaunt to Beirut in September, and if that goes ahead I'm sure I will find plenty to say about it. Don't be too optimistic that I'l waffle on day-to-day life on there much, though.

If you don't have me on your friends list and want to add me, don't be afraid to ask. A lot of you have banned audio profiles from being added without your initial approaches, so I haven't been able to stick you on my list myself.

2. http://www.left-and-to-the-back.blogspot.com

The new place for MP3 and YouTube uploads, you fools! Please do come and visit - it was even updated today especially. I must admit I'm quite excited about the possibilities of this idea at the moment, even if most of my lj friends list doesn't seem to be. Their loss.

I feel I should also make it clear that there are no sinister reasons behind discontinuing this lj, unless boredom counts as being something sinister. I'm not trying to avoid anyone or even make any sort of political statement about lj's new owners, I just feel that four years of me wittering on about my day to day life in public is enough for one lifetime, and possibly even more than is healthy for one person. It feels as if my energies should now be directed in a more productive direction, and that's exactly what I plan to do. No more naval gazing for me. Well, not much, anyway.

If anyone wants to talk to me about what's going on in my life in the future, you know my email address. And if you don't, or need reminding, please feel free to leave a comment below. I'll see you around. And who knows, I might even reactivate this blog at some point in the future if I go travelling again or have something useful to say, but don't put any money on it.

It's the moment you've all been waiting for... My long-promised MP3/ YouTube blog focussing on forgotten curios and obscurities is now online. It will focus on both the sublime and ridiculous moments in pop music, so you can expect to read about dire flop novelty singles of yore (I have some treats lined up, I assure you, including a country rock single about Spanish holidays) as much as you can lost gems which were wrongfully ignored.

There will also be an irregular feature on there which will involve me pulling out a charity shop or second hand shop find for everyone's delight - I would reveal my plans for the future now, but I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise or show my hand at this early stage. For openers, though, please find Bernard Manning and Ronnie Barker's failed 1970s bids to enter the Top 40, and I reckon I can easily top even that in the near future.

http://left-and-to-the-back.blogspot.com/

If you presently link to this blog from a website of your own, I would be quite grateful if you could update to the one shown above. Obviously, I'll understand if you don't want to or are not as keen on the content of the new blog as you were on this one, but it would certainly help me to get over the usual problems with generating traffic in the tricky first few months.

(*And yep, I know that two of the existing entries on there are rewritten versions of old ones on this livejournal. I don't intend to make a habit of recycling old material, but it seemed like a good way of sticking a reasonable amount of content up as quickly and as painlessly as possible so visitors could have something more than one entry to look at).

If you speak to certain people at the wheel of the great poetry juggernaut, you will often be told that poetry has "gone back into the mainstream" again, that it's now fashionable, credible, and that since Scroobius Pip climbed into the Top 40 everybody knows what to expect from the spoken word scene. Sometimes I pick up the Metro and the London Paper and read these articles and almost will myself to believe them. I'd have to try very hard, though - they're complete and total bollocks, obviously.

I don't blame anybody for trying to get the public's confidence, and it probably does much more for the cause than my brand of self-deprecating honesty, but let Uncle Dave put you right here. Poetry has been in much ruder health at other points in history. This isn't like 1968 all over again, and it isn't selling out the Royal Albert Hall. In fact, it's frequently barely selling out scruffy pub backrooms even when there are big names on the bill. That the mainstream media even want to touch the artform at the moment is a giant leap forwards in itself from the dark old days of 2005 when poetry sales hit their lowest trough since records began, but we've still got a long, long way to go before people get the recognition they deserve.

Nights like Jorge at the George Tavern in Stepney do highlight the public's general attitude towards spoken word artists as soon as the form is taken out of its safe little ghetto. Where poets and bands share the same bill, it's a war the prose warriors will never, ever win. Make no mistake, it's a tough gig, and I don't know anybody on the circuit who would ever claim otherwise apart from perhaps the most famous performers. As I take to the mic, I notice that I am greeted with a number of angry scowls in the front row before I've even opened my mouth. "Poet = wanker" their expressions seem to say. The majority of the audience talk straight through me to start with, rendering the first few minutes barely audible to most of the room.

During the third poem, however, something strange happens. The whole room shuts up, and is watching and listening to me. It's not a slight silence, either, as a few people trudge towards the bar and ask for drinks. It's total silence (with applause at the end, thankfully). This continues for long enough that I can get some snappy, simple material out which I think won't anger too many people with self-indulgence, and stays with me to the very end of the set. It still feels as if it's been a battle, but it's an absolute blessed relief that I've managed to come out on top. It's an unusual set in that I air a lot of material which I would ordinarily leave out of gigs, but I make a mental note to remember exactly what I did and how I did it for future occasions like this one. In a moment that makes me cringe immediately afterwards as soon as I sit back down, I tell the audience that they've been lovely. This is a blatant lie, obviously - they were stubborn arseholes for a worrying amount of time. I find myself meaning it as I say it, though. It's the same syndrome as when you decide you like the school psychopath for a few minutes, because they've made up their minds that they find you rather endearing and they're not going to torture you with a car battery after all. I think sometimes as human beings we tend to mix up feelings of relief with something else entirely.

I completely admire the concept of the Jorge night and think what they're doing for poetry (and indeed the gig circuit in London) is wonderful, though. Far from constantly going for obvious "big names" or people who are barely even connected to the poetry world to promote the form, they're genuinely taking risks and booking new artists as well. It often works, and many poets find themselves in similar positions to me to start with, only to win over the audience against all the odds. The bands are also frequently brilliant. On the bill on Thursday we also saw the enjoyable piano driven tunesmithery of Steve Bland, who actually managed to be anthemic with very little musical support, the distortion heavy pop angst of Thee Assasins, and finally an anarchic twelve piece band called Apples for Everyone who seemed like an exciting collision between Celtic folk, psychedelic pop, anti-folk, The Guillemots and your large drunken uncle after ten Guinnesses. What astonishes me about the present music scene is that lurking in the cracks and crevices are some bands who frankly wouldn't have been out of place on John Peel's Dandelion label circa 1972. They don't seem to get much press exposure, but they're there nonetheless, and sometimes you can turn up to events like these and feel as if the carnival has come to town. The lead singer ruins things slightly by making a few comments about performance poets which sound rather sarcastic and scathing - perhaps I misread his intentions, but nonetheless it would be a bit rich if he were indeed extracting the urine. For large scale hippy collectives to suggest that poets are a bit pretentious and ridiculous would be hypocrisy of the highest order, after all. As Dan sneered to the judge in Withnail and I: "Do you think you look normal, your honour?"

Much lower down the bill on the night was an individual called Harry Herry who I embarrassingly spoke about on mic as being "Hairy Mary" (although I still maintain that he has been billed as that at the Klinker at some point). He's another character who has to be seen to be believed - a man from Rotterdam dressed as a Dutch sailor who sings solo songs about perplexing topics such as cleaning out toilets whilst gurning, bobbing up and down, and playing his keyboard like a demented, hyperactive goon. He's been around on the circuit for many years now, and is always worth a look.

Another top night, then, and further evidence that The George Tavern may not be the neatest or smartest gig venue in London, but it's certainly one of the most daring and deserves to continue.

A long, long time ago - or a year and a half ago to be precise - you may remember that I mentioned that the Chris Morris website Cookd and Bombd were compiling their Top 1000 Singles of all time. The way this worked was quite simple. Each forum member was to nominate several singles of their choosing with an MP3 and a review, and the final list was to be in no fixed order, just being a cluster of singles everybody felt strongly enough to nominate. The final results are enormously varied and curious. Click on "read more" to see.

( Read more... )

Obviously I can't say I agree with every single choice, but it's fascinating to see precisely what everybody chipped in with. If you want to argue with the results, it's probably best to join the forum at http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk and go to the Oscillations section rather than bicker with me about it.

I'm now sitting back and seeing whether mentioning 1,000 different singles in a row like that and also the magic word "MP3" will cause the webstats for this blog to suddenly skyrocket... sorry to disappoint any random strangers who have popped by expecting more.

Anyway, on another topic entirely, I'm doing a gig at the George Tavern near Shadwell tube tonight, so please drop by if you can. The audiences for these occasions tend to be notoriously tough, so we'll see how it goes...

Touch Me I'm Sick is a regular London poetry night which has been running for nearly two years now. That seems like a rather pathetic tally in the grand scheme of things - "But the Eiffel Tower has been around for longer!" I can hear you cry - but on the ever-changing poetry circuit that's actually quite significant. It does seem sometimes as if most nights collapse not long after their first birthdays, the hosts gradually growing tired of the work involved for minimum thanks or financial returns. Two years is normally a decent benchmark, and a sign that the evening will be around for awhile to come yet.

Changes do seem to be afoot with the occasion, however. Last night they managed to get a sixties garage and psychedelic DJ to play music in the run up to the night and also during the breaks, which obviously meets with my full approval. TMIS has had odd evenings in the past where enthusiasm and audience response has seemed somewhat low, and such high tempo, full-on, joyous clanging and rattling seems ideal to get people in the mood. It may be a sheer coincidence, but on this occasion I notice that the audience seem much more cheerful and enthusiastic.

There again, it's always worth cheering up when Richard Tyrone Jones has a full-length set. Richard has been on the circuit for long enough now that he's beginning to seem like a stalwart himself, and far from churning out the same material over and over, he often achieves the impressive feat of regularly keeping his set fresh amidst all the pressure of the continual live work. I must admit I prefer his shorter, snappier material, but the longer prose pieces he did last night managed the tricky balancing act between being crude, intelligent and surreal. "The Day the World's Arsehole Disappeared", for example, does exactly what it says on the tin topic-wise, but allows itself to speculate and meander around the subject in a fashion which is immediately fascinating. He has the imagination to actually think through all the absurd scenarios and possible statements which could be made out of the basest of beginnings, and to do so whilst hardly bothering to mention toilet matters, and for that should be applauded. There's no question that his raucous and full-on style may not be to everybody's taste, but it's certainly worth investigating.

This was arguably the best TMIS I've been to since the night began, and I can only hope that it manages to continue on this form for much longer.

(And yes, I will still carry on updating this LJ until I've got the other blog fully in place).

I've been talking about doing this for ages, and I think the time is nigh... well, a couple of weeks away, anyway (let me get Easter and a few other extra-curricular responsibilities out of the way first).

In a nutshell, I think time is long overdue to put an end to this Livejournal. I do aim to continue blogging, but for various reasons too dull to go into here would like to keep the poetry blog active online over at the Myspace site, and start up a specialist music blog running elsewhere. I could of course just as easily do the latter here on LJ, but there are a wide variety of reasons why I might find that uncomfortable, and for quite another thing, I really don't think that LJ is quite the blogging site that it once was when I joined in 2004. It's not even owned or marketed by the same people. Time was you had all sorts of brilliant, tremendously active writers on this site and a lot of interaction, whereas there are days at the moment where it just feels like operating within a void (and not just on this blog either - my whole friends list suffers from similar underactivity).

Additionally, I don't feel especially comfortable scribbling away about everyday matters on here*. There have been a few instances in the last year or so where I've almost said the wrong thing and come a cropper, and so I've been a bit more ruthless at editing those sorts of entries than I used to be. The problem is, it's now reached a point where I feel as if I'm skirting around the interesting details so much that the whole thing is almost entirely missing the point, and actually isn't much fun for me on a personal level. I'm not one of life's natural gossips, and whilst a blog might have made sense when I was living in Australia when I had a lot to observe and could very quickly run away (or at least get a flight home) in the event of upsetting the natives, it's a bit harder to be so truthful in London where people do seem to take offence very easily. It doesn't matter that this blog is actually hardly read by anybody - it only needs to be read by the wrong person at the wrong time for me to find my nasal passages precariously close to the proverbial ton of shit. And we all know what that smells like, eh readers?

The big question is, where should the new blog go? Blogger and Blogspot seem to be the most popular two choices, and there's a lot of content on both that's worthy of a good read, but what essentially is the difference? What tools do they offer? Is there anything that's a pain in the arse about them? And what are their communities like (Blogspot seems the most active to my eyes, but is it easy to "link into" other people's journals as you can on lj?)

Anyhow, I await everyone's advice. If I don't get any, I'll probably pester rhodri. And rest assured I've been out buying odds and sods from records stores and doing some vinyl rips of stuff that will end up on the new music blog, and it will be a damn sight (or perhaps a damn site, ho ho) better than this scrapbook-styled effort in terms of content.

(*Yes, I've heard of locked entries. No, I don't like them much).

I returned to the 13th Floor Club on Saturday night, which is almost always a joy. It might be because it's a niche night, playing only sixties mod, garage and psychedelia, but it appears on the surface to be one of those rare evenings which manages to attract a constant, hardcore audience without once being heavily invaded by scenesters or people determined to force their vain identity on the place. Facebook photo snappers are present there, but for most people the evening seems to be an excuse to have a good time rather than to be seen to be seen in the right clothes.

I find that most of the best club nights in London peak early in their lives - you have to be aware of them just after the first couple of nights when they're beginning to attract a crowd, but before the point where the more obnoxious media whores get wind of them and colonise them. Believe it or not, I know club promoters who (privately) think exactly the same thing, and get painfully nostalgic for the days When They Wasn't Famous. Or didn't have their brilliant idea ruined, at least - fame is probably overstating the case more than a little bit.

Highlights of the evening included:

* Guest DJ David Quantick getting deperate for the toilets and leaving his DJ booth to rush through to the front of the cubicle queues with a nervous and embarrassed wave of thanks. I wouldn't like to speculate about what his problem was, but I hope he's OK now.

* Icelandic mod band Thor's Hammer actually getting a spin on the decks this time around - not with "My Life" but another more obscure EP track "Big Beat Country Dance". Always welcome.

* Can's "Mother Sky". This was spun the last time I visited the club in January and felt like cheating then, being neither psychedelia or garage in the strictest sense of the word, but being blasted through a proper PA system the track always sounds wonderful. Home listening never quite seems to capture the pulsing, repetitive urgency of it, but there are precious few places you can visit where it will work its way on to a DJ's playlist.

Obscure track of the evening on this occasion was Alan Avon and Toyshop's "A Night To Remember". I'm not a fan of it, actually, and nobody danced to it, but I'm always entertained by the curveballs some DJs like to throw into their sets.

Beyond the fact that the evening was much more crowded this time than last, little seemed to have changed beyond the presence of rather more mods on this occasion. This can be bad news in that mods do tend to have a nasty habit of judging a person by their evening wear, but almost all seemed to enter into the spirit of the occasion and were perfectly friendly. I'm also starting to see people I recognise from previous visits in the club now, which is rare for me. Perhaps it's because the 13th Floor Club officially has the friendliest toilet queue in London - although you tend to be stood in it forever, waiting for one of two cubicles to become available, so I suppose chat is preferable to awkward silences.

I only hope this night can continue without being hijacked by a self-conscious set or ruined at any point soon. It does what it does extremely well, and I don't think it needs any additional help.

It's an ongoing inconvenience in my life that a lot of people I like in both the world of poetry and music seem to get gigs in venues I care rather less for. It's an ongoing disparity. I've waffled on about the Old Crown pub's status on the poetry circuit for so long that I'm beginning to bore even myself, but I've perhaps talked less about how little I like the "legendary" 100 Club on Oxford Street, which is right at the other end of the spectrum, in the red zone labelled "scuffed up beyond belief". Even as a teenager I disliked the place. Yes, people will tell you, but it's so delightfully authentic and tumbledown. It looks as if it hasn't been decorated since 1973. "Precisely", I'll reply.

Actually, my descriptions of the 100 Club could go further than that. Not only does it look as if it hasn't been decorated since 1973, it also looks as if it hasn't quite been tidied up or repaired after a wild working man's club party where the orange plastic chairs and wobbly formica top tables took some slight damage. It's not the end of the world, obviously - I don't necessarily expect plushness from gig venues, but if they're going for the whole "earthy" vibe, I would at least like them to perhaps try to go beyond the community hall look. A good band can transcend a trashy environment, but why give them the challenge in the first place? The 12 Bar on Denmark Street has exactly the right idea about how to look authentic and old-school without looking as if the painters and decorators last visit pre-dated the pub rock movement.

The evening manages to get off to a bad start as one of the doormen/ bouncers takes exception to me entering the venue a whole two minutes before they're ready, sending me outside again to wait behind the door like a naughty boy. I don't want to quibble, but it's not so much the problem as the way he addresses it - with aggressive and sarcastic tones. When I was a teenager I looked forward to the day where I wouldn't be shepherded around by bouncers in a condescending way anymore. That day never came. My older self feels impotent about this outcome. I could raise a complaint about shoddy customer service values, but I think it would fall on deaf ears. There's not really anything you can say to these people. "Excuse me, my good man, but I think you might find that your shabby little gig venue might stand rather more of a chance in the harsh London climate if you utilised some manners around your customers" probably wouldn't wash. I'm half tempted to try it, just to see if it stuns him into silence, then think better of it when I realise it would be likely to get a more forthright response.

Still, it's always a happy night when Misty's Big Adventure do a gig in London, irrespective of the location or the gatekeepers. Last night they were minus their giant blue dancing "creature" Erotic Volvo, the many-handed, wild-eyed gibbering thing who regularly dives into the audience to dance with random strangers. He was voted "worst band mascot" by staff at the NME recently, which is a bit unfair - his absence makes one thing very apparent, which is that he was indeed responsible for a certain volume of the atmosphere the band created. Without Erotic Volvo, the audience seem to take longer to be persuaded to dance, and even the band themselves seem a bit more subdued than usual. You expect that kind of result from a lead guitarist who has been replaced by a session musician, but it's surprising to note that somebody who has previously been dismissed as "Bez-like" makes such a big difference. I hope his absence is only temporary.

A slightly below par Misty's Big Adventure gig still kicks the performances of almost all other bands into touch, of course, and this one is aided by their inclusion of a "Greatest Hits" set, playing each and every one of their singles back to back. It's a reminder of how long their career has plodded on for. When I first saw them at the 12 Bar back in 2002, I was convinced that they were destined for greater things and within a couple of years would be playing the Astoria as a headline act. That they're still only playing the 100 Club is something I will always find baffling. When "Fashion Parade" kicks in, it sounds every inch like a lost hit single - in fact, perhaps if they'd chosen a topic for the lyrics which revolved around something other than criticising the more fashionable bands around them, it would have stood a chance. A great big brassy pop tune criticising the playlist favourites of XFM was never, ever going to break through in the way it deserved, although perhaps we can listen to it in years to come and laugh amongst ourselves when the careers of the Kaiser Chiefs are up.

I'm stunned by the band as always, although I've given up on the idea that they're ever going to have anything other than a marginal cult following. As long as they can afford to look after themselves, I'll be happy - perhaps there's something to be said for setting up direct debit schemes for any bands we feel might become airbrushed out of existence in the present conservative music scene. I'd happily drop them a couple of hundred pounds a year just to keep going forward. In this Internet driven age, would it be too much to ask for a website where we could drop funds in the direction of bands in return for the odd T-shirt, exclusive album, the guarantees of gigs in usually ignored far flung towns and perhaps a special mug? Have I invented the future here, or just thought of a concept which belongs way back in the past (the fan club)? You tell me.

The NME is not dead, contrary to continual Internet rumours, but by gum it certainly is looking a bit peaky:

http://entertainment.time.../music/article3497298.ece

As much as reading the NME was an obsession for me at one point in my life (although I preferred Melody Maker, I would actually buy both weekly) I can't see that there's very much to mourn here. The paper has moved so far from its original purposes and incarnation that it's hard to trace any easy way back. It was also difficult to see it at the time, but the rot really did set in around Britpop - that was the exact point where an obsession with image and sales developed over and above the outsiders they used to champion. Journalists began to talking to bands about "disappointing sales" continually at that point, and by the time The Spice Girls were on the front page, it was all over bar the shouting. The emphasis had shifted irreversibly.

Unlike The Teardrop Explodes, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Mondays, The Stone Roses (whose debut only sold a few hundred thousand in its first year, and at a slow, constant trickle), even in fact the Pistols and the Clash, Blur and Oasis were big, generation gap jumping, tabloid headline grabbing, sellers. "Morning Glory" sold beyond Simply Red levels, and "Parklife" certainly didn't do that badly either. You could argue that The Sex Pistols defined a generation more and are now seen as a "classic band", but they alienated the straight kids and almost all parents completely at the time. Unless you were a certain age and of a certain disposition, they were an utter turn-off. The NME celebrated things like that (eventually, though they were frequently slow on the uptake) and understood that its audience wanted "rebel oddball outsiders" and intelligent commentary rather than world-beating, Bono-threatening champions, and more tedious stories about cocaine use. Unlike their predecessors, though, and probably against the magazine's original expectations, Oasis and Blur crossed boundaries. The uncles and aunts of the stadium terrace chanters who got off on Oasis would have been completely disturbed and alienated by most of the NME favourites from 67 to 77, and possibly well into the eighties too. David Bowie would have been far too effiminate for them to cope with, Lou Reed too intelligent and perverse, the Prog bands far too awkward. Whilst many of these acts crossed over on a pop level, for most of their careers they were truly niche performers with sales propped up by hardcore fanbases.

The one moment in the sun where the NME was suddenly "big news" (on the UK Nine O Clock News for the Blur v Oasis battle) changed the way both IPC and the editors thought about the magazine. It wasn't about interesting, intelligent bands anymore (or at the very least bands with pretensions towards intelligence). It became about giant backstage parties, and coke sniffed off toilet seats and ROCK AND ROLL!!! As soon as those reports began to shift more units, it caused the paper to really lose its way, slowly but surely.

And lest we forget, before we get too weepy-eyed about the death of Melody Maker, we must remember that it too pulled the trigger on itself. The MM revamp of the late nineties (where it became a tabloid sized colour magazine) really wasn't far off the NME of today. That folded as a result of its attempts to get a cool teen market, and you would have thought the marketing folk at Time Warner would have given that a bit of thought before going sexy sticker and poster crazy with its sister paper. Or perhaps they thought what went wrong last time was just that they ran posters of the wrong people... which at least would explain why Sophie Ellis Bextor hasn't featured so prominently this time (unfortunately for me).

I'm still exhausted from the conference I attended and had no intention of doing a journal update today at all, but then I received the rather sad news that the producer Norman Smith died over the weekend. This probably means very little to most of you, and that's actually a huge shame - besides engineering a large bulk of The Beatles output in the sixties, he also has Pink Floyd's first two albums on his production CV, and equally notably the Pretty Things "SF Sorrow is Born" which is one of the finer albums of the period.

Norman Smith was nicknamed "Normal Smith" by John Lennon, largely due to his rather straight, middle aged attitudes and appearance. In the sixties the Abbey Road studios contingent were still quite conservative, technically minded chaps in white lab coats or smart suits, doing their best to understand and bring out the best from wave upon wave of new musical trends (and to get some idea about the advances in technology and styles, think about how far rock music jumped from the earliest Merseybeat pop bands in 62/63 to the approaching rumbles of hard rock and heavy metal in 69 - such enormous changes would be almost unthinkable in one decade now). Some of the sound boffins coped, others didn't, but all the evidence shows that Norman Smith handled change far better than most, and certainly far better than his appearances would suggest. Pink Floyd were doubtful that Smith "understood" the way they worked during the recording of "Saucerful of Secrets", but the Pretty Things "SF Sorrow" just shows how much he learned and how many of the stylings were quite definably his, and how much he had to offer - so much so that The Pretty Things named him as almost being an honorary member at that point. Also, in total fairness to the man, for all Saucerful's strengths I doubt the Floyd really knew what they wanted in the period immediately following Syd Barrett's expulsion, let alone how to communicate it to a producer.

In a further odd twist, Norman Smith went on to have a couple of hit singles himself in the seventies. He originally wrote "Don't Let It Die" as a songwriter's demo, and found EMI were keen enough to issue his version, which promptly got to number two in the British charts. Hence he's probably one of the very few people who first tasted chart success in his own right by the time he was in his fifties. It's a rather sugary, Saltwatery, Lennon-esque piece of work, but quite likeable, and I include it as a download here just to commemorate him. If you really want to get a measure of his finest achievements, though, I'd recommend rushing out to get copies of "SF Sorrow" or "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" now though, if you haven't already got them.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JFM71LUT

I'm presently up in Scotland organising various bits and pieces around a major conference, and Jesus Christ it's hard work as always. If there's one thing anybody should learn about doing a job like this, it's not to be fooled by offers of free meals and drinks - there is indeed no such thing as a free lunch. If it's free, it's because somebody wants to talk to you about work for a very long time indeed (until eleven in the evening in some cases) and has decided to throw in some steamed seabass to sweeten the deal. You will feel replete, I can assure you of that, but you'll be much more tired than if you'd stuck to the ham sandwich on hotel room service. Be warned. When people say "It will just be half an hour of chat until we settle down to getting drunk, ha ha", it's never the truth. If it's just half an hour of chat they want, they can give it to you in a meeting room for a mere fraction of the cost. And if you get drunk with business associates anyway, it will always end in tears (sometimes literally) and possibly a loss of confidence in your work. Do you see? No, don't thank me, it's what I'm here for.

And whilst I was here, I got thinking about the muzak hotels and conference suites use. You see, my hotel bar is rather uniquely using the Easy Star All Stars album "Radiodread" as its muzak. Available only on import in the UK, this particular disc consists entirely of (actually extremely good) reggae and dub reinterpretations of the "OK Computer" album. As muzak, however, it's oddly distracting, especially if you're in a hotel on business. One thing sure to put you off your work is a bunch of ranting Thom Yorke lyrics about the evil of men in suits and their unnecessary meetings. Perhaps the hotel manager is being subversive, but I would ask him or her to reconsider their choice of soundtrack. It makes me feel uneasy.

Continuing the topic, I would also add the following songs to the list of things which should never ever be used again for hopefully obvious reasons:

Lighthouse Family - Lifted. Gentle Jesus, make it stop. This is usually used to soundtrack concepts which are meant to reassure and relax mature people. Holidays, political parties (who aren't, like, Evil), Health Spas, old people's homes, in fact just about fucking anything that generates tranquility rather than excitement over the last ten years it seems. The Lighthouse Family must be a very happy clan. I hope their lighthouse gets fucking decommissioned by the Government like all the others, myself. I've heard enough. And it better had not be a "listed coastal building" either.

Republica - Ready To Go. Quite the opposite of the Lighthouse Family's opus, this one. This is constantly used to generate youthful excitement, except of course it sounds like what it is - a bunch of mature chancers in a studio attempting to sound like thirteen year olds having a sugar rush after swallowing too many Nerds. It says nothing of consequence("shoutin' out.. baby, I'm ready to go... on the rooftop... yeah"), makes a bunch of stupid pre-programmed synth noises, pounds away, then disappears again, presumably making it an easy choice to soundtrack footage of people - I dunno - skiing, falling off mountainsides (hopefully), jogging, enthusiastically scribbling down business plans, flying in helicopters... whatever.

I would like to say that I wouldn't like either band to go without a pension, but the reality is that actually I wish they did have to do proper jobs for a living. Proper jobs that involve going out to events and having to hear their drivel broadcast to an entire room all day and night, so they'd finally understand how bloody insufferable it all becomes.

If I were a dictator, I would ban all music in advertising and promotional clips. We might appreciate it more then. Except in the case of Republica and The Lighthouse Family, of course, I doubt it would seem like a better prospect under any restrictive circumstances.

Not too long ago on this 'ere blog, I flagged up Marshall Hain's "Dancing In The City" as being a one hit wonder from my childhood which brought me endless pleasure... now it's time for another one...



For verily (as Sir Jimmy Saville might say) it is The Look on Top of the Pops with their sole hit single "I Am The Beat". It would seem that there are two bands called "The Look" - one is a Detroit based supergroup, who this lot most definitely aren't. Who these blokes are I'm really none too sure. They're a band who appeared to have been more or less erased from musical history, without even a brief Wikipedia mention to their name. However, I can reveal the following facts:

a/ MCA issued "I Am The Beat" as being the world's first infinite single. The run out grooves played the end refrain repetitively in a loop until you chose to either lift the arm of the needle, eject the record, your needle wore down, or there was some sort of power cut, possibly caused by a nuclear war years in the future. A completely pointless and actually downright irritating gimmick, of course, as I highly doubt anybody actually kept the record revolving for 24 hours chanting "beat" to themselves and clapping their hands in a crazed manner, not unless they were attempting some sort of early eighties New Wave hypnosis.

b/ The Look had one follow up single, "Feeding Time", which bothered the top 75 briefly. I heard it once as a child, and now can't remember it. Sorry. The album both tracks are from received an extremely positive review from Smash Hits, announcing to the world that fans of Squeeze and XTC in particular would love the contents of the disc, but I've never seen a copy anywhere, and therefore cannot verify this.

c/ The Look seemed to be part of a whole slurry of slightly retro bands riding The Jam's coat-tails during this period - along with The Lambrettas, Secret Affair, The Dots, etc. etc. most of whom are barely ever heard these days, but did indeed trouble the top ten quite seriously (well, The Lambrettas and Secret Affair managed, anyway).

The video clip above has dreadful sound, so if you really want to hear the magic for yourself, click on the video-less YouTube clip below. For my money, it's further evidence that the present set of XFM approved bands rolling through really could have existed in 1981 or 1982 without anyone batting an eyelid - but I can see why I loved this track so much when I was barely out of short trousers. It's a tremendously insistent, pounding tune, and it's actually extremely surprising it's so seldom heard now.

I was running through my poetry in the kitchen on Wednesday night, just in front of the pop-up toaster - this is a common scenario in the Dave household, right up there with me clipping my fingernails whilst listening to The Fall's "Middle Class Revolt" - when Amanda made an unexpected appearance. She wanted to know, not unreasonably, what I was doing. You would think that she'd be used to such things by now, but our five year relationship still brings many surprises.

I explained that I was rehearsing my Apples and Snakes set, and that I was worried that I would have to drop a poem from it because I was presently running over time.
"Are you doing 'Newport Pagnell'?" she asked.
I replied in the affirmative.
"Why not lose that one, then?" she suggested.
I asked her why. She replied along the lines of "Well, if you have to lose one, it may as well be that one, y'know..." desperately skirting around the whole issue. In fact, she never did explain to me properly why she doesn't like "Newport Pagnell". I think she was keen to avoid a long late night discussion about its relative merits, or lack thereof, and was worried about hurting my feelings. If the truth be told, I'm rather indifferent to it myself, but in terms of audience response it's been one of the stronger poems since it was last introduced a year ago.

In fact, I didn't just include "Newport Pagnell" on the night, I actually opened with it. I told Amanda this was the plan, and she looked at me very doubtfully indeed. And I don't know if it was Amanda's look of lingering doubt in my direction that did it and filled my brain with subconscious fears, or the interests of the audience, or some other mysterious random factor I've never even considered, but indeed it is safe to say that they did not seem to especially enjoy their entire poetry evening being opened with a prolonged diatribe about the relative shortcomings of being stuck on a motorway near a satellite town of Milton Keynes. People stared at me rather curiously. The lines that normally go down well were ignored. Far from being the immediate icebreaker it normally is, the poem went down as a wrongfoot which would cripple the fittest, youngest athlete. Perhaps in a library environment in front of a small audience it seemed tactless, rude and misjudged - I remain unsure. Answers in a comment, please. And if I really should drop "Newport Pagnell", for the love of God please let me know now because I can easily live without it. It certainly doesn't work as a published piece.

In truth, I always find library readings or performances very difficult to judge. No matter how much they like a poet, library audiences will usually just clap politely rather than cheer enthusiastically (and trust me, they really did like some of the acts on the bill on Thursday night, rushing over to tell them so). The postures of a library audience are normally somewhat different too. As one of the acts of the evening pointed out, they tend to tilt their heads slightly and smile indulgently like small children, and those expressions will remain fixed throughout the set. Perhaps being in a library space reminds them of being children at school again. The bottom line, however, is that at the end of the night, nobody comes over to tell me how much they liked my work, or to ask about weblinks or work for sale. This is the first time this has happened in at least a year, so by the standards of other recent gigs it can only be deemed a failure. Usually even at my worst received gigs where I'm supporting somebody utterly inappropriate or just being downright inept there will be at least one outcast who enjoyed what I did enough to come over and tell me so - but not on this occasion. I'm left a bit lonely at the end of the evening as people walk straight past me avoiding my gaze to go and praise the other acts on the bill, and I feel like a sulky Michael Barrymoore having a fit of self-doubt (even though I've nothing in common with him and obviously I'm not doing comedy).

What went wrong? The truth be told, I don't really know. It didn't feel like an appalling set to me whilst I was going through it, and I was determined to carry on as normal and think I succeeded. Perhaps I should have read the signs better and changed tack. Perhaps if I heard a recording of it I might be able to pinpoint areas where I lost the audience and why, but it didn't sound much to me like an atypical gig, there seemed to be enough people looking on attentively, and it seemed like the sort of thing which would have worked on other occasions. I fluffed the lines of "A Year In Morse" slightly, but beyond that it felt focussed enough. Or perhaps I was just on a bill filled with poets who have had much more acclaim than me, and it was a simple case of being first on in the evening, and being quickly forgotten about. I have no easy answers, which is interesting because usually I do. On this occasion, I don't actually feel as if I have much to apologise for, so, er... sorry and all that, but... if you wanted "bad", I don't think that was it. I could think of several nights I've done in the last two years which would have deserved that kind of response, but not necessarily this one.

If there was one good thing about the evening (besides the chance to finally do an Apples and Snakes gig) it was actually getting to perform in Bishopsgate Library. Believe it or not, I used to actually do research work there for a job I had with the local council, and had to stop when my role was downgraded and became basic admin. That experience almost directly inspired the "Slow Death of Another Trade" poem, and if nothing else I actually got a chance to close the circle and rant about a situation whose frustration had partly been inspired by the library's very existence. I can think of few other similar opportunities I've ever been given - if I'd attempted the same stunt outside the format of a poetry reading, chances are I'd have been arrested, or at the very least told quite sternly to pipe down by a duty librarian. People normally pay for such catharsis, being paid for it should be beyond my dreams.

I'm reluctant to review the other acts on the bill in depth, since I think analysing a bunch of poets you were on the same bill as is a wee bit rude, but I can report that they were all good in very different ways. Obviously I sound like somebody who hasn't turned on Radio Four since 1992, but I haven't heard Jude Simpson in years and was surprised by how much she'd changed since the pub years when we last shared a bill together. Her comic poem epics have been honed down a lot into more immediate works, and she cuts a charming presence, seeming really at ease with herself and relaxing the audience into her own world. Jasmine Cooray was brilliant, delivering some extremely thoughtful, considered and poignant work, and Talking Tekla the Narrata exploded like a anti-terrorist's suitcase packed only with slightly overwhelming joy and enthusiasm. Is that a naff description? Hey, it probably is, but it's late at night.

The event didn't sell out, but I think it's a good one, and if Bishopsgate Library and A&S carry on with this scheme, you should definitely come on down to the next one. If nothing else, Bishopsgate library is one of my favourite ones in London, always shining and freshly scrubbed clean, but still looking like something out of a 1950s spy film, all low metal lampshades, shining green tiles and oak panelling. It's a brilliant place to hear poetry. In fact, it's a fantastic place just to research architecture and social history, and I'm sorry I don't get the opportunity to do that much anymore. I almost feel nostaglic now.

A major reminder coming up for a gig I'm doing tomorrow night... Apples and Snakes have contacted me to assure me that there are certainly tickets left for anyone who is worried about that sort of thing (*coughs*) and it would be lovely to see as many of you there on the night as possible (*cough cough*).

For anyone who needs the information again:

Don't Shush Me! - an Apples and Snakes Event
Bishopsgate Institute
230 Bishopsgate
London, London and South East EC2M 4QH

£7 Entrance Fee, £5 concessions

7:30pm

Poetry in the library with BBC3/ Radio 4 comic poetry performer Jude Simpson, Talking Tekla the Narrata, Dave Bryant and Jasmine Cooray.

To drum up more support I traipsed to Poetry Unplugged again on Tuesday night. Like it or not, this is going to be my last appearance there for awhile, given that I'm away in Glasgow next week doing a major conference for my dayjob, and I'll probably be recovering from the enormo-shifts I've had to do the week after that. People think that going away to do conferences must be fun, and they're not without their charms, but anyone who thinks I have a greater knowledge about Edinburgh, Glasgow, Chelmsford or Cardiff after doing any of these things in any of those places is sadly deluding themselves - I generally only tend to see my hotel room, the car park, and the venue the event is being held in. As somebody who is partly responsible for making sure that certain aspects run smoothly, sometimes I'm still on my feet until quite late at night, and then I generally just crash out in my room. It could be worse, but let's just say that if I allowed myself to get severely hungover I just wouldn't function on an average day. It's really not much of a jolly for people working behind the scenes, although I can consider it a success if 90% of the attendees feel that it has been.

Anyway, on the topic of poetry - as we were - I have to say that whilst a lot of the newcomers to the London scene are indeed very direct and not heavy on imagery or metaphors (as I said last week) I'm increasingly impressed with the slickness and style of a lot of people who have barely been involved for five minutes. Unplugged is highlighting quite a few of these, as are numerous other events up and down London. For as long as this continues, nobody needs to worry that a lot of the more successful poets now seem to have abandoned bothering with open mics. It seems that even as an observer you're still likely to see some good material on any given night, as random and unpredictable as these things are. Keep it up, say I.

Grandmaster Gareth's blog on Misty's Big Adventure's Myspace site has alerted me to the below link, which is an absolutely unbelieveable MP3 resource of all things library music, especially the more electronic, Moog orientated stuff:

http://www.vintagelibraryemporium.blogspot.com

Boards of Canada and Stereolab fans should particularly be interested. All some of this material needs is a few wobbles and muffled samples, and it's away... I've downloaded one track called "Analogue Dialogue" which is downright terrifying, to be honest, a screeching squeal of conflicting Moog noises which is likely to upset both you and your cat's ears. Besides that you might find some odd jingle gems, with some often ridiculous titles, or a lot of melodic washes which seem unsettling for reasons you can't quite discern. It's a complete lucky dip, obviously, and the quantity of material on offer does make it hard to decide where to head first, but you're sure to find something of interest nesting deep within the blog.