… have only gone and done it again! Fantastic… got out of more scrapes than James Bond. Heroes all.

He died on 29th June 1975.

He’s good isn’t he. (no question mark). The middle bit especially – Happy Sad to Starsailor. Blue Afternoon, my favourite, is astounding.

He has the advantage of not having a pair of Size 10s (Male) trapsing all over his back catalogue (see Van, Neil, Joni and, unfortunately even Bob and Nick).

Those older ‘singer-songwriters’, if we must use the phrase, need to be fresh, some are fresher than others, some are dead.

I go to more football matches than rugby matches, because there are more football matches than rugby matches.

Recently on a bus, I alerted a guy that the evening’s football match had been postponed and, low and behold, a woman started up a massive discussion about namby-pamby footballers. Erm… our local football team plays 50 League and Cup games a season, unlike the local rugby team who play about 30.

Went to the rugby tonight… one woman said it was too cold to go… one man said it didn’t matter… another man, who inevitably didn’t go to the game either, presumed I would be ‘all over’ the Six Nations tomorrow. Incorrect squire, I’ll be at a football game, could be Association rules could be Rugby rules.

No offence meant, obvs., but football fans who identify as ‘rugby fans’ are shite, aren’t they? I go to infinitely more rugby matches than any of them!

For why?

The lad can’t do the endless product-on-product-on-product, year-on-year, routine as lesser artists (Neil Young, boringjoni, van…erm… the one who was in Them) do, ever-so-slightly often.

Anyway, I wanna tell you a story about Elvis COMPLETELY taking the piss out of the record industry in 2005… not a mean feat, given he died in 1977! Can’t do it right now, too busy laughing at Arsenal. Do it first thing tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to the Memphis Flash… I don’t know who is first or second in the world of Pop Music, but one is him and the other is The Beatles.

Saw a film today, it was released in 1942. Check out the plot. It’s cosmic.

Groups of families living peacefully – Men with guns intervene (Think: Grouse shooting by the royal family) – Peace returns – Men, more men, return – Camp fires, through lack of care/vigilance, mutate into forest fires – families flee for their lives onto an island – when the fires have burnt out, they all return to where they all wanted to be it the first place.

It’s a bit like the Daily Express. It’s called Bambi.

I’ve been pondering this question for three weeks.

I went to a showing of a local film at the cinema. Local films (Mark Jenkin notwithstanding) are a curious beast. They are usually short and poorly made, and, sure enough, so was this one, but they do have one thing going for them… they draw a crowd. The showing I went to was pretty much sold out.

The audience was a very different one to the ones I’m used to when I go to see the more arty/foreign films. It is exactly the same audience that revels in feel good British films about saving a hospital, Army wives forming a singing group, a community buying a racehorse that wins a big race, Dad’s Army, an old man walking to hundreds of miles to see his sister etc. etc.

Here’s the thing… in an audience with an average age of about 75 (conservative estimate), there were three advertisements to join the armed forces! Marines, Army, R.A.F., presumably all produced by the government. I’ve seen one before, but three? To an audience of people, most of whom are long into their retirement. They ain’t joining the army anytime soon.

Why?

… in my circles, maybe yours, it’s a myth isn’t it?

Beatles – Better than the first, not quite as much as David Hepworth believes, but better. Dylan – No contest. Byrds – No contest. Love – Prefer the 2nd. Doors – I know the debut is revered, but I definitely prefer Strange Days. Jimi – Jury’s out, but I’d plump for the 2nd. Stones and Elvis and The Pink Floyd and Nick Drake (no matter what the rather splendid Joe Boyd says) – Exceptions to the rule, debuts are better. Pretty Things – Get the Picture is better. Jethro Tull, Them, Tyrannosaurus Rex… all the 2nd.

Spoiler alert – This is not a First World problem.

Sorry for disappointing any fans of Boris Johnson’s handling of the London Riots, donating West Ham a free stadium at the tax-payer’s expense, the Garden Bridge etc. – this is just about the three years he has been holder of the once-proud office of Prime Minister.

My no. 1? Wednesday, 25th September 2019 – so, really early on.

A female Labour MP asks the Prime Minster to tone down the rhetoric regarding Brexit as she had been receiving hate mail, and particularly in mind of what happened on Thursday, 16th June 2016 – the murder of Joe Cox, who was on her way to hold a constituency surgery.

Answer from the Prime Minister? “… I have never heard such humbug in all my life.”

Who was the real loser in that? Paula Sherriff, the MP in question? Maybe, she lost her seat at the next election.

But no, I’d say the real fall-out took place on Friday, 15th October 2021 and concerned another MP, Sir David Amess, who was actually conducting his constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea.

A Conservative MP (one of Johnson’s own side), Sir David Amess, like Joe Cox, was murdered.

What’s your favourite?

Pretty groovy. Sponsored the greatest concerts ever, 69, obvs.

Rewind: Gisline, Gasline, Gasoline Maxwell. Nowhere near 69! A dodger, par excellence.

If you want to know what this country is built on… read her case…

She is going down BIG TIME (oh. don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she’s getting it a lot, LOT, easier than one of them thar blacks) … but… hey… she is prepared to go through all that for rich (richer than her), white (whiter than her), men.

Go sister!

I was at Anfield the last time Liverpool won the old Football League in 1990.

A dreadful place to get away from at the best of times, I’d been standing in a queue a mile long for the bus back to Lime Street when four fans got in a taxi, I saw my chance and bundled in after them. Nice lads, chatted about the game, paid my contribution (a pound) at the station, got the earlier train back south… but the thing I remember most about that taxi journey is how matter-of-fact winning the League seemed to be for them – it felt like we were all going home after a Leyton Orient-Southend United match, not a game that had just decided the League.

Little did any of us know that Liverpool would not win the League again for three decades.

At exactly the same time, under Alex Ferguson, Manchester United got their mojo back. The biggest football club in the world, for that is what they are, like it or not, suddenly had a League position to prove it.

The early 1990s really only saw Arsenal and (briefly) Blackburn Rovers as their rivals in the newly monikered Premier » Continue Reading.

1975-76 Wolves 1, Liverpool 3 QPR’s last 15 results: Played 15, Won 13, Drew 1, Lost 1. (Nasal voice, doffing his cap to minor royalty) – “We knew they’d bottle it.”

2021-22 Liverpool 3, Wolves 1 Bottled it.

… no, really, it does still exist. I don’t think I’m on a willy-wind-up… I mean, it did happen, yeah?

Don’t tell me… Team f***-face’ won… “REALLY important trophy to win, history etc., must keep the blah, blah, alive – thing – stuff.”

Team traitors against the country lost… “Our ambition is 4th and, anyway, we’ve allowed Russian billionaires to destroy this country, haven’t we? ’bout time you gave us a break.”

What a load of shite – sums this country up in 2022. Nil f***** nil —— again.

I genuinely didn’t know this match was happening until I got back from proper sport an hour ago, but Chelsea are itty-bitty-teeny-weeny-champions… “OF THE WORLD!”

What a great time to live in a shithole.

Remind me what’s happening in the Ukraine.

Clearly Fat Boy wouldn’t know what that is a reference to, but this isn’t about The Doors.

The 20th May 2020 jaunt in the garden of No. 10 surely has to signal the end of Johnson as Prime Minister. I’m absolutely gob-smacked that a person who so obviously lies through his teeth at every available opportunity ( and no, they don’t “all do it”) has been given life after life after life.

If I was younger, in need of funds, I would see his morals and bending of the truth for his own convenience, as a red light to do whatever I pleased to get ahead for myself.

If those grey men in the Tory Party were so vexed (rightly… finally) at the end of last year about the December 2020 gathering, this has to be the final straw.

I got a prediction wrong last week (Australia 5 England 0… hurrah!), but surely this time next month Fat boy J. won’t be Prime Minister any more.

Thought about going with the monkey chants tonight (well, you do don’t you as a football fan, obviously) but decided on going with the mug noises… 0-1, 0-2, 0-3, 0-4.

The England football team tonight has done more for tolerance in society than the racist Fat Boy J. and his Eton/Oxford crew or their tabloid arse-lickers have ever or will ever get near.

Nope not Covid, nor Tottenham’s wait for a trophy, but W.H. Smiths’ pretense that they sell CDs! At least in my local branch (an hour’s journey from a High Street record shop) anyway.

You can imagine the meeting… “Stationery?” “Not bad, W.H.” “Magazines?” “So, so, W.H.” “CDs?” “Sold none, W.H.” “How could that possibly happen? Don’t people want to buy the Soundtrack to the Lion King again? Ditch the CD department.”

Further news… the British Heart Foundation had a full run of Sainted D., Deep Purple, Slade and Style Council on CD today. Sainted D. at £2.99 each (the ones without the bonus tracks – gee, thanks Sainted D.), the others at £1.99. I think we’re going to get more and more of this, and I’m definitely going to be nipping in on a regular basis. The stuff, which two or three years ago might have been farmed off to the specialist shop, is now going straight onto the shelf.

I’m in, you’d be mad not to.

Tottenham have won 2 trophies (League Cup… oh, well done) in the last 100 competitions in which they have entered. I want to see that quality side playing at the very top of the pyramid and I’m prepared to dig deep for the privilege.

Something as good as this rarely comes around more than once, lump on.

Hurrah!

Rock ‘n’ Roll gets a programme all to itself on Radio 2… three episodes… gotta show commitment. Fronted by a guy from the Kaiser Chiefs (football lad, I’d probably get on well with him), the track-listing is “think of any famous Rock ‘n’ Roll song and… that’s it.” It’s a “Driving Rock ‘n’ Roll” 2-CD release stretched over three weeks.

Still, I mustn’t grumble, I’ve got the “specialist” option that is BBC6 Music… they’ll bound to come to the… oh, no, wait..

I’d be mortified if Paul Morley died before me as my mantra has always been “If that miserable Manc reckons it, I’m outta here.” I’d be lost. Where would I go to not buy something recommended by him?

The moderate man has only written a book on Dylan, which is out at the end of April! Strewth, is nothing sacred?

I’m currently embarking on a clear out and before this news the Dylan library was already looking likely for a trim. With this news, I’m taking a machete to it.

There are about 215 Beatles songs, I can honestly say that, at any given time, at least half of them have been my favourite.

I can almost recount them in order… Eleanor Rigby, When I’m 64, Help!… …in the middle, I’d have been fully prepared to have a fight over Ask Me Why (still want some?!) Now? Can’t Buy Me Love, Got to Get You into My Life and Michelle.

That is why The Beatles are effortlessly the greatest pop group ever. All ages, all songs.

… you know the ones; tiny little books on a particular album, 120 pages or so, about £10 each. Their brightly coloured spines look great on the bookshelf, but just a cursory glance at the reviews on Amazon reveals the series to be a real mixed bag.

I recently read the one on “Smile,” a strange entry in the series as so much has been written about it in the past. Bizarrely, the author elected to spend 80% of the book on a pre-history of the album. I’d have thought you’d deal with the album’s pre-history, the rivalry with the Beatles and the pop climate of the time by page 2, and go straight to Brian’s surprise return to the project in 2004 and the subsequent 2011 release, taking on board all the rumours/imaginings of what “Smile” was like along the way via the numerous magazine articles and bootlegs on the subject. He didn’t do that, and an opportunity was lost. I suspect the sleeve notes to the 2011 release were far more revealing, and I’ll dig out my copy later.

I’ll cut Luis Sanchez, the author, some slack for the brilliant line … “Pet Sounds is the score to » Continue Reading.

Roberta Flack’s first LP is getting the 50th Anniversary treatment on its, erm, 51st Anniversary. Great forward planning!

Neither the Mojo or Uncut reviews make it completely clear what is on offer, or the price, a common occurrence in those magazines unfortunately, but the obligatory vinly is pictured with 2 CDs and, yes, it appears that the obligatory vinly and 2 CDs is what you get.

I find the ways of the Record Industry increasingly bizarre, but wouldn’t it be better to release said product on the obligatory vinly OR compact disc rather than the obligatory vinly AND compact disc.

Yet another “no sale,” I’m afraid. I don’t know how they keep finding different ways to not sell me records, but they do.

I’m only in the market for Golden Age and Simon & Garfunkel’s career, starting in the 50s as Tom & Jerry and ending pretty much as the 60s ended, spreads itself pretty much straight through it the Golden Age, but even I’m not going to be buying this edition, and if I’m not going to buy it, who is?

It reminds me of the six copies of the CSN & Y issue which remained resolutely on my local WH Smith shelf for about three months until, presumably, they were remaindered.

Don’t these magazines only work if you are dealing with the big hitters (Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc. – the Hendrix one sold out in my local WH Smith) or real mavericks. I’d put money that an issue focussing on Beefheart or Zappa would outsell Paul Simon even if his record sales still beats both of them hands down.

I’m really annoyed.

Mojo published a Stones special today (£7.99), available in all good book shops, and Part 1 takes the story from 1962 to 1969. Part 2, available later in the summer, is from 1970 to 2019.

Two 45s and a paltry 6 years or recording LPs to cover the Golden Age? 50 years to cover all the stuff afterwards? Er … are you George?

Madness … I’m complaining … if one issue has to cover the last 50 years, at least 3 issues should cover the Golden Age.;

Longevity. Kinda a good thing, yes? Your roof is leaking, so you want someone who has fixed a leaking roof more than a few times to turn up, right?

Not so good in music.

Listening to Aretha’s As and Bs comp., I decided to find out what Tony Blackburn did to mark her death in August on “Sounds of the 60s.” Answer? Precisely what you’d expect from “soul man” Tone … her three most famous songs and then nothing for 8 weeks.

However, it’s the fact that he has apparently played the same Booker T. track (“Pigmy”) on 5 … FIVE … occasions in that time that suggests he is merely dialling it in.

What’s the point? Why don’t they get someone with a knowledge (that he clearly doesn’t have) or, frankly, just someone with enthusiasm to do it?