Friday 19 January 2007

I have a new job. It is counting money, about ten years wages in a day. I am forced to endure Real Radio and it's horrible playlist, jingles and DJ's day in, day out. I will try to change this but it will probably end up getting me fired. My free thinking attitude always has in the past.

I have started 2007 as a working hermit. I get home from work and tuck into my food like a wee shite. Haggis supper, battered mushrooms, pizza and curry sauce for dinner tonight. The diet can start on Monday...

Jamming with Matty and Davey proved fruitful fun. We gave birth to the bare bones of three bodies and all look forward to inserting the potato filling tomorrow with equal enthusiasm. Harburn Hall is a fun place to make music in - large, cosy, remote and it's on a stage - so it won't feel as weird when there are people on the floor watching us. Maybe we will get some gigs in some groovy dance clubs once we have honed our groovy craft?


Me and Matty jammed through a new song of mine that has been inspired by my re-acquaintance with all the dregs of lowest common denominator pop shite. It's called, defiantly, 'I'm Still The Same'

Pop melodies we've all heard a thousand times before
Infiltrate your brain and turn you into a fucking bore
You want to get to the top; you sleep with some slob
Then you can sing all their demeaning little songs

But I'm still, I'm still the same
I'm still, I'm still the same

Expect to hear it on 45rpm vinyl sometime in 2009.

Written under the influence of the 'Power of the Beelgene'.

Sunday 7 January 2007

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

If I don't get a grip soon I'm gonna end up looking like Halle Berry by the time I'm forty.

2006 ended with some classic gigs in the underground scene. I feel very grateful to have so many creative and overall great people around me I can call friends. I often feel marginal in this burgeoning musical mass. Although not prominent, I like to think I weave my way through, leaving particles behind that in most cases hopefully don't smell (although a fart is a useful weapon on a bus if a baby is crying).

Recently I have been delving into the archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It's incredible stuff - funny, intelligent and futuristic...I don't know what it says about me that I like this music so much, or if it's a good thing! It is brilliant though.

The song that got me through Christmas and New Year was 'Real Love' by The Beatles. It's actually an old John Lennon demo that the rest of the band spruced up many years later. I never actually played it, only in my head. This time during Christmas and New Year was possibly the worst period of my life. I now really know what people mean when they say they were' worried sick'. An old saying is that 'what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger'. I now know this is true.

For the second year in a row I neglected to release a Christmas Single. I'm gonna start working on this year's one now so I definitely get it sorted for this Christmas. At a rate of one chorus and verse per month, it should be an opus by then.

It seems a lot of people I know have the same New Years Resolution - to lose weight, me included. I'm a lazy cunt and since quitting smoking last year I've been eating pizza and chips for breakfast. Or onion rings. My standard fluid intake consisted of about 3 pints of full cream milk per day, graduating to organic milk. One day I was in Morrisons when I noticed that single cream was only 60 odd p for 568ml. It seemed like an indulgence but I thought "what the heck, the milk's not doing it anymore". Quickly this became double cream, with sugar stirred in. It's not even a drink anymore. So getting fit is something else to aim for...I wonder who will see it through?

Tomorrow night me and my friend and musical accomplice Matty are meeting with the legendary Davey Dobson, a fantastic drummer previously of Voice of the Mysterons fame (surely one of the best bands ever). It's to discuss a musical project, in which he won't be playing drums, but bass. On a keyboard. Possibly. Still, Matty will be playing drums and he is also amazing. What will I be doing? I have NO idea...

Doug