Only Me !

Hello again!

Seems like only last week...

Perhaps, like me, some of you are old enough to remember the time when people had stereos that were way too heavy to cart around in their back pockets, and gigs were plentiful and well attended.
Ah yes, the Golden Glow of Nostalgia, which covers a lifetime of cracks in the wall.

'The Golden Glow of Nostalgia

Anyway, we're here now for better or worse, and what do we make of it all ?
According to Deepak Chopra we are all temporal beings in a finite multiverse
So we'll ignore that.

On another note, the self-promotion saga that is Richard Prince (recap) continues with a dull explanation / defence of sorts in a  pretentious but ultimately boring piece in an online magazine titled 'Autre'.
Which is French for 'Other '.

As you probably know.
I'm just telling you that because it's the most interesting thing about the article.

This got me thinking, as I gazed at the fluff in my navel,
Should online magazines be called 'digi-zines' ?
Does anyone care ?

Anyway, in case you're ambivalent about clicking the link to the Richard Prince article, I'll condense it for you, cutting to the chase, as it were.
There's a bit of an opening ramble: scene - setting, if you like, putting Mr Prince in context - name dropping, to be precise. 
So we know he's connected to Art.
Vaguely... like Mickey Mouse is connected to Michaelangelo.

In the article, Richard Prince basically details the process by which he 'followed' people on Instagram, isolated his preferred images of them and deleted comments leaving his own cosmic posturings as taglines.
Then it's copy, enlarge, print and voila !
The rest is history on the walls of Londons Gagosian Gallery and sensible offers only please.
Sensible meaning $90,000...

It's Art, Honey,
With a Capital Money...©™ ero2015

Is Art the new gold ?
If you have money to burn , apparently so.
Which is exactly what the KLF did in 1994, when they burnt a million quid.

Part of the rave  explosion  movement , they were also known as The Timelords, The Justified Ancients Of Mu-Mu, The JAMS - situationist , provocative and damn good fun all in one, they constantly derided 'the industry' in which they worked, making increasingly bold statements as a way of telling people not to settle for the hype.
Whilst hyping everything they did.
They were controversial and creative, in the best way.
Raising consciousness whilst flogging people 'Doctorin' The Tardis'
They even wrote the iconic 'How To Have A number One Hit : The Manual',
now out of print and currently changing hands for big money.

On another £note, there is Banksy.
Witty, powerful visual statements that comment on our fragile society
They now command silly money.
I enjoy the shenanigans of local councils arguing as to who the owner of  a certain tagged wall might be.
I like to think of Mr Banksy / Mr Mouthwash / whoever, sitting back and laughing at the petty squabbling , born of greed.
The film Exit Through The Gift Shop is an introduction to the strangeness.
Although it is another way of giving money to mr Banksy.
Which is difficult.

Anyways, reading back over this piece, I am sorry for re-visiting the Richard Prince thing.
Personally, I think it's relevant-
And pointless, at the same time.

It's all getting a bit philosophical for me.
Bring back unthinking hedonism...and corporal punishment !
Especially for those who draw on walls.
And those who steal virtual pictures from virtual walls.

RIP Christopher Lee

As someone who avidly watched the seemingly endless battles between Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the Hammer 'Dracula' films, I was truly saddened to hear of the death of Mr Lee.
To me he represents the passing of an old line of gentlemanly actors, and I only hope that he is reunited with his old screen nemesis.
In my mind, he will always be Dracula, as I felt he embodied the character so well.

I remember feeling conflicted when he played Scaramanga in the Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun , as he was (in my mind at least), typecast as Dracula.
Of course he also achieved cult recognition as Lord Summerisle in the original Wicker Man film, and widespread recognition latterly in The Lord Of The Rings - infact he was the only cast member who had actually met Tolkien.
He also dabbled in Death Metal, I kid you not.


His acting career spanned hundreds of films.
His first Hammer role was in 'The Curse of Frankenstein', followed by 'The Mummy' , but to me it was with  'Dracula, Prince of Darkness' that he cast an inspirational figure - well, as inspirational as an immortal bloodsucker could be.
He reprised the Dracula role five times.
Peter Cushing as Van Helsing was often his foil, and between them we had the age old battle of good and evil.
He and Peter Cushing, were, in real life, great friends, although the only film in which they were allies was 'Horror Express'.

Will they walk and talk together in the Summerland of yore ?

Will they finally resolve the age old struggle between light and dark ?

I just want to say a heartfelt farewell to a true titan of the silver screen.

Business Unusual

Hello everyone both of you,
 You may have read my rant recently where I got on one (as they say) with regard to spammers and bots misappropriating my magical words and thereby bringing a premature end to my blogging in the free world  (which was almost a joke, for those who recall the song by Neil Young...)
Speaking of which, what happened to music ?
I mean - I'm old and out of the loop - at 50 something, I should perhaps be grateful for pastoral symphonies and suchlike, to ease the pain of life in a harsh, unforgiving world.
For those of you protesting that 50 - something is not old ; when I was eternally 21 , anything over thirty was old, so I am technically a listed building.
All the hoary cliches of my punky mis-spent youth are now true.
I am that old fart that I shouldn't trust.
Though I'm not a 'hippy'...
but Peace anyway.
I am only grateful that age is less of a cliché than it once was.
Besides, I was reared on the musical dabblings of John Peel, and he was timeless

But the music, man.
What happened ?
Since 'home taping is killing music', it's been going downhill

Actually, it was a number of things, including the internet...

I've always been wary of the charts (payola man, breadheads and cocaine)
But the situation has spiralled downwards -
The birth of CDs, the death of tapes,
The advent of Mpegs , torrents and Spotify .
The death of vinyl - now making a comeback, hurrah - but boo as I will have to re-invest in turntables .

When I was younger, living through the shock of the new
and grooving to Punky - Reggie music
my mainstream was The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and The Jam.
With a side order of The Damned , Wire, The Gang Of Four, The Mekons , XTC , etcetera.
Later flavours included The Swell Maps, The Normal, Patrik Fitzgerald, early Ultravox.
Stateside we had Devo with their buttoned - up version of Satisfaction
Novelty nonsense The Dickies .
Guilty Pleasures were The Vibrators and The Tubes.
It's already getting messy, and I haven't mentioned so many ...
For melodic, old school moments, Mr David Bowie.
For more challenging old school, proto-punks The Velvet Underground.
Back in the U.K., The Soft Boys.
Oh, and Queen, now and again - though I never quite got their angle ...
As my personal musical tastes expanded, I discovered the joys of reggae, psychedelia, blues, mod and metal.
I had mind expanding moments with Captain Beefheart and Mr Barrett...and I was a sucker for coloured vinyl and gimmicks from John Cooper Clarke to Dr Feelgood.

Not to Scale

It was an incredible world with a wealth of stuff.
I always assumed that as I matured  got older, I might gain a new found respect for 'Prog Rock' embodied by Yes, Hawkwind,' The Floyd ', and suchlike (in fairness I never warmed to Jon Andersons voice, or much of the endless self indulgent guitar- noodling of 'The Floyd ' and co, but c'est la vie...).
I also grooved on the Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces, etc
These groups were endemic and are mostly timeless - but what happened to music ?

Punk became 'New Wave' with a slightly wider remit and real grassroots d.i.y and more influences - even the dressing- up box as Adam And The Ants morphed into pirates followed by the likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Spandau Ballet, Ultravox and Visage leading to the New Romantics and the rise of Goth, which was led by The Mission, Fields of the Nephilim, Sisters of Mercy, All About Eve , Bauhaus and The Cure.
As the Eighties became the Nineties, dance music mashed and mangled choice moments from years gone by - eventually creating loved up baggy - swagger.
I never quite got the angle of people like the Happy Mondays, who seemed more of a gang than a band. Plenty of fashion and attitude, but not so hot on the ditties, in my opinion- but they were part of the burgeoning u.k.dance 'scene' in the early Nineties, which felt like more of a protest, with endless illegal raves organised in secret, and 'cat and mouse' games with the authorities...one of the beauties of this rebellion was the sense of unity, and the fact that you could be happy drinking water all night long...
The 'House' scene diverged, with Euro-House, Acid-House, Hard-House and probably Wendy House.
Trance - Dance, Ambient, Junglist, Drum and Bass, Grime and so on, as movements splintered and labels gradually morphed.
Millenial awakenings led to the decline of the drug-addled payola -  ridden muzak biz, where glad-handing and cheeky lines of marching powder fuelled an increasingly deluded industry full of inflated egos and precious little talent...
...so here we are, painfully aware that perhaps there really is nothing more to explore - I think it was Paul Weller who once said that by the year 2000, all possible chord combinations would have been used: and he's the Modfather, so he should know-
But then he also gave us 'The Cappucino Kid', so maybe not -
- so here in our post millenial hangover, are we condemned to re-hash everything that went before ?
Don't get me wrong - I've used and abused sampler technology too - but I say use what's gone before by all means, but add something new.
Give it a twist.

...and that seems to be the problem.
There's no twist anywhere
Apathy has descended upon us...
There's an overwhelming sense of - to quote Bohemian Rhapsody:  nothing really matters anymore.

Discuss...

Glyphs And Griffins

The other day I was reading an article which demonised the prime minister , when I thought about how every age seemed to depict its worries / demons in images which would make sense in the wider cultural context - visions of flying dragons or images in clouds with ominous portents (or just Jesus in a slice of toast).
Of course in days of old (or so I'm told), we had the seers, shamen and wise women who made much of signs and symbols, often scrying tea-leaves or animal entrails or just smoke.
So, as we come forward through the dark ages into the light of science and rationalisation, how do we see our cultural fears and demons ?

No longer do we have eyewitness accounts of fish and frogs raining from the sky...
Another sign in the heavens was the sighting of comets, whose fiery splendour presaged war, pestilence, earthquakes...

...but we are no longer seeing things in the sky...

Alleged U.F.O. 1952

In the post-WWII era UFOs became a thing, particularly in the Cold War era U.S.A., where their alleged alien crews (as depicted in film ) were ciphers for the ever - present communist threat .
However true or not the reports of aliens and crash-landings were, they gave a modern form to ancient fears.

In the U.K., we have frequent reports of exotic animals in the wild , such as pumas and ominous phantoms like 'black shuck' in urban places.
Unusual creatures are often sighted.
Sometimes they are just throw-backs, remnants of a simpler time when strange creatures roamed the world...
 ...we had a surge of Loch Ness Monster reports which went global in the 1930s with the publication of a (later disproved) photograph .

The 'surgeons photograph' 1934

There were also tales and sightings of the Yeti / Sasquatch which came to the fore in the nineteen-seventies.
It is perhaps relevant, however that the most popular sasquatch film ( Patterson / Gimlin ) was probably of a guy in a suit.

Alleged Sasquatch 1967

Again, the truth of the reports is not as important as the reports themselves.

Later in the last century, the emergence of crop circle spirals on an annual basis seemed to indicate a growth in Earth- consciousness ( whatever that is ) , or messages from extraterrestrials.
This, however, falls into the dangerous realms of tin - foil helmet  territory.

But then why should it ?
Are we just so sophisticated that we are instantly dismissive of signs and symbols ?

'Hidden in plain sight' is a latter day saying.

Perhaps with increasing literacy (don't forget, centuries ago , only monks could read or write ), the use of symbols to convey messages gradually fell into decline.
 Perhaps , alongside the 'old wives tales' or superstitions, they became embarassing relics of a primitive past.


Saying this, we still have symbols in everyday life , although they are for practical purposes.


We are now in an age of almost entirely visual cues, given the global reach of products which often have to rise above the inconvenience of language -

Symbols are increasingly everywhere, giving us the immediacy of understanding that we crave

But they are almost purely practical, existing in an instructional sense.
So how do we see our demons now - and who or what are they ?

One of the most obvious and recognizable demons of the last century...

image by Noma Bar

Our modern demons seem to increasingly lurk in our peripheral vision.
Shadows that we rarely encounter personally.

Faceless immigrants, masked terrorists, anonymous hackers in cyberspace.
But there are other, perhaps less visible but no less real, demons.
And these beasties are often created by us !

Global Recession.
Climate Change.
Mass Extinction.
War.


We're overdue a switcheroo on the magnetic poles, too.*
So that could be fun...

What I'm saying is, the signs are all around us

Are we seeing the signs around us?


Oh...and I mentioned griffins in the title of this rant.

Sorry, I fibbed.

They don't exist.

* current scientific thinking says we're more than 500, 000 years overdue for a reversal of poles.