Boys Keep Swinging...

Ah, memories eh?

This is an old clip of me performing on Saturday Night Live. Bit of a scratch band, as you can see - Klaus Nomi on b.v.s and a couple of other pooves he'd been trying to have his wicked way with in the gay club where we met the night before the show who turned up on spec wuth their instruments on the day of the show at the Chelsea hotel for a *very* speedy run through. Thank the Lord Carlos Alomar was there to hold the thing together is all I can say. Nomi couldn't even get the words right - "...when you're a girl..." I ask you...

Bobcast #60...

...Download/listen to it here...




L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

...I'll Drink All The Time...

As a rule, I try to avoid getting sucked into the prevailing media news agenda. An outsider artist if nothing else, I've always felt it important to come at things from a slightly different angle from my competitors - which would probably explain the Romi Haag business, I suppose... "The received wisdom is the enemy of the mime artiste", as my old friend and mentor Lindsay Kemp was always saying at the Beckenham Arts Lab where, as his apprentice, he had me crocheting op-art willy-warmers to sell outside the U.S Airforce bases he'd forlornly frequent in the hopes of meeting an amenable serviceman with "a highly developed flair for the visual and a strong interest in Kabuki Theatre". That's when he wasn't appearing as Nanky-Poo in the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund's all-year-long Panto at the Rotunda Club, Faversham.

It was Lindsay who introduced me to Grail mythology too - now, that's one path I should never have pursued. Liberating the mind from the constraints of Judaeo-Christian/bourgeoise morality is one thing - prancing about your Los Angeles apartment bashing a pair of coconut shells together and endlessly prattling on about the Knights Who Go "Ni!" with a refrigerator stacked with vials of your own wee is quite another. Thank God for Bing! It was Crosby who sorted me out - gave me a crucifix and shipped me back over to Europe to make weird synthesizer noises in his backing band. Stills, Nash and Young weren't too impressed, of course, but the important thing was that it got me back into seeing myself as an experimental artist who had more strings to his/her bow than a well-turned ankle and a delightfully androgynous set of cheekbones. If it hadn't been for Bing, I don't know where I'd be now - probably in Epping Forest, most likely, yelling "COME BACK! IT'S ONLY A SCRATCH!" and "I fart in your general direction" at passersby in a pathetic French accent wearing a set of chainmail. Either that or in Tin Machine...

But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes - the mainstream media. As a rule, it's to be avoided but, speaking as someone who's made his livelihood exploiting the miseries of teenage angst, I'm ever so concerned about the youth of today - especially the awful blight that is the phenomenon known in the UK as 'Binge Drink Britain'.

The sight of scantily-clad youngsters going over on their outrageously high heels, toppling drunk and sputum-flecked into the nation's gutters is enough to send shivers down the spine of even the most liberal-minded of parents - especially if your offspring's name is Nigel and you'd just been wondering what on earth had happened to the pile of Boots vouchers you'd earmarked to use on a new set of curling irons only to turn on the 9 o'clock news and see him mangling his ankles, his diamante slingbacks toppling under the weight of his booze-bloated body.

I don't want to sound old fashioned, but what's wrong with them?? I mean, no one's got anything against them having a good time. But what's with the heels?? Even a smidgeon of common sense would tell them that combining perdendicularly cantilevered footwear with a virtually intravenous rate of alcohol consumption is just asking for trouble. But no, over they go, like pole-axed flamingoes - one more notch on the five bar gate of an adminsitrative assisitant in a Tyneside Accident & Emergency Unit. Why can't they just be content with a quiet night in, flashing no colour in front of the Tattva box with a container of industrial strength adhesive and several grammes of Columbia's finest? It was good enough for my generation.

Of course, it doesn't really affect me - after all, I live in a fully deductable tax haven in Switzerland. But I do keep an eye on the old mother country via the miracle that is the BBC i-player - when I'm not watching Gavin & Stacey obviously. Or porn. So it was gratifying to see the viewers of Britain giving short shrift to emblematically spoilt, overgrown-teenage-pseudo-chav Lady Sovereign, who was voted out of the Celebrity Big Brother house last night. I've never had much time for the 'I'm Alright, Jack' attitude, but 'Sov' took the biscuit with her refusal to help with communal tasks around the house - cleaning up Vinnie Jones' splatter farts, putting rotting fruit in the bin and suchlike - and her stropping about the place in a perpetual sulk in an assortment of unflattering sweat shirts. Nice make up though - which reminds me, I have to get ready for a photo shoot and if I go out before my red and blue zig-zag has dried, I'll have more streaks than Ray Stevens...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Pretty Pink Rose...

Ziggy has arranged for pop singer Pink to pop over to help me out with some backing vocals on a new track I'm working on. It needs someone to cover the low notes I can't quite reach these days - plus, being rather on the strapping side, The Pinkster's a pretty useful young lad to have hanging around if you need a Marshall stack or two lugging about the studio - it's as much as I can do to pick up a pack of joss sticks with my lumbago. So I'm a bit confused when a well-put together blonde lady shows up at the door in a halter neck top and side-tied lacy knickerbockers and not much else. "Sorry love, the meter's already been read - last Tuesday. Now hop it before I give the managing director of Eon a stiff talking to. I know Sir Alan Sugar you know - and I was Hilton John's fag at Oxford - or was it Watford? Anyway, that's beside the point, just don't think that because I haven't had a hit since 1976 that I'm not in with the movers and the shakers. One step further and you'll be back on the Jobseekers' Allowance before you can say twenty per cent carbon emmissions reductions from your combi-boiler..."

I'm just about to ring Neighbourhood Watch when she hurriedly fishes a CD out of her tote bag featuring on its cover a scantily clad, pink-haired stevedore who bears an uncanny resemblance to the chappy stood in front of me and I can see that I've just teetered on the brink of making a ghastly mistake. Fortunately, I've just ordered in a box of assorted biscuits which, washed down with a couple of cups of my industrial strength Rosie Lee and a couple of snorts of Bostik - not to mention a strenuous apology from yours truly - help bring her round to seeing that it's all been an awful misunderstanding and pretty soon we're all in the party mood.

"I do like your knickerbockers, young sir," I tell Pink as she's polishing off the last of the pink wafers. "I don't suppose I could try them on could I? I've been looking for a new gimmick in the underwear department ever since the all-in-one-see-through-tube-dress got shrunk in the wash and those babies look like just the ticket..." Pink makes his apologies, would love to help and everything but ....not to put too fine a point on it, he's ...shall we see...*going* *commando*...

Fair play to the lad for being so candid - last thing I need with a headful of adhesives and Peek Freans biscuits is an eyeful of the old pink pepperami. I still have cold sweats in the night from the time I spent a year shacked up with Romi Haag in Berlin. Going to bed every night with a luscious-legged siren only to wake up with an unshaven brute with legs like emery boards can do terrible things to a man's psyche, I can tell you. Played havoc with me 20 deniers too...

I'll post the track up when Eno's finished beggaring about with it. Right-ho - must dash; these post-ironic gothic-mash-up trance anthems don't write themselves you know!

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Changesonebob...

Well, what else can you do when you're bereft of ideas, your career's stalled and you've been reduced to making up the numbers on Britain's most popular celebrities-learning-to-dance-at-peak-time-on-a-Saturday-night vehicle but....*cash* *in*!!!

Yep, it's greatest hits time again folks - but fear not, oh intrepid punter...this is no simple rehash/reheat/reissue/repackage/repackage slip them into different sleeves/please the press in Belgium Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, oh no - I should cocoa...ho ho ho ho ho ho (...see what I did there? I was pretending to laugh all the way to the bank....)

But seriously, with the extra exposure I'm going to be getting from being on Strictly, Ziggy and I felt it was the appropriate time to overhaul the old Swipe back catalogue, give the old ouevre a sonic makeover and generally make sure that the old songs we knew and loved are ship shape and Bristol fashion for the century ahead. We've got in the best engineers we could afford (...it's amazing what people will do for a set of out of date, forged Luncheon Vouchers in the current economic climate, isn't it?) and they've set about remastering every album so that it will sound even more fabulous in your i-Pod. As an added bonus for all my loyal fans who already have all the original albums, we've put together a splendid compilation of the best bits called Changesonebob, which will feature not only the best-loved songs from my career but a few rare and previously unreleased tracks from the 'lost' albums - Polskie Delicatesy and DaDa DiVa, as well as some weird and wonderful out-takes and a couple of brand new songs!

We'll be posting them up in twos and threes as we complete the remastering process for each album so keep an eye out for the posts here or make a regular visit to the SwipeCore site from whence you'll be able to download all the songs as well as the original albums - all for *absolutely* *free*!!

Right, must dash - they want me to give the once over to the newly restored 'Memory of a Free Subscription to Harper's Bizarre' and the meter's running....

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

The Elephant Man...

Obviously, with the kind of profile I have in my professional life - slutty, immoral, polymorphous sexual libertine and valueless psychopathic anti-social pervert etc (and believe me - I'm one of the *nice* guys in show business!) - it's easy to confuse the man/love object you see on your screen with the person underneath. I can't complain, really, I suppose. After all, it goes with the territory in this game - the light entertainment business being as it is fairly liberally sprinkled with the kind of people described above, as anyone who's ever had to sit through twenty minutes of Celebrity Squares will I'm sure agree. So I'll make no bones about the fact that, having cultivated the persona of a ruthless, physically improbable sex god/dess with the morals of a depraved waffen SS officer on shore leave in the Gambia, I have to live with the consequences.

But that doesn't mean it isn't hurtful when people assume from the outrageous opinions and controversial stances one is often obliged to put out into the public realm, that one necessarily holds those views or wants the world to be the way one reflects it as being in one's work. Oftentimes, the offence can be put down to a straightforward misunderstanding. For example, I was genuinely convinced, at the time, when I admitted to pederasty that I was confessing to no more than being a stickler for good grammar and somewhat picky about matters of acuracy and decorum in general; not some ruddy kiddy fiddler. I trust that since that dismal episode, I have more than made up for it with my abundant charitable efforts on behalf of abused children in South East Asia. The valuable work we do, helping them off the streets and into dimly lit factories where they can work 24 hour shifts sewing sequins onto leotards is not something I want to bring too much attention to, obviously. But to my mind, it seems simple - if the poor wretches *have* to be abused, then at least let it happen in a safe environment with a 5 minute water break every 11 hours and help keep the price of a glamorous all-in-one dance outfit within the reach of the humble Essex house wife into the bargain.

But for all those discreet and unhearlded efforts to do my bit for the greater good, I'm still seen in most quarters as some awful amalgam of Rasputin and Unity Mitford (with a bit of Larry Grayson on the side, most probably...) So it's no surprise that one can, on occasion feel like a terrible perversion of humanity; a horribly distorted version of a human being, the worried and haunted outsider condemned by public opinion to lurk around the darkest and seediest corners of society in ill fitting assortment of hosiery (and a bipperty-bopperty hat); a hideous freak; a terrible monster. But then, one thinks; "well, it could be worse, I suppose - I could be David Cameron..."

Given this, it was no surprise that when I was offered the opportunity to play the lead role in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man in 1980, I jumped at it. Anyone familiar with the tragic story of 19th century circus freak Joseph (John) Merrick who is not moved by his story has a cold and sterile heart if you ask me. There's a full account of Merrick's story here, for those who aren't familiar with him. I must say that, researching the role, I began to feel a quite shocking empathy with the guy. It was a very special moment, each night in the claustrophobic arena of the theatre, fending off genuine tears as I re-enacted the part where Merrick bit his mother's ink pen broke it in two and then turned blue. So, as a special treat, here's a youtube clip of me in action in what, I suppose, was probably my most successful acting role...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Let's Dance!!...

A quiet start to the day and then, in the midst of browsing through the new Squinty Fuckers catalogue while Olga ladles me out a bowl of her delicious cold, grey flannel soup (*hold* the parmesan....), a bombshell. A hurried telegram arrives from Ziggy Woodblum - you'll recall that he's my agent, solicitor and all round greaser of palms/scrubber of backs etc. Never one to compromise clarity when there's a charge attached, Zig's message is brief and to the point:

cll m - z

(I do wish Western Union would reverse their decision to charge double for vowels - Ziggy can be almost incephirable at the best of times, let alone without recourse to one fifth of the alphabet. Mind you, to be fair, with his vast array of speech impediments - it can take him several hours, not to mention emergency medics, to order a bowl of soup - a truncated text message can be the safer bet.)

I finally get through to him on his landline. "Bob? No, there's no one here of that name - why don't you leave us in peace? Why, why why? Nazis!" "Hang on, It's *me* Zig. *I'm* Bob..." "Oh, my lovely Boy! Glad tidings, my life! The goyim wants you for Strictly! Brucie....Brucie..."[sound of a pretend pound coin being rammed into a call box repeatedly accompanied by a high pitched moan followed by a dead telephone line...]

So, it's all very exciting - I check the Ceefax and, no word of a lie, I've been confirmed by the BBC as one of the contestants on this year's Strictly Come Dancing! Fantabulous news, isn't it! So this means not only do I get to lock horns (amongst other parts of the anatomy) with the delightful Camilla Giddyup...

...but I'll also get to meet Brucie! ("Shut that doo-er!!")

So, ready the super trouper, loose the dry ice, skip the light fandango! Now, where did I leave me red shoes....??

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Be My Wife...

I get a text from Ronnie Wood - he's had a new lease of life since Rod Stewart loaned him his Freedom Pass. It reads thusly:

oi oi swipey! Go 2 www.russianbride.com - u'll l.u.v. it!cheers - r

I can't make out a word of the text - it's all in Russian, obviously - but the visuals.....blimey! Remember Stalingrad? Believe me, you won't after a couple of hours browsing these Babooshkas!!

Anyway - long story short - I must have clicked the wrong button or something because, as well as a voucher for a free online subscription to Arsenal's home fixtures until the 2013/14 season, the other morning I found *this* on my doorstep:

Oh sure - she's *fun* alright! Cleaned me out of Stolichnaya and cheesey wotsits, mind - so another online shop is looming. They'll bankrupt me one day, Ocado. On the plus side, Olga won't let me lift a finger around the house; always cooking, cleaning and mopping the floor...when she's not "otherwise engaged", obviously. So, on the whole, I'm feeling rather like Michael Caine in Alfie; "...it makes a lovely bit of apple crumble...carm on gel - get in that kitchen and give me dumplings a prod...they're like bladdy tennis balls...nar, where's me crumpets gorn.." and all that.

So it was not a complete disappointment to discover from my legal advisor that the small print of the terms and conditions I must inadvertently have clicked in order to view more images like this... or something similar in Russian... means I won't be able to get an annulment until 2057/unless I'm prepared to appear in person before a nominated Belarussian magistrate to hand over 40,000 roubles in cash. And prepared to hand our first-born over to the authorities of the former-Soviet Republic. So it looks like I'm stuck with her. Fair play to the lass though - she is hung like a *stallion*...

Oh well, easy come...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Time...

"...he's waiting in the wings..."

Well, it's taken me a while, but I finally made it onto the cover of Time Magazine - about time they put someone else on too; I was getting sick to the back teeth of that stupid wazzock with the toothy grin! (Sorry Iggy, but you've had your turn!!)

The shoot was a breeze - always is with Annie Liebovitz - although she could lighten up a bit with the banter. Things took a decided turn for the worse when I asked her how she and Anne Bancroft were getting on flat hunting. Just trying to make conversation darling - what you get up to in the privacy of your own home is none of my concern. Just don't come running to me with your carpet burns. I'm going back to David Bailey for Vanity Fair, no word of a lie.

Right, I'll keep you posted when we hit the news stands. Should be out to coincide with my 60th birthday celebrations - middle of April...


Oi Oi!!

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Bobcast #59...

"...it's been a long time....oh mah boy!!"

Bob's back with a podcast to warm the cockles of your heart....or vice versa...

Listen/download here, as per...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Let it Snow...

Blimey - what peculiar weather we've been having!! Barmy, isn't it? I can't remember being surrounded by snow like this since I was the Thin White Duke - I had half of Columbia down my cod piece for most of 1975, you'll recall. Terrible times - although I don't think I've ever had so much luck with the ladies as I did during that period. Probably the cod-piece. It certainly couldn't have been the vials of urine I used to keep in the fridge to ward off evil spirits. Worked too - Jim Rosenthal has long stopped stalking me in any case. Too busy doing the half times on ITV4, no doubt. I still wear a clove of garlic round my neck to this day, just to be on the safe side. Bloody reeks from Gether to Malkuth, it does. But I digress...

Where was I? Oh yes - the snow. Flaming parky, ain't it? And getting from A-B has been an absolute ruddy nightmare, hasn't it? I can't remember the last time I wore flats - probably those little character shoes I used during the Philly Dogs Tour, also back in the mid-seventies (well, what would you wear if you had a cod-piece with Half of Columbia sagging from your crotch? Wear stack heels with that little lot and you're asking for a one-way ticket to a hernia, Gungadin.) Oh and there were those smart little brogues I used to wear with a lime green Thierry Mughler and an alpine hat on the Serious Misgivings tour. Poor old Stevie Ray - if his agent hadn't been such a greedy boots he'd never have been able to afford that helicopter and still be a live today. Cracking soloist he was - and a dab hand at three card brag, if memory serves. Lost several small Caribbean islands to him on the tour bus so I had to kick him out and get Earl Slick back in; great guitarist Earl, but shit for brains in a card school.

So, what with having been snowed in and everything, it's been pretty quiet here at Swipe Towers; but hopefully that'll soon change once my lumbago clears up and I can get back in the attic to fetch the trusty ukulele down. First things first though; got to catch up on Nurse Jackie on the i-Player. Terrific production values, don't you agree? And that new barnet of Edie Falco's is to die for, ain't it? Which reminds me; I must give Keith a call; see if he can defrost me marcel wave - it's been like walking around with a ruddy cormorant on me bonce since Christmas.

Oh well, onwards and upwards...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

Gary Glitter...

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Being 59...

Of course, so much has changed since I made my first tentative steps into the world of show business in the early 1970s. A musician's lot was very different then - there was no interweb, no mobile wristwatches, no nano-nino hard-drives the size of a tie pin. No, records were the only viable currency back then, unless you wanted to run the risk of forking out for a cassette that would probably get mangled by the player within a week or two. Nowadays, of course, artists can pipe themselves straight into other people's ears through the wonders of microchip technology and there's a fortune to be made if you can come up with a ring-tone irritating enough to make half the population want to commit hari-kiri. Obviously, I prefer to keep my artistic integrity by steering clear of such crass commercialism. You won't hear any of *my* songs advertising Hovis or the nation's favourite building society. The bastards promised me they'd have a listen, but...

So nowadays, I tend to live a pretty reclusive life; it's a fairly mundane routine really. Up at 5.30 am, pop down to the gym, do a couple of rounds of Thai boxing (excellent for the cardio-vascular, I'm told..) Then it's back home to flop out in front of BBC Breakfast - it's never been the same since they booted Natasha Kaplinsky out, has it...although I'd give that Wendy Hurrell one, in a trice... 9.15 on the dot I put in a couple of hours silver surfing. Obviously, as someone who's benefitted greatly from the material rewards society has to offer a talented female impersonator with an ear for a crafty tune and an uncanny sense of the twists and turns of the popular music zeitgeist, I try to pay something back by helping those whose lot in life hasn't been so fortunate. I do a lot of work with young offenders - keeping in touch with them online, trying to keep their spirits up as they rot away in their air-conditioned cells, off their heads on pot having bizarre sexual misadventures with bogus asylum seekers. Well, just read the Daily Mail if you don't believe me; apparently, in terms of crime, being in prison is almost as bad as living on a council estate these days. They want to lock some of these people up...

Lunch time comes and goes; I might wander down to the local pub for a brisk tissue restorative before heading back home for an afternoon nap. All a far cry from my hedonistic Glam Rock days, I'm sure you'll agree! I was off my bonce on Bostik half the time; I'm surprised I can remember anything about it at all, to be honest! Although I do have a vague recollection that I spent most of 1977 living Romy Haag in a bedsit in Berlin. Wonder how she is? Lovely lass - if a bit on the *hirsute* side, first thing in the morning if I recall...Nowadays, I like to relax in the evening, watch the box, maybe read a bit of detective fiction and then 'early to bed early to rise' as we used to say; I'll like as not be tucked up in bed by 10.30pm.

Of course, all of this will change next year when I go back on the road to promote the re-issue of my back catalogue; the "That's Your Flamin' Lot Tour' we're calling it; 50 shows in 50 cities all crammed into a period of little more than three months. Blimey! I'll be well and truly shagged out by the time I get home from that! Good job my doctor is busy stocking up mon prescription drugs as we speak; otherwise I'd *never* get through a schedule as tough as that at my age! So, I'll be anything but reclusive in 2010, what with all the shows and the reissue and all the attendant media work. Oh, and on top of all that, I get my Freedom Pass!!

xxx
Bob

First things first...

Right, the first thing you've noticed is probably the fact that I'm wearing stockings. Which is a shame, because I spent about 120 quid on getting my hair and make-up done and all you lot can do is gawp at me legs - honestly, I don't know... The stockings were six pounds - well, I say stockings - they're actually cut down 70 deniers from Boots (three pairs for six ... never let it be said I don't have an eye for a bargain in the hosiery department. I just wish my stylist Keith could learn a little from the nation's favourite pharmacist when it comes to value for money... and, while I think of it, his personal hygiene leaves rather a lot to be desired. But that's another story...)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, my clobber. Well, as you can imagine, the question I get asked most often is, "Bob - are you a cross dresser?" To which I invariably reply, "Cross? I'm ruddy livid - have you seen the price of pancake in Superdrug? I'll be reduced to using flour and talcum powder again at this rate - like we used to have to in the 70s..." So I hope that's cleared that one up.

And let's get another thing straight right from the off. I might be dressed like a woman down below in the lingerie department and be wearing enough diamante eye shadow to make Shirley Bassey look like Arnold Schwarzenegger on a particularly manly day, but the rest of me is *all* gentleman, believe me. None of that limp wristed, Julian Clary shenanigans from yours truly - I'm built like a pit prop and hung like a Stevedore if you must know, so none of those Boy George comments when my back is turned, or I'll have you in a half Nelson before you can say "Giant Haystacks is a great big nancy boy with his own personal collection of Barbie Doll memorabilia..."

So, that's the gender confusion cleared up, hopefully. Of course, there's no shame in mincing around like a great tart, reeking of white musk and wearing little more than a camisole and a pair of hold ups (although I'd recommend that you put a couple of extra layers on if you're going to be doing any grouting....that stuff gets everywhere...and takes some shifting...) Besides, there's a great tradition of cross-dressing and female impersonation in this country that stretches right back to the days of music hall. Remember such legendary figures as Rachel Heyhoe-Flint, Ann Widdicombe, Cheryl Cole and George Michael? Well, they have all made laudable attempts to pass themselves off as women at one time or another - indeed, George had me fooled right up until I ran a beautifully manicured nail up the length of his five of clock shadow. Went up like a Swan Vesta it did! But that's another story...

Anyway, I must be off - these eyelashes won't crimp themselves, will they? I'll be updating this site as much as I can over the next few weeks, so hopefully you'll come back often and enjoy your visits as much as I enjoy posting stuff up here.

Have a great week everybody!

L.U.V. on ya,

xxx
Bob

Okay...

...so you didn't go for the movie idea. A shame, really, as you'd have been ahead of the game if you had. Or did I not mention my special gift? I can see into the future, you see. Yes, really. It's one of a few, shall we say, special features I have. Like being able to breathe through my skin. Hence the tights. *Much* better ventilated than your average pair of trews and, as an added bonus, they make for a rather nifty air filter too. Very handy in Los Angeles or Beijing, I'd imagine. And of course, they do show off my incredibly sexy long legs too, which is nice. The two hearts come in handy too. And did I mention the multiple sets of genitalia? No, I don't suppose I did - you probably would have been a bit keener on the movie pitch if I'd led with that now I think of it. Oh well, you live and learn. Mind you, when you're 1.2 light years old (that's several thousand millenia in old money - I lost count after you bastards nailed that beardy bloke up for telling you to get your acts together) you are prone to the odd lapse in concentration.

So, where was I? Oh yes, the old wedding tackle. Well, it's not actually quite as impressive as I maybe suggested earlier. I have just the three sets actually - one of each and a wierd sort of feathery thing that's quite handy for pollination in some of the less developed solar systems - I'd imagine it would probably go down quite well in marine circles here on planet Humanoid too...not that I've ever tried it, you understand. Although I did have a close encounter with a couple of porpoises once that could have got quite interesting if I hadn't had to come up for air. It's the legs - great on land; bloody dangerous underwater, I can tell you. It's quite popular with the Earthlettes too, of course - for obvious reasons - although I did have one bizarre request from a lady of, shall we say, a certain age who wanted me to give her bannisters a quick once over after I'd performed the painful duty on her. Honestly, some people, eh?

So there you have it; that's me. Just your average, common all garden extraterrestrial, really. Brain the size of a minor galaxy, astonishing powers of extra-sensory perception, the ability to see into the future and extraordinarily well hung. Just your standard model really. Oh and I sing too; strange uneartly songs they are; uncanny glimpses of the future that awaits you all, if you would just open up your eyes and see it. A bit like that Carpenters one only with a bit more guitar, obviously. You know the kind of thing...

L.U.V. on ya

xxx
Bob

Anon: the autobiography...

This is the working title for a novel. The idea is simple. It's set in the London of the not-too-distant future. Barring a handful of rebels and an increasingly dwindling pool of veil-wearing Somalian immigrants, *everybody* is a celebrity. Even the servants and hangers on of the fairly-well known have acquired a renown that would put today's reality TV stalwarts to shame. Anyone who is not a celebrity is such a novelty that they are treated with the same jaw-dropping, flash-bulb popping adoration as would previously only have been merited by huge stars of the silent era; Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, perhaps. Invariably, with the help of modern technology, they don't remain unknown for long; there is, for instance, a separate youtube chart for 'Big Issue' sellers who can command huge performance fees for personal performances, some of the biggest stars of street corner begging having been replaced by 'virtual' spots outside Marks & Spencer and so on where people can watch looped performances of them shouting "'Gisshew" and then make online credit card payments to have the magazine downloaded onto their mobile phones. In such a world, anonymity becomes the most powerful condition it is possible to aspire to; hence the naming of the novel's eponymous heroine: Anon.

Anon. goes to great lengths to disguise her true obscurity - wearing expensive cast-offs; Jimmy Choos and designer snakeskin trousers purchased from the new breed of charity shops - Help the Wanted; War on Ageing; Sexfam etc. She flees the city where she joins a small band of rebels who make night raids on the city, smashing the ubiquitous flat screen TVs that show the sex-lives of the fairly well-known in all major public places, spraying out the names and slogans on advertising hoardings and so on. Anon. and her fellow rebels are eventually captured and after being tortured and villified by the Head of the State (a thinly veiled Simon Cowell - no, I didn't know he was a Muslim either...) they are publicly crucified. Ironically, in death the rebels achieve only the worst kind of martyrdom and become the most celebrated of all celebrities as their lives are revered and worshipped down through the centuries in a wicked travesty of the obscurantism for which they gave their lives.

I'm thinking Blanchett or Paltrow in the lead role. Bill Nighy as the O'Brien character, perhaps? Maybe Mel Gibson as Barabas. Kind of thing.

So, whaddaya reckon?

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob

PX3052

Hughes, Robert The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. Vintage, 1987.

England in the Rain podcast #1...

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Interior Monologue...

Do you ever get tired of it?

You know, that persistent Film Noir voice-over that runs through your head from daybreak to lights out? Another kind of drone, the sort that turns every event, no matter how prosaic or dull, into a portentously bleak existential scene straight out of Simenon or Chandler, if only in one's imagination. So sitting, for instance, on the john - it would be a john, obviously, not a bog because to be properly noirish you need to be in Chandlerville, LA; there's not quite the same ring to sitting on a lavatory or loo in suburban England, is there? - you'll hear it starting up.

Cue RKO transmitter on the north pole morse coding away to the Universe. Cue dramatic chords. Roll opening credits:

Farewell my not-so-lovely...

Maigret Takes a Dump...

Or better still...

The Long Goodbye

Maybe that's where that Arnott chap got the inspiration for The Long Firm?

Some days, you'd just like to turn it off. But you can't. (Well, you could - but only if you think you're ready for the real Big Sleep...)

Still, as they always say - 'better out than in'. Another movement in the symphony of life; another day, another post...

Droning...

The bus slows into electric blue light, gently strobing. Two police cars are parked up behind an ambulance, their whirling lamps scattering neon lighthouse sweeps into the pre-dawn gloom. We slowly process past the scene of the accident, as remote and numb as mourners behind smoked glass in a funeral limousine. There's a body splayed out across the curb, one bearded cheek sucked tight to the tarmac like a squared-off cartoon face pulled inexorably toward some U-shaped, subterranean magnet made by Acme. Police and paramedics kneel close by in calm attendance as the bus edges slowly past the open rear doors of the ambulance. 'There but for the grace... ' you think, instinctively acknowledging your own good fortune in not being outside, not being cruciformed out there in the road - not being him. Then suddenly in this blinking blue fridge door light, the daily rattle into work and all its chilly rigours has been transformed into a breeze, your bus into a sanctuary; warm and secure as a comfort blanket to a spooked child. Nothing like proximity to another's misfortune, pain or suffering to focus the mind, you think. 'It's an ill wind...' this unbidden, callous train persists. After all, look on the bright side. You might get a post out of this...

We pick up speed, the accident recedes as we hurtle through the January dark, almost back on track after this unwelcome, unscheduled interuption. Our journey starts to regain some of the digitised announcer's serenity. She intones the stages of our journey in the soothing, measured syllables of her pre-programmed m-peg mantra. Cyber woman. Computer world. You thought you'd left all that behind. "Relax..." she almost purrs with astonishing warmth and conviction given that it's only whatever clever voice simulation algorithim they've used that brings life to the perfuntorily keyed-in strings of binary code, "...everything's OK." And maybe she's right. Perhaps it's not quite so bad being here, not lying there; being safe and warm, not damaged and cold. Maybe this drone thing isn't going to be so bad. There are, surely, worse things in life to be than a drone, after all? A late drone, for one thing. Or a voice without a body announcing the stops on the bus. Or a cyberman.

But you've killed him off, that cyber you; the shimmering pixelated avatar is dead. Or if not dead, at least not you. Not any more. You're here, a fortunate, cosseted drone on his way to work. He's lying splayed out somewhere in his cyberworld, as cold and rigid as the bearded meatspace stiff you left behind a bus ride ago. Soon you'll be scuttling off the bus and into an ecologically lit office, with a water cooler and personalised workspaces cleaned by elegant women with covered heads, just like all the other drones. The morning will pass and the day will lighten. Your heart will be heavy for a while, as it always is after a bereavement - that's what's happened to you, after all; you have been bereaved, in a way, haven't you? Or been the cause of the bereavement which must surely bring some traumas of its own? But you'll survive. You'll live to drone another day. So relax, you're back in the land of the living, even though it might feel for a while like some kind of living death. You're back where you belong, where you should always have been; droning with the drones in the land of the drone. And it isn't so bad, is it? If you're honest. It's not been such a bad start to the week, really; just the two fatalities.

Feed

Flanders & Swann song...

It's been real and it's been fun...

L.U.V. on y'all

Bob

Books I've Read in 2009...

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Synopsis: Jap girls in synthesis; Greggy* young, scatty, aspiring novelist (Sumire) falls for older, went-white-haired-overnight-from-youthful-Ferris-wheel-in-Switzerland-shock-incident, greggy older woman with own wine importing business (Miu) whilst being simultaneously lusted after (Sumire, that is...although...) by the male (non-greggy) school teacher narrator until Sumire's sudden flip-flops/silk pyjama-clad, Greek island disappearance sparks a frenzied bout of bleak existentialism and youthful supermarket stapler theft by the son of the narrator's (non-greggy) soon-to-be-former squeeze.

Best bits: "If I were some good-for-nothing lesbian, would you still be my friend?"

"Whether you're a good-for-nothing lebian or not doesn't matter. Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin without 'Mack the Knife'. That's what my life would be without you."

"I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the Earth, gravity their only tie to the planet, lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep"

Works in progress: The Atmospheric Railway by Shena MacKay, Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill.



*note to aspiring authors: chances of publication are inestimably enhanced by introduction of at least one (preferably more) lesbian character(s).

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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She's Falling in Love With Me...

49.3% of all British workers have had sex with a fellow employee. Of those, 97.8% have done so with someone more senior than them within the organisation. 87.5% of that 97.8% were female. Contrast those figures with these: in a recent anonymous survey of 2,000 office workers, 12.7% said they had never taken home with them office stationery belonging to the company they work for. Of that 12.7%, a further 9.3% had made private telephone calls, but had *never* made private photocopies whilst at work, whilst a staggering 81.3% said they *had* taken photocopies of their privates, but *never* tried to telephone their privates to someone. Of all those surveyed, 73.7% said they were lying...

Confused? You won't be...

She's Falling in Love With Me MP3


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Books I've Read in 2009...

Hotel World by Ali Smith.

Synopsis: Talented, young, 'greggy' swimmer and (how ironic is this?) diving champion Sara Wilby climbs into a dumb waiter for a five pound bet with a fellow employee in the hotel in which she works as a chambermaid only to plummet to her death. The narratives of a soon-to-be-ill hotel receptionist, a homeless, a cynical hack, Sara's sister Claire and a host of ghosts and ghoulies converge on the shaft down which she fell in this compassionate and wise mediatation on love, loss and the transience of existence.

What the blurb would say if it had been written by Bob: "Transcendant stuff! Smith hurdles the limitations of linear temporality with glee and gusto! Bonny lass!!"

Best bits: "She is walking on carpet that sinks like gracious mud..."

...and:

A surprise appearance by the ghost of Dusty Springfield who "soars, sure and broken, definite and tentative.." as an ASBO-bound household blare out her rendition of 'The look of love' at full volume first thing in the morning.

That Distance Apart poems by Jackie Kay.

Oh-so-slender volume of (presumably) autobiographical verse by 'greggy', black Scot. The emotional agonies of adoption rendered from all sides of the process.

Best bit:

The Visit

I thought I'd hid everything
that there wasnae wan giveaway sign
Left

I put the Marx Engels Lenin (no Trotsky)
in the airing cupboard - she'll no be
checking out the towels surely!

All the copies of the Daily Worker
I shoved under the sofa
the dove of peace I took down from the loo

A poster of Paul Robeson
saying give him his passport
I took down from the kitchen

I left a bust of Burns
my detective stories
and the complete works of Shelley

She comes at 11.30 exactly
I pour her coffee
from my new Hungarian set

And foolishly pray she willnae
ask its origins - honestly!
This baby is going to my head

She crosses her legs on the sofa
I fancy I hear the Daily Workers
rustle underneath her

Well she says, you have an interesting home
she sees my eyebrows rise
It's different she qualifies.

Hell and I've spent all morning
trying to look ordinary
- a lovely home for the baby

She buttons her coat all smiles
I'm thinking
I'm on the home run

But just as we get to the last post
her eye catches at the same time as mine
a red ribbon with twenty world peace badges

Clear as a hammer and sickle
on the wall
Oh she says are you against nuclear weapons?

To Hell with this. Baby or no baby.
Yes I says. Yes yes yes.
I'd like this baby to live in a nuclear free environment

Oh her eyes light up
I'm all for peace myself she says
and sits down for another cup of coffee

Works in progress: The Atmospheric Railway by Shena MacKay, Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami.

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Tramp Smash...

Through the spirit haze, the fug of dry ice, a straw haired siren emerges, blinking in the rhythm of the dancefloor strobe. On a platform of shiny patent red she totters, a ripped up Union flag casually wrapped about her preserving the scantest dignity, a jaunty leapardskin pillbox perilously poised above her temple. The bruise-black mouth the other end of an ebony cigarette holder smoulders: "Clivedon, wasn't it? Or St. Tropez? Long drinks on the verandah after easeful, sex-disturbed canasta. Noel boring anyone who'd listen with his latest dreary outrage. Or is one so easily forgotten?"

People are always mistaking me for Ferry. Or James May. Must be the Newcy brown...

Tramp Smash


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Granny Vision Vamp...

A few years ago, I saw a rather striking woman in her seventies striding out of Barclays Bank in Richmond. Clumpy knee-high boots, opaques, little black mini skirt, one of those red sixties-style cardies worn over a black polo neck, and a long full ponytail of black and silver-greying hair tumbling out from a jaunty leather puff cap. (I can't remember what *she* was wearing...)

Granny Vision Vamp



L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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New Song on SwipeCore...

As I mentioned previously, I've decided to post up all my music for free on our sister (brother?) site, SwipeCore. The first LP is already up there as two gapless MP3s so you can here it as I originally intended as two uninterupted 'sides' of music. The follow up, Bedroom Burlesque was always conceived as being a collection of themed but distinct songs, so I've decided to post them up individually and provide a bit of background material as to their conception and making on these pages. I'll be putting a song up every few days so, if nothing else, it wlll give me something post...





Joining the Cyber Circus

This was always intended to be the first song of a collection that I knew from the get go would be aimed at the 'MySpace Generation' of online community users. The words 'community' and 'generation' imply a sense of togetherness and camaraderie and, while there's no denying that such things exist in abundance in cyberworld, it's been my personal experience that whatever nebulous aggregations there are out there, they do little more than mask or temporarily divert us from an abiding sense of loneliness and isolation. Many of the songs, in more or less obtuse ways, deal with that strange contradiction, but this is probably the most direct and I felt it was the only place to start the album.

I wanted to update the theme of generational divide so beautifully conveyed in 'She's Leaving Home'. The conceit expressed in this song, I suppose, is that one no longer needs to physically leave home in order to 'leave home'. The idea of 'running away to join the circus' always carried with it the implication of a rejection of certain restrictive and oppressive values - usually either small town or family ones. In this song, there's another world, no more than a door slam and a finger click away into which one can escape from them and - to use a Bowie phrase that's always stuck with me - discover one's own morality. Of course, it's not quite as simple as that. Really, they just want to see your ass. But as long as you're aware of that, I suppose it doesn't do any harm - keeps us off the streets and all that... And in these times of economic downturn and credit crunch etc... cash in hand, no questions asked darlin'...

As a further tribute to the song's Beatley origins, I was trying to ape George's Beatles for Sale era Gretsch shimmers on the old Epiphone Emperor - with, as you'll hear, very little success...

Hope you enjoy it...





L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Books I've Read in 2009...

Stone Me: the Wit & Wisdom of Keith Richards.

Synopsis: Compendium of humourous/sagacious quotes from the Walking Laboratory himself. Likes his HP sauce, does Keef. Oh, and heroin...

Best bit: the bit where he drives off with a guitar given to him by a fan to autograph. "Buy another one!" He tells the grizzling afficianado when they finally catch up with his limo to ask for it back.

Disobedience by Jane Hamilton*.

Synopsis: Henry, a young chap in his late twenties looks back on his teenage email surveilance of his piano playing mother's love affair with a Ukrainian violinist.

Best bit: Elvira/Elvirnon - Henry's 'greggy'** American Civil War re-enactor sister.

Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith.

Synopsis: Inverness-set re-telling of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Imogen and Robin are "Greggy" modern day equivalents of Ianthe and Iphis (it says here). Lots of gender confusion and a fine anti-globalisation polemic centring on the obscenities of water profiteering and female disempowerment (or your own randomly selected choice of right on buzzwords)

Best bit:

Hi. This is Anthea. Don't leave a message on this phone because I'm actually trying not to use my mobile any longer since the production of mobiles involves slave labour on a huge scale and also since mobiles get in the way of us living fully and properly, on a real level, with people and are just another
way to sell us short. Come and see me instead and we'll talk properly. Thanks.

Oh and a nice Cilla Black gag.


L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

*Begun in 2008.

**See Girl Meets Boy.

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The Smiths Singles Box...

"Kiss my shades". "Talent borrows, genius steals". "Beware the wrath to come". "Our souls, our souls, our souls, our souls..." There was more wit and wisdom engraved into the run-off grooves of a Smiths record than in the entire recorded output of most of their contemporaries. And now thanks to the wonderful Rhino records those of us who weren't able to enjoy the first 10 Smiths 7 inch singles first time around* can feel the hairs stand up on the back of our necks and the whole of our being sizzle with adolescent joy (...slight return in the case your humble scribe) as we nurse these glorious and lovingly produced facsimiles of the original Rough Trade singles.

OK, there are a few minor quibbles - the sleeves on the RT originals had the tabs showing at the back rather than glued under the rear cover. And the Jean Marais pic looks a bit cheap and p/copied compared with the original. But they're minor cavils when set against the love and care and attention to detail that Rhino have so evidently put into this re-issue. Let's hope they've been let loose on the original LPs and CDs too - I'm sure they'll sound as good if not better than our lovingly nurtured but inevitably slightly torn and frayed eighties copies. As well as those cryptic run-off messages, there's another lovely touch in the silent area. The original Rough Trade RTN part of the serial numbers has been crossed through and replaced with an RHN prefix. But it's the sound of the things that's really been shown the most respect. As Johnny Marr himself said to critics of the band's decision to sign for EMI; it's what's in the grooves that counts, not what's on the label.

If the sticker on the box is to be believed, the contents of the box have been mastered directly from the original tapes. Whatever the source, boy do they sound good. It really is like slipping one of the original singles out of its wrapper for the first time when you go to play one of the Rhino reproductions; quite uncanny. And they've maintained that slightly boxy, brash indie single sound on the earlier songs like 'Hand in Glove' and 'This Charming Man'. But listen to 'That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore' and it actually sounds even clearer and more detailed than my lovely first pressing Rough Trade original album version of the song on 'Meat is Murder'. You can see why RCA (who invented the format) were so keen to persist with the faster speed of the 45 rpm platter - singles sounded so *sharp*, didn't they? So my copy of 'The Boy With the Thorn in his Side' is slightly wonky (it still sounds OK - amazing how you get used to stuff like that) - that's the deal with vinyl; you're prepared to put up with the rough, because when it's smooth.... well, it's like most of this Singles Box; a very deep joy. Or, perhaps more astonishingly, like travelling in time. Yes, that'll do. When vinyl is good, it's like time travel.




So, a very big thank you to Ma Swipe, for queuing up outside the shop for three days. You've made an old man very happy. (And when I find him, I'll *murder* the old bastard...)

[These may or may not sound any good as MP3s; but what the heck: it's Christmas! (Well, it *was* Christmas...)]


The Headmaster Ritual MP3



Still Ill MP3



That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore MP3




* I tended to buy the 12 inch versions. They sounded fantastic *and* you got an extra track - often of exceptionally high quality: think 'Girl Afraid', 'Rubber Ring', 'Unloveable' and, of course, the full version of 'How Soon is Now'.

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Bobcast #58...

...T.V. Theme Special...

...with Eisner award winning cartoonist, Mr. Nick Abadzis....

Live long and prosper!





L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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A Few Words in Defence of Randy Newman...

Performing the Traditional Festive Tidying up of the Hard Disc Recorder ahead of the forthcoming Christmas telly binge (that's right, I'm going to tape 30 or so hours of useless festive programming that will once again remain unwatched and clog up the hard disc recorder until next Christmas in order that I have a full library for *next* year's Traditional Festive Tidying up of the Hard Disc Recorder), I happened upon a previously unwatched BBC session featuring the wonderful Randy Newman performing with the LSO at St. Luke's in London.

I could happily have sat and watched him just talking for the whole hour. "This next song is the word of God", he says of 'God's Song'. "Why he chose me as his instrument and not McCartney or Simon or Dylan....or the Arctic Monkeys...." Or returning home from a particularly successful recording session, he's filled with a rare sense of pride, only to turn on MTV and watch part of a 'making of the classics' documentary on Stevie Wonder's 'Songs in the Key of Life'. "There's Stevie, playing his synthesizer. Then they play back what he's just played and he overdubs another layer. It was like *Bach* playing. [Perfectly weighted pause...] I wanted to *shoot* myself...

Maybe I'm particularly dense, but I find that the full impact of his songs takes a while to sink in; it's so easy even when you've been listening to him for a while still to miss the wafer thin irony and take him at face value. The example above is a wonderful one. You're encouraged to go along hook line and sinker with his seemingly unapologetic pronouncement upon the inherent decency of the good old U.S. of A. But this is, it slowly begins to dawn on you, such feint praise, is it not? So the U.S. is not as bad as Hitler's Germany or Russia under Stalin?

Whoopie-do.

There's usually a subtle demonstration of musical genius to match the peerless lyrical brilliance - the majestic strings and the rigid shouldered gospel piano chords on the chorus of 'Sail Away' or the little Brian Wilson pedal underpinning the "they got surfing too..." in 'Political Science' - the little filligree touches of the master of the self contained piano accompaniment. Here, it's those lovely baroque trills after the names of those evil dictators 'who need no introduction'. Someone should, if they haven't already, anthologise some of his early hack work. I say hack work in the same way that you'd call one of those finger-warmer-upper Bach piano inventions hack work. He wrote one of the best songs of the Sixties ('I've been wrong before') for a Cilla Black single and his 'I don't wanna hear it anymore' is a standout of Dusty Springfield's classic 'Dusty in Memphis' platter. You just can't imagine anyone emerging again capable of reworking the dominant tropes of the canon of American popular song with such wit and potency as Randy Newman does. Or an audience for them if they did.

Sadly, you tube doesn't seem to have any of the show I saw (I was hoping to share the spoken links with you all). But I hope you'll enjoy the clip I was able to find of one of his most recent (not to mention resonant and timely) songs.

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Strictly C***s Dancing...

Well, that's what we've always called it in our house, anyroad. Until this series, which has been superb. Apart from the final, obviously, which was the biggest travesty this side of the 2006 European Cup Final. Lisa Snowdon (she of the legs that go all the way up .... and *then* some) danced like an angel, scoring perfect marks for both her first and second routines. Such a divine figure of feminine grace did she present that even died in the wool, take-it-up-the-jacksy-from-a-burly-foul-mouthed-Stevedore pooves as Graig Brevile-Toasted-Sandwich-Maker and Bruno Tortellini appeared to be attempting to contain erectile swellings of desk-lifting proportions. And Rachel Stevens was almost as good.

So, come the vote to see which two contestants would grace the final dance off, and despite the pair having a seemingly insurmountable lead after the scores from last week's cocked up viewers' vote had been added to the finalists' scores, you just knew that it would be one of these floating goddesses of the terpsichore who would be ditched by the sofa-ridden, intravenous carb-guzzling rump of the good old British public. And so it came to pass. With whatever herculean effort of their walrus like personages they could manage without contravening the myriad of restraining and anti-social behaviour orders that keep them penned into their sink estates and safely out of sight of the middle classes, sufficient numbers of viewers managed to beat at the BBC hotline auto dial function on their mobile phones with an Iceland party snack jammed flipper for long enough to make the call and register a vote for two flat- left-footed, Robbie Keane lookalikey starched stiff showroom dummy doing a shit 80s style robotic dance wanker, Tom Chambers. It would be going a tad too far to say that grown men cried. An Henry-esque, bottom lip protruding boud in the attic listening to early John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers-era Eric Clapton very, very loud seemed sufficient. I won't even *start* on the footy...

He'll be the next Doctor Who - just you watch...*



L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob


* Robbie Keane, obviously...

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Bobcast #57...

...Happy Crimble everydobby....





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Bob

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Thatcher...

I don't want to sound like one of those "Is it just me, or is everything shit now and weren't things much better in the 1970s" Stuart Maconie/Danny Baker types, but...well, it's kind of true isn't it? Up to a point at any rate. It can surely be no accident that things started to take a severe turn for the worse around 1979. Just when things had been looking up too - children, don't believe all you hear about The Winter of Discontent. It wasn't *so* bad. And there weren't *really* rats - and anyway, even if there had been, they'd have been *much* better than horrible, synthetic, antibiotic-resistant *modern* rats...

Yes, 1979 was pretty much the fulcrum year, really. The best of the post-punk stuff had pretty much been done by then. We still had Concorde. Arsenal beat Manchester United in the Cup Final. You still needed to be vaguely literate in order to be able to read the NME. And then Thatcher came along and ruined *everything*.

Perhaps I've missed somthing and have been doing the woman (she was, I've been assured, a woman after all it seems...) a great disservice, but without overstating the case too much, she is surely the most repellent creature ever to have stalked the planet and has been exclusively responsible for *every* *single* *evil* in the world. *Ever*. Has she not? And Pinochet. And if you don't believe me, compare the world as it is now with the way it was then. For instance, had you been foolish (or drunk enough) to want to experience the England cricket team spinelessly capitulating to India (or indeed any other former colony without the good manners to remember that we taught them the bloody game in the first place, didn't we?), you'd have had to do so by tuning your crude (probably Pifco-made) transistor radio to Short Wave and hearing the dulcet tones of John Arlott ebbing and flowing like a Lee Scratch Perry dub effect all the way from the subcontinent. At three o'clock in the morning. And if you turned the volume right up and pressed your ears vigorously into the speaker grille, you might even be able to make out the occasional word he was saying. Of course, *nowadays* the whole humiliation is beamed out in deafening quadrophonic sound with high definition and stats and reverse camera angles/slo-mo fan zone alternative commentary at the delicate impress of a digit. That's why they call it digital, you see. So there you are - if you wanted to follow the cricket nowadays, you wouldn't have been able to miss a thing. Some improvement.

In constructing this argument, I'm trying to think of areas where I might have to concede that, yes, love or loathe her, in all fairness I have to hold my hands up and admit that, yes, much as it pains me to say so, she did at least... I dunno....make the trains run on time or something. But no, she didn't even manage that. Trains were shit then, for sure. But they're shittier now. And more expensive. And Richard Branson's involved somewhere along the (excuse the pun) line, isn't he? I rest my case. Radio 1 is rubbish - so much so that even Radio *2* is *much* *much* better now. Now that would never have happened in the seventies, would it? John Peel's gone (killed whilst on an innocent walking holiday in South America, by Thatch, obviously. And Pinochet - did you not know that? I told you she was evil. And him.) Arlott? Gone. The mines? Long gone the way of those endless Laurel & Hardy and Norman Wisdom re-runs. One off talent and exemplary professional Chippy Brady has made way for Samir Nasri - a player as erratic as he is overpaid and a man with so much class he saw fit to trip up Newcastle's Joey Barton for no apparent reason, off the ball and in a manner that can only be described as 'like a lickle gurl'. The most challenging aspect of the modern day NME is distinguishing between the adverts and the advertorials. Gone are the Special A.K.A. to be replaced by some gurning, brushed-down-by-your-mum-bog-brush-hair-styled young simpletons whose idea of radical pop engagement is fondling their charity labrador puppy stuffed toys and stuttering over their autocued monosyllabes. And all the while, that sleek, white arrow stands proud but disused, on permanent display outside the service hangar.

And don't get me started on Blair...


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Bob

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If Early English Poets Had Soul...

...Little Milton...

...Donne Covay...

...Thomas Dekker & the Aces...

...Sly Dunbar & Robbie Shakespeare...

...The Edmund Spenser Davis Group...

...The Marvell-ettes...


It's food for thought, mobsters...


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Bob

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Woolies...

Perhaps the saddest of the scenes of 'thirties-style depression beginning to afflict our high streets as the economy goes kapputt is that of the mile long queues for half price tat outside, in and around your local branch of Woolworths. Woolies will have a place in the heart of anyone who has at any point in their life, in however fleeting and hamfisted a way, toyed briefly with a life of crime. For who hasn't, ensconced in those august halls of a wintery early evening, not been tempted by the vast array of easily purloinable products never further than a lifted jumper away from being one's own? Happy days they were, sadly long gone, back then when one could while away hours - whole days, indeed - cramming armfuls of red vinyl Dickies singles and such like punder into a badly torn Tesco carrier bag, one's VERY presence in the store barely so much as flickering on the drowsy consciousness of the slumbering security guard. Innocent times, sadly gone forever with the ever deeper incursion into our privacy of the ubiquitous Orwellian surveillance cameras and those pesky paparazzi. It barely bears repeating to the poor, denuded youth of today, weened as they are on freezer bags of deep-fried Mars bar and WAP-enabled palm-top sonic digit crunchers, that they shall never know such times as those...Like those other joys of a seventies childhood - the three day week, power cuts and only three channels of unwatchable tripe to choose from on the goggle box (and 'Who Do You Do?), they'll just never understand, will they?

But perhaps there's a barely detectable silver-lining peeping through the dark clouds of economic downturn. If *Woolies* is going under, things *must* be bad - and that can only be good. Those vast warehouses where you could shoplift anything imaginable (so long as it was made of plastic. And by Pifco) - from barely fit for purpose picture hooks, to Lionel Ritchie embossed thermos flasks to the common or garden nut or bolt engineered with Soviet-style comic inefficiency not to fit with any other common or garden nut or bolt on the planet - have to be of use to *someone*, don't they? And, in the absence of an unlikely return to pre-eminence of Ratners or *yet* another Subway opening up, perhaps the Rotary Clubs Associations of the land could do worse than implement my own humble plan to turn the High Street round. It's a simple scheme and one that will not only give the retail sector a much needed shot in the arm, but also restore some sense of civic pride to our binge-drunk youth's vomit encrusted thoroughfares. Ladies and gentleman, I give you: the Charity Shop Mall!

That's right; glide in comfort through air conditioned splendour, from War on Want!, Saunter past the British Heart Foundation before swinging into the opulence that is the Princess Alice Hospice Megastore! Marvel (coo!) at the unspeakably bad tramp busker squeaking way interminably on his violin; now no longer a sodden figure of pathos beneath the dripping awning outside McDonalds but now transformed into a Christmas card image of joie de vivre and beaming like a retard as he saws away like a palsied hyena in the *comfort* and warmth* of the new arcade! Drool over those well stacked shelves of Jack Jones and James Last LPs! Choose your 3 for the price of two Alice Sebold novels at your salubrious leisure (you've got *two* *whole* *weeks* yet before you need to sign on!!!) Come on folks, you know it makes sense - dig deep friends, dig deep....FOR BRITAIN!!!

L.U.V. on y'all,

Bob

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Bobcast #56...

"I'm a roadrunner hunnay!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Bob's Rock 'n Roll Special is now available at all good retailers for the discerning listener..."


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Bob

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Bobcast #55

...oh yes...





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Bob

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Bobcast #54...

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Bob

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Modern Lovers Live...

Side one:

I'm a little airplane

Hey there little insect

Egyptian reggae

Ice cream man















More on Beserkley Records.



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Bob

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