Gone...

xxx

Bob

42 words about 'Urbane'...

Obviously there comes a stage in one's career where the need to court popularity from one's massed millions of admirers becomes almost a total irrelevance. You've done all the wearing a kimono to get a bit of attention  and pretending to be a Nazi bit and you just want to get on with what you do best: grouting. You've got so much money in the bank you could end Third World debt by giving up six months interest alone, so what else is there for you to do with the last few dull years of your life but have the occasional 3-day Skyping session with Ricky Gervaise and pals and bask in the Caribbean winter? Well sod that! The need to create, create, create is still all consuming.  So, my hordes of brainless lackeys have hit upon a fabulous plan. They told me at our last webinar/virtual catch-up that I had gone way beyond this point of brand recognition several LPs ago and it might now best served my interests to announce a complete conventional media blackout/radio silence/internet account Omerta and leave everything to the bods in the Viral Marketing department who will, I'm reliably informed, get me onto every news bulletin in the civilised world without me needing to do so much as take my eyes off the current ever-so tricky Jenga manouvre. As Ross would no doubt say, "*FINE* *BY* *ME*!!!"

So, I leave you not only with a new LP (out soon from all good retailers. And HMV) but also 42 words that I believe really get to the heart of the Chothic (no, I've no idea what it means either) nature of the current ouevre (ditto). Right, I'm back to me plank insertion before Stephen Merchant eats all the Bourbons. Here are your 42 words humanoids:

Panglosian
Dissonance
Rentaghost
Defenestration
Gengolphus
Plantagenet
Garribaldi
Bling
Cadaverous
Dork
Wagnerian
Semantic
Gorgonzola
Frenetic
Bijou
Caliper
Drachma
Volleyball
Pincer
Draconian
Vituperative
Peruvian
Lithe
Scalloped
Finbar
Animatronic
Zoob
Recalcitrant
Fol-di-rol
Rendered
Immutable
Koan
Hotline
Botticelli
Runes
Clippy
Stanza
Cormorant

Madonna@80...

Personally, I've never quite forgiven her for that 'Hand of God' incident. Still, at least she never tried to bite anyone's arm - well, apart from Sarah Bernhardt, obviously...

xxx
Bob

Birthday goil...

 Ah well, another candle on the cake tomorrow - it'll need to be a pretty big one to fit them all this year. Not that I'm particularly age conscious - indeed, I'm rarely conscious, period, but that may well be as much down to the Drambuie Breezers as to any incipient senility. I hate using the phrase but 'when you get to my age', you tend to treat each day as a bonus - especially when you've lived life with an acetylene blowtorch trained on the centre of the torch as I have been wont to (Grammar Nazi aside - *why* is Blogger underlining the word 'centre' as if I've spelled it incorrectly? Did we actually win World War II? See, there, it just did it again. Ridiculous.) Anyway, assuming I make it through until tomorrow before the spellchecker gives me a stroke, I trust as many of you as possible will be joining me up in town for the big Official State Birthday Celebration shindig that Dave, Nick and all the lads are putting on for me. I'm sure you'll have seen coverage of the preparations on the news over the last couple of days and are like me scratching your head and wondering why the hearse bearing my coffin will be collecting me from the chapel of rest and not the Coach and Horses as I requested. Probably Dave and Nick's idea of a little joke at my expense. Or is that Michael Gove? Anyway, God only knows what they'll have planned for my 30th next year - probably a lynching if this lot drift any further to the right. Which reminds me, how is Kenny? Anyway, you should come along. After all, you are ruddy well paying for it.

But enough rambling about my birthday celebrations. You'll all be wondering I know how the new album's coming on and I have to say, at the risk of sounding a self-satisfied old toadette, it's progressing rather well. After having held out for as long as possible from joining the digital revolution, I recently invested in some new recording hard- and soft-ware and the results have been quite dazzling if I say so myself. I really wish I'd taken the plunge sooner. The microphone is proving a particularly solid upgrade - especially since the baked bean tin and string arrangement I've been using up until now was beginning to fray. Not to mention dent. Of course, as with all progress, there's a downside. As much as the new sense of clarity is a boon, obviously there's a cost in that you can now hear most of the lyrics. And the singing. But after the initial heebeejeebees have died down, you do get used to it - well, the cat has at any rate. Mind you, he's long been pretty much inured to the idiosyncrasies of my vocal technique as he's probably strangled more water voles than I've had hot dinners. 13 mice, 1 rat and 1 pigeon is the current body count. I'm thinking of shipping him out to North Korea - he'd soon sort 'em out. So, what can the avid listener expect from the new album? Well, it's probably my most accomplished LP to date and that production gloss is compounded by a growing sense of lyrical maturity. The title track being a case in point:

 Oh dear what can the matter be 
I got stuck in the lavatory 
Stayed there from Monday to Saturday - 
Oh what a state of affairs... 

So I hope you'll all brave the elements to join the celebrating throng up in Westminster tomorrow. I'll be handing out a few signed test pressings of the new LP - well, we have to do something to try to keep the numbers down; Health & Safety etc. Why else would Cameron and Clegg be going?

Toodle-pip!

Open mic night: 22/11/2012...

Never forget the golden rule of the open mic: it was good last week, so it will be awful this. You hope against hope that it won't always be the case, but invariably it is. I say it was awful, but I can't really speak for the first hour or so as I don't get there until after 10pm as it's a late night at work. But Cas's last words to me on Wednesday after our weekly practice session are along the lines of 'get there at 10 because I can't wait to play the stuff we've practiced'. Getting back home from work, wet, brain-dead and tired, I could happily flop in an armchair and yell abuse at the screen whilst watching Question Time with the sound muted (well, we all have our own ways to unwind) but I leave a mildly disgruntled, long-suffering partner in crime to head back out into the rain, trying to keep the worst of it off my little 4 watt Vox amp and my caseless £80 Strat copy with my overcoat, and down into the steaming pit of rock 'n' roll debauchery that is the Cow & Snuffers. No matter how tired or apprehensive you might feel, the pull is always too strong to resist.

Mick the Landlord pulls me up a free pint of 'Buie and I try to hide from view of  'the stage' so that I can at least savour a couple of gulps of grog, but it's hard to be discreet when your amplifier is causing a blockage on the well-trodden route to the ladies loo and Paula the Landlady is flecking both one's (facial) cheeks with parodic aristocratic French mistress kisses replete with much exagerrated lip puckering and butterfly wings arm flapping. Sure enough, I'm spotted and make my way through the adoring crowds to the tiny corner of the pub into which a drum kit, PA system and various other forms of amplifiers have been arranged to form a Krypton factor-esque obstacle course for the daring handful of musicians. Once a week they attempt to insinuate themselves between this jungle of mischievously angled microphone stands, noose-like cables and illuminated music stands in order to attempt to bluff their way through a carefully selected repetoire of popular favourites and hoary old chestnuts. In short, imagine an area the size of a modest king-size bed decked out by Salvador Dali and co. along the lines of their first Surrealist exhibition only with an overloaded household electrical current running through it and you have some idea of the extreme bodily contortions required by the artiste in order even to stand on - or, more accurately, in - what we might with heavy irony refer to as 'the stage'.

"What kept you?" "What time do you call this???""Thank God you're here!" The imploring throng pat a legendary shoulder, shake a saintly hand, grasp at a messianic arm as I move amongst my flock. Their pent up desperation for my arrival wafts me onward, their sheer desire spiriting me towards 'the stage'. It's quite touching at first, until the bubble is rudely burst. "Thank God you're here - Zak said she was waiting for you to get here before she'd go up and sing. Come on - we've been waiting all night to hear her."

And Zak - Cas's daughter - is indeed here and sporting an early modernist masterpiece by way of her coiffure. Resembling the charred remnants of a crop circled cornfield that's been razed to the ground, her short back and sides are topped by an electric blue ball of coiled plaits. It's lovely to see her. Where do you start with Zak? Studying at Oxford, super model good looks, voice of an angel and with all that, add in a zen-like poise and self deprecating niceness that many with a zillionth of her talent or accomplishment lack. So, all in all, just your average teenager, really. Jo, her Gran, is there too - only Gran seems far from apposite when used to describe this lady. Only the grey of the hair might offer a clue - unkempt in fiery abandon, it's like something out of Blake and emblematic for me of the bold, bohemian spirit I've known since I was a kid. The hair, like the spirit, is no less wild, than it was back then, just lacking that black lustre of yore. I give Zak and Jo a hug, ask Jo if she's had a chance to play - she's blossoming into a fine jazz pianist since studying improvisation. With each week it's harder to equate the confidence and authority of some her playing with the timid-seeming soul we almost had to lead screaming up to the piano when she first performed here. She has played and, barring the obligatory music stand disasters and accompanying blizzard of carefully prepared cribs and sheet music, it went OK.

Lovely Julia is on 'the stage' with her shiny new Yamaha semi- acoustic and, with Bluegrass John - charming hard-to-believe-he's-a-pensioner - on acoustic and Cas on stand-up bass we lurch through 'I'll be your baby tonight'. My poor attempts at the kind of fills you'd hear on an early Johnny Cash record (who, incidentally, sounds not entirely unlike our Bluegrass John here) are saved from total, tuneless mediocrity only by the judicious addition of a few intermittent cutting out and spluttering noises, the kind usually associated with a faulty lead. Or Adrian Belew. It's always easier when the first one's out of the way, thinks the eternal optimist in me. Then a Cornish-looking debutante - Sue(?) -  gets up to sing an old folk number about white something or other. I say debutante, you understand, because it's her first time 'on stage' at the open mic, not because she looks like Yasmin le Bon or some similar glamorous upper crust fillie. Simon (no, not another le Bon) knows the chords to 'White something or other' so he plays acoustic and harmonises with Cornish looking Sue (?) and, not really knowing what else to do, your humble scribe interjects a bit too loudly with a few trademark Exile-era Keef/Proud Mary-era Creedence-style slurs. It's awful, but a bit better than the first one.

Simon gives me a nod and asks if he and the other guys from Grand Union - his wife Kate, Cas and fellow gooner Gerry, who also moonlights as the Cow & Snuffers' resident kit basher - can do one more song before he and Kate have to go. They have a gig on Saturday and I'd expected them to want to use this session as a final rehearsal for that, but with an unusual turnout of wannabe performers tonight, they've obviously only had a limited time to play. It's fine because I can sit down and have a breezer or two and catch up with Zak. One song turns into two and I find I'm feeling a bit wound up - a combination of not playing well earlier, having kind of known that something like this might happen - that I'd get all psyched up to play and then not get the chance, despite having spent all yesterday afternoon practicing for what I knew would only be, most likely, a 10-15 minute spot - and of partly not really wanting to be here in the first place.

Several flute solos later, Zak finally steps up before her adoring public. I've been wanting to hear her sing 'I only have eyes for you' - our arrangement based on the gorgeously loopy Flamingoes version - for a while, but as soon as we start, I make a fundamental error of judgement. The arrangement relies on some beautifully abrupt and oddly unsettling (for a doo wop record) 'shoo-wop-shoo wops' and in order to make these work, I need to contort myself through the cat's cradle of cables and isometrically arranged stands to a position somewhere in the vicinity of a microphone. However, in doing this, I realise with mild alarm that the position I've adopted (at the cost of some considerable discomfort, most pertinently a rakishly angled cymbal perilously close to my crack which I keep backing into and getting jammed up there) was perhaps ill-advised. Whilst allowing me to 'shoo-wop' like a queen, sadly I'm also positioned in such a way that Zak's gently skanking body is almost completely obscuring the chord sheet I'm relying on to get me through the song. It's turning into one of those evenings. All the 'shoo-wops' in the world won't disguise my inept chording. My casual acquaintance with the structure of 'I only have eyes for you' becomes a total stranger during Bobby Vinton's 'Blue velvet'. Oh sure, we'd rehearsed it yesterday and it sounded fine- only that was in Bb. Zak prefers D which, not to get too technical about it, is a long, long way up from Bb - at least on my fretboard it is. I end up soloing as at least it will only sound fucked up one note at atime, rather than in clumps of fucked-up-ness if I stick with the chords.

Something has to change - and fast. I pluck out the stacatto opening riff of 'I'm blue (the gong song)' and suddenly we're motoring. Cas and I share the bluesy harmonies of the call and Zak lets loose on the response in a cascade of gong, gong, gong, gong g-g-gong gong yeahs, Gerry pinning it all down like Al Jackson and the place starts to move. A handful of folks are dancing and I can spot the row of regulars propping up the bar mouthing along with our voodoo mumbling. It comes to a halt and I feel that at least something's worked for me tonight. Happy to have finally got into it, I get a bit hacked off when Cas calls a halt to the proceedings. But then we find out it's only ten to eleven so there's the usual dithering - probably only a couple of seconds, but in the adrenalised timespan of the performer, it feels like about 3 days - what to play and at some point I go into a minor 'I'll play anything you want me to play and if you don't want me to play anything I won't play at all' style wobbly.

More dithering about whether to do 'Run baby run' even though like a divvy I didn't bring the chord sheet with me in my rush to get out. I suggest 'Sympathy for the devil' and we're off. Cas thinks afterwards that the potency of our rendition is sparked by my channeling some of my frustration and aggression into the song, but I actually become quite calm quite soon into the song. Gerry once again gets his target acquisition system locked straight on the groove and starts to enjoy himself with the tom toms. Cas throws in some spirited growling harmonies on the chorus and the woo-woo mantra that we finish on and for a brief moment, it's like you're floating on air with the chug of Richards' guitar as your shield and Jagger's barbed lyric your spear. I don't even have to look at Cas, I can sense the relief in his voice that we're finally cooking and that I'm at last starting to enjoy myself. I try not to look at my neighbour Geoff, who is old Bill, when I sing 'just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints'. Old Bill, Old Nick, none of that matters anymore, in the moment of the song. There's still an internal frisson though at the transgressive power the words somehow seem to have maintained, but the real power it contains is something wordless, elemental. You feel the full power of the song like a pistol in your pocket, the dancers lose their clothes, become a warpaint-daubed tribe. A strange telepathy of the spirit takes place. None of us, performers, dancers, needs to say it, we just know. We know that everyone in the room is involved in this song, that we are merely the channel for it.  And I realise that none of the rubbish they have written about this being some diabolical evocation or summoning up of evil spirits is true. You know it, you can feel it. This is no satanic ritual. It's an exorcism.

                                       

The Beverly Brothers Rifleman Rehearsals - vol.1

Balu & the boys getting in trim for the show...

Captured in stunning HD audio verite, our new podcast series showcases popular local beat combo/anarcho-skiffle-ists the Beverly Brothers preparing for tonight's show. So join Balu and Bobcat Beverly for 3/4 of an hour of high-octane semi acoustic meandering and see if you can guess tonight's theme ahead of the show!

Download The Beverly Brothers Rifleman Rehearsals - vol.1

Love on y'all,

BOB(CAT)

Austerity: Greek Style...

The first clue that all is not well comes as you step down onto the baking Tarmac at Kefillinia Airport. Its only when you stare up with your own two eyes and gaze for a while into that fathomless expanse of azure that the true magnitude of the Euro Crisis hits you with all its full and terrible force. For it seems that, despite the endless EU bailouts, notwithstanding every miserly and lecture-accompanied doling out of ECB aid, for all the harshly apportioned austerity measures and talk of European Armageddon, the simple fact remains as clear and as stark as that infinity of blue up there. The bankers and the technocrats have all had their say, but now, it seems, you're stood staring up at Greece's very own bottom line. It breaks down like this: Greece is broke - so broke, in fact, that they can't even scrape together enough to afford to put a single cloud in the sky.

And then there's the unemployment - particularly bad among tourists and holidaymakers. In fact, there seems very little useful activity whatsoever for these poor battered souls to undertake at all beyond the odd desultory length of breast stroke in the gently rippling Man City blue of the pool, perhaps straining occasionally to pat a lethargic mitt at a luridly hued beach ball, or summoning the effort to mutter a muted 'on me 'ead son' at their despairing offspring before returning to the default activity of the indignado; an unproductive backfloat circuit of the pool. they stare up forlornly at that pitiless pauperised sky then head back down the cypress lined terraces to the shade for a long, cool drink; the time-honoured solace of society's demoralised and unwanted souls.

We were warned before we came out that we'd need to be careful using ATMs as the recent election result might lead to a run on the banks, and that turns out to have been wise counsel indeed. In fact the situation is so bad that the town has even had to install an additional cash machine merely to cope with the hordes of people attempting to withdraw their life savings in order to spend it on two weeks worth of very reasonably priced fish platters, ouzo and ridiculously disproportioned measures of gin and (apparently optional) tonic.

Some of the better off among the jobless have had enough already and, fed up with the torpor of poolside idleness, decided to strike out for a better life elsewhere, causing the forlorn multitudes unable or unwilling to severe ties with their former life to stand guard around the harbour. They wave tearful farewell to their former compadres as they head off to seek a better life for themselves and their families in their ostentatiously sized and extravagantly glistening power cruisers.

One such vessel - a sort of sea-faring, shining black and white equivalent of one of Usain Bolt's hi-tech running shoes is making its escape as I potter down to pick up some croissants for breakfast - well, one has to keep oneself active and apply some sort of routine, even if all sense of hope has gone. Two fighter planes roar overhead; a prophesy of imminent menace. The boat soars through the glass-calm waters leaving the rest of us here with nothing to do but float and drink and silently hate the Germans.





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Austerity: Greek Style...

The first thing you notice when you step out onto the baking Tarmac at Kefillinia Airport is the sky. Notwithstanding the numerous EU bailouts, ECB handouts and scandalously misapplied austerity measures, the situation in Greece just seems to go from bad to worse. Once you actually get here and peer up with your own eyes, up into the fathomless azure, only then do you realise the extent of the misery gripping this poor blighted land. Whatever the reason - bank runs, Armageddon-inducing deficits, the very folly of European Monetary Union itself, it seems the poor Greeks have reached their own bottom line. The sad fact is this: they can't even scrape together enough to be able to afford a single cloud.

And then


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Bobcast #76 - Featuring Exclusive David Bowie Interview!!

When Bowie met Bob...

Bobcast #75

Fall in love with Europe all over again with Bobcast #75...

xxx
Bob

Bad, bad people on the rise...

There's a knock at the door. It's our neighbour's son, Harry. Hardly recognised him. He used to be such a nice polite young man; you know, just your ordinary, run of the mill angsty teenage kid - skinhead haircut, swastika neck tattoos, bovver boots and a dog-eared copy of 'Mein Kampf' and Skrewdriver LP under each arm. Seems he's fallen in with a bad crowd of late though, or something. Probably just a phase, but unless I'm very much mistaken he's been flirting with extremism - and, judging by the Jesus boots, chunky sweater and ginger sideburns - he seems to have embraced a particularly poisonous brand. Poor parents. Must fair break their hearts. Imagine putting in all that hard work and effort, raising a kid as best you can only to see them grow up to become a liberal democrat.

Indeed, the kindle edition of the Guardian he repeatedly waves under my nose during our fractious exchange, jabbing a grimy-nailed finger at it occasionally for emphasis, is a dead give away - as is the decidedly macro-biotic aroma emanating from his pullover. Sure enough, once he's spent a good quarter of an hour castigating the previous administration for bankrupting the Treasury and embarking on a Churchillian soliloquy about serving the national interest, it becomes evident that he's not only gone lib dem but seems to have headed straight over to the most mentalist margins of the hardest of the hardline deficit reductionistas. I just let him rant on, shuffling nervously in a vain attempt to hide from his vision the antiquated 'Don't blame me, I voted Liberal Democrat' sticker I keep forgetting to scrape off the porch window. In the end, I'm left hoping that the elaborations of a luminous marker on the nearby 'Justice for Blair Peach' poster will provide sufficient distraction - indeed, I find I'm particularly drawn to a rather buxom looking, pink (I'm assuming) peach myself. Tragic case that. Wonder if he's out yet?

After a lengthy deliberation on Nick Clegg's current initiatives to put an end to century's of racism and the difficulties of getting the banks to lend to small black businesses "...frankly, they just don't *want* to work, some of them..." he finally gets to the point. Which is, basically, you know, am I interested in joining in on any of the Big Society initiatives that are going to be starting up in the neighbourhood shortly? And can he consider me to be sufficiently won over as to be one of his Champions?

It's hard to know what to do in these situations, isn't it? I mean, part of me just wants to nut him one and ask him to bring his pal Vince over for some of the same. Incidentally, and straying from the point at hand briefly if I may, is ours the only home in the United Kingdom in which 'laying a Vince' is a long-acknowledged euphemism for a particularly extensive bowel movement? I sincerely hope not. Anyway, as I say, the initial response is the desire to deploy blood curdling violence, but then the fruits of all those hours of zen meditation and mindfulness mantras kick in and I am able to take a more enlightened and karmically beneficial position. So, in the end it was all agreed. I start on Tuesday. A full weekly wash, polish and valet service for Vince Cable's government limo. Four hours a week, with time off for good behaviour. Still, could have been worse; Danny Alexander has a pathological fear of body hair, apparently...

xxx
Bob

Bobcast #73: Robot...

Listen to/download Bobcast #73, an exclusive preview of the new Swipe LP, "Robot", in its entirety. To download the individual tracks and donate, visit the SwipeCore site...

xxx
Swipe

Betjeman's Banana Blush...

This is lovely and, according to this piece in The Grauniad, quite hip too. I picked this up in the Shooting Star Hospice place in Hampton Hill on Wednesday. What a lovely way to spend a morning; trotting from shop to shop in brilliant sunshine, idly flicking through the Mantovani and Mathis in the hope of finding a gem. That's about as close to the England Betjeman eulogises that it's possible to get nowadays, I guess; the smell of old things and decay, and the merest sliver of hope and redemption of time lost that can only be found in the forgotten and discarded. And this was it; a little ray of sunlight - from opulently textured sleeve, to gleaming, dust-free grooves - a precious English gem...

(It's so nice, I've posted up all the tracks. Enjoy...)

Side one:

Indoor games near Newbury

Business girls

Agricultural caress

Youth and age on Bielieu River Hants

The arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel

Side two:

Lenten thoughts

The Cockney amorist


Longfellow's visit to Venice

The flight from Bootle

A Shropshire lad

On a portrait of a deaf man

A child ill

Oh, and that lovely old Charisma label...:

xxx
Bob

"A loathesome spotted reptile..."

Ah, Liberals, eh? You've gotta love 'em - although not in the biblical sense, obviously...unless of course you can stretch to a pretty decent lawyer. For those of you who thought their complete absence of any sense of morality began with the devil's pact they've just entered into with the Tories, think again.

Where better - or wierder? - to start another trawl through the Swipe Towers vinyl archives than this superb piece of satire from the much-missed Peter Cook. I can't remember where I picked this one up from - I have a feeling it may have been passed on to me by my Great Uncle Gweekington. I certainly remember seeing its memorable Gerald Scarfe illustrated sleeve at my grandmother's old pad in Hackney.

Regardless, this little piece of history dates from 1979, the year of the Jeremy Thorpe trial (if you're not aware of or can't remember it, the details are eloquently laid out here). Looking back, you can see why Cook's cultural currency would have been pretty high at that time - high enough to earn a release on a renowned 'punk' label, at any rate. Derek and Clive were an established illicit and foul-mouthed oral tradition spreading through most school playgrounds around this time. Cook had also recently hosted a marvellous pop programme called Revolver which featured many up and coming punk acts, including the Sex Pistols, and this release bears a suitably time-warped, cred-worthy 'pay-no-more-than' sticker. It's always been a pet theory of mine that Cook was a formative influence on Mr. Lydon - just check out his vocal on the theme tune of Pete & Dud's 'Bedazzled' movie; a wonderful and ahead of its time study in complete and utter anomie. And they have a similar look to them, don't they? Indeed, I can almost forgive him for supporting Spurs.

1979 was a joyous time for me - beginning to discover myself a bit more and journeying up to the West End for brilliant, sunshiney weekends. I seem constantly to be drawn back to that time in my mind but I probably wouldn't have really valued Cook's cynicism so much back then. His barbs still hit home today, over thirty years on - check out the riff on MPs expenses, for instance. But listen to the laughter - that sounds different too. Freer, pre-Thatcherite perhaps? Or is that just 'la nostalgie?' Anyway, enjoy...


"Entirely a matter for you" (320 mbps MP3) - from the mini LP, 'Here comes the judge'.

How to make a theft-proof Kindle case in a few simple steps...

First you'll need one of these:

You can either nip over here and pick one up for £111 (free delivery) or you can wait like I did and get one as an early birthday present/late inheritence from a deceased relative... or should that be a deceased inheritence from a late aunt? Either way, once you've got one, you'll need some of this 'very useful stuff':

...one of these (or similar):

...and one of these:

Now, making sure you've disabled the safety catch and that you're holding the blade *away* from your body, take the Stanley knife to the crease of the inside of the book like so:

Having completely removed the soft centre of the book leaving only the hard exterior shell, apply two strips from the same roll of the hook and loop tape like so:

Now cut two slightly smaller strips from the other roll of hook and loop tape and apply them to the back (that's the side without the screen for those of you who are new to your Kindle) of the reading device like so, being careful not to obscure the rather nifty little speakers at the top:

Now all that's left is for you to mount the Kindle onto the inside back of the gutted book and you have your very own durable and lightweight protective case for the princely sum of £1 (plus one secondhand hardback book):

And just in case you don't believe me, here's one in action - and yes, before you all write in, I know there's nothing on the screen. I just happen to be a very big fan of blank verse:

Of course, you might not like the sight of frayed paper everytime you open up your Kindle reader, but fear not! The electrician's tape is never far from hand here at Swipe Towers. Indeed, we dread the day he comes 'round asking for it back. In the meantime, it's just the johnny for tidying up the inner spine:

Of course, I can't swear for certain that it's theft proof. But I'd think the odds are fairly slender on something like this being whipped from your tote bag:

Happy reading!

xxx
Bob

Coe fury at fresh Olympic cuts...

Coe: "..I *hate* Sebastian Coe..."


Lord Coe has publicly blasted the Coalition's austerity programme saying it will ruin the 2012 Olympics and make Britain the laughing stock of the world. In an astonishing outburst the Tory peer spoke of gathering anger within the organising committee at the cuts they're being forced to make ahead of the prestigious games set to take place in London next year.

'I'm fecking livid!' yelled the former middle distance running legend who has played such a prominent role in bringing the games to the capital. 'Some of these money saving measures are simply ridiculous. It's bad enough that we've had to compromise on the stadium - the current meccano and Tupperware structure is a mere shadow of the wonderful arena we had planned. But now the events themselves are going to be compromised and it makes me want to puke. Cuts?? Schmuts!!'

The efficiency measures being considered look set to dramatically affect the global spectacle of sport. Despite an offer from London Mayor to loan out some of his famous 'Boris bikes' the cycling is set to be one of the worst hit events. 'We've got a lovely velodrome and yet the spectators will have to sit and watch competitors ambling past on unicycles. I don't know why they don't give them all comedy trousers to throw water down and oversized shoes, it'll be enough like an effing circus already, already!' Cried a clearly distraught Coe in between sticking pins into an effigy of his former competitor Steve Ovett.

Ovett: "I *hate* Sebastian Coe!"


The economy measures will be evident from the opening ceremony onwards. The Olympic torch design was put out to tender some time ago and the winning submission by a Chinese company was by far the cheapest and can also double as a screwdriver and general purpose DIY kit and rawplug holder. The eternal Olympic flame will only be lit at weekends and on alternate weekday evenings, although it is hoped that, with enough support from sponsors, this may be extended depending upon how many 50p pieces to feed the meter have been donated in the run up to the games. Other areas affected include Three day eventing which will also suffer with organisers left to ponder how on earth they're going to squeeze the highly popular horse trials into a day and a half, never mind dispose of all the pony droppings.

The 2012 Olympic torch: "I *hate* Sebastian Coe too!"


But it's the proposed cutbacks in the blue riband track and field events that will cause most alarm for sports fans. In order to reduce wear and tear on the track, the 200 metres will become the 100 metres, the 400 metres will become the 200 metres, the 10,000 metres will become the 5,000 metres and the Marathon will become the Snickers. Track events will suffer similarly as the hop, skip and jump reverts to being simply the hop and skip, although optimists suggest that this may significantly enhance British hopes of gold in the event. Elsewhere, planners are considering combining events in order to make funds stretch further which could lead to bizarre outcomes such as Ussain Bolt taking on the Ghana hockey team in the women's shot put final or England winning the football.

There are further concerns that the Paralympics will be even further compromised than the able bodied events. It has already been suggested that the events featuring blind competitors be held at night, in the dark in a desperate attempt to meet the Games' much-heralded green agenda. There are however concerns that the parallel games will be adversely affected by controversial and stringent government quotas aimed at reducing the numbers of incapacity benefit claimants. This could mean many wheelchair users are simply unable to afford to compete. The Department for Work & Pensions has however denied any political motivation behind the move saying, 'look, if these people are fit enough to take part in a highly competitive global sports event, they're Bally well fit enough to work. Arbeit macht frei!!! Schnell!! Schnell!! Schnell!!!'

Wheelchair Basketball ladies: "..I like him..."


The London Olympics commence in summer 2012.

xxx
Bob


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Lib-Dems force through last minute AV vote change...

Panicked Yes Vote campaigners in the forthcoming Additional Vote referendum have successfully engineered a last minute change to the rules of the contest in a desperate attempt to secure electoral reform despite growing public indifference to their cause. A jubilant Nick Clegg announced that he'd sneakily managed to add a new paragraph and some additional boxes to the master copy of the ballot paper when David Cameron had briefly left the keys to the Cabinet xerox machine unattended.

The new voting papers will now read as follows;

Do you want Parliament to be elected using the Additional Vote system?

Answer:

Yes

No

Probably Yes

Oh, go on then - Yes dammit!

Please rate your response in order of preference by giving each box a number from 1 to 4, 4 being the option you most agree with, 1 the lowest. Your ballot paper may be recorded for training purposes.


A tearstained Clegg, fresh from a lengthy Stephen Sondheim session said, "this is a marvellous moment for totalitarianism - I mean democracy. This change to the rules will be a big step towards the kind of voting system we've long argued for and will mean that future elections will no longer be decided by a few swing voters in some shithole in the east midlands. No, in future, the second and third preferences of a handful of nazi sympathisers and fruitarians against the bomb will make all the difference - and this has to be good news for us Liberal Democrats. With this reform, we'll be able to look forward to a Lib-Dem/Tory coalition in perpetuity - I'm delighted. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and set fire to a Reichstag building before settling down for the evening with a Susan Boyle CD and a box of kleenex...no, they're for the *tears* silly!"

But there has been some disquiet among Lib Dem backbenchers that even this electoral shillyshallying will not be enough to spare the party from the wrath of voters angry at having seen their anti-tory votes for the party helping to secure a Conservative-led administration. "I still think things could be tricky for us" said Simon Hughes from the depths of a rather cumbersome tree costume on Clapham Common. "I 've had letters from some of my constituents which have been quite alarming in tone, and that's even after I've removed the razor blades. Several of them have mentioned a new kind of tactical voting in which people will vote for any party ahead of us. Not only is this very spiteful but it could also mean that cranky extremist parties could experience huge surges in popularity - and surely that's *our* job. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must dash. There's a rather hateful Airdale approaching and I can't go home reeking of piss again or the Missus will think I've been out on the lash all day with Chas Kennedy again..."

In an unrelated development, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been arrested and charged with tearing the legs off a live pitbull terrier. In a statement, Hunt defended himself, saying "It just looked at me sort of funny, see..."

The case continues...

Download/listen to Bobcast #72


xxx
Bob
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

That Nick Clegg New Stitesman Interview in full!...

Clegg: "...you started it, no we didn't...yes you did you invaded Poland!"


Poor old Nick Clegg. The deputy prime minister has exposed his vulnerable side in an interview in which he says he regularly cries to music like a lickle gurl, his children wonder why students are being so hard on him, and the only time he played tennis with David Cameron he lost, but only, he claims, because the Conservative leader had tied his legs together and super-glued his racquet to a nearby public convenience, forcing the Deputy Prime Minister to hop pointlessly about the court and play with a cupped hand while his so-called Coalition partner yelled out 'hard cheese' every time he scored a point at the expense of the hapless Liberal Democrat leader.

"I'm a human being, I'm not a total shitbag – I've got some feelings," Nick Clegg tells Jemima Khan in a revealing interview in the latest edition of the New Stitesman. "The curious thing is that the more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayals that people impose on you … I increasingly see these images of me, cardboard cutouts that get ever more outlandish. They make me look like some ghastly caricature of a fat, toffy-nosed oaf - the sort you can imagine being tied up in a sack with chicken wire and kicked about the quadrant at Eton for not having toasted a crumpet crispily enough or some equally trivial fagging faux-pas. No, hang on - I think I'm getting mixed up with the cardboard cut-outs of Cameron. Dashed difficult to tell really - well, mine are usually on fire and it gets dashed difficult to see through the billowing smoke sometimes, to be honest."

At home in the evenings, Clegg likes to read novels while dressed up as his idol Judy Garland - "what a dame! and so *tragic*! - and says that he cries regularly to her music, although this is not, strictly speaking, breaking news: Clegg did make similar remarks in an interview with Radio 4 last year before breaking into an outrageously off-key rendition of 'Thar's no buzznezz like show buzznezz' in an outrageous Ulster accent before being reminded that this was Ethel Merman, not Garland's signature tune. He was later revealed to have consumed three bottles of neat gin and had to be forcibly separated from his feather boa and have the streaks of teary mascara removed from his cheeks with an industrial sander.

Talking about his family, he tells Khan: "What I am doing in my work impacts on them emotionally, because my nine-year-old is starting to sense things and I'm having to explain things. Like why all their friends from the park are being shunted across to the outskirts of London because we've capped the amount of housing benefit their parents can claim so they've had to move somewhere shitty they can afford to live, like Hillingdon or somewhere ghastly like that. Or he asks: 'Why are the students angry with you, Papa?' - obviously he got *my* brains and not his mother's! I just tell him, be grateful that your father can afford to shell out the £9 grand a year it'll cost to get you through Oxbridge, you brainless little oik! Now, get back to your sums before I take my belt off to you!"

Clegg insists that his relationship with David Cameron – whom he calls "Davina" – is not particularly close. "We don't regard each other as mates and actually I don't think it would be a particularly healthy thing if we tried to become personal mates - taking our clothes off and wrestling in front of a roaring fire then going off to look at photos of bodybuilders with the soundtrack of Cabaret playing in the background. No, we should definitely stop doing that..." When Khan mentions talk that the two men play tennis together naked, Clegg squirms. "No, no – well, er, I think we've played one game of tennis. Of course we meet from time to time but it's always basically to talk about what we're doing in government." Who won? "Ah no, that's a state secret," Clegg jokes, not particularly funnily. (Cameron won, Khan reveals. And Clegg's racquet is still clinging like a limpet to those public conveniences since you ask.)

Khan also asks Clegg what he thinks about News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, being a regular guest at David Camerons' dinner parties. "I don't know anything about Oxfordshire dinner parties. I'm assuming that they weren't sitting there talking about News International issues," says Clegg. "Indeed, if I know David, he'd have been trying to get her to supply some more Page 3 shoot contact sheets for him to bribe wayward backbenchers with. All perfectly legal and above board, I can assure you!"

Clegg also signals a changed identity for the Lib Dems. He said: "I don't even pretend we can occupy the Lib Dem holier-than-thou, hands-entirely-clean-and-entirely-empty-type stance that we've been bullshitting all those silly sods who voted for precisely that all these years with," Clegg says. "No, we are getting our hands dirty, and inevitably and totally understandably we are being accused of being just like any other politicians - which is a bit rich if you think about it, because most other parties do in fact stick to at least one or two of their election pledges when they get into power. So we've decided to cut the crap and not be ashamed of our incredible lurch to the right. We're going to go the whole hog next, just you watch. We'll have really smart uniforms made up amd a fancy sort of squared off helicopter blade logo that you can wear on an arm patch and lots of flags and book burnings - well, the students won't be able to afford them anyway, and it'll keep the OAPs warm when we axe their winter fuel allowance...might even have to start throwing afew of them on at this rate. Once we've annexed the Sudetanland and demilitarized the Ruhr it'll be no sleep 'til Moscow! There'll be an annual rally somewhere really exciting like...oh, I dunno - yes, that's it - Nuremburg! See all this democracy stuff is like *so* yesterday's politics. If you hadn't already figured that out when the party with the third largest share of the votes decided who should form the government, then you must be as thick as my little ...erm, whatever his name is. You know, the kid we were just talking about. My...you know..offspring."

On the manifesto pledge not to increase tuition fees, he insists that it was not one of his main manifesto priorities: "I didn't even spend that much time campaigning on tuition fees. I was already working on our new name - National Socialists..., even more ridiculous than Liberal; Democrats, isn't it! And what about my new slogan - Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer! Great, isn't it?? *Rauss!* *Rauss!" Look, I can even do the funny walk..."

Clegg has had trouble with interviews in magazines before. In 2008 he told Piers Morgan in GQ that he had slept with "no more than 30" women at any one time, a remark that sparked a thousand dyspeptic headlines - not to mention a considerable amount of chaffing down below....

xxx
Bob

Kate Bush to follow Director's Cut with album of duets...

Bush: "Still traumatised by swan incident..."


Kate Bush fans still revelling in the news of a new album of reworked classics from the diminutive pop genius have a further treat in store. Kate's website has just revealed that she'll be releasing another album hot on its heels; this time a collection of her old songs sung with an unlikely assortment of guest artistes. The most headline grabbing of these has to be the new version of 'Don't give up', the poignant tribute to those affected by mass unemployment she originally recorded with Peter Gabriel in the 1980s.

Never an artist to shy away from controversy, there will nevertheless be many an eyebrow raised by the prospect of the eccentric pop diva performing a heartrending song about the travails of the jobless with the current Business Secretary, Vince Cable. "I know a lot of people will be wondering what a divine chanteuse like Kate is doing warbling away about the homeless with a slimy Tory troll like me, but if they think that's bad, they've obviously not heard her version of 'The man with the child in his eyes' with Michael Gove", said a clearly exuberant, and possibly medicated Cable. "It's really clever of Kate to turn the song into a sly kind of gay anthem with a really astonishing performance from Michael. How a repressed, former public schoolboy like the Education Secretary is able to draw a deeply moving portrait in song of a man in love with another, younger chap I'll never know. He takes to a sequinned frock like a duck to water too - or should that be a ducky?' smirked the Twickenham MP whilst tucking heartily into a generous carving of braised swan.

Cable: "Day -oh..."


'Obviously, unlike many of my cabinet colleagues, I have a bit of previous show business experience to back me up. Last Christmas I appeared on a celebrity dance show and I've always seen myself as being as much a song and dance man as an expert on macro-economics policy and how to kick start the UK economy by depriving as many people as possible of work and reducing their disposable incomes. Why, after a hard day dismantling the welfare state and inflicting a package of unprecedentedly savage cuts that will disproportionately disadvantage the poor, the sick and those least able to defend themselves and set the cause of progressive politics back several generations, I like nothing better than to dress up as Leni Riefenstahl and belt out a few Harry Bellafonte numbers washed down with several crates of Mackesons. Day-oh...me say day mer say day me say day-oh....daylight come and me want come home..."

Gove: "Who? EMA..."


Other treats in store for the public include a new version of 'Them Heavy People' featuring tory grandee and gourmandising heavyweight Nicholas Soames. "We were hoping to use Cyril Smith, but sadly he passed away while I was still working on the backing track - it can take me decades just to get the drum sound right..." said a clearly distraught Kate. "Mind you, his rotting Liberal corpse could probably have held a tune better than old fatty Soames, anyday..." However, reports suggest that the sessions for the new LP didn't go completely smoothly. "Yes, Kate had a few problems when she was recording a new version of 'Wuthering Heights' with Nick Clegg", a studio technician was able to tell us. "Firstly he insisted on playing the part of Cathy, even though, to all intents and purposes, he's a man and the vocal part is well outside his range. Then he insisted on Kate incorporating a lengthy coda to the song which would give him a platform to spout off about why we should adopt the additional vote for several minutes over a really over the top prog rock guitar solo. When Kate refused, he threatened to leave and go and form a government with Stevie Nicks instead. It was terrible. Completely over the top and what's more, you'll never get strong, single party government again. Kate said it's a wonder she was able to stay in the same room as him without stamping his nuts off - although, I've heard that this is a common reaction from people who've spent any serious amount of time with the man..."

Siffre: "Get back to ruining the country you Tory scumbags..."

But the new album has not been greeted with universal pleasure. Former pop star Labi Siffre was one of a large number of musicians to express incredulity at members of the Coalition taking time out from their parliamentary business to record with an airy-voiced songstress. "I know they've used the extreme economic circumstances to do pretty much as they damn well please regardless of any democratic mandate, but this is a step too far," opined the smooth-voiced seventies star. "Why can't they leave the showbiz alone for a minute and get on with bringing the country to its knees ??"

Hear hear!

Bobcast #71...

...a Japanese pop special with your new hostess, the plasticiously wonderful Ms. Honor Garter.

Listen to/download Bobcast #71 here...