Daylight robbery

Image via http://www.srf.ch

From the very outset, I unequivocally deny that I have ever knowingly promoted the musical offerings from a Cee Lo Green and completely refute the suggestion that Mr Green is responsible for the financial crisis bringing Cyprus to the brink of bankruptcy.

Indeed, up until about two years ago I had never heard of Cee Lo Green but was aware of his irritating vocal style that was featured on the annoying Gnarls Barkley hit record “Crazy”. But, on a eagerly anticipated holiday to Cyprus in the summer of 2011, the overweight singer and rapper almost managed to ruin the stay on the first night by having his masterpiece “F**k You” played over and over and over again at full volume and at two in the morning from a neighbouring apartment. Early the following day, the lure of the communal swimming pool proved irresistible to the children and they were splashing about by eight thirty which was when the noise polluter made himself known. If I have learnt anything in my lifetime, it is that you should never offer unwarranted criticism to the children of a Yorkshire woman.

From the balcony, I watched the altercation with some amusement. The man bore a striking resemblance to a Chuckle Brother. His spiky hair and retro moustache was sufficient to make even the most innocent and trusting child feel distinctly uncomfortable. His accent, however, suggested that he might be the missing and so far unknown third Kray triplet. “Tell your farrrkin kids to keep the farrrkin noise down and get out of my farrrkin swimming pool” he bellowed. “I farrrkin live here and you`re just farrrkin tourists.” He was, as you can imagine, completely destroyed by the Yorkshire woman.

One day without you

Image via johnmartyn.com – Paul Reid

Four years ago today, Iain David McGeachy OBE died. Better known as John Martyn, he successfully divided the human race into two distinct groups; those that have never heard of him and those that adore his music.

Way back in 1973, he made an appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test which was in those far off days the only television programme to air an alternative to The Sweet, Mud, The Osmonds and Dawn featuring Tony Orlando. Saving up the money from a Saturday job, I went to an independent record shop and bought the Solid Air album on vinyl and then played it to death. Fingers and a heart bled as I tried to emulate the hammer-on, pull-off percussive guitar style and 40 years later the technique has still to be mastered. It was only with the coming of the internet that I realised that the bastard was playing the stuff in DADGAD tuning which remains a black art to players like me who lack the imagination to progress beyond standard tuning and the ubiquitous three chord trick. That`s 25 years of trying to work out May You Never in standard tuning that I will never get back.

I first saw him live at a student union gig a few years later. I wasn`t quite a teenage girl screaming at a Bay City Rollers concert, but it was close. Back in a grotty student flat after the gig, the cheap acoustic came very close to being hurled out of the window. It was the same every time I saw him over the years in York, London, Bristol, Hull, Newcastle and Glasgow. How could anyone play so well and sing with a voice that could melt steel? For this unashamed devotee, his career seemed to have three distinct stages. First was the beautiful boy singer-songwriter breaking hearts with raw emotion. Then the rock star with sharp Armani suite and shades, hanging out with Clapton, Phil Collins and David Gilmour blowing people away with overdrive, Echoplex and swell pedal and then, sadly, a decline. In saw him at the Robin 2 in Bilston in 2006 and a few months later at the Fairport`s Cropredy festival. Overweight, unwell, looking very old and unfortunately missing a leg, his voice had deepened and his guitar occasionally out of time. It looked like the start of a long goodbye but that did not stop us worshipping the ground he now hopped on. I last saw him at Symphony Hall in Birmingham a year later on his Solid Air revival tour which now seems like an insurance policy for his wife and kids.

Living a life of grace and danger he was, by all accounts, “difficult” at times. As is so often the case, outward aggression seems to have been a defence of inward sensitivity. There is a lovely story of a fan persuading his heavy metal buddies to go to a John Martyn gig. Utterly converted, the youths headed for the stage door in the hope of an autograph. Taking a chance, the missionary asked for a photograph of himself and the great man. As John Wayne left the building, the reply to the request was typically brusque. The fan, far from being humiliated achieved glory. “You lucky bastard”, said one of his mates. “You`ve just been told to f**k off by John Martyn.”

John Martyn was grumpy, bad tempered and sometimes nasty. He also wrote and performed some of the most moving songs we are ever likely to hear. After four years, I still love the bad old bugger.

This from 1975 and Sunday`s Child:

His master`s voice

Image via HMV

Apparently, the dog was called Nipper. He died in 1895 and was buried in a park in Kingston-upon-Thames. Appropriately enough, a branch of Lloyds TSB now covers the final resting place of the High Street icon and charity shops and closed steel shutters now cover the High Street.

The howls of nostalgic mourning at the retail power of the internet cannot deflect from the simple reality that Comet, Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster were badly managed and basically out of date. Undoubtedly, the very well paid directors and CEO`s of these failed companies will receive generous remuneration for their time and lack of effort but the real victims of incompetence will be, as ever, the workforce. In the barking mad rhetoric of a clueless coalition government, those that left the workplace in the evening as “strivers”, returned in the morning as “shirkers”. Rather than spending their wages to boost the economy, they will now be forced to claim benefits from the state. Osborne`s plan A for austerity is not working and is criminally insane.

Apart from being the most inept Chancellor of the Exchequer in living memory, including the woeful Norman Lamont, Osborne is also very, very stupid. After a series of disastrous budgets and budget statements resulting in endless u-turns and climb-downs, this inbred oaf remains in office and continues to destroy the national economy. Happy with hookers, lines of coke and smashed up restaurants, this complete idiot is now a liability to the nation yet continues to enjoy the confidence of his Bullingdon chum Cameron. Between them, they have the collective intellect of a recently decapitated mollusc and all the charm of a kitten sucking razor blades. After demonising the poor, the unemployed, the sick and the disabled, Osborne steals from them to reward his wealthy friends. With £7billion, yes billion, of bonuses to bankers being deferred until April to take advantage of the Chancellor`s tax break for millionaires, terminally ill cancer patients, double amputees, people diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and dying children are judged “fit for work” and are having their rights to benefit removed and are being abandoned by the state that has a duty to support them.

Knock three times

The difference between a real drummer and a drum machine is that you only have to punch the information into a drum machine once. For all his obvious failings, leader of Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council Mike Bird is nothing but tenacious. Mercifully, he is not a drum machine and his skills with the sticks behind the kit remain unknown.

This evening (Monday), he will once again attempt to secure an increase in the allowance granted to him and his immediate cronies at a meeting of the full council. This is the third time Walsall`s drum major has tried to swell his benefits and each time the same old justification remains utterly ridiculous. Paying himself and his mates more money is, apparently, simply an exercise to bring cabinet allowances in line with other neighbouring local authorities.

His first go at drumming up support to allow him to line his pockets at the expense of tax payers ended with a massive u-turn back in November 2010. He then tried it again in January 2012 but made the mistake of inflicting the public to dreadful tub thumping in the local press and on local radio stations trying to con the Walsall public into believing that he was in some strange way actually competent, diligent or useful. That attempt at a drum solo ended in spectacular failure and hilarious farce in the council chamber when councillors did not know if they should vote for kick or snare. Undeterred, Walsall`s wannabe John Bonham is back again trying to beat more cash out of the community chest to fund his rock and roll lifestyle. Given the backdrop of cuts and more cuts to services, redundancies to council staff and the inability of the ruling elite to understand that this town is dying, the bare faced cheek of Mike Bird and his cabinet is breathtaking.

Having at least learned from the mistake of showboating in the local media, Bird has remained uncharacteristically silent over this latest attempt at gold digging, hoping that the audience will not notice pudgy fingers in the petty cash box. He will, no doubt, be emboldened by joining a coalition super group set up as a rather poor tribute act mimicking the Westminster coalition super group. The Walsall Liberal Democrats are just as duplicitous, irrelevant and as hopeless as their parliamentary counterparts. Having lost his allowance as a group leader because his party has less than six seats in council, councillor Ian Shires now picks up an allowance of the same value as a member of cabinet. Serving the people he represents, he is happy to also serve himself as part of the price of compromise and, you never know, might end up with a pay rise.

Christmas number one

There was a time, in the days of vinyl records and Top of the Pops, when speculation regarding the chart topper for Christmas generated genuine interest. It might now be a condition of growing old, but these days some of us look forward with greater enthusiasm to the release of cabinet papers under the 30-year rule.

In 1982, Beat Surrender by The Jam was kicked off the top spot just before Christmas by Renee and Renato singing Save Your Love. Describing Save Your Love as a novelty single is insulting to both the Smurfs and the Wurzels but it provided an apt conclusion to the year of the Falklands War and an appropriate harbinger of the year of the Thatcher government landslide re-election. For some, reading cabinet papers from 30 years ago might be as pleasurable as listening to Renee and Renato on permanent loop but for others, especially for those who lived through those times, they give a fascinating insight into the government many of us so fiercely opposed. There is also a sense of how history is made and how history determines the present and the future.