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Great Western Studios comes down.

They have started tearing down the Great Western Studios; for years in view from my desk. First to go is the wood clad tower where once Banksy's highwayman reared.


In the buildings place... The entrance to the Crossrail tunnel.

Amedeo's decision

And had Amedeo Modigliani known

that by choosing another life

he could have saved his own

as well as those

Of Jeanne Hebuterne 

and their daughter would he have done so?

I doubt it very much.

3 deaths is a small price to pay

for such placement of paint and suffering.


READ MORE POEMS AND STORIES

Rumer at the Tabernacle.

There was a buzz about the Tabernacle last night; Rumer was in town. There's a buzz about Rumer at the moment; A new album released, endorsements from such heavyweights as Burt Bacharach and Jools Holland and a following of enthusiastic fans.

Once on stage there was an air of nerviness about the singer, who, dressed simply in black, wearing shoes worthy of a second glance, launched straight into her set. It was not until a little bit of banter with her pianist put her more at ease and allowed some interaction with the audience.  Her own songs are lovely; lyrical and gentle, she has a sweet voice to carry them and her lyrics poignant enough to actually want to listen to. Her new single "Aretha" was beautiful; I'd been listening to it enough at home beforehand to recognise it with a smile.

It is so refreshing to have a British artist who is happy enough to eschew the trendy Americanisation of female singers as well as avoiding sensationalism. We shall hear a great deal more from Rumer.

Gaz's Rockin bookreading and signing.

Memories of the Muse in tattered tutu on a garlanded swing.

As I write this the happy cries of children leak into my room from the school yard next door.


I am usually impervious to these noises such is their ubiquitous status in my life but this morning for some reason I hear them... and am immediately transported (through a seemingly never ending succession of mediocre performance/installation art pieces put together by lazy, uninspired and uninspiring, talentless 'Artists' who use the sound of children playing a metaphor for innocence or some such hokum) back to a fondly remembered muse.



Years ago the Muse and I  worked on a vignette for her MA show (before the crack and heroin really got to her) in which the muse, in the guise of Manet's ballerina, hooked on crack, tutu tattered and filthy from the constant abuse she endured as the price she paid to her chemical god, smiling numbly, finger in mouth and childishly singing some unintelligible ditty, swung too and fro on a garlanded swing in the middle of a warehouse.


The soundtrack to this was the innocent playground cries of children.


I think what the muse was trying to say was: Make the most of it girls because I am what men are going to turn you into!

A million more hits and I'm viral.

Ryan O'Reilly band amuse the police on Portobello Road.

I heard rumours that the Ryan O'Reilly band were hassled by the police and moved on from their regular Saturday morning  Portobello Road spot. 


Got in touch with Ryan for details:


"Yeah. But I got them laughing and we had a chat about Mick Jones from the Clash and the Sargent seemed to warmto us after that so he marched us outside Orwell's house where there is a big no busking sign and said he gives us special permission to busk there. We got moved because the crowd was too big and spilling into the main road. Just another adventure in the life of a busker!"


Buskers such as Ryan and his band: http://www.ryanoreilly.co.uk/ are an important part of the life and soul of Portobello Road. Why can't the authorities work this out for themselves.


Here's an idea; Tell All Saints to bugger off and create an indoor busking site for the winter months.

Julian Temple and Requiem for Detroit at the Pop up Cinema, Portobello Road.

Piers Thompson writes:


REQUIEM FOR NAPOLI?


To the Pop Up Cinema on Friday night to watch Local Hero Julien
Temple introduce his lyrical masterpiece, Requiem For Detroit. It is
my third trip to our very own digital microplex and once more it is
packed. By now, we have all learnt to wrap up warm.


Julien has no equal as an iconographer. He filmed the Pistols’
Jubilee boat party. He made The Great Rock’n’ Roll Swindle
which moulded the Sex Pistols/McLaren mythology. He made
Absolute Beginners, turning Colin MacInnes’ seminal tale of the first
teenagers into a musical, with David Bowie dancing on the keys of a
giant typewriter.


He has flirted with the arts, making movies about Jean Vigo,
Wordsworth and Coleridge, and opera. But it is as the iconographer
of English Rock that he is destined to be remembered. The Filth
And The Fury (Sex Pistols revisited), The Future Is Unwritten (a
hagiography of Joe Strummer), Glastonbury, The Liberty Of Norton
Folgate (a contemporary music hall with Madness and Stomp) and
Oil City Confidential (an award winning account of Dr Feelgood)
have cemented his reputation as the go to guy if you are aiming for
posterity. He is working on The Kinks even as we speak.


Requiem To Detroit is a hymn to the rise and fall of Detroit that
combines a history of the Motor City through archive and the
parallel success of Motown with a very contemporary exploration
of the potential renaissance of the city by the subcultures that
are colonising the devastated ruins. And they are both ruins and
devastated.

It’s a post-Apocalyptic vision that is anything but bleak. It also acts
as an inspiration for those of us left in MacInnes’ Napoli (that is
Notting Hill to you squares). The vacuum created by our decline as
a creative force allows lots of room for bindweeds like you and I to
prosper.


Requiem? Hallelujah! Amen.

Watch out for RoughlerTV's report from the penultimate night of the Pop Up for the year. Tonight is a special screening of Halloween. He's behind you.

http://www.youtube.com/RoughlerTV

Hell. This is Roughler TV

Portobello Panto.

For Details and tickets click HERE

Notting Hill is finally getting it's mojo back.... At Maison du Chien.

I've spent the last eight years, grumpy as fuck, bitching about the lack of anything in Notting Hill other than the desire to yack around in pubs bars and clubs snivvelling up cocaine. I write poems about it, I alienate more people than you can shake a straw at,  and you know what! I was right.


But now. At last. Notting Hill is finally finding it's mojo.

I went up to Maison du Chien, above the Bumkin in Westbourne Park Road tonight. I went up because Piers Thompson was celebrating Tanya's birthday (it is a bit like that in the Thompson household) by DJ ing in his inimitable style (new verb: to Piers) and making a happening in his wake.What I found was a mini cabaret; just two acts: Earl Okin (a bloke I've seen around for ever but never knew he could do what he did) and Kalki; the best hula hoopist on the planet who even Piers couldn't faze. I went home after this, I'm elderly and need my sleep but apparantly stuff happens into the early hours.


Maison du Chien is Mat Whitley's baby, born of Medium Rare, and I think interesting because it doesn't try to be anything other than good fun. and that is what it is. Good fun! A little bit of Burlesque type nudity always helps.


It is a long climb up to the top floor at Bumkin. It is a climb well worth attempting without assistance.


Maison du Chien is happening until it stops (I'll try to find a link) but until then go.

Failing that go to Medium Rare at the Tabernacle... Feel the mojo rising!

Keith Richards at Proud Chelsea. Oh and the Beatles, Hendrix and Dylan too.

A busy day yesterday.


Lunch at the Tabernacle with the delightful singer/songwriter Rebecca Poole; more about her in later blogs.


Then off to Proud Chelsea: http://www.proud.co.uk in the Kings Road for the opening of an exhibition of photographs by Michael Joseph of a baby faced Keith from the 60's and early 70's.  It is a small show but contains some iconic pictures.

                                           Photo: Michael Joseph


A real bonus was the various images of  Dylan, Hendrix, and Beatles also on show in the gallery; well worth a visit if only for the cover shot for 'Rubber Soul' and the naked ladies from 'Electric Ladyland'.


I managed a little schmoozing before dinner at the Stockpot: http://stockpotchelsea.com/ a place I have not visited for years. Glad it is still there though; a rare reminder of the Kings Road of old.