Hendrix lives.

Jimmy Hendrix died 40 years ago in a seedy flat in a seedy hotel just down the road. There are many myths, many stories about that night.... Only I know the truth, but there again I'm probably making it up.   However, on the 18th of this month the above event is happening in homage to the mans life and talent.

Be there and help kiss the sky!

Stress. The Event at the Tabernacle.

It's tough.


I'm booking acts and dealing with the trivial minutae that comes with that, I'm fucking about with the flyers and getting them printed, I'm looking for sponsorship and the obsequient snivelling that comes and goes with that, I'm worrying for Britain and Tony Blair ain't on my side...


I have a lot of friends and they all want door passes... Rock and Roll.


The joys of promoting an event.


How did I get myself into this situation?


The online ticket stuff is now up and running: www.tabernaclelive.co.uk 


Come to the show!   Be there or be square.

The Man.

London Underground.

The London Underground song.


There is a rich use of Anglo-Saxon English in this video... Do not watch it if you are prudish, squeamish, uptight, over 70 or a tube driver.  It is however an accurate observation.


Full Marks to the Amateur Transplants.

North East nightmare... The Olympics 2012.

last night was a nightmare...


Doing a 'reading' in a bar in North East London, simple enough you would think.


Think again.  It was pissing with rain as I travelled across town by tube followed by a ten minute drenching walk. Wet miserable and broke is a great way to start an evening.  Then I am told that there is a tube strike starting at 9.. pm. Which meant that no-one turned up for the thing - we had an audience of 6. Ouch. Andreas later described it as intimate.


It took me 2 hours to get back across town, once again in the pissing rain! including an hour long bus journey surrounded by idiots yabbering away on mobile phones.


Sometimes London is a joke, not a funny one, a sad one.


Note to self: Never again.


One thought arises: What is Boris going to do when the tube drivers decide to strike during the Olympics? Then there is the Terrorism that Tony Blair has brought to this country.


I will not be in London for that particular fiasco.

The Harrods of W2 and Conkers.

Savage weather is on its way apparently.

For those returning to school this week, there won't even be the consolation of savage grudge conker matches. According to the Campaign for Real Conkers, there is a shortage caused by the dismal August weather, when many fell early from the trees and rotted on the ground. Most of those still on the trees will not be ripe and robust enough for the sport when the gales topple them.

Keith Flett, the serial Guardian letter writer and a spokesman for the group, explained: "The conkers are nowhere near ripe enough yet and people won't be able to get their practice in. When you whack a conker before it is ripe it will crumble to bits.

Things to come... The Event 24th September.

Details to follow shortly.

Mike Edwards Killed by a hay bale. Eldorado of sorts.

As a young man I enjoyed the eccentricity of early ELO and am saddened by this news. I am also saddened by the fact that he had to be identified using youtube and photos... No one there.

Mike Edwards, 62, was a founding member of ELO and played cello with the group from their first live gig in 1972 until he departed in January 1975.

He quit to become a Buddhist and later changed his name to Deva Pramada because of his religious convictions.

Mr Edwards died instantly when he was hit by the bale which weighed nearly 700lbs.

He was driving along a road when the bale careered down a slope in a field and flipped over a hedge - smashing down onto his roof.

The circular bale is believed to have been in a steeply-sloping field beside the road when it somehow rolled and jumped 12ft to 15ft into traffic.

Police said the accident happened at around 12.30pm on Friday on the A381 between Harbetonford and Halwell in Devon.

Steve Walker of the Devon and Cornwall police traffic unit said they were trying to contact his family.

He said: ''This was a tragic accident and we have now identified the victim as Michael Edwards, a founder member of ELO.

''We have used photographs and YouTube footage to identify him but we now need help contacting his family for formal identification.

''We don't believe he was ever married and we have identified an ex girlfriend but she is currently aboard.

''We think he may have a brother called David in the Yorkshire area and we obviously need to contact him.

''Michael has no immediate family but we believe he may have taught some cello in Devon and would ask his students to contact us if they know of any relations.''

Mr Edwards had been living in Totnes, Devon. After he left ELO, he was replaced as cellist by Melvyn Gale.

I guess he has found his Eldorado..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bre3HF8_Vw&feature=related

Dogs do not paint their arseholes red.

I was called an old man tonight. That's fine if it comes from a youngster.


But.


I was called an old man by a middle aged woman with bleached hair and a nasty pinched mouth; you know, the kind of mouth that looks like a dogs arsehole, but less attractive. 


There is a reason why dogs do not paint their arseholes red.

Tony Blair. Arrested for War crimes?

I'll keep this short and to the point.


Why has Tony Blair not been arrested and charged with war crimes?


He is the living embodiment of everything that is rotten in our society today.

Meanwhile Gardens by Charles Caselton.

One sometimes finds strange things in familiar places, or familiar things in strange places; Charles Caseltons Meanwhile Gardens manages to do both.


In reality Meanwhile Gardens is a plot of land in the shadow of the Trellik tower, adjacent to the Regents Canal. The goldborne road helpfully points to it. It is the kind of place (the name helps too) to sit, watch and wait for stuff to happen; Frequently in life stuff tends to happen elsewhere. Meanwhile in Caseltons novel  is all go.


Marion, the central character, escaping a life she would rather do without and hoping to find some answers, arrives in the neighbourhood; more specifically the cemetry further down the canal. So begins a rough and tumble adventure in North Kensington, an adventure that is larded with wonderful characters in an almost fairy tale world. Surrounded by a 'rag tag' family of strangers she sets about a quest of sorts. Naturally there are highs and lows, there are some great villains too. Tragedy strikes and she must somehow pull through. Of course we must not lose faith.


Caseltons West 11 is not quite as it should be there is the air of a circus to it. There is a lightness of touch to the writing and I get the sense that here is a storyteller who knows his subject (and his manor) well.


Meanwhile Gardens was originally published in blog form. Nothing wrong with that; if Dickens were alive today he would be doing the same, he'd probably nick a few of caseltons characters to boot. There is however a greater sense of pleasure to be gained from holding and digesting a slab of book! 


I'm off to Meanwhile Gardens to wait for stuff to happen...


And before you accuse me of plugging a friends book, I bought my copy, happy I did, which allows me to speak my mind.  It is available in all good book shops.

Legal coke in Notting Hill? Balaclava's for Afghanistan.

Jan Nieupjur writes:


Yesterday as I was openly enjoying my drug of choice; alcohol it occurred to me how silly things have become: Alcohol; Freely available 24 hours a day 7 days a week, endorsed (and used) by the government, cause of more deaths and crimes than all other drugs put together, taxed to the hilt to provide revenue for, among other things, the police, in order that they can spend the majority of their time dealing with alcohol related crime and anti-social behaviour.


When they are not doing that they are obliged to persecute poor underprivileged young people for possession of the drugs of their choice; drugs they use to escape the miserable elitist society we live in. 


Carnival time is a good example of what goes on.


The police state that a 'number' of arrests were made over the weekend, some of them drug related. You can bet that they were picking on the easy targets; the poor black kids with their bits and pieces rather than the thousands of well heeled, predominantly white, coke heads and pill poppers with their pockets full of Colombia's finest!


The bars and parties of Notting Hill were awash with coke, they always are, yet the police do nothing because doing something would be tantamount to opening a massive can of worms.


Because...


The so called drug fiends are in fact middle class society today... Every one is doing it; newspaper editors, the BBC, ITV (what the hey, all TV), the Law, MP's, everyone. 


If they raided one of the smarter places and turned all pockets and bags out there would be enough coke to supply Lithuania's dentists for a year.


But hey, that is not what the police force is for is it! The police are here to protect us from the nasty social no-hopers in their sink estates.


Solution: Legalise drugs. Tax the fuck out of the rich users and spend the revenue on improving the lot of the underprivileged... They wouldn't need drugs then!


We could all sleep safely and happily then. Except of course the coke heads gurning and yabbering the night away. 


Hey, they could knit balaclava's for our boys and girls in Afghanistan while they are at it.

Cheating, gamesmanship, on line Scrabble and the 'Cheat detector'.

I'm a bit busy right now with the forthcoming event. Jan has offered to fill in for me on the blogging front for the next couple of days.  I would like to make it quite clear that his views are not necessarily my views... I take no responsibility for what he writes; he is an old man with an old mans temperament.  Here goes:


I have, in my dotage, taken to playing on-line scrabble (the on-line scrabble arena these days is where the blue rinse brigade try to hook up with widowed accountants and Filipina's look for potential husbands).


I pose as a retired bank manager and have posted a photograph of my least favourite nephew! I find it hard to get through an evening without at least one invitation to 'tea in Eastbourne' or a tryst in the local Holiday Inn. 


One thing I have noticed is that a lot of these demon scrabble players cheat! And if they don't cheat they use gamesmanship tactics that would make Terry Thomas blush. My method of dealing with this is to send them a message of admonishment then immediately withdraw from the game; leaving them with a somewhat hollow 'victory'.

                                                                       Wilson Hsu


You see they are all 'stats' whores; they care more for the records of 'games won' than the actual game... In fact they would much rather not finish a game; finishing a game is incredibly time consuming and invariably ends in defeat.


The 'non English speaking' competitors are obliged to resort to computer programmes to play the game resulting in an extraordinary spurious vocabulary a lot of which is gleaned (by the computer) from scientific dictionaries.  These poor souls do not realise that they have become just another part of the computer software... they are not playing the game, they are purely 'interfacing' between myself and their computer. They receive a stiff message from me which requires no computer programme to understand.


I have a feeling that they will not 'Love me long time' after reading my missives.


I did however 'chat' with a wonderful woman who now lives in a dug out home (literally dug into the ground) in australia. I wish there were more like her!


I am resolved to invent a cheat detector... I sense a fortune coming my way!