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OLD MISERY GUTS |
posted by jim on 8/03/06
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D’ya know what really burns my ass?
A flame about yea high.
That’s a joke that doesn’t work because it’s essentially visual.
Other stuff that really burns my ass:
There’s that TV ad, I think it’s for pressing your red button on the BBC – I hardly ever make it to the ad’s punch line as my girlfriend hits mute before it gets that far – anyway, it’s the ad where the bloke is sitting in the pub listening to the fantastic and sad ‘He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother’ by The Hollies and then it gets replaced by the far more exciting karaoke almost in tune version of ‘Sweet Soul Music’ sung by somebody who can’t pronounce the word ‘music’. What’s my point? I don’t know. Maybe that wonderfully poignant music on a jukebox with a quiet drink is better than being shouted at almost in tune by a wedding group. Therefore the ad is wrong and rubbish. I don’t even know what it’s advertising for definite so it’s failed on so many levels.
I’ve been feeling a bit low lately, can’t explain why. I started to think about getting out of London again. I’ve been living in the same place forever and need a change. Somewhere with chickens to defy the bird flu scare. A place with less shouting in the street and not so many shootings. Less shouting and shooting, is that too much to ask for? Two people were executed at point blank range yesterday about five minutes from my house. What bothers me apart from the senseless murder is the way I was somehow relieved to read the words ‘drug related’, making me breathe a sigh of relief that they aren’t coming for me next. That can’t be a good way to be.
On a more positive tip – cue out of tune BBC singers and hilarious scratch of halted record sound fx – I recorded a radio session with Chris T-T. The School album looks and sounds great. The tour starts next week.
Next time it’ll be funnier.
RIP
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GOD LIKE GENIUS |
posted by jim on 25/02/06
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The NME Awar…Sorry I’ll start again. The Shockwaves NME Awards seems a bit of a mean spirited occasion. The back slapping all comes with a dig in the ribs and a stab in the back. Even after the Sugarbabes had played a cover of ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor’ that boy from the Arctic Monkeys couldn’t be pleased without being a bit snide as well. I was pleased and proud, having written the song and thought it was a rocking version.
Nobody appears to really want to win an award – a middle fingered statue that you can’t show off to your grandparents – and about the most rock ‘n’ roll thing you can do at the event is to accept your award graciously with a thank you and a short speech without saying the word fuck. Which brings me to Bono and Bob Geldof, who thanked us all for saving the poor and then went all rude and sweary about it, just like all the young dudes had been doing all night. You might think they’d be old enough to know better. I sometimes wish they didn’t have their good deeds and the Boomtown Rats to fall back on so I could really say what an embarrassing couple they’ve become.
I went to the NME Awards many years back. When they were called The Brats. I went with my manager Adrian, we both got pretty drunk and told Michael Eavis he had his head on upside down, then Adrian called Eavis a c word and I’ve always thought this may have been why I’ve never been asked to perform at Glastonbury. On the plus side I haven’t had to suffer trench foot. Also that night I remember walking around with Blur drummer Dave Rowntree and punching celebrities in an amusing way. Dave now spends his days at his computer animation company and on missions to Mars, while I’m a well respected acoustic performer and published author. Neither of us has the time to punch musicians and swear under the influence any more.
Thank you and fuck off.
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FUNNY TITLE |
posted by jim on 16/02/06
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http://www.davegorman.com/images/whackbox.jpg
Dave Gorman was standing in for Tom Robinson on his radio show and I went on as a guest. I performed ‘Taking Care Of The Caretaker’, the first verse of ‘Falling On A Bruise’, after which I forgot the words and compensated with ‘The Only Living Boy In New Cross’. I get terribly nervous in one to one singing situations, even though I felt very comfortable talking. I like Dave Gorman a lot so it’s good for my ego that he also likes me. Often meeting famous people you admire lives up to the cliché of being a disappointment, I once met Elvis Costello and didn’t really like him, Nick Cave also is a God to me but he wasn’t the loveliest man I’d ever met when I did so, maybe they were both thinking ‘That Jim Bob was a twat. I feel so let down.’
On the radio show I let the cat out of the bag, not only by saying what my ‘novel’ was about but also that I had started writing another. Who the hell do I think I am? Truman Capote? William Shakespeare? Alan Tits ‘n’ Arse?
The rumour continues to spread – not exactly like wild fire – but maybe like a big old 20% extra free tub of Clover. The rumour is that I or Les, or Les and I wrote the Arctic Monkeys songs. The NME rang last week and I couldn’t possibly have commented on the rumour.
Countdown has begun to the ‘School’ tour and album release. I’ve got the finished album, the sleeve is fantastic, lots to look at and read while you’re listening to the utterly fantastic music. A good argument against the download and the MP3.
I’ve been reading a book called ‘The Cheese Monkeys’ by Chip Kidd. It is superb.
http://www.goodisdead.com/
Also ‘Dirty Blonde at the Cash Machine’, a book of poems by Ray Hollingsworth. It comes in a fancy Dan book with pictures and like ‘School’ is an argument against the MP3, or rather the online book.
http://www.cultpoet.co.uk/index.html
I’ve been listening to more Bob Dylan and also to prove I’m not stuck in the past, the new Belle & Sebastian album. I hadn’t bought any Belle & Seb albums until the previous one and so hadn’t experienced them swearing before as they do on the new one, it’s almost gratuitous, fantastically so.
Watching ‘The IT Crowd’, a programme that some people have been upset by. I think a comedy that actually makes you laugh goes against the grain a bit, what were they thinking? Not to worry, the laughs will be over in just 6 episodes and we can return to a bloke dressed as an old lady having a piss in a slightly different location week after hilarious week.
I didn’t get a Brit Award again.
http://brits.co.uk/contact/
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THE ARCADE MONKEYS |
posted by jim on 2/02/06
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It’s official. I’m getting old. I feel more at home in Café Revive with the old ladies and gents in Marks & Sparks than I do with the yoof in Maccy Ds (where does the apostrophe go?). I call it Marks and Sparks. I’m getting old. I dress more like the old M&S dudes as well, as we all queue up for our ‘cuppachinos’ and almond crossonts I feel safe and at home.
I went into Topman today to buy an accessory and the clothes on sale made me feel like I was shopping for my grandchildren. The music playing on Topman FM was the Arctic Monkeys. Or the Arcade Monkeys as I keep calling them, just like my mum when she talks about Roger Williams and Pierre Brosnon. I’m confused by the Monkeys. I feel I should like them but I don’t really. It’s got a lot to do with all the ‘accidental pop stars’ guff on the TV, I don’t believe it. I’m too cynical to believe you can become a chart success by sending a few emails out and posting on a few message boards. I’m suspicious of the implication that they’re signed to a record label run by their mums in a back bedroom. It’s a pretty successful label. As I once wittingly said on the radio, “Domino are pretty big, they’ve got restaurants all over the world.” Worst of all though – aside from the envy and jealousy of the size of their popularity in comparison to mine – worst of all they make me feel so damn old. That’s why I prefer the Arctic Fire… Oh bollocks.
I’ve never really won anything. I’ve got a football medal from school that I didn’t really earn, having spent every match of that particular football tournament sat on the subs bench waiting in vain for one of the other players to break a leg or score an own goal, so that I could be brought on to heroically score the last minute winner and be carried shoulder high around the cheering playground. I have got some silver and gold discs for my Carter album sales, including a gold one for the Carter album that topped the charts –Number 1 in the charts, I suppose that’s winning something. Apart from all that, every pound I spend on the National Lottery is a wasted one. Not for me the opportunity to claim that my life won’t be changed by the three million quid I’ve just won. It won’t be me.
I want some prizes.
I’m not on any shortlists so I’ve made one of my own.
I would like please:
An Ivor Novello for lifetime services to songwriting
A Brit Award for the same thing
The Mercury Music Prize for my next album ‘School’
An NME Award for lifetime achievement
And then I want to be called ‘the godfather of lyrical indie rock’. Or something. In the same way that James Brown is the godfather of funk, Paul Weller is the godfather of mod – the modfather – and Iggy Pop is godfather of punk.
Eddie Argos from Art Brut was influenced by my work, I’ve heard that Preston from Big Broth…sorry, from The Ordinary Boys was a Carter fan. I bet Arctic Monkey Alex Turner has got all my records.
Let’s not wait until I’m dead and buried before I get the plaudits. I’ve already written my acceptance speech, “I’d like to thank…”
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WHERE’S WILLY? |
posted by jim on 24/01/06
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http://www.dewright.demon.co.uk/Bill.jpg
There was a whale in the River Thames. A Bottlenosed whale. It died. They’re conducting an autopsy to find out what killed it, probably all the shit and condoms and broken glass and crisp packets from the Thames. It was important to chop the whale up and find the cause of death and then hold an inquiry to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We don’t want shoals of bottle bugled whales swimming up the beautiful brownie shimmery shitey to die. It’s the tip of an iceberg. Maybe that’s what attracted it here.
In spite of the sad ending to the story it did seem to unite the capital city for a few hours. Perhaps we stopped stealing each others’ mobile phones and pushing each other out of the way at bus queues for a while.
And then it started to bother me how they’d dispose of the body. Burial at sea? Cremation? Would she – a female whale: fucking up all the ‘Free Willy’ headlines – be turned into soap? Buried in a huge grave? What would Hugh Fearningly Whitingstall do?
http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/images/secret.jpg
And then there are the squirrels. The culling of the grey squirrels in Cumbria because they outnumber the red ones. Whittingstall must be licking his lips.
Jason Reynolds from campaign group Red Alert said, "We are in an unfortunate situation here in the Lakes that we are now at the last stand of the red squirrel and we have to keep England's native red going. It's the last place it remains so the greys are not welcome because it is causing the extinction of the reds."
Jason, Jason, Jason. Haven’t you heard of Charles Darwin? Natural selection? The survival of the fittest? Ethnic cleansing?
This kind of human thinking towards animals has always bothered me. Like one of the arguments against vegetarianism is that if we don’t eat meat then cows and pigs will become extinct. So what. I’m sure the cows don’t care. The pigs don’t give a shit. I imagine they’d all rather take their chances with extinction and the end of their family line, rather than have their relatives’ brains and testicles compressed into making some fat human’s meal a happy one.
They should give me my own wildlife programme on BBC2, I can be the next Bill Oddie.
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THE MUSICIAN’S FEAR OF THE MUSIC SHOP RETURNS |
posted by jim on 13/01/06
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http://newsfeed.tcm.ie/images/people/JadeBigBroPA.jpg
So, here’s what happened. When I was rehearsing for the School Orchestra gig, my guitar started making farting sounds. I swapped guitar leads and the flatulent sounds stayed. I diagnosed a broken pick-up. For the Islington gig I taped an emergency pick-up to my guitar, which I’d take back to the shop after Christmas. It was still under its 12-month guarantee and I was also entitled to a free ‘set up’, which for the non musos is like getting your car serviced (of course for the yes musos, it’s nothing like that at all).
I’ve talked here before about my phobia of music shops and the people who work there and how I got over this somewhat when I successfully bought my new guitar last year. Anyway, I went back to the shop yesterday and after being ignored by the six people behind the counter for five minutes I was ‘served’ by a grumpy bloke who reluctantly took my details and then reluctantly tried to find the phone number of the guitar’s manufacturer for the next 30 minutes, until he got bored and handed me over to somebody else. This new assistant took my details again because the grumpy geezer hadn’t saved them on the computer.
To cut what’s a pretty boring story that I wish I hadn’t started short: after one hour in the music shop, with my details taken twice, the guitar maker’s phone number finally found and telephoned, all to the accompaniment of some kid playing Coldplay songs on a piano keyboard, we found the battery. There’s a fucking battery? I had a flat battery in my guitar. I felt stupid. I felt like someone who’d put petrol in his diesel car, like the man who took his fax machine back to the shop because every time he fed a fax message into the machine it came back out the other end, I felt like Jade Goody. To add a little insult to my injury it was then pointed out via the shop assistant’s guitar twiddling, diddling, harmonics and showing off – playing the guitar so much better than I ever would – it was pointed out to me that it didn’t need a free set up either. And so I left the music shop with my guitar between my legs. As I climbed the stairs I swear I could hear all the many, many staff pissing themselves laughing at the nob jockey who’d just been in the shop, they’d dine out on the story for years. I’d never go into a music shop ever again. My only consolation was that I was a sort of pop star and they all worked in a shop.
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WHEN IS AN ORDINARY BOY A CELEBRITY? |
posted by jim on 7/01/06
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http://dox.media2.org/barista/archives/galloway_616.jpg
By the end of 2005 I’d recorded my next album, mastered it, designed the sleeve and given it all to the record label. I’d finished writing what I’ve been calling my new book and I’d posted that to a literary agent. My next tour was booked and the tickets were on sale. And now I find myself waiting for something to happen. Waiting for everyone else to do their bit. To manufacture my album and offer me a fabulous book deal, sell my gig tickets. It’s all out of my hands now. I’m getting impatient. I’m probably bored. Maybe I should just give in and make the most of my free time: Read more books, learn a new language, take piano lessons. I’ve got three whole series of Seinfeld to watch, along with all the commentaries, interviews and other extra stuff. There’s the first series of Peep Show as well and then of course I could just sit on my arse and try to get a better score on the Bop-it game that my manager bought me for Christmas, I’m the crap one at Bop-it in my house, I think it’s a ladies’ game. http://mimish.org/pg_friends/bopit_tim.jpg
But instead of any of that, I’m browsing the world wide web, finding nothing, listening to radio talk shows talk about the same thing for hours on end. I’m wasting time being dumfounded by an MP in the Big Brother house and I’m worrying endlessly about whether anyone will show up at my March live dates or buy my new record if it ever gets made. And is my ‘book’ actually just 80,000 shit words, poorly and naively strung together by somebody whose ambition is bigger than his talent?
I want to spend 2006 making acceptance speeches. I want to win the Mercury Music Prize, or better still, be nominated and then make a big song and dance about how I’m not going to show up. I want my ‘lifetime achievement to song writing’ Ivor Novello. Presented to me by Rod Stewart in a wanky but swanky West End hotel.
I had to leave the house. Before I went mad or my acne from all the seasonal chocolates and pickled onions suffocated me. I took a bus to Croydon to do some bank duties and have a coffee in Marks & Spencer’s with all the old ladies. The bus fares have gone up, from £1.20 to £1.50. Surely that’s an unreasonable leap. What about £1.30 and £1.40 for God’s sake? I suppose I’ll have to get an oyster card, there’s little choice in the matter. What about casual travellers? Those without credit cards and the Internet? People who live at the bottom of a hill, far from a sweet shop, or with better things to do with their time than buy bus passes or understand the complicated oyster card system. I wish I was a teenager so I could jump on the bus through the back exit doors, without any need to pay, scratch my name on the window and then hop off at the next stop a couple of hundred of feet later.
Michael Barrymore’s crying in the Big Brother house, you can hardly blame him.
I’m currently reading Deadkidsongs by Toby Litt, bought for me by Fruitbat and his girlfriend for Christmas.
I’m listening to the Bright Eyes live album and watching Three Men In A Boat.
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TEAM JIM BOB'S END OF YEAR LISTS |
posted by jim on 21/12/05
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I thought I might do this all in lower case like I’m phone texting, which is something that I have yet to have tried. So that’s what I did, but my Microsoft Word wouldn’t let me do such a thing and while I was looking down at the keyboard that I was tapping away on, Microsoft Word automatically changed every lower case i into a capital one and every new sentence now began all capitalised and grammatically correct. Anyway, I’ve never been much of a mobile phone enthusiast, in particular I hate the person who thought it would be a great idea to fit the latest phones with speakers and then people can listen to shit music on the bus and watch GMTV – the first TV programme to go live on your mobile – on the train. Now I can’t think straight or read my book on the bus because someone’s watching Fiona Phillips giving dumb blondes a bad name and playing Fiddy Cent on their poxy telephones at a too loud and too tinny volume and tone.
Anyway again, played a brief set in Brixton at the Offline Christmas party. I’m a sucker for a well organised event with my stage time set in a big piece of stone. So I didn’t like going onstage about an hour and a half late and then for some reason I managed to lose my voice during my short twenty five minutes of singing. So I went to Ireland at the craic (do you see what I did there) of the next dawn to support the reformed Sultans Of Ping with the fear. Terrified I wouldn’t make it through the two Irish gigs. And do you know what? I did. There were a lot of squeaks and silent notes but with the help of the audience I made it to the end of my two Irish sets. In time to watch the Sultans and get drunk. They were utterly superb by the way. A good end to an interesting and ambitious year. Happy Christmas everybody, thanks for all the support, see you on the other side.
Here are the results from the Team Jim Bob jury:
TEAM JIM BOB’S TOP STUFF OF 2005
JIM BOB
Top 5 Albums Of The Year
1. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning/Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
2. Arcade Fire - Funeral
3. Babyshambles - Down In Albion
4. Chris T-T - 9 Red Songs
5. Rufus Wainwright – Want Two
Top 5 Gigs Of The Year
1. Bright Eyes – Somerset House
2. Jimmy Webb – Hammersmith Lyric
3. Sultans Of Ping - Dublin Village
4. Beck – Hammersmith Apollo
5. League Of Gentlemen Are Behind You – Croydon Fairfield Halls
TV Programmes Of The Year
1. Peep Show
2. Still Game
3. QI
4. Arrested Development
5. Casanova
Films Of The Year
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Goodbye Lenin – DVD
Book Of The Year
In The Miso Soup – Ryu Murakami
MARCUS T OLLINGTON (Jim’s manager)
Top 5 Albums Of The Year
1. Arcade Fire - Funeral
2. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
3. British Sea Power - Open Season
4. Chris T-T - 9 Red Songs
5. Tennant/Lowe - Battleship Potemkin
Top 5 Gigs Of The Year
1. Jim Bob's Christmas Concert - Islington Academy
2. Arcade Fire @ Reading Festival
3. Sultans Of Ping/ Jim Bob - Dublin Village
4. British Sea Power - The Forum
5. A-ha - Brighton Centre
Special Mention - Kylie @ Earls Court
TV Programmes Of The Year
1. Doctor Who
2. Peep Show
3. Lost
4. Without A Trace
5. The X-Factor
Film Of The Year
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe
Book Of The Year
The Miracle Life Of Edgar Mint - Brady Udall
NEIL MR SPOONS WITHEROW (jim Bob’s uber roadie)
Top Albums
9 Red Songs - Chris TT
Employment - Kaiser Cheifs
Fine Art of Surfacing - Boomtown Rats (re-issue)
Top Gigs
Sultans/Jim in Dublin Dec
IDou/JSSW at Water Rats London
Cat Empire - Sheps Bush London July
Pixies - Ally Pally Aug
Top TV
Doctor Who
West Wing Series 6
Coast
Film and Book of the Year
Only saw Revenge of the Sith at cinema and that was shocking.
Didn't read anything particularly outstanding either.
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AFTER SCHOOL |
posted by jim on 11/12/05
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I woke up on the Thursday feeling like I’d been run over by a bus, the last Routemaster perhaps. That 159 from Streatham to Oxford Street. http://www.aidan.co.uk/md/Lon159OldBusV4801.jpg
The one on the telly with the jolly clippie in the uniform with the whistle and the smile.
http://media.bestprices.com/content/vhs/70/148674.jpg
Not the usual 159 with the old misery guts who can’t be arsed to walk the four feet or so down the bus to look at my travelcard and rings the bell when the old lady with the heavy shopping has almost got her arthritic foot on the platform. Anyway, I woke with a neck ache from all the headbanging that took place the night before during the greatest ever performance of ‘Angelstrike!’. There was the back pain from carrying those heavy amplifiers and that piano and then my legs – my poor old man’s legs which throbbed from walking up and down those many flights of stairs from the dressing room to the stage of the Islington Academy.
What a gig. What a truly wonderful gig that was. It seemed like a good idea at the time: to form a 12-piece band and perform a dozen songs that nobody had ever heard before. And it was. A bloody good idea. I had these dreams that we’d be booed off, or of a bored audience checking their watches for Five to Sheriff Fatman. But no, it was all a dream. Everyone seemed to love it. It’s mad to leave it at that of course. All the stress of putting together such a large band for an hour or so onstage is insane. I expect the Jim Bob School Orchestra will perform again before too long.
http://indaviess.freeservers.com/Orch.jpg
I don’t want to blow my own trumpet – Lindsay played trumpet by the way – but I thought the gig was so good that I’m a bit miffed that nobody would be there to review it and that they aren’t sitting around on comfy but stiff chairs talking about it on the Late Review on BBC2. We aren’t performing a couple of numbers on Jools Holland’s Hootananny. It probably won’t be endlessly played on the radio. All this should happen. All this stuff on the TV about bullying in schools should have ‘Back To School’ playing in the background, they could’ve taken ‘The Revenge Of The School Bullied’ from the ‘Angelstrike!’ album as a hint of what was to come. Instead, it’ll be Keane and Coldplay for the sad bits and Arctic Monkeys for the exciting violent happy slapper re-enactments.
As I type this James Blunt is about to appear on his own BBC special. There is so little justice in the world.
The Jim Bob School Orchestra were and are: Chris T-T, Jon Clayton, Simon Henry, Kate Grimaldi, Holly Morrison, Damo Waters, Arran J Lovechild, Jason Powerdrill, Richy Crockford, Lindsey Lowe and Vicky Johnson.
Peep Show is brilliant.
http://www.richard-pryor.com/rpryor.jpg
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