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THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT |
posted by jim on 17/09/05
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There’s been a fair amount of stress and drama in my personal life lately, it’s kept me away from this blog and it’s the type of thing that also tends to throw your pop career into perspective.
The rearranged DVD gig was approaching and the day before I was struck by a terrible fear of déjà vu, my least favourite of all things French, I’d rather eat a snail
http://crazy4cinema.com/Actor/imgs/broadbent.jpg
I was watching Stephen Fry, banging on about the poetry and beauty of five-day cricket as the double decker http://www.economycandy.com/store/images/DoubleDecker.JPG
full of pissed and victorious, happy and glorious England players entered a crowded Trafalgar Square. And then it hit me: big national sporting victory…public celebration in Trafalgar Square…next day…it was all happening again, history was trying to repeat itself. So I woke up on the Wednesday of the DVD gig and with some trepidation, switched on the TV to look for bombs. There were loads but this time mostly miles away from my gig, once again – pop career thrown into perspective.
Anyway, I spent the day being interviewed and reading bits from my book for the special features on the DVD and then the gig came and went, in my opinion successfully, wonderfully, hardly any howler mistakes on the guitar, singing the right words and mostly in tune, Ronnie Result. A few people have commented on the Carter website that the gig was a bit subdued and the atmos somehow lacking. I didn’t think so myself and if I’m honest I was a little hurt by the comments, I started to question my performance. Was the gig not as amazing as I thought it was? Had I been too Coldplay not enough Motorhead? Was my suit too brown? Too striped? Was it all a dream? This is not my beautiful car…this is not my beautiful wife…letting the days go by, water flowing undergrou… http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004CVAC.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Don’t know where that bit was going.
I’ve booked a week in a cheap house in Devon http://www.definitelydevon.co.uk/Images/Cream-Tea.jpg at the end of October, I’m going to attempt to finish a version of my work of fiction that I won’t be too embarrassed to send to a few publishers and also as an unexpected bonus, I’ll be out of London for Halloween
So I won’t have to hide in my house with the telly turned down low and all the lights switched off. If the ghosts and ghouls egg my house, the yolk will be on them, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Chris T-T gave me an advance copy of his new political album ‘Red Songs’ and it is extraordinary. Really quite brilliant, it’s possibly the most offensively brutal set of lyrics I’ve heard since the Sex Pistols and I’m not exaggerating.
http://www.christt.com/redsongs.html
I’m a sucker for a TV crime drama, there’s been none on lately and then like buses used to do in the 1970s, they all come along at once: Rose & Maloney, Taggart, Spooks (ok, so spies, not crime but…), Without A Trace, Waking The Dead, Messiah 15, so many cop shows, so little videotape.
Music: Arcade Fire
Reading: I’m such a slow reader, my obsessive compulsion makes me read every line twice but I was three pages from the end of ‘In The Miso Soup’ when I left it in my bag at the Barfly. I’d also lost my credit card, my door keys, my diary, a watch and various other things. But most of all I was perplexed as to what to do about the last three pages of the book: do I buy another copy? Do I read them in a bookshop? Would they have a copy amongst all the Harry Potters in the local library? And then to make matters worse, I also left my unread copy of this week’s Radio Times
http://www.david-dickinson.net/images/dd-cover-rt-dec02.jpg in the bag.
A nice man called Alex at the venue found my bag and I got it back and finished the book and I know what time all my cop shows are on and everything is ok.
So, what’s with the Jim Broadbent picture?
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ILL |
posted by jim on 2/09/05
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I’ve been unwell.
http://www.mypharmacy.co.uk/medicines
Sick as a pig.
http://www.cuddlecards.com/ccpics/sick_pig1.gif
I suppose it was flu, the more stubborn symptoms are lingering, hanging on for my grim death but I’m now nearing my more normal 76% good health. In the almost words of Errol Brown, it started with a cold. Then it became more like flu: headaches, sore throat, blocked up everything, nausea, jet-lag. That’s what it left me with, jet-lag, like I wasn’t in charge of my own head, feeling confused and listless. And with so much to do. but I pretty much just gave in eventually and stopped trying to get things done, I just sat around watching terrible daytime television shows. Going to bed earlier and earlier but not sleeping, not dreaming but hallucinating, I couldn’t relax. And then a neighbour went away and left his car behind outside our house, his car with its sensitive alarm, bastard. Peep, peep, peep, selfish bastard. Considered slashing his tyres at three in the morning but felt too ill to move.
If the TV news is to be believed, then I think the world is ending. This is it. Mother Nature as child abuser. Not that we weren’t doing quite well with our own self-destruction, all the violence and hate and distrust and intolerance, Jesus H.
On a more local theme, I’ve been looking at footage for the extras for my DVD, have formulated an editorial sketch. Designed a DVD sleeve and then redesigned it when Cherry Red didn’t like it, after my initial annoyance and stamping around the house, I agreed and went back to the drawing board.
Two weeks to go to the live filming, nervous as Hell that I might balls it all up. Having designed the sleeve, built a set, started selling the thing to the shops and in particular, having spent the money, it’s all kind of up to me to do my cub scout best. Sing in tune, don’t swear too much, remember the words, be funny, play the right chords, don’t break a string, try not to appear too fat, wake up on a good hair day, don’t get a spot on my nose, don’t drink too much, drink enough, don’t make a nob of myself, that kind of thing.
Reading another Murakami book, this time a different Murakami though, Ryu not Haruki. It’s called ‘In The Miso Soup’ and, so far, it’s about Tokyo sex tourists.
Hate to let a week go by here without mentioning Top Of The Pops. So, Top Of The Pops is going to go all serious, play less pop music and more stuff that doesn’t get featured so often. For example: Coldplay, U2 and James Blunt. That’s Coldplay, U2 and James Blunt. More Coldplay, U2 and James Blunt. Three acts that are featured so the opposite of often that I’m not quite sure who they are. Hooray for the BBC.
I’m going to switch to the soluble aspirin to try and recover my lost voice before it’s too late.
Bye bye.
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WONKAS! |
posted by jim on 24/08/05
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So it was down to McFly http://img115.exs.cx/img115/7137/bttfi1.jpg to knock Blunt http://www.dcet.k12.de.us/teach/mrsk/Julie%20Supplies%20Photos/Blunt%20Scissors.jpg off the top of the singles charts. I don’t follow these things religiously, I look at Teletext quite a bit though, so I know about the charts. I don’t watch Top Of The Pops on purpose but since they’ve started shifting it around the schedules I keep catching bits of it. I didn’t know who the ‘older’ male presenter was this week, some unfunny comedian or other. On the subject, I was out last night and saw Dick Bacon outside Leicester Square station, he was talking in a very loud “I’m famous don’t you know!” type of way and I wanted to push him down the stairs onto the Northern Line.
I’ve been dabbling again. Bits – really small bits – of writing for my, in inverted commas, book. Then I’ve been working out horn lines and recorder parts for ‘School’ and designing various sleeves and flyers. And then I’m trying to organise the impending ‘School’ recording sessions, in spite of my telephone phobia and impossible reticence and poor people skills. That’s poor, as in my skills and not the skills of people who haven’t got any money.
August is birthday month.
My mother, my daughter, Grandmother-in-law and many, many more.
http://www.leisurezone.co.uk/images/Birthday%20Cake%20Bouncer01.jpg
Went to another iDou gig, this time in New Cross. Call me a traitor but I’m not so keen on the place, in fact it scares the bejaysus out of me, I suppose some folk would call it ‘character’. I preferred New York after they Disneyfied it, I’m no cultural snob, I see no poetry in getting your face smashed in or the sound of police sirens as they race down the high street to be first to draw the chalk outline.
I’ve caught a cold.
Went to see ‘Charlie & The Choc Factory’, which was skill. Don’t believe what the spoilsports tell you about Johnny Depp not being any good because that’s a load of nonsense. The only bad thing about the film was the family at the back of the cinema who carried on like they were at home watching it in their front room: talking, criticising the film and rustling through Sainsbury’s bags.
http://www.calbaptist.edu/dskubik/ftse4good_files/ei2.jpeg
More soon.
http://www.darkhorizons.com/2005/charlie/charlie2.jpg
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BACON, BLUNT AND THE BULL & GATE |
posted by jim on 10/08/05
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I’ve started meeting potential members of staff for my school project. I think it will be called ‘School’ and then hopefully when they make all those education related TV programmes, they’ll type that word into their big old BBC computer and come up with loads of music to be used incidentally. Incidentally, putting a band together isn’t as easy as it sounds. I may have said before that I don’t know many musicians, surprisingly few for someone who’s spent most of his life in the music business. Yesterday I went to Brighton to meet Chris T-T who is pivotal to the whole thing, I feel a lot better after talking to Chris, I just hope he likes the songs.
I doff my hat to the Magic Numbers for walking out of Top Of The Pops after that nob jockey Richard Bacon called them fat, I admire their courage, you’re not supposed to walk out of Top Of The Pops, just grin and bear it. You aren’t supposed to rugby tackle the presenters just because they called you ugly and sneered at you. Watching that Schofield incident for the fumftieth time recently I heard for perhaps the first time the comment about bad teeth. I assume this referred to my dental records, I was quite annoyed retrospectively. Why I oughta…
Been buying some wicked percussion instruments, no not bongos or congas, today my Thunder thing arrived. It’s a tube with a wire attached that makes the sound of thunder. This object will feature in my song about the storm. I’ve even bought one of those bird whistle things they used to voice the Clangers, punk fucking rock.
Recorded a new intro tune for my DVD gig and started to rethink the set a bit. Originally I was going to walk on stage to this orchestral version of ‘Come On Smart Bomb!’ And then follow it with the song of the same name. To do that now it would seem as though I was making some point. Instead I’ve got this short tune that relates to the DVD title, which will almost certainly be ‘Jim Bob Live From London’, it’s not a great title but when you see the sleeve you’ll see it makes sense and declare me a genius.
Went to the iDOU http://www.adambestic.com/EmilyKappa-thumb.jpg
gig at the Bull & Gate, I like the Bull & Gate, I’ve lived through a lot of my personal music history there. I think the TV in the bar may be a mistake though, as I found myself watching the bands – iDOU excluded naturally – on the TV instead of making the effort to go through the big old swing doors to the actual venue.
Reading: ‘Wild Sheep Chase’ by Haruki Murakami, I might have to work my way through all his books now, although the six hundred page jobs make me a tad nervous.
Do you know what makes me want to emigrate?
James rhyming slang at number 1 in the singles and album charts for 5 weeks in a row.
Come on, own up, who’s bought it? Is it you? Somebody must have bought a copy.
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EUSTACHIAN TUBE CLOSED |
posted by jim on 30/07/05
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“It’s your Eustachian tube.” The consultant’s registrar told me. “It should sort itself out but might take a while, months, maybe a year.” He said that there wasn't much that could be done other than fitting a grommet under general anaesthetic, which was a tad risky because of the close proximity of the brain. Stick a plasticine dog in my head? Was he insane?
http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/.../Grommit.JPG I’d learn to live with the muffled hearing. At least I know why I’ve been listening to my heartbeat, pulse race and my footsteps step for the past eight months. http://www.slcent.com/eustachian.html
I went to visit my sister and her family in Devon for a day or two. I actually enjoyed the train journey, reading more than I manage in bed, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami http://www.murakami.ch/main_2.html . I quite like the relative solitude of a long train journey, especially if I get a seat away from restless kids and people on the phone. The only noise came from a couple of Welsh girls, one of them felt sick and kept going to the toilet to throw up while her friend – the loud one – offered her “cookies? Sugar? Water? Tea from the health food shop when we get there?” which all just made her sick friend more sick.
Walked on the moors, through woods, by rivers – with my sister and her children and their large dog. More outdoors than I ever experience shut away in my London cell. I’ve been recording demos of my next album – I think it’s called ‘School’ – I’m quite excited about the thing so far, I just need to find some more musicians, I know so few. Trumpet players drop a message to http://www.jim-bob.co.uk/contact.shtml
While I was in Devon, London was at war. Came home to transport chaos and walked across Hyde Park to avoid some of it, got on a bus which was then searched for packages by a community policeman. And then a drunk bloke got on and sat opposite me and started making dumb jokes about bombs and gas on the tube and then turned on me to tell me how Crystal Palace football ground was a shit-hole (I’d mistakenly tried to calm him down by getting myself involved in a conversation about football). After a bit of swearing at the bus driver, the drunk bloke got off the bus and we all cheered in the spirit of the blitz.
Life is imitating art through the work of James Blunt and his friends. The kind of singers and bands you get in programmes like the O.C. and Dawson’s Creek, made up by script writers, who’ve also written the songs, which sound a bit like songs but not really. There’s something manufactured for the plot about them. That’s what James Blunt sounds like to me, like an actor in the role of good looking but a little bit sad singer songwriter.
Why do you never see baby seagulls? You do, they’re on the roof of my mum’s neighbour’s house. It’s my mum’s birthday very soon, I’ve bought her some binoculars so she can observe the birds’ progress in full Bill Oddie close up, but there’s a risk they may have taken their first flight away from the rooftop before her birthday, should I give my mother the binoculars early?
That’s all really.
Reading: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, finished Haunted by Chuck P
Listening: Mainly to my own music as I’m writing and recording but have just bought Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom as I only have it on vinyl. It’s a two CD sketch now with 24 demos and other stuff.
Watching: Extras, Still Game (Marvellous)
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WAKE ME UP WHEN JULY ENDS |
posted by jim on 14/07/05
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Such a tragic day, that in my own tiny way I felt attached to.
Of course for me it was just a gig postponed and a rethink of my plans for the year, for many others it was so much worse.
I personally felt pretty empty after that horrible Thursday, but watching all the people out on the streets in silence today – it’s been said a hundred times already and by more articulate people than me – people of all religions, non religions, colours, creeds, nationalities etc, somehow united. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if that was the positive that came out of all this mess. Not the terrorists and the BNP advancing their causes to separate us but the exact opposite, wouldn’t that be nice.
On a Jim Bob note, I’ve been writing a lot of lyrics for my school album, it’s going to be superb, I’m pretty happy with the songs, the words are flooding out of me. I definitely seem to thrive artistically in a misery vacuum.
Went to see Bright Eyes http://extra.twincities.com/images/bright_eyes.jpg at Somerset House, http://www.picdiary.com/degrade.php?file=/misc/somersethouse.jpg he – they – was – were – absolutely amazing, I was inspired and so relieved that he wasn’t all rubbish and dissing John Peel. As a bonus, we went by car and managed to park almost exactly outside, how has that one passed the parking junta by? Got home just in time for the Tour De France highlights, why don’t they just put it on every night on ITV? That’s ITV1 by the way, not 2 which I haven’t got (no outside aerial). Every week is like The Likely Lads for me, trying to avoid the results of each day’s racing so I can watch it all in one tiny go on Monday night.
Great party at Crissi and Les’ house, not too hectic but very enjoyable.
I’ve had messages from all over the world asking if I’m ok, yes I am and thanks for asking. It’s good to have friends in these times that I think we call troubled.
Love to all.
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THURSDAY |
posted by jim on 8/07/05
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It’s a bad bad day
On a scale of 1 to Bad
It’s in the Guinness Book of Grey
The weatherman’s gone weather mad
There’s a storm on the horizon
There’s a twister in the breeze
Outside the underworld await
Sharpening their knives
Chaos come to those who hate
To see us live our lives
There’s a hardman in the harbour
Balaclava’d lager louts shout
It’s a bad day
It’s a bad bad day
And there ain’t no way it’s ever gonna go away
So I’ll just lay here on this motorway
And sing songs of sorrow
Sad songs that say
Roll on tomorrow
It’s been a bad day
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Wellington Boots |
posted by jim on 28/06/05
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I get these ideas, they tend to surface late at night, some of them I get excited over and go to bed, only to wake up feeling like I’ve had a mild nightmare. I now know that the previous evening’s amazing idea is in fact stupid and perhaps rubbish. One of these ideas was to form a school orchestra and perform a gig with them, I decided to run with it.
After my last tour I – and here’s another thing, my irrational fear of other people’s low boredom thresholds – I thought I needed to do something a bit different. There was a lot of talk about getting a band and I was considering it, which is how I somehow arrived at the school orchestra thing. That in turn would lead to the beginning of an album, call it a concept album if you like, call it a musical soundtrack if you prefer, but I started writing songs based around a school orchestra. I’ve now begun about eight different songs, it’s getting in the way of the book I’m supposed to be finishing and also my rehearsals for the live DVD. So then we book a gig at the Islington Academy, it’s a Christmas concert now http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0319343/Ss/0319343/elf_d87-8f.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0319343
The heat of the English summer has kept me indoors hiding from the noise of the neighbourhood, I’ve found myself wishing it would rain. I’ve watched a fair bit of Glastonbury on TV, at least the four or five acts the BBC have chosen to rotate for us. The Doves, KT Tunstall, Basement Jaxx, Fatboy Slim, Ian Brown, Coldplay http://www2.hawaii.edu/~stopar/images/coldplay.jpg and mainly James Blunt and Somebody Told Me by The Killers over and over again. I thought the White Stripes were mesmerising with their red carpeted stage, their red microphones, timpanis and marimbas, I love it when bands make an effort, put on a hat and a suit.
What about all the other stuff that was on? I wanted to see my mates on telly, I wanted to watch Chris T-T and Art Brut.
Talking of Coldplay http://www.echs.k12.sd.us/Adv%20Pages/Dustin/MY%20PAGE/pink-floyd-dark-side.jpg last night and again tonight they’re playing up the road from here, I heard them last night with fumfty thousand fans singing along to Yellow, there really is no escape. I’m jealous of their fans, of their success but not of the fact that their songs are not really about anything, I’m writing an album about a school orchestra.
Went to see the Frank & Walters at The Water Rats, marvellous.
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TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE |
posted by jim on 15/06/05
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There’s always talk on breakfast TV news programmes – particularly on BBC1’s brekkie prog, where they seem obsessed with the subject – about the troubles of Marks and Spencer and their falling profits etc.
I often go to Marks and Sparks’ cafe for a cappuccino and maybe an almond croissant. I think I may have touched on it in my fabulous autobiography, I’m not sponsored by M & S, far from it, I feel like I shouldn’t even be going into the shop, not even using it as a short cut between the bank and the Whitgift Centre when it’s raining or the high street is particularly full of chuggers http://www.dcu.ie/students/careers/fdr/grad.jpg and clipboard wielding British Gas bullies. I feel I shouldn’t really go there at all because Robert Newman told me not to for political reasons. Unfortunately I like their coffee shop, mainly because it’s customers are about 99% old ladies and the occasional old fella, all getting their cuppa chinos and free biscuit, I like to go places where I’m the youngest person there, it’s good for my ego.
Every now and again they’ll experiment with a change of free biscuit and every time they do it doesn’t work and they have to change back again. People of a certain age don’t like change, wasn’t it William Shakespeare who once said ‘modern life is rubbish’ and went on to record a whole LP about it to illustrate his point.
And then imagine my dismay when Marks try to go all American and marketing man tricksy on me and the OAPs by changing the cup sizes from regular and large to small and regular. This is supposed to make you feel a bit cheap about ordering a small cup and most people want a regular sized drink anyway. Therefore everyone ends up with a bucket of cuppo chino they can’t drink for more money http://www.thom.org/photos/SKDVcoffeepot.jpg , don’t these fools know who their customers are? They should take a look sometime, get out of their smug offices and boardrooms and focus groups, they might see the poor woman serving the old ladies and indie pop stars and have to explain to each and everyone that regular is really actually quite big. And now they’ve had to put empty cups on display with post-it notes stuck on, one with the word SMALL on and the other saying REGULAR. And now they’ve fucked about with the shape of my almond croissant.
In between all this I’ve been writing, both book and music, more news soon.
Finished reading Rat Scabies and The Holy Grail, great book and have started Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk http://www.chuckpalahniuk.com/images/fight-club-novelist-chuck-palahniuk.gif
I don’t know what this might say about me but I’ve bought CDs by Rufus Wainwright and Elliott Smith, if you type these words into Google images you get this: http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0001W8DNS.03.MZZZZZZZ.jpg I like him as well.
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A NEW MOON IS BORN – I THINK I'LL CALL HIM KEITH |
posted by jim on 6/06/05
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There’s a new moon, it’s a national holiday in the Rebub of Ireland and it’s Ben Lambert from Jim’s Super Stereoworld, the Abdoujaps and Carter’s birthday, happy birthday Ben.
Billy Bragg is on the radio, there’s a great new song by Chris T-T http://www.christt.com/ called Preaching To The Converted that has a line about Billy Bragg going fishing in his 4 by 4, I don’t know if that’s poetic licence or song based fact but Chris T-T is a genius.
I was at an airport in Shoreham in Sussex on Saturday http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thestevedaq/air.jpg , I went to see Chris play and also to do a set of songs myself. It was a small festival but tremendous. I did the sort of set I might have done if I was playing at Reading or Glastonbury – the Shoreham gig was called Glastonwick by the way – there is an entertainer in me that loves to please crowds. In that respect I’m like Robbie Williams http://www.sillyjokes.co.uk/dress-up/masks/pop-stars/robbie-williams.html but that’s where the similarities end, I’m not rich beyond my wildest dreams, or indeed arrogant beyond my richest dreams. I haven’t started dressing like Freddie Starr and I didn’t used to be in Take That.
Been planning my future, after the DVD I might do something ambitious and bonkers, but I won’t tell anybody yet because it might not happen and then I’ll look daft http://www.sillyjokes.co.uk/dress-up/masks/pop-stars/robbie-williams.html I like to keep everyone guessing, most of all myself but I will say that I am currently burning the creative carrot at all available ends.
Went to see Beck at the Hammersmith Odeon, where do they put all the seats?
He was fantastic, nicked all my ideas as usual.
Listening to the Art Brut album http://artbrut.nikkidido.com/
Reading ‘Rat Scabies and The Holy Grail’ http://www.geocities.com/ratscabiesholygrail
by Christopher Dawes who is a friend of mine and used to be called Push.
Watching ‘Conviction’ BBC2 Saturday nights http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/conviction.shtml
Ian Dury is on the radio now, hitting me with his rhythm stick, which reminds me of an incident with the great man in Spain in 1992. http://www.sol.com/images/CA%20Castilla%20la%20Mancha/mancha.jpg
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