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WHERE WILL I SHOPLIFT NOW? |
posted by jim on 21/10/05
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I don’t like to bad mouth the family but, my local Safeways which is now a Morrisons is closing down. Just in time to avoid the Christmas rush. About a week before the big day all the staff will be jobless and I’ll have nowhere to buy my potatoes and cheese from. Those bloody Morrisons. And it’s no use mum going to Iceland because I hear that’s also closing down. I shall starve to death.
My manager and the shady character from Eldorado, Marcus Tandy is moving into the area soon, he’ll starve to death as well http://www.geocities.com/cyberrobert/birdsall.jpg
It’s a funny old world don’t you think?
Michael Jackson has been called up for jury service, he is expected to get out of it on a technicality. A copper put an unruly boy in a waste paper bin.
The bloke who dressed up us the rozzer in The Village People is wanted by the police http://a.abclocal.go.com/images/071505_victor_willis.jpg
On the other hand, if anybody believes that truth is stranger than fiction, they obviously haven’t read any Chuck Palahniuk.
My ears and the state of them is driving me up the wall, going to the doctors is such a frustrating exercise and something I’ve avoided like the bird flu for years, so I shouldn’t really complain. Both ears are muffled now, me and Beethoven and Eric Sykes. Don’t heckle me, I probably can’t hear you.
Played a triumphant gig in Bedford – never thought that was a sentence I’d use. The last time I played the town, everyone sat with their backs to me and had a chat, half the girls were sick outside and the other half were crying, it was like all my bad teenager party experiences in one big Bedfordshire flashback lump.
I’m on Radio 2 next week. This means various things to me: Firstly, I deserve to be on the radio more, so I’m happy about that. And Radio 2 is the very radio to be on, it’s got bulk listeners but most importantly of all, I got my name in the Radio Times this week. It's one of the two magazines I buy and read religiously every week and have done for years. The other mag is Time Out, who in spite of my loyal subscription, have never had a kind word to say about me.
Reading Rik Mayall, or rather, The Rik Mayall’s ‘Bigger Than Hitler, Better Than Christ’ book. If my manager, or the dude from Eldorado, wrote a book I would expect it to be like this.
Listening to John Lennon at the moment, there’s a reason other than sheer pleasure.
Find out at Christmas.
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STUDIO DIARY PART TWO |
posted by jim on 10/10/05
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So I went on back to the recording studio and, in what in these self indulgent days could be considered record quick time, Tears For Fears would have turned over in their graves – if they were dead of course – we finished the first nine songs of the ‘School’ album, we recorded my vocals and mixed into the night and early morning and the songs now sound wicki wicki wah wah west. I went home to record the simpler 3 remaining tunes at the less spectacular Stereoworld Studios and with a dozen songs recorded and sounding to me like the greatest album ever made, I went to Stanstead Airport.
In the adjacent airport check-in queue to Team Jim Bob, there was a very hairy David Baddiel checking in for a Spanish bound flight…oh and look, Clive Anderson…and Angus Deaton and various other recognisable TV faces, all going to the same mysterious place, I wonder where and why they were going.
I forgot to say, I’ve seen a rough version of the live DVD and it’s looking pretty damn good, particularly happy with the look of my suit, my only regret is that I swore so much, at least eleven effings, effs or effers. My mum is going to see this.
Team JB’s first night in Berlin was to be a planned quiet night with a few beers and a chat and no hangover to muss up the following day’s sightseeing and Jim Bob show. Of course this would turn into many more beers and then some cocktails and another great plan scuppered by our weakness for the juice of a good time.
The following day we walked our hangovers around the streets of Berlin and in spite of it being my fumftieth visit I still have no sense of direction and follow Mr Spoons around like something that follows something else around.
The gig was not for me one of my best performances, it was pretty late into the next morning when I stepped onto the stage, without my self-confidence, basic guitar skills, the lyrics to the second verse of ‘The Music That Nobody Likes’ and a bit of a silly set list. A set list with maybe too many Carter hit singles on it, not enough ‘Angelstrike!’ tunes and I really should know the words to ‘Sheriff Fatso’ by now, surely to goodness.
That same evening Robbie Williams was also in town,
http://www.leeds.gov.uk/GrandTheatre/graphics/fs.jpg
playing his one and only European show this year to 8 thousand lucky Berliners, he showed up at my gig and caught the second half of my set and then we had a big fist fight, which I won, I broke two of his teeth and Mr Spoons knocked out three burly Williams bodyguards, while Marc O beat the shit out of his manager with a baby football table.
Anyway, I felt a tad ashamed of myself for my below par musical performance but the audience were kind enough to tell me I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was and that made me feel better so I had a gin and tonic. This is the drink that I first tried when I was in Holland with Richy from Abdou/Idou, up till then it was a drink I thought I didn’t like but now I’ve sort of taken to it, even if I can still taste the mothers’ ruin a good two days later.
Flew back to London at stupid O’clock in the morning and forced myself to stay awake all day, or at least until I’d watched Midsummer Murders, which I’m watching as I type this. It’s got the Welsh dude from ‘This Life’ in it, what happened to the other of Bergerac’s copper sidekick’s? Have I missed something? Can you imagine living in a village with so many horrific and violent homicides? Lambeth shmambeth. Now I’m thinking, shall I watch the ep of ‘Arrested Development’ I’ve just videoed (I love that programme)? Or I could go for the first of a two-parter of ‘Waking The Dead’ that I’ve also taped, or I may just plump for the Alan Bennett South Bank Show, because I’m a vulture for a spot of culture.
I’m forming the live version of the Jim Bob School Orchestra for the Islington Academy gig, there should be ten or twelve people on stage that night, it’s going to be amazing. Christ I hope it’s going to be amazing. I think the new album is going to knock people’s socks off. Blow them away. Probably really piss a few critics off as well.
The German for hiccups is schluckaufs, travel really does broaden the mind.
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STUDIO DIARY PART 1 |
posted by jim on 27/09/05
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It’s time to enter the recording studio to realise my ‘School’ project. Various musicians and friends – and combinations of the two – will be popping in and out to record their parts over the course of the sessions and hopefully I’d be able to sit there on my producer’s throne and watch the whole thing take wonderful shape.
The recording studio is, compared to where I live, in the middle of nowhere. http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000001ES7.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg I won’t see anybody who isn’t involved in the recording for a whole week and once again I’ll be thinking about escaping London for good. The studio is in a converted oast house, they used to cook hops in the room we’re recording in. I’m there with my mates, Mr Spoons is cooking lovely food and the weather is my favourite kind: that sort of sunshine, but not too hot, with a nice breeze weather. Outdoor Sunday newspaper reading weather. At night we relax and some of us maybe get a bit drunk and we talk rubbish till the early hours. I’m going back to sing the lead vocals this week and hopefully mix the album which, and I may have said this sort of thing before, but it really is sounding abso-fucking-lutely extraordinary.
Taking the advice of the Carter message-board I’m reading Haruki Murakami’s ‘South of The Border West of The Sun’.
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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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