ghost town

whilst the politicians and big corporations are living it up, at a certain London sports event, this is what the reality of life and sporting facilities are like for real people. empty shops on the high street, sports areas fenced off from the public, run-down public facilities that date back to another century. no £1 million pound double-decker buses on our high-streets, or common people being given huge sponsorship deals.... music is by the excellent soap operatic society the voice is Helen Highwater of The Ritas the lyrics are by me, written over a day on twitter, when i was feeling particularly annoyed with the corporate schmooze-fest. the original footage and images, were taken during a very wet and bleak friday, and partly inspired by The Clash film Hell W10. anyhoo, here's the lyrics, as originally written:

I'm claiming ownership of #lumberin2012borelimpics #lumberin2012borelimpics will be the penultimate festival of TheNewBoring, featuring a 200ft statue of Adele, 1000 LiamGallaghers... ...There will be a TributeToXfactor tribute act, 30 sensitive singer songwriters will impale themselves on flaming accoustic guitars... 25,000 footballers wives and reality TV stars will lead a procession, headed by FernCotton dressed as TheQueen and Nickleback will perform.. there will be a marathon 48 hour edition of "8 out of 10 cats" where #seanlocke will insult a guest, with the same put-down, over and over. Meanwhile, I'll be out of the country, somewhere interesting. Enjoy. #lumberin2012borelimpics #lumberin2012borelimpics Banksy to unveil new mural of an albino hamster, in a baseball cap, smuggly listening to a DJShadow compilation cd. #lumberin2012borelimpics the EDL/UKIP to host ThePalaceOfTheEmpire and bang on about invading foriegners, whilst dressed as Crusaders... #lumberin2012borelimpics there will be no hoodies, no smoking, no drinking, no dogs, no Irish, no free-speech, but there will be a McDonalds #lumberin2012borelimpics in the skies, chrismoyles and 100 lesser #radio1 DJs will do a fly-past, bouyed-up on their own hot-air... #lumberin2012borelimpics on day 2: 100 boybands will reform as tribute acts, and then release cover versions of classic boyband songs. #lumberin2012borelimpics a large inflatable DavidCameron head will float across the London skies, spitting soggy "BorisBalls" at the locals. #lumberin2012borelimpics everyone gets complementary cans of Carling, UnionJack hats and a cd-copy of "Simon Cowell Sings The Hits of Oasis' #lumberin2012borelimpics Argyle & Bute do the catering but no one's allowed to photograph anything. #lumberin2012borelimpics Starbucks and Carling to serve-up a special boring drink - "The Lageraccino" that gets you both drunk AND sober. #lumberin2012borelimpics for 2 weeks only, every day will be a Tuesday. #lumberin2012borelimpics all the different Bristish street tribes will get together and tell each other they aren't "authentic" #lumberin2012borelimpics James Blunt+Elbow to team-up and write a song lasting 36 hours, about a woman who's really sad about something. To celebrate the #lumberin2012borelimpics Adele will release her own brand of socks, to be sold in the Co-op. To celebrate #lumberin2012borelimpics Ford will release a new model, called "The Car", which will basically be a car. During the. #lumberin2012borelimpics every episode of Eastenders, will be filmed on the moon. For security reasons, during #lumberin2012borelimpics Police will be allowed to arrest groups of people, found to be congregating on buses. The #lumberin2012borelimpics Official Programme, will have no words, just pictures of BorisJohnson reading emails at his desk. The fortnight long #lumberin2012borelimpics will last for 365 days, weather permitting. During the fortnight of #lumberin2012borelimpics all PCs bought will have Windows 87 installed, whether you want it, or not. During the #lumberin2012borelimpics Ed Sheeran will think really hard about a song, but not actually write it, and have a cup of tea instead At #lumberin2012borelimpics Coldplay will change their postcodes Live-Onstage in front of 1000s of adoring fans. During #lumberin2012borelimpics Noel Gallagher will be offsetting his carbon footprint, by smacking himself everytime he has a song idea. In celebration of #lumberin2012borelimpics DaveCameron will claim he's going to pose nude for Playboy, but deputises the job to NickClegg The #lumberin2012borelimpics weather will be: sunny spells, temp of 28 degrees, untill 11:00am, followed by heavy rain for rest of the day During #lumberin2012borelimpics LillyAllen will reform ...twice. In celebration of #lumberin2012borelimpics MickHucknall will star in a reality TV show, but not actually appear on it, as he's on tour. On TV during #lumberin2012borelimpics TimeTeam will bury the body of a 2000 year old archaeologist, in Nuneaton. #lumberin2012borelimpics DizzeeRascal and RossKemp to star in a soap-opera about "grime". #lumberin2012borelimpics Lloyd Grossman to host a show about non-famous people called "Bryan Ferry". Depeche Mode to reform with an all-new line-up, and to re-write a cod-reggae version of WalkingOnSunshine for #lumberin2012borelimpics This must be waht life is like in SponsoredTweetLand everyday #lumberin2012borelimpics #lumberin2012borelimpics wayne rooney, wayne rooney,wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney.

only for sheep

or, me and dexys midnight runners in my life today.
i am a big fan of the first album.... there is something about the synchronicity involved in it - the band sounded and looked like the last gang in town, they were a direct reaction to the guitar led RAWK music of the times, hijacking gigs and blowing the main band away in a wave of brass... which no cutting edge band was doing at the time.
they had instrumentals, poetry, spoken word...
i have that album on vinyl nowadays, and on unaltered cd(not the expanded version, i can't bring myself to mess with perfection just yet...)
the look was based on dockers from "on the waterfront" one of my favourites... and i have to admit i did sport a woollen beanie, black jeans/jumper and leather box jacket... with my white adidas holdall - around the one-horse town i grew up in, much to the mirth and merriment of the local cooler-than-thou punk cogniscenti who were all so-oh fashionable in their biker jackets(i've never owned a biker jacket to this day...).
searching for the young soul rebels became something of an epiphany for me... this big slab of emotion, like hearing my generation or elvis for the first time - the music press in the day ruefully printed the headline "dexys album actually quite good", as if they begrudged the fact that a group of brummies could actually do something that wasn't pastiche, but had real feeling.
each track spoke to me about my life back then... hanging out in caffs, running in the streets... the teenage thing.
there was something in-between the lines about it all, a mystical quality like pet sounds has(pet sounds being my benchmark for how a life changing album should sound)
ironically, now i live in the area that the band were from... the teams that meet in caffs, was perhaps a reference to the mythical little nibble on bearwood high street, about two doors away from where i catch my bus everyday...
we went to the nibble for a few saturdays, to smoke and eat greasy spoon food, but the seats were all from different tables, the sauce bottles were empty, and the clientele had long since gone over to the dark side... sitting amongst large old people in strange timeless raincoats who stared into space, or younger people who pinged the video-machine.
there was an air of impending gloom about the place - probably due to the fact that it was about to close, change hands and turn into a cafe bistro, which lasted all of five minutes (they got rid of the neat little curved window on the doorway), and now it's opening again as a take-away chicken shop....
kevin rowland used to live round here, he had a house in oldbury and got himself a flat on the hagley road, where he lived with his then girlfriend who played violin in dexys.
i met pete williams the original bass player a couple of times back in the mid-90's, he actually produced a demo for some band i was playing bass for, in some dingy flea infested underground recording studio.
he made of good job of it too(he was always busy working with local music and theatre groups).
me, i blanched when he mentioned "i used to play bass in a band", and i mumbled something and tried to carry-on without tripping up over the fact that someone who had orchestrated one of my favourite albums was in the room, watching me fluff my (bass)lines.
i ran into to him again, at a dexys convention, when after a night of having kevin rowland's brother hand out red marlboro to me, pete turned-up to meet the small crowd of rather drunk people who'd been watching videos all day.
he was looking for someone to re-issue the bureau album, and i had a contact who was interested in having it on his record label... so i gave him contact details and never heard from him again.
but pete was ever the modest man... i was impressed by his humility, and now i know the depth of his talent.
just finished reading the dexy midnight runners young soul rebels book by richard white.
reading the book, i never realised until now, just how much of a player pete williams was in the band... along with all the other members - i'd always been intrigued as to the make-up of the band and how they had arranged the music... it was a lot more democratic than was previously thought.
the dexys convention was a good day out, some nice people there, my first ever internet meetup i might add - back in the early days of such things... i got there and found someone had come all the way from new zealand, to sit and watch videos or attempt a karaoke, and discuss how much they all loved bruce springsteen's music.

needless to say, after the initial band split, i went with the bureau whose sound harked back to the early dexys... and i never got to hear the blue ox babes as they disapeared from the radar pretty quick, owing to the fact that the dexys sound borrowed heavily from theirs, but only dexys had the huge record company backing.
kevin archer turns out to be the real musical genius, coming up with a lot of the ideas and sound of both album one and two.
he's kind-of disapeared these days, which is a shame.
but back to the book - in fact, i admit i did skim through the recording of the 3rd album, as it had all got a bit boring by then, falling out with nameless session men, firing and hiring producers, touring the world and feeling unhappy, getting van morrison in to sing and he just sat there looking moody...
just regular music biz stuff really.
no, i was into that early period, when the sound was cooking... i never really got into the raggle, taggle gypsey thing(i'd heard it all before), and come on eileen was a turkey (or in kevin's case, an albatross), which i remember mostly for having danced to at a scooter beach party on the west coast at three in the morning(geno was connected to the day i was in bed feeling ill, and had the radio on with the song on heavy rotation...).
by the third album, it had all gone pop... drafting in seasoned session men, wearing suitzzzzzzzzzz, and i'd drifted off to other sounds.
the bureau had one good album, lots of that bluesy attitude - all the good bits, they had one shot at it and left the stage.
although they are together and playing nowadays...
now that i've heard the blue ox babes, and even got bounder to play them on his excellent radio show at the weekend, on a birmingham music special - i regret not digging them out before.
do you know, at one point i toyed with the idea of writing a dexys musical, now having read the book, i have no excuse not to(it was going to be a parable with king arthur connections in it), i mentioned the idea at the convention i went to all those years ago... but it didn't go down too well.... it would have been a one man thing, with backing music...
but thankfully, i never got to taint the memory of such a sound!

rowland is a genius, you can tell by the erratic way his life progressed, he said he had a plan, but the guy was a creative maverick, no doubt there, but he had some talented people backing him up in the beginning.
they had it all, genius.