9 other things to do with a guitar

It’s all very well being able to play a guitar, but what else can you do with one?

1. You can spin around with it or even just spin it around:

 

2. You can perform acrobatics with it:

 

3. You can twat somebody with it:

 

4. You can take a chainsaw to it:

 

5. You can just smash it up:

 

6. You can blow it up:

 

7. You can use it for background music whilst you juggle:

 

8. You can make a bike ride more entertaining:

 

9. You can attach an outboard motor to a 20 foot long guitar (if you have one handy) and go for a cruise on the river:

 

Climb up on my knee…

It’s a sad fact that with the recent death of Dave ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, the genre of music called ‘the Blues’ lost someone who was probably our last link with the people who have made the music what it is today and enriched its legacy out of all proportion to its humble beginnings.

Honeyboy was the last of the Delta bluesmen – as far as we know – and he actually knew and played with people like Robert Johnson. In fact, he stated that he was actually with Johnson when he drank the poisoned whiskey that allegedly killed him.

Having said all that, the world of the itinerant black blues musician in the 1930s and 1940s was so badly recorded (indeed, why would anyone grasp the significance of musical events at this time and preserve it for posterity?) that rumour, speculation and even lies have often obscured the real version of events.

What we’re left with is a mish-mash of anecdotal histories and biographies that both fascinates and frustrates.

Take a blues great like Elmore James, for example.

James was a seminal figure in the Blues, with his trademark slide riffs, his poetic lyrics and his frail but commanding voice. He cut dozens upon dozens of sides for a multitude of record labels – often recording the same songs or slightly adapted versions – and learned his craft in the company of Johnson and other Delta notables of the 1930s and 40s.

However, dig just a little deeper and an interview with his elder cousin ‘Homesick’ James casts some doubt on how much kudos Elmore should really have. Homesick claims that he taught his younger cousin how to play slide, that he either co-wrote or wrote classic Elmore James songs like ‘Dust my Broom’ and played as much, if not more slide as Elmore on record and at gigs.

Quite how much Homesick is to be believed is hard to say. There are obvious financial incentives to be economical with the truth, and no-one ever wrote down what actually went on at the time.

Thus, we’re left with stories that may or may not be true but can never be verified.

And that’s part of the pleasure I get from early blues music and the study of its proponents.

It’s a sort of mythology and as long as you’re content to accept that much of it has little basis in truth then it’s as fascinating, in its way, as any Greek or Roman tale of heroism and divine machination.

One of the most interesting characters in blues history – and one who epitomises everything I find engrossing about it – is Sonny Boy Williamson.

To be exact, Sonny Boy Williamson II.

Actually, to be even more exact, Aleck or Alex or Willie Rice Miller or Ford.

(When I say exact, I mean as exact as Sonny Boy II wanted to be about himself…)

He was also known variously as Sonny Boy Williams, Willie Williamson, Willie Miller, Little Boy Blue, The Goat and Footsie, but that’s another whole shitload of stories that’ll have to keep for another time…

However, I hear you ask, if Aleck was known as Sonny Boy Williamson II, was there a Sonny Boy Williamson I?

To which I can truthfully reply, yes there certainly fucking was.

Sonny Boy the First was actually born John Lee Curtis Williamson in 1914, dying in 1948.

Like Sonny Boy II, Sonny Boy I was a harmonica player and singer who pioneered the instrument as a solo player, had a great deal of success with his many recordings and kept such illustrious company as Muddy Waters throughout his relatively short professional life.

So, Sonny Boy I and II were both significant harp players and singers, but they weren’t even remotely related.

Why then did Sonny Boy II ‘borrow’ Sonny Boy I’s stage name?

Well, if you thought “money”, then you’ve guessed the reason.

As this very informative article puts it:

By the early ’40s, he was the star of KFFA`s King Biscuit Time, the first live blues radio show to hit the American airwaves. As one of the major ruses to occur in blues history, his sponsor-the Interstate Grocery Company-felt they could push more sacks of their King Biscuit Flour with Miller posing as Chicago harmonica star John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson.

It was a rather clumsy deception, but it obviously worked as the name stuck with Miller and there don’t seem to have been any lawsuits. Although the Insterstate Grocery Company didn’t actually pay him much, they allowed him to plug his gigs on air and this helped push up his earnings by getting bigger crowds to see him.

Indeed, such ruses involving aliases and stage names weren’t uncommon, with such luminaries as the late, great John Lee Hooker recording for different record companies under a variety of names early on in his career.

As well as his own name, he recorded under the names of Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, The Boogie Man, Johnny Lee (getting slightly less imaginative now), John Lee, and even John Lee Booker and John Lee Cooker.

The latter two names must have taken fucking ages to think up…

Anyway, to his grave, Sonny Boy II dubbed himself the ‘real Sonny Boy Williamson’, in spite of appropriating Sonny Boy I’s stage name whilst #1 was at the height of his career.

It probably helped both men that Sonny Boy #2 didn’t start recording until long after #1 was dead and buried, although his recording career didn’t exactly set the world alight. In fact, somewhat ironically, it wasn’t until his contract was sold on to Checker Records – a subsidiary of the famous Chess Records Company – because he was so difficult to work with that he started to get blues chart success.

Recording with the likes of Willie Dixon and Robert Lockwood Jr, Sonny Boy II wrote and released many songs which have become blues standards – all marked by witty, sometimes desolate lyrics, a quavering baritone and sharp piercing harp lines. Notable successes include ‘Eyesight to the Blind’, ‘Help Me’, ‘Checkin’ up on my Baby’, Nine Below Zero’, ‘Don’t Start me to Talkin’’ and ‘Bring it on Home’, the latter covered by Led Zeppelin on their second album, but attributed to Page and Plant…

Sonny Boy II was a real showman. He’d play with the harp inside his mouth and up his nose.

Here he is from the early 1960s:

He spent a lot of time in Europe towards the end of his career and acquired a rather eccentric image for which he sported a chequerboard suit, a bowler hat, a furled umbrella and a briefcase which held his harps and a bottle of whiskey.

And yes, Sonny Boy #2 liked a drink…in fact, as well as being a drinker he was a gambler, conman, brawler (wiry, but 6 feet tall and often armed with a blade) and ladies man, with a wicked sense of humour,

He was backed by some of the early UK beat groups when he toured the country and dubbed the Animals the ‘Mammimals’ and, with reference to the Yardbirds, he had this to say:

“These British want to play the blues so bad…and they play the blues so bad!”

He died in 1965 soon after he returned to the US, but even his gravestone is somewhat ambivalent – not about his name, but about the year of his birth. Although it states 1908, Sonny Boy #2 claimed it was 1899, although census evidence suggests it was 1912.

If it was 1912, then 53 years of hard living had certainly taken their toll!

However, amongst all the hard living, subterfuge and other roguish antics, Sonny Boy II was generous when it came to helping his fellow players. He mentored a young Howlin’ Wolf – who seems to have been his brother-in-law – and also helped spread the word about a guitarist and singer who went on to be known as BB King.

So, Sonny Boy II was many things throughout his life, but his constant was his music.

As usual, to conclude this post by letting the music do the talking, here’s Aleck, Rice, Sonny Boy II, whoever he was, with one of his classic compositions.

Just him and his harp…

Fuck You in the Super U

Living in France sometimes has its surreal side.

Take today, for example…

There I am in the Super U in Pouance buying bread and some pate for lunch. It’s fairly quiet although there’s piped musical pap playing in the background.

And then I hear something I actually like.

It’s a track by Cee Lo Green (who some joker once informed me is Hughie Green’s grandson) that was a hit a few months ago.

 

 

I like it because it reminds me of some of the Philly stuff Ifrom the 1970s. It’s great, in fact – good arrangement, fantastic voice…

But the lyrics are somehow different.

He’s singing the ‘alternative’ version.

Here’s what I’ve heard before and was expecting to hear again:

 

 

And here’s what I actually heard:

 

Of course, as far as the French are concerned it’s just a song sung in a foreign language so it’s not at all offensive.

All the same, it amused me to see grannies and mums with kids shopping whilst old Cee Lo was singing ’Fuck you and fuck her too’…

Headline of the century?

 

Zippy for mayor!

The comments section in the online Daily Mail is often worth a chuckle.

Today has been no exception with the news that the UK is about to get its first BNP mayor.

The worst rated comment on the story reads as follows:

What a disgrace. People should not be allowed to vote for fascist parties. The UK is a democracy not a Nazi state.

– Rainbow, Hackney, 12/4/2011 13:30

I don’t think Rainbow quite gets this democracy stuff…

Battered by the Ornaments

Pete Brown.

Who?

Well, if like me you were around and listening to music in the late 1960s then you might remember him as the lyricist who wrote with various members of Cream.

I hope he got a good royalties deal because, amongst other songs, he wrote ‘I Feel Free’ and ‘White Room’ with  bassist Jack Bruce and ‘Sunshine of your Love’ with banjoist Eric Clapton.

Anyway, perhaps it was writing for a band that inspired the move, who knows, but our Pete formed his own band in 1968.

Pete Brown and the Battered Ornaments comprised Brown on vocals with Pete Bailey (percussion), Charlie Hart (keyboards), Dick Heckstall Smith (sax), George Kahn (sax), Roger Potter (bass), Chris Spedding (guitar) and Rob Tait (drums).

Quite a line up, and one which actually delivered on their debut album ‘A Meal you can Shake Hands with in the Dark ‘. Although the music is hard to characterise, it’s actually a pretty early stab at British jazz rock – think Hatfield and the North and National Health – with the added humour of Brown’s lyrics and delivery.

Spedding, Hart, Kahn and Heckstall Smith take some great solos whilst the rest of the band provide a rock solid but flexible accompaniment.

For me, there are four stand out tracks which add up to well over half the album so not too bad a ratio of goodies.

The opener, ‘Dark Lady’ has some great slide guitar from Spedding (he plays a lot of slide throughout the album)  with an explosive solo from Heckstall Smith. Hart plays some lovely Hammond on this which is surprising because although he was hired to play keys, he’s not best known as a keyboard player. Brown supplies singing which is both effective and idiosyncratic.

Cream fans will be interested in Brown’s own 12 minute version of ‘Politician’, which has far more verses than the Cream track, and this features a very funny spoken improvised intro from Brown all about the events that lead up to the events in the song itself – the bit about him kissing his butler on the fly still amuses me greatly, even after over 40 years…oh and the mention of a girl’s ‘flowery khyber’…and the ‘politician’s pinstripes vibrating with neon glow’. There then follows a sax solo – no backing – which sounds like someone being very sick but in a good way and then the song itself. No Clapton riff, but instead a very uptempo 12 bar with great saxes and slide guitar. In fact, I prefer this to Cream’s version.

‘Sandcastle’ has a great bass riff with a faintly Eastern melody, wah slide guitar and flute. No laughs here from Brown but the band really carries this track so no matter.

The other stand out track is a 12 minute 12 bar which shows that the Battered Ornaments could have been a blues band to reckon with. Entitled ‘Travelling Blues (Or The New Used Jew’s Dues Blues) it has great solos again and more clowning from Brown who wants to go to the country (man) where ‘the colours of the cows are cool’.

The other tracks are good, don’t get me wrong, but not up to the high standard of the four described above.

So, what happened next?

Well, they recorded a follow up called ‘Mantelpiece’ and then they got booked to support the Stones at the legendary Hyde Park gig.

Things were looking good!

However, in a move that I believe is without precedent in rock, the band sat down, decided Pete had to go and sacked him!

A bizarre move as it was Pete’s band in the first place…

‘Mantelpiece’ had Pete’s vocals wiped and replaced by Chris Spedding’s and the band was renamed – rather predictably – ‘The Battered Ornaments’.

The Ornaments had zero success – despite playing Hyde Park with the Stones – and Pete went on to form Piblokto, which was OK but not up to the Ornaments’ standard.

Surprisingly, Pete Brown’s still.making music and his recent stuff bears investigation. His recent collaborations with Phil Ryan (ex-Man, ex-Piblokto) are a little too serious for my taste but the band is good and Brown sounds as if he’s taken singing lessons.

Anyway, as ever, Spotify is your friend and you can hear ‘Meal’ (and Piblokto and the recent Brown/Ryan stuff) and judge for yourself.

I think it’s a great little album.

The truth, almost the truth and nothing like the truth

So, the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests is well and truly underway.

Today the police officer who pushed Tomlinson over, minutes before he died, was giving evidence.

Pc Simon Harwood stood by his statement in which he said Mr Tomlinson’s posture was “almost defiant”.

Almost defiant?

So not defiant then.

I’m glad we’ve got that sorted.

Carry on like that and we’ll have criminals pleading ‘almost guilty’.

Giving evidence for the third day, Pc Harwood said he had not expected the newspaper seller to fall over and he had not helped him while he lay on the ground because it was not part of his training.

So, Harwood doesn’t expect someone to fall over when he pushes them. OK, that might not happen every time you push someone, but surely you expect it to happen sometimes.

Oh, and heaven help you if this police officer arrives first on the scene at an accident because there’s fuck all he can do for you due to his lack of first aid training.

Are we really expected to believe that standard basic first aid training is not given to serving police officers out amongst the public?

Matthew Ryder QC, for the Tomlinson family, said Pc Harwood was denying events clearly visible on the video.

He asked Pc Harwood: “Do you agree he had his back to you? We’re all here in this room looking at the video.”

Mr Tomlinson was filmed moments before he died on 1 April 2009

Pc Harwood replied: “No.”

Mr Ryder said: “You’re lying Pc Harwood, I suggest, and you know it.”

To that, Pc Harwood said: “No. I’m just trying to help.”

 

Tomlinson quite clearly has his back to Harwood.

Harwood was trying to help by lying?

Trying to help himself more like…

The officer maintained that “from his angle” it had appeared Mr Tomlinson had not been moving away.

I thought minimum eyesight requirements were rather higher for the Met, as it appears Harwood is virtually blind.

Pc Harwood has already apologised to the Tomlinson family for “any way” he may be responsible for the death.

He has admitted Mr Tomlinson was no threat to him or his colleagues before he hit him with a baton and pushed him.

So, Harwood admits he may be responsible for the death of Tomlinson and, moreover, that he assaulted Tomlinson twice prior to his death.

Members of Mr Tomlinson’s family walked out in tears after hearing the policeman’s denials.

Hardly surprising after Harwood’s behaviour up to that moment.

Pc Harwood, who is suspended from the force on full pay, has been told he will not face any criminal prosecutions over what happened – but he is still facing a Met Police misconduct hearing, due to take place after the inquest.

Off work with full pay and exempt from criminal prosecution?

Now that really is adding insult to injury.

The success of failure…the failure of success

Language is an amazing thing…

…whether it’s your own with all the expressive power and beauty that you can summon up in order to communicate or a foreign language that you’re trying to come to grips with.

After 7 months here in France, it’s getting slowly but steadily easier to both understand spoken French and to speak it ourselves.

I find the whole French language ‘experience’ very rewarding and today was great, with an hour-long chat with our neighbour, totally in French, and then arranging a delivery of firewood with M. Thireau at Renaze when I also had to give him directions to our place, again all in French.

Obviously, I’m still exposed to English (we’re not so immersed in the culture that we’re conversing in French at home, and the Sky Box carries all the usual English-speaking channels) and the few ex-pats that we have dealings with – we didn’t move here to get involved in some sort of British enclave – give us a chance to chat in our Mother Tongue from time to time.

However, after intermittently watching British TV here for a few months, I feel forced to ask, what the FUCK has happened to the English language?

In particular, what the FUCK is it with all this ‘heart and soul’ and ‘with passion/passionate about’ shite?

It seems that almost everyone who does anything has done, is doing or will do whatever it is with all their ‘heart and soul’ or that they’re ‘passionate’ about it.

It doesn’t matter what it is, there’s always this self-promoting, self-justifying cack which really doesn’t mean anything after even superficial analysis.

I’ve even heard it justifying total failure where it’s used as some sort of excuse – ‘well, I was really passionate about it’ – as if simply wanting to do something was some sort of key to success. What about skill, talent, practice or self-discipline, for fuck’s sake? 

Everyone, from an X-Factor contestant to a Commonwealth Games competitor, puts their ‘heart and soul’ into their efforts and says so with monotonous regularity  – but how else should they approach their endeavours if they’re serious about gaining success?

But it’s not just that these once valid but sparingly-used expressions of supreme effort and mental dedication have lapsed into cliché – they’re now used to justify lacklustre and mediocre achievement and even abject failure.

Fuck me…I can just about tolerate these expressions from people who clearly make an effort – it’s just lazy speech – but when it’s some obviously talentless twat in a TV talent show then it’s a bit more than just linguistic sloppiness – it’s self-delusion, as they clearly mean it.

Personally, I find it somehow emblematic of a generation, sapped of ambition through a culture of tolerance towards the average and mediocre, which now believes that merely stating that an effort has been made is the same as actually making an effort.

Increasingly low expectations in society  have robbed people of the ability to self-criticise and self-evaluate, with the result that even complete failure can be judged as some sort of success as long as the ‘passion’ was there or that one’s ‘heart and soul’ were in it.

I can clearly remember being told by my parents and teachers that as long as I did my best then it was no shame if I failed, but it seems that today it’s sufficient just to state that you did your best, even though no real effort was made. Thus the individual is taught to deceive himself in a misguided attempt to insulate him from failure.

But it goes even deeper than this.

Decades of deception on the part of successive governments and education experts have created a myth – the myth that no matter what background and/or intellectual capacity an individual has, he or she can be equipped to transcend these specific and often fixed limits and become enabled to achieve success. In essence, it’s a very laudable aim – but impossible to attain unless you lower your sights and redefine success.

A prime example of this can be found in the well-documented practice by some primary schools a couple of decades ago of banishing the competitive element from events like sports day. All participants were considered achievers and given a certificate regardless of whether they’d come first or last.

No-one lost.

But no-one won.

Those who came first were deprived of any sense of achievement and those who came last were deceived into thinking that they’d achieved equal placing with the winners.

Given that these children then entered a competitive society upon leaving school, many of them were ill-equipped to deal with competitiveness in the wider arena of work and other social situations.

(Nowadays, of course, we’re doing the same thing but with university students and Media Studies degrees…)

With educationalists seemingly given carte blanche over the last 50 years or so and government attempts at social engineering (admitted by those responsible in the last three Labour governments of the last 13 years) seeking to introduce equality across the socio-economic strata defined by ethnicity, gender, religion, race, income, environment and education, the British public was sold a monstrous lie – the lie that everyone could be a winner. In purely Darwinian terms this is a patent impossibility and, within the complex social structures of human society, pure fantasy.

Yes, equality of opportunity is a worthy goal, but only within very broad limits. Taking a metaphor from the school sports day example above, you can produce equal placings in a 100 yard dash if you handicap the faster runners with a time or distance penalty, but would those results have any real meaning either to the runners themselves or the doting parents?

Indeed, you could just dispense with entering potential winners in the race and thus ensure that some of the potential losers won – and that’s just what happened when the concept of ‘positive discrimination’ began to manifest itself in job selection, and shortlists and quotas began to specify that only certain groups of people would be considered for certain posts. Thus, those with a proven track record of success or obvious potential were often denied access to certain positions. So, once again, success was left unrewarded and the mediocre – and occasionally the failures – elevated to jobs beyond their skill sets.

Even within government itself, failure appears to be rewarded, with serial incompetents such as David Blunkett and Lord Fondlebum being given new cabinet posts after serious lapses of judgement and after a suitable period of time. Lesser figures in national and local government, finance, the Civil Service and a wide variety of public services seem to be able to escape accountability with impunity and, even when they are unable to continue in their job, often benefit from substantial severance payments and generous pension deals.

Naturally, the media plays a part in this celebration of the mediocre…

On one TV channel you can watch a documentary about the British airmen who fought in the Battle of Britain who really did put their ‘heart and soul’ into what they did, and often lost their lives in the process. Although I don’t doubt that their mental state must have been in turmoil, to say the least, prior to scrambling, nevertheless they just went ahead and flew off to an uncertain fate and possible death.

However, on another channel you can watch the day to day work of a haulage company, Eddie Stobart. I’ve just seen an extract involving the trucking of a load of cream cakes to Tesco in Didcot with the driver nervously saying what a difficult load it was. Now, whilst I have the greatest respect for truckers – with the exception of those fuckers who overtake their colleagues on the motorway with only a 1 mph speed advantage – it’s not exactly a matter of national defence or a process which might well result in death.

So, we celebrate the mundane in the same terms as we celebrate the heroic with few of us aware of the absurdity of it all.

Meanwhile, the absurdity formed after years of social manipulation and the drive for equality at all costs sits like a tumour at the heart of our society – success is largely derided unless it’s approved by a celebrity TV jury and failure is accepted as an inevitable consequence of equality.

Indeed, at times, I’m hard-pressed to tell the difference between success and failure… 

Hornets and a Wasp

I’ve posted quite a lot about the number of strange (to us) creatures we’ve seen since we’ve been living in the Mayenne and it’s been a fantastic experience  observing the French flora and fauna but – as with most pleasures – there’s a downside…

According to one of our future neighbours, the west of France has a major wasp problem.

Although I can’t find anything to confirm this on the interwebs, anecdotal evidence here seems to confirm it, with another of our future neighbours regularly complaining about the effect they have on his bees. He has several hives and his honey production is suffering.

But it’s not only the wasps, it’s the hornets – les frelons. This is a new word in my French vocabulary and one I wish I didn’t know.

Whilst wasps don’t really bother me – live and let live, plus they kill garden pests – hornets are a different matter.

They seem bolder and more inquisitive than wasps and they also pack a very painful sting and although I’m quite a peaceful soul as regards pests (flies, mosquitoes and rats are fair game but I can tolerate most other creatures around me) hornets are rapidly becoming a nuisance and are now dealt with accordingly.

However, whilst a simple whack with a fly swat can at least stun a wasp long enough for you to really lamp the bugger with a handy shoe or other weighty object, should the need arise, it takes more than a swipe with the swat to bring down a hornet.

Jesus Christ, they’re tough bastards!

We recently bought a spray which seemed to be the most lethal on the market and specifically for guepes (wasps) and frelons.

Wasps don’t stand a fucking chance! It kills them immediately – and I’ve even used it on a nest which is now wasp Chernobyl. Hornets are a different matter though.

I trapped a hornet in between a window and a shutter at about 11 o’clock last night, gave the gap a good spray very quickly and left the pesticide to do its stuff.

When I opened the shutter to get the dead hornet out, sure enough, there it was on the floor…but it wasn’t dead…

It lay there, visibly twitching – untill I twatted the bugger with one of my steel toecapped work boots. It was one dead motherfucker then.

Although I can’t find anything recent about a plague of hornets in France, I did find this from 2007:

The French honey industry is under threat from hordes of bee-massacring oriental hornets, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The forests of Aquitaine, in south-west France, now play host to swarms of the the Asian Hornet, Vespa velutina, which is believed to have arrived there “from the Far East in a consignment of Chinese pottery in late 2004”.

Entomogist Jean Haxaire, who first eyeballed the invaders, said: “Their spread across French territory has been like lightning.”

Haxaire said he’s now counted 85 “football-shaped” nests across the 40 miles which separate the towns of Marmande and Podensac “in the Lot et Garonne department where the hornets were first spotted”.

The Asian Hornet can cause some serious damage to a human, “inflicting a bite which has been compared to a hot nail entering the body”. But that’s not the principal threat they pose. They can decimate a nest of 30,000 bees “in a couple of hours” in search of larvae on which to feed their young. This, unsurprisingly, gives local beekeepers serious cause for alarm.

Co-incidentally, another bunch of fucking pests, the EDP, seem to have lost a Wasp they’d rather have liked to have kept. Paul Sackey now plays for Toulon in France. This may well be old news, but it’s new to me. Sackey is one – perhaps the only one – of the party’s celebrity endorsers. I wonder how the party feels about him playing in France? Actually, scrap that – I really don’t give a flying fuck.

Miners helmets and beaves

According to Stephen Clarke – author of the ‘Merde’ series – in his latest book ‘1000 Years of Annoying the French’, the wife of the 20th century UK PM Harold Macmillan was a tad eccentric and enjoyed gardening at night wearing a miner’s helmet.

Too late for a ‘heads up’, but this short post gives me an opportunity to rave about a very rare thing – a good TV program.

If you can catch it in BBC iPlayer or something similar, then I can heartily recommend ‘Anvil – the Story of Anvil’ in the BBC4 ‘Storyville’ series.

It told the story of 1980s Canadian hair metal band Anvil’s recent attempts to make a comeback and eclipsed the classic ‘Spinal Tap’ film.

I don’t doubt for a moment that some of it may have been staged, but much of it wasn’t, I’m positive, and had me in stitches when Lips – the lead guitarist and vocalist – was describing the meal rota at the cooked meals suppliers he drives for and almost in tears when the band walked out to a packed house in a Japanese venue after expecting no-one to be there.

Then there was the drummer, Rob Reiner, who, when asked the reason for their current lack of success, said something the lines of ‘I can say it in one word…two words…three words what’s wrong…our management’s no fuckin’ good.’

There was also the inevitable fight between long term members Rob and Lips with Lips sacking Rob and then a tearful making up.

A further, rather surreal delight was Rob’s artwork. Several canvases of street scenes totally empty of people – ‘I like buildings’ – not to mention his painting of a giant sculpture of an anvil in a park which dwarfed the people near it.

Apart from all that, any band who writes lyrics that include the word ‘beaves’ has to be paid some attention…

Anyway, just try and see it – definitely my favourite TV program of the year so far.