Fall from Grace

Tonight I’m being whisked back to my Northumberland mansion after our annual sell-out gig on Hadrian’s Wall.

Even if Rick Wakeman remixed our entire oeuvre it could’ve been released as a single.

From the moment we shuffled onto the stage, like a coach-load of tourists emerging blinking into the harsh Mediterranean sun, until we fled in ignominy our act was shambolic.

Why are these records all so bloody serious, so reverential anyway? Why do they look to be so sodding important? Why do these bands appear with a fanfare and then disappear?

It is a testament to the power of stardom’s siren’s song, that a man who has suffered acute stage fright in a drum circle agreed to appear before a mass of baying students.

When our earnest author, free from the burden of drunken associates, was finally ready to enjoy the gig, an adversary, one he’d buried years ago, manifests to test his fortitude.

As with all these sorts of schemes it came unstuck: the acid came on like a thief in the night and he apparently battled giant snowmen down the M66, swerving to avoid them as they enacted a monstrous snowball fight.

And, if I hear this album again, I'll be picking up a nice big stake, assembling a mob of angry villagers, replete with pitchforks and torches, and having me a good old-fashioned Goth hunt.

Having reached his mid-forties without attending an open-air festival, Stephen James Watt assumed that The Stone Roses’ Heaton Park gig would be a baptism of fire. He was half right…

Oh dear.

A lapsed Rosarian, Stephen Watt was happy to proclaim – especially to his ticket-holding brother-in-law – that the Stone Roses' reunion was a purely commercial venture. But, when fate, an ‘anonymous’ tip off and the arrest of an associate conspired to provide him with a ticket, he swallowed his pride, put on his bullet-proof jacket, slipped his Glock 17 into his waistband and headed off to where he first saw the light. Would a pilgrimage to Madchester resurrect his passion or be a journey into the heart of darkness?

A workmate spent years trying to enlighten his spouse, and after this extensive period of indoctrination she brought him James Blunt’s Back to Bedlam for Christmas. He snapped it in half and filed for divorce.

I can still recall the first album I taped: Not the Nine O Clock News’ Hedgehog Sandwich. It was recorded tape-to-tape by placing two mono, low-end radio cassette players speaker-to-speaker and pressing play and record. There is very little to recommend using this approach, a point perfectly illustrated by the finished cassette in this instance, as halfway through my mum comes in to ask suspiciously what we’re up to.

Putting the Homme in homage......

What is Billy's obsession with having a fit bird on bass? As for the bloke – he might as well be my dad.

Babyshambles were voted the worst act of this summer's festival season, which was no mean feat – I saw Primal Scream at Glastonbury with my own eyes.

I, like many others saw the full extent of this tax-payer scorn when my father was (unexpectedly) confronted with Boy George in all his glory.  “What's that? Is it a lad or a girl? You surely don't like that, do you?” No, of course I didn't but I couldn't agree with him, now could I?

That programme with Bill Oddie and Davina McCall is on, you know, the one about extreme sex in the animal kingdom. It's starting now

Maybe I'm missing the point?

A few weeks ago an ex-NME journalist wrote a big piece in a national paper ...she displayed a complete lack of knowledge or interest in music. She had never heard of (for instance) Krautrock. It's a bit like a film journalist holding a hand up after ten years in the job and saying, ‘bugger me, have you watched anything by Kurosawa? Is he good?'