IT’S AN ESSEX THING:

A long time since we’ve played here in Dublin, why, god only knows.
This is another of our great home-from-homes, a gathering place for
joyous celebration, the streets fizz with an energy that makes me
feel good. Fell out the bus this morning & across the road to the
Hilton gym for a shower & a natter, getting naked with the locals.
Pick up the sunday papers, grab a porridge & tea. No time for poetry
today running straight to stage & soundcheck – rubbish pickers dance
in the heat of an intensely hot summer morning. We chase an illusive
crackle on the mic, my in-ears freak out, pumping hi-velocity
malfunction direct into my head bone – we laugh. Drift back to the
bus & catch a ride across town to catch up with old friends at the
sea-side. the warmth of the Irish tribe welcomes me in, wraps
around me, feeds me, warms me on it’s love rotisserie.
Ride back across town, shake hands in the back seat of something
sharp & black, air-con cooling the savage brow of a cross town jam.
In the trough the gates, the wave, the smile, the code remembered
for a bus & back through the rabbit hole where the kettle’s always
on in the Underworld.

(K)

THE FIRST LAST GREATEST UNDERDOG (IMAGINED):

When Elvis died I was shocked by how it upset me> He was an
institution, a lighthouse, had always been there. With the murder
of John Lennon the world got a little colder & I’m still shivering.
This morning, as I showered, the news that my first & greatest
beacon of hope had moved on to illuminate another place made me
sob like a little kid.

25th of February, 1964, I was seven years old. The buzz about the
Clay/Liston fight had filtered down to even me (the boy with his
head in the clouds). I’d had no previous interest in boxing nor even
knowledge of it’s existence, but the noise about this fight was so
loud that it had infiltrated my impenetrable bubble & got me curious
– ‘So what was all the fuss about?’. There was some guy a long
way from our little backwater town who was going to fight another
guy & neither of them had anything to do with real life as far as
I could see. They didn’t go to my school, didn’t live in our town,
didn’t even live in our country! They were going to hit one another
in somewhere called ‘America’, a fantasy land I’d discovered through
DC comics. A place where amazing things were available to boys my age
(like bicycles with white wall tires & cow-horn handlebars, baseball
bats, weird footballs & X-ray glasses). This was a land, far beyond
imagination, that only existed on TV. A place where the sun always
shone, where shadows were black & exotic chromium-ed cars cruised
sunset strip whilst cool young dudes grinned through immaculate
white teeth, leaning back & grooming their perfect hair with the
fluid  wrists of Zen calligraphers. Until 25th of February 1964,
America wasn’t real, so I vowed to remain in my bubble forever,
protected from the world outside where my little dreams would be
shot down before they had chance to fly.

The fight I heard that night changed everything. Why I even listened
to it is beyond me, other than perhaps it was to show solidarity with
my Dad who had a clear desire to catch it on the radio. We tuned in,
sat in the car engine running to stay warm, me beside him. Something
significant was going to happen in Dad’s car & I didn’t want to miss
it.

The press had it all worked out, long before the fight even
started, the world was sure of the outcome. Sonny Liston was the
reigning World Heavy weight Champion, a boxer who was considered by
everyone to be so overwhelmingly ferocious he was unstoppable.
No one could withstand the supreme power of his punches & great
fighters at the top of their game had openly avoided fighting him.
Then this confident 22-year-old contender steps up & starts getting
all vocal about how he’s going to beat the unbeatable champion, how’s
he’s going to upset the world (& that got my attention) to become the
new (& greatest) Heavy Weight Champion of the World. Sat next to my
Dad, parked on a little patch of dirt outside our house, in a little
town where dreams withered away, I started to fizz. Me & Dad, sat
side-by-side, illuminated by the glow of the car radio dial.

The task for the 22-year-old was to achieve the impossible, something
he claimed, no ‘promised’, he would shock the world & do. Right there
& then, I put everything I had, all my hopes & dreams, my whole future,
on him. If he lost, then I would loose with him, but if he won, my
dreams could become realities. If this young dude, who didn’t know I
even existed & didn’t waist his time posing,cruising & combing his hair
in slick TV detective series but trained to perfection whilst spouting
an electric poetry my generation needed, pulled off what the whole
world said he couldn’t then I would never again believe anyone who
told me ‘it can’t be done’. I didn’t know what colour his or my skin
was back then & it wouldn’t have mattered if I had. Everything about
this young guy was fantastic, inspirational, a beacon of light.

The shock in the voices of the radio commentators that night
(‘Oh my God he’s done it!’)& again years later when he did
‘the impossible’  for a second time, re-taking the title that had
been stripped from him, sent waves around the world, silenced his
detractors. Those who moaned about him sounded stupid, ‘Impossible’
became meaningless, a fictitious ball & chain, erased from the
dictionary forever. I glowed in the dark, sitting next to my Dad in
his car. No one in our little town knew the of silent transformation
that took place in me that night, nor the packed I made with myself
never to believe anything was impossible.

Mohammed Ali!, Mohammed Ali!, Mohammed Ali!

(K)

LOST ANOTHER ONE THEN?:

The sad news on the radio that we lost Dave Swarbrick hit me,
driving back from the studio. It was the album Full House that
first introduced me to Dave & Fairport Convention. Still my
favourite folk rock album, though tut-tutted by my die-hard
Fairport mates, every track on that record is a gem, especially
‘Flowers Of The Forest’. It had a profound influence on me,
showed me how to create melodies out of a drone, something I
would call on again & again when Underworld began making club music.
At a time when modulation in the bass just wouldn’t have cut it, yet
at the same time we were searching for ways to introduce melody t
through voice, it was the Fairports I would constantly return to for
inspiration. I will miss Dave’s inimitable electric fiddle playing,
& wish the electric violin was being explored more today in
contemporary music. What a fantastic sound, an over driven
electric fiddle.

(K)

STARING THROUGH THE CRACKS TO SEE WHO’S COMING:

Bishop in a paper hat, mop in a bucket. Who’s that coming,
running in flats & heels? On a mission, once a minute, doing
weird stuff, savage. The legal truth is random & wild, getting
away with it the first time. First fix, fast woman in a leopard
lycra cat suit. Spider snakes, the cost of cruising, it’s all
about the detail.

(K)

QUOTING SHAKESPEARE IS CHEAP:

Served chilled upon sunset the contents of thy private mind.
Godfather, Lady Joker, didst though turn off thy phones,
switch to silent or carry on thy texting?

(K)

LOVING THE RAIN:

I’m at the table, deep priority seat. I’m being serious, spark,
28 05 16. Sat with a stranger, gorgeous in the wild, Cappuccino
fish woman listing names of good looking film stars, certified
recipients  of her adoration, drawn from a reliable source.
You can never tell the ages of the ones who look after themselves.

(K)

IT”S ALL IN THE DETAIL:

Late night drifters down at the Cross, everything exposed,
everything available, grinning. Clouds of nicotine crouch
on the precinct, black & white halos. Transients, vagabonds,
waiting for the last ride to anywhere.

Melt-Banana were fantastic on Saturday night.

(K)

LAST NIGHT IN TUFNAL PARK:

Black flower, rebel blue. The wolf the dog, the walk up an alley.
Wake up to an alarm, leather roses down the arm, fast walking
through empty streets. Drifting after midnight, draped in
secondhand fur, scratches on the bumpers, front & rear.

(K)

UP LONDON:

Visited the Victoria Miro gallery in Angel for the Yayoi Kusama
exhibition of mirrored rooms, sculptures & paintings with eldest
daughter who had helped cast the giant metal pumpkins last year
when she worked at the AB Fine Art Foundry on Bow. I’ve been
struck by these mirrored rooms since I was a teen, a student at
Cardiff Art College as they were the closest representation to
the inside of my head at the time. Then we caught the train to
Camden to spend hours with Martin & John at the Bass Gallery,
sifting through P basses & new rigs for the daughter, so she
can finely break free from using dad’s gear. Though she’s a
fabulous guitarist, bass is her place in the band & she has a
clear vision of how it should sound. We tried every P bass in
the shop & left happy she’d found exactly what she wanted,
both of us blown away by the generosity of the guys who gave
of their precious time help another youngster start right.
I can’t tell you how impressed I am by the Bass Gallery & if
bass is your thing or you just want to talk motorcycles I
recommend a visit.

Rode another stinking train home, remembering to re-hydrate all
the way, so not too trashed when we reached the sanctuary of
Essex in bloom.

(K)

INTO THE EMERALD CITY:

The stink, the heat, the proximity of unfamiliar body parts.
Standing on slow trains, breathing secondhand breath, rocking to
a discordant rhythm, footfall grooves broken by the ragged cracks
of grease stained pavements, queueing for time. The going in is ok.
The being there is a buzz. It’s the slow, grinding process of leaving
that suck the life out of me. Chin up.

Listening to:

Moskus – ULV ULV

Idris & the Pyramids – WE BE ALL AFRICANS

(K)