Idiots

Funny thing, the English language. Subtle, nuanced, full of layers and inferences to be made. Someone said to me not long ago that 'relentless' and 'consistent' mean the same thing, but one of them, in my work context, has a negative connotation. So they don't mean the same thing then. But that's then down to a personal and subjective interpretation. They'd probably be in the same section of a thesaurus.

As would those minor non-profane insult words we chuck about. Fool. Prat. Clown. Imbecile, moron, twit. I looked those last three up. In a thesaurus, under 'idiot'. The definition for idiot is given as 'very stupid person', but that isn't right. That's an imbecile, or a moron. And those two are different, surely? As an insult, an imbecile can't help it, but a moron can. Idiots don't have to be stupid.

We've all got idiots in our lives. Maybe I'm the one in yours. In which case, I apologise. Which probably means I'm not an idiot, although I may be the other things. I have idiots in my life, though, just as you do. I think they're more difficult to deal with than twits (silly people), or prats (irritating people), or clowns (can't take them seriously even though they do).

I've decided that this is because you cannot reason with an idiot. They not only believe themselves to be right, they believe you to be wrong.

Take that motorist (invariably in a German saloon car painted some sort of grey) driving up your arse on the motorway. He's definitely an idiot. He's doing something stupid, dangerous, but it's you that's wrong, probably by being on the road. But he's an idiot right then. Somewhere along the line he's acquired that car so it seems reasonable to assume that in a different context he isn't an idiot. Not all the time. He may even be reasonably intelligent.

Idiots make crap decisions too, when they're being idiots. And because they've convinced themselves they're right, they also have to convince themselves you are wrong, otherwise the whole idiot decision making process falls apart. Which means that reason is useless against them. They've already dug in. You can argue until you're blue in the face, you can marshal a series of cogent arguments, you can bring intelligence and the big picture to bear but the idiot has already decided. It doesn't matter what they've decided, because the most important thing they've decided is that you are wrong.

Bright Sparks

I've loved the music of Sparks since I was about fourteen. I had the glorious peak period top-of-their game albums on pre-recorded cassette, Kimono My House/Propaganda/Indiscreet, and some others, and then on record and then on CD, and now on a Spotify playlist, and I've never stopped listening to them. They're that band for me, the one to fall back on, a whole lifetime of knowing that there's music that will always lift. I suppose everyone's got one, I hope they have. I hope you have.

I never really knew that much about them. I don't think I know what everyone else knows, at least. I still couldn't tell you, without looking it up, which one is Ron and which is Russell. I've never seen them. I know they're American but I don't know where they're from. Obviously I realise they're brothers. However, I do know that the cover and some promo (reaches for CD cover) for Propaganda was shot in Littlehampton (West Beach, the river) and in Worthing (the old Heron Garage - Grand Avenue?). I know that the bass player on those albums went on to be in the Radio Stars. At drama school Virginia Bigwood told me she saw the singer carrying a handbag on West Beach. And so on.

What I never really appreciated was the lyrics, until recently. That's because (definitely looking it up now) Russell sings in a mangled accent like a Frenchman with a mouthful of escargots, and an octave higher than a five year old, and you can't really make out what he's on about. But I have enjoyed the little revelations of coherence, like chinks of light, and extrapolating the sense of what they're on about. Listening to the albums once again though, I watched the lyrics scroll along to the music on Spotify (musiXmatch, must have been struggling for a unique name) and finally understood what some of them are about. So when I get to a song that, as a tune, I might have been tempted to skip, reading along with the words lets me enjoy it in a different way. They're laugh out loud funny, often, and coming as a revelation nearly forty years later more telling for all that. Of course I knew that 'Here in Heaven' was somehow about Romeo and Juliet, but only now does it dawn on me that Romeo is in heaven, talking to the mortal Juliet. "Juliet, you broke our little pact". Can't imagine any more what I thought those lyrics actually were. 'Amateur Hour': "Girls grow tops to go topless in, while we sit and count the hairs that blossom from our chins. Our voices change at a rapid pace - I could start a song a tenor and end up a bass".

Another thing - as a songwriter, there's a comfortable distance between Sparks and me. I could never write a Sparks song. Listen to Oasis, easy songs. Easy chords, nursery rhyme singalong lyrics, easy. Ask me and I'll show you. Sparks? No way. No one has ever come close. Not for more than one song. It's difficult even to cover them. Do you do the accent? Sing clearly? Change key? Octave lower or falsetto? 

So other bands and songs came along and were and still are favourites, from the Clash to the Killers, but those Sparks records have always been dependable. They're mine, the associated memories belong to me, before I ended up belonging to other people. I don't have to share, I don't really know any others who feel the same. Mine.

Health scare

Am I missing something? Probably, probably. Still, recent experiences of hospitals, for assessments, consultations and procedures that aren't urgent, have mystified me more than ever.

Small private hospital: nurses, doctors etc (mostly) cheerful, helpful, courteous and professional. Free car parking. Attractive and pleasant waiting areas with plenty of comfortable seats, today's papers and free drinks, although you don't get to spend much time there as generally you are given an appointment time which means something. Wards small or individual and a better prospect than a Comfort Inn. Forms filled in once, follow you around and catch up with you next visit. 

Large NHS hospital: nurses, doctors etc (mostly) cheerful, helpful, courteous and professional. Car park expensive if you can get in. Endless repeated form filling with the constant background caveat of litigious vultures. Waiting rooms institutional and mostly devoid of reading material as newspapers can spread disease, apparently (micro-organisms have certainly changed since I did my degree, unless there's a special disease only Daily Mail readers are susceptible to - actually, let's hope so...but what would they be doing in a large NHS hospital anyway...sorry, I digress) which is a shame because you can spend half a day there, given that your appointment time is aspirational at best. Although there are televisions, which is nice for devotees of daytime broadcasts about houses and antiques. The wards follow the prison/barracks theme and I know that it might just be my limited experience but why does each ward reception area seem to be a mountain of paper and bad tempered people on the phone? Does this not suggest something about the way the place is managed?

Which brings me to my point. One of these organisations is run at a profit. The model for the profit-making company is a small establishment with excellent customer care. I assume the money comes from rich people's private health insurance premiums. But somehow, the NHS pays this organisation to look after us. So I suppose in this way our NI contributions help to keep the private health insurance contributions reasonable. I wouldn't know, because I don't do private health care, on principle. And I pay National Insurance. 

Everyone should be looked after this well. And it isn't the fault of the dedicated and professional carers, because I can't detect any difference in their quality. How can the NHS pay someone else to do what they should be doing? Why don't they build small pleasant hospitals instead of centralising them into these massive and remote treatment farms? 
How about one in Littlehampton? I know the ideal place. 

Greet The New Orthodoxy

Everyone doesn't think the same, they never have. It's just that, nowadays, I get the impression that there's less tolerance for views outside the orthodox. There seems to be more rules about what to think.

Sometimes I think I'd like to post some inflammatory opinion on my FaceBook status or my Twitter but I can't, for the sake of offending someone. And I wonder how many other people hesitate before saying what they think because it's not only the people in the room listening, but another few hundred, many of whom you never see any more but there you go.

So there's this kind of averaging out of opinion. And if you're too far along the narrow bit of the bell curve, not only are you wrong but you're wrong to say it, there must be something wrong with you, you troll. And if you have one opinion that means you must belong to a subset, and have a load of other opinions.

In my job, I can't discuss politics or religion in any other way than factual. Fair enough too, people should be able to make up their own minds, and I wouldn't want my nearest and dearest influenced by someone else (especially if I disagreed). Mind you, I like to think my friends etc are probably pretty clear on my leanings.

Still, it leaves plenty of room for opinions on other things. But still one hesitates to express them. If I say X-Factor (Strictly/I'm a Celebrity etc etc) is shit and aimed at placating the vegetating masses with some artificially enhanced drama masquerading as jeopardy or talent, I would probably risk offending the many friends of mine who feel the need to point out what it is that distinguishes their particular chosen participant/contestant from the others who are by some mysterious measure still more awful. So I don't, because if I want to argue I'll do it face to face, preferably over a pint. But I am in the habit of expressing strong opinions.

Those who know me well recognise it as a starting point, not an end, but in the new orthodoxy it's getting harder all the time.

Last minute dot gone

I've got a million and one things I need to to do, but I'll still lie in bed all morning. I will sit at the computer and resolve to get some important document for work done, but decide that my hard disks need organising. I'll get completely distracted by tiny things that make me disproportionately cross, like the state of my local newspaper or the shouting Americans on my TV, and devote energy to writing a half-arsed blog instead of writing job applications ('blog', by the way, is not considered acceptable by the in-program spell-checker. I expect you knew that).

Not that I haven't got a job. I just want a new one. And music keeps me busy enough without the distraction of my 'real' job. Anyhow, is it me? I don't know whether I'm doing that thing males do, using some slack part of my brain to do some distractive activity while the rest of it subconsciously deals with the big stuff. Or perhaps I'm knackered and I'm somehow being forced into relaxing. Maybe I'm just disorganised. Or leave everything to the last minute come what may, so even when I have the time I don't use it effectively. I can envisage some point later today when I'll feel glad I've reorganised my hard drives, posted a blog, found out about faster broadband, and collected my repaired guitar. I'll be ready to do some song preparation or some important document writing.

Next week I'm playing a half hour set of my own songs in Hove. There are four acts, I'm on first. I suspect they know I'm really old and want me to get finished in time so I can get an early night. Still. Hopefully there'll be a few people there and I can find out how the songs hold up. I have enough, even though I'm not the most prolific songwriter in the world. The best thing is it will force me to make sure the newer songs are ready to go. Even if I don leave it to the last minute.

Aaaargh! It's all too much!

Bloody hell! I forgot about the blog!  No one's reading, no one's reading, no one's reading, sod it, give up, someone's reading! Hello John.
Morecambe, last post, four years ago! Trouble is, keeping up this information stream is hard work, and to what end? I had this grand idea of starting a MySpace (remember?) for each of my musical projects from the last thirty-something years. So I did, and I uploaded recordings from each one. And made them all friends with each other, and other people joined in, a bit. Then MySpace got a bit shit, and looked like history, and no one else joined in any more because I'd probably saturated my audience. So I got rid of them all. No one has banged on my door demanding their return.
I have a Facebook page for music and a personal one too. I'd quite happily give up the personal one but I feel I need to sustain it for the sake of the music one. The music page has music you can listen to, details of gigs, and automatically updated my Twitter account. Oh, and it's linked to ReverbNation, and possibly Soundcloud. You can listen to my songs on last.fm if you want, assuming that still exists. I might have a We7 account with songs on too, can't remember. My YouTube channel has videos to go with demo versions of new songs, and links from other people who video me when I'm out and about. I've got a web site. Two e-mail accounts. Subscriptions to Facebook music groups, and a Yahoo group somewhere or other. What's it all for? Who cares? Who is taking any notice? I suspect that a normal human conversation with a few people on selected occasions might well be an adequate replacement for all this online information overload.
Then again. Went to a venue a couple of months ago, set up, got a request for 'Silly Alibis'. They saw a poster, checked me out. Another venue about the same time, this couple started asking me when I was going to play some original material, they didn't come to hear covers, they've downloaded my whole album, love it, play it in the car all the time (is that the only place we use CDs now, the car?).
So I suppose I'll keep updating everything as best I can for the sake of the few people who might be interested, or that stumbler-upon of my stuff...StumbleOn? Isn't that something....

Up North

Went up to Lancashire for a week or so, pleasant family time. Visited, briefly, the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales, Forest of Bowland and Morecambe. I had to look Morecambe up in the 'Crap Towns' book. It's deservedly at number 3. We drove through a derelict seaside resort, parked on the seafront carpark and walked along the prom. The wind was strong and the sky was grey, although that's not Morecambe's fault. The Midland Hotel has been restored to its deco glory. There was an amusement park in between the closed down amusement parks. We had coffee at Costa, I looked in a bookshop.
Superficially disorganised, rooms coming off rooms and stepping over piles of books to get from one place to the next, it reminded me of the way secondhand bookshops were thirty years ago. Masses and masses of books you can't imagine anyone ever buying, which is exactly the sort of place you need when you can't find what you want through more straightforward means. At some point over the last twenty years, bookshop proprietors have reasoned 'instead of charging what I think this is worth, I'm going to charge a generous percentage of the price were you to buy it new'. This particular bookshop proprietor has then added another percentage, so you get to search longer than you need to to pay more than you want to.
I enjoyed visiting Morecambe. It makes the seaside resort I live in (Crap Town 18 in the second book) look tolerable.