The Last LP

I’ve just been listening to the new Alabama 3 album, which I was gonna try and blag for free from an old friend/music PR that I still talk to sometimes on social media.

I didn’t have to, though, because it turned out that you’d pre-ordered and paid for it, and it was sent to your old flat which now has been cleared and repainted and deep-cleaned and left forever.

The post redirection sent it to mum and dad’s house, and from there to me, here. It’s quite a sad album, you know, in places. It has possibly the last ever contributions from D. Wayne Love.

You’d have liked it. It made me cry a bit. A lot for a bit. These jags are pretty fucking powerful. I am actually triggered but I will probably always be, here and there, and I think that’s right and proper.

It ends on a positive song, like La Peste did, which is what this one seems to share the most soul with, and with a chuckling baby just come into the world. And this is how things turn forever.

The other day, I can’t remember what exactly it was, but I was asking on Facebook for people to remind me what it was I couldn’t remember. And, I nearly put: yes, Daniel, I have had a poo.

Cause that’s almost certainly what you would have written as advice. Completely predictable. But the thread was worse off without it and to think you will never do that again is...

...

...

The last album you ever bought was a good one. An unexpected gift, and honestly one I never asked for.

I’ve been listening to myself as much as I can, and I’ve been trying to talk about the things I am thinking, and bring the feelings into places where they are appropriate. It’s impossible, really.

But I will continue to try and progress. And carry on getting up day after day and trying to not have to try to be level. It’s OK, isn’t it. Not to be level. There are moments of calm, here and there.

You really would have liked this album, you know. It burns me deeply to know that you will never hear it. And this is how things turn, too. I think Alabama 3 have always understood that process.

Z

And so

may you ride the zephyr to your Ithaca

the wind which brought Aphrodite to your Paphos

And

may we in turn recognise that

the gentle spring can still come again

Even if

the jealous discus of Zephyrus

has stricken down a beautiful boy

Forever

let us trust that there is an Apollo

to transform thee into the purple-blue hyacinth

that you always were and will be

Y

Youth is not wasted on the young:

It should yomp and blaze and yell

And love fiercely and fear none;

Rampage in rain, and scratch out sun,

Dance dervish in night-romps, and tell

Secrets and tales in sizzling song;

Seek wisdom in moments, gold-spun

And ineffable, jangling nerves swelled,

Synapses firing and joy over-run,

Yowling on moonshine with blistered tongue.

Beware those who, ringing their idiot’s bell,

Flubber and fidget, drivelling long

That youth is wasted on the young,

So tend to tomorrow’s dreary dell.

These people are devils, woeful and wrong.

Squirm out of the yoke, never dwell thereamong;

Who knows if tomorrow brings heaven or hell?

Youth is not wasted on the young.

But youth should be wasted by the young.

Exhausted by evening, a day that's spent well

Is comfort enough when there’s naught left undone.

So revel and rage and be brilliant: Be young.

X

There are some X-rated tales that I

probably

will never tell

But what I possibly will do, maybe

is use some

of them in fiction

Aye, there’s some X-rated stuff alright;

mild, really,

by some standards,

But nonetheless I’ll not reveal them.

I mean, that'd be

incrimination.

Here’s one, though, and it’s only

X-rated

retrospectively:

Thirty years ago – a long time -

there was a

cupboard full of

porn in Maes G. We’ll not make

any jokes about

library deposits

at this time, and I shan’t be

taking any further

questions either.

But I will say that, for some reason,

I’d always walk

home at 3am

Confused and smoky-brained

and with something

borderline illegal

tucked unconvincingly

into my socks

and somehow

for some reason, I’d never get

stopped by the

rozzers. Never. So, well.

Like I say, mild enough

stuff. Unlike

some of the pictures.

W

 What?

Mate, don't sit there

Mate

don’t sit there, honestly

I know the bus is quite busy and I’m kinda looking sort of well, not friendly, but probably Dad-ish, here not too near the back or front, with my headphones on listening to Inside the Comedian, and looking out the window

so I understand that I’m a safe bet, dressed in my work clothes and looking sort of smart casual.

But mate

you’ve not thought this through

I’m saying this silently to myself cause I know I wouldn’t’ve been told neither, and also a bit cause, yeah, I would prefer to have my bag next to me cause I don’t like mornings or strangers on the bus next to me

but that’s not it. Not really. I can cope with all that, even if I am one of only a few on this bus wearing a mask

Mate

have you seen the other free seat

I know there’s quite a few other free seats, and they’re all much of a muchness, as buses are and seats and open windows and mouth-breathing fart-arsed other college students like you

but you need to work this out in your own head before you sit in the seat next to me.

Look

have you ever seen such a beautiful neck

I can’t fucking tell you this or acknowledge it either cause obviously it’s inappropriate and I am so much older than you and her and pretty much most of this bus clanking its way across Shropshire

but there is down and soft skin and elegance and the most gorgeous delicately auburn hair and

Look

she is your age and she is alone and beautiful

I don’t want you to be harassing her or anyone ever so don’t get me wrong but you know, mate, I can tell you that you have picked the wrong seat here, the wrong seat entirely

she has a cosy woolly jumper on and in the rain she would look even more beautifully bedraggled

so Mate

honestly it is for you to decide what to do but please

be a good man. Be what you want to be. Sit there, next to her, the girl with the beautiful neck, the young woman who – maybe – you might get chatting with and actually like each other and make friends

or more, or none of those things. And all those are OK. But you’ll never, ever find out if you sit next to me instead, and

Mate

don’t be me, mate. Don’t be me. Don’t be me.

There’s fewer stops than you realise before we all pull in to the bus station and we all have to get off and maybe the girl will never get on the same bus again or maybe she will and

someone else will sit next to her and maybe even then you won’t see it but believe me

Mate

a snap of the fingers click clack 30 years will have bungled by and you will be

sitting on a different bus on your own in your own seat behind a girl with a beautiful neck and you will be dismayed when some gozzy-nosed college boy doesn’t even notice that he is making a decision

that he will only see as a decision at all when he is three decades too old and the only wisdom you can impart to him silently is that with understanding comes only sadness.

V

If you'd not been in Bristol and not Wrexham

and if Dave had been up for it

then well who knows

Vinyl Erasers' claim to fame was one song 

played over and over and over on cassette

at Planet X in Liverpool.

And cause I was knocking about in Bangor

and had proximity to your bass

that shitty Marlin Sidewinder

Vaffan Coulo became my band or at least

the band I was in because you weren't there

and Dave didn't fancy it.

It doesn't seem like much, I know. But it is.

If I look back, and I do look back, then I see

the direct line from here to there

via everywhere else and the books and the degree

and the bands and all of that.

If you'd been in Bangor not Bristol or Wrexham

or if Dave'd been up for it

then well who can say

I don't know where I would have been for all this time

but everything would have been completely different

in ways I can never know.

I wish I had that bass. I'd've got it set up properly for the first time

well, the first time ever.

That awful action was five miles high. It was a bugger to play

but now it's someone else's problem

lost in a hundred house moves and

various garages. Various memories. Various gigs.

So lost so easily so permanently.

U

Life is so unfathomably unlikely in the first place that it’s useless to try and understand it.

I have spent most of mine upset about this, until I worked one and only one thing out, which is that no matter how ugly and unbelievably painful things get, nothing is truly unbearable because if you’re still able to feel it then in one way or another you can undergo it.

I know it’s not much of a philosophy, and I hate it to be honest, but there you go. Confusion is the default human condition, and when we can instil our unique sense of futility and cosmic uselessness in our computers, that’s the point at which they’ll switch from being unaware to self-conscious and therefore harmless. I don’t want to seem ungrateful but fuck me what a utterly weird journey this is for all of us.

Unnecessary, ultimately.

T

GO ON TOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you shouted at full full full volume

Tommy Lloyd looked around, startled

because he was in the centre circle and the ball was in our own box, nowhere near him;

There’s a tale about all this

Which I’ll tell you when you turn twenty-one.

S

This ain't a poem or nuffink like that

It's sumffink I'm ffinking sat here in me chair

It's not real levver, it's falling apart

But it's comfy, I like it, it's goin nowhere.

This is my ffink wot I've ffunked most today:

"I'm sat here all sad and it's doin no good,

Me hair's gone all flat and me face has gone grey,

Cos anuvver week's passed in a dumbfounded mood,

I've gone to me work and I've done ffings, I spose,

But nuffink seems all that important no more."

It ain't all that much to report, mate, I know,

But that's wot I ffinked since I ffunk stuff before:

Imagine one day I might squeeze out a laff,

All I can do is look fforward to that.

R

It's never going to be right. I am wrestling with it being real.

And in a dream there you were, you scruffy ratbag.

Dozing, slightly snoring, hands clasped over your belly.

Raggedy beard - not too long, this time, and still dark - and glasses.

Dressed in black. A couple of seats back from me on the bus.

It was...

...these things aren't nice. But it was the first time I've seen you since.

And you were just so chilled out and peaceful.

That is the real I choose today. That is the right place today.

Chimeric Rock News

 

Chimeric Rock Star News

With madcap legacy-destroying divot Ian Brown

Dickinson dodges danger

Iron Maiden singer Goose Dickinson is recovering from a narrow escape after he nearly got sucked into the inlet valve of one of his own jets.

The Run To The Hills vocalist, 63, was out with his flock on their yearly autumn migration from Svalbard to the south-east of England, when he became separated from the main V formation due to an unexpected air current.

“It was pretty hairy,” said the 5ft 6 Russian white-footed goose, “Especially when I realised I was on an unerring course toward what I instantly recognised as a Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet. With its wide body and Pratt & Whitney PW4056 turbofans, it pulls an incredible amount of air and I was heading right toward it.”

Luckily for the heavy metal superstar, the jet climbed swiftly to avoid a patch of upcoming turbulence and it was only his pride that was hurt.

“Never mind Bring Your Daughter… it was very nearly a case of attending my own slaughter,” quipped Dickinson, preening at an awkward tick on his tail.

Crops Under Pressure

The UK’s tomato manufacturers have warned of an unusually low yield this year after an unexpected and devastating influx of Aphid Bowies.

Richard von Damm, chairman of the England Tomato Guild, said that as a result, prices could soar.

“People must realise that whilst we all can appreciate the chameleonic craft and constant reinvention of the late Thin White Duke – except for Tin Machine, naturally - when tens of thousands of Bowies swarm it is absolute carnage.”

Mr. von Damm added that as well as sucking the sap from crops, Aphid Bowies – real names Aphid Jones - can bring viruses and attract mould. Incecticides are not always viable as pest control, as they quickly develop a resistance to the chemicals.

“If someone could come up with a new control measure,” continued Mr. von Damm, “They really would be ‘Heroes’.”

In the meantime, there is to be no ‘Lazarus’-like comeback for the beleagured soft fruit industry.

“We are always on edge when it comes to Aphid Bowie season,” Mr. von Damm added. “But this year we have only just recovered from a plague of Locust Capaldis that severely weakened our ability to react.”

The Aphid Bowies are expected to be in the United Kingdom for several weeks before they depart for Cannes for the world premier of a remastered print of their 1986 musical fantasy smash, Labyrinth.

Not so Ace of Spades

An emergency evacuation order has been served on residents of West Bengal after a group of wild elephants broke loose from a reserve.

“At this time we urge everybody to remain calm, but to leave as soon as is practicable,” said lead conservationist Anita Noah-Yannick. “This crash of elephants is extremely dangerous and pose a huge risk.”

Noah-Yannick added that the escapees appeared to be led by mutton-chopped pachyderm bassist, Lemmy the Elephant. Having bedded over 2,000 females in his life, the gravel-throated musician’s sheer manliness and raw sex appeal has set off a chain reaction amongst the males of the group.

“They have gone into a collective state of Musth,” continued the spokeswoman. “And their behaviour is incredibly unpredictable.”

A musth state takes place in bull elephants and is characterised by testosterone levels up to 60 times the normal levels; as a result, the animals can become extremely aggressive.

Lemmy, whose hits included Bomber, Iron Fist and the duet with Mozzy Osborne, I’m Not a Nice Guy After All, did not reply to a request for a comment by time of publication. It is thought that the one-time Jimi Hendrix roadie is also suffering from severe toothache due to the irritating discharge of temporin which is a feature of musth.

In the meantime, residents are urged to travel outside the danger zone as soon as possible, said Noah-Yannick.

“We are working hard to control the herd and have ordered a gigantic bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a puddle of coke which we will use to distract Lemmy,” she said. “We are working on a way to manufacture an enormous cylinder of tobacco that he can pick up with his trunk too.”

Amphetamine manufacturers across the subcontinent have also been put on high alert.

Next time: Find out what gets Eel Young Swimmin in the Free World; Why Dave Vole is Learning to Fly; Who is putting that enormous grin on the face of Axlotl Rose; And why Piers Corbyn is god.

Katzenmusik

 Ike and Rusty like to look out the window, and their noses leave smudges:

ENHANCE DATA

Obviously they were writing a tune weren't they? This is how I interpreted it:

And it sounds like this.

Q

Questions?

Questions?

Mate.

I've got questions.

I've got so many fucking questions that I am starting to look like a fucking question mark.

When I stand up my back bends and my head droops in on my belly.

My feet have detached from my legs.

I can't feel the ground anymore.

Questions.

Questions.

Mate.

By now I reckon I know that there's always gonna be questions.

And that I will never stop asking them.

The only thing I can tell you for sure though

Is that there aren't enough fucking answers.

And that there never fucking were.

P

 

Go listen to MC Hammer, folks, you'll get more sense.