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.