A True Star, a Wizard.

Here I am, back In Presteigne after a quick visit to that London with my boyfs to see Todd Rundgren perform his 1973 masterpiece album ‘A Wizard, A True Star,’ which is, at least arguably, simultaneously psychedelia’s high water mark, and one of the greatest blue eyed soul albums of the 70’s. Todd hasn’t really had to work for a living since producing ‘Bat Out of Hell’ for points, and his recorded output since 1977 has been subsequently sporadic and patchy, to put it mildly. But his two great albums of the early 70’s, ‘Wizard’ and its astonishing predecessor,‘ Something/Anything’ are up there with the very best.

1973 was something of an annus mirabilis for Todd, since he also produced The New York Dolls debut album. Todd nuts like myself can get upset by the fact that if he’s known for anything, it’s for not being Liv Tyler’s dad. I’m still puzzled, faded old punk that I am, that people could still regard ‘Dark Side‘ as the album of 1973, when ‘A Wizard, A True Star’ is infinitely superior. This puzzlement was not abated by the fact that there were a few empty seats in the Hammersmith Apollo, or that my three boyfs and I, all of us over fifty, were quite clearly in the lower percentile of the audience demographic.  Also, it must be faced, 80% of the audience were blokes, though I find that mystifying too, since Todd is nothing if not an old romantic. As my boyf Yammerman said to me in the bar, ‘it’s hard to pick out your friends when everyone has grey hair.’

But boy, did it start unpromisingly. It was announced that at 8pm, we would hear Todd Rundgrens Johnson, followed at 9 by ‘A Wizard…’ Todd Rundgren’s Johnson turned out to be Todd, with another guitarist, a bass player, and a drummer playing Robert Johnson songs in front of a big black curtain. If you’d heard them in the pub, you’d think they were a very good pub rock blues band, but you wouldn’t want to go and see a pub rock blues band in the first place. I began to relax, however, during the third number, where Todd couldn’t find the key, and said ‘You don’t practise the blues, man.’ I thought, ‘the old bastard, he’s got some mad hugely polished to slickness  show lined up behind that curtain; and so it proved.

After a half time spent queueing for the loo (I would imagine a high percentage of the crowd had prostate problems), we settled down for the main event. The great Danny Baker was sitting a few rows in front of us, and Macca was rumoured to be in too, whether or not it was because he loved Todd’s music, or simply that he appreciated heroic Todd’s trashing of Lennon in the seventies, it’s hard to say.

The album opens with a noise a little like the washing machine on the Tardis. As this noise filled the theatre, the black curtain raised, and there was a six piece band on risers dressed in white tuxes, a big light show, a video screen, and Todd dressed as a NASA astronaut singing ‘International Feel.’ And from there on, it was a camp, funny, theatrically brilliantly executed celebration of the Greatest Concept Album ever. There, I’ve said it.

I lost count of the number of the costume changes that Todd nipped off to do between the short songs, leaving the superb band (several of them old Utopia hands) to do the instrumental bits; ten or so, I guess. My favourite was the orange gear he wore for the soul medley. Todd is a Philly boy, and in 1973 he made this white kid want to be a soul singer; you can hear why Hall and Oates chose him to produce their second album. Fantastic stuff.

The show ‘finished’ before he’d done ‘Just One Victory’, which is a hell of a number to have tucked away for your encore under any circumstances, but here, of course, it was astounding.  The crowd bayed for more, but how do you follow ‘Just One Victory’? Besides, it’s the last track on the album, and to do another song would have ruined the thing. So, into the bitterly cold that London air, exhilarated by probably the best Rock and Roll show I’ve ever seen. He’s only doing one other European performance, and that’s tonight, in Amsterdam, which strikes me as insane. If ever you get a chance to see Todd do this show (and it would go a storm at G.A.Y., or in Vegas), sell a kidney for a ticket.

Shining still…

Obituary – a Poem by H. McFaddean Spume

Obituary

No one knows why,

But his shits were huge.

They disappeared around the bend,

And left a perky brown iceberg above the water line.

Hotels dreaded his residence,

All too often, his huge turds

Blocked their entire system.

Plumbers adored him.

As a nose-picker, he was second to none;

A skill he was happy to share

On buses and trains, in lifts, in libraries,  and once, memorably,

At a dinner seated next to Dame Ninette de Valois.

DNA testing has revealed

His snot smeared on countless sofas,

Dried like runnels of brown candle wax.

He was a god to steam cleaners.

As a masturbator, his output was prodigious.

His students regarded the endless fiddling

With his generative organs

During lectures and seminars

As largely endearing,

Although, at the moment of crisis,

He was given to shouting his own name aloud.

Kleenex shares have dropped seventy points

Since the sad announcement of his death.

It is very seldom that Spume is moved these days to write a poem, but he e-mailed today to tell me that whilst dropping the kids off at the pool this morning, he was so impressed by the magnitude of his Thora, that it occured to him that this was the kind of personal detail that biographers might sadly overlook, and that this omission might make an ideal subject for a little vers libre.  As ever, I am happy to publish anything by that great and good man.

Lock Keepers Inn

On a beautiful afternoon in September last year, my Beloved and I, together with her six year old daughter, strolled along a canalised section of the River Lagan in South Belfast to where one of the locks is being restored. This is part of an ambitious long term scheme to restore the Lagan Navigation up to Lough Neagh, and subsequently the Ulster Canal onwards from Lough Neagh to join the Shannon/Erne Navigation. If and when this restoration is completed, it will be possible to go from Belfast to Dublin by inland waterway, albeit by a somewhat roundabout route.

To my suprise,  my Beloved doesn’t like canals as much as I do, (but then, very few people like canals quite as much as I do) but she does like a stroll, so she was prepared to put up with my burbling enthusiasm about the lock restoration project. Right by the lock itself is the newly restored Lock Keepers cottage, which was featured in the BBC show ‘Restoration’, and it looks like a great job had been done.

And to complete my ideal afternoon out, next to the lock and its attendant cottage was an excellent cafe, The Lock Keepers Inn, where I had a delicious scone and a latte served just how I like it, i.e. not in one of those stupid tall glasses, that cafes seem to reserve for those of its customers who are already feeling a bit effete after ordering a latte anyway. My Beloved knew one of the young staff, and chatted to him about his A Level results. A place I’d be happy to recommend to any visitors to Belfast, especially those who are canally inclined.

How extra-ordinary, then, that this attractive, well-run cafe has brought about the downfall of the repulsive Iris Robinson, and, I would be willing to bet, her husband Peter too. And who has enough support to replace him? My Beloved feels that there’s no one credible. And, although it might be hard to stomach for people in the rest of Britain, the DUP currently represent mainstream Unionist opinion. Thanks to the venal, hypocritical behaviour of one disgusting woman, the peace process has taken a knock, just as it needs support. This morning dissident republicans have exploded a car bomb in Randalstown. A PSNI officer is seriously injured in hospital. Iris is sulking in bed, unable to talk due to her sudden mental incapacity, and hope seems further away than it did even a few days ago. I do hope, however, that the excellent Lock Keepers Inn can survive the gathering storm.

Climate Change Sceptics Right!

No, but let’s imagine that they are. Let’s imagine, as Copenhagen comes shuddering to what promises to be an appalling anti-climax, that the tiny minority of scientists who don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change are right. Let’s imagine that their research, almost entirely funded by the oil industry, the coal industry and the Saudis, is not criminal nonsense, but actually the case. And let’s imagine that we ignore these nay-sayers, and proceed on the basis that human-agented climate change is true. What will be the consequences of ignoring the sceptics?

Our children will live longer, we will eat better, our local economies and communities  will be stronger and ‘human-sized’, our technologies will be transformed for the new century, there will be fewer cars clogging up the streets, trains will be better and faster, our air and water will be cleaner, our oil will last much longer, fairtrade will spread throughout the developing world, there will be more forests, fewer endangered species will vanish and our cities will be full of market gardens and buzzing with electric bikes.

If they are wrong, however, but we take their views into account…

760×151, your teeth are like stars, roger kite philosophy presteigne

I’m just coming up to a year of posting stuff (occasionally intermittantly, I admit); and in a week or so I’m over to Perry’s for a bit of a web-site zhoosh up, so the thing should be slightly different come the New Year, with dozens of exciting new features.

Looking through the most popular search terms that brought people here, apart from the fairly obvious ‘Ian Marchant’, there are three that stand out above all the others. These are (as you may have guessed) ‘760×151 pixels’, ‘your teeth are like stars they come out at night’, and ‘Roger Kite philosophy Presteigne’. I am happy to be able to help with the latter, at least. Although I’m sure Prof. Kite wouldn’t thank me for giving out his phone number, I am glad to say that as Head of Philosophy at the Free University of Radnorshire, he can be contacted via our headquarters, which is in Elda’s Colombian Coffee House, High Street, Presteigne. If you are not lucky enough to find Prof. Kite there, Elda will be happy to pass on any requests.

But what are the ‘Your teeth are like stars, they come out at night’ gang after?  It’s an old joke, like ‘Your eyes are like pools, – football pools’. What are you trying to discover? Who said it first? Who wrote it?A 100+ people came across this blog looking for answers to… what?

Should any of you ever find the answer that you are looking for, please leave any information here; let this blog become a repository for information about this clearly very well-loved old gag.

As for the 250+ people who arrived here looking for ‘760×151 pixels’; could one of you please let us know why you’re after this particular configuration. Is it your lucky size? Is it like the Golden Mean or something? Are there pictures of that exact size lurking about on my blog? What are they? You may have come here looking for answers, only to find questions, which might be annoying unless you’re an actual Zen Monk, but I beg thee, before you hurry on your way on your quest for just the right sized photo, for whatever arcane purpose you might have, illuminate the rest of us.

Off the Page

As I’m a guest on the Radio Four show ‘Off the Page’ today, it suddenly occured to me that I might, just might, get some increased traffic here, and that first time visitors might wish to see something other than my discussion with my Italian translator, or my tribute to Sylvia Plath.

In fact, it occured to me that I should probably big up my own marvellous product. So click here for a Christmas gift which will keep on giving!

Now, feeling relaxed and happy at having been offered a seasonal bargain, new visitors to the blog, please read on…

Not Lost in Translation

‘The Longest Crawl’ is being translated into Italian at the moment by a guy called Claudio, for publication in the spring.

Every few days, Claudio sends me an e-mail, to ask about problems he is facing. A few days ago, for example, he ran this one past me:

‘On page 9, where you say “How about Cunt by Stewart Home?”, I replaced Cunt, that never got translated into Italian, with Ensler Eve’s The Vagina Monologues, which has got translated into Italian instead (I monologhi della vagina).’

I replied…

‘Hmmm. Not sure. Stewart Home is a situationist writer in the UK, and psycho-geography is an offshoot of situationism. So I am suggesting that Perry is a cunt for telling me about lots of UK travel books about drink; and he takes it as a suggestion that he might bring some psycho-geographical books, which in turn makes me feel worse. It’s quite a complicated joke, I guess, and I’m not sure The Vagina Monologues does the same thing. Could we leave it untranslated?’

Then this morning, Claudio sends me this…

‘I think I’ve found a solution for the itchy problem of the Stewart Home’s book you quote: instead of Cunt, I’ve chosen another book by the same author, Cranked up really high: an inside account of punk rock. In Italy it’s been translated as Marci, sporchi e imbecilli: attraverso la rivolta punk, literally “Rotten, dirty and idiot: journey through the punk revolution”. So, whereas you say “How about Cunt by Stewart Home? You should bring that”, the whole sentence comes out as (I re-translate from Italian) “How about Marci, sporchi e imbecilli by Stewart Home? I really think it will suit you”. Do you think it could do?’

Yes, Claudio, I do. I think that’s brilliant.

But then Claudio asks me this…

‘On page 143, talking about Tony Green aka Sir Gideon Vein, I’m not sure I’ve caught the meaning of “he calls Jesus a word which, used in this sense, is said by feminists to hate women”.

What do I tell him?

Thylvia

A correspondant, a noted crime writer, contacted me today re. my Sylvia Plath clerihew, which I recited to him a few years ago, in a taxi up to Lumb Bank after a few beers in Hebden Bridge, and with which I’ve managed to cause a great deal of upset over the years.  I sent him the text, after some umm-ing and aah-ing, because I couldn’t work out how to write a lisp. So it’s the first time I’ve written it down, and I’m open to ideas which might improve the written version.

The text reads

Thylvia Plath

Had a taytht for gath.

Thsee couldn’t thtop thmelling

Her Baby Belling.

Fans of the Belling range of cookers will write and point out that they don’t make a gas version of the legandary ‘Baby’. I know, and I’m sorry.