MY
ELECTRIC LOVE AFFAIR @ The Jam House, Queen Street, Edinburgh - 8pm
One
of the few independent bands (i.e. no record label support) we'll step out to
see.
And
'Rolling Stone Magazine' keeps zapping newsletters to my Inbox. I
peek thru their 'Breaking Bands' link... more like 'breaking wind'...
So much 'new' looks like it's been styled by someone who just discovered a
Rolling Stone magazine circa 1969 or TEEN BEAT circa 1965, in other
words... looks kinda like, but is NOTHINGLIKE the true
independent originals. The other trick is to put some 'hot',
'cute', chick 'actress' whose been in a soap or showed up in a segment of 'Grey's
Anatomy', into a band or 'duo' as the front person. One of their
favourite lead-ins is 'Sounds like...."
I just don't
know any more. Amy, Duffy, Adele.... Jesus... (maybe JESUS is next.. who
knows???!) At least hurry up with the karaoke doppelgangers. Let's get to
the grooved up, acid-cracked Grace Slick/Janis Joplin copies.
Please don't tell me they got the order wrong and we've already had Joss Stone
playing 'Janis'.
In
the meantime, while you're waiting for Christ or an epiphany....Go see MY
ELECTRIC LOVE AFFAIR. They don't stoop or copy, to conquer.
-------------------------------
PS
- I was given a new cellphone (mobile to those in Gran Bretagna) and with it
took a little photograph of The Links path on Friday evening... looks a bit like
a river... I like it anyway. I like employing different cameras and
enjoying their different characters.
-------------------------------
Wed
12 March 2008 - MGCK Music"Deep
in the heart of Texas.."
Goddamn.... a
double-header. Two music must-be, must-see, must-shmooze hot spots in one
and a half weeks:
RED GORILLA
MUSIC FEST, LOUDLY and PROUDLY UN-affiliated with SXSW. In their own
words:
"RedGorilla
Music Fest is not affiliated in any way with SXSW
or South By Southwest, Inc. Approximately 300 bands and solo artists will
perform in Red Gorilla showcases in six venues/eight stages on 6th Street
in Austin, TX on March 12-15 - right in the heart of all the action.":
It's Free-for-all
and, obviously, followed by the BIG one everybody already knows about -
the Money-Fest SX South West. It's all happenin' deep in the heart
of Texas... in the Owl Town of Austin no less. If you can find a hotel
room, or a bus to sleep on, you can be there too. For my
money? If I had any, yes, I'd be there this week. A 'budgetary
deficiency' has circumvented my travel plans. Oh well... maybe next time.
[Not
so funny: When we were in Austin last June, I thought, 'book the hotel room now!
Get it taken care of.. hotel room and flights and be done with it.' Well I
didn't and I shoulda and I woulda if I'd known what I know now, which is, I want
to be there! You really DO have to plan ahead in life. Something I
am absolutely dreadfully f*cking appallingly BAD at.)
PS
- Lunch with Andy Garibaldi today (Mr Dead Earnest). That will just have
to assuage my disappointment at not being in the 'No Country' for old men!
Sat
8 March 2008 - MGCK Music"Somewhere
on a desert highway.."
Still
thinking about Neil Young. When I saw him 10 years ago at the San Jose
Amphitheatre (Mountain View to you), he was kinda like 'Neil Old'.. amazing how
things change... he's 'Neil Young' again. Also thinking about other lyrics
like "been through the desert on a horse with no name, it felt good to
get out of the rain...." America.... yes, indeed... America.. and not
just the band.. the place. Far far away from the 'cultured' world of old
Europe. Wide open spaces and a sky so blue and huge just hanging above
you. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. You could say I've
been dreaming of it.
[photo
somewhere in Arizona.. early Jan 2007, E C Smith]
Tues
4 March 2008 - MGCK MusicOpen
letter to God!.. after seeing Neil Young play last night
"Dear
God, Please make me like NEIL YOUNG. Please make me as incomparably
wild and free and unfettered and UNCONCERNED with conforming as that
free-spirited CRAZY HORSE man.
Please make me into a REAL LIVE HUMAN
BEING who IS the epitome of the truth from inside to outside. All layers
of energy and aura acting in tandem, entirely and truly as ONE.
Please give me a talent so huge that I
can walk on a stage balding... fat... (looking a bit like quasimodo loping down
from the belltower), wearing a jacket and pants bespattered with paint at the
'now youthful' age of 62 and simply rip and rock the house down without a single
mouth-agape-with-wonder soul noticing that I am balding and fat because I am so
far past all that superficial shit and my talent is SO LEGENDARY and SO
GENUINELY HUGE,
that the people can't even see the little human surface shit they would normally
delight in picking at.
Please
give me a BAND as extraordinary, true, talented, ungrasping, UNCOMMERCIAL and FAITHFUL
that they will coolly hang around through all of my ups and downs, languishing
in recording studios, rehearsal rooms and tour buses across
decades, just so we can sometimes play together and create
incomparable magick, if and when we do.
Please
make me so raw, bold and honest that I do not show up at 'tribute gigs' to my
self, and lazily 'mine' my back catalogue but am always pushing and creating and
giving 'new' art and music to the world. Exploring all the degrees and
temperatures of my artistic expression without concerns for the commercial
devils who would besiege my soul, suck my blood and try to crush my wild
free spirit and make it 'saleable'. Please Dear GOD. PLEASE
MAKE ME AS GREAT A PERFORMER, ARTIST and SUPER-HUMAN BEING as NEIL YOUNG!
Please do it before I die....like RIGHT NOW!
PS - and one last thing... dear
God... could you teach me how to play guitar, write songs and SING like Neil as
well?"
Yup...
that's my letter to God re Neil Young. I'm putting a
super-sized super-duper big-headed bullshit Richard-Branson Virgin-Airways style
'Upper Class' stamp on it here and now. That gig last night... where touts
were selling tickets for £1,000 a pop, was, possibly, and I have raked through
my own back catalogue of gig experiences... hmmm.. yes.. that was I think and I
believe.. that was the BEST LIVE
GIG I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!
Neil left NO stone unturned with his Rock and Roll Hurricane. It was like
TWO inconceivably great gigs in one. He spent an hour just being Neil
surrounded by guitars and pianos and picking out instruments and acoustically
playing incredible songs from so many great albums (I wept twice!! no THREE
TIMES!!), including those most recently released in 2006 and 2007. The man
does NOT STOP writing and producing and touring and working... and fuck me
kids.. but his GUITAR PLAYING!!!! ALL of his extraordinary one-man-band
skills... oh my god. Maybe I should just die now... But then....
they packed away the acoustics and let CRAZY HORSE out of the ramp and for two
more hours it was a rock and roll rodeo, like a wild wind blowing you here there
and everywhere with him. I love everything about Neil Young.
His total clear simple devotion to what he is and what he does and his total
lack of apology for not being something else that maybe 'normal' people would
find more.. uh... Normal!
In
a world where people are nipping and tucking and trying to pretend to be
something other than they are so they can 'fit in' and rub twa hae pennies
together in thanks for being allowed to make enough crap money to fit into a
crap society in a crap way. Neil Young has NEVER apologised for 40+
years of mad sex, drugs and rock and
roll life and MIND-BLOWING (sometimes incomprehensible-to-the-normal-ear) music.
I used the words Rock and Star in the same sentence last month. Oh yes...
oh yes.. oh yes... he rocks you like a hurricane. He IS the hurricane.
I
couldn't believe my luck last night. Thanks to Mark Mackie @ Regular
and my Jimmy Miller for making it possible
Sun
2 March 2008 - MGCK MusicIt's
a small place... Edinburgh..
kinda
like a fishbowl
[in
the living room.. looking deep into the chandelier - looking for the future -
courtesy moi - Feb 08]
SO....we
can BREAK OUT, into the wider world! We can SWIM FREE! There's still 10
months left in 2008 - where can we go and what can we do there?
WE
can go to San Francisco and watch the Gay Pride Parade (why do Gay Guys have the
best bodies?)
[The
following photos and some 'notes' are from The San Francisco Chronicle and great
they are too.]
We
can go to BURNING MAN!! "Each
year, the week before Labor Day, northern Nevada's Black Rock Desert becomes the
trippiest -- and easternmost -- San Francisco neighborhood when tens of
thousands of self-proclaimed performance artists assemble for the Burning Man
celebration of all things primal and tribal."
We
can hang out by the Bridge, at the Presidio and watch the Blue Angels:
"The Blue Angels swoop past the Golden
Gate Bridge and over San Francisco in their aerial show. Chronicle photo by
Deanne Fitzmaurice" (thing is... if you're actually in the
city while this is happening.. you get the inkling what it's like to be in a war
zone before the bombs hit the ground. It's very very LOUD and unsettling.
It makes you certain you will vote to bring the boys home... whoever 'the boys'
belong to.)
we
can go to the beach...
we
can head up to The Sierras.... Yosemite??? (this photo of the Canyon in
the mist is MINE!)
[courtesy
Moi 26 Dec 06]
I
don't know for sure.... but it kind of looks like 'everything' we could do in
the next (remaining) 10 months of 2008 takes place in or around California...
There might be a message in that. i.e. Venice AND Texas can wait.
--------------------------------------
I
forgot to mention... another 'letter' of mine 'to the editor' was printed - this
time in the Edinburgh Evening News. It was about the diminishing 'music'
scene in the town. Replaced by 'residential developments', theme bars, hen
and stag nights and tourist tat... etc etc etc.. Read it..it's good. They
printed the WHOLE DAMNED THANG!
Of
course if you're too lazy to go there... here it is:
Poster
witch-hunt killing music scene
AS a musician, songwriter and director of a music publishing company, I must
concur with details of the issues raised in your article "Fly boys sick of
getting the brush off in poster crackdown" (News, February 26) and begin
with a simple fact.
The live music scene in Edinburgh, as in other cities around the world, is
reliant on street postering as one of its important advertising vehicles to fill
venues.
As a result of this current witch-hunt against flyposters in Edinburgh, the live
music scene in the Capital is slowly disintegrating and disappearing, to be
replaced with theme bars and Omni Centres.
The previously vibrant multi-textured fabric of the inner city is turning into a
predictably themed centre for stag and hen nights and middle-taste tourist tat.
The attacks on Edinburgh gig managers and club owners for using postering to
advertise their upcoming events is having a negative effect on that local
economy.
Glasgow, on the other hand, is alive and thriving and positively thrumming with
live bands and a vibrant music scene spawning popular bands and world music
scene contenders. Glasgow supports and values its own inner city arts culture,
as does Dundee. Both cities have "legal" poster sites, as do most if
not all of the major cities in the UK (and Europe and the Americas).
Here's a fact for you: It is a Scottish Government directive to find a positive
solution for "designated legal postering sites", and Edinburgh City
Council is dragging its feet.
Edinburgh seems to want clean streets, (lots of new expensive residential
developments), no noise, no vibrancy – except once a year during the Festival,
when a bit of excitement is allowed. The rest of the year, Edinburgh, the
purported capital city of Scotland, conducts herself like one of her Morningside
ladies, with the lace curtains drawn.
Electra Smith, MGCK Music, Edinburgh
----------------------------------------------
PS:
My
dear friend Shu Lorimer was the camera-person on this Al Jazeera documentary
from Kenya:
And as with
every new month... I'll be retiring an 'old' month.. Probably May-June
2005 - California Dreaming.....
(I STILL
haven't retired that month yet???!!! Apparently not... I love it too
much... to say good-bye)
-------------------------------------------------
If
you're looking for LAST MONTH's DHARMA - go
to: FEBRUARY
08 -
- California Dreaming
GOODBYE
TO THE LIGHTS....
If you don't know how.. 
