Untitled Document

VAUXHALL

ROUTE TO LOVE

So then I was round by Chinatown

Been riding the tube, just skating round

I chased my ghost up the emergency stair

And found it lurking round by Leicester Square

Heaven Hell or Hartlepool

The windy city, I passed through Hull

I had a clear and concise destination

Until John Bull had me thrown out of the station

So I decided to be on my way

I didn't know the time didn't even know the day

I knew where I wanted to be

But here I was drowning in an endless sea

Now I've got a girl, a girl of which I'm fond

But here I am stuck in the back of beyond

Where eyes peep out from doorways

Frightened, pinned

Lives spent wanting waiting chasing the wind

Unhealthy looking clouds, glimpses of stars

Moments of beauty, crashed cars

Sillicone valley I carried on by

These things you notice in the glimpse of an eye

And all these things i'll pass and never touch

Truth be told i never cared much

For carrying a heavy load

I carried on down the road

When stars shine above, I thought about life and i thought about

Love...

Karel wrote the genius melody and rhythm to Route to Love, we'd been touring a bit by this time, playing places like the Adelphi in Hull and Princess Charlotte in Leicester, loads of great rock and roll dives all over the UK. Really bad riders of cheese sandwiches and warm cans of lager were the norm and most of the country were seen either hungover or drunk so the words came out of that.

BAUBLES, BANGLES, EMOTIONAL TANGLES

Think of all the times I've tried to will you to the door

You'll turn up when least expected and what's more

Loneliness drives you into other people's lives

And you'll grasp at bottles and put up with lies

Then think of all the times you thought you were free and didn't care

Just to turn around shaking

Cos that someone wasn't there

'I'm in love with Peter but I'm pregnant by you, he'll ahte me if I tell him, what are we going to do?'

Well would it hurt if you phoned in sick

We've plunged in deep

We're in this thick

Could you be round my house prompt 8-45

For God sake do something to remind us, we're still alive

For there's a room

With it's pictures all strewn

Where we'd sleep with the radio on

All those paged in dedications of my dreams

'Pete the babies not yours'

And through those hateful scenes

It'll be a port in a storm, somewhere safe and warm

For when those manic monsters all swirl and swarm

And all the endless rooftops that reach up to the sky

Until the last chimney fades and dies

If for a moment wrapped up in each other

No problem, you're the sister to my brother

Baubles and bangles, emotional tangles

Would you walk out the door

bank holiday pirate radio deals with emotional complications. The beautiful chords and melody are Big John's

NIGHTJARS

We brought you flowers

We bought you sweets

You looked so young

Wrapped in hospital sheets

You said at night

The ward gave you chills

You asked for drink

You craved for pills

For being in here

It made you squirm

Surrounded by the elderly, the sick, the infirm

It brought back those nights

Sat by the phone

when you wanted to reach out, not to be alone

Things that are scarce, sacred and hidden

You find yourself seeking all things forbidden

You know that it's wrong

You should be oh so strong

And when a stranger walks up and asks for a light

Well, it's a gaudy moon hangs over centrepoint tonight

Then all the faces on the tube that slip by

Sometimes it gets too much, and its all you can do, to break down and cry

But after a few drinks

The city opens up

That you could feel it just swallow you up

We brought you flowers

We bought you sweets

You looked so young

Wrapped in hospital sheets

For Sylvia...

BUTTERFLY BEAUTY BURNS

So...

You carved up your face

Just for a laugh

A need to transcend what you saw in the glass

Cropped

Severe

Beautiful

Bleached

Timeless, immortal, forever out of reach

And...

You'd walk in front of cars like Jesus walked out on water

Like nothing could ever touch you

The nights would ever harm you

The drugs could ever age you

Good times could never jade you

Then...

Wonderfully scarred

With total disregard

You would never grow fat

and not be seen

dead

in that!

You'd leave behind no shadow

You'd leave behind no stain

but when the sky is bruised

You know...

It will rain

Yet even when your eyes are all smudged

Wantoness cannot be judged

Even when your eyes are all smudged

Terribly tinselly tacky things

The burn, burn, burn, burn, burn of beautiful butterfly wings

There was a weird transgender club somewhere in the arches that never closed, always good for a drink, other afternoons were spent in the Queen Anne a notorius strippers pub over the green where one particular dancer used to rub her body up against the greasy wall mirror in rhythm to T.REX. This was in the days when most pubs still shut between 3 and 6 of an afternoon. The pub had that faded scarlet and gold flock wallpaper Victorian feel with torn baize on the pool table and off duty doormen an added bonus. Craig Charles the Red Dwarf actor was perpetually propping up the bar. Karel used to read the Guardian seemingly oblivious to the flesh swanning around him but would always put a pound coin in the proffered pint jar.

TACTLESS

Oh you were leaning over the wall

Gazing into

Some other world

Something lost

Something destroyed

Oh if I knew

What you

Were going through

Still you never know

What's going on

In the other room

Until it's too late

There's things now long gone

And you can't bring them back

To mention them in this house

Would just be

Tactless

Now do you remember that swan that was shot in the park

The hateful hurtful things you said to me in the dark

Corpses of coaches buses cars

That drunken insult hurled across some bar

And if you pulled up the hedges and tore out the trees

You couldn't leave things more barren, bereft and diseased

And you can't bring things back

No, you won't bring things back

Anything you do now, anything

Would just be tactless

Now i can hear those voices

Coming up from the floor

And that very same song is being sung next door

And the sound of the sirens cuts the street outside

Tonight I want to stay in my room and hide

Now's not the time to bring back the charm

I know you meant well but you're only causing harm

And that's just Tactless

Brett shot the video for this in the Harp Ballroom in New X Gate and under the pier at Brighton. The really beautiful girl in the video, Jolanda, went off and joined the moonies in New York not long after, indeed I think is is still part of the moony family to this day. The living should never speak ill of the dead, what the dead have to say about the living is another matter.

YOU'VE GROWN SO OLD IN MY DREAMS

Bulging eyes and bleary breath

Still living in fear of that untimely death

The one in your heart

The one in my head

And all those things that were left unsaid

There's a world going on outside my door

There are cars in my street that I've never seen before

Our cities are going up as fast as the sky is coming down

And the sky is coming down

And you said one day we'll be together

(If you'd just like to wait forever)

But you've grown so old, so old in my dreams

A postcard from Greece, stained in retsina and blood and someone else's come. Signed with the scrawl of Medea.

KILLY CAR THIEVES

So we drove out to Washington

To the all night service station

To play the machines the Space Invaders

Aimless killing time no destination

Rambo, Death Race, Lost Ark Raiders

Dawn got bored and couldn't talk

We gunned the car all the way down to New York

Stopping once in front of an electrical store

Bumper to the window, glass to the floor

Video's, kettles, compact discs

Trivial things, not worth risks

It's just the joy, the speed, the pain, the ride

The up all night searching through the oblivion inside

And it really is an awesome sight

This cities starry sprawling light

That I feel so small

And hate to think about it all

Unexpressed rage

A wasted night

We doused the car in petrol

Set the thing alight

Absolute paean to the Geordie Ramraiders of the time. First few lines inspired by late night drives with Howard, when he was the coolest man around.

BRIDE

If I sold my belongings

Bought you some flowers

Would you still keep me waiting

Hour upon hour

Of course there are things that I've said

When I should not have spoken

Such careless words

Hearts have been broken

Could we make a new start?

We can't live together

But can we live apart

God! The way you walk in and out of my life

With these tales to tell

Thoughts as deep and as pure

As your chalice well

My feet on the ground to your head in the stars

You say i need to look up like you need to get out

But woah, i have my doubts

And Su, I'm not so sure

But if dreams would see us through

Postcards, letters, phonecalls too

I'm trying to be as celestial as you

You give me something only what I don't know

I just know the boat leaves

And with that my heart grieves

And when I sold our bed

I lost my head

I've sold our belongings

And bought you some flowers

Some Bessejeneever

Let's sit on the floor and get bombed

One last time

And in a station's cafe

We purged our pasts

Forced a smile

Then we went our own seperate ways

Sadly loved

Dearly missed

You always said there's got to be more, more, much more than this!

So into this world go me and you

What's to become, become of us two

I'm ready to make peace with my bride

I'm ready to make a truce with my bride

I'm ready to make a pact with my bride

I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready to make peace with my bride...

The station's cafe section paraphrases a song called 'Just Ask the Lonely' which was inspired by Vivien Tenny's New English Library novel of a late sixties Manchester soul girl which took it's title from the ultra-classic Four Tops song of the same name.

MANIC MAGIC MAJESTIC

In a ripped and tattered ball-gown dress

This lonely starlet in distress

Amidst all the little flowers of the mall

Who'll want and get and always shall

Who're all consuming, ever-changing

Those idiot smiles, all permanently engaging

This time, next time, sometime, whenever

We can buy it on the never-never

All the muted messages left on answer-phones

It's how I'd imagine, say, Halo Jones

The night's still young

My credit's clean

Let's press a few buttons on my favourite machine

Gothettes and miseribilist's clamour down a lonely street

You can't feel the pavement under your feet

Swings and shows saucers and slides

We'll take we'll take all of the rides

How can you not be swayed?

By all that is displayed?

This time, next time, sometime, whenever

We can buy it on the never, never

In a ripped and tattered ballgown dress

This lonely starlet in distress

Swings and shows saucers and slides

We'll take, we'll take, all of the rides

How can you not be swayed?

By all that is displayed?

This time, next time, sometime whenever

We can buy it on the never, never

Never such a sight since they knocked the Odeon down

A Lalique vase, a Schiaparelli gown

I'd take you for Beatrice Dalle anytime, anyday

The tattoo on your back is more sublime anyway

You're amphetamine thin with Tennents drinkers' skin

Never stop to worry about the mess that you're in

The night's still young, my credit's clean

Let's press a few buttons on my favourite machine

How can you not be swayed?

By all that is displayed?

This time next time sometime whenever

We can buy it on the never, never

A broadside against the dearthers, dullards and deathlys, and a hymn to the ragged chancers, the one-off's, the raw beauties, the permanently alive. We had played the Locomotive in Paris and Beatrice Dalle had shown, she was sat at our table but we were so out of it we knew nothing of it. She popped up on French TV the next morning saying that she had been to see her favourite band the night before, and how exquisite we were. Karel got straight on to the phone when we got back to Bonnington Square and tried to commandeer her for a video, she wanted paying some sort of fee but Karel was having none of it. Karel wrote the music for this too, immense.

WHAT THE MOON SAW

You're beat split grape of a face

Really wouldn't look out of place

In a garden of ruins

Sorrows and tombs

Your Judas Tree

Oh how it blooms tonight

Your conscience must be Jerry Built

You cut me up without any guilt

And I played the farmer who'd just come to town

The moon must have cringed when it looked down

What it saw on the floor

Life's fatal flaw

One moment of lust

Shattered all my trust

I'd refuse to believe it if i saw it with my eyes

I still can't believe what you said was all lies

But now I know

The moon told me so

Seven soldiers and a sailor

Outlandish behaviour

Shopgirl, Princess, Washerwoman, Duchess

You said they'd all look the same on the slab

And from your first indiscretion in the back of a cab

Your life was mapped out

How you threw it about

Played dirty little stop out

To my stay at home meek

I was a willing accomplice

I even turned the other cheek

Oh but i was lead astray

I was lead astray

That's what all you innocents always

Seem to say

And they say one day your nose will meet your chin

And there'll be a scar for every sin

For you cut me up without any guilt

Your conscience must be Jerry built

I played the farmer fresh into town

The moon must have cringed when it looked down

In a garden of ruins, sorrows and tombs

Your Judas Tree, oh how it blooms tonight...

Bonnington Square was full of real characters at this time, not the parking lot for Chelsea Tractors that it is today. Over the road was a family called the fat boys, there were three brothers, i think they each had an alsation dog. The fat boys had been in the square since time immemorial and they used to walk the dogs around the square in a slow stately manner every evening around six. They resembled something out of Deliverance, or Henry, portrait of... Karel had retrieved an old table of theirs and had positioned it in the kitchen of 68. The table was an abonimation, a regular curse. It stunk of raw meat juice like they had cut all their beefs and porks and chickens and hams straight on to the table, years and years of fat boy butchery, ingrained, insoluble, and no matter how much domestos was brought to bear on the surface, how much bleach used to scrub it down, the stink in the wood could not be removed and stayed with us for a summer or two. Maybe we grew to love the thing in time. It was never got rid of. These spiteful, wronged, vindictive words were written over the table. I wonder where the fat boys are now?

YOU'RE NOT SINGING ANYMORE

You came on the third and moved into my room, it was like the start of some great oil boom, the sort that pushed up the prices, yet opened up the choices, 'well it brought a little fun to this town'. All laddered tights and lame the night that you met me, it was offshore leave and home from sea, with money to burn and the town to paint, there I was waiting, a sucker to treat me like a saint and what do you know, you showered me with presents and a little gold ring, a little gold ring that covered a multitude of sins. Well, well, the days they improved and the nights just got better, I'd now live for those weekends when we'd dance and you'd sing. But of course just when I'd gotten used to your face, well you were up and you were out, you were gone from this place, taking with it your money and all that was funny, and that little gold ring, the one that covered a multitude of sins. Well now that finger is bare but you know I still walk down Union Street on friday nights hoping maybe you'd be there, but I know deep down, you're not singing anymore.

We played a gig in the ballroom of a hotel in Aberdeen, one of the more exhilarating engagements we undertook. the saturday night port sparkled and surged with intentional violence and mindless sex. Scribbled a few hungover notes in a strippers bar at ten the next morning. The recording was done down in the West Country. At a place called Sawmills in Fowey, Cornwall, where Daphne Du Maurier lived, and used to shoot tourists with an air rifle. Union Street in Plymouth has the same random wild west frontier vibe as Aberdeen.

BLESSED BOY

To walk around this city with it's wealth all on show

To gaze through the windows and walk home in the snow

men go about their business no time for joy

You sing with the angels, blessed boy

No room in this town for poor John Brown

Poor John Brown you just can't keep down

Lazy bone idle perpetually late

Poor and impoverished all the things that you hate

Well, unscathed the return of young weasel head

More psycho than ever i'm back from the dead

Dirty and dishevelled I turn up at the door

You hate it, you hate it, can't stand me no more

So I'm off without delay

Sentence me while I'm away

I might return another day

But I'll do my do's

And I'll have my say

I'll have this drink and you can pay

For joy and joy much joy just joy

here's some kind of angel

Blessed boy

Higher...

We played our first ever gig abroad in Zurich at a place called the Rote Fabrik. Spent a few days there. It was xmas and nowhere to go. Was walking around with a copy of the scapegoat trickster in my pocket, huddled into a coat against the snow and the wind, looking at all the riches in the windows. There was a German Romantic painting exhibition on at the Kunstmuseum, lots of Caspar David Friedriches and Otto Runges. Spent days in there there was fuck all else to do. This comes from there.

REAL BEAUTY PASSED THROUGH

All the shiny ghosts that haunted the child

Right until mystery was choked and defiled

Well let grown men weep light candles for the deceased

Blessed truly are the blind

And never again will I pay in kind

Now they say all good children go to heaven

And November nineteenth of something seven

Found us quarrelling so violently in Hanway Street

All those birthday presents were scattered at your feet

Like snow, front page paper headlines falling from the sky

A sense that maybe time was passing you by

You wrote an epic from the ferry then less and less

As Europe swallowed you up then you lost my address

And now the triumph of the innocents

Stands clean amidst these derelicts

Strange buildings sad children

You want to see the whole world and you want it now

You should get to know yourself first I spat anyhow

Now left to rummage through the debris of what was left behind

Knowing never again will I see your kind

You know these things only time will tell

and like Withnail said 'chin chin farewell'

For the past I've no illusions anymore

Let those fools pass by my door

Flesh and blood I'll take my leave too

A real beauty has just passed through

Wrote this with Bill in a place he was staying down in Lee Green. Karel had been feeding us Fellini films, the one about the layabout in particular, Accaton, great imagery, someone I was involved with had gone to Rome and disapeared so had that kind of thing in mind. Karel had a good store of Jacques Tati films too.

EVENING WORLD HOLIDAY SHOW

Not just a cloud coming down from above

They've sanctified fear now they'll privatise love

There's a modern slang have you learned it yet

We hate humans we love our pets

Consumer terrorism left out on the shelf

We've just had a phonecall from the A.L.F.

Right queer sightseers us

Token dreamers on a broken bus

So relax in your seats everything is fine

Just forget your worries and let the sun shine

Of course nothing in this world is ever fair

Especially when the judge is running for mayor

So be ready for the worst in the next few hours

Meanwhile here's the latest from the 'Disco Dancing Flowers'

A poser, you're a priest, you're brother has sinned

Do you turn your back or turn the bugger in?

Right, here's a dedication to all you mutoids out there

Surf is up but don't wet your hair

Dungeness power station rising up out of the mist

A wave of ultra tanned bodies all sun bed kissed

And oooooh the e tinged smile that lingers on your face

It's like a million miles of empty office space

It's not just a cloud coming down from above

They've sanctified fear now they'll privatise love

The evening nearly over

We drove down to the coast

It was then you asked me what I liked the most

Silence commenced

I turned on the radio

The Evening World Holiday Show

We embarked on this great mad seaside tour of the North East coast in an army truck that belonged to a traveller name of Asa. We played to four people at the end of the pier in Skegness and a packed club called Surfers in the old plaza Tynemouth. If anything was supreme about Holy joy this was it. The whole country seemed loved up on Ecstasy but for us it was the end of the world and absurdity and fragility reigned. The disco dancing flowers were these real trash battery driven ornaments that were sold in the glossy trash mags of the time, real consumer shite. The A.L.F. were in the gold of their years. Halucinatory radio stations pushing truth and good shit through the awful everyday static.

BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER RESOLVED

Madly unrequited

Of course I'm ashamed, indignant, slighted

The lads are all thieving in Port Grimaud

Where was I sleeping on your floor

With this mystic heathen fantasy of yours

That even our street holds unknown doors

If you'd just wait and it's getting late

Dare I believe in fate

So how was this friendship defined

You said I was all images

Whilst you dealt in signs

Oh great Chagallian cow

So you went to art school

What good is that now?

And why waste half the night putting on a show

When there's still so much you don't know

You don't know

You won't ever know

And may be I never fitted in to your place

Your friends and what have you

And if that is the case

I won't show my face

Around these doors

For a while

Poetic justice

Might throw up

Something more vile

Our roles were always ill defined

My faith in things a little undefined

Nature industry nature

That is the issue

Mourn our decline

Oh send me a tissue

And now I'm counting on the poem that says

The poem that says

Everything must change

We chop down trees

We plant

New seeds

And because it was never resolved

I'm forever standing in the rain

Everything relates to you

This glorious, glorious, glorious paean

Somedays Karel and I would walk over Vauxhall Bridge and spend hours in the Tate as it was then wandering through the many galleries gazing in wonder at all the beautiful women to be found there. Other days Chirico or Turner would have to do.

UNLIKELY GIRL

Some things take weeks and weeks

Like the kiss curl that clung to your cheeks

Still its worth it when you smile

For these things are fraught

So fraught and fragile

Always in love

But never really loved

Is it worth waiting or can these things be shoved

People want to own you

Or just change the way you feel

The little bit most you

They'd dearly like to steal

Truly happiest alone

You're in a world

A world that's your own

Well I'm a deserter too

And I find that the same thing, those same things they ring true

Oh yes, they do

One of life's refugee's

Always chasing falling leaves

As the cinema pours its contents out into the streets

These people are like dogs

They'll snap at your feet

When you just want some shade to hide from the heat

I say let them chase your shadow

They can never catch your soul

Let them chase your shadow

They can never catch your soul

The Beatles film when Ringo gets sick of the whole palaver, plays truant from the band and goes walk about in West London, plays the gentleman, puts his coat over a puddle for a girl to step on...

When your suits got the shine that your shoes require

Night's no longer spent setting the town on fire

Deeper and deeper, the door ajar

Deeper and deeper, the door is ajar

Shadows fall

When you think you've got it made then things begin to slide

And your face no longer graces the place with pride

Deeper and deeper DOOR AJAR

AND THE STREETS ARE CLOSING IN

YES THE STREETS ARE CLOSING IN

SHADOWS FALL

Cry rents night sky then silence

BITTEN LIPS

You know she's not as tall as on the screen, but then, we're engaged in creating dreams. I watched from the window of a coffee bar, as she was hustled into the back of a friend's car. I was having a quiet drink after the late picture show, Prince was on the jukebox outside it began to snow. Silently, furiously, all those fleeting dreams, in a world where everything is just what it seems. Everybody wanted to know her, I looked on as her boyfriend was reduced to a helpless gofer, surronded by everyone, touched by no one, forever, forever, forever and a day...

You Know it's all I've ever wanted she'd said, 'oh that and romance' BUT FOR A FLASH DID I CATCH A TRAPPED VULNERABLE GLANCE? As if it was herself just published the Satanic Verses and all the passing taxi cabs turned into hearses. With an eye in every building windows giving out the fear CHAPMAN and his ilk for a moment lingered here. So what other ghosts had the eighties given us so far, I turned my attention back to the bar, a million unknown voices all wishing the same thing, transferring their anxieties to a vision on the screen, celluloid framed, that immortal smile, LIFE IN ITSELF IS MORE FRAGILE. And earlier I'd listened to what she'd said on cable tv, ah you know the kind of things that people say when they're on tv...

'SOMETIMES I READ MY MAIL AND I GET A LITTLE SCARED, TIRED MOMENTS LATE AT NIGHT WHEN MY NERVES ARE BARED, BUT LIFE MUST GO ON, ONE SECOND AND IT'S GONE, SO TRUST IN YOURSELF, ANYWAY AND ALWAYS, AND THE NIGHT WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF' Yeah, the night will take care of itself.

Then she sang us a few bars of her favourite most current song 'I WANT TO SPEND THE DAY WITH YOU, WITHOUT DOING THE THINGS YOU'RE MEANT TO DO, WHY WON'T YOU LET ME INTO YOUR ROOM? YOURS IS A PLAYGROUND AND MINE... IT'S A TOMB!'

You know she's not as tall as on the screen, but then, we're engaged in creating dreams...

Cold Montmartre derive, way after midnight...

HERE IT COMES

Here comes the BIG SOUND

TAKING OFF IN THE CAR PARK

RIPPED JEANS AND BLEACHED HAIR

CONVERSE BOOTS VISION STREET WEAR

LIKE ACTION MAN IN LEGOLAND

WHEN IT FEELS LIKE MY LIFE HAS BEEN TAKEN OUT OF MY HANDS

HERE IT COMES

YOU SAID HAVE FAITH

HONEY DON'T GRIEVE

I PROMISE YOU THE WORLD

COME NEW YEARS EVE

USHERED IN ON A STORM

EVERYTHING WILL BE SO SWEET

THE BEST THING THAT'S EVER HAPPENED IN THIS STREET

Here it comes like GABRIEL'S HORN SENSATION

MY WHOLE LIFE SPENT WAITING

FOR THIS MOMENTS REVELATION

OUT IN THE GARDEN

WE TALKED UNTIL THE RAGGED DAWN

THE MOMENT CARRYING ON

RIGHT THROUGH THE BLESSED MORN

HERE COME THE THINGS THAT ONE DAY WE'LL DO

TRAVERSE THE GLOBE A PACT JUST ME AND YOU

MIRACULOUS POTIONS GOING DOWN A TREAT

TRADING GREAT NOTIONS THE FUTURE INFINITE

HERE IT COMES, HERE IT COMES

YOU SAID HAVE FAITH

HONEY DON'T GRIEVE

I PROMISED YOU THE WORLD

IT'S NEW YEARS EVE

USHERED IN ON THIS STORM

AND EVERYTHING SO SWEET

YOU'RE STILL THE BEST THING HAPPENING IN THIS STREET

THEN THE GANG TURNED UP AND OFF WE ROARED

I GOT WRECKED

AND YOU GOT BORED

I MESSED UP

I TOLD A LIE

NOW I'M SO LOATHSOME

I COULD DIE

There it goes again

There it GOES AGAIN

In the notes to a previous song i'd baldly stated that ' The whole country seemed loved up on Ecstasy but for us it was the end of the world and absurdity and fragility reigned'. That was bullshit, and a lie, obviously. Hymn to the good times and homage to Kerouac this period piece, that never captured any kind of anologous sound.

HOT LITTLE HOPES

Crack a dirty joke

Christ you're still too young to smoke

Still it's hardly a sin

No use crying into your gin

It was the usual tawdry setting

Of a nightclub

When we met

Product of a generation, ever quick to forget

All violence, premeditated

Ritually anticipated

You know, smart suits and shades

Gold sovereigns and chains

Chasing the overly made up sorts

Who man the perfume counters

In the larger department stores

Ah, the drivel of drunken bores

So...

A post-valentine park bench palaver situation

Capture the moment in a photo booth

Then a taxi to the station

To where the streets are teeming, the place is seething

The whole town is out

And all the bars are heaving

And look, bare spammed legs and white court shoes

Tottering down the pavements, crying, dying to be wooed

And later, much later in the dorway of a shop

Well some people drink too much

And they just don't know when to stop

You'll feel sordid and spiteful

Hateful the next day

Didn't even get a number

You squandered all your pay

A window full of jewellery

Wishful thinking, material gain

Just to see your dreams all vanish

In a puddle down Pink Lane

And week in, week out, week in, week out

You'll be back next friday without a shadow of a doubt

Hot Little hopes

A tangled weekend

More than just the obvious

I'm looking for a friend

Two minds, one thought

Point of no return

This will be the one

And everything will burn...

It's just an ongoing story on the front page of the Chronicle

FREDA CUNNINGHAM

Middle Engine Railway Lines

Gloriously deserted truant minds

A childhood's innocence sheltered by these fields

Of bricks and broken bottles, puddles and weeds

In what might look like the pits to you

But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder

And I hope that still rings true

Amongst flowering buildings, withering trees

This tragic waste, these polluted seas.

Anyway...

I dwelled on these things

And the fortune change brings

One day a field of flowers, the next a wall of stone

Well the rose must grow along with the thorn

Should I follow my dreams or stay with what I know

I'd dug myself into a hole

I just couldn't let go

All these universal hassles taken on as my own

Well by Aidan, Oswald, Cuthbert or Bede

If you've any wise words say them now

I'll take heed

Yeah, well who should come along

But the gawk who used to push a pram

A beetroot little bairn forever crying for it's mam

Now in the last song we heard you were staring into space

A magic, tragic look etched into your face

From neglect people crumbled, I always assumed

But dear me Mary, how you've bloomed

You've upped and left all those problems behind

You're superbly, completely, out of your mind

And here you are now to say 'Sonny don't worry'

The globe might crumble with yourself don't worry

The good things all come from inside

And I think that this you'll find in time

Well, for a moment I admit, I thought my world was spent

When all of a sudden it feels like the last day of lent

Yeah, the last day of lent...

Hymn to times simple, friends, places, situations, before lives and wishes got complicated and good things soured, purities corrupted, and yeah, an early acknowledgement that the world is now mighty fucked, fucked and maybe it was time to start looking inside, a plea to keep the faith anyway... I fucking live by this song... me.

HAPPY GO LUCKY

Ours is the moon

That's on the wane

So point me to the sun

I'll try there once again

Oh for how long

Do these things last

They seem to go

Then they go just as fast

You know I've caught your habit

Of always looking at the sky

Tonight's clouds linger

Then pass on by

Remembering a sunset

That torched the sky

And oaths sworn to last

Until the day that you die

Now snatches of Grafitti scrawled on some toilet wall

Unexpected wins in an amusement hall

'You'll make me lonesome when you've gone'

I'm thinking now of all the lights that shone

You know they'res not many left that quite understand

Will I meet you at the Plaza, or maybe Dreamland

Some myths grow

Others fade and die

As the photo's

Over these years

Will testify...

TORCH ME

'Things are so complicated, why be a pain, you're out on the sly again'

Nothing is beautiful, seen in that light

City sob stories can briefly burn bright

People in this place, you say they act so hard

Yet... they're scared to say what they feel

Unsure of what to do all piano bar blue

So much time was wasted with you

Oh I opened up, hoped for something more real

Then you turned and acted so snide

'Things are so complicated, why be a pain, you're out on the sly again'

The Vibrators, Knox and his gang, they had a song called London Girls' 'London Girls always getting me down, just can't take the same old runaround' from an album called Pure Mania. Class.

LOOK WHO'S CHANGED WITH THE TIMES

Once upon

You did everything wrong

Dressed so bad

Made everyone sad

Oh the mad things you said

Then really you went off your head

I remember you best

Selling tombstone blues

To small town jerks in Johnson's shoes

This ex-jailbird, cause celebre

Found karma on a kibbutz in Israel

But this is the place you left behind

Had to come back to see what you'd find

Got off the coach and walked around

Couldn't believe the vibe that was going down

Shoot the drug dealer on the video screen

In a dragon ninja versus bad dude scene

Violent retards, bimbo's too

All about to vent their bird-brain spleen on you

So those dirty deeds you once perpetrated

You claim to have repented

But still you're hated

You're finished with the past it hasn't finished with you

All that bad karma like shit on your shoe

And it may be true but I don't believe it

That things are getting better

Cos I don't recieve it

Once upon you did everything wrong

Now everything's a mess

I hope you come out strong

Look who's changed with the times

Maybe the times have changed with you?

A retro take on Killy Car Thieves, instead now Howard was driving the tour bus and not the Rover he used to take down to the service stations. There is a theory that we wasted this album, Positively Spooked, in the way we recorded it, produced it, or allowed it to be produced, and listening to this, fuck i agree, i'd go a step further and say that myself, personally i'd run out of any ideas, had nothing left to write about, and should have thrown the towel in there and then, hard though, when you're doing the only thing you ever wanted to do, with some of the mates you grew up with too. Fuck it, throwing in the towel has always been anathema, stand up, soldier on,create something new... went to maybe the only place we could go...proto Brit Pop.

flyer for gig on the 'Wrecked Again' seaside tour of bracing North Eastern seaside towns . This gig was played out to the heavy rock support band five paralytic screaming women from Nottingham and two journalists called The Stud Brothers. I don't think we played that well. The following night was a different matter entirely when we played Skegness. The Exiled Cockney manager was so excited we were playing that he had a hundred commemorative t-shirts printed up with the name of the band and the clubs logo on. He then persuaded a bevvy of the local glamour girls to model them in an onstage wet t-shirt competition on the stage, which he had us watch on his nascent cctv system in his office over a complimentary glass of champagne. Class. As they say in the trade. The audience was a mixture of local indie fanatics and dance orientated tourists. A potent mix. We played, as they also say in the trade, a blinder. Bill, was particularly on form that night.

All the artwork on all the Rough Trade releases was painted by Chris Milton. Like all men of supreme taste Chris had an unhealthy obsession with Dylanology and worked primarily on old testament pagan mythical sources. A big visionary smoker he once entertained Karel and myself in his gaff up in Kentish Town. I couldn't speak for three days after.

Two characters called Thorsten and Jokull showed up at Bonnington Square with a bottle of Black Death vodka and invited us to Iceland. It was dark the whole time, dark when we got there and dark when we left, a beautiful moonscape of a place, the photo's below were part of a programme they put together. We went to a disco there on the first night, every woman in the place was beautiful but the guys they were only interested in the drinking and the fighting, to a man they drank and fought without pausing, in a friendly manner, without vindictiveness, soon we were dancing around the fights, the place was heaven, basically.

The Sugercubes showed immense hospitality. Einar especially. On the high street, Chess and myself stood perishing in a doorway as supermodels sashayed down the pavement in vests, oblivious to the snow. It was like a hyper beauty version of Newcastle we thought. Two faces from North Shields appear out of the blizzard and ask us what we are doing here? We ask them the same thing of them... they are working in the fish filleting factory, bettter wages, less crime. Not that it makes it a better standard of living mind...Later on we went on a TV chat show and talked suicide and depression with the prime minister and Iceland's main eurovision song contestant.

We stayed in an old brothel on the main street, on the evening of the gig there was a powercut which plunged the whole town into a further darkness, the gig was in peril of being called off, but between us and the promoter we somehow persuaded the gangster owner to open late, he was a cool guy and agreed, he locked us all in, and threw the bar open for good measure, it was a very inebriated gig both band and audience, later we had a party thrown for us at the Bar 22 club. Met two of the coolest girls in the world Saeunn and Magda. The poster above was for the gig at Tungun, The Moon Club, it has since burned down. Reykjavik was the best. Thank you Thorsten and Jokull.

Alfie on stage in Vilnius, we arrived a week or so before liberation and made a whole load of friends there, loved the place. Everyone loved Frank Zappa. They were building a statue in his honour. When the Russian tanks rolled in they knocked it down. The gig was in a big old institutional gymnasium type building. Later on we played records on Radio Free Lithuania. We played the only records they had Queen and Elton John and the Sex Pistols. EMI's finest. When you touched the decks you got sharp electric shocks. Loved it there. When the Russian tanks rolled in they knocked this building down too. I watched it happen on the television back home.

The PA and all the equipment was really basic seventies stock. Suffice to say it sounded great. Loud and rude and clear.

Adrian discussing Zappa, drinking local beer.