Mum phones. Dad’s had some sort of stroke and is in Ipswich Hospital. A brain scan has revealed no damage, but otherwise things are bit unclear and undefined. Mum is waiting to hear from the doctors, and I’m waiting to hear from Mum.
They’re treating him with something called a ‘lumbar puncture’. I look it up.
It’s also known as The Spinal Tap.
Saint Shane’s First Letter to the Internetians.
Mr Edwards is typing this on the bar of The Boogaloo with his laptop. It’s gone 1am, and we’re the only ones here. Mr MacGowan speaks – slowly. Mr Edwards writes it down. Without editing.
Take a letter, Mr Edwards.
DE: So how are you, Mr MacGowan?
SMG: It’s been a great day. People collapsing all round me. I’ve decided there’s no such thing as a heterosexual. Omnisexual. That’s the word you used. I just went to see Borat. It’s sickeningly sexist, racist, anti-PC. And I love it.
DE: How was Vegas?
SMG: I was nine grand up on the roulette table. And then something happened that jinxed me. But I got out before I lost my original stake. Though the next night I was banned from the roulette table. Victoria won at Blackjack. And then walked away, which is a really hard thing to do. And then she walked back. And lost it.
[Footnote: Ms Clarke vehemently denies this last sentence.]
Spider and Louise got married by the pool. And I was the Best Man. I was also the Elvis Imitator in the ’68 Special get-up: leather suit, red neckerchief, shades etc. I sang the song they chose: Love Me Tender. Backed up by most of the Pogues. We had a great time in Japan as well. And San Francisco. And L.A. Hope to see you soon; hope to see ALL those old faces soon. Sayonara to Nippon. And Howdy Doody; and Happy Trails to you.
In San Fran I met once again with the great Clay Wilson. He gave a personally autographed copy of his new book of underground art. His personal selection from the mid 60s till the present day. I was really made up. Thanks to Rudi Fernandez and Del Zamora…! I was shocked to hear of the death of Luis. May he sleep in peace. May the helicopters in his eyes fly forever.
DE: What was it wanted to say about your sister’s music?
SMG: My sister made one great album and did a few live dates before she decided she wanted nothing more to do with the music business. She has been throughout the years a brilliant barmaid, a brilliant office worker for an insurance company in Lloyd Baker St. And an invaluable part of the Pogues administration. And an invaluable part of Van Morrison’s administration. She was an original follower of the Anti-Nowhere League. Whose lead singer Animal’s sister married and then broke up with my cousin Paul. He is now happily married again. After that she made her own album Chariot with a bunch of cowboys from Limerick who ripped her off. That situation has been rectified. And the album has been re-released – with the help of my father – including the single I Love Him With A Grace, and its original B-side, which wasn’t on the original album. And it’s available on her section of my website. (DE locates it: http://www.shanemacgowan.com/siobhan.shtml). It’s absolutely brilliant: it’s like Enya with real guts and heart and soul and spirit. The best female Celtic Soul album. And that’s my totally unbiased opinion. No, honestly, really, it is. Paradoxically, considering the hardest drugs she indulges in are booze, Xanax, and cigarettes, it is the ultimate spaced-out chill-out album. Just stick the big cans on and lie back on the waterbed and let her take you away to a world of timeless Gaelic mysticism. It also features my mother and father talking a love duet in Irish.
She’s also finishing off her first book based on the early Irish legends or history as you will have it. She’s already proved her writing and graphic art skills as an early Pogue Mahone poster designer (for gigs etc). And then editing and designing the original fan mag. Previously edited by Julie Pritchard. Siobhán re-christened it Ord na hOne. Inspired by the Irish Catholic magazine The Messenger Of The Sacred Heart. Her various graphic art is available also on that website, including her portraits of me personally signed by me and for sale, of course…
DE: What would you like to say to those curious about your work who have just heard Fairytale Of New York and nothing else?
SMG: Check out the five Pogues albums I’m on. And if you like, try the two I’m not on. And also the SMG & Popes albums: The Snake and The Crock Of Gold (ZTT Records). And the official live album: Across The Broad Atlantic; recorded mainly in Dublin and partly in New York when for some reason there were two St Patrick’s Days.
DE: Which 5 Pogues / solo tracks would you recommend them to legally download for starters, Fairytale aside?
SMG: That’s an impossible question. But off the top of my head right now I’d say – personally – Star Of The County Down, Rainy Night In Soho, Waxie’s Dargle (The Pogues), Yeah Yeah Yeah (Pogues), Victoria (SMG & The Popes).
Incidentally the Popes have an existence of their own that grew out of being my backing band and friends. I would recommend listening to their recordings. I was heavily involved in the recording of the first album they put out without my name: Holloway Boulevard. I did SOME singing, writing and producing and wrote the sleeve notes. However the second album is as different as it is more accomplished. Take it from there, yourself…
That’s all for now, folks.
Érin go Bragh!!!
Seán Mac Gabhan.
Eleven days since the last diary entry already? Time goes, goes and fades. Days through fingers like refined sand. Aches and pains are at least partly to blame. Aches which make sitting down painful, or standing up painful. Or walking painful. Or lying down painful. What a disappointment this body is: I should have kept the receipt.
I’m off to the Naughty Clinic tomorrow to get the aches between my legs investigated. It’s my first time to such a place, though I’ve found fellow males have been only too happy to weigh in with their experiences as soon as I mention the appointment. I’ve not done anything vaguely risky in THAT area for at least five years, but apparently I still have to go for a check up in case. If some religions are forged around The Virgin Birth, perhaps I can start one around The Celibate Clap.
Some days I’ve felt too busy, or too ill, or too sleepy. And then I think there must be more to life than feeling too tired or too ill to do anything with it. I need time to recover, to get better. I need to eat more healthily, drink less alcohol. And as ever, I need to say no to kind friends inviting me out all the time. I’m just not as hardy as they are. And I’m not just talking about Mr MacGowan.
Speaking of which, the other day I set up my laptop on the bar of the Boogaloo and took dictation from SMG as he wrote his first blog entry. In a locked pub, in the early hours, no one else about.
It’s called Saint Shane’s First Letter To The Internetians, and I’ll post it here shortly. Mr O’Boyle and Ms Clarke have already read it and given it their blessing, so it’s effectively a piece of Authorised Biography. I quite like the idea of Shane MacGowan – who doesn’t own a computer – having a blog. We’ll do it again if people like it. As he says, I’m like an occasional Boswell to his Dr Johnson.
Taylor Parkes has stopped reading blogs and online diaries. He says the entries where people are having a sad life are too depressing. And the ones where people are having a happy life are too depressing too.
Exchanging our various valetudinarian moans, he says that if he never could have sex again, he’d have to commit suicide.
This is, of course, where our views rather differ. He in turn has never harboured fantasies of having an operation to create a smooth, hairless, Barbie patch where one’s genitals should be.
In a world ruled by me, sexual organs would have to be applied for as an optional extra.
Halloween. My friend Ms Lucy Madison organises a spooky walking tour of the Middle Temple, Fleet Street and environs. Why? Because she likes doing it. Appropriately, she’s come straight from the set of Most Haunted Live, the popular TV show on which her boyfriend works. Some 30 odd people turn up, and it’s all great fun. She tells us dozens of local ghost stories, and points out locations like The Blackfriar pub – an outrageously ornate Art Nouveau hostelry. I later discover this was saved from demolition by Mr Betjeman.
Other tour highlights: the oldest working clock in London. A cavernous pub intact since 1666. Dr Johnson’s House. The banqueting hall in the Temple which the Harry Potter films use for the school hall. Temple Church, where we hear choirboys practising into the night. Actually, the whole Temple area of London is far more like Oxford than the capital. A different world. People ‘ssssh!’ each other as they pass in the lanes. The Sweeney Todd barber and pie shop locations, which she reassures us are fictional. I did know this, yet still need reminding. A clear indication of the strength of the tale. And a LOT of Dickens locations as featured in his novels. I do like fictional guided tours. They always seem more real than any actual history.
“This is the flat where, in Great Expectations, Pip discovers that his mysterious benefactor is –”
“Oh no, I’m in the middle of reading that!” complains David B. He’s not joking. So I’ve edited out the end of Ms Madison’s inadvertent spoiler, just in case you too have yet to finish Great Expectations in any form, Dear Reader. In which case, what are you waiting for?
I return home to find my front door refreshingly free of egg splatters. Happy Halloween.
To Kilburn to see David Barnett’s band The New Royal Family. He’s fantastically confident, entertaining and generally impressive as a frontman, and they make a splendid sound as a group. Vainly, I can’t help imagining him singing my lyrics. But then, I think the same while watching most bands I’m fond of these days. The frustrated lyricist’s lot.
I feel it’s still quite unusual for male singers (at least in bands) to agree to sing another person’s words. Which is a shame, as a kind of healthy competition tends to come forth: the singer doing their best to show off as a performer, putting their own spin on the words; the lyricist trying hard to impress the singer, frustrated with their own vocal shortcomings. A standard kept up on both sides. Showing off to each other, before showing off to a crowd.
I’m snuffling somewhat due to a cold that tediously seems to come and go. I inwardly grumble and whine on the journey, feeling that Highgate to Kilburn is the most difficult journey in the world. It isn’t actually: I just have to plan it better.
Last time I went to Kilburn was to the Luminaire, and I hung about too late, resulting in waiting for a night bus connection at Brent Cross at some ungodly hour.
Public transport has really been getting to me lately. Either I’m dwelling on the shortcomings of the tubes and buses, or I’m actually cursed. At the weekend, those on the Northern Line know all about these things called Rail Replacement Buses. The idea is, because of engineering works, Transport For London commandeers a fleet of lovely old Routemaster buses to cover the route that the tube trains would be taking. All very well, except these temporary drivers seem to be from a dimension much like this one, but not entirely. Out of the four or five Rail Replacement buses I’ve taken in the last month or so, two have led to an unexpectedly long excursion along rail routes which only exist in parallel worlds.
On one of these acidic trips, the driver decided to suddenly veer off into a maze of residential streets off Kentish Town Road before reaching a dead end. Then we all heard him phone his fearless leaders, and sheepishly retrace his trail to rejoin the main road at the point he left off. This was after about twenty minutes. No one on board said or did anything, of course. Too English.
On the other, a full double-decker of people expecting to travel from Archway down to Camden suddenly found themselves travelling down the Holloway Road, and then up Seven Sisters all the way to Finsbury Park. Which is, it’s fair to say, a somewhat loose interpretation of the Northern Line. To cap it all, the driver didn’t even use the bus lane. We were stuck in traffic AND on the way to the wrong destination. Some people did finally get up and say something to the driver, once we were on the Seven Sisters Road. Thus can be measured the limit of English Reserve – half the length of the Holloway Road.
“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” came the driver’s snarled response. One of those men who, given the choice between plunging off a cliff and admitting to having made a mistake, would take the pebble-dashed coffin look every time.
Thankfully, he relented to opening the doors to those who wished to take their chances elsewhere. Which was everyone on board. Muttering darkly, yet still not quite talking to each other, we walked the remaining yards to Finsbury Park tube.
It’s a minor waking nightmare. A vehicle full of people, all of whom know where they’re going, except one: the driver. And he thinks everyone else is wrong.
So now at weekends I avoid all Rail Replacement Buses. Instead, I take the normal 134 which covers the same tube route. It stops more often, but at least my pulse isn’t given any nasty surprises.
With Ms Charley to the press screening of It’s a Boy Girl Thing, a high school body-swapping comedy. The plot: a boy and girl who don’t get on magically switch bodies due to some ancient relic or other. Cue the usual comedic consequences, followed by lessons about what matters in life, and then the inevitable romantic happy ending. Hardly an original tale. Still, I decide to troll along as interpretations of gender-swapping and metamorphosis are favourite themes of mine, no matter how mass-marketed. It also helps that the boy is Mr Kevin Zegers, last seen as the son in Transamerica. Like Cary Elwes, Jared Leto and River Phoenix before him, he’s one of those preternaturally beautiful young actors that one wants to keep tabs on before the rude interception of career vicissitudes, or the ever-popular drug-inspired early grave, or simply the cruel volleys of age.
His mother is played by the frankly unlikely Ms Sharon Osbourne, of Ozzy and Asda fame. Her acting talents as evinced here will not, I suspect, give Ms Streep any sleepless nights.
Despite a few scenes of nudity which must pitch this toward the older side of the teen market, there’s the disappointing eschewing of any true sexual exploration: the boy-as-girl very nearly has sex with a man, but doesn’t go through with it. The leads fall in love while thus displaced, but don’t act upon such urges until things are back to normal. As Charley points out, it’d be more interesting if they slept together or even just kissed while in each others’ bodies, but this is, we must presume, Going Too Far.
So we get the fossilised set pieces as tried and tested by every US teen flick since the 80s, not least the climactic all-or-nothing football match. And yet Mr Zegers and Ms Samaire Armstrong – who has fun swaggering and swearing – are such a watchable and convincing couple, the film is just about redeemed. Interestingly, Mr Z is more convincing as a girl in a boy’s body than he is as a macho sports jock. Far too moisturised for ball games.
Ms S suggests I sign up for NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month event that runs in November. Although it has the slight whiff of US Self-Help-ness about it, I think it can only be a good thing. So I’ll give it a go.
Saturday night. Just in from The Boogaloo, which tonight is hosting an jolly party for The Sounds. I am told The Sounds are a Swedish band who have just played 4 nights at Brixton Academy, supporting a group called Panic At The Disco. I wouldn’t know a Sound or a Panic At The Disco if he or she bit me on the bottom. If this were to actually happen, I’d be less concerned with identifying their position as a modern pop group in the general scheme of things, and far more concerned with the act of being bitten on the bottom by a person with whom I had not formally been introduced.
Anyway, people seem to be enjoying themselves, dancing and smiling and so forth. I do the necessary etiquette for feeling not quite in the mood for a party: make eye contact and smile with everyone I know, then politely sneak out. So I leave the pub at about 1.45am, and sit here across the road, my ears ringing, to write up my diary.
Last Thursday. Beautiful & Damned is laid-back but fun. Present are Robin, Ellen, Tammy, Eddie, Lawrence, along with my neighbours Ms Layla, Ms Liz and Mr Cicero. It’s nice to show one’s next door neighbours what your life is like, not confining it to the usual small talk when passing in the street. Some fantastically dressed people there, including a handsome gentleman called David who is not only impeccably attired, but is something of an impressive dancer, probably with a few proper lessons under his belt. Moreover, he shares the wealth, happily partnering up with boys and girls alike, teaching them a few vintage moves on the spot.
My fellow DJ Ms Red follows a fantastic set by over-indulging at the bar to the point where she hurts herself while dancing. “I’ve forgotten I can’t do The Splits” she says, limping. Later, when she develops a bout of hiccups, I am witness to a cure that genuinely works. You pull back your ears and drink a glass of water very quickly. Although in this case, her ears are pulled back for her by a third party. Actually, the glass of water is also administered by a third party. Her hiccups vanish at once.
Silent movies screened tonight are Flesh And The Devil and Piccadilly. Music played includes The Puppini Sisters’ Wuthering Heights, which seems to go down terribly well, along with Right Now by Mel Torme, a suggestion from my mother. I am also complimented for airing The Monochrome Set’s The Ruling Class. Peggy Lee’s My Man is less obvious than Fever and solicits less dancing, but sounds no less stunning in a club environment. Lawrence – dressed as a deposed Russian prince – gets me to play Ivor Novello’s Keep The Home Fires Burning.
Other current favourites:
I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair – from the movie South Pacific
Oh Lori – Alessi Brothers
Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue – Art Landry (1920s recording)
Don’t Forget To Mess Around – Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five
Ole Buttermilk Sky – Hoagy Carmichael
Hey There – Peggy Lee (from her album of Broadway tunes in a Latin style)
I Could Have Danced All Night – ditto
Savoy Stomp – Judy Garland
Sweet Georgia Brown – Ella Fitzgerald & Count Basie
You’re The Top – Anita O’Day & Billy May
Mister Sandman – The Chordettes
Two Little Girls From Little Rock – Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell
Next (Jacques Brel) – Scott Walker, though I alternate it with the even more histrionic version from the 60s cast album of “Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well…”.
‘Next’ is one of my favourite lyrics of all time. I wonder what it must have been like for Scott Walker’s teeny bopper fans to hear him sing, only a couple of years after his big pop hits with the Walker Brothers, about his ‘first case of gonorrhea’.
The sleeve notes to ‘Scott 2’, the 1968 album ‘Next’ is on, are by ‘his friend Jonathan King’. Mr Walker’s 2006 album, “The Drift’, is shockingly experimental and avant garde, but I can’t help thinking he should have asked Jonathan King to do the sleeve notes once again. That’d be truly ‘dark’, and ‘challenging’.
As a DJ, I find it’s better to generally play to women than to men or to some idea of what pleases both. Women are more likely to get up and dance of their own accord. Men are less likely to dance, and are also far less likely to dress up. The question of putting someone on the door to impose a dress code is dismissed when I realise there’s a fair amount of male club regulars who love the music, but prefer not to make an effort with their clothes. I will never understand why boys like jeans quite so very much. Other trousers are available.
Message from Mr J:
“I just saw Salman Rushdie dancing in Clerkenwell – to I Will Survive.”
The next Beautiful & Damned is on Thursday November 23rd.
To the Phoenix Cinema in Finchley for a screening of The History Boys, preceded by a Q&A with Alan Bennett himself. A comical moment kicks off the proceedings when the National Treasure is welcomed to the stage. He has to walk down the auditorium aisle from the back of the cinema, but his way is obstructed by a handful of latecomers still getting to their seats, along with a smattering of people suddenly getting up to go to the refreshments kiosk or the toilets. He stands halfway along the aisle, waiting for these people to pass, with an embarrassed smirk as the applause continues for just that little bit too long. Given he’s a writer who specialises in the very English fear of social embarrassment, it almost seems scripted.
And then, as with so many London Q&As in cinemas I’ve attended, the microphone doesn’t work. The event is a benefit for the venue, a beautiful Edwardian cinema struggling to retain its independence. I can only hope they spend some of the revenue on better microphones.
From yesterday.
A giveaway sign that Dad doesn’t live in London: as we walk around town close to 4pm, he looks on the umpteen aggressive vendors of free newspapers as a curious novelty and a generous service; not the plague of superfluous irritation they’ve become for commuters.
Pop into the huge Waterstones on Piccadilly. Am pleased to discover that on one counter by the tills are no less than two books with contributions from myself. The Jerome K Jerome ‘Idle Thoughts’ is there (now at half price), next to ‘The Decadent Handbook’, which is newly out. I mention this to the till staff, and they just stare at me warily.
Spend most of the day with Dad, whose forthcoming 70th birthday bash I’m DJ-ing at. His list of requests includes Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, all of which is expected. Less likely, at least to me, is a track by the Scissor Sisters. I first heard about them from Erol, the DJ at Club Trash, who gave me a CD promo just before they had a hit with their Bee Gees-esque version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’. I recall thinking they were yet another NYC club act, perfectly enjoyable but unlikely to appeal to real people, certainly not to those over 35. How wrong I was.
We attend the Mel Calman exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in Little Russell St. Calman was essentially a gag merchant who used a rudimentary, yet recognisably unique style of line figures, usually for single panels in daily newspapers. I note some of those on display:
Woman, to Man Reading Newspaper: “Look at me when you’re pretending to listen to me.”
Man to Woman: “I’ve got no subconscious resentment against you. It’s all conscious.”
Therapist to Santa Claus (on couch): “Why do you have this desire to GIVE all the time?”
I stop and buy the new Moleskine City Guide notebook for London, with cute leaves of removable tracing paper for plotting routes on street maps. I probably don’t really need it, given I already use the basic notebook along with their party-friendly skinny Moleskine Cahiers. But I’m an incurable notebook junkie.
Then to a Mervyn Peake show at a small working gallery called Chris Beetles Ltd, off Piccadilly. Peake’s illustrations for Bleak House are incredible: bringing the more outrageously Gothic side of Dickens to the fore. Interesting that many people still think of Mr Peake purely as the Gormenghast author, not the acclaimed artist and illustrator he started out as.
Then to a Soho screening of a rather odd US indie comedy about bestiality called Sleeping Dogs Lie, followed by a brisk walk to the Horseshoe pub in Clerkenwell for a gathering of Neil Scott’s friends, including Rhodri, Jen D, and Kate D. Martin White is an energizing, galvanizing presence as ever. As I arrive, I note our host is still yet to attend, and I make some allusion to the film Murder By Death. Turns out that’s what everyone else was saying before I got there myself. Well, it’s nice that we’ve all got an awareness of 70s Neil Simon spoofs in common.
A reminder that this month’s Beautiful & Damned night is next THURSDAY, Oct 19th.
THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED – OCTOBER EDITION
Date: Thursday 21st October
Times: 9pm to 12.30am.
Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AT, UK. 020 8340 2928.
Tube: Highgate (Northern Line). Buses: 43, 134, 263.
Price: Free entry, but do please dress up. Cocktails for the best dressed.
Full description on the DE News page.
