Even though I had family who were part of the Jehovah’s Witness thing, I had no interest in joining them in what I considered to be a sort of half-arsed death cult. Well, death cult might be a bit strong but most of what they seemed to do was related to death. Or being dead,…
(Not) Choosing My Religion. Or, Can I Get (Rid Of) A (Jehovah’s) Witness? Part 1: The Family.
I’m not religious. I’ve never been religious. I’m not going to stick my neck out and say “…and I never will,” because, unlike many religious people, I understand the difference between ‘believe‘ and ‘know‘. My family isn’t religious either: I wasn’t even christened. However, it would be wrong of me to claim that I’ve never…
Ode To A Suriname Toad.
I can’t remember ever having written much in the way of poetry, maybe when I was a kid at school but not much since. At our school, which is quite big on paying lip service to things, they have this thing called “Secret Friends” which you can sign up for. What happens is that you…
Finger Pointing Songs: part 5. The Beatles. Or, A Twist (And Shout) Of Lennon.
“I’m really glad that most of our songs were about love, peace and understanding.” Paul McCartney, 1995. Credit where it’s due: when I think about nasty, finger pointing songs, The Beatles aren’t the first band that comes to mind. The earlier stuff was primarily ‘I love you, you love me’ stuff. It wasn’t really until Help!…
Oh! How Strange The Loon. Or, John The Baptist by John & Beverley Martyn.
“Lying and poetry are the arts,” Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying. The week before last, something strange happened to my boring website with boring stories about boring things. Last week a lot of people read my post about The Only Living Boy In New York. The reason an unusually large number of people did…
Finger Pointing Songs: part 4. Indie Sulkers. Or, The Ballad Of The Binned: The Razorcuts, Felt & The Stone Roses.
“I never took much, I never asked for your crutch, Now don’t ask for mine.” Bob Dylan, 4th Time Around lyric. “Know thyself,” Luke 4:23. The Bible, innit? It’s good advice, know thyself. I suppose it’s a bit bleak in a way and I’ve already talked about Goethe’s glib response to it but I suppose…
Finger Pointing Songs: part 3. The Rolling Stones. Or, Wife Beating Man.
The shadow that Bob Dylan cast over the sixties wasn’t only long and broad, it was dark and cold. Once he’d broken through, any number of scruffy young ‘poets’ came out of the woodwork and started telling it like it was. Social justice songs were back on the agenda but that was before his performance…
Finger Pointing Songs: part 2. The Kinks. Or, A Respecter Calls. Or, It’s A Shame About Ray.
“Pity is easy, but it’s difficult to care,” Ray Davies. I like things to make sense and generally, to me at least, they don’t. I look for logic and I look for rationality in everyday life and, when I can’t find much, I can get a bit maudlin. So, what I’m doing here – realistically…
Finger Pointing Songs: part 1. Like A Rolling Stone. Or, Bob Villain?
The idea that there are only about – depending on who you believe – three, five, seven or however many basic story plots that have ever existed is always being bandied about. Reductionism isn’t difficult – I don’t know why they don’t go further and say that there’s only one: somebody does something. The same…
I’m Sticking With Lou. Or, Velvet Common Ground.
The Velvet Underground can’t have invented everything. Even though sometimes it seems a bit like they did. They can’t have because they only started putting records out in 1967 and, by that time, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had been released and The Beatles had already invented everything. Well, not everything maybe,…
MiddleRabbiting 