Deliver Me From Nothing

 

Back in the day people made records. Short for recordings. Some were clearly better than others but all of them have their stories. There was no spell-check-auto-tune-digital-anything. But there were always real things and fakes. I guess Nebraska would be considered a real album. I watched "Deliver Me From Nowhere". It's a film that's as bleak as the album. I saw it on the Disney Channel. Somehow that doesn't seem right. But the Beatles live there too now. Modern culture is a strange soup. Eventually they'll make a movie of everything and that will slowly over write all our memories with an alternative version of history. A creeping correction or just another more diluted “visionary” adaptation? I don’t know.

I first became aware of the Springsteen sound when my drug dealer neighbour played "Born to Run" over and over when "friends" visited. Then a rival drug dealer smashed in all of his house's windows one night. The music stopped for a while. I kind of missed it but the kids got a little more sleep. Then I heard "The River". History hasn't been so kind to that song, academics and critics might pan that simple and dark explanation of the times, but in 1981 and at 26 years old I felt I'd already lived every verse. The lyrics strangled me. I stayed stuck for a while. I can't listen to it anymore.

Springsteen rode the myth. He became a stadium act and a symbol. Millions heard his songs, hummed the tunes but missed the meanings. It's hard work to stop and think when there's always another song coming up as the algorithm pushes your taste along in whatever direction. Rich pals fly to New York to attended those rare shows. It's an experience. Springsteen's on your bucket list. He's not on mine because there's no bucket and no list.

So "Deliver me from Nowhere", the film about Nebraska: It seemed honest and paced about right. Troubled families and the monochrome 50s. Familiar shit that I can understand. I just never was gifted with a singing voice that could express those things. That's why I'm sitting here today supping tea and thinking about scrambling some eggs. Memories of factories, fights, family, religion, women and troubles; they haunt me, almost like that famous curse. Those records provided an accurate but mostly unwelcome explanation, but nobody really wants to be understood anyway. It's all this film tries to do now in it's cinematic short-hand. Cut them some slack. Irn-Bru for Coke. A bag of chips for a hot dog. A Volkwagen Passat for a GTO. I've been down in dead man's town too.

Not Me

 

"It ain't me babe, it ain't me you're lookin' for."

Click here.

Sorry I Clicked

I read an article this morning about this White House video and being the curious type I clicked on it. Do the same and you'll be sorry too. These people are just not right in the head. For them it's all about making everything worse for everybody.

"My profession is supposed to be fixing pianos but there's nothing I like better than smashing up a good piano."

The Tools We Use

Click if you wish to proceed, then read. The usual terms and conditions might apply, I've no idea. You may find this depressing, but I don't. Maybe you won't be impacted much if you're a robot or an AI spider from Singapore - or just disguised as one. 

Access Prohibited

I can't lie. I am very curious as to what is going on in this room somewhere in a certain building in the heart of Edinburgh. I'd like to think some special, unworldly event is taking place in there. Nothing too bad, maybe just a bit strange or experimental. You know like dogs playing poker, some counterfeit financial process getting up and running or an illicit meeting of the local branch of the illuminati where they discuss further improvements to the city's system of cycle paths and cycle friendly road schemes ... all in order to act out their terrible revenge on the stubborn citizens of Auld Reekie. That does sound bad, but also realistic. So who actually has access to this place? Who made up the sign? Not that any of this really matters.

Another eBay time wasting, head numbing bargain. Nine English Pounds and free postage for a very neat and tidy, unused aluminium Strat scratch plate.

George the cat soaks up some March time golden sun flakes.

Economical With The Truth

 

Substack can be a few days ahead or a few days behind, you can  never really be sure. Anyway here's an overview of modern economics and personal anxiety. And I'm blaming Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for about 99% of the trouble in the world but you don't have to take my rather obtuse words for any of it. Click on the pic in the traditional style.

Food Facts

"The cauliflower soup may contains slight traces of scallops - but frankly I have to doubt that statement."

Today's BLT: Why do healthy foods i.e. vegatables, salads etc. get themselves stuck in between your teeth as if they were bits of bacon or toffee? You think you're eating into the good guys and then find a few moments later it's their green and (at this point) unpleasant remains and debris that are clogging up the tooth and gum gap area. Perhaps I'm just not chewing correctly or my mouth has some design flaw that gets worse with old age. Maybe nature just wants perpetual revenge on humans via any quick oral way that becomes available (?). No point in trying to get proper dental advice on this either, you'll just get that smug, waggy finger lecture that you already suffer every six months.

Yesterday's lunchtime unhealthy potato crisp, cheese, rocket and mayonnaise on sourdough sandwich. 7/10 approx. No post sarnie tooth blockage excavation or rescue work was required.

Telegraph = Time Wasted

Breaking the unwritten rule of avoiding posting shit on a weekend. Fake headlines might make more sense than real ones. The media just keep on saying things and we just keep on reading them. Thanks to CBQ for this amusing headline generator tool. Anyway it's the last day of the month.

 

Another fleeting moment captured at some World Heritage Site or other. As predicted by nobody, but earlier in the afternoon, a rainbow pulled up outside. It could've ended up looking like this, but that was only part way through the editing process.

Child Psychology

Ode to Billy Eilish: It’s a game changer. A lottery win. A lucky strike. Against all of the odds. You’re the wreckage of an old band. 80s or 90s vintage maybe. Bad hair, wrong attitude, same old story. Years later a modern performer moves in, swoops down and picks up your dusty and forgotten material. 

We all (well some of us) fantasize about experiencing such a rare moment of accidental fortune and chance. "Everybody's been burned, everybody knows the pain" ... but the music business can still be full of surprises.

"Black Box Recorder" are a recent example. Livin' the slow dream and it might just happen for you. Well you can only dream if you can get a proper sleep. 

Click the pic for more mixed up tales from the dark heart of the music industry.

Your Mojo or Mine?

Click-Bait: This piece is nothing whatsover to do with Leonard Cohen but if it seems to be dark, disturbing or obtuse in some twilight way that he might have liked, I'd be reasonably happy with that.

Hot and Cross

I’ve always been eager to prove the insignificance of religious significance. Truly, I’ve never proved anything of the kind in my life. Proof just slips away overnight, like some rogue ex-US ambassador or Epstein's financial advisors operating their pocket calculators for the artist formerly known as Prince Andy. Feasts, festivals and seasons come and go. Nobody cares apart from retailers and avid followers of wayward public opinion. Hot cross buns are different. This year (as usual) they’re in the shops at the same time as Easter eggs, and I’m not complaining.

So I’m on the hot cross bun diet. Two a day. I’ve been on this diet for exactly one day. It’s holding up fine. No side effects. As an added bonus sometimes you can find weird human face lookalikes in or on the buns. There’s definitely an angry, or at least perplexed, God like grimace worn by the top bun in the photo. Maybe it was the size of the knife I was brandishing. As Kevin Bridges once joked a few years ago, “God’s a wee bit out of his depth now ...”  and 2026 just might do it for him.

P.S. There needs to be a “classic” British comedy film made about rival bakeries in some mythical Yorkshire village: “Top Bun.”

The Alternative Dead

A very short, short story. You must commit by making a click above, otherwise nothing happens. References to Hitler, Stalin and Alice Cooper. You might be slightly offended or disturbed. I might not be bothered.

Outsourcing Responsibility

Mondays must be the day I catch up and dump materials and links here and there. This one's been out for a while, so it's here in it's full and unedited form.

It's often said, half way towards a joke, that the world went downhill after David Bowie died in January 2016. Over ten years ago now. There’s no evidence for that. His death did not tip the planet from it's axis. It marked a moment. It did not mark a measurable collapse. But it's an interesting thought. David Bowie's being is somehow responsible for the stability of the world and the progress of all the stupid humans left behind, including me and you. He passes away and right then a new era of decline is upon us. Slow to begin with but with the passage of time measurable. The power of popular culture, film and music is not to be underestimated. That’s something that most politicians fail to understand, but for the people the signs become visible, then clear.

Bowie shifted shape throughout his life. He refused the honours that others of his generation lapped up. He was a cracked and bad actor. A bee hive drone, an image junkie and an off the wall, cut up poet. The man who fell to earth and the Goblin King. There is a theory that he was super human or a god of some sort. He held onto an elevated status for fans and media types alike. Then he moved away to some other realm. Higher, cleaner perhaps. If he was a god at all, I'd say he was a modern, updated version of Pan. A 21st Century Pan, playing the saxophone rather than the pipes or a woodland harp. A Hornblower at the Gates of Dawn who made a few bad albums along the way.

We like anchors. When someone large in our lives goes, we fix the date in our minds. The years that follow feel harsher, so we tie the feeling to the loss. Nostalgia does the rest like a comfort blanket. We see changes differently. The past looks clean from a distance. It was easier when things were as they were. We forget the real muddle and constant noise of life and keep the low light of a better memory flickering. Those unaware of the Bowie magic can't see the obvious, so it goes. They have their other gods to deal with. Root causes are at the root. Sin came into the world via one man they say. Not David Bowie though. This time around.

The data, numbers and the feelings tell a blunt story. Some long trends kept improving after 2016. Extreme poverty, over decades, has fallen sharply and did not suddenly reverse that year. Other problems grew more visible. Climate change deepened but arguments remained polarised and amplified within an always quicker media machine. Politics hardened into schoolyard battles and bully-boy tactics. Even Bowie's conflicted take on politics may have looked attractive to the faithful.

A pandemic swept the globe in the early 2020s. Wars and invasions run on and still run to and fro to please the industrials. Epstein’s tacky, ragged ghost still haunts victims and his rat faced fellow criminals. Tragedy and suffering still are everyday things. Unreported and misunderstood. Crime and punishment, boom and dip, false dawns and unpleasant lottery winners. But none of these began or emerged from some new Frankenstein style swamp with Bowie’s unexpected death. They were already in motion and have been since the first stone was thrown in anger at some rival hunter gatherer.

So the claim doesn’t hold up as fact. It works as a metaphor. A great artist moved on. The years that followed felt unstable to many. It is human to draw a line between those things. Bowie was a touchstone, a life raft, an icon and also an incomplete and flawed genius. He was a fragile human and he became sick and died, sooner than we might have expected. It is not evidence of anything. It's a fantasy.

The logic of existence persists and pushes away against such a far fetched theory ... but it makes a kind of sense. If you want it to. Stepping back and looking at human activity there is a sense of absurdity and the ongoing repetition of futile behaviours that leave us static in some muddy rut, somewhere we don't belong.

It's a familiar rut. Almost comfortable. We've been here before and perhaps rather than settle for Occam's Razor and the obvious and simple truth, let's try another angle. A fresh explanation. Take a gamble on a piece of thinking. Clear blue skies overhead, not a cloud in sight. Our investments go up and down, according to some stiff market breeze or with the movement of a butterfly's wing far away in Africa, or so it seems. What difference does one more death in a billion make? Maybe more than you'd imagine.

Bring Me Your Disappointment

Another slice of opinions on old rock music that's been available on Substack for a bit (and no where else apparently). Looks like I've screwed up once again. Click the Pic if you're remotely or even mildly interested. It's slightly less intrusive and shorter than a podcast.

Compositions of Moonpig

More incomprehensible nonsense.

Available by simply clicking something nearby.

Wolf Fleece Appreciation Society

It does my heart good to see that such a group exists in this day and age. Hosted on the ever reliable but totally fucked up Facebook site, as you might expect. There may be other versions at large. However I will not be joining this one for personal and security reasons, but I wish them well in the good and vital work that they are engaged in. Over two hundred thousand members can't be wrong. Naturally I've always had a secret craving to own and wear one of these fine garments. Oh, wait a minute that's yet another lie I'm telling you. "Good luck out there", I say, on behalf of urban foxes everywhere. Click the pic to browse and join up if you dare to dare.

Jumpy Hilly Downers

They're young and fit. The fabulous Big Air boys and girls. Flying across the blue Winter Limp-Pig skies in Cortina (once famous for it's tin worm cars). Braver than the Hulk or Thor. They are either very stupid or simply superior humans who will eventually live on Mars untroubled. Their future is bright. Mostly (rich?) white kids and the odd fully formed adult trying to beat some long standing injury, they rule the air with their crazy dreams and tricks. A cooler than cool elite little set. 

Everything, every stunt, every move is "HUGE!" or "MASSIVE!" according to the wannabe teenage sounding commentary team. It's over in seconds too, blink and you lose the plot. Just don't have the camera drone collide with your helmet as you race down the mountain. I'll miss it all when it's gone, or until the next hyped up media distraction comes along.

China, Japan, USA, Canada and all the snowy/mountainy European counties are the top dogs. There's a few flyboy/girl smatterings from elsewhere but I find it odd, and it's across a range of Olympic winter sports this year, that I just can't root for the USA in anything right now. I don't hate Americans or wish them ill, far from it. But with the current toxic regime looking to capitalize on and brag about anything that you can wave a flag over, I don't want them to have a chance to do that with these competitions. See the athlete and their performance, not the country should be the rule. But ... it's tough to see past those other American idiots.

Linked In or Left Out?

You can read this on Substack with a simple click on the pic. I can't be arsed publishing it here because there's just too much clutter.

A Song About Syd

 

 

Did "Shine on" ever shine and why am I dredging up this old and worn out material? I don't know, other than that I've hit an age where having some of my random thoughts placed into order and catching them in a bucket seems important. Household objects on a shelf in a row. Photographs set on a timeline. I know this imagery isn't really helping, but it's the best I've got.

I could write about things that are deeper and more meaningful, but I'm not so well connected. Not this time anyway. There are a lot of songs about Syd Barrett out there. Some well-intentioned, some cashing in, some just "influenced by", and so on. Rock music loves the disturbed and the dead. They're the subjects that won't kick back or complain as their myths and legends fade, grow or mutate.

The most famous song about Syd is, of course, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” from Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. This album directly followed The Dark Side of the Moon and, as you'd imagine, audience expectations were high and unrealistic. A tough challenge for any band. There's over two years between the albums. A long time in rock music. For the title and main theme, they took on the subject of their own recent evolution from Syd's influence. A thing that many bands have done with lost or missing creators. Write about what you know, I guess. Common experiences.

The multi-layered piece is meant to be an undead eulogy for Syd Barrett, a man who was still alive at the time but not present (apart from the "incident"). It wants to be tender. It wants to be noble. But wanting isn’t the same as being. What it delivers has a brutal feel and a distance about it, like a cold monument built from the polished stone of prog rock. The man it honours was, at his pop peak, all quicksilver and slippery nerve. A madcap laughing but heading down the drain. I can't really listen to his post Floyd solo efforts these days. Crazy; unkindly, yes. Diamond; not so sure.

The lyrics are blunt and weak. “Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.” It sounds grand. It sounds important. But it doesn’t say much. There are awkward religious overtones. The phrases drift by in big, cloudy symbols leading into black holes, steel breezes, diamonds in the sky. They gesture towards tragedy without ever cutting in closer to the bone. Barrett once was sharp, strange, playful. Dangerous and destructive. His early work with Pink Floyd had bite and colour. Here, he’s reduced to a fallen star. It’s neat. It’s tidy. It’s not a good fit.

Musically, the song sprawls over the album, divided into pretentious parts like a medical textbook. Long stretches of synth-heavy atmosphere. Slow builds that promise revelation but can't quite deliver it. David Gilmour’s guitar lines, always silky smooth and controlled, as we've come to expect. Roger Waters using the solemn weight of his writing, but the weight never provides emotional heat. The iconic four note motif is strong the first time. With multiple listenings, it can feel like an idea stretched thin. There is craft here. There is polish. What’s missing is connection.

There is also an uncomfortable sense that the band projects misplaced guilt and nostalgia onto Barrett rather than engaging honestly with who he was. The tone is reverential but distant, as though the subject has already been turned into some tragic symbol. Hard now to remember the person. He was a writer of naive pop songs that glinted. They darted into off-kilter observation. He was whimsy and melody and nerve. This song turns him into a statue.

For an artist as idiosyncratic and defiantly unconventional as Syd Barrett, whose early work burned bright before falling into disarray, this stately, slow burning lament feels misaligned with his spirit. I wonder if he might have recoiled at such a ponderous, self serious monument. Did he have the capacity to listen from his dark corner?

Mental health problems are not easy for family and friends to deal with. All the love, effort and time taken to try to "help" are often thrown back and rejected. Feelings and loyalty are stretched to their limit if the condition spirals, as Syd's clearly did. It's not some glorious thing. Ultimately the shining part becomes a faded history and the dull reality is of a struggle to just exist without pain. Nothing fills the hollow centre. These are things that are hard to describe and harder to sing about.

In the end, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” feels well meant but incomplete. You could argue it had to be done rather than ignore the story, but as it reaches for the myth, it misses the man. Treating Barrett like a victim when he was a restless talent who thrived on surprise. I can respect the intention. I can admire the sound. But now I don’t feel it. Maybe that's why it doesn't so much fail as simply miss the mark. It's an album I'd choose to avoid listening to. In the end, we all wish that everybody we loved could be here, but that's just not how things are.

Understanding Khruangbin

In the words of Mark Speer, "When we first started the band, we wanted to have a formula,” “It’s like, ‘This is what we do, and we’re not gonna try and go outside the box too much. We’re gonna explore the box we’re in. I’ve always been a big fan of that. I used to be in bands where it was like, ‘Man, we’ve gotta think outside the box!’ And all I’m thinking is: ‘You guys don’t even know.’ Music should never be just for the sake of being experimental. Before you even start, you have to know what you’re experimenting with first.” 

I’ve known about Khruangbin since around 2019. I didn’t go looking for them. I don’t really do that with music. They showed up anyway. Like some stray dog that decides you’re it's person.

The first record I really listened to was Con Todo el Mundo. Before that it was scraps, live clips, YouTube footage, half-paying attention. Once it clicked, it stayed clicked.

You have to admire a few things right away.
One: the brutal simplicity; guitar, bass, drums, nothing extra.
Two: committing fully to a dry, locked on wah tone and never apologizing for it.
Three: the apparent refusal to change guitar strings more than once per tour, if that. There’s discipline in that kind of neglect. It may be a myth.

There are other reasons I like them. The music, obviously. The quiet weirdness that hangs over every performance. Do I understand what they’re doing? No. And I don’t think that matters. Maybe the best way to explain them is to say why a reasonable person might keep listening.

You know it’s Khruangbin in about ten seconds. Earth seconds. No delay. The guitar is thin and sunburned. The bass is elastic and upfront. The drums are loose but never lazy. It feels familiar even when it isn’t, like remembering a place you’ve never been. Deja Vu surf funk.

This is instrumental music that refuses to be wallpaper. There are few vocals, sometimes none, yet it still feels deliberate, emotional, like something is being said. Not supermarket music. Though I have heard them played in a Tesco, which felt wrong in a way I can’t quite explain.

The global influences are obvious but never desperate. Thai funk, dub, Middle Eastern scales, soul, surf rock, psychedelia. They don’t steal. They don’t show their work. It just passes through them and comes out clean.

They make perfect music for a certain kind of living. Night driving. Low-stakes work. Sitting still. Substances, if that’s your thing. Hanging out without needing to talk. Zoning out without disappearing. Spanning deserts, wilderness and still, bare rooms.  Khruangbin fits all of it, which is harder than it sounds.

Laura Lee’s bass is the center of the band's gravity. The lines are melodic, confident, loud enough to matter. People come for the bass and stay for everything else. There’s a calm authority in how she holds the band together. No tension. No drama. Just forward motion.

Donald Johnson (DJ) makes restraint look easy. It isn’t. The grooves are precise, stripped down, unforgiving. No showing off. No wasted hits. Space everywhere, and that space is where the music actually lives.

They’re relaxed without being dull. The songs don’t sprawl or collapse. There’s always swing underneath, small shifts, quiet momentum. You feel it more than you hear it.

The look matters too. The peculiar wig thing image. The stage clothes. The album art. The stillness playing live. It’s cohesive and strange and memorable. It felt important at the start. I don’t know where it goes next, or how much it really matters in the long run. There’s a fine line between icon and costume.

They reward repeat listening. I'm not bored with them, but I don’t binge either. Too much would ruin it. Each listen reveals something small; a fill, a tone change, a rhythmic turn. The music deepens instead of wearing out.

Most of all, they feel sincere. No irony. No smirking distance. No contempt for the listener. Just three musicians locked in, enjoying the sound they’re making. That kind of honesty is rare, it spreads.

Where are they going next?
I don’t know.
That’s fine by me.