Podcast explanations

impossible songs podcast

Podcast

The Gcast Podcast currently playing on this page (and also on the Fairytale Management Blog and on Impossible Songs Garageband page) is made up as follows:

Hunter (Remix) - from the “Roughboys” CD. “Yes! This (Hunter) is like Belle and Sebastian with a Casio keyboard - that’s a good thing because I love Belle and Sebastian and I love Casio keyboards, nice melody, nice voice. I love the simplicity - so not overwhelming in any way. I think this is a well crafted tune and kicks a bit of ass. – sergius gregory from Homer, Alaska on 30 Oct2006” Well this how Gregory reviewed the track a few weeks ago, one thing’s for sure there is no Casio keyboard anywhere on it, to my knowledge but I’m glad he liked the track.

Let’s make Pearls - from “Scapes”. Described as “sublime alt-pop reminiscent of Electrum” by Podcaster Threefromleith. Who am I to argue?

Butterfly on the Moon - From "Hearburst", the song and title are really nothing to do with one another, it was just a great title to use (we thought). I love Ali's double tracked vocals and the whispy guitar.

White and Red (Remix) - from the “Roughboys CD”. The raspy, underlying guitar sound in the middle passages was my desperate attempt to copy Jimmy Page’s sound used on the album “Houses...”.

Bite the Baby - a bonus track from “Sneakin’ out”. The tune (?) came about from my kids and I making up a song about a Nintendo game we used to play regularly, strangely this song is currently our second best selling download!

On Nonsense - instrumental guitar stramash from “Social Enterprise”. Two separate tracks mixed together for no particular reason. Kind of an ongoing riff on “Whole Lotta Love”.

Silence – remix of a never properly released track firstly done on “Early Eurosongs” and then in this form on “Sneakin’ out”. Recorded only on DAT tape and in a hurry one Sunday afternoon in Germany. A heavier guitar was added and remastering done about a year later.

Nobody Jones – original mix from “Border Crossing”. This song gestated for about two years before we finished it and recorded it, then it got remixed, voices were added, extra guitars and synths were added and so it was lengthened by about a minute and was finally put out on “Roughboys”. Nobody Jones is a brilliant singer/songwriter currently living and performing in Edinburgh, the song is nothing to do with him; it was just that the name scanned in really well.

East of Z – East African and exotic sounding track from “Social Enterprise”.

Tokyo Skyline – from the CD “Heartburst”. Occasionally blamed on the film “Lost in Translation” but to be honest I can’t remember what came first, I think the song may have been Pittenweem or Baltimore Skyline at some point.

All songs are Barclay/Hutton compositions for Impossible Songs; production is mostly the work of Martin Freitag except when the Roughboys get involved. Martin also plays bass and has done most of the drum programmes. Siggi Richter is also in there on keyboards. Ali Hutton of course provides the main vocals and most of the lyrics; John Barclay plays a variety of guitars and twiddles with sliders and buttons on the desk. Impossible Songs’ use Cubase software and Zoom equipment to record and mix and from time to time I contribute a pot of home made vegetable soup and Ali arranges flowers. There is something quite soothing and reassuring at times in the way we choose to exhibit our muso, stereotypical patterns of behaviour.

All your secrets

impossible songs

impossible songs

All your secrets are out there, you just don’t know about it yet, like the flowers in a Gypsy garden, like a tree hanging over your sleepy head, like a shadow hiding in a corner. All so unguarded and unremembered. Secrets that float and talk, that takes no encouragement. Grave and static, hollow and dangerous, creeping in and around the edges. Wherever you live you are seen when you think you are unseen and followed when you think the road is clear. Lights shine in your rear view mirror, occupants grow uneasy, and somebody sits on your back bumper for miles and then is gone, quickly. A phone rings in a room and then stops as you pick it up, a curtain wafts in the breeze, a door closes by itself, a dog barks. Where did the lipstick on the coffee cup rim come from? How is that paper in the bin? Where is the loose change I put down on the table? Who sent that letter? Where am I really going? All your secrets are out there, fighting for a place and fighting for space in a drowned pool. You think you are a hunter, but then you are hunted, you think you are on top of things but then you find yourself far behind the pack. Wolves and sheep meet and hold long conversations, sticks and stones build structures, names are written on walls in graffiti islands and public ruins. Posters are torn down or plastered over boarded up windows. Decay is structural and steady; truth is at the end of a tunnel that you never can reach. All your secrets are out there, all your secrets are mine...for I saw them first.

A few days

impossible songs

impossible songs

Thursday

The never ending busy-ness continues with no breather for Ali or poor old me. Tonight it’s a quick trip into OOTB to view the new fold back on the PA and see the latest additions to the Cannons’ Gait furnishings. Then via the back streets of Edinburgh up to the Baby Tiger Night at the Café Royal, where we play a half hour set through their frankly magnificent PA. Also on the bill are Lindsay Sugden and friends, Son of Thom and the Elegy. It’s a pretty good night all round and CDs are exchanged; our set is a mixture of the flawed and the perfect, whilst everyone else concentrates on cellos and tuneful guitar thumping. Thanks to Baby Tiger for putting the night on anyway.

Friday

A day at work and then recovering at home and with a full house, football practice, various neds on Buckie, visit a grandchild (and a son and daughter in law), discuss Ice Age II, eat a quick pizza, make exotic toasties, struggle with the automated tills in ASDA, “Have I got news” etc..Nice to get a few hours sleep.

Saturday

Lazy sleep in at last, stay in all morning and make detailed observations on a great deal of rain, some serious chat around family business, a sick cat at the vets, then in the evening visiting some very old friends in Fife. The kids say theirs is the best home made pizza in the world, tiddlywinks, bathing a baby and getting home late. Some time spent thinking about the various consequences of loads of things and a few glasses of red wine to finish the day. Try to ignore the football results.

Sunday

Bacon rolls and straight out the door and across the bridge for full on football action in not so sunny Inverkeithing. We win 3 – 2 and my boy gets number two and lays on number three. It doesn’t get better than this even if the weather is crap. Then up to the holiday cottage for a little pond forking i.e. draining the pond without falling in, whilst Ali Hoovers. The artful pond forking does seem to work though only time will tell – wait till the levels drop. The cottage’s heating isn’t working however and so despite numerous attempts at programming and cajoling the system we just give up and depart for West Lothian and a cosy stir fry (no lunch today), (Ali and I also lift the lounge carpet and leave it there). Last gasp at the OOTB accounts – we know now where we stand: Singer/songwriters in Edinburgh – we stand with you - I think! What next? A spot of extreme ironing maybe or do I try on my tux in readiness for the 007 film premiere we’re heading for on Thursday? Can't wait!

Big Time

impossible songs

impossible songs

The wedding presents we didn’t get,
The passage of thought but I still forget,
The practiced pain and the false regret.
Here is the place where time slips away.

The fish hook eyes and the pointed stare,
The glimpse or touch of your underwear,
The cement and concrete tyre track trail,
This is a place where time slipped away.

A casual glance and the journey south,
The twist in my smile, the curve of your mouth,
The splash of water to end the drought,
There in that place where time slipped away.

This is place where time slipped away,
And we’re living here still, even today,
You can visit us here but you can’t stay,
In the precious place where time slipped away.

Kids with guns

impossible songs

impossible songs

Call of the mild.

Getting too cold for my liking, we now are experiencing the two duvet and one cat nights, how long will this go on for? Experts seem to think that a prolonged cold spell (known as winter in some parts of the world) is about to break forth on us. It appears that as the Gulf Stream decays out in the North Atlantic we are no longer protected from the icy, deep water currents that prevail, or come from the North Polo (or Pole as National Geographic might put it). These big black deepwater beasts are going to cause our heating costs to soar and give us a few miserable weeks leading up to the early days of 2007. Already a white icy substance has been forming on my car windscreen every morning. No matter what I try or how often I run and rev the engine it’s back the next morning. To make matters worse I’ve just heard that all fish will die when I am 102. This means I can’t even look forward to a decent fish supper high tea for my birthday treat. The only good news seems to be that if you eat and drink like a Frenchman (or woman) your overall health will improve or at least stabilise. Hopefully it won’t go as far as having to learn the language properly. God bless the Auld Alliance I say and pass me another bottle of Tesco’s finest red plonk.

Privacy.

Some people want privacy and peace and enjoy building big walls around themselves, while others spend hours on the web, writing books, filming films or just blethering about everything they’ve said, done, eaten or thought about. Now the curse of the common touch of progress has blown into that utterly pointless, tacky dwelling somewhere in Edinburgh known as Bute House, as if any of us cared.


We are all bankrupt.

Well at least we had some fun spending it, though we’ve no idea what we spent it on. Perhaps a few nice lunches, some shoes that didn’t quite fit, a crap CD or DVD, a new exhaust from Kwik-fit, some golf lessons or a weekend in Paris. Money just goes, money doesn’t talk, it swears and now more Scots than ever are broke and probably staring into wardrobes full of shirts or dresses they don’t really like the look of. At least the Clydesdale Bank, HBOS and RBS are doing alright as are the acres of shopping big sheds and malls that munch on the carcasses of once vibrant towns. Whatever the plight of the chattering classes, financial bankruptcy isn’t the worst kind of debt to be in. It’s when you lose your soul you’ve got the real problems and there is no helpline in the Indian sub-continent or a bureau or a website that can get that back for you – it’s other people you have to look to then.

Cocaine.

The drug of choice for the rich and famous that has left a bloody and despairing legacy in Columbia. Every year the FARC Marxists guerrilla group earns about £2 billion from the trade while snooty white kids snort it through £20 notes in the hope that they’ll get high and get feted and glamorised like Kate Moss or some other pretty air-head. I’d imagine that these good people make sure they drink fair trade coffee, eat dolphin free tuna, use eco friendly detergents and want to “make poverty history”. It’s a shame they don’t get the connection between their cocaine and the misery meted out to the peasants of South America who survive by growing the stuff while looking down the barrel of an AK47.

Win Zippy

impossible zippy songs

impossible songs

Win Zippy

A whirlwind visit to McDuff and Aberdeen to check on the grown up children and their progress. I received a late bottle of a Glenfiddich liqueur and a DVD of the Da Vinci Code and the unexpected removal of the rear part of the car’s exhaust to add to the fun of a few days out. In a northern mix of rain and sun we braved Codona’s funfair by the beach in Aberdeen and were somewhere between being fleeced and rewarded by the various attractions and arcades. Grabbing a gift from those “crane” machines is a popular family obsession (on the last visit we salvaged two large cuddly Disney toys); this time it was just one, but a giant Zippy no less. I dread to think of what its actual cost to us must have been but who cares?

We were just finishing lunching on mince, skirlie and salad (this is Aberdeen!) and listening to a Freddy Mercury impersonator doing his sound check whilst the football results rolled up on Sky sports. Then we wandered over to the arcade where the kids were still pummelling the “crane” thing just in time to see a giant Zippy hover across the booth and into the hopper that was set to give him freedom. A great and rare moment to savour after two hours of struggling with these crap machines – much cheering and air punching followed.

After three glasses of wine, some fajitas, chocolate and Glenfiddich the Da Vinci Code doesn’t seem so bad a movie, apart from the last quarter and the whole ridiculous Roslin guardian thing. It’s very hard not to think of the retail park, Costco, Ikea and all the Swedish meatballs and Chelsea Tractors just a few minutes away from one of Mary Magdalene’s temporary resting places. One piece (?) of Scottish history they’ve managed to miss out of the vague and patchy Scottish curriculum, next year perhaps? After all history is “just one thing after another” and who really knows what happened when?

Three pumpkins

impossible songs

impossible songs

Three pumpkins and a mild furore.

Hovis and Oblivion are the names of these two fine, slowly rotting seasonal creations carved out from the best of Tesco pumpkins. The third is in McDuff on top of a fridge and frightening any small children that venture too close. Cutting open these pointless vegetables or fruits or whatever they are has now become an annual event for me and I am an expert – commissions welcome.

Random weekend...

impossible songs

impossible songs


Random weekend jottings:

Photo above: Many hands make large non-fat delicious fruity pudding disappear. The hands in question belong to Ali, Tommy and most importantly Caroline (who made the pudding). I held back for all of ten seconds before piling in for my slice.

Who knows the history of and the correct words to the “Worm Song” (Nobody likes me, everybody hates me etc.)? The problem is what form of lyrical magic should come next, “I think I’ll go and eat some worms” or “Because I like to eat worms”. The debate is raging on, answers on a postcard please.

Freuchie is a small village in Fife. I spent the morning after my birthday walking around it taking photographs for the ASC website. Sunny, open and clean with the radio masts of East and West Lomond looking down upon the bright Eden valley below. One thing that spoils Freuchie is the inappropriate garish street furniture everywhere; signs, instructions and large yellow painted tracts of roadway representing the worst parts of traffic management. Every where you look some piece of heavy duty signage reminds you that you should be obeying some trivial rule. There must be better ways to get traffic control messages across than this and keep wee villages looking cute.

I wandered back to the new holiday cottage where deep conversations about building works and alterations were taking place. I avoided these and watched a solitary robin as he skipped and skidded across the patio slabs in the hazy sunshine. I enjoyed the peace and sensible planting of the back garden for a few moments and then returned to help with the measuring up. I also watched a horse peeing in the field across the road, unbelievable how much urine a small horse can produce. I thought for a moment that it could be the equine equivalent of blogging.

Lunch on Saturday was Pittenweem Haddock and a pint of Belhaven upstairs in the local pub (avoiding Sky Sports in the bar below) 100 yards from the house. The haddock was nice enough but I doubt it ever saw Pittenweem or ever spoke with an East Fife twang, the fishing industry in Fife is no longer what it once was.

We watched Mettalica’s “Some kind of monster” on TV during the week. I’d just come in after a long day spent down in Birmingham and it seemed like perfect couch fodder television. Turned out it was fun, excruciating and fascinating and for Ali an unexpected feast of metal, one of her early musical loves (?). The statistics on Metallica’s sales and life style excesses are mind boggling and their behaviour is incomprehensible but it all hangs together somehow and they survive. Makes me wish I’d tried a bit harder at playing those tight E minor riffs when I was a teenager.

Quote of the week (?) from “My Name Was Judas” by CK Stead:

“Our friend was not the Messiah, nor will there be one, this is the truth I write, it will not hurt you, grasp it.”

Buy a CD, watch a video

New CD - out right now - click cover to hear samples and buy.

impossible songs

Video produced and shot by Confushion: Music by Impossible Songs.

Saturday

impossible songs

impossible songs

Saturday morning diary.

No discernable hangover but a fuzzy head.
Watching re-runs of Scrubs on TV
Finding disgorged mouse stomachs on the paving slabs
Elvis at the Last Supper, beside whom would he sit?
Where to go for the rest of the day.
The shittiest thing that ever happened to me.
Having a shave in the shower and realising how much of your face you’ve missed when you come out.
Sitting up on the worktops
A sausage and fried egg bap with brown sauce.
Where does morning dew come from and how come it lasts all day?
Wearing an old T shirt.
Walking along the corridor singing Peter Gabriel songs.
A long conversation about autism.
Flaky broadband not working.
Trying not to eat the remains of last night’s popcorn.
Having an idea for a song and then forgetting it.
Deciding to go out for Saturday lunch, but where to go?
Deciding not to go to a Japanese Supermarket even if it may help the kids do their homework project.
Changing the bed sheets.
Sitting outside in the frail October sun.
Being 50 years and 51 weeks old, well almost.
Suddenly having something that may turn out to be the beginning of a retirement plan.
Going to the bottle bank yesterday and taking the bags out of the car today.
Interesting new Gnarls Barkley video.
Finding a lottery ticket in my pocket.
Coffee, tea, Coffee, tea, Coffee, tea, Coffee, tea, etc.
Thinking about another busy week ahead.
Thinking why are certain things sexy and certain other things not.
Why have I got spots this week?
I’m looking forward to something but I don’t quite know what it is yet.
Appliances making odd clicking noises and water pipes gurgling.
Being unable to get away from the couch.
Grenadine, Sprite and cherry cocktails.
Lunch at the SQ Bistro, baked potato, haggis and cheese. Weird but tasty.
£30 parking fine in South Queensferry High Street. Bugger.
Home and straight into the garden.

City of Bamboo

impossible songs

City of Bamboo - modern myth, modern fable, tea cloth underneath the table, never here, never able...

In the City of Bamboo
We sit cross legged and we watch you
We study all the things you do
All the stupid things you do
It seems you hardly have a clue
In this City of Bamboo

We are free but we are slaves
We stay excited and are brave
We’re resentful and engaged
As we seek the prefect wave
To try to be as good as you
In this City of Bamboo

The girl will cook a prefect meal
The doctor asks “how do you feel?”
The peasants offer jellied eel
The rushing rodents make you squeal
You just do what you have to do
In this City of Bamboo

The banker’s coins they shine like art
The actor plays his vital part
The priest and prostitute must part
That damp ignition will not start
I cannot leave and nor can you
In this City of Bamboo.



new video

Sugar Moon

impossible songs

impossible songs

Sugar Moon

Never mind the conspiracy theories about space travel and lunar landings and all the rest, none of that matters anymore. Space is out there and we all know that in time we will all be “out there” also – even it it’s as cremated ash particles. So I like to speculate every so often on what may be beyond earth and I currently like to think that the moon’s surface is made of sugar. Sugar burnt black and brown, syrupy at the edges, oozing and congealing as it basks in the rays of our sun shining down through the non-existent atmosphere. And right there below the surface are a number of warm, soft baked pears. Sounds ok and feasible to me, so remember when you next visit the moon, bring a spoon and a carton of fresh cream.

Video

A fun afternoon was spent at the Confushion household filming a version of the song “Not Pretty”. Ali and I now feel sure we can get Equity cards on the basis of our fine, spontaneous and largely unscripted performances, maybe a Brit, a Bafta or an Oscar awaits? Of course full credit must go the direction and production skills of Fraser and Karen as we stretched them to their limits with our petulant artistic demands, strops and a series of unreasonable requests. A quick dish of Fraser’s curry soon calmed us down and filming resumed with Ali digging her very red fingernails into me and my trousers getting soaked by a brace of water cannons. These deadly weapons were aimed and fired by some innocent children coerced into participation by the aggressive production team and Ali in particular. The drive back to East Lothian (in wet pants) was reminiscent of sitting uncomfortably in a moving steam bath, a thing I seem to have done many times in nightmares. Ali however slept soundly all the way home, purring like a well fed cat. We eagerly await the final, polished and edited version of the vid.

Go Forth and Tunnel

It’s a Forth tunnel we need, not another bridge. Locally fabricated in Rosyth, sunk in the estuary, pumped dry and filled with a roadway. There are lots of suitable sites in the South Queensferry and Rosyth areas. Bring your shovels next weekend and we’ll do some test digging, or if you have about £50million to spare then give me a call. It’ll be money well spent as (once the powers that be decide what to do) a new bridge will be at least £1.5 billion and the project may become even more embarrassing than the sad saga of the Parliament Building.

Good Life

impossible songs

impossible songs

The Good Life

The good life is paid for with the pure gold of guilt.
There really isn’t anything quite like it.
Its deep to the bottom, it’s tall to the top,
And nobody knows when the guilt will stop.

God given and demonstrated, remonstrated, white, Anglo Saxon or Scottish Presbyterian guilt. Mined in the highlands from water soft streams and springs, a Celtic mist of unrequited dreams, black Bibles and Hymn books and sermons on the dysfunctional dismount. Every bloody word and breath made to count. Something surrounding, spinning and dancing, like brave waves breaking, though that isn’t actually happening. It’s a ritual for the observer, a practice for the participant, some masturbation for the sycophant, a dash of mysticism, controlled and crippled in the shining candles and silver cups – all with wine and biscuits.

Guilty over money, guilty over sex, guilty in relationships, guilty about your ex, guilty about perversion, stealing, lying, not properly trying, standing still while inside dying.

Guilty about telling the truth, the shame of exposure and worst still losing your highly valued composure.

Family quilt, family guilt, do what thou wilt, do without guilt, do what thou quilt.

Standing naked before this made up God, imagined in some other mind, yet transferred so effectively over to mine.

Guilty if I deny Him (him), guilty for my unbelief but sick to the back teeth of this piss poor heritage, that sits me at this edge, pulls my loyalty to it’s limit for all the sins I failed so miserably to commit but am credited with.

Here alone, like a bad criminal, every guilty thought a taken prisoner of the subliminal:

God & Guilt.

Walking on egg shells in climbing boots.
Pulling hairs out by their roots.
The roots are deep in generation’s worth of ignorance, twisted.
Here come the black suits to keep you black listed.
Anger to pile on the guilt and squeezed,
Into the hardest bullet ball you could ever believe.
Never fire that bullet.

Jews, Hebrews, Muslims, Buddhists, Scientologists, Amish, Palestinians, Pictish, Catholic, fanatic, frantics, charismatics, statics, caravans and 4x4s, Solidarity Party, Buckfast smashed by the off-licence doors.

Bad Batch

impossible songs - faced with a bad batch...

impossible songs


Bad Batch Engineering

The drain hose on our dishwasher has a pin hole in it, we found it today, and it’s been leaking for months and has created a black, damp morass under the kitchen floor. Just what you like to discover on a Sunday afternoon after a few glasses of wine. I tried to phone the warranty company but they close at 1500 on Sunday (fair enough, try tomorrow). When the engineer arrives at either AM or PM some day next week I fully expect him to say “Ah! There was a bad batch of these hoses issued, you’ve been unlucky...” A few months ago when our oil tank leaked, (yes, we live in the sticks many miles away from the Russian gas fields so we only have oil and running water here), guess what? Our leaky tank came from a “bad batch” that somehow made their way into public use. Any “bad batch” 737s out there, or Space Shuttles or Coca-Cola or Aspirin? Beware folks, remember that quality systems, (you know, the things that numerous consultants are making big bucks from all year long), don’t always give you good quality, just consistently similar crap.

Jesus Camp

Somewhere in the buckle of the Bible belt the Army of God is stirring up it’s youngest and most easily controlled recruits, far away you may say, but it could still happen here yet. Camp out, figure out, work out and space out for George Bush, the right to carry arms and Jesus. Religious geeks wherever you are, stay busy brainwashing the 10 year old kids about “two kinds of people in the world, those who love Jesus and those who don’t”. And so the question is what do you want to do to those who don’t actually follow Jesus: Love them? Help them? Feed them? Do good Christian stuff as per the beatitudes? Be constructive in any kind of way? Hell no, let’s just burn the heathen masses out like the “good guys” did in the Old Testament, like the Israelis did last month when they left a million thirty year old cluster bombs in the villages of Lebanon. That’s God’s chosen people I’m talking about by the way, that’s how they treat their neighbours who don’t follow their God.

It never fails to amaze me how blinkered and intolerant people can be when they adopt fundamentalist beliefs of whatever kind. It’s a slippery slope, best stay away if you know what’s good for you. “White and red, black and blue, trying hard not to be like you”.

Ok enough ranting for one day.

Breathing out your soul.

Breathing out your soul,
In invisible smoke,
The chemical demons,
Explore the emotions,
Explore some kind of consciousness,
Export the emptiness,
So you may set sail,
Make a ghostly thing whole,
Breathing out your soul.

Slide more

impossible songs - slides

Nothing unusual here folks, move right along. If you want an stressful night out at the cinema go and see "Children of Men". The bleakest, starkest view you'll get of how the UK may be in 2027, until it comes along.






impossible songs

Impossibles...slipping away..

impossible songs: rockin' the impossible

impossible songs

Priory Ali Blur

impossible songs

Priory Ali Blur 06

impossible songs

Monthly Mouse Hunt Revisited

impossible songs

impossible songs

Monthly mouse hunt revisited.

A busy week for us and the cat. It seems like he’s been catching mice everyday. Possibly as a result of the harvesting work in the field nearby. This morning I got up to find a poor dead mouse placed on top of the barrel table outside our back door. Left there as an early morning gift for us no doubt. Funny how hard it is to appreciate this kind of thing at the start of the day.

The rest of the week has been spent drinking beer and playing music at various local venues with Martin, Heike and Siggi. Sunday’s gig was outside under the Forth Railway Bridge at the Two Bridges Hotel as part of Ferrystock II in the Arts Festival. A brilliant day with great performances from our friends Norman Lamont, Jill Hepburn, Ewan Michael Riley, Tommy Mackay and the Impossible Songs bigger band. The day was sunny, warm and the promenade was crowded with visitors, sightseers and all kinds of water borne activity on the river. I don’t think Martin, Heike and Siggi had ever expected to play in such a unique and spectacular setting.

Monday night we played at the medieval Priory Church with a far smaller audience but a fantastic overall sound (thanks to Martin), a fun and intimate gig that saw us all playing well and ending in an impromptu jam on a reggae version of one of Norman’s songs, the name of which escapes me. Then back to our house with a few friends in tow for more beer, cake and wine (the staples of the German diet it seems).

On Wednesday we played at the hot and sweaty Forest Cafe with special guests Confushion (Fraser and John) providing a blinding half hour set in the middle of ours. The Bohemian, candlelit, shambolic café atmosphere was great and though we made a few blunders and the drum programmes were temperamental it was a very enjoyable night. I was happy not to fall from the tiny stage and that the mountainous PA speakers surrounding us stayed in place despite looking likely to collapse at any moment. Again the night ended in a small beer fest lasting into the wee small hours. Martin, Heike and Siggi left to begin the long journey home next morning nursing the now familiar beer headaches and hangovers.

Set list (for the week):

Nobody Jones
Dancing
Old Enough
That’s my baby
Futon Blues
Happy Like
Rainbow
Tragedy Queen
Not Pretty
I miss that boy
Syrus’ Song

Thursday was the regular OOTB night and was a pretty quiet one though the quality of performances was high. I was compere for the night and Tommy Mackay started the evening with “Pink Floyd are shit”, his Syd Barrett tribute song. As I listened to the lyrics properly (for the first time) I realised how good a song it was and how poignant it had become. On the way home in the car we had our usual sing-song based around the Supreme’s “Happening” meeting Herb Alpert’s “Tijuana Taxi”, bizarre but a total hoot and ripe for a remix or a cover. This led nicely into the Chiffons “Chapel of Love” and the idea of forming a tribute band called the “Pish Supremes”. The name emerged when we realised we couldn’t figure out what the opposite of supreme might be. Two middle-aged men driving in a car singing MoTown, guilty pleasures? I suppose you had to be there..

The Empress Helena and her search for the True Cross.

impossible songs

impossible songs



The Empress Helena and her search for the True Cross.

This story was first recounted in the Golden Legend, a thirteenth century manuscript describing the lives of the saints. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, followed her son’s example and in AD312 adopted the Christian Faith. As an elderly woman she travelled with her royal entourage across the Middle East and visited Jerusalem and a number of other holy sites. When in Jerusalem she met an old man named Judas who claimed to know the exact site where Jesus Christ was crucified and where the cross once stood. Helena questioned him intently, paid him small amount money in the form of silver coins and tasked her servants to investigate the site that the old man had described.

Some workmen were hired and an excavation on the site of the Crucifixion revealed three crosses, buried flat in the soil not far below the surface. Helena decided that the remains of the crosses should be tested and prayed asking for a sign from God. A dead boy from a village near Jerusalem was placed upon each cross. When laid on the first two nothing happened, but when the boy’s body was laid upon the third cross he was miraculously brought back to life, proving that this indeed was the true cross. Helena wanted to take the cross back to Rome in order that her son could view it and administer its powers. Before she had the opportunity to arrange any of this, a war broke out with the King of Persia, Chosroes II.

During one of his early campaigns against Jerusalem he stole the cross and took it to Persia. After this Helena returned to Rome where she lived out her latter years as a nun serving the poor and tending to the sick. It is said she died of a broken heart, brought about by the thought of the cross of Christ falling into the hands of non-believers. She felt that she was responsible for this “abomination”.

However in AD629 the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered the cross and brought it back to Jerusalem. He was about to make his triumphant and flamboyant entry into the city when the main gateway crumbled and fell down in front of him and his army. The gate to the city was blocked by rubble and dust and in the midst of the turmoil and angel appeared to Heraclius. The angel reminded him that Jesus was humble and that he would have ridden through the gateway on an ass and without any regal or military splendour. Heraclius took the warning to heart and so barefoot and without any insignia he carried the cross towards the gate. As he approached it, the gate opened and the rubble cleared before him as he entered the city.

From this point on the fate of the cross passes into the grey mist of history and no more is known of it nor are any further details recorded.

Some relevant pieces by Adam Elsheimer:

The Exaltation of the Cross.
The Embarkation of the Empress Helena.
The Questioning of Judas.
The Digging for the Cross.
The Testing of the Cross.
Heraclius on Horseback with the Cross.
Emperor Heraclius’ Entry into Jerusalem.