Tuesday 24th of April, 2001
Perhaps I should make myself clearer as regards the "guitar solo". Obviously, if I am a solo performer, and I stop singing at any time, anything that continues to happen ought, by rights, be considered a "guitar solo". What I am trying to do is find something more complicated to play so that the audience won't get bored. Rather than merely widdly-widdly ad nauseam, which is what some people think a guitar solo is. I'm getting better at it.
I clean the bathroom and change the water filter. The fact that I am continuing to keep up with other human beings in the housework stakes does not fail to amuse me. They said it couldn't be done. Or rather, they said it could be done, indeed really ought to be done, but was unlikely to be done by me.
After lunch I jet off down the Walworth Road to do Money Stuff - a further depressing pouring of my currency into other people's bank accounts. I pop into the charity shops but nothing appeals - it's entirely possible that I have enough shirts. Astounding!
I go into the library on the way past, and spend a long time pouring over the CDs. They are redecorating at the moment - I've got them out on loan until the fifth of June, which seems like an eternity away, but isn't of course.
(I have that gig on the second...)
The reference section has been temporarily relocated in front of the jazz CDs. Don't want to disturb them.
All the same, I look at all the CDs twice, and pick seven.
On the way through the Shopping Centre, I find that a tractor beam drags me into Tlön Books, where I spend another long time browsing. I sit down and read Toyah Wilcox's autobiography, or at least the bits that refer to her courtship by Robert Fripp. We all have our prurient sides.
My prurient side is being heavily indulged at the moment - not only have I subscribed to PopBitch, but I found a Groupie web site (a link I followed up after reading the Almost Famous script the other day), which includes a lot of gossip. A lot of that is what is called "Blind Gossip", where they say - oh I don't know - "Which teen idol has been caught in flagrante delicto with an inflatable cow?". To which the answer is, of course, "Well? Which one is it, then?"
To which the reply is silence, or perhaps a significant wink.
You're just supposed to know these things.
On the one hand, this means that they can head off libel actions at the pass, on the other it suggests that they can just make it up as they are going along.
One can only hope that it doesn't catch on in the respectable media - "Which major world leader was caught out today, when a certain Asian superpower declared nuclear war on them?", "This Third World Country has been struck by famine again!"
Of course, exactly who does anything doesn't matter. The members of the various girl bands, boy bands and girl/boy bands are interchangeable to such a degree that any transgression or rumour might as well be associated with one as another girl, boy, whatever. The picture painted of the pop business is so sordid that I find it difficult to believe the... the...
Well, frankly, the stupidity of it.
So anyway, my prurient side has me buy No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman (wait a minute - this book is about the Doors! I'm not that interested in the Doors! Damn, carried away again!); Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugerman again (debauchery in the rock world of the 60s and 70s); Expensive Habits by Simon Garfield (more music industry unpleasantness, this time British and financial); and for a little light relief the Grimm brothers' Household Tales (illustrated by Mervyn Peake) and The Double Tongue by William Golding (left unfinished at his death, so not one of the must-haves, but I'm a fan).
Donna calls from Walkers to ask if I can go in in a couple of weeks. So things are looking up workwise. Or squinting up, anyway.
Later, I write and post to the Corpses an apologia for Progressive Rock. I do hope I'm not torn apart. Or, worse, patronised.