STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART; NO MIXER

Curse the cold wall around the Holy Scintilla within. C’est puissant. The red plague rid me of this frosty facade.

Bless those eyes, are they impossible to draw?

Curses, I feel what you feel; it’s just I can’t say… out loud. Shhhh. I’m afraid of what happens when dams burst.

Bless your tiny feet as they walk on the moist Earth. And wherever you go – dig it: Fly!

Curses on the Shadow-Men that’d force infantry on drummers everywhere, ridding the land of laughter.

Blessings on those rare souls still connected to a hundred-thousand anonymous troubadours.

A million curses on profiteerings; the bones of future generations. How can you look at your children and not regret the famine you have thrust upon them?

A billion blessings on the Guardian Angel at the Gates of Paradise; she is the bearer of the beacon. The way, the truth and the light.

That is all.

LET THE SUN SHINE

My computer screen finally karked it. RIP. Go in, get it fixed and hope they don’t hassle me viz the chip on the corner. Wasn’t that I swear! Stayed normal a whole two weeks before the neon tartan marred my vision. Then yesterday no vision. Just a black background and a bunch of lines. Ah it’s just a thing. What matters a thing? It has no soul, no ideas and I don’t need it. Much.

But if you’re wondering why my posts are short you know. I’ve got to slip into cafes or libraries to do them and I’m a busy boy right this minute.

Someone told me this morning that Jupiter and Neptune lined up today. Apparently that’s cosmic news for me. Whoopee! Who knows what weight this stuff bears but what use in casting cynicism on what can only be either immaterial or benevolent. So Father Zeus, Grandfather Poseidon, I who am blessed by your beneficence salute you. Whether or no you exist.

Fortuna and Folly can throw what they will my way. I can hack it today.

TUNE

The way I feel today is in the music and not the words.

FAREWELL SADIE

Sometime around 1967 one of the multitude of gurus coming out of India, avatars of ‘Neo-Hinduism’, scored big. He met the Beatles, thru George Harrison’s wife, the model Patti Boyd. Here she is:

Pretty wasn’t she?

Famously the fab four trotted off to India with this guy in 1968, there to receive the answer. They were all in thrall to the guy. It didn’t bother them, his lush estate, his fine house, his private helicopter. They put up with the rules, no drinking, no drugs – well mostly, and they took up meditation. Versions vary as to what occurred but it’s a well established part of the lore of the 1960s that Lennon and Harrison confronted their guru over his advances to the women of the group. Mia Farrow recalls being grabbed by him in a cave, that sort of thing.

Afterwards McCartney issued a statement saying they’d all thought the guy was something more than human and he wasn’t. All four confirmed that the benefit that they’d had from the association was to the practice of meditation. They’d left drugs behind and were seeking a new way.

Needless to say they didn’t leave the drugs. Over ten years later McCartney came close to doing 8 years in a Tokyo jail after getting busted with an ounce at the airport. Being a Beatle he only did 9 days. This happened around the time Lennon got shot dead by one of those who the Me Decade decided weren’t Beautiful People after all. And in that long slow decade since those halcyon days with the Maharashi he’d faced addictions to alcohol and heroin. Ringo was never into it much, drugs or meditation. Maybe George got past it, but he came close to losing it on the I-see-the-Light trip. Goodbye the pretty girl upstairs.

But that was to come, in ’68 they spent some weeks in India. And then it finally dropped that the Maharashi was not immune to the sex and money traps of power. Maybe he wasn’t at all the gentle and great spirit he seemed. Lennon remember some look from the guy when they told him they were out of there. Something hostile, murderous. Amongst the explosion of songs written at the time came one of Lennon’s most aspic barbs. Originally it was called ‘Maharashi’. Fearing lawsuits and some kind of voodoo (Lennon seemed to be superstitious) they changed it to a girl’s name and thus to a story of destructive harlotry. How strangely Christian that a man’s transgressions are blamed on a woman. I recommend Rachel Unthank & The Winterset’s version on the Mojo White Album tribute.

There’s the revelation, the kernel of truth that persistently escapes neat definition. And then there’s always someone ready to make a buck out of it. When things were jake, the Maharashi was talking movie deals with someone in the Beatles camp. He jumped in right with a 2.5% of the gross profits bid. He knew how to hustle.

Religion it’s a bitch.

CAN YOU DIG IT!

Been listening lots to Mojo’s fourth release of a Beatles album covered by people you never heard of. Well not quite true.

We’ve all heard of Beth Orton, right? She gets two tracks, the (imho) best on the record followed by the weirdest (dunnit look like they’re havin’ fun? Not!). John and Yoko’s contribution I shouldn’t wonder.

Fabulous! Orton’s version that is. They roll into each other with “Dig It” converted into an avant-experimental epilogue for Harrison’s tune. That’s the showcase. I wonder if she thinks it’s the album’s best song too. She does it as George wrote it, as she should. It’s her sound and she knows what the words really mean.

First the lonely crowd lugubrious lament on the selfishness of people (All thru your life, I-me-mine, I-me-mine, I-me-mine) followed by the unabashed egotistical strut (I! Me-me mine!). She’s better than the boys were. By far. She digs it, she lives for it, it comes from the heart and fuck you. And that’s today me too.

At the end of “Dig It” she has a dig at Yoko. Hah! Where Lester Bangs thought John Lennon was culture climbing marrying her, Orton knows full well ’twas the other way around. I guess she sees Yoko as a rich kid opportunist maybe. I don’t know. Don’t know her. And I don’t care about John and Yoko.

Why then all the bollocks viz the motherfucking sixties! Ahhhrrrggghh! Will we ever be rid of them.

My generation that is (1963-1979). The answer: no. Why’ve I been crapping on about rock stars and their stupid drug deaths, why have I been contemplating the erosion of talent that comes of overindulgence. The cracked marriages, the fall into apelike vulgarity and the will to slavery that so many seem to, just… prefer!

Have I been doing this?

Who knows. I think I’ll just drop it. The point’s made. Those songs were writ by the Magic Group, right? But they hated each other’s guts when they did ’em. It had gone sour. Go back and look at the clip from Let It Be. Look at Harrison’s face. And check out John Lennon trying to be Bob Marley or something.

Orton’s taken all that and made magic. Doesn’t that make you happy? What? You don’t know? You haven’t heard it? Oh…

I feel the sorriest for you.

Thru talking. Ciao.

TUNE

Sister, look at what you’re doing.

TUNE

There’s two ways you can go, one easy and forgotten, the other hard. But you’ll be remembered.