PLUGHOLE.

Psyched on getting an illustration in the new Mercy E-Zine, and that we'll be playing a show for them in an old paint shop on the street that nearly forgot its own name.

Tonight:

I was Tuesday evening blue with a pain flower in dull bloom just left of my stage-right hip bone. The dog in the next yard shookah-shook a yard dog’s day from his shoulders and watched the lock on the gate to the alleyway. “All your months will begin on a Sunday” said the boy in black to a girl in grey who maybe then got home without her keys. I was heavy eyes under weekend weight, and I held my hands to sleep.

You know you're going to make a good record when...

a partner in crime sends a message that reads "The drum sound on Physical Graffiti is mega!"

Couldn't agree more.

I HATE SCHOOL RULES

Caught Rob Penn's Ride of My Life on BBC 4. He bolted about the world buying bits to make his dream bicycle. Some good enough moments, but did a rather bad job of feigning super-loco enthusiasm at every turn (For fuck's sake Rob, it's only a fucking headset), as well as confusing most of his interviewees by pissing himself at really odd moments. He came out with a Campag Record groupset on a Rourke frame with Cinelli bars, a Brooks seat and a Chris King Headset and rode off into the distance with his wallet some 5 grand lighter.

Wimbledon-bound tomorrow, with a pit stop in Camden, followed by some summer rain in Anglesey with the Crash Gang.

Obsessed with Exciter's "I HATE SCHOOL RULES"



And the less said about the album cover, the better.

Stick-Up

Type design for a sticker for your local skateboarding shop.

MOSHICD37

POW.

Back in Black(pool)

Work has been getting all up in my time and shit, hence the no-post. Did a UK legger with my mates for 5 weeks and we're still mates and so we're writing another record so that the exercise can be repeated until we are older men than we are right now.

The severe weather warnings of the weekend saw myself, Dunc and the Brown Town swerve the fuck out of our coast to coast jaunt. We got up with the larks and instead rode up to Blackpool and back instead. The thing about Blackpool is that everything there is disgusting. The food is disgusting and Blackpool tower is disgusting. Everyone that you look at with your eyes is disgusting and disgusted by the disgusting people that they look at with their own disgusting eyes. Still, despite a windy and rainy day, I managed to catch a touch of sunburn and a feigned smile smack bang in the middle of our very own Las Vegas.



So yeah. New work:



Should be seeing the light of day in mainland Europe as September trips over October's welcome mat, and I dare say we'll be tripping up drunk across Germany for as long as they can stand us to.

And if Contador wins the tour due to today's tangled code of honour, will the Yellow Jersey offer him any piece of mind at all?

NEVER interrupt de black man or a sleeping bassist.

The dogs started barking up the alleyway at half 7 this morning. It's quarter past 12 and they're still at it. It's akin to knobhead festival-goers screaming "bollocks!" into the messy night. I think if I'd bought a dog and it reckoned it urgently needed to be in the house, I'd just let it in. Saying that, the dogs round here are souped-up on the devil and put to work on each other in the bowls of Bootle skateparks. 1 and a half weeks into the tour and I got the grump of a nocturnal rock musician. Rough with the smooth. Rob's coffee this morning has got my nails down to the quick.

Instant chat-a-like makes it all worthwhile:

PETER:

it was a weird night, after we left the gig berni got chatted up buy this alcoholic and i heard the most crazy sentence I have ever heard.

PAUL:

What was it?

PETER:

'your exposed ankles are taking me to a new Babylon, i bet you've got a punani dats a real crispy'

haha

she literally ran away

the weird thing was James went 'what are you saying mate' and he goes 'NEVER interrupt de black man'

Free the Pterodactyl 3

Joe Tucker made this with the help of Liam and Heather. Heather, sorry we broke your door. I hope you're enjoying your new lock:



Now the rain was laced with pity. The beaches met the coastal roads and street lamps led them blind into the city fast asleep. And the wind carried the curses of collisions in the darkness and the accidental crunch of devil's purses underfoot. I was thinking who out of us all I thought would grow up and just how right and wrong I'd been in equal measure. She is buried treasure. She is bored. Butterflies will die towards the end of summer years, and apparently she's just ignoring them. A friend, he put it simply "If I understood, then I could understand..." These blue eyes grow ageless. The sky feels contagious when the stars recall spots on those teenager's faces who come down here after dark to learn how to fall apart, to dance with the devil until they become free of God's will again. We have surnames for the taking but the girls don't understand the men with guilt the shape of local police stations and the last train home. She settled down and said 'goodnight', never said 'goodnight' and went out in a blaze of glory in a bar room full of history, hope and pity. If I understood, then I could understand. The blue eyes grow ageless. The sky feels contagious. If you were the stars that means I was the places that we went.

Liam's Blog

Joe was telling me about a restraunt deep in Cheshire he visited with the inlaws. I pissed myself when he told me about 'Liam's Blog'. I wanted to try and describe the concept, but figured that Joe would do a far better job himself. He is the king of the story:

Recently I was in a pub in Cheshire when I spotted something that I can only describe as absolutely wonderful. When I say ‘pub’, it was in fact what most pubs in Cheshire have now become – a pub-restaurant. An aspirational pub-restaurant. Where once patrons ordered pints of Stella, now they’re just as likely to order cappuccinos or the limited edition produce of a local microbrewery. Where once customers were happy with an egg and cress sandwich, now they demand ciabattas; The menus bandy about terms like ‘pan-fried’; They’ve installed a massive sofa; There’s a room called ‘The Library’. Of course it’s all bollocks – the customers may want all the trappings but there’s still a deep resentment for all things cosmopolitan. Yes, we may watch Sex and the City but we still hate gays and the EU. Go and have a closer look at the books on The Library’s shelves – they’re all just Jeffrey Archer novels and Good Pub guides from 1986. The dickhead in the kitchen might offer to rustle you up a Pak Choi salad but he’d never eat that kind of food himself – he’s just saving up for alloy wheels.

Anyway, I was in a prime example of such a pub – maybe the best I’ve ever been in. The menu kept banging on about ‘organic produce’ and referring to the chef by name – Liam. Then I noticed a small blackboard high up on a wall. It was perhaps not much bigger than an A4 piece of paper and read, bafflingly, ‘Liam’s blog’. That bit was painted on, permanently. Then, below it, written in chalk, clearly in the handwriting of a sixteen year old girl, it said something like, ‘Chantenay carrots coming through nicely in the organic vegetable plot’. It was pretty clear this sentiment had not come from Liam. Liam was a front.

But still, I was intrigued – ‘Liam’s blog’. What did it mean? Did Liam have an online existence where he waxed lyrical about the comings and goings of life as a chef in a provincial pub-restaurant - the ‘best bits’ of which later made it on to the blackboard I was now looking at? I can imagine this – I’ve seen other pub-restaurants misguidedly go overboard with their online infrastructure, ie, “The Nag’s Head –don’t forget to visit our website / forum / facebook group”. But a quick internet search on my phone for the name of the pub throws up no such thing.

Let me be clear about this: The small blackboard I am looking at proclaiming itself to be ‘Liam’s blog’ has no online presence. The startlingly abstract reality of the situation finally dawns on me – the blackboard itself, in the minds of the people who run this pub, is ‘the blog.’ This instantly threw up a matrix of questions – what do these people think a ‘blog’ actually is? Maybe they don’t think words need clear definitions? When they write something on this particular blackboard do they imagine they’re writing a ‘blog post’? I imagine the bar manager handing a stick of chalk to a young member of casual staff whilst telling them to “go and update Liam’s blog”.

The only conclusion I can sensibly reach is this, and it’s incredible – the people who run this pub have heard scant mention of this word, ‘blog’. They don’t know exactly what it means but they know it lies in the same strata as ciabatta and quinoa and frappuccino – and those are things that people now want, or, more specifically, want the option to turn down in favour of a ‘gut-busting 12oz Angus Beef burger’. The people who run this pub are so progressive that barely have they heard mention, let alone proper explanation, of an exotic new idea, than they have unselfconsciously run with their own interpretation of it, even at the very real risk of making total fools of themselves, their staff and their entire establishment. I want to find the manager and shake him by the lapels of his jacket and shout in his face until he’s rudely brought up to speed with common knowledge. But then a deeper, pervading sense of sadness – a sort of desperate protectiveness - overcomes me and now I want to find the manager and I want say to him, “Something is coming to you about which you currently haven’t the slightest clue. The world is going to tell you that ‘Liam’s blog’ is wrong - so very wrong, in ways you haven’t imagined. And I want you to know that, whatever they say, it isn’t wrong. I want you to keep ‘posting’ to Liam’s blog, I want you to keep ‘updating’ it, keep ‘uploading’ it. I want you to know and understand that, as far as I’m concerned, that blackboard is Liam’s blog and I want it to remain so for ever more.”

What else?

Watched East Bound and Down in its entirety again, which sent me on the second David Gordon Green bender of the year. The male relationships throughout his stuff are so monstrously well-observed (see Kenny Powers and his brother Dustin or Schneider's gang in All the Real Girls). There's a warmth and fondess between the men, but executed with the flippancy and irreverance that only years in each other's pockets can produce.

Gettin' Down With Your Royal Badness.

Bendal Interlude day. Bass, guitar and drums for 7 songs in one day. Drummer told band 8.30am so that band arrive for 9am. Heavy metal cunning. Spotted guitarist Stu-pot out in the street at one o'clock last night post Sound City shows. Naughty. Swerved Max Tundra but I'm psyched on Field Music this evening. I'll try and not turn my conversation with Brewis-squared like an interview for Sound On Sound/Tape Op.

Been learning Down With Prince by Hot Chip for Moshi's 100th record release show.

"I'm sick of motherfuckers tryna' tell me that they're down with Prince."