Roxy Music Time!

Last week I was getting the adrenalin rush of performing in a play at a theatre I fell in love with the first time I saw a production there sixteen years ago. My beloved has only just got over her end of run hangover.

This week has been a little flat, although I did get my first telly work this year which is good. I went for a casting in Manchester on Wednesday and got a part in a TV commercial, as did a good mate of mine who I enjoy working with. Filming next week somewhere in the North West which will be good fun.

This week the news hasn't been exciting enough to stimulate a great deal of blogging. The government still doing its best to screw up the Middle East by pratting around in Syria. The European Union pretending they have a solution to the cock-up that is the Euro. Strange how they seem to think endless summits will solve the problem. Which reminds me, I was asked yesterday if I had any financial dependents. I answered: "Yes, the population of Greece!" Boom, boom!

So to end the week I thought a bit of Roxy Music would go down well. In my humble opinion Bryan Ferry has never written or sung a bad song, so I'm always spoilt for choice. I went for Psalm, off the Stranded album:

Back To 1977

Lounging around in the sixth form, chasing girls, drinking Boddington's and wishing I was as cool as Bryan Ferry. That was me, and half the teenagers in the country in 1977.

Bryan Ferry has written some of the finest pop songs ever written and has always played with some of the world's best musicians. Here is one of his finest from that vintage year of 1977, the title track from his fourth solo album, In Your Mind:



In fact I'd forgotten what a damn fine album In Your Mind is, so here's a bonus track from it, Rock of Ages:

The Tourists-Loneliest Man In The World

I can't believe it was May 1979 that I saw The Tourists supporting Roxy Music at the Apollo in Manchester. But it was. So for anybody else who was there here's a reminder:



I wonder what happened to that singer and the guitarist?!!

Sentimental Fool

I've had some really interesting conversations over the years with people about the past, whether it has ever really been better than the present, why so many people remember what happened fifty years ago but not what happened yesterday. Why your first 18 years drag on like centuries, then suddenly you are in your 50s and wondering where the time went.

Half of my family are sloppy sentimentalists who can sit around, usually after a few drinks, and start getting all maudling about the past and people long gone who they probably never actually liked. Or about places they visited or lived that, at the time, they loathed.

I remember Billy Connolly once talking about longing for the Gorbals. So he went back after years of pining for the place only to realise it was that time of his life he pined for, his childhood and youth, not the physical place. It was actually a real dump.

Some time ago I wrote a story about 'crossing the great divide' and below is how I wrote one of the last paragraphs:

They finished the last dregs of their tea before granddad asked whether Sam wanted to go out through the back door or the front door. It was something Sam had often wondered about and now the time had come, he had no problem making his choice. It was definitely the back door, the very same door granddad had stepped through that first day at work. There was no real choice for Sam, the past reassured him but the future was full of terror and uncertainty, you never knew what lay ahead. But the past was there, it was certain, it comforted and reassured. It had to be the back door, he had made that decision weeks ago when the doctors told him.

But then again, you can't beat a bit of classic Roxy Music. From their album Siren I give you, Sentimental Fool



So occasionally I now pine for Gorton, Glossop, Edmonton, Plumstead and Zamora. But never Nicaragua!

Lloyd Cole

Been working in Clitheroe most of the weekend, but for some reason kept thinking about times gone by, like seeing Lloyd Cole at the Apollo, Ardwick in about 1982. He is so underrated:

Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera (Quiet Sun)

Friday Funday

The genius that is David Byrne. This is my idea of heaven: "Everyone is trying to get to the bar. The name of the bar, the bar is called heaven. The band in heaven they play my favorite song." Bliss:



Classic Roxy:




A perfect day with the sun in your eyes:

Friday Funday-Mayday Special

There are still some muppets who believe in socialism. To them I say compare this:


to this:



and answer this: Who won the Cold War?

This man grew up in Chapel-en-le-Frith. Don't it make you smile?

Don't it tell you God is a Northerner? Maybe the North includes Scotland Cat!
Then this: I'll move you, then I'll confuse you:

Chance Meeting

We've been away for a couple of days, hence the lack of blogging. I make no apology because it was a tremendous couple of days, quite momentous really.

The break took me back in time, and also involved searching through some old photographs, and I was taken aback. I hadn't realised how hard I had worked around 1980 to look like Bryan Ferry. Those who know me now will be shocked, but I did then have a full head of hair and a waistline that would have people wondering if I had been anorexic.

But a Roxy Music song, from their first album, imaginatively entitled Roxy Music, kept coming into my mind these last couple of days. The first few lines are particularly relevant to Friday. So thank you to some very special people, and enjoy the following from Roxy Music.