i once threw a pair of a boy's undercrackers (underpants) out the window when i was on a field trip to the beautiful island of arran off the west coast of scotland. i would have been in primary five then, maybe ten years old . i still feel bad about that. the scants (underpants) ended up in a cow field and the boy ended up in therapy. no, i made the last part of that up. he hung himself. nooooo, of course he didn't. he's living a perfectly normal and happy life with a wife, family, dog, garden, ford mondeo, a mild frozen food addiction and a subscription to top gear magazine . i hope so anyway. i've not seen him since i was about twelve. i hope i didn't scar him. why did i throw his y's (underpants) out the window though? for a joke i'm sorry to admit. pranksters and jokers huh!
well, someone got their revenge on me yesterday. the weather had been a bit dodgy all day. there were about four seasons in the day which is kind of normal for glasgow at this time of year. at about 5pm i spotted the sun and headed out to get a coffee and a leg stretch. a new girl was working at the coffee place i frequent so i had a brief, friendly chat with her then took my beverage to the park, found a nice bench near the freshly cut herb garden and sat and listened to a cd my friend ian lent me. it's by clem snide and contains some of the best lyrics i've heard in ages. i particularly like this one:
"your blood will colour every sunset, your tears will help me grow some trees"anyway, after ingesting his comforting and inspiring words i continued walking and as i was passing a portaloo (which i remember thinking i'd never seen before in the botanic gardens) an attractive (though overly made-up) blonde girl stopped me. "I'm desperate to use the bathroom, but the door is broken, please please please (maybe she only said two pleases, but i'm exagerating for effect) please can you stand and just maybe push the door closed while i'm in". "But there's the park toilet just down there" i exclaimed, surprised by this turn of events. "I'll be really quick, hold on" she said and rushed into the portaloo before i could even react. maybe twenty seconds passed and suddenly the door burst open and a fat man came out where she'd gone in. "Oh ****" i thought, realising i'd just been tricked.
i checked a tree to see if i could see the camera, and i looked around the back of the portaloo and i could see some fingers in the male toilet beside it where she was obviously hiding. i was half tempted to push the whole thing over, douse the lot in petrol and lob a match on it. but i didn't have any matches. maybe i should have shoved it over and started booting it in, but i resisted and forced a smile coz i knew i must be being filmed. plus neither of these options are really me i don't think.i was a bit mortified but smiled and continued to walk along, checking people's reactions to see just who had played the prank. after walking a few yards i was accosted by a bubbly female producer and an irritating little media man who kept saying "well done, well done" and shaking my hand. i knew why he was doing that coz they need to get my permission in order to broadcast the footage. i'm fodder for their show.
i spoke a bit with the woman and the guy and they told me it was a hidden camera show for prime time bbc 1. the show is called 'just for laughs'. it sounds like a poor man's trigger happy to me. anyway, i signed the release form saying they could use that footage. what the hell. i'm not so vain that i don't like seeing myself in a stupid light. at least, i think i'm not :P i just looked bemused. that's been seen before.
i was regaling this tale to a friend today and he told me a story about a similar 'joke' that he saw played on someone in glasgow by a tv show. but the victim was a ned. oh a 'ned' is a scottish term for an often violent, scary, disaffected youth with no social skills and a penchant for irrational thought, confrontation, tracksuits and baseball hats. anyway, as soon as the 'paint' 'accidently' fell from a man on a ladder onto the ned's shellsuit the ned went crackers and grabbed the ladder, hurtling the painter actor through the air. brilliant! apparently then three panicked tv production people ran towards the splattered ned shouting "it's a joke, it's just tv, we're from the tv!!" and he promptly decked all three of them.
i wish i'd done that now.
so the album is finished. the 12 songs have been selected. i'm really happy with how it's sounding so now i have to start finding some good homes for these songs. and that's what i've been working on recently, hence my somewhat quiet nature. it's a slow process i think between writing songs, recording them and getting them out there. unless you're on a major label and the label is screaming at you to hurry up coz the share price might dip. that doesn't apply to me. the only thing that might dip is my mood unless i'm making progress. these songs that make up my new album are the product of a couple of years of writing. i don't know if i've missed out some better songs coz i don't have the luxury of recording many songs and selecting, but i do know that i'm really pleased with the finished album. i'm hoping it'll be out in the next few months. i really believe this is a better album than the first one. "calling out to you" will always be close to my heart but i think this album is more thought-out and it's a progression. the working title is "off the radar".
i've only one gig lined up and that's in glasgow on 9th november. there might be some before that, i really don't know at the moment. my focus is purely on finding liked-minded people who want to put their time and money behind this album. i've not been writing much lately, i've been too preoccupied by other things. actually that's not true. i wrote a song last night. but i don't think it's very good. i want to learn piano to see if i write differently or something. i need a shake. a musical shake. i need paul to teach me some new moves on the guitar i reckon. the last time he did that i wrote one of my best songs i think.
i'm really heartened by the fact the the two songs i like the most on this new album are the last two songs i wrote. "footprints" was written not long after returning from japan and in the studio we kind of captured a moment. "amorino" is the other and i love playing it too. it's a song that is about as pure and honest as i could ever hope to write.
life is strange just now. sometimes when there are endless possibilities it's easy to freeze and be confused about which route to take. but my focus has to be on getting this album out. i think it'll be out in japan first which kind of makes sense coz that's what happened last time too.
this summer has been amazing. the highlight was a private garden party organised by neon tetra that had some great artists playing. oh, i really don't like the change into darker seasons. i get scared and panicky. i need the sun. i need heat. i need warmth to envelope me or i freeze. i hope the transition into autumn and winter will be smooth. at this time of year i think i need a hot dog to keep me company. i don't mean a frankfurter. i mean a big, red-blooded labrador or something. i'd call him fritter maybe. he could keep me warm on winter's evenings and i could get him to do harmonies on new tunes as i strum under moonlight nights in my flat. or scare burglars maybe, whichever was easier for the confused mutt.
i hope your summer was good too. here's hoping for a quick winter. gosh, it's not even autumn yet. ignore me. i do my best to.
