TOO MANY HAMBURGERS AND THE VOLUME OF PLENTY

Sometime in the deepest darkest depths of ancient antiquity I was taken to my first live ‘rock concert”. I must have been about ten years’ old. The family holiday, a week in Blackpool, northern England’s “Coney island”. Me dad took us to see Lonnie Donegan. You can look him up on google, mentioned in most of the rock ’n’r oll history books as a seminal influence on many future rock musicians, including The Beatles. He was performing at the top of England’s miniature facsimile of the Eiffel Tower. I always thought he was Irish, but he was apparently a Scotsman. We live and we learn. As a young man he’d traveled around America picking up on all these traditional folk-songs. When he returned to England he revved ‘em up beyond recognition, pioneered the “skiffle” craze in the UK in the late 1950’s, A washboard, a broom-handle strung up to a packing-case, a couple of guitars and a lot of un-classically trained teenage hormonal energy to be released!

By the time I saw him he was far from being a teenager. We knew him as a family entertainer / personality on TV. But this wasn’t television. No volume-control. Apart from factory machinery in metallic process, it was the loudest thing I’d ever heard in my life. Not what me dad expected, he was more of a Perry Como kinda guy, his ear-drums took a severe beating. These five guys relentlessly pounding their heads against some invisible wall of Jericho, till the walls came tumbling down.. I knew my life would never be the same again. It was as if I’d emerged from this pre-recorded diluted cocoon of “family light entertainment”…into a whole new world of loud and electrifying possibilities…

Anyway, after the show, we went to this Wimpy Bar”, American-style hamburger place, they were springing up all over England in the early 1960’s, before McDonalds. But either me dad couldn’t speak American or the guy working there couldn’t speak Yorkshire dialect, or me dad’s battered ear-drums had totally deranged his vocal chords, cause the order was catastrophically miscommunicated. Me dad thought he’d ordered one hamburger each, but after an exceptionally long wait for what was proudly being touted as “fast food”, suddenly this huge plated mound of bunnied cow-patties appeared, there must have been twenty to thirty. The look on me dad’s face could’ve sunk the Hindenberg and as far as I remember that was a balloon… He refused to pay. There was a big argument before we were marched off for fish’ n ’chips, the guy threatening to call the police!

That night in our modest B & B I couldn’t sleep, I lay there waiting for the cops to turn up, or Lonnie Donegan to come crashing through the wall! I couldn’t shake the feeling it must be so exciting to be an American and have such an appetite! I knew if I ever wanted to grow up, I’d have to learn how to play guitar and eat twenty hamburgers at one sitting! I never managed either. Though I did buy a guitar a few years later, spent a few weeks posturing in front of the mirror, then sadly donated it to a jumble-sale. Just couldn’t get me fingers round the frets. But I grew up anyway, life is like that. You can’t always get what you want and sometimes you get offered a lot more than you need. And there’s always another wall to break down, you just have to make sure you get yourself a good helmet, if you don’t want to suffer terminal brain damage..

And speaking of brain-damage, is there anybody here who doesn’t think confession is good for the soul? You can tell me, I’m the soul of discretion. Unlike Valerie, discretion is not the better part of Valerie. She’s liable to tell you things you don’t need to know. And speaking of things you don’t need to know, does anybody here think Jimi Hendrix was a psychological implant? If the key to living in peace is being able to express your frustration and anger, did we throw away the key in a fit of exhilarated over-excited adrenaline acceleration?

How many people think Paul McArtney lost his mojo after he lost John Lennon?

How many people think John Lennon lost his mojo after he met Yoko Ono?

How many people think that John Lennon would have accepted a knighthood?

How many people think that the Queen of England sits at the head of a round-table?

How many people think that Ringo Starr got very lucky?

How many people think that The Beatles were just a figment of Harry Nilsson’s imagination?

How many people think Harry Nillsson was just a figment of Harry Nilsson’s imagination?

How many people know who Harry Nilsson was?

How many people think Yoko Ono had more imagination that the whole of Liverpool put together?

How many people think the hole in the ozone-layer means we can raise the debt-ceiling out of this world and negotiate a new bail-out with the Martians?

How many people think Mars is already a Chinese colony? For ten billion yen you can buy yourself your own Milky Way? For the price of an inflated ego you can have your own ring put around Saturn?

How many people think Elton John will play the first rock concert on the moon? The rocket-man or the already-high-as-a-kite Willie Nelson? David Bowie, the man who fell to earth cause he lost his footing stepping on Freddie Mercury? Who will be the first lunar idol? Sting? Beaming live from his very own sea of tranquility? Lady GaGa? Or Doris Day? Is Doris Day still alive? Is Lonnie Donegan still alive? So much to google on! How many people think Lady GaGa is a psychosomatic implant?

In the immortal words of Ricky Nelson, if memories were all I played I’d sooner drive a nine-iron!!

It seems to be a perverse quality of the human psyche to venerate an era that pre-dates our adult consciousness. Stuff goes deep when you’re crawling around on the carpet while your mom vacuums with the radio playing. If, like me, you were raised on mainstream soft-pop, sometimes the most schmaltzy of over-produced ditties can melt your insides to mush and severely handicap any growing dynamic.. We used to be so didn’t we all! It takes years of study to learn how to handle nostalgia and see it clearly for what it is, nostalgic. Something that happened in the past, and we are not living in the past! If we were, me mam would still be making me sandwiches. We have to live in the here and now, which is not a time-space configuration but a leap of blind faith into a sea of joy! Either that or a big black proto-original void demonstrating that in truth we can see so much more clearly in the dark. Let’s face it, you don’t need a light-bulb to locate your genitalia. You don’t need your genitalia to tell you how you feel when your heart’s been broken. Seeing into the future is simply not remaining fixated in the past. Not looking back. Taking all the stuff that most deeply affected your being in the past and transforming it into a viably vital present electric currency. Bob Dylan didn’t look back, otherwise he’d be a pillar of salt by now, his arteries all clogged up. Elvis looked back and look what happened to his arteries!

As soon as anybody picks up a guitar, or a pen or a paint-brush, or a piece of clay, or decides their body needs to move in ways not normally associated with walking down the street, speak in words not commonly associated with casual conversation in Starbucks, are they coming face to face with the possibilities of transformation? And you will ignore these possibilities at your peril, possibly at the risk of your soul? Merely regurgitating the past is the faux soul of vanity, which is the death of the soul and can undermine the moment as profoundly as greed undermines community. If the only way to feel empowered is imitating somebody else, you will always be working nine to five, even if you’re performing after midnight. Just doing a job. And you can do your job well, you can do your job not so well, but it’s still just a job. Chasing somebody else’s tail, after they’ve already dropped out of your race, cause hopefully they’ve realized it’s not a race? They’ve just been chasing their own tail. At some point if you want to tell your story you have to forget somebody else’s tail. Even if you were at Woodstock and apparently in the thick of it, at some point you have to realize what you were celebrating was already an era all but played itself out…

So where do we go from here? For any artist the mainstream has to be their sub-culture. If re-creating your world is the aim of art, if you want to share yourself with the universe, you have to behave as if the whole of creation depends on you re-creating it good, well and true. To be incapable of lying must be your base criteria. To put on an act may be the basis of a lucrative career, but it could also leave you drowning in the mainstream. On the other hand, of course, you could finish up living out on the streets or lopping your ear off in a wheat-field..

In the immortal words of Jimi Hendrix : “excuse me while I touch the sky!” Jimi’s not here. Elvis isn’t here. Bob Dylan’s not here, I believe he has a gig in Philadelphia tonight... .Amy Winehouse isn’t here, hopefully in re-hab heaven? But the sky’s still here. The earth is still here. And I’m here struggling to come unstuck in the middle of it all, burst through my rocks and hopefully not have to roll with too many soul-destroying blows? In the immortal words of John “Speedy” Keen of Thunderclap Newman : “we have got to get it together now!” And speaking of thunderclaps, bursting rocks and new men….

Hands up anybody who thinks this moment is not memorable?

Anybody remember their first kiss?

Anybody remember their second kiss?

Anybody think that comfortable underwear is worth fighting for?

Anybody ever fought for sales assistance?

Anybody ever wandered through Walmarts and thought “it doesn’t come any cheaper than this!?

Anybody think the cost of living is getting too expensive and poverty should be subsidized by the State?

Anybody think poverty is already being subsidized by the State? Some countries should be arrested for over-crowding? Cheap labor is well worth paying for? If a job’s worth doing it’s worth paying somebody else to do it?

Whoopi Goldberg descended from a long-line of Jewish comedians? If it wasn’t for Jewish comedians would we never have known how un-funny most gentiles are? Is Whoopi Goldberg Bob Marley’s mummified corpse in drag? It’s a drag to be high all the time? “All the time” is a relative concept? Conception is how we got our relatives in the first place? The first place is where we go after we just came last?

Is music the key to living in peace? Are too many musicians playing in the wrong key? In the immortal words of Harry Belafonte : “a beautiful bunch of ripe bananas hide the deadly black tarantula!” Randy Newman : “let’s drop the big one now!”? Hamlet was a great Dane? Corrupt politicians should be exposed! Hands up anybody who think politicians are quite capable of exposing themselves!

*******NB. I met this guy Fred Hellerman, used to play with Pete Seeger in the American folk “Weavers”, who told me he once did a gig with Lonnie Donegan. He implied in so many words Scottish Lonnie was an insufferably talentless ass-hole! You either believe it or you don’t..