Back on Hard Ground:


Belfast was nice and clean after Oxegen and the ground didn’t ooze when I trod on it and people didn’t kick mud at me. We also went for a ruby which was a rare treat. Spicey food that tastes spicey - not like in the US where spicey means slightly vinegary, the like hellman's mustard.

Then there were four shows around England that were good fun, mainly because I always enjoy the first week or so being back in the country. Our ferry was delayed so we had to rush from Stranraer to Liverpool but we did get time for a fuel stop at some random little backwoods trucker gas stop. Next to it was a weirdy supermarket - ALDI maybe, somewhere super cheap anyway that sold brands that ripped off big brands. Like cornflakes that weren't Kelloggs but came in a box designed to look exactly like Kelloggs. Anyway, Brian found these biscuits which were aptly named as we were going to Liverpool, home of the original E's.....





We went to Portsmouth too, which has these three islands in the middle of the estuary – I thought they looked like WWII gun enplacements, but in fact they were built by Henry VIII (not personally). It was good to see the sea. And there’s something special about the English coast for me. It’s not spectacular in the sense of Big Sur or expansive like, say, the beaches near Perth, Australia but it has a certain something you don’t find anywhere else. The sea was grey/green and choppy and a large Brittany Ferry sailed within a couple of hundred yards of the esplanade and it looked brilliant. There are divine moments every day if you’re lucky enough to catch them. This is our bus on the sea front with one of Henry VIII's defenses on the left of the picture.



I put 2p. into an arcade game and won a quid - in 2 pence pieces. I carried them around all day but finally got fed up with them and left them in the dressing room. The wanton excess of rock and roll.




We got to the Latitude Festival the following morning and the artist showers didn’t work, and the dressing room wasn’t ready, and the promoter was being stingy with meals but I decided instead to enjoy looking at the woodland around the site rather than get bummed out. Like Albert’s always saying: happiness can be a choice.

Here's the lake behind the stage. It looks delightful.




A few yards along the path were lots of spent shotgun cartridges. Hundreds of them. I was hoping someone was trying to off the festival hippies living in tents by the lake but I never heard any shots. Unless, of course, they'd killed all the hippies before I'd arrived. There's a thought...I guess happiness can be a choice...as well as a warm gun.





And here are Matt's drums waiting patiently in the trailer to go onstage. The show was good but it was poorly managed.






I read Alex James’s book – a Bit of a Blur yesterday. It’s very good. It’s very Alex too. He’s very witty. All of Blur were/are – although none of them made a career of being a caddish fop quite like Alex. He always came out with the best one-liners, and in the most fey voice possible. I remember him criticizing my French once as we went into a Parisian night club (Lilly la Tigresse, maybe?) and I’d tried to say thanks to the doorman. Alex, of course, speaks excellent French – I speak only three words of French and apparently I’d got all of them wrong. I quite respect the fact that he knew what good manners were even if he chose to be ill mannered most of the time, or at least very haughty. That's much classier than just being an oik outright. I remember he also put the staff at the George V in their place as we went back there to party after the MTV Awards Paris once, which is no mean feat as they are the snottiest hoteliers among the snottiest people on the planet. The book’s well-written and candid but in a way that doesn’t really betray any confidences--the only person he really tells-all on is himself, which is gentlemanly of him. He doesn't dodge himself either - he acknowledges he was a brat but also understandably says, to my mind at least, that it was his job. Which I think it was (although I was glad to not have to look after them). He doesn't excuse himself with a load of rationalising, self-aggrandising bollocks. It may be my age but I’m not so sure that there are any pop stars around in England these days with the class of Blur and Pulp? They certainly had some panache.

I also read Pearl Lowe's book All That Glitters, which was disappointing. While she's candid about her drug use that's the only thing she's really candid about. She dodges around so many issues I felt she was spinning a version of events and I wasn't supposed to notice. Certainly it seemed that she only wanted to be in a band as an excuse to be famous, not because she wanted to write or be a musician in the first place-she blew too many opportunites for that and Powder were never more than a very peripheral band. It rings false that she cared about being a singer when, given every opportunity to succeed, she blew it. I can't remember a song of Powder's or anyone talking about that Powder gig that blew them away. Pearl's desire to be famous without doing anything to earn it plays a repetitive key note throughout the book. The whole Gavin Rossdale paternity test fiasco is written to emphasise that Pearl was only trying to sort out who her daughter's father was and then it was the evil lawyers who made her follow up on the paternity test and subsequent maintainence payments. It all reads a bit disingenuously, as though Pearl wants us to believe she never thought of any of this by herself. Pearl as some kind of naif wandering through Britpop and without a conniving, ego-driven bone in her body. It reads like she's selling something. But that's junky style, in essence. There was something hollow to the tone of the remorse in the book to my ears. Whatever, it's okay as a book, but Pearl's only real issue, in Pearl's eyes, seems to be her drug addictions, on which she pins all her selfish behaviour. As a drunk myself I think this is a cop out. I think ones addictions are only symptoms and dealing with the addicition might be difficult but it's not addressing the root of the problem. The self-justification wore a bit thin after a while. She's very candid about her drug use. She's been clean for 2 years. Good for her. I really hope she stays that way. It's hard work. And I hope her daughter stops having photo's taken with spotty youths sucking her breasts. There's got to be better ways to get everyone to notice you. She could do some work and become good at something instead.

** Just read this quote on The Times online.
"Daisy was indeed revealed to be Rossdale’s child. Pearl sued for Daisy’s school fees, which Goffey had paid since she was six.
“This guy’s a millionaire, he can at least give Danny back the money he’s spent,” says Pearl "

I've no interest in defending Gavin Rossdale - sounds like he's being a bit snide BUT insisting that now he's minted he should be reimbursing Pearl's boyfriend for money spent over the years on private education seems to contradict the motives given in the book for clarifying the child's paternity, s'all. Bless her, I think she's got a point, but she's such a complete merchant, and I think I'm irritated because no one's supposed to notice this, as though everyone's dim or something and will believe all of Pearl's flannel. Wonder if it would be such a big deal if Supergrass were charting higher?