Hammer Horror.


I got back to New York after my last trip exhausted, as usual, but also glad of the extra time I spent in London and Paris.

It's a strange feature of touring / traveling that getting home is both a good and bad thing. I'd ached for my own bed (literally in my bunk on the bus-a bunk that had started to smell of rabbits, for reasons I could never fathom unless it was either me or Albert below, but we're both very clean--just like Paul's Grandad) but when I got back I found myself missing England more than I ever have.

My American friends have told me my accent is back and I know when I was in England I was slipping in my Coventry accent again; deliberately too--which is about like making yourself fat for a laugh.

(Coventry Accent 101: Say Water without pronouncing the T, same with Butter. Use the word Scratter to describe someone who doesn't pay their way and is always trying to cadge ciggies or drinks or anything. Affirm everything not with Yes or even Yeah but with "Arh." said with a dipping chinese-style third tone. Duck is pronounced with a nasal U sound and no C. Not that we use the word Duck-off there much. Call a bread roll a Batch. Replace the words really and extremely with the word Dead. Classy, innit?).


Anyway, back in New York I started watching some of the twenty DVDs I bought in HMV and Virgin. These are mostly old British films and largely a bunch of 1970's Vampire films made by Hammer Productions. They were all shot in England with parts of Suffolk, I think, made to look like Transylvania. They were all full of comely wenches and most had Christopher Lee in them as Dracula. Oliver Reed makes an appearance as the Werewolf (he was dead good-looking before the drink destroyed him) and Peter Cushing is the man I'd most like to have as my grandfather if I could have a third and Peter Ustinov wasn't available.


Ingrid Pitt - Vampire Hottie. Part of me still wants to date a Goth (and Goth was still cool in Coventry and Leeds long after the rest of the world had got into rave music. Amy Lee got married already, didn't she?).




Christopher Lee - the James Bond of Draculas.



It's strange how these cheesy, dated movies have stood up over time. I can still remember scenes I'd only seen once on a Friday night when I was about 12. They left an impression, that's for sure. To be fair, comely wenches and a single flash of boob (usually by the end of the second reel) coupled with dark and powerful undead super-antiheroes is a powerful aphrodisiac for a 12 year od boy.

It's funny to find a vivid sense of self in something from your childhood. The same can be said when I listen to The Jam, I can instantly be transported to being angry and eager and fifteen and crazed with a huge unsatisfied appetite for life. Not like the jaded old tosser I am now.... It's good to know that those feelings from back then don't go away, but something happens over time that makes them less accessible.

I also got copies of David Essex's movies That'll Be The Day and Stardust, both classic (if a little contrived) British Rock movies back when we were good at such things. Ringo was in That'll Be The Day (and Keith Moon makes a cameo!) and it was one of the first films me and my brother recorded and kept on video (along with Papillon and Billy Liar).

To a large degree these movies were--apart from hanging around at soundchecks when The Jam played Birmingham--my first introduction to the behind the scenes world of the music business (there were no VH1 Confessionals back then). I think it's still pretty accurate now. Well, everything except the bit about making dogs OD on Acid. I don't think anyone does that anymore these days.