It has also been published in Discorder Magazine (October 2007)
Syd Barrett & Me – What Exactly is a Dream?
When I was 19 heroes’ still came in plastic boxes and what was kept inside was not a shiny toy or a tiny figurine but a small cassette tape. Scribbles of handwriting, capital letters, numbers and symbols proclaiming the cassettes magical potency, these were the talismans of youth and a memory in the palm of your hand. All you had to do was put them into a machine and press play.
“You’ve got to listen to this…” words like these were common currency. Tapes were made with love and passion and exchanged with infectious enthusiasm. There was every possibility of wonder back then, when everything seemed new and uncharted in our lives and on our stereos. It was just a compilation tape, some early Pink Floyd, a few bootlegs and the songs from his solo trajectory, but enough was there. A creative life in snapshots and an intimation of something bigger if the listener got it. In the end all it took was one side of the tape to play and Syd Barrett exploded into my imagination.
Soon
the modern bands of the time became nothing. The otherworldly distorted
echoes from Barrett’s guitar made other bands with their effect pedals
seem like hopeless amateurs, he had the spirit of invention while they
had an inability to play. The child-like ‘English’ words played in my
ear more convincingly than a dozen other English sounding bands and to
my young ears Syd looked and played better than all of them. Everyone
else was a pretender, his lyrics stolen by Blur, his look appropriated
by Bolan and his interstellar nursery rhymes borrowed by
At 19 I was converted into a world of experimental pop songs, free-form psychedelic jams and absurd lyrics depicting outer space, pet mice and peeping toms. The records bought, the bootlegs collected, the black and white video footage, the books, the pictures, the posters, the chord progressions, the interviews and the history, it was all assembled. But the desire was never satiated, Syd Barrett’s creative period was brief and there was little to it other than a handful of albums and maybe a few unreleased tracks and it took a lot for me to admit there was no more to it than what I had gathered. Such a love is frustrating and bittersweet, it was incongruent that someone so young and talented didn’t carry on, despite his later problems, but this affair was more to do with the dream of a life I had ahead of me rather than his, a symbiosis of potential encapsulated in another that I wanted to achieve and not the realities of a life as it is lived.
People would spout off famous tales of Barrett’s later illness as if it was a fetish of artistic credibility but to me this was always cruel, the sound of a broken man has never been funny or cool and this was the cipher through which he was judged, as a madcap and a fool. It’s easy to dissect an enthusiasm if there seems little to it or no one else comprehends it, and with Barrett both cases applied, my romance was from such a small place but big in my heart, but that’s what it’s like with youthful pursuits, no one seems to understand them quite like you do. It all came down to a love of his creativity, the artistic burst of musical experimentation propelled forward by the enquiry of a young mind. It was the intensity of youth echoed back to me as I delivered my own youthful appreciation.
Such a passion was born to die both in Syd and in me, the hints of loss were already there in his later recordings and in the later life I was to lead. That fervour is now but the dream from a memory, placed in a small plastic box, and that is all it is. With time and knowledge and technology between us the cassette tape is now defunct. It may be left to gather dust in the far reaches of a cupboard but that plastic box will still be carried around with me wherever I live.
Here is a live review of the band Wrong Animal.
The same review was published on the Take1 Records website but can now be found here:
http://www.wronganimal.co.uk/Pages/press.html
Wrong Animal at the Comedy Club 18/10/05
Wrong Animal Live - The Comedy,
It's cold outside but in this basement it's hot. The heat is excruciating, this subterranean place is far too small for Ms Bee and her band - Wrong Animal.
The audience here is for her, some are standing on chairs, others will only see the darkened backs of the multi-headed beast that is this crowd, it doesn't matter we can all hear and that is what counts.
Two hours before the witching hour Ms Bee strolls onto the cramped stage, the band around her jostle for space, the people in front push forward, she takes command and effortlessly launches into 'Little Kid Sometimes' the title track off her new album. Within seconds it is apparent that this live animal is a different kind of animal to the recorded one. The bass chugs a mantra, the guitar interrupts the 303 and the drums are our friend, always there and dependable. Ms Bee hollers "When I don't get what I want I cry." like a spoilt child who's had her sweets taken away. This isn't some identikit regurgitation of an album struggling to remind us that it is sentient, Wrong Animal is alive.
'Better of Dead' and 'Don't You Stop' wear splendid new clothes. Here tonight it seems the memory of these songs were half naked, dressed only in the skimpy underwear of electronica. Sexy as Wrong Animal was in just its knickers, this beast is dressed up, has to be dressed up and will blind you with its finery.
Next follows a new song, a 'love song' called 'Goat Slaughter'. The verse funks itself up, it grinds into you, rubs you up the right way and gets you ready, but the chorus take you roughly, when you least expect it, it violates beyond repair. Ms Bee screams, "Goat slaughter, goat slaughter, die like you oughta." 'Goat Slaughter' is a harsh but fair lover (if a little schizophrenic.)
'House upon the Hill' and 'Packin up & Leavin' two other new songs close the set and remind us why we are here. Wrong Animal has shed its skin, grown into a new animal. Punk, funk, and whatever other cage you might want to keep it in has been cast aside. Wrong Animal is out and roaming. Catch it if you can.
Film Review: Gone to the Dogs
For a short film seemingly made by dog lovers for dog lovers, Gone to the Dogs offers a unique mix of comedy and pathos, which isn’t particular to those that have had a canine influence in their life. The film is also surreal in parts when dealing with the notion of metamorphosis, reincarnation and another kind of existence parallel to our own, but such concepts do little to distance one from the story because its appeal is both broad and charming.
On retirement Jack and Rose move to a faded seaside town. It is a place that seems to embody the washed out emptiness of old age, the coastal attractions are spent, the sky is as grey as the pavement and the sun and the crowds have gone and left the town for good. On arrival a suicidal dog walks out in front of the couple’s car as if to highlight the exhausted atmosphere of such a forgotten town.
Like his new home Jack (Anthony Booth) has similarly found himself depleted, stuck in a tired marriage and surrounded by the young that only increase his feelings of loneliness and sexual frustration. He notices teenage couples kissing outside his house and in a cafe he spots a pretty waitress affectionately caressing a companion, all before returning to the company of his wife in doomed resignation. Unable to accept his age and his seclusion from the world of youth Jack attempts to impress the locals on a funfair striker machine, but instead of proving to the crowd that he is virile, the effort causes him to have a fatal heart attack. Following the death the widowed Rose (Dora Bryan) subsequently throws his ashes into the sea, whereby Jack is reincarnated from the pounding waves into the form of a dog.
Gone to the Dogs is a cyclical fable of sorts dealing with Jack’s new found animal life and the lessons he learns through the perspective of this new existence. That for which he hungered as a man he gets as a dog. The other wild female dogs satiate his sexual desires (if for a brief moment) and the very same waitress he stared at so forlornly in his former life ends up stroking him as he wished, once he is on all fours. These pleasures are short lived and come with the penalty of humiliation when Jack later finds the dog he partnered with acquiring a new mate. Consequently he is also punished when a human agency stops his sexual activity by neutering him. Later Jack finds himself walking in front of a car much like the dog before him, dejected by his own canine experience
Despite such scenes of sad self discovery, the film is a comedy and it delivers most of the laughs with the depiction of the human as a beast. Various jovial voiceovers portray an alternative community of dogs that run amok in the town centre, frolic on the beach and admonish each other in the park for playing with sticks. By displaying such human traits of speech and behaviour the film also suggests that this group of animals are all victims of an afterlife metamorphosis.
Dogs are central to the film and the skilled performances of the animals make the other more periphery characters seem superfluous, however it is through these animals that a very human story of self discovery is told. As a human transformed into a dog, Jack gradually learns the trivialities of his desires and the importance of companionship when he returns to be by the side of his wife, now as her pet and no longer yearning for that which he cannot have.
Gone to the Dogs is only available at the website http://www.gone2thedogs.com/