All Farewells Should Be Sudden

That's right folks, only a week after my obituary on The Verve, they announce they're getting back together in their original line-up to record a new album. I have mixed feelings about this, obviously.

Of course, I'm relishing the opportunity to see them again, at the Roundhouse this time. And of course, I'll buy the new album.

However, I have fears...

• Ashcroft gigs are awash with dad-rock fans- the type who clog the bathrooms at Oasis and Paul Weller gigs
• Given 'Mad Richard's self-confessed ego-tripping, there is the strong possibility that the album will come out sounding not unlike one of his solo efforts, only with added mooching guitars courtesy of McCabe. (He is the only member not to appear on Ashcroft's previous solo efforts.)
• Most likely they'll try with a couple of producers, maybe Owen Morris and Flood, possibly even someone like James Lavelle, before sacking everyone and producing it themselves, creating a soupy, whining mass.
• There is no denying this band find it difficult to work together. No doubt they'll honour the gigs they've already advertised, but if they're already experiencing difficulties and burn-out, the gigs will be a heartbreaking whimper. We're talking a letdown of Stone Roses at Reading proportions. The chances of them staying together past Christmas are slimmer than Ashcroft himself.

So, there you go. They're coming back and that's that. They don't have a record label yet, but that doesn't seem to matter. No doubt the bidding war is currently under way, as it's a guaranteed cash-cow, and the royalties should keep Richard in black jeans and V-neck T-shirts for a good few years to come. Just don't go swiping any obscure Rolling Stones instrumental spin-offs this time, eh lads?

Life Is Not a Rehearsal

I've read a few blogs where the author is despairing at his (always male, for some reason) indifference to music. Not just new music, as this goes without saying. But also the lack of impact a favourite album has. In our adolescent minds we build the album's creators into God-like figures, and the album becomes an indispensable item. It travels with us on long, hopefully memorable journeys. It wakes us up in the morning, or helps us sleep at night. We convince ourselves that no matter what happens, we'll always love this album; it'll always be there for us.

The album I'm currently mourning is this one

Released in July 1995 amid rumours of serious drug problems fragmenting the band, the album opens with an epic swagger, blasting away the shoegazing elements of their first album, A Storm in Heaven. Title presumably swiped from a pained poet. With A New Decade and This is Music, the band stamp a more muscular, psychedelic sound on their calling card.

This is Music was chosen as the first single in May, with gorgeous artwork by Brian Cannon, also working with everyone's "hmm, sorry, just never got it" pariahs, Oasis. They followed a theme, mainly Ashcroft looking wasted in black and white in front of some crumbling piece of architecture, sometimes holding a sandwich board with slogans such as 'life is not a rehearsal' and 'all farewells should be sudden' .

On Your Own was also chosen as a single, but it's link with So it Goes is so strong that it's difficult to imagine one without the other. With lyrics like "all I want is someone who can fill the hole in the life I know" they offer an insight into the isolation which was clearly helping to destroy the band. The rot clearly set in during the mammoth US tour on which Cannon accompanied them, his lens milking the misery to capture some iconic images...

This feeling of hopelessness is confirmed with the lyrics of Northern Soul 'This is the tale of a Northern soul, looking to find his way back home'....'I wanna see if you know me, I was born in a rented room, my mother didn't get no flowers, Dad didn't approve of me, do you?' It goes on like this.

'Drive You Home' is an achingly mournful comedown-song, with lead guitarist Nick McCabe switching seamlessly from the swirling riffs of 'Soul' to the smacked-out reverb on 'Home'.

'History' follows, with it's heavy strings and extrapolated (let's just say swiped) lyrics from Blake's 'London'- 'I wander lonely streets, beside where the old Thames does flow, and in every face I meet, reminds me of what I've run from'. The rest of the album continues in this way, each song linked to the last in the same way that to hear a track from 'BloodSugarSexMagick' in a compilation or on shuffle is... just not right. 'No Knock on my Door' tells the tale of lost virginity and devotion, and Ashcroft sounds as if he's drunkenly singing through bitter tears until he's drowned by McCabe's heavy guitar. The remaining tracks are like the calm period after sex, or sunrise after a heavy night, reminiscent of their earlier stoned grooves but with a new-found power driving the melody and the incantatory lyrics.

By the time 'History' was released as a single in September, it was all over. On August 5th, at T in the Park, Ashcroft announced that the band would not be playing together again. The even-handed reporter at the Strathclyde Telegraph had this to say- "Hands up who likes The Verve? What's that, three, maybe five. To be honest, The Verve are the most overrated thing since Christianity. Both are based on men with long straggly hair and both will never come back"

Fair-do's Jocko. But I wont burn my bible just yet, as The Verve were resurrected, with the rapturously received Urban Hymns.

June 1997 saw the release of Bittersweet Symphony, a video which probably helped to get me laid, and still continues to do so. It was kept off the number one spot in Britain by... I forget. In the coming months they rode a wave of critical acclaim, and actually looked happy to be together. Ironically, former Stones manager Allen Klein took ALL royalties as they had lifted a loop from an instrumental version of 'The Last Time' by the Stones, reworked by Andrew Loog Oldham. He then sold the rights to Nike, further enraging Ashcroft. Any profits they took from this deal were donated to charity. Still, the lads got their cereal bills covered when The Drugs Don't Work went straight to number one. By now Urban Hymns had sold 1.5 million copies- one in 30 Brits owned it.

In February '98, my sister entered me into a Big Issue competition for a benefit gig and I went to Brixton Academy on the National Express. Across London, the rest of the music scene powdered it's nose at the Brit Awards. It still stands as the greatest gig Ive ever been to. From the moment Ashcroft walked onstage and shimmied on his little Persian rug, the audience was rapt. The band powered through the set, clearly relishing the opportunity to play their much practised, never unleashed Northern Soul material. 'Come On' was turned into a glorious, almost Nazi-esque stomp.

6 months later, at the V festival, the old rot was back in attendance. Ashcroft was still jubilant, but the sincerity had gone. Before long, the inevitable came. Rumours about Mccabe's mental health were played down by Ashcroft, citing a new-born daughter. McCabe was more honest about the break-up of the band. "It's my fault. I have mental problems".

This blog hasn't ended up as I envisaged it, but what's new? I was lamenting the loss of a treasured memory in my life, but by writing this I realise how much I still love the album, and at the moment I want nothing more than to go home, listen to it and have a good cry. OK, maybe not the crying bit.

I've persisted in seeing Ashcroft live, but resisted buying the albums, except the latest, Keys to the World. Try as I might, I can't convince even myself that it's better than average, so I won't push it on you. He may be a total narcissist, but when the imagery is this good, sometimes you just have to go with it...

It shouldn't happen to a production manager

I've been on a downer lately. The worst thing is not being able to put your finger on why exactly. But June is turning out to be alright. It started pretty badly; I had planned a trip to Norway with my dad and my nephew to geek out about World War II bunkers, German submarine pens, and generally take in some breathtaking, never-before-seen sights. But my boss put the ky-bosh on that by insisting I was back in Holland. Fair play, I suppose, as we have a number of outdoor shows to plan, and they're all squeezed into a ridiculously short amount of time so that the kids, sorry... the orchestra, can enjoy their six-week summer holiday. I was also facing the prospect of finding an apartment and paying a small fortune for the privilege.

Amazingly I managed to do so on my first day back from a ridiculously short trip home where I saw no-one. My family weren't even there, they were mostly in Norway eating disgusting pickled fish and looking at 'Kraut-crete' bunkers. My apartment has it's drawbacks, of course, but after months on the road, broken up by days off spent on the tourbus, it's great to be able to cook myself a meal, watch a subtitled episode of South Park and sleep in an unmade bed, safe in the knowledge I wont be awoken by a border-hopping trolley-pusher. Do they throw out my socks or are they stealing them? I can't figure it out.

However, this new found comfort did not solve the problem that I thought was giving me most trouble; avoiding work. Before even leaving the States I was seething about being forced to move to a foreign country when I could just as easily do my job from my sister's home office. With a fantastic view of the Simonside hills and Yop in the fridge to boot.

But, as Im on salary, I suppose I have to be here. The first few days I really struggled to get out of bed before noon. As if to prove a point I only ventured to the studio or the admin offices every other day, mainly to start and then abandon a blog or check my soul-sapping myspace account.

I began to wonder what the cause of this lethargy could be. I was basically willing my boss to fire me. In my defence, I've been to the US twice in two months, which entails suicide-watch long-haul flight, working 6 17-hour days back to back, one day off holed up in a hotel trying to find replacement bus-drivers who know how to lie to border-guards, another 6 days on, followed by a murderous longhaul flight.

I worried I'd developed ME, or narcolepsy or similar and was destined to feel drained and frumpy for the rest of my days. Then like, trudging down the pavement in a thunderstorm and spotting a 50-pound note in a puddle, something presented itself that changed my outlook.

This is Chewie. No, I'm not in love with a pygmy goat. But she, and her unborn kid, possibly owe me their lives. I was walking back through the park when I saw this adorable specimen sneezing frantically in her enclosure. Being a bit of a soft get I poked my fingers through the fence to tickle her nose. She was struggling to swallow something yellow, and it was making a noise similar to rubbing two pool-balls together. Most unnerving. Try as she might, she couldn't sneeze out the offending item. Nearby children were getting upset. Or reaching for their mobile phones to film the death of a goat. Not wanting to see this through to its grim conclusion I grabbed her little horns so she couldn't pull away and hooked a finger into her mouth to pull out the offending item. She tried to escape and bite my fingers but she was no match for me. With a sloosh of goat-saliva, out popped the implement of death; a wedge of yellow-skinned apple. I released my grip on her horns and, unperturbed, she bent down and picked up the wedge of apple again, this time chewing it a bit more slowly. Young mothers obviously took me for some kind of goat-torturer.

But, I know I did the right thing. Now everytime I walk through the park I take some fruit, veg or bread with me, all torn into manageable pygmy-sized chunks. I have a purpose, and it's to make sure Chewie doesn't choke.

Next week; more middling antics as I find a fallow deer trapped in a cattle-grid.

Housebound

A change has come about. Don't get excited, I'm still whining about stuff no-one cares about. But I have made a decisive step. Before I started this job I had just taken 3 months off to 'find myself', for want of a better expression. I had quit a job of 4 years where I'd managed to go up the social ladder and down the pay-scale. The transition from light-fingered bartender to nattily-dressed manager on a salary is not an easy one. But it makes you infinitely more attractive to the waitresses. So if you're reading this and your girlfriend ever worked at my bar, I've probably rubbed your rhubarb. wha-wha.

Anyhoo, when I left that job, a paranoid, tired mess, I became a bar-slag; flitting from poncey cocktail bar to drug-dive with ease. But I was never happy at any of them. Posh hotels, strip-clubs, 'the place to be (on coke)', none of them held my interest. So I quit, left the city, bummed around. It was great. I even hired myself and my motorbike to a film crew and got a dodgy Hitler-do.

Then just as my money ran out I fell into this touring job. I didn't see the point in renting an apartment, as looking at my schedule I would only be there 20 days out of the next 90 or so, and then I'd be going to America. Rather than pay for a hotel I opted to stay on one of the tourbuses during the days off, showering in the storage shed. I could go to the supermarket for a few micro-meals and drink the gallons of beer and wine left on the bus from the previous tour. Perfect, no? Well, obviously not. As a result my days off were miserable, lonely affairs. I trudged the streets for hours, trying to resist the coffeeshops. It didnt last long. What to do when you're on your own in a foreign country with a fridge-full of beer and 200 movies stored on the bus hard-drive?

As the tour schedule eased off, I started rushing back to England and working from there. Almost all communication in this company is done by email- literally across the same office sometimes. At the moment we have very little to do- a TV special and two outdoor shows, then nothing until we go to Japan in September. So I envisaged a long, easy summer.

Alas, Im on a salary, so my boss insists I'm here. I cancelled a trip to Norway last week so I could make it back for the TV-special. I was there to help throw out leftover food and load the truck at the end of the night, that's all.

So Ive been forced to rent an apartment here for the summer. Bye-bye lazy 10-week holiday; bye-bye expensive camera; hello dingy basement apartment; hello spiralling weed habit. It's nice to have a place of my own though, even if it has virtually cleared me out of everything Ive been hoarding Silas Marner-style for the past 4 months. Ive always shared until now, whereas this is entirely my own place.