It was 1999, and I was starting university.  I had terrible dress sense; a velour luminous orange v-neck Cotton Traders shirt was the worst offender, usually accompanied with black shiny plastic-effect trousers.  Inexplicably I was single.  I had no mobile phone, and no computer.  I had a scrap of paper in my wallet with the mobile phone numbers of a couple of my more fortunate friends, which I’d have to take to a nearby phone booth to call them.  Alternatively I would go and knock on their door.  I met a pencil-necked geek called Gareth Evans.  I thought he was a nerd.  I used to pass him offensive and sometimes threatening doodles in lectures.

In November ‘99 I got a red Ericsson T10 mobile phone.  It had a flip-down cover which I though was cool, and I could type in my own ringtones.  At the time this was just out of this world fucking amazing.  I’m not sure how people ever coped at university before mobile phones.  I mean, how the fuck did you know where everyone was all the time?

Ericsson T10

In my second year my sister loaned me the money to buy a computer.  I had no internet, but I didn’t need it.  I could type up my essays in my room, save them to a floppy disk and go to the uni’s IT Suite to print them off.  I was given a warning by the university’s Head of IT for printing out naked pictures of Shannon Elizabeth.  Big Steve and I would sit in my room playing Championship Manager 2 and Settlers III: Gold Edition, or we’d sit in his room and watch the wrestling videos his mum used to tape off SKY and mail to him.  Inexplicably, I was single.

Christmas 2000 Gareth Evans organised a social; a sit-down meal in as close as Loughborough got to a nice restaurant.  The dress code was shirt and tie.  My mate Andy and I turned up in Elvis costumes to try and piss Evans off.  By now Evans and I had a love:hate thing going on.  I loved trying to wind him up.

"Alvin Stardust" and "Fat Elvis," December 2000

In my final year I finally got the internet, which opened up a world of endless pornography and the opportunity to download thousands upon thousands of songs from Kazaa for free.  Communication was now primarily through a little thing called MSN Messenger.  I met whatshername (not via the internet, I must add).

Evans wouldn’t share a house with me in the final year, and whenever we did group coursework he stoutly refused to let me into his group.  He was still a nerd, which is why I always wanted to be in his group.  He however, knew I was lazy and disruptive.  To wind him up, during a Management Accounting group coursework presentation we made references to him being a sex offender and a homosexual.  He took it well in fairness (no gay pun intended).  As part of the same group coursework we also left our friend, dressed only in vest, pants and afro, in a field to the mercy of a farmer and his dog. 

Click on the picture to see this man, standing in a field in vest and pants

One day on MSN Messenger, Evans and I started discussing music.  And we bonded.  I recommended Gold by Ryan Adams (for which I must give credit to Big Steve for originally recommending to me).  Evans loved it.  We both, to a certain extent, became obsessed.  Me probably more so.  I bought everything Ryan Adams I could find and downloaded everything I couldn’t.  For our first Valentine’s Day, whatshername bought me the sheet music for Gold, and I learnt to play the whole album, especially loving ‘Firecracker,’ ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Wildflowers.’

A few years later Evans and I were still in touch on e-mail, still chatting about music, usually in work time.  However did people talk aimless rubbish with people hundreds of miles away during work hours before the advent of e-mail?  He bunked a day off work (the first time ever, he told me, although he did sort of get his boss’s permission first) and flew from Jersey to Nottingham to come with me, Andy and Big Steve to see Ryan Adams at Rock City.  It was fucking ace.  Afterwards we drank ridiculously large G&Ts and trashed my flat.  Whatshername hit the roof when she came home to find the place stinking of brandy and cigars and her computer fucked due to the large amount of porn we’d downloaded onto it.

A couple of months later Evans sent me a short e-mail saying: “Buy the album ‘I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I’ve Caused’ by David Ford.”  Bizarrely I remember the first time I ever played it; in the car on the way to ASDA with whatshername.  “Is this a man or a woman?” she asked during the opening track.  “It’s a man, I think,” I replied, unsure.  It was the second track — ‘State Of The Union’ — that grabbed me by the balls.  And another obsession began.

The first time I saw David Ford was at the Sugarmill in Stoke.  Evans was supposed to come but had to pull out due to a strenuous-sounding work jolly in Barcelona.  I had liked Ford up to this point, but was captivated by his live performance.  I don’t care if that sounds gay; he was brilliant.

I went to see him a couple more times, once at the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham, and at Birmingham for his annual ‘Milk & Cookies’ charity gig, where he played a host of stuff including covers and requests.  He sat at the piano and played the full version of Bat Out Of Hell.  This elevated him to the status of God in my eyes.

When the following year’s Milk & Cookies gigs were announced, an auction started online for the opportunity to perform live on stage with Ford.  Long story short I ended up winning the auction to perform at the Eastbourne Hippodrome on my 28^th Birthday.  My song: ‘Firecracker’ by Ryan Adams.

December 13^th 2008 was the best day ever.  Whatshername and I went down with Andy and his wife Rachelle.  We went First Class on the train, had a Mexican and some beers.  Andy filmed a documentary in the style of X-Factor, which to this day I still can’t convert into a format Youtube likes.  Eastbourne was cold and as windy as any place I’ve ever been.  At five o’clock I went to meet Ford and rehearse the song.  I was shitting it.  The auction had been caveated with “Mr Ford reserves the right to change your song choice and your part in the performance if it’s likely to comprise the quality of the show” so I knew I had to be not terrible.  The guy who had won the auction the year before had played ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ on piano with Ford singing, and it sounded brilliant.  I was feeling the pressure of expectation.

In the Hippodrome I met Ford and watched him rehearse and soundcheck with his band.  When they called me up on stage Ford just handed me a guitar and said, “I’ll count you in and we’ll just see how it goes, OK?”  That was it; no pissing around.  We ran through the song about five times to iron out any creases.  The band were fantastic, and really put me at ease.

“OK,” Ford said, “the plan is that we’ll play the first half, have a break and then I’ll call you up at some point in the second half.  So you can enjoy the first half and the break but then shit yourself through the second half.”

Click on the picture for my M&C duet

Now, I know it isn’t perfect.  I started flat because I couldn’t hear my own voice over the instruments (I suspect they’d turned my microphone right down, perhaps rightly), but it was probably the best experience of my life, singing one of my favourite ever songs in front of about 700 people. 

And if you’re wondering about the hat: in the first half of the show Ford had worn a cowboy hat while playing Beck’s ‘Devil’s Haircut.’  I decided I wanted to wear it, so I picked it up on my way onto the stage.  It seemed appropriate for a Ryan Adams song.

After the show we wandered aimlessly around Eastbourne for a while, eventually ending up in Wetherspoons.  We ordered posh ladyboys: Leffe, Baileys and G&Ts.  Andy did his impression of Clyde from Any Which Way But Loose.  At one o’clock the pub called last orders and we got up to leave.  As we stepped outside Rachelle noticed someone knocking and waving through the window; it was Gary ‘G-Man’ Page — Ford’s drummer.  In quite the most surreal ending to the evening we stood outside chatting with Ford and his band for about half an hour about all kinds of nonsense. 

Evans — unable to make it due to a tricky commute from Dubai, and who’d still not seen Ford live at this point — had asked me to ask Ford where we should go for his upcoming stag do.  He suggested “something different… like a football tournament in Barcelona or coal mining in Wales.  And do it the night before the wedding.  Not enough people do that these days.”  We said our goodbyes and went back to our £35-a-night hotel on the seafront to drink Baileys, warm lager and red wine until the small hours.  It was — and without meaning to sound like an 8-year-old’s report on what I did for my holidays — the best birthday EVER.

Eight months later it was Evans’ wedding day.  I had made the transition from annoying cock at uni to best man.  I had got hideously drunk on Evans’ stag do and lost my glasses.  The wedding was great and my speech went down pretty well, but the best part was the surprise the bride — Erica — had organised for the groom.  After the speeches I told the guests that the bride and groom were going to make their way to the dance floor for their first dance, and they should follow.  I ran ahead to give the surprise his cue.

The bride and groom walked to the dance floor to the sound of David Ford at the piano playing their song, ‘Song For The Road’.  Evans looked over at the piano, back at Erica then back to the piano, proper double-take style.  “He looks like David Ford,” he whispered.  “It is David Ford,” she said back.  “Did you know about this?”  “Yes Dear, I organised it.”

At the end of the set Evans asked for an encore.  Later he would confide in me that he wished he’d thought of an obscure album track that he really wanted to hear, but all he could think of was to ask Ford to play Firecracker.  With me.  Feigning reluctance I got up there and played the song.  Again, I bloody loved it. 

Click on the picture

Afterwards Andy and I plucked up the courage to ask Ford if he wouldn’t mind just saying a few words into Andy’s video camera.  We’d made a kind of documentary in the style of X-Factor, we said, and we wondered if he’d like to do a Simon Cowell-y type critique of my performance.  He smiled, “I think I’d be good at that…”

Click the link to see 

I’ll never be a rock star but I’ll be able to tell my grandkids that I sang and played my guitar on stage a couple of times.  I’ll ask if they want to see the DVD.  They’ll scoff and ask me to explain what a DVD is.  I’ll explain it’s something we used to watch films on in the olden days before telepathic holograms and I’ll say, “You think that sounds shit, let me tell you about my red Ericsson T10…”

The Haiti earthquake was and continues to be a terrible, awful tragedy, and the people of Haiti need our help.  They need our money.  What they (and we, the rest of the world) don’t need is a bunch of self-serving, back-slapping celebrity twats cobbling together a half-arsed karaoke version of Everybody Hurts (one of many songs that should be given *listed* status, preventing anyone from ever, ever recording a cover version, under penalty of death).  It fucking sickens me, it really does.

If you want to donate money to the Haiti cause, go on the official DEC site. 

If this abomination of a single ends up retailing at — let’s say — £1.99, just donate two quid direct to the charity instead.  Or £3.99, which is what a single cost in my day.  Fuck it; donate a fiver, a tenner.  Twenty notes.  Do something but please for Christ’s sake don’t do it because Simon Cowell told you to.

Are you going to let this flabby worm tell you what to do? ARE YOU?

If you donate your cash to the Disasters Emergency Committee it will go to those who need it most.  The aforementioned £1.99 CD/digital download/whatever you kids call them these days won’t appear out of thin air.  I shudder to think what the ‘profit’ on a CD is these days, but I doubt the Haiti appeal will get more than half the price of the CD.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical.  Maybe the distribution, the CD press run, the artwork, the materials etc will all be donated for free.  But I’m sure in the current economic climate and with the music industry — according to that twat Bono — dying on its arse, no-one’s going to be falling over themselves to be involved for nothing but kudos and publicity (apart from the celebrities, who want to enhance their reputations, because reputation = future record sales).

Record Company Knob: “Hello?  Is that Bob’s CD making factory?”

Bob: “It is indeed.”

RCK: “Do you fancy being involved in the new Haiti CD?”

Bob: “Wow, I’d love to!  Anything we can do to help.”

RCK: “Excellent.  We’d like you to run a few copies of the CD for us, only, you know, it’s for charity so we won’t be paying you for the time, manpower and materials.”

Bob: “Hmmm.  Right.  Well, how many CDs do you think you’ll need?”

RCK: “We estimate we’ll sell two million copies in the UK.”

Bbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppppppppp

Bob Roberts, Managing Director, Bob's CD Making Factory, shortly before hanging up (that's what the Brrrrrrppppp is meant to signify above)

If this is one massive game of Simon Says, then why doesn’t Simon tell us all to just donate some money directly, instead of telling us to buy a single his record company will be producing?  Maybe because presumably the former option won’t make him look like a fucking saint, and won’t in the long-term make him a shitload of cash.

I really don’t want to seem bitter about this, but these useless cunts are falling over themselves to sing in this song, and they all just want to look good by being a part of it.  I agree that we should be raising awareness and trying to get people to donate, but for fuck’s sake it’s been on the fucking news for over a week now.  Anyone who hasn’t grasped that’s something’s kicked off somewhere in the ocean near America must have been living in a fucking cave.

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe the only way for people to give money to charity is by releasing another sacrilegious cover version of a classic song.  Maybe we, the British public, really are that fucking stupid. 

What’s wrong with releasing the original version with all proceeds going to Haiti?  (Say what you like about REM or Michael Stipe, but fuck me Everybody Hurts is a great song, and part of the reason it’s a great song is Stipe’s haunting vocal.)  No glory-seeking celebrities would need to be involved, Simon Cowell wouldn’t get any glory (or a Knighthood, which he’ll now almost certainly get next year, the smug twat) out of it, and there’d be a lot less people making a nice pile of cash out of a global tragedy.

Am I wrong?  Tell me if I’m being a jerk here.

In the mean time I need to go and lie down for a while.

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On a completely unrelated topic I came into ownership of Warren Zevon’s (Born 24th Jan 1947 — died 7th Sep 2003) entire back catalogue at the weekend. Now Warren Zevon (pronounced Warren Zeeeeevon in an American drawl) was a proper rock star. I’m guessing you’ve never heard of him, which is not surprising. But you know that Kid Rock song from two summers ago? The piano riff that plays all the way through it (da-dah, da-dah, da-dah-da-dah — yeah, you know what I mean) is from Zevon’s most well-known song Werewolves of London (which I’m not actually that keen on), but I digress.

Where was I? Ah, yes, Warren Zevon was a proper rock star. Marriage, divorce, alcoholism, finding out he’d been dropped by his record label from reading the Rolling Stone gossip column, drugs, rehab, collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan. Songs with titles like Life’ll Kill Ya, and My Shit’s Fucked Up, songs with subtle, political subthemes. And, as far as I’m aware, he never minced around on stage under a giant lemon mirrorball demanding we cancel third world debt.

In 2002 — having not been to a doctor in twenty years — Zevon was diagnosed with a form of inoperable lung cancer. In his final interview on the Late Show With David Letterman he said “I guess I made sort of a tactical error by not going to the doctor’s in twenty years. Just one of those phobias that didn’t pay off.” When asked if he knew something more about life and death now, he offered, “Enjoy every sandwich.”

I’m sure Zevon would have ticked all the boxes comedian Bill Hicks (another killed by cancer) looked for in a rockstar:

“I want my rockstars dead! I want them to fucking play with one hand and put a gun in their other fucking hand and go, ‘I hope you enjoyed the show.’ Bang! Yes! Yes! Play from your fucking heart! I am available for children’s parties, by the way.”

Are you listening Paul Hewson? Kelly Jones? A little self-destruction never hurt anyone you know.

At the risk of sounding a bit fucked-up, my favourite Warren Zevon song is ‘Excitable Boy’. The song is four simple verses, each of two lines, each line ending “He’s just an excitable boy” in which Zevon tells the story of a juvenile sociopath who (literally) gets away with murder because all through his life people shrug and say he’s just an excitable boy whenever he does wrong. When I first heard the song I thought it was hilarious. You may think it’s crude, offensive and insensitive. Being dense at understanding song meanings, I searched the internet for other people’s opinions. A few examples:

“A not so subtle dig at all these politically-correct liberal wankers who try to explain away bad behaviour with trite comments such as “he’s just an excitable boy”. Frankly, when someone’s evil, there’s no excuse – he/she should be locked up forever!”

“this song has something to do with the rise and fall of rock music as Zevon sees it.”

“This is him taking shots at those who try to make up excuses for what people do and try to excuse their behavior… cough terrorism cough”

“Excitable Boy seems more autobiographical than anything. No political stance on coddling the mentally disturbed. It strikes me more as a balance between wish-fulfilment and urge-denial.”

“like most of Zevon’s other songs: it’s just meant to be funny!”

“this song always spoke to me because i believe that there are people who should never be parents. it starts with the excuses made by the parents, and then society. when your child is a shit head, discipline him. when an adult man is a shit head, it may be a result of parenting, but it is not an excuse.”

“this song is just a witty ironic “joke” it has a catchy pop riff, the lyrics are goofy, and at the end he throws in the disturbing lyrics for their irony because you would not expect that in a catchy song. That is all, no liberal bashing, political commentary, or anything like that.”

A pot roast, the kind an Excitable Boy might rub all over his chest

In just eight lines he’s created something that people are still debating over 30 years after it was first released, and seven years after his death. I find this fascinating. Delving into his back catalogue I find that most of his songs are, on the face of it amusing and often crude ditties, but when you peel back the layers there are dark political, cultural and biblical references. Genius.

I’d be happy to think anyone would even remember me after I’m gone. If they give a fuck about anything I’ve ever written then great. But I need to write something first. This was New Year’s Resolution #2 (or NYR#2), you may remember. So far in 2010 I have added to my novel — drum roll please — zero words. But, I have done some ‘planning.’ Actually genuine planning. Not say-it-whilst-doing-that-wanky-inverted-comma-finger-thing ‘planning’ sense. I have actually done some quite crucial planning. Honest.

And I’ve lost 0.9kgs (NYR#1v2). That was Friday. Then I got pissed, twice, and ate a lot of food.

N.B. spacemonkeygaz.com lawyers have asked me to point out that I wouldn’t dream of downloading anything illegally. And if I do ever manage to write anything and get it published, you’d better not download it for free or I’ll tell Bono.

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