The Gonzo Daily - Friday/Saturday
Young Jessica is an excellent assistant and a real boon in the office.
However she has one serious drawback. She was only born in 1997, and
unfortunately does not come from a household where experimental music is the
norm, we have several confrontations a week. This week that’s gone, for example,
she told me, her voice rich with emotion, that if I ever played her Robert Wyatt
again she would phone Child Line! What on earth can an old fool like me do
in the face of such teenage intransigency.
I am actually dictating this to her, and when we got to the end of the last
paragraph, I explained what ‘intransigency’ means.
She glared at me.
“I am not stubborn!” she spat at me stomping her foot, only proving my
point.
Earlier this year I read Marcus O’Dair’s excellent biography of Robert
Wyatt, and was struck by a very telling quote from Wyatt’s wife, Alfreda Benge.
She was commenting on the practice of ‘Wyatting’. According to Wikipedia:
The verb "Wyatting" appeared in some blogs and music magazines to describe
the practice of playing unusual tracks on a pub jukebox to annoy the other pub
goers, in particular Dondestan. Wyatt was quoted in 2006 in The Guardian as
saying "I think it's really funny" and "I'm very honoured at the idea of
becoming a verb." However, when asked if he would ever try it himself, he said:
"I don't really like disconcerting people, but even when I try to be normal I
disconcert anyway." However, Alfreda Benge said it made her angry "that Robert
should be used as a means of clever dicks asserting their superiority in pubs
... It's so unlike Robert, because he's so appreciative of the strengths of pop
music. So that, I think, is a real unfairness. The man who coined it, I should
like to punch him in the nose."
Now, personally, I am very fond of Wyatt’s music and don’t understand why
anybody would find it grating to the ear. On the other hand I think some of the
dubstep that has been played to me over the years by some of the young people in
my extended family is a bloody awful row. when I was young I always thought my
father was a bad tempered, curmudgeonly old sod by rejecting all the music that
my generation made out of hand. I hope that I’ not quite as bad but I think that
my chances of liking Skrillex are about as likely as Jessica whistling Dondestan
on the way to work.
POSTSCRIPT: An earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm, is a catchy piece
of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer
playing. Phrases used to describe an earworm include musical imagery repetition,
involuntary musical imagery, and stuck song syndrome. Guess what piece of music
I have managed to embed in Jess’s cerebral cortex? All together now:
“Palestine’s a country, or at least it used to be”….
THE GONZO TRACK OF THE DAY: The Raz Band - Cars &...
COMING TOMORROW
Barbara Dickson at The Plough
Yes’ symphonic rock still progressive
THOM THE WORLD POET: The Daily Poem
Gonzo Weekly #145
www.gonzoweekly.com
Hawkwind, Twink, Stackridge, Alice Cooper, Robert Plant, Roy Weard,
Dogwatch, That Legendary Wooden Lion, Hawkwind, Jon Anderson, and Yes fans had
better look out!
The latest issue of Gonzo Weekly (#145) is available to read at
www.gonzoweekly.com, and to download at http://www.gonzoweekly.com/pdf/. It
has Dave Brock from Hawkwind cutting his birthday cake (picture courtesy Brian
Tawn) on the front cover together with a round up of what is coming up for the
Grand-daddys of Space Rock, We also have an exclusive interview with Twink about
his new album - a sequel to the legendary Think Pink, and a look at the history
of Stackridge to tie in with the band's last ever gigs. Doug looks at Alice
Cooper, Lee at Half Man Half Biscuit, Jon muses about Robert Plant. Thom waxes
all poetical like, whilst the legendary Roy Weard continues his regular column.
And there is a radio show from M Destiny at Friday Night Progressive, and the
first of four Strange Harvest radio specials from the folk wot bring you Strange
Fruit. There is also a collection of more news, reviews, views, interviews and
water opossums with something to lose (OK, nothing to do with small marsupials
planning to pray to St Anthony of Padua for an intercession, but I got carried
away with things that rhymed with OOOOS) than you can shake a stick at. And the
best part is IT's ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
This issue features:
Robert Plant, Kenney Jones, Rufus Wainwright, The Who, Barbara Dickson, Bob
Dylan, The Zombies, Steve Hackett, Strange Fruit, Friday Night Progressive,
Russell Henderson, Rick Wakeman, The Boomtown Rats, Karnataka, Twink, Alice
Cooper, Stackridge, Ade Macrow, Lee Walker, Half Man/Half Biscuit, Roy Weard,
Hawkwind, Dave Brock,
Lemmy, Motorhead, Jess Heard, Bee and Flower, Beatles, Elvis,
Haight-Ashbury, Neil Nixon, William Basinski, Huldre
Read the previous few issues of Gonzo Weekly:
Issue 144 (Percy Jones cover)
Issue 143 (Billy Sherwood cover)
Issue 142 (Daevid Allen and Spirits Burning cover)
Issue 141 (Rick Wakeman cover)
Issue 140 (Jaki Windmill cover)
Issue 139 (Raz cover)
Issue 138 (Galahad cover)
Issue 137 (Chris Squire cover)
Issue 136 (Neil Nixon cover)
Issue 135 (FNP cover)
All issues from #70 can be downloaded at www.gonzoweekly.com if you prefer.
If you have problems downloading, just email me and I will add you to the Gonzo
Weekly dropbox. The first 69 issues are archived there as well. Information is
power chaps, we have to share it!
You can download the magazine in pdf form HERE:
* The Gonzo Daily is a two way process. If you have any news or want to
write for us, please contact me at jon@eclipse.co.uk. If you are an artist and
want to showcase your work, or even just say hello please write to me at
gonzo@cfz.org.uk. Please copy, paste and spread the word about this magazine as
widely as possible. We need people to read us in order to grow, and as soon as
it is viable we shall be invading more traditional magaziney areas. Join in the
fun, spread the word, and maybe if we all chant loud enough we CAN stop it
raining. See you tomorrow...
* The Gonzo Daily is - as the name implies - a daily online magazine
(mostly) about artists connected to the Gonzo Multimedia group of companies. But
it also has other stuff as and when the editor feels like it. The same team also
do a weekly newsletter called - imaginatively - The Gonzo Weekly. Find out about
it at this link:
www.gonzo-multimedia.blogspot.com/…/all-gonzo-news-wots-fit…
* We should probably mention here, that some of our posts are links to
things we have found on the internet that we think are of interest. We are not
responsible for spelling or factual errors in other people's websites. Honest
guv!
* Jon Downes, the Editor of all these ventures (and several others) is an
old hippy of 56 who - together with an infantile orange cat named after a song
by Frank Zappa, and a small kitten totally coincidentally named after one of the
Manson Family, purely because she squeaks, puts it all together from a converted
potato shed in a tumbledown cottage deep in rural Devon which he shares with
various fish, and sometimes a small Indian frog. He is ably assisted by his
lovely wife Corinna, his bulldog/boxer Prudence, his elderly mother-in-law, and
a motley collection of social malcontents. Plus.. did we mention the infantile
orange cat, and the adventurous kitten?
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