The Sunday Reflection #84 - Inspiration, truth and rejection

      My front garden with below some of the blooms       

What makes me get out of bed in the morning? Well the glib answer is a cup of tea and the need to walk our dogs, but I am sure you know that is not what I was really asking. It is the fact that every day is different. Some days are wonderful, some are awful, most are days where life just passes you by. Some days I wake up with things to do, events to go to, people to meet. Sometimes there is nothing in the diary. The first thing I do is look out of the window. Is the Sun shining? Is it raining? Unlike nearly all of my neighbours, I still have a front garden. It is the first thing I see when I leave the house. It gives me inspiration and sets me up in the right frame of mind for the day. For me that is more important than being able to jump straight in my car. Even when it is raining and miserable, the garden reminds me that plants need rain. 

If it is raining, that will make some of my decisions for me. The clothes I wear, the way I get to work. I rarely drive, it is a lovely walk. If the sun is shining, I take the more scenic route. This time of year, I'll often stop in Mill Hill Park and photograph the blossoms and trees, if the light is right. On such days, it is not hard to find inspiration. If it is belting down with rain, and I drive, it is hard to feel inspired. As a songwriter, I seek inspiration in the strangest of places. I was walking to work last week and I walked down Flower Lane. I used to deliver papers to people in the street. There were all sorts of people on the round. I did the round for two years and got to know many of the people. Some were nice, some were not. There were three houses in particular that I have stories about. I told one of them in yesterdays blog. I wrote a brand new song about the second story earlier this week. It's called Naughty Naughty, but you'll have to wait to learn more of that. 

The third story? Slightly duller. One of the houses was that of a senior journalist. He got every paper every morning. He was the only house on the road that got the Morning Star. One day he was in the garden as I arrived. I handed him the papers and we had a chat. I asked him how he got any work done if he had to read all of those papers. I also asked him why read them, if other papers had already printed the stories. He explained that often he'd realise from reading interviews etc, that other journalists had missed a key fact, not asked the key question, etc. He'd then be on the trail and many of his scoops started in this way. I quite liked the sound of being a journalist and asked him how you got involved. He suggested that many people start on local papers and if they are any good, they progress.

I discussed this with my Dad. He knew Dennis Signy, the editor of the Hendon Times, and I suggested he could ask him about a job for me. My Dad's response was "I didn't know you could read and write". English was not my strong point at school (being dyslexic). I really had nothing other than an inkling that I might make a good journalist, certainly nothing to back it up. But Dad did arrange for me to go for a beer with him and Dennis. Dennis gave some advice. I was still at school "Get involved in the school magazine, enter writing competitions, write letters to papers and keep them and then come back when you have a body of work". Fair advice, but advice I didn't take. I found writing boring and difficult. Inspiration counts for nothing if you let it wither. Doing this blog has convinced me that I would have done a great job, but I was too lazy and stupid as a teenager to do what I needed to do. Being inspired is not enough.

Dennis told me the truth. He wasn't patronising or condescending. He made it clear that journalism was both a job and a calling and the best journalists have two qualities that I've come to realise are in short supply in this world. They tell the truth and they take risks. When we watch journalists in places like Ukraine, they are at risk. Many journalists die in the execution of their work. Many more are locked up by repressive regimes. In thecurrent Trumpite era, truth seems to be a relative than an absolute commodity. As to courage? I genuinely never thought we'd see a situation where journalistic freedoms are under threat in liberal democracies. But they are. There is a concept that has emerged over the last few years, that disturbs me greatly. It is the concept of "my truth". The idea that we can have our own version of truth, often a truth that is not backed up by evidence. Often a truth where challenging dangerous ideas and concepts is wantonly dismissed. If there is evidence that undermines "my truth" it is simply ignored. There is a whole industry based on undermining provable facts, with lies, distortions and untruths. A new tool has emerged in this. It is AI. We now have a situation where almost no picture, video or any other evidence can be treated as real. It is almost as if the whole concept of truth and reality has become obsolete. Where does this take us? 

Lets take something really boring and mundane. Lets imagine that there is a wonderful, historic trout river in Somerset. A journalist hears that a water company has been discharging raw sewage into it. They go down, interview local people, take pictures and videos of dead fish and the other detritus of sewage, then interview the local MP. They contact the water company for a quote, as all decent and fair journalists do. What if the water company, on hearing about a journalist sniffing around, get their PR department to debunk the story fake news, claim the pictures and videos are AI generated. What if they invite the MP in, present their version of the truth, make donations to running the MP's office. What happens to the story? Who do we believe? Why should we believe anything? 

And that leads us to the dark downside of all this. Rejection. The scenario I described above is made up. It is fake news. It is a scenario I invented in my head. It is plausable. It may even have happened, but it is fiction in as much as until I decided to construct such a story, it didn't exist (even if it really has happened). However, the scenario I described is happening every day, with the major details changed. Multinational companies employ PR departments to debunk genuine stories. MP's get donations from lobbyists to ensure that the version of the truth the companies want to be told gets told. Journalists, who have done their homework, been honest and decent and told the truth have been hounded. In the UK the story of Carole Cadwalla is a cautionary tale for all of the dangers of being a journalist. In the US, we have a President attacking whole news organisations constantly. Of all of the aspects of the Cadwalla case, the most disturbing is the complete lack of support for her from the paper she was working for. 

Rejection and failure by an employer to support staff, is in my opinion, the worst form of cowardice. When the organisation that is failing is one that is supposed to be a bastion of truth, one relied on by hundreds of thousands of people for honest and fair news, it is sickening. This blog only started after a blog I wrote for the Barnet Times was dropped after the paper was put under pressure by the Tories running Barnet Council (Read about it here). The difficult thing for me, was that all I had done was told the truth and broken a story that other outlets, such as the Jewish Chronicle then picked up on. Not one iota of the of what I said was disputed or challenged. A former Chairman of the Chipping Barnet Tories even left a comment supporting me. The only regret I had was that I loved being associated with the Barnet Times. It was a lifelong ambition to write for them. I wasn't sacked because I was no good. My blog was actually the most read thing on their site, when they sacked me. I was sacked for telling the truth. A difficult truth and one that their largest advertiser (Barnet Council) didn't like. But when it comes down to it, do I regret posting a story that exposed the truth that Barnet Council had posted a video featuring anti semitic comments by a neo Nazi? No.  To me, rejection was a price worth paying for telling the truth. It always will be.

This morning at mass I was in a sombre mood. In the bulletin, was the news that the father of a friend has passed away. He was a contemporary of my Dad, perhaps one of last few. His son was at St Vincents, FCHS and also an alter server with me. His parents were stalwarts of the local community. It got me thinking about my Father. I can remember discussing the Watergate scandal with him. I was fascinated by the courage and persistence of the journalists who exposed Nixon. Dad cautioned me "Being a Roman Catholic should have taught you one lesson, if you tell the truth to a baying mob, you might just get crucified". I was shocked. I said to Dad "Are you saying that we should buckle in the face of screaming mobs?". That seemed a very un-Dad thing to say. His response stuck with me. He said "No, not all, if you put yourself in that position, you have to tell the truth, but you need to go into such situations with your eyes wide open and realise what is likely to happen". He added "There is a saying, don't put your head above the parapet if you don't want to get shot. What they don't tell you though, is that if no one puts their head above the parapet, you all get bayonetted". Another lesson of the Easter season, one that is difficult to come to terms with, is that every one of the people who accompanied Jesus on his travels deserted him, when the baying mob came for him. Truth has a heavy price, but if no one has the courage to tell the truth, we are all well and truly doomed.

On that note, have a great weekend. 

The Sunday Reflection #34 - Inspiration and Humanity

Last night, I was at Dingwalls in Camden Town to watch The Pogue Traders. They are a celebration of the music of The Pogues. Since the Pogues stopped doing shows, this has been a big part of our Xmas routine. The band have really taken off in the last couple of years and last night Dingwalls was packed. Last year, Shane MacGowan passed away, after many years of illness. His was a colourful lige and the term flawed genius could have been invented to describe MacGowan. Although 90% of people primarily know The Pogues from their Xmas anthem, Fairytale of New York, it is just one of many excellent pieces of music that MacGowan wrote. I like it, but it is by no means my favourite Pogues song. Rainy night in Soho, Streams of Whiskey and A pair of Brown Eyes are songs I'd list as far better. 

The quality of MacGowans lyrics is something that never ceases to amaze me. Just about every tale of Shane involves copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. He was a party animal who lived and played very hard. But within that same person, was one of the most sensitive, caring souls, who had a great sense of justice and a hatred of injustice. As a songwriter, I often look at the work of such geniuses to try and learn how to improve my own style and content. What strikes me about the Pogues lyrics is the brutal honesty in them. If you take Fairytale of New York, it is not a fairytale at all. It is a very sad and melancholic tale of two people who are falling apart. The only real redemption is the soundtrack that lifts a broken spirit. . The Song starts with "It was Christmas, in the drunk tank". Not how most Xmas fairytales start. The song descends into a bitter argument and trading of insults between the two parties. Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, the chorus kicks in "And the boys of the NYPD Choir were singing Galway Bay, and the bells were ringing out on Christmas Day" and you are transported to somewhere else completely.

It intrigues me where that song started. My parents used to joke about "having the Xmas row". Often it was caused by my Dad going for a drink with his mates and getting back late for lunch. In the Irish tradition, alcohol is a big part of Christmas and having all manner of family around often meant that resentments that have festered for years surface as the drinks flow and the conversations develop. I have seen some terrible Xmas rows (not so much within my family, but with mates) and on a few occasions, we've had extra people for Christmas dinner, as rows exploded in the families of friends. I suspect that these drunken Xmas rows that Shane must've seen plenty of, would have planted rich seeds in his mind. There has been plenty of talk of AI putting creative people out of work. Could an AI ever create something like Fairytale of New York? The reason I love the song is that it oozes humanity. We know the characters are deeply flawed, but we also know that they are interesting. 

This brings me back to drug and alcohol misuse. I have often mused on whether the likes of Shane MacGowan would ever have produced the work they did if they were absteemious types. Clearly it is unlikely that he'd have written a ssong like Streams of Whiskey, but what would he have written in it's place? Alcohol didn't make him a genius, but it did put him in a lot of situations where inspiration abounded. There are two elements to artistic genius, the first is finding inspiration and the second is transcribing it into something amazing. When lockdown was announced, the songwriter in me rejoiced. I'd finally have time to sit down and take my time to write the songs that I'd been too busy to get down. The Sun shone, I picked up the guitar and.... Absolutely nothing. I had no inspiration at all. I'd try and play new riffs and just realise that they were bad rehashes of old riffs. I took to learning to play TV theme tunes on the guitar to keep my hand in. I was starting to worry that I'd just been kidding myself that I'd ever been able to write songs. Then lockdown was eased, we started living again and the ideas flowed. I realised that much of my body of work is derived in pubs etc, where someone says something that triggers an idea. Once there is an idea that is interesting, it is easy. Over the years, I learned that the best songs are actually about quite mundane moments in life, that are transformed into magical images by the addition of music. One of my favourite songs is Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding. It is a song about doing absolutely nothing, but it transports me to a different world.

Sittin' in the mornin' sun

I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come

Watching the ships roll in

And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wastin' time

I left my home in Georgia

Headed for the 'Frisco bay

I've had nothing to live for

Look like nothin's gonna come my way

So I'm just gonna sit on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wastin' time

Look like nothing's gonna change

Everything still remains the same

I can't do what ten people tell me to do

So I guess I'll remain the same, yes

Sittin' here resting my bones

And this loneliness won't leave me alone

It's two thousand miles I roamed

Just to make this dock my home

Now, I'm just gonna sit at the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wastin' time

Source: Musixmat

That is the true measure of genius. To me, it is a measure of humanity and genius to take the smallest thing and make them into a musical painting that is both compelling and beautiful. Just as MacGowans illustration of two deadbeats arguing in the cells in a New York drunk tank has become an integral part of many peoples Xmas, Redding made a hobo sitting in San Fransisco docks doing nothing into a beautiful celebration of life. Maybe I've missed out, but I can't think of too many songs about soberley sitting in the office, dreaming of upgrading your BMW, when you get your next bonus. I am sure far more people in the UK spend their time daydreaming about such mundane things, than visualising drunks in the slammer in New York, but few seem inspired to set their daydreams to music. When I used to work in an office, I found it really uninspiring artistically. You do the same thing most days and for me the highlight was the bacon roll run. I used to go most days. It got me out of the office and I'd chat to the staff in the cafe. I wrote a song about the decline of the culture of family run Italian cafe's in Soho a few years back. Places like Starbucks are far more sterile. You get your coffee, sit in the corner with your headphones on and stare at your mobile phone. Not like the old days, where you'd sit in Sidoli's cafe in Aldgate and swap jokes with cabbies and the owner of the gentlemens club over the road. 

The nature of MacGowan and  Reddings genius was to take those small things and distill them into brilliant songs. To me, what makes a song brilliant is that the writer captures something in the lyrics that means something to you and then adds music that places it and embeds it in your mind. At the end of Fairytale of New York, it plays out with rather majestical, upbeat coda. The lyrics have set the scene and the music delivers us there. One of the things I love about Christmas is that it is a time of music. There are the Christmas chart belters that we all love, that we associate with a snog under the mistletoe at the Xmas party, or that Granny and Grandad would dance around the table to. Then there are the Christmas carols, that for me, take me back to school and the carol service. When my kids were little, watching them sing Away in a manger always brought a tear to my eye. Away in a manger was written by Irish American composer William J. Kirkpatrick. Apparently he died after waking up in the night with a tune in his head. He went downstairs to score it, and when his wife woke up he was slumped over the desk, dead. We can only wonder what song he took to the grave. The hymn was written in 1895. Just think that up until that year, this key Xmas tune simply didn't exist. When I was born in 1962, almost none of the pop music we associate with Xmas was written. Next time you enjoy Fairytale, Slade's Merry Christmas, George Michaels Last Christmas, just think for a second how lucky we are that we live in a time when all this music has been written.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing for me is the idea that  all of those mentioned above had something that triggered and inspired them into putting pen to paper and writing this music. Maybe if they'd had a different breakfast, walked down a different street, if it had been raining instead of sunshine that day, they may have been in a different mood and that song may never have existed. There are 8 billion of us on the planet, but if Shane MacGowan had randomly bumped in to a mate the day he wrote it, and spent the day doing other things, maybe the song would never have existed. Never let anyone tell you that humanity isn't a wonderful thing. When I was a kid, I asked a wise old Catholic Priest why God made the world. His response? So that we could fill it with music. I have no idea what goes through the mind of God, but I guess that when he listens to Fairytale of New York and Dock of the Bay, he must feel happy with his efforts (let's save the yes, but... for another day in another season).

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I mentioned above that after lockdown, I found my songwriting inspiration again. One of the good things about lockdown was it forced me to look at the songs I was writing and ask myself some difficult questions. Just before lockdown, I'd written a song called Longshot Didn't Die. As with most songs in the Allen Ashley period of the band, Allen made some amendments to it when he saw the lyrics. I realised that this was very much the direction I wanted to take the band in musically. As Allen had left the band and I was singing, I didn't have to consider whether he'd feel comfortable singing the lyricis I wrote. I had a couple of old songs that I thought fitted into the latest iteration of The Dots, but of the period 2012-2019, I felt that apart from Longshot, none of the songs sat well with where I wanted to take the band. 

I very much wanted us to sit somewhere between Ian Dury and Madness and I wanted the songs to be about London and about growing up here. I wanted a Ska feel to the music, with Duryesque wit and observational humour. The first song I wrote specifically for this new era was "The Burnt Oak Boogie". Unlike just about every song I'd written before, it wasn't a story, a scenario that I'd constructed. It was a completely autobiographical look at the place I I'd spent a lot of my life knocking around and how it affected me growing up. 

The first verse was about my mum's love of the place, the cheap mushrooms at the market etc, the best library in the world, the fresh eels. How she'd send us off to the funfair at Montrose park and warn us to be back by dark. The second verse was about the lady I consider to be surrogate Grandma, Annie O'Keefe who lived in Homefield Road. I'd always wanted to pay tribute to this wonderful little old Irish lady from Co Kerry, who was the kindest person I ever met. Her husband Joe was a caretaker, he bred budgies in their back garden and they had a dog called Beauty. The third verse is about growing up and moving on. 

The first time we played it was at The Mill Hill Music Festival in 2022. I was overwhelmed by the reaction. People loved it. I came up with  a concept for the video, lots of shots of Burnt Oak past and present, with some footage of the band being silly in there. I shot the stock footage and was planning to film the band shots, when we got a phonecall from the Dublin Castle offering us a gig at short notice. To try and rustle up a few extra punters, I decided to put the video out, without the band footage. The video immediately went viral and had thousands of views. Quite a few punters saw it and came to the gig. Many told me how the song was brilliant and caught the Burnt Oak vibe perfectly. It was a bit of a Eureka moment. I realised that I'd been trying too hard to write the perfect song and trying to be too clever. The great songs mentioned above just flow. If a song doesn't flow, it doesn't work. For me, the Burnt Oak Boogie was a song that worked. We didn't overcomplicate it. Here it is

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, so make it count

 Yesterday, I went to see a couple of old school mates of mine play at The Boogaloo Bar in Highgate. By a strange coincidence, I went to Finchley Catholic High School with Sam Sproule and Orange Hill with Paula Marks, whohave got together to form an absolutely brilliant Country/Americana/Rockabilly band called The Midnight Crawlers. They are absoluetely brilliant. After the gig, I had a chat with Sam about what the band was up to. He has some exciting gigs in the offing, and he told me that

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he was enjoying life to the full. He said "The way things are, you don't know if some lunatic is going to end the world, so we' have to get the most out of every day".

I have a very similar attitude to life. I had a period when my children were small, when they were my absolute priority. Now they are all adults, I have thrown myself back into performing with a passion. My kids are fully supportive and are amongst our biggest fans, dragging their friends along and making things a lot of fun. I dearly hope Sam is wrong about a looney ending it for us and long after I am gone, they will have memories of fun times. I've always encouraged them to make sure that they have some fun in life. 

I was recently asked by a friend of mine, Tony Lloyd, who does a podcast giving advice for people looking to get on in the music industry, to feature in an episode and pass on some of the lessons I've learned over 45 years in the music industry and also a few of the stories of along the way. Tony has just released the podcast on Spotify. Tony asked me to have a listen, just to check that I was happy. It is interesting listening to yourself talking. I am really happy with the podcast and I do hope that for up and coming musicians it might be helpful and for those that just want to listen to something about music, it is fun. 

Have a listen.

Today is a bank holiday, a day off for many, when we can chill, enjoy ourselves and also to take stock. A year ago, I was reeling from getting the results of a biopsy, that revealed my prostate cancer was aggressive and required some very invasive treatment. My life was effectively put on hold. I was in a state of deep emotional turmoil. Within three months I'd be having life changing (not in a wonderful way) surgery.  A year ago, despite trying to put on a brave face, my horizon was my treatment. I could not see beyond it. I was very angry and very upset. However, there was one light on the horizon. Immediately after getting the news,  I flew out to Portugal to finish off the new album by The False Dots. I didn't appreciate at the time what a good move this was. It lifted me, albiet temprorarily, out of the mire of self pity I found myself in. 

A year on, I am hopeful that I've pu the prostate cancer behind me (although only time will really tell). I'm focussed on the future. I will soon be 62. I don't feel like it. I don't know if what happened last year had a factor, but as many mates are talking about retiring, taking up golf, moving to the seaside, I feel more energised than ever with my music. I am genuinely excited by what we are doing.  Realistically, I have ten-fifteen years of being able to fully do what I want with my life. When I was a teenager, I thought that by the time you were 30, things like music would no longer be something you cared about. For me, the opposite is true. 

One of the things I started to do last year, in a very dark moment, was when I wake up, I say "Today is the first day of the rest of my life, so make it count". I then shut my eyes and think of what I have to do. I do a mental stocktake for the day. Today was the first time since I started that I realised I had no plans at all. It really was a day off. No work, not meeting friends, not going out. I hadn't even planned to go to the gym. I had not planned to write a blog, but then Tony Lloyd sent me the podcast. As I listened to it, I thought of Sam's comment and also the talk on the radio news this morning. Rishi Sunak is proposing reinstating national service for young people. 

I have to say, this horrifies me. I feel I am uniquely priveliged having had a life where I've been able to do what I want and play in an amzing band. What bothers me more than anything about Sunak's scheme is that it does not seem to be about inspiring young people. Tony Lloyd's podcasts are designed to inspire people and give them the faith to realise their dreams. I set my studios up, to give young people a place where they could realise their dreams by rehearsing. I hope that anyone who see's my band leaves feeling happy and possibly someone may look at us and think "I could do that". Having said all of that, what inspired me most when I set up my band, was the fact that my mates were as well. When I was at school, it seemed like everyone was setting up bands and trying to make great music. 

My advice to Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Ed Davey and every other politician trying to persuade us to vote for them. Give us all, especially the younger people, something to believe in and some inspiration. If you look at the world today, what we need is people to put down the guns, stop killing each other and start communicating. Every day that people are killing each other things get worse and more innocent lives are ruined. Sooner or later, be it today, tomorrow, next week or next year or even a hundred years time, people will have to talk to each other. Today is the best day, because the sooner we talk, the less people have their lives ruined. I get all of the "yes but,this lot are terrible and we can't talk to them". Until the monsters who commit atrocities are forced to face up to the human, compassionate side of their nature, all we have is pointless conflict. In truth, the hardest thing of all is to make peace,compromise and forgive. It is also the only way that, as a race, we can move on. I dream that by the time I depart this mortal coil, there will be peace of earth. I also beleive that music is fundamental to this, as it is something that brings us together. That is why I've dedicated my life to the making of music and why I think it is important. 

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If you enjoy reading this blog, please give my band,  the False Dots a follow on Spotify and a listen to our music. If you live in St Albans, please nip down to The Horn on Thursday night to watch us. It will be fun, I promise you.

Thursday  30th May, The Horn, St Albans CLICK FOR DETAILS AND TICKETS enter FD24 for a discount!