Did you miss us? Did you even notice that we’d been away? If you live in Pevensey you probably wouldn’t have, as we’ve never been there, and you won’t have signed up to this mailing list. For the rest of you, we offer the simple explanation that the entire run of the January mailout was used as an impromptu toilet, possibly by Madame Chairman Meeow, and had to be consigned to the recycling bin. Something similar happened once to a few boxes of Wild card EPs, when a former member of the band was moved to vomit upon them following an incident involving liquid refreshment. This, of course, is a story for another day, and will no doubt get an airing when the Old Man writes up his memoirs and their unexpurgated nastiness knocks Boris Beckham and his wife off the front pages of all the tabloids.
So of course you all missed out on the bumper twelve page twentieth anniversary edition, which was a shame as we’d prepared huge and flattering eulogies on all past members of the band, along with profiles and some very frank interviews in which controversial opinions were expressed concerning TDL’s running of the organisation over the last two decades. Some of these were a little tart, and it is only the broadminded benevolence of our great and gifted figurehead that agreed to see them published. In the light of this, it seems all the more tragic that the entire print came to grief. Oh well. Give it another twenty and we’ll do it again.
We blame Emma, the new office junior, whose job it was to stick them all into envelopes and put them into the postbag. You might have thought that the injection of some fresh blood into the organisation would have stirred things up a bit, but you know what these Job Seekers are like nowadays. Her typing is execrable, her grasp of tea-making rudimentary to say the least, and she occasionally drives the Old Man inchoate with rage. That will teach him to sign up staff with a sixteen-year contract without reading the small print.
So you will have missed last issue’s caption competition. It was Jefferson Starship, and naturally no one got it right, because no one got a mailout. The one before that, which has had you all guessing over Christmas, was of course The Sweeney, whose work we recommend to all those unfamiliar. This issue we have a special treat for you, so read on, enjoy, and entries on a postcard to the usual address will win, as usual, no prize at all.
Bus
Pass I've Got A Bus Pass
To recap, then, Blyth Power is now twenty years old. We were going to
celebrate the whole bang shoot with much palaver, but there was something
on the telly that night, so we forgot. Those of you who are unaware
will be pleased to learn that Mr Joseph Porter AKA TDL, AKA The Old
Man, started the band after he mysteriously parted company with a punk
rock band called The Mob in the distant reaches of memory. This was
late 1983, but the first live show was in February 1984 in a squatted
Bingo Hall that later became The Garage on Holloway Road in London.
So now you know. Lord knows we’ve banged on about it enough. TDL
is more concerned with the next twenty years. (Or so he says. In actual
fact he seems more interested in the colours and markings applied by
the Fleet Air Arm to Blackburn Skua Mk II aircraft in the Norwegian
campaign in 1940. No wonder nothing gets done.)
As for Blyth Power, the next thing on the agenda will be the sequel
to On The Viking Station, which will be called Fall of Iron, but which
will not be here for a while as TDL has not yet finalised the arrangements
on all the songs – although they are written. We can inform you
that when it does happen it will feature both Bomber Harris and Born
In A Different England, as well as an updated version of The Mermaid
which may be familiar to some from Mr Porter’s solo sets. The
plan will be to make as thorough a job of this as was made with Viking,
so rest assured it will be worth waiting for. In the meantime dates
are continuing to come in for the band over the summer and beyond, and
it seems that in spite of its great age, and the bizarre new projects
undertaken by the aged despot, it will be business as usual.
Business as usual, in fact, commences in Leighton Buzzard on April 30th,
and continues throughout May 1st at Rochester Sweeps festival. See you
there.
You
Traded Your Guitar For A Hand Crafted Bong
Oh if only! Now that middle age is drawing to a close and senility beckons
with arthritic fingers, the Old Man has even less desire to lug about
dirty great piles of smelly rusty drums, and so has no intention of
hanging up his guitar. Consequently there will be a continuation of
the solo doings of Mr P. but these will of necessity be fewer and farther
between as he has finally got his finger out and gotten the Red Wedding
duo project off the ground. Good Lord! What is this you ask? Simply
the dreadful combination of Cooper and Porter unplugged, which is all
set to confound and confuse the folk music scene on seven continents.
It’s pretty much like Mr Porter’s solo stuff, only with
the addition of some melodic and tuneful widdling over the instrumental
bits. Early days yet, but great things are both planned and expected.
The first of these is to be the next Downwarde Spiral release, which
will be DR011CD, and is due out at the end of May. Currently under construction
the CD will potentially feature ten tracks hitherto unheard outside
of Mr Porter’s solo performances. Tracklist at the moment is:
Broadlands, a melancholy reflection upon the recent musical careers
of Messrs Porter and Cooper; Enemy Within, reflections on the People’s
Lobby for free fuel and bigger lorries; Bluecoat Boy, a lament for the
lost opportunities of the 1992 General Election; In The Wilderness,
a Robert Graves poem set to music, with added chorus; To Market Today,
on the fall of the iron curtain, and the exploitation of the former
East; Fang Over Lip, what happened when the Anarchists grew up; I Who
Came In From The Cold, a trainspotting expedition to the wilds of East
Berlin; Song Of The Patch And The Coat, from the 1984 production of
Brecht’s The Mother; Follow The Band, about absent friends; and
On Top Of My Lot, in which Ben Jonson laments once again his lack of
commercial appeal. Needless to say, the fickle and restless spirits
that haunt our endeavours (i.e. chance, budget, and spanners in the
works) will work their evil influence, but The Old Man took Emma the
Office Junior with him to the bank manager’s office when he negotiated
the overdraft, and apparently she exercised such a winning charm that
he was duped into allowing the fiendish old despot a further avenue
of credit. Sucker. You can order this CD now – it’s just
called Red Wedding – and we’ll send them out as soon as
we have them. Just turn immediately to the Mailorder form attached to
this epistle.
Tiny
Wraiths Tap At My Skull With Piano Tuning Forks
This can only be the latest in a long series of excuses about the non-going
re-issue of The Guns of Castle Cary, which has been going on now for
a year or so. This is one of the few things that TDL has been unable
to blame Emma the OJ for. In fact it’s his own fault, as he keeps
spending all his waking hours gluing together Airfix kits, when he should
be embracing the spirit of Rock. He claims the warmth and pliability
of the humble polymers keeps him in touch with the true chemical nature
of the planet, from whence all things do come, even nylon, polyester
and Eastfield CDs, so pish to the tree huggers and their ilk. We think
he just likes the glue. Recently the old fool has been onto Humbrol
in Marfleet trying to flog them a job lot of unsold vinyl to melt down
and recast as tiny Hawker Hurricanes. They were strangely disinterested,
but sent him a voucher for twenty Airfix Club Flying Hours for his pains.
As for the recording, we swear blind it will happen one-day guvnor.
Honest. Further dates have been arranged for the next sessions, and
it will all get sorted in time for the band’s fortieth.
I
Have No Idea What I'm Doing Out Of Bed Today
Here’s the bit where we should be focusing on the recent live
adventures of Blyth Power, and the forthcoming dates to look out for.
In actual fact it’s just a load of useless padding isn’t
it? I mean to say, those of you who attended the live shows will know
how splendid they all were, and those who didn’t can rest assured
that we will talk them up into events of triumphant magnitude in this
organ, because that’s what we do. We here in the typing pool spend
our days in the company of a thesaurus looking for shiny new superlatives
with which to garland the old tyrant’s endeavours. We long ago
tired of words as unexpressive and mundane as magnificent, epic and
outstanding. Instead it is our never ending task to seek out newer and
even better means of expressing our delight in his tawdry works, and
thus we are moved to describe the dates with New York Scumhaters in
East Anglia as having been salubrious, the forthcoming Red Wedding recordings
as being works of exquisite gorgeousness and the impending Summer of
fun as being a non-stop round of ephemera and turcolomania. Not so sure
about the last two, but no one is going to care anyway.
One date we will draw your attention to, without further faddle or munchuncundummery
is, of course, the Tallington Ashes, scheduled for the weekend of August
6/7/8th. This looks set to be an event that defies even our malicious
misuse of language, and we are going to simply describe it as jolly
splendid. This year there is to be an attached beer festival, and the
line up of bands and artists is growing rapidly, as the powers that
be have failed to say no to anyone so far. Thus we anticipate short
but extremely sweet sets from A GALAXY OF STARS including General Winter,
Wob, Eastfield, Barnstormer, Anal Beard, Daddy Those Men Scare Me, Giga-0,
Jack, Chris Butler, Rachel Pantechnicon and of course, Blyth Power.
This year we will make sure Blyth get to play on the Saturday night,
so if our Finnish friends happen to be passing again, do stop by and
see us.
Oh, by the way, we’re going to win the confounded cricket match
too.
It's
A Desolate Scene A Corrupt Machine So Evil And Mean
Once more we beg and implore all those of you not connected to the Internet
to reconsider your soulless Ludditism and to embrace the future with
open hearts. Just as plastic and petroleum are the elements in which
we live, so is the computer and the digital screen the new element of
thought and the route down which we must continue our spiritual pilgrimage
or fall by the wayside in a dark age of our own making. Just as the
Class 66 has replaced the Grid, so has the keyboard replaced the pen,
and the DJ replaced the musician. This, of course, is unfortunate given
the trade we are engaged in. Funny that. DJs play records don’t
they? Who makes the records then?
But we digress. The website has been updated with yet more Genesis to
Revolutions, a smashing new section for Red Wedding, and as soon as
current commitments permit, the long awaited link will go up to Mr Porters
Deutsches Bundesbahn railway photograph site, which the old fiend has
under construction – in between the plastic kits - and which is
the chief reason he is casting his eyes eastwards again with a view
to spending long weeks once more on the continent in smelly vans.
Will
You Buy My Fanzine? (No)
And so we come to the exciting part of the proceedings, where we try
and flog you anything left in the warehouse that hasn’t gone on
E-bay for more than it’s worth. Naturally the first and most crucial
item we want to fob you off with is the new Red Wedding CD. Weighing
in at around 40 minutes, and featuring 10 of Mr Porter’s hitherto
unrecorded songs, we reckon it’s a snip at £12. He’s
learned to play the guitar a bit since Death Went to Bed, and with the
addition of Mr Cooper, the whole thing, while still very much an acoustic
recording, has a cohesion that is pleasing and a fusion less confusing,
that is warmer than the former, and more tuneful to the ear. Cheques
payable to Blyth Power. Ho ho ho…
Apart from this, we are pleased to note that the full range of products
is still available, including mousemats and badges, so get your wallets
out and remember – every CD you buy is filling the Old Man’s
bulging pockets with fat wads of cash and benefiting no one else, so
make him happy. You know it makes sense.
Thanks again to all those kind donations of stamps and recycled packaging
material. Do keep it all coming, as we are constantly in need of padded
envelopes and the like. You can send your bottle tops to Blue Peter,
but the jiffy bags come to us! We would like to say the sterling efforts
on the recycling front have added decades to the planet’s long-term
existence, but as we actually hate trees and think they should all be
chopped down and turned into IKEA cupboards, we will simply keep our
traps shut and focus instead on all the pennies we have been able to
drop into the china frogs on the despot’s desk, rather than into
the coffers of Office World and their ilk.
Friends. It is a cruel hard world, but it is the only one we have, so
let’s make the most of it. See you somewhere.
The
Cat's Got No Legs The Cat's Got No Eyes
Madame Chairman Meeow has succumbed to a deep and expensive neurosis
which has necessitated regular and inconvenient doses of evening primrose
oil, which serve no purpose whatsoever, but have contributed to the
vet’s fighting fund in their efforts to stave off competition
from the proposed new combined veterinary and bowling alley that has
received planning permission on the site of the former Saint Mungo’s
Children’s Hospice on Knaresborough Road, which was demolished
last year when a consortium of building magnates discovered they had
an uncle who worked for Harrogate Borough Council’s planning department.
Consequently Madame C. has not even half a shrew to offer this time.
Nothing but a few bald spots from over-grooming, and a tendency to mark
what she considers to be her territory lest newcomer Emma the OJ attempt
to seize it to her own purpose. TDL, who prefers to delegate when it
comes to staff disputes, is uncertain as to what possible designs Emma
could have on the space in the hall behind the new bath, the top shelf
in the linen cupboard or the narrow gulch between the sofa and the cabinet
in which repose his priceless collection of Fleet Air Arm machines in
1/72 scale. Madame Chairman seems to think that these territories are
under threat, however, and it is the duty of this office, in addition
to consulting the thesaurus, to regularly disinfect these areas in the
wake of her turbulence. To this end we will sign off here and fetch
a mop and bucket.