The Fishwhacker Swindle?

Following a successful European tour and a mere two years after his masterpiece, Music In A Foreign Language, wistful fin-de-siecle troubadour Lloyd Cole is up against the odds with his new double album, Fish In A Barrel. As always, the master wordsmith pulls another sultry gem out of his quirky hat. Fish… opens with a blistering acoustic version of Bob Dylan’s Jokerman that knocks the original into a cocked hat. The second track and first single, Hats Off, is a searing, swooping indictment of formality at weddings, its plaintive harp cryin’ the blues over a throbbing sea of Moog and double bass riffs. Unusually for Lloyd, there’s a guest vocalist in the form of none other than Joe Cocker on the faux-disco anthem Bowler; but really, the guests are there in spirit if not flesh as the first disc wends its way through a field of homage to Van Morrison, Mickey Spillane and The Kinks.

The second disc is less successful but in a way a greater achievement. It’s an extended cover of Lou Reed’s neglected rock-epic Metal Machine Music, more melodic yet if anything more experimental, more deviant, than the original, with its fusion of twelve-string guitar feedback and a full orchestra that reaches the heights of John Williams at his best. Crucially, Cole adds a vocal to the mix which is almost certainly his own, though the voice here sounds little like his normal one, incorporating as it does a whispered baritone tone which sounds like a musical instrument of some sort.

Hats off to Lloyd yet again, then. Four and a half stars out of five.


Update!

No, I don't mean Lloyd Cole... who's that other bloke?

The best words in English are the ones that start with a consonant, preferably a plosive, followed by the letter r. Brood, prune, frown, prick, drool… all wonderfully evocative. Shrew is great too, though it doesn’t follow the rule strictly. On the whole, words of one syllable are best, but there are some excellent exceptions, including my favourite word of all time, drivel, which begins with a superb punch and rambles off like the thing it’s describing.


There are those who claim that the word is mightier than the rifle. The cunts would have been no use at all at Kronstadt.

- Leon Trotsky

Hope everyone enjoyed Christmas dinner. Me, I stayed traditional and South African.

It turns out all those books like the Bible and the Koran were right. Apparently, the woolly mammoth, which was like an elephant but had a special extinction gene, possessed a kick-arse hairy flap which covered its anus to keep out the cold. There's no way this could have "evolved" without the guiding hand of an intelligent designer, because it's such a fucking excellent idea. So well done, Jesus and Mohammed and all your disciples and victims!

The story of the bristly ring-cover is begging to be told on film. Just imagine what Disney could do with a decent script.

Mammoths' cocks were three feet long when erect, which isn't that impressive when you consider how big their owners were.

I’d been thinking about her all day.

The light turned green and I pulled away, aware of a growing ache down below, the throb of tumescent veins. It had been a long time, too long, and now that we were going to be together in a few minutes the urgency intensified. She was - is – beautiful, white and curved and open; and that Tuesday evening, as the autumn gold bathed the pavements, she was waiting for me.

Focus, damn it. A shriek from the tyres as I jammed my foot down hard and for a moment I thought I wasn’t going to make it, but the front of the car drifted slightly to the left and the tailgate in front moved off as my engine stalled. The driver in front gave me two fingers as he gunned his own engine. I sat for a few seconds, foot still on the brake pedal, the iron tang of fear in my mouth, but there was no time to hang about because the guy behind was leaning on his horn and the adrenaline kicked in down below, and the need surged in me painfully. I keyed the ignition and joined the traffic flow again.

We’d met the day I had moved into the new house, and hadn’t spent a day apart since then. That first night, home after a celebratory curry, I had spent hours pressed against her, joined to her as if we were a single organism, convulsed in the grip of the dark unity of agony and delight. There had been others before her, of course, but looking back I understood that, whatever their qualities, I had not been wise enough – old enough, perhaps – to appreciate them. She was different. The feel of her warmth against my thighs, morning and evening and often in between as well, was something that I savoured to a degree that had been absent from my youthful dalliances with other, sometimes even prettier, partners.

I drove recklessly, cutting off an elderly lady in a Micra trying to ease out of a side street, sending a group of schoolchildren leaping back from a zebra crossing. I was in pain now, and I shifted my buttocks on the seat and grabbed my pants with one hand to adjust them as best I could.

Had I strayed? Yes, I won’t deny it. I am a man, and man is a fallen creature. Sordid contacts in dim foetid chambers with dirty substitutes whom I’d never respected afterwards. Rising after the act in disgust on each occasion, I had returned home and my guilt had dissolved in the throes of my passionate reacquaintances with her.

I slammed to a stop on the forecourt and flung the car door open so hard that it bounced back into me as I leaped from the seat, and as I ran for the front door I was vaguely aware that the car door hadn’t closed behind me but I didn’t care, because the animal need was on me now like the grip of a fever dream, and it was the wrong fucking key try another come on come on and then I was through the door and usually we played a game in which I would call out to her, pretending I didn’t know where she was, but this time I ran straight to where I knew she’d be and hurled open the door and oh my God, there she was, open and silent and teasing and my frantic gaze was drawn to the exposed hole and I scrabbled with my buckle and wrenched down my trousers and pants and with a roar I mounted her.


OHLORDOHMIGHTYMIGHTYJESUSYESTHATSSO
GOODSOFUCKINGGOODOHMYGODDONTSTOPDONTEVER
STOPAHNECTAROHYESYESAAAIIIAAAAAAHHH!!!


I collapsed, spent, in the peace afterwards, basking in the warm bliss and murmuring words that meant more precisely because they didn’t make sense. After a while I raised myself and looked down at her. It had been fierce, and there was a little blood, but I smiled when I wiped and saw the staining was scant.

I love you, I whispered.


I stood, buttoned, buckled, tucked, zipped, and flushed, and went to look for a smoke.



(Inspired by this.)

You can't visit a blog these days without coming across some post or comment that slags off the Yanks. It's either a foul-mouthed, barely coherent rant or one of those snide, one-eyebrow-arched Radio Four-type smear jobs. Well, the people who make these comments are wrong, and worst of all unoriginal.

1. War. So the US invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam, and those self-righteous pricks are in paroxysms which for some reason never gripped them when Saddam was torturing, gassing and otherwise murdering. Yes, the WMD argument was bullshit, but that mustachioed bastard deserves everything he got and is going to get. And it's not like oh-so-superior Europe is squeaky clean either - the French did unspeakably shitty things in Algeria, and it was fucking Dutch soldiers who stood by ten years ago when Muslim men and boys were being massacred by the Serbs.
2. IQ. "Oh, those Americans, they're just so... so thick, aren't they? Pity the poor souls, and pass the sundried tomatoes." Newsflash, fuckheads: the British are stupider by far. Turn on the telly, especially the BBC, listen to conversations in supermarkets, go walking in the street, for fuck sakes; proud, wilful ignorance is rotting Britain from the inside out. "But 50% of Americans don't even own a passport!", you cry. Well, 77% of Brits who own passports don't know what they're for, and 81% can't spell the word.
3. Comedy. "They just don't do irony, darling." This is the area where the Yanks are most vulnerable. Britain does it marginally better. But the US has better sitcoms - Seinfeld, Frasier, Cheers, the brilliant Curb Your Enthusiasm - and the funniest and maddest Python, Terry Gilliam, is American. As for any other country in the world - Cambodia, Iran, Germany - well, the funniest thing about them is their accents.
4. Culture. So what if people in Africa and Asia wear baseball caps, eat at McDonald's and like Britney Spears? I hate all three from the bottom of my rectum, but who the fuck would I be to lecture anybody on what they can and can't wear, eat and listen to? And US TV is the best in the world. There's a lot of it, and that's why there's a lot of shit on it, but the three best programmes in TV history - The Sopranos, 24 and Six Feet Under - are all from, no, not Britain, not Burkina Faso, not fucking France, but The Great Satan.
5. Religion. The US is routinely portrayed as a nation of Jesus freaks. Well, they do take religion on the whole more seriously than we do, and I admit that I find this ridiculous and laughable. But why single them out when a whole slew of other countries - most Middle Eastern ones, certain East Asian ones and Northern Ireland - practise a far harsher variety of religious correctness?

The fucking bastards who spread racist anti-American poison in the British press are even worse than the bloggers. Some wanker in that vile piece of bogroll The Independent was saying the other day that America is 'the most homophobic nation on earth'. The sanctimonious cocksucker obviously hasn't tried cottaging in Saudi Arabia recently. The BBC made up a pack of lies during the Katrina hurricane about how black people were being deliberately ignored by the authorities in charge of the rescue attempts. Well, fuck them all, the malignant arsewipes. If the US had stayed as isolationist in 1941 as these fuckfaces seem to want them to be nowadays instead of bailing us out of World War II, we'd all be talking with a Californian governor's accent.

I don't even mind if people take the piss out of specific Americans like Bush. I have plenty of Americans on my own hate-list. What brings down the red mist is this blanket of venom about America as an entity, one that transcends the concepts of culture and nation. It's fucking racism, is what it is, and the vermin that peddle it need to be brought to book, and can fuck off while they're at it.

-ly compelling actor who was, astonishingly, voted Most Handsome Student in high school. Following an unfortunate encounter with a mustard gas canister in World War One, he developed a disorder of his pituitary gland called acromegaly and became ugly. This didn't do his career any harm, as he appeared in a number of Hollywood features and singlehandedly redefined the term 'typecast'. He was in the 1944 Sherlock Holmes film Pearl Of Death as grotesque sidekick Hoxton Creeper, and was so well-loved that the Creeper was resurrected for a further two flicks. Sadly, Ron keeled over with a fatal heart attack in 1946 at the age of 52 before they were released. Other Hatton favourites were The Big Guy and Union Atlantic (1939), and The Princess and the Pirate (1944).

Rondo's gone, but his beat lives on.


There are two deliberate mistakes in this post. Can you spot them?

Couple of months ago I posted this comment on El Barbudo's fine blog (shame about its owner):

And these filthy-mouthed blogs are all getting a bit incestuous, a bit
circle-jerky, aren't they? Harry fellates Ball Bag who rims El Barbudo who's
sodomising Dr Maroon while Gorilla Bananas spanks the monkey in the tree
overhead. If I ever get myself a blog I'm going to stand on the sidelines
and jeer at you cunts.

Well, I'm older and wiser, and frankly I need the company. So link and comment generously. Because my reservoir of goodwill is not bottomless, nor is my jacuzzi of self-control.

Why are most blog posts so angry and whingeing? Go to many of the links on the left and you're likely to read a shitload of opinions along the lines of 'fucking this' and 'cunting that'. I thought it would be nice to start this blog with some positive thoughts and feelings. Yes, there's cruelty in the world, and disease and war, but on the other hand it's nearly Christmas, I didn't kill anyone on the road today and my foreskin is starting to grow back. So c'mon, grumblebunnies: everyone lighten up, SMILE and let me know how good you feel! ;-)

... won't Blogger let me:

- add links?
- change the fucking font?

Update!

The problem was with me! Sorry, Blogger, especially about the language.