out in the wilds

horsemouth has been a little remiss of late (he hasn’t been micro-blogging his life in excruciating detail for you everyday like he initially promised). friday night horsemouth was knackered (so he just went to bed). it was good to see everyone saturday night (a friend’s birthday) but sunday (having drunk too much and been hung over) horsemouth was feeling a little remorseful - these are the perils of horsemouth's boom and bust psychic economy - it will pass doubtless... no work til later on today...

still it was good to see denise, graham, fiona, claudia and brigid. saturday night graham and fiona and denise and horsemouth listened to musicians of bremen volume 3 on graham’s excellent hi-fi. graham praised the clarity of the recording. sunday morning (before the hangover properly hit) horsemouth played the werewolf and katie cruel. there was a discussion about horror movies, amicus horror movies, b&w horror movies (and in particular jacques tourneur’s i walked with a zombie).


in search of something easy to read horsemouth has started on real england: the battle against the bland a plaint against the standardisation of modern life (the hollowing out of pubs, the gentrification of the waterways etc. - street book potlatch - free). he’s up he’s having his coffee he’s listening to a very pleasant fahey and drone thing - sighting at bigtooth ridge by marcus eads & caleb r.k. williams.
today sunny but cold (allegedly).

howard has been busy again.

‘what happens next? what about the fifty years before you die?’

to lift a line from nik cohn’s awopbopaloobopalopbamboom, a jilted love letter to rock and roll (written in a cottage in conemara in the spring of 68 when he thought it was all over).


last night horsemouth watched takoma park city tv’s panel discussion on the takoma music scene in 1962 (midway through daniel bachman played a gig). fahey always talked it like he came from a cultural desert - but of course there was a scene, a succession of coffee houses and record shops, a network of blues aficionados and record collectors (not least the famous cellar door club - where richie havens and john fahey later played, where miles davis recorded). the seegers lived nearby, their maid was the blues guitarist elizabeth cotton.

fahey kept the names from his hometown for his songs  (the sligo creek immortalised in sligo river blues, his record label named after the neighbourhood itself, revalation on the banks of the pawtuxent) - he records tracks for collector joe bussard, then records and has independently pressed 100 copies of his first album blind joe death and then he’s away to university of the west coast. really and truthfully takoma park records was properly born elsewhere - more down to ED Denison than fahey.

they struggle with fahey (a notoriously difficult character) - he’d gone away, they’d stayed - but now he is the city’s most famous son.

horsemouth back from the mari llwyd llundain

once, when horsemouth was a child in wales in the 70ies, his father’s friends arrived to drag him out for a pint - they arrived with a sheep or horse’s skull on a stick (which they banged on the window with). this, and an outbreak of oranges and lemons were the only two folkloric things horsemouth can ever remember having witnessed (ok he tells a lie a kid once showed him a dead wren in a matchbox and told him it was the king of the birds).


it started in the boot on cromer street - horsemouth was there early - the locals were moaning about the pub being full (but admitted it would help with the finances). horsemouth got a beer and then hung around near the dartboard - then outside on the benches when he got the phonecall from max. they went in, glyn arrived. song sheets were distributed - there was an attempt at a practice but the pub was too noisy. so horsemouth, glyn and max adjourned to the outside (where they exchanged their limited knowledge of the proceedings and the welsh language - because, horror of horrors, the lyrics were in welsh (mostly).

and then the mari lwyd arrived -  the shivering horse’s skull on a stick, clacking its jaw, decked with ribbons the operator being semi-hidden under a white sheet. the horse wanted admittance to the pub. knock, knock, and those in the outside party began singing - wel dyma ni’n dwad, gyfeillion diniwad... horsemouth, emboldened by the best part of a pint (and a little practice in the afternoon to the video) tried to sing along. in this he was helped by two things, the fact that everyone else was singing and this hid when he was singing the wrong note or pronouncing words incorrectly. the fact that the first line is repeated twice (so horsemouth could ecoute et repete and bodge the pronunciation), ditto the second line is repeated three times, the final line is (roughly a third of the time) nos heno. after three verses the inside party sing answering verses - presumably about letting the mari in (or not) - after 14 verses the matter is decided, the mari admitted and  mari’s triumphant song is sung - 3 verses in welsh, 4 in english, and a final verse in welsh.

having assisted the mari’s entry horsemouth and his companions nipped on to what they thought was the next pub (but turned out to be the final pub on the route on greys inn road) and, after a quiet pint upstairs, assisted the mari’s entry yet again. they then nipped across the road to the london welsh centre and continued drinking. there was a celdih upstairs (organised, like the rest of the evening by the spring heeled- jacks) but horsemouth did not dance. he chatted up a woman from seattle and had a photo taken with the mari. (and then the bus home and a bag of chips).

so (after the excitement of the mari llwyd) horsemouth was a dirty stop in last night - he missed the gwenifer raymond gig - he sent myk in his place. myk reported that gwenifer was almost polysyllabic - something about twenty pounds and vinyl, the p.a. was crap and the tuner unco-operative, so there were a few fucks as well. instead horsemouth watched black lake - scandimisery, obscure personal improvement courses, an island with a dark history, woolly jumpers (lots of woolly jumpers).

monday horsemouth has off - the laptop just came back from the dead having had coffee spilled on it (loud were horsemouth’s curses - visions of having to buy a new computer monday etc.)

horsemouth of the many faces

horsemouth has just dreamt (philip k. dick style) that he’d taken something that rendered him incapable of recognising his own face in a mirror. consequently whenever horsemouth looked in a mirror a different face was there - a black man, a young girl, a blank space etc, horsemouth himself (but looking strange).

the dream took place in a giant, dusty dark, stately home (and surrounding parkland) - it was like some filthy squat party. at one point horsmouth emerged from a side room to find the rest of the place deserted, he eventually found the people outside clustered round a tree.



yesterday (at myk’s invitation) he went to a gig celebrating the life and work of guitarist phil miller - and very good it was too - there was some fierce fusion style unison work (which horsemouth was terrified to observe was sight-read rather than learnt) and some satisfyingly meaty prog jazz things (think early king crimson), there was also a solo rendition of matching moles’ god song.

‘our special correspondent in the day after tomorrow reports’

so the time-traveller in h.g.wells’ the time machine is mocked. it’s a book of the type tale told at a dinner table. (it’s also a very slim book easily fitted into the pocket of a coat).

horsemouth was off to a gig in south london (acoustic anarchy at waterintobeer) - his friend lou crisfield was playing, as were air is blue, martin howard, s&m.

martin opened it (despite a cough) - once again birds, love, death - at the ornithologist’s arms excellent again (name dropping kroptkin), then two songs by s&m, then a woman called alex played (ukulele and voice) songs of a picaresque newcastle wake up in the lost and found, love, break up, such like. well played and well sung (horsemouth liked the flick with thumb, flick with forefinger uke playing technique).

then lou crisfield - starting with a song about her father teaching the kids to play guitar (some nice bluesy hammers on here), then, if horsemouth’s memory serves in the pines (leadbelly or bill monroe?) on the banjo (an instrument that can only approximately be tuned... allegedly) , a gillian welch number, a number in praise of mutual friend milly (also known to about half the audience). 

air is blue - a duo - alternating guitar and acoustic bass - the woman sang, she had a very nice delivery which seemed to manage the difficult trick of being in pitch and being spoken at the same time. the bass came in at some nice unexpected places.

and so back home (a bag of chips on the way to soak up the beer - for yes horsemouth had become over enthusiastic and drunk too much beer). later horsemouth goes to a.n.other gig (busy weekend) - so more reports tomorrow. tomorrow he works (wednesday he works). saturday the anniversary of the death of alice coltrane.

april 13th (end of term) horsemouth’s own gig down at water into beer.

fat cat friday has been and gone (and will not come again)

horsemouth has his coffee. the heating is on. strangely the bin lorries are prowling the neighbourhood. 

yesterday was fat cat friday the day on which the average CEO has made the average yearly wage of a british worker. (so in horsemouth’s case they’d probably made his yearly wage by the end of play january the 1st). yesterday john clarkson was visiting and flew back (drones permitting). they went for a walk in the valley of the agapemonians (the night before they’d watched a truly terrible vin deisel movie). horsemouth was not around to see him off - a rare to chance to catch up with howard had appeared and had to be taken (down in pop(u)lar).

horsemouth and howard (aka. musicians of bremen) chatted, went and got a curry (at the curry hut) and then nipped out for a swift pint of session or two in the gentrifier’s arms. there is a broad intention to work on volume four - howard has a brace of songs already (including a great new version of robbie basho’s blue crystal fire as a waltz). horsemouth suggested recording those pretty much as is - and then responding to them with incidental music to try to create a song cycle (sort of thing).

anyway - nothing much can be done until easter.

he picked up a copy of daniel deronda (god bless library sales) for 20p (now he just has to find the time to read it).

in the evening a rapidly sobering horsemouth watched deja vu denzel washington’s this is the story of a man marked by an image... film as time travel (against terrorism again) fantasy. it’s denzel so it all has to end well.

first post (fd18) - happy new year 2019 (proforma)

horsemouth is reusing this proforma from last year.

horsemouth did only one gig last year he has one planned for this year so far. hopefully he will organise more (or at least let himself agree to them).

he hopes to do some recording (but he has none planned currently) howard has a raft of new songs perhaps they will get on with recording these. there’s a proposal to record a cycle of 4ths (reversed this would make a cycle of 5ths), then again with a 7th, then again with a 7sharp 9 - this appeals to horsemouth as it is a rules based system. there was a plan to record one of his poems as well - which he failed to get done last year - perhaps he'll get it done this year.

the stuff with andrew minty, morven and siobhan has gone quietish - in part this is horsemouth’s fault for bailing early to the countryside. he wanted to do more of this. perhaps he will in 2019.

he will keep writing (the drawing and the photography seem to have died back for the minute).

work continues to roll on ok(ish) - horsemouth is paying into a pension (so he can probably permit himself this money out of his other savings - this is his theory anyway), he should probably diversify his sources of work (he didn’t last year and he probably won’t this year - he’s a bit lazy).

financially things are tight (beyond impossible) squeezed between rising rent and stagnant wages. being poor (and pinching those pennies) is getting horsemouth down. he walks as much as he can, he gets the bus as much as he can (this is actually not suffering - he’d get a bike but he doesn’t fancy cycling in london), he eats out rarely and yet he has failed to take sandwiches to work, or a flask of coffee, or the bus to his parents (etc.).

his homestead (the gaff) - horsemouth remains very pleased with (it has been - so far - almost entirely hassle free). he’s nearly covered all the walls with bookshelving. the raised bed permits better hoarding.

politically horsemouth expects it all to continue to be fucking rubbish, to come to a crisis... and then drag on forever. he apologises to his EU friends.

micro-politically (the communal endeavour) as long as there are no great clashes of personalities (which of course there will be) it may be possible to get on with creating more housing at social rent. horsemouth is hopeful (which is always dangerous) so eyes on the prize and keep your nose out of the shit that doesn’t concern you horsemouth.

horsemouth has, since last summer, been putting himself about a bit more, but probably not enough, hopefully it will all pay off.

 right, on with the year. (meanwhile, howard has been busy)