holiday it's a holiday and the last day of the year

so yesterday horsemouth went up john smith's to practice - they did noah (it probably needs a third voice), and the seemingly related somehow if you're on your own and my feet were lost (to index them by their first lines) - at the end horsemouth was using the 3's against 2's picking pattern from the reverend gary davis's talking blues on if your on your own (but in daddad tuning tou understand) and sliding some harmonics.


worldes blisse dirge they made some progress with (a backing vocal and a tambourine). it looks like they will have more songs to add to the set and will perhaps aim to do some recording over easter, perhaps they'll get another practice in before john is back to work. broadly horsemouth's solo gig as the musician of bremen has demo-ed up two songs for the musicians of bremen set.

they wandered out to get a pint but the murder mile was shut so they tried the elderflower which was a bit rubbish before heading back to the mile for that artisan beer - they've got him. everything else just tastes like poison now. horsemouth (of course) wanted another. john did not . they shuffled off home - horsemouth via a bag of chips and a donation to a homeless dude.

this morning was bright and sunny but horsemouth slugged-a-bed with unspecified dreams, the pigeons clustered on the guttering in the sunshine but are now dispersed. horsemouth will go and do some shopping. (shopping done - cup of tea and a wander).

happy new year - see you on the other side.

bah humbug!

"how difficult it is to tell even a millionth part of the truth and how harshly one is punished for doing so." - edmond de goncourt.

so merry christmas one and all. god bless us each and every one. bah humbug. at this point horsemouth would usually be going  'having survived yet another year...' 
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having survived yet another year horsemouth is pleased to have played and recorded an album of songs with john smith as musicians of bremen, he's pleased to have released it (both online on bandcamp and as a physical cd), he's pleased to have played three gigs in this line up and a fourth as musician of bremen - combining the best of musicians of bremen with the best of his horsemouthfolk days and all in 30 minutes - and all these gigs in some kind of alignment with the heavens. he is pleased with the progress of various songs he's involved with writing and arranging (worldes blisse dirge and noah), though he really should hurry up a bit with all this. he plans to continue with it all in the new year.
horsemouth thanks the people who put them on (gertrude, tim goldie, albino).

horsemouth has blogged daily (or nearly) and continued with the promulgation of yam zombies but he has not, so far, managed to get his theoretical endeavours going again.

horsemouth has been pleased to go out and see more music this year (thanks to john clarkson mostly) in no particular order idiot saint crazy, georgina brett, the owl service, stick in the wheel, a reformed les ambassadeurs internationaux, richard skelton, the bohemianauts, pelt, richard youngs, rick tomlinson, united bible studies, aine o'dwyer, gertrude, daniel rosen, david thomas broughton, adam sherry, com(in)us, arthur brown, jonny halifax & the howling truth, tim goldie, jah wobble, various improv'ers and jazz improv'ers. (kevin davy, dreamtime etc.).

on youtube/ spotify/ i-player he made some good discoveries - judee sill, more karen dalton and robbie basho, gene clark etc. mc5, sonic'.s rendezvous band and some working musicians robert curgenven, sproatly smith.

tv wise. (not that he has a tv you understand) treme, true detective.

books? akenfield, michael jeffries - wild england, cobbett rural rides, kilvert and anais nin, diaries, john hillaby,  anna kavan - ice, albert camus  the plague, imogen holst gustav holst,  lillian hellman the unfinished woman, and a threefold cord - alex la guma, memories, dreams, recollections - marianne faithfull, the prisoner - thomas m. disch, magic hour - jack cardiff, hadrian VII - fr. rolfe. denis johnson train dreams, anton chekov letters, dubravka ugresic the ministry of pain, george lois damn good advice (for people with talent). re-reading pkd -do androids dream of electric sheep?, rousseau - reveries of the solitary walker, the lover - marguerite duras, blues people - leroi jones, beneath the visiting moon - david grubb,   ...

healthwise.  horsemouth (a vegetarian already let us remember) has reduced the amount of cheese and pastry he consumes and walked more - moving towards a term time 20 miles a week.(if only he could face the tedium of jogging).  his frozen shoulders have unfrozen and he has not been coughing his lungs up, the only downsides are that he is balding rapidly and his teeth continue to be a bit rubbish. ( but hey never look a gift horse in the mouth).

at work. he has been revisiting material that gave him trouble in his youth and (at last) being able to see the wood for the trees. he is generally pleased with the work-life balance, while his unemployed friends are being mercilessly fucked with by job club etc. at least horsemouth doesn't have this. sadly the ideology of capitalist austerity finally arrived in beachside donkeymule land (friends have lost their jobs already, pay and conditions have been cut and there may be further trouble ahead).

gentrification. housing wise the seaside towns continue to gentrify at an astounding rate ('how much?') but at least there have been some signs of effective resistance (e15 mums, new era, ASS), horsemouth's housing co-op has continued to lose housing and to lose people - the longer this particular can can be kicked down the road the better. he doesn't want the street food but (secretly) he quite likes the craft beer (motherfuckers - 'how much?' ).

horsemouth made 50 this year (he outranks you all) some people have left the party, some have arrived, some have got ill, people's kids continue to grow. he's off for a walk with his parents soon. merry christmas.

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'in my journal I have tried to collect all the interesting things that are lost in conversation.' - say the two goncourts (edmond and jules) united as one writer (as one I) in the process of 'dual dictation' . they would go out to the parties and make notes on the comments and on the bad behaviour - frankly their friends (the daudets mostly, theophile gautier, balzac, sand, zola, flaubert...) were glad when they stopped doing it (not that they ever did stop it really).

early on they give us the typical end of an evening - 6am, a friend drunk and in tears over a showgirl who doesn't love him, another showgirl semi-naked, drunk and vomiting, cursing loudly, the goncourts (drunk) taking notes (well jules taking notes on the cuff of his shirt).

they begin their journal with the coup d'etat of louis napoleon. in 1856 the read poe and recognise his genius. in 1857 theophile gautier tells them how he writes (he's under considerably less economic pressure than balzac clearly). their novel germinie lacerteux (a thinly fictionalised account of their housekeepers bad behaviour) paves the way for zola (but they themselves do not follow it up).

photos courtesy of Max Reeves (www.s-kollective.com)

horsemouth plays 'the golden one' (good photo this)

horsemouth and andrew minty (from the duvals)
tackle 'I still miss someone' by johnny cash.........

horsemouth struggles through to the bitter end of  'gentleman john' 

the musicians of bremen open up with 'the werewolf'

sound problems and 'the mercifully brief guitar instrumental'

the highest note of the night 

starting off into 'gentleman john' - a little nervous

introducing 'in the bleak midwinter' 

'low income londoners won't be priced out for a while'

says a headline in the grauniad (that's good to know).

horsemouth rose at 3pm (having been up earlier between 10 and 12 to see sean out of the door and off to the bus). having played the gig horsemouth proceeded to get terribly drunk and stay up late and so was hungover and vomitous in the morning. he hopes he was chatty and made sense enough at the gig because he was paying for it the next morning.

by 3pm the hangover had abated and horsemouth began to shuffle round the flat and to check out reports.

horsemouth thanks everyone who came out and commiserates with those who couldn't make it or arrived late. he particularly thanks john smith and andrew minty for singing a song each with him. horsemouth was once again cursed by feedback and microphone placement issues - he opened with the werewolf (by michael hurley) with john smith on backing vocals and then into gentleman john (lyrics by horsemouth, music by rust groat) which went tolerably well excepting that his fingers were being mutinous and he was assailed by feedback issues. really horsemouth lost the audience for a while here and took a while to recover - the mercifully short guitar instrumental went ok as did the golden one taken solo (largely written by john smith but with some input from horsemouth) , as did I still miss someone (johnny cash) wth andrew minty of the duvals singing. but recover horsemouth did with the devil song (entirely written by horsemouth) and worldes blisse dirge (a trad.arr. - a traditional 12th century song arranged by horsemouth - in fact he'd only finished working it out the morning of the gig) and with a first airing of noah (written by john smith and his good self with the aid of book divination). horsemouth fucked up the second line and so had to comp about for a bit until he could repeat the verse again (he hopes no one noticed - john smith noticed but said it sounded good). finally horsemouth indicated the approaching solstice and got the audience to sing in the bleak midwinter (they were really good) with him singing the bass and when he forgot the words again he simply got them to repeat the first verse. by reincorporation we reach the end.

horsemouth wishes he could give you a great helpful blow by blow description of the other bands but he was off getting drunk and talking shite to people - fake teak were good in a heaven 17ish, early Depeche Mode kind of way, monteagle had a good trancey americana thing going on. in between that horsemouth was mostly out in the carpark - he thanks albino for putting him on again.

he starts referring to himself in the third person (right to buy)

the day of the gig dawns bright and clear - horsemouth has just avoided prayer for the day (always worth doing). in the courtyard a magpie is running off the pigeons.

today is the anniversary of the bringing in of the right to buy policy. not the right to build policy or the right to have enough money to buy policy or the complete supression of the value form policy etc., but a policy that decimated social housing stock by forcing councils to sell off their housing and one that enabled the government to raid the proceeds of those sales while denying councils the right to use them to create social housing to replace (or at least ameliorate) the loss of stock.

horsemouth is conflicted on how best to faff out the day (they can't expect anything productive of him surely, he's an artist and a musician) - he could go and faff it out up in hackney or he could shuffle round the foreshore of the seaside towns.

john hillaby's journey through love has reached the point where his wife dies. his watch keeps stopping. hillaby takes to drink (he always liked drink, it gets him through rainy days when hiking). all of a sudden he starts referring to himself in the third person - horsemouth knows this one, 'who's there?' asks the cyclops, 'no-one' replies odysseus. his wife was a psycho-analyst (like lampedusa's wife), he realises he knew lots of people he could ask for help but had not. he finds a cutting in his files to distress himself with, a terrible flies trapped in a web resorting to cannibalism kafka-esque nightmare (the spider by frans vans pauen). he begins the journey down the chain of books and songs and associations and to question his walking and writing.

he travels to the US to walk the appalachian trail (5000 miles of backwoods - maine to georgia) and gets lost in his memories almost immediately. the wildlife is different it makes little sense to him. the forests are already logged out. after a brush with hypothermia and lost again he makes straight for the nearest road, bus and airport out.

augustine of hippo says 'when a thing is everywhere the way to find it is not to travel but to love.' 

apparently noah (like the vikings) first released a raven to guide him to land but it did not return - then he released a dove, the loon (or great northern diver as it is known here) was apparently one of the few birds to survive the flood independently (4004 bc according to bishop usher).

horsemouth's gig

for horsemouth everything progresses keenly -he's trying to get his 'set' together for saturday night but frankly he has far too many songs (though not enough that he's co-written or written by himself it seems to him) - he could just show up and play whatever feels right until he runs out of time. this is what he does anyway really. horsemouth has two planned guest spots that's about 7 to 10 minutes right there out of a 30 minute set. 

today is a bright sunny day unless you are in the oil industry (the 'beggar my neighbour' policy of the saudi's and the americans are having harsh effects not just in russia but though by way of compensation it looks like current oil prices will bugger the shale gas extraction industry for a bit also, rendering it unprofitable). the weather looks like it will hold - horsemouth will go for a womble and a read. horsemouth is reminded that while his life is remarkably dull and comfortable other lives are marked by drama. on the balcony horsemouth's clothes are drying. 

horsemouth has gone all festive and treated himself to a stilton.

yesterday he was out looking at houses (mob handed) then he returned and was enticed round to andrew minty's by the offer of soup. they played guitar and sang for a bit. the first rendition of I still miss someone was particularly fine. 

upon hearing robinson crusoe being read aloud

oh halcyon(andon) enablers of horsemouth's book addiction:

horsemouth has started on john hillaby journey through love - previously he read his journey through britain that minty lent him, a great solitary walk from land's end to john o' groats. here hillaby is on his home turves (if that is the plural of turf) - yorkshire, highgate, kilburn, his eckchens - his little points from which he understands the world. he worries that by telling us about them he will curse them - but he does so anyway.

he starts one evening by breaking into the old reading room, a disused hut near thorgill, there he finds the remnants of a few old adventure books, stevenson, conrad, scott that the farmers and iron miners used to read. he tells us the story of an illiterate welsh blacksmith who upon hearing robinson crusoe being read aloud in welsh decided to learn to read. he notes that those who read these adventure did not then go away but stayed (at last the ones still around to talk to).

in april the snow comes, unable to journey he reads the 'wise, dispassionate' letters of chekov (like lillian hellman he's a fan). there's the possibility of a walk and talk tv series - but the stakes are higher, we know (from reading the back cover) that his wife is about to get ill and die.



the lyke walk - the walk of the dead celebrated in the lyke wake dirge runs nearby, an old dear solemnly threatens the locals that if she's not treated right she'll come back. it's a harsh pre-christian landscape, or maybe post-christian one, a world of eco-systems and botany, of death and life intermixed.



yesterday horsemouth made some progress with the worldes blisse dirge - he's playing it on the steel string guitar with a capo cunningly placed to give a buzzing noise - perhaps it's a runner. the writer, some 12th century miserablist, honestly states that life is a crock of shit and better when it's gone. it's at least mercifully brief - the song that is. (horsemouth learnt it from edward lee's music of the people - there's a version on his myspace page).

horsemouth is interested to note that cheviots being an upland sheep (and a kind of sheep increasingly popular near horsemouth's parents) are prone to scatter rather than bunch together in a flock when threatened. horsemouth wishes to surprise (and impress) the locals with his knowledge.

yesterday (bright, sunny, warm for the time of year) horsemouth walked down to greenwich (he visited the chip shop and halcyon(andon) - and then out to woolwich (via the thames barrier, seeing it from the other side as it were, turning to the river when he could), the lorries queued to use the ferry - a knackered and footsore horsemouth took the dlr home.

those books in full;
 journey through love - john hillaby - one quid
tout ubu (with illustrations livre de poche edition) - alfred jarry -one quid
pages from the goncourt journal - jules and edmond de goncourt -one quid
capitalism and material life 1400-1800 - fernand braudel - one quid.