horsemouth 'whataboutist' ('remember, remember, the fifth of november')

morning peoples. 

'starmer is boring but not corrupt' it was put to him. (er. except when him and his cronies were sabotaging the previous labour leader but we will let that go because it has indeed gone by). 

and then it was put to him that he was guilty of 'whataboutism' or 'whataboutery'. 

he replied that things happen (yes), but other things happen also, and it is permissible to go 'but what about...' because the other things may be a part of the first thing (a decay in wider political life for example). 

horsemouth has heard sten raise boris and lady nut nut's home decoration habit (paid for by anonymous donors - no danger of access or political influence being purchases there!) on the back of paterson MP's double my salary scheme, is this not 'whataboutery'? (or whatever the scope limiting measure is called). 

horsemouth is glad boris has been knocked back on his first attempt to knobble the regulator but he will soon be back at it (and probably, when the dust has settled, with labour assistance).

horsemouth's but what about? was claudia webbe MP who conducted a campaign of harassment against someone she suspected of having an affair with her partner (including threatening to thrown acid in their face). for this she received a suspended sentence and community service (which strikes horsemouth as unduly lenient). when you look at her website she is making all the right noises for someone of horsemouth's political persuasion and there she is ascending the greasy pole up from islington councillor onto the labour national executive. it only goes to show you can't tell very much about people from who they say they re

sproatley smith (and the weirdshire lot) have put up a compilation album of various artists who have played weirdshire events at the babar cafe (and very good it is too). horsemouth thinks it's a great 'scene' alula down, haress etc. and recommends you buy it , similarly he recommends the stuff from leigh on sea (the owl service etc.), the stuff stick in the wheel put out, gwenifer raymond's take on american primitive. 

meanwhile what is happening with the musicians...

'remember, remember the fifth of november...'

because it's bandcamp friday. (rather than the day on which we celebrate a conspiracy to blow up parliament rather a long time ago). 

on this day bandcamp waive their revenue share so more of the money goes to the musicians themselves (and they are hungry if not technically a famine). remember you can get the whole musicians of bremen digital discography  (and that's all the albums, EPs and digital singles you can see here) for a mere  £11.25 GBP or, if you've done that already, maybe you could purchase the weirdshire compilation or some of the music horsemouth has recommended above. 

horsemouth is very bad at this self-promotion lark and facebook and blogspot are obviously not the places to do it. 

horsemouth is coming to the end of milan kundera's immortality a book based around a (private life) sex/ (public life) fame dichotomy. if horsemouth is honest he has always been a shy boy (and now he is rapidly becoming old) and has not really had enough of either to satisfy him. he suspects he's pretty much had his lot (of either sex or fame) and from here on he will have to make music because he enjoys making it. 

his immediate task is the peter, paul and enza stuff, to negotiate a playing of some of  pete's songs (to their mutual satisfaction) and get a version of enza's loops of heaven  up and running.  

now the world is set to rights we can get on with the music

horsemouth (man of leisure) went round to pete's for the reformation of PPE (peter, paul and enza). 

he took the hummingbird copy (tuned standard) and the banjolin (just to play through high-rise strutter's ball). the resonator is out at howard's. pete has some kind of epiphone hummingbird copy (so horsemouth compared guitars - how could you not? - pete wins)

they ate (a gyro each, horsemouth had the vegetarian equivalent with halloumi). horsemouth and pete drank (a little).  

they took a look at enza (and catasto/fille's) loops of heaven and then at peter's are you still watching? walking in the  woods, captain migraine, good morning sunshine, isn't it so. horsemouth faked up catastro/fille's guitar part from loops and enza sang and they began to get that one working. pete's songs are good and memorable, horsemouth thinks not all will survive into the set (but most of them will). there's a fair amount to learn that he can just sit around with pete and learn.  captain migraine they played last time (2 years ago) and the others they worked on a little before the pandemic. of course horsemouth doesn't play guitar like pete so there will have to be some allowance made for this. 

horsemouth thinks they should bring back johnny remember me (but with johnny leyton's lyrics) and the get carter theme from their first gig. these went well. 

the joke (peter paul and enza / peter, paul and mary) is that they are going to do puff the magic dragon (but horsemouth doesn't see it, it would be indulgent). 

as horsemouth said he's really keen on having some songs sung in french/ spanish/ italian (hell swedish and russian are even possible). 

when horsemouth had made it home he had a chat with pete online. horsemouth (from his position as a proletarian internationalist) coated off the british (pete said he quite liked them). 

of course now the world is set to rights we can get on with the music. 

accessions diary and a lost cat

horsemouth has just failed to find any of his memories sufficiently well written to deserve republishing. he has his coffee. daylight (such as it is) is leaking through the windows. a year ago he was crowing his (temporary) victory over the end of facebook's notes tool (in that he had published a few extra posts after it was supposed to have ended). it will take him until november 10th to establish a regular daily blogging habit on blogspot

actually the daylight is fairly decent. it's just that the sun has difficulty in these winter times in making it over the houses opposite (and will have further problems as more go in for loft extensions).  the council have been round planting more trees (which will provide useful shade in the hotter summer months). 

as horsemouth has noted both next door and the basement flat two doors down and the house on the corner of the street have suffered from flooding (this is discouraging horsemouth from contemplating any basement extensions within the communal endeavour). horsemouth needs to hurry up and write something for the communal endeavour (not that anybody will read it you understand). but even if his fellow members don't read it the writing of it will help horsemouth formulate his thought more clearly. 

accessions diary. potlatch book box by daubney park. 

• the craftsman (richard sennet)
• elizabeth costello (j.m. coetzee)
• blueprint (theresia enzensberger)

so that's horsemouth's reading sorted for the next little while (he still has to complete milan kundera's somewhat slight immortality - or set it aside). he's had a bit of a run on the coetzee, the craftsman is he thinks a celebration of craft (precisely in the era when it is most destroyed by industrial production), the blueprint is a fictional book about the bauhaus (so it features gropius, kandinsky etc.). 

yesterday horsemouth was out and about looking for a friend's cat. they put up posters in the neighbourhood. they talked to people. as usual horsemouth likes talking to people. he has great faith in them. they talked to the dog walking dudes in the park (the guys who feed the foxes), to the dude who drives over from gospel oak to help his son with the dog walking, they talked to a dude from the boats off scrap metalling, educators and people who work in youth centres (who too posters), the youth took photos of the poster on their phones, the young professionals recommended an app, people offered advice. 

apparently there's a turkish dude on the estate who feeds the strays - he's probably worth a chat. 

the cat is a good looking boy (and neutered) he's probably just found a house with better central heating and posher cat food.  

horsemouth is listening his way through a h.p.lovecraft inspired podcast series from bbc radio 4. jack parsons just surfaced (together with l.ron hubbard). 

12 years ago horsemouth was out and about in hackney of an evening and drunk. on this occasion he manages not to fall over and smack his face open (but it's a close run thing). jesus just look at him.

oncle yanco 'le merveilleux' (jean varda)

horsemouth is up late  (jesus he really is turning onto a lazy sod in his 'retirement').  he's finding his 'retirement' a bit boring (he may have to find something else to do). he's a bit shocked by this realisation.

last night a phonecall from his mum with added radiophonic sound courtesy of water on the wires. it seems like phone communication with his parents will be cut when it rains. his dad is off to the dentist and his mum wants to go see the doctor but can't. 

Oncle Yanco from JP Achard on Vimeo.

he's enjoying agnes varda's film of her oncle yanco and his floating village (similarly there was a grauniad article about californian boat dwellers). at one time he though gentrification was so intense that we would be driven off the land (this may well yet turn out to be the case). at some point oncle yanco (jean varda) makes reference to the importance of 'le merveilleux' (the marvellous) to him, this should be understood in the french sense as a mixture of myth and fable and folk tale. he discusses the importance of his collage art.

horsemouth's resonator is over at howard's (the great clanking beast that it is) so he has got the peasold classical guitar out of its gig bag and has been playing that. he's been thinking about his putative gig at water into beer  in february (which as howard points out is a long way off), he's also thinking about the PPE (peter, paul and enza) reunion session wednesday - he can't take the resonator (he'll probably tune the hummingbird copy standard and take that).

now the PPE line up is double bass, guitar and vocals so horsemouth is interested in playing a jazzier set than he would do normally, something slightly chanson. last time they were opening with the get carter theme music and including the cuban spanish a la luna yo mi voy,  peter will bring his tunes (which are good and memorable). enza will bring stuff she wants to cover.  

yesterday he played his way through - something's on your mind, sometimes our dreams, painbirds, katie cruel, the entertainer, ace of spades, high rise strutter's ball, honeysuckle rose and paper moon. he had a look at autumn leaves. at one point he had the guitar parts for st.louis blues worked up maybe he could revisit that. he also had guitar parts for some french songs worked up (but he has largely forgotten them). these will either be good for PPE or for his upcoming musicians of bremen gig. 

now autumn leaves/ les feuilles mortes gives the potential of singing a song in both french and english. it is a song of regret and misery at the passing of love affairs with (as horsemouth has noted before) slightly different metaphors employed for the passing of time (autumn leaves/ footprints in the sand). it will take him some time to work up - he has a set of chords from an eric clapton version (!) that may work (and some different ones in a teach yourself jazz book). 

horsemouth can't (as yet) play jazz. he lacks the musical knowledge and his ears aren't wonderful. that said he likes the idea of working with double bass (and the idea of singing songs in more than one language). 

 

maybe ah... (in the time of the pandemic)

horsemouth awakes with one of howard's new songs rolling round his head (well that's not true, it didn't start until he was well into his first coffee). it's a very tyrannosaurus rex type tune (and it's said that they were ripping off the incredible string band). horsemouth is now hearing a wordless vocal on the tune, it would be a shame to miss a trick.

other tunes in howard's new set are very heron-ish (which in horsemouth's book is a good thing). 

horsemouth opines it is always a good idea to have another pair of ears on the track (to tell you what is working and what is not working). we are all of us in love with our own creations and stop our ears to the truth about them until it is too late. (your daughter cannot act mrs. worthington)

that said in any group of songs there are always the songs that turn out to have worked and the ones that turn out either not to have been that interesting in the first place. then there are the others where the execution has been botched and not fixed. 

there are (of course) albums where there is not a single bad track on it (forever changes by love, I just can't stop it by the beat, and agents of fortune by the blue oyster cult horsemouth would argue). to make such a record would require real dedication and focus and luck. other than roadhawks (an assembled and through mixed compilation) horsemouth cannot think of a hawkwind album that is reliably good all the way through. 

for a strange moment yesterday howard's photo on the cover of volume three started to resemble eric cantona (horsemouth has no idea what this means). 

soon (november 11th) it will be six months since horsemouth last worked (like actually worked). it is 3 months since he last had the opportunity of working. 3 months since he parted company with his employer. 

he was prepared (in part) for his new economic inactivity by the time of the pandemic and of course by his lifelong habit of being undemployed (and taking the long (academic) summer holiday - actually longer than the academics or school teachers). for horsemouth it was a great relief to find a job where he could just plod on and still make enough to live but after 25 years they took it away from him. now there was a time when horsemouth had plenty of other things on the go but he's not tempted if he doesn't have to (and certainly not while the pandemic itself continues to drag on). 

horsemouth's parents both retired early. his dad it suited (he vastly preferred pottering about and doing the garden to working - he always had an an anti-authoritarian streak to him) for his mother it was a bit more difficult and mixed. she did a number of part-time jobs before settling down into it. they are the classic post war prosperity baby boomer DI2K (double income two kids) ascend the property ladder and retire comfortably family. 

horsemouth is not certain that retirement will suit him. the hobby (music) may not be active enough to keep him interested and the communal endeavour may be just too fucking annoying. 

a friend retired at 60 (but then the pandemic happened). horsemouth wonders what he is making of it. he seems to be doing a lot of painting and going on walks (er. and making music).  

horsemouth's getting money out in advance on his work's pension in a lump sum will turn out to have been a bad idea unless horsemouth drops dead before he hits 67 or unless he invests it in doge coin (or similar cryptocurrency bollocks). 

towards the end of the week he goes for a coffee with martin (to sort things out), wednesday there's supposed to be the reformation of PPE (peter, paul and enza) after a two year hiatus. horsemouth should get on and have a think about the tunes he wants to play. 

don't fear the reaper

in the celtic system of days the evening is the start of the new day. 

dark precedes light.

based on this system j.g. frazier (the golden bough) argued that samhain was the beginning of the celtic new year. 

so this evening as darkness falls the new year begins. 

wheras beltane is attention paid to growth and new things samhain is about attention to death and the old things. the dead come close. feasting and fires of purification. if you are watching halloween as horsemouth watches it you will have watched up to the end of michael myer's escape (and will now watch the rest of it and halloween II  tonight). 

this year there's a strange thing with the clocks also. 

horsemouth once announced a scheme to play his gigs in relation (as close as he could) to the wheel of the year, the two solstices, two equinoxes and the four celtic quarter days. (he has to some extent managed it and got in an additional friday 13th). 

horsemouth is of a gothy disposition.

 

dana's faith (mia and julliet - two teenage girls) review don't fear the reaper. they truly get it (except that they can't face the darkness of the lyrics and render it a song about the acceptance of death). to horsemouth it always seemed a song about a suicide pact or vampires. 

'it's so creepy. but in a good way.'

they are right to identify the guitar solo as ASTOUNDING (and to praise the drummer). horsemouth has extended his blue oyster cult position from black and white (the first three albums) and the odd few tracks from the corporate rock years (cultosaurus  and fire of unknown origin) to an agents of fortune position. he finds it an almost perfect rock album. 

it is three full months since horsemouth even thought about working. he still has not fully sorted out his finances fully, nor got a new passsport, nor come up with a plan. he needs to move on to the new thing. 

sylvie has died (so people say). horsemouth remembers her dancing in front of lee scratch perry. he remembers snogging her in the three crowns and them being ushered out by the bar man. he wishes her well on her journey across the rainbow bridge. 

yesterday howard was round. the sun shone and they sat out on the front porch drinking beer and listening to music. howard played recordings of five demo tracks for the next musicians of bremen album (probably a howard solo effort). they were good. 

horsemouth lent howard the resonator largely because he had recorded one of the demo tracks with it and it had sounded good. howard seemed to be angling after another electric guitar (but without an amp they are kind of pointless suggests horsemouth). 

howard (being a practical, can-do sort of person) helped horsemouth process the recent communal endeavour related difficulties - they are now on a new path. horsemouth should get out that little bluffer's guide to project management and check through swots and pestles (and risk analysis - someone is certain to demand a risk analysis). 

this is still occupying horsemouth's head way too much. he will call andrew minty and get him to intercede and gradually assemble a safer work environment. 

horsemouth just saw a magpie. a bird that is both black and white. outside it is a rainy grey day. 

'I am charging you with murder.' 'oh good.' (things can only get better)

so horsemouth is gone (just imagine that). how will he be remembered? a doughty warrior for social justice? an annoying dilettante and drone? mostly harmless?

you will decide and he will no longer be there to importune you to listen to his music or share his literary enthusiasms or political outrages. 

he will leave his writing and his songs and mixes stored on digital platforms (digital platforms that that will no doubt become deserted zombie -infested shopping malls within a decade). there will be a few CDs remaining, a box full of unrevealing diaries. 

eight years ago horsemouth was celebrating because 6 years worth of his old style myspace blogs had been ransomed and returned to him (having been disappeared by them without warning one fine morning a year before). now it sits as a zip file on an old disused computer (the netbook) and as an attachment in email account. 

horsemouth's great library of alexandria he is already thinking about dispersing - he needs to get more mobile. it's a pity. his room looks great again. this time it is very cosy (like mole's houses in wind in the willows).

a year ago he was watching ingmar bergman, two years ago reading duras and bukowski, three years ago reading the journal of a victorian poacher, four years ago he was beset by his anxieties.

last night horsemouth was beset by his anxieties but also his rages. a woman is charged with murder (she has stabbed her husband to death and left him to die in the kitchen) 'I am charging you with murder.' 'oh good.' she replies. this is what sealed her fate. refusing to apologise or show any contrition.  horsemouth recognises this rage and frustration.

in general though horsemouth's strategy is to avoid people who want to play life's dramas turned up to 11. if someone annoys you or is rude to you move out of their way.  step to the side. both the wife and the husband had the chance to save themselves simply by moving away and embracing poverty and loneliness. for horsemouth passion is akin to madness. 

as he noted 6 years ago: 'horsemouth has more respect for self-control than he does for rage but he cannot always do it. he cannot always rein it in and yet he does.'

he respects people who can throw down. he's always found it difficult and he's never been any good at it. so he tries not to.  

if horsemouth is honest with you he is finding his life of leisure difficult (mind you he found working difficult as well).  this was the pattern last time he tried it. as long as he had (voluntary) work he was fine when he decided to give that up things became difficult. 

once again, and the thought has occurred to him before, horsemouth is thinking about getting shot of some tasks. he needs to complete his pre-retirement checklist (making sure he can get at all his savings would be number one). this will tell him how quickly he needs to move. 

as you can see his thinking is a bit inconsistent. 

today howard comes round to borrow the resonator. he has used it on one tune and likes the sound of it. (it does sound good horsemouth has to admit). horsemouth could have taken it out there but he thinks it is important to let howard get on with writing playing and singing the tunes to his own satisfaction without horsemouth sticking his oar in. if there is work for horsemouth to do on them (and there may not be) it is better if he does it later rather than earlier. this laissez-faire strategy may not work for all the tunes (but it will work for most of them).