Tuesday 5th
I see the sack of shit with the knot in the middle was on the telly last night. Apparently we’re all going to have to suck it up for a little bit longer but because we’re such a resilient nation who fought them on the beaches and in the factories we’ll soon see the back of Johnny Virus and everything will be back to tickety-boo tea and crumpets before you can say two World Wars, one World Cup. Somehow I don’t think its going to be that easy.
This morning I have to go food shopping because we don’t have any. Not any fresh stuff that is, we have tins to see us out until next Christmas but there’s only so much Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup you can eat. So its to the deserted roads I take and to a deserted Tesco’s car park I arrive. The first thing I see inside the store is a bloke without a mask on. I say bloke, I mean slug. A huge fat bastard with greasy hair, his cold purple marbled gut dangling from beneath his ill fitting black t-shirt and all the time I’m thinking to myself I thought this virus homed in on such people, its almost like the fucker’s asking for it. There must be some kind of damage to my retina here that I’m unaware of, the threat of flashbacks in the middle of the night or something, an unheralded trauma awaiting me at five am when alls quiet but I survive and fill the trolley with various comestibles all of which will keep us going for another week. Then I discover that the Bog Roll Bandits have been at it again. I ask the woman on the check out about it and she tells me that soon after the sack of shit gave his speech last night they descended like locusts and took it all away. I could understand this kind of mentality if the virus gave you the shits but unless I’m missing something I’m pretty sure that having the trots isn’t one of the symptoms.
D Coelacanth - Ghoul Town Tails Two
A5 booklet.
[contact details to come]
Yesterday morning I sat in the poang and read the second instalment of Dai Coelacanth’s Ghost Town Tales. I should be back at work but instead find myself reading about the Gravy Scientist and the Heavy Fractions Band and find myself much preferring this new found freedom. I look upon it as retirement-lite, a trial run for the real thing should I ever get there and if I do ever get there I shall spend my mornings reading such as this. A fine start to the day. Bugger the crosser and covid give me Mole Seventeen, Rat City, Alan Rammer and the Fang Thugs.
As in the first outing there is no pretence to plot structure, punctuation, beginnings, middles or ends. This is no obstacle to enjoyment though, in fact to any decent minded William Burroughs loving literature freak there is much to enjoy here. Especially the vivd imagination of Dai which is capable of producing this;
‘Jarry loves a mushroom I noticed the room upstairs contains gheng zone I could feel it when I came out of the toilet river beyond the static window they make a facsimile but exaggerate certain features to gain viewers frozen scabs organise a car pool verena tries to discourage this kind of talk suzi was editing she told everyone that she no longer needed to eat they don’t look fresh vhs crime you think people can’t sense it but they can mr lee drilled into someones face and shouted something about pie fillings.’
The ‘pie fillings’ are a constant as is ‘spanish milk’ ‘mr lee’ and dozens of other character including the mysterious ‘mole seventeen’ and his/hers/their various similarly numerated counterparts.
Amongst the many fine aspects of his work Mr Burroughs’ writing was rich enough to furnish many a band with a moniker and so it shall be with Ghoul Town Tails Two. Take your pick from these few gems;
Subliminal cemetery
Cannibal gas
Spider jail
Dunbar ming
The electrified flap doctor
Mole people in shemp masks
Bucket spiders
Such is the richness that entire stories are to be found within short paragraphs though what’s happening is how you interpret it. It could be something to do with ‘the shemp’ or ‘mr lee’ or buckets or mushrooms or that mysterious Spanish milk. I have no idea. Like Naked Lunch meets Blade Runner with all the richness that those two can conjure.
Gulping this down in one sitting takes your mind to a strange place. You read on and on as if transfixed, drugged, the characters and language enveloping your fevered mind filling it with all manner of imagery. Or you could dip in at random take a paragraph and etch in to your skull these words;
‘grisly tape cult they just sleep and drool sprocket collector not even pagan satellite …’
http://chocolatemonk.co.uk/nonmonk.html
Wednesday 6th
A bright and frosty morning and the pavements are quiet and almost ice free so we take it steady up the hill and around and past the car thats a storage space, the houses that seem to take forever to have their extensions built, the drug dealers house [so called because it sits behind a high wooden fence and has a padlock and chain through it] only occasionally having to cross the road to keep a distance from fellow walkers. No joggers today so let us assume that they are all hard at work saving the nations economy from rupture.
Nearer to home there’s a road that passes the school that is all uphill and has several speed bumps set in to it. Approaching us at quite some speed is an empty low loading van, the kind used for transporting broken down vehicles. As it passes us I see that the driver is a young lad who is gripping the steering wheel tightly with both hands while bouncing around in the seat like he’s riding a bucking bronco. He hits each speed bump full on, the van rattling over each bump with increasing volume as it approaches us, almost deafening us in the process.
When a service bus appears we sing the ‘how many people are on the bus song’ which goes something like ‘how many people are on the bus, on the bus, on the bus’ to no tune in particular. As yet we’ve never seen more than three. Most of the time they’re empty or have just the one solitary passenger.
At the top of the park we find that we dawdle for longer than usual as the sun is warming us nicely. We stand and watch a robin, two blackbirds, a ground feeding bird that might be a fieldfare while at the bottom of the park an inquisitive squirrel approaches us to see if we have anything for it. We don’t and walk home. I can almost see the disappointment in its face. No rats to be seen. Maybe they killed them all off. I don’t know.
Constance/Nyoukis - Whit?
Chocolate Monk. Choc.500 boxset.
50 copies.
Contains:
Constance/Nyoukis - Where Warble Ends/Minatures for Joan. Split lathe cut 7"
Constance/Nyoukis - The Glue Tank/The Great Gut Fixed. Split cassette
There Goes Blood Stereo - CDR
Your Mind Hiss - Cassette
A6 pocketbook - Constance / The Click Inbetween - Nyoukis / Failing Lights
Three photographs
Two button badges
It was at a Chameleon gig in Nottingham a few years back that a well refreshed Nyoukis sat down beside me and related the tale of how Blood Stereo had been followed around America by Susan Boyle. Not literally of course but via the numerous billboards that carried her image. This after the mighty Subo found fame with her singing through tv show Britain’s Got Talent and had crossed the Pond to conquer America. ‘SHE’S FROM FUCKING BLACKBURN!’ he shouted into my left ear at a volume the whole room could hear ‘AND I’M FRAE FUCKING BLACKBURN. WHAT ARE THEY FUCKING ODDS MAAAAAN?’ Then he began singing a song that I cant for the life of me remember the name of. When I say sing it was more like a full throated roar and one that I very much enjoyed. A personal performance and a remarkable one at that which still, after all these years of gig going is one of the highlights, even though it wasn’t part of the gig. Whether Nyoukis remembers it is doubtful but that really doesn’t matter.
I must have seen Blood Stereo numerous times over the years but I shall see them no more for the plug has been pulled. Yes ladies and gentlemen its time to don the black and mourn and at the same time give thanks for all that has been gratefully received. To celebrate/commiserate Chocolate Monk have put together a box of choice items; a split single, a split cassette, a split CDR of reworked Blood Stereo material and a tribute comp by people who Chocolate Monk assure us we’ll have never heard of. There’s also an A6 perfect bound booklet containing Constance’s surreal artwork and Nyoukis’s vibrant cartoon heads, several photomontages and a couple of button badges for good measure. Just don’t think you’ll be able to follow the link and purchase one as they’ve all long since gone.
‘Whit?’ is probably the response they got when news of Blood Stereo’s demise went public. Its what you’ll hear north of the border. Probably in Blackburn where they’re already laying out the wreaths. Whit? Is a good way to bow out though. I delight in Constance’s Sun Ra like solo on ‘The Glue Tank’ on her use of garbled vocal loops and spacey electronics on ‘Where Warble Ends’. On ‘Minatures for Joan’ Nyoukis blows ever so gently over the top of empty milk bottles as a ghostly Wurlitzer does battle with rattled ducks. As ever when you listen to Blood Stereo you enter realms that seem to be other audio dimensions. Its where the avant-garde meets the kitchen sink and the pubs and parks of Brighton. I swear they could make a decent album while stood at a bus stop. For all I know they may have already done so. The thirty minutes of reworked material in ‘There Goes Blood Stereo’ is a woozy head trip where everything in your peripheral vision goes blurry before you black out and fall into a soft bed and dream sweet surreal dreams of an unfolding collage full of gulls, moans and reversed Minions, a foghorns lament for clanking metal and the grinding axles of wooden carts full of plague victims, where Dictaphones meet the saliva gathering in your jowls, where drones and unearthly sounds slither and come to rest on a bed of Kagel clockwork toys. Oh the joys.
So thats it then for Blood Stereo but surely not the last we’ll see of the Karen Constance and Dylan Nyoukis or, heaven forfend Chocolate Monk. Because y’know, things have been shitty for too long now for me to take this kind of news.
http://chocolatemonk.co.uk/available.html
Saturday 9th
What should have happened is for Donald and Melania to chomp down on a couple of cyanide pills before Donald Jr shoots them in the head while coked out of fucking brains before then dousing them with petrol, sorry gasoline and setting them both on fire in the Rose Garden with Fox TV news cameras present and a maskless Sean Hannity asking Donald Jr if he’s really ANTIFA in disguise. But thats not going to happen and it really pisses me off.
The last couple of days spent in an ever increasing spiral of incredulity as to what’s happening in Washington DC and the fact that there’s someone holding the most important post in the world who is obviously mentally ill. Doom scrolling through Twitter I find a Trump supporter who says its all Pelosi’s fault that people got into her office because she failed to lock the door behind her, like she was sat in her office with her feet up when the shit hit the fan. I feel like saying something but remember Mark Twain’s famous dictum; Don’t argue with stupid people, they’ll only drag you down to their level and beat you with their experience.
Then I awake this morning to find that the Orange Man Child has been chucked off Twitter and that outside its a beautiful winters day. I’m not much of a winter fan and to some extent dread the long dark days, the wet, the cold, the fight to keep body and soul intact before the arrival of spring. Today is glorious though so I’m off out alone with crispy footsteps across a park thats covered in frost an inch deep watching the blackbirds rootling around in the frozen leaf debris looking for breakfast. Its early, very quiet and still, not a breath of wind, the sky a blue going to white and when I get to the top of Scholes Lane the sun hits me full in the face and its blinding. I walk past people defrosting their cars, people with their bonnets up trying to put life into batteries that have succumbed to the cold. My favourite winter car drivers and you always see one or two, are those who scrape a postcard shaped oblong into their windscreens before drive off at speed, their windscreen wipers going full bore. I once saw somebody pour boiling water on to the windscreen of a car that was frozen solid, I stood and waited for the inevitable crack but miraculously it never came. Maybe they were on to something?
Last night I finished the second volume of JG Ballard’s short story collection while listening to Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No 3 in F-Sharp Minor. They seemed well matched. The Scriabin at times, especially during the last three movements sounding like Cecil Taylor in full flight. Then some Beethoven piano sonatas as I’ve been reading about him lately not realising that he’d spent his later deaf lug years frequenting the less than salubrious drinking dens of Vienna pulling out of his pocket a conversation book and pen so that he could communicate with his fellow drinkers. This brings to mind the age old question of which of the five senses would you choose to give up should the situation be forced upon you? To which I’d probably say smell with hearing the last to go. Then imagine being a genius composer and having to spend the last twenty-eight years of your life as deaf as a post. Thats some kind of torture.
I’ve not seen that many online gigs since the onset of the plague. In fact up until today I’d only seen one, that been Graham Dunning way back in March/April last year but now I’ve seen two. Or one and a bit to be precise as there’s still two more to come of the three concerts featuring the work of Morton Feldman as broadcast live from Wigmore Hall. Watching someone pay Morton Feldman’s piano works at 11.30 on a Saturday morning is one of those things you’d thought would never happen but we live in strange times. The effect on me is almost transcendental. I find myself watching Petroc Trelany introduce the pianist Kerry Yong and the repertoire he’s about to perform that for the most part sounds like an architects to do list: Projection 1, Extensions 3, Durations 4, Intersection 4 …. I carry the bluetooth speaker around the house with me as I reheat some lamb broth and defrost a tea cake. Mrs Fisher is readying herself for a Radio Leeds interview about her new book and although not nervous the playing of Feldman is obviously grating ‘What the bloody hell is that you’re listening to?’
Sunday 10th
We have new neighbours across the street. The Monkey Crunchers moved out while it was snowing and the new people moved in under the cover of darkness. When we pass the house this morning we notice that in the garden there’s a three foot tall concrete Gandalf outside their front door.
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