PAUL GIOVANNI INVENTED FISH ISLAND SHOCK!!!!....

Current mood: IN CHARGE!!!
Category: IN CHARGE!!! Music

Well shit....

I've nailed the website again and it's all thanks to readers of last nights blog....

Yes boss, after finally realising I hated the old front page layout, I put out the request for aid, and it came in, and then I knew what needed to be done...

A collage...

As it stands, it's in no way finished yet.

What I'm gonna do is make it like one of those 'Where's Wally' things crossed with an Heironymous Bosch

So...

I'm so impressed with yesterdays contributions, I think (like President Musharraf of Pakistan) I might give up my dictatorial kinda one man government and set up some kind of a free and easy Giovan-commune here on Fish Island...

Yes boss, there was a wonderful space on the market, just opposite my current pad. £400 a week all newly done out and begging to be turned into something...

Until recently it was being used as a breaking yard for luxury cars and since discovering it, I've been having visions of turning it into some kind of horrendous art commune - the kind of place that will end up destroying many heads, relationships and hearts in the name of art...

But thankfully, I've been down that road before...


There's a lot of these kind of places coming online on Fish Island at the moment - this website is almost completely dedicated to Fishy Artsy studios...

Basically, the whole fucking joint is being turned into some kind of alt-art heaven, just a canals width from the next Olympic stadium...

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to point out that i was here 3 fucking years ago....

Yes boss, I moved into these shoddily built yuppie flats before this building was even bastard well finished, before any Olympic decision was made, and before the place became the new fucking Greenwich Village?!?!

I AM THEREFORE THE GODFATHER OF FISH ISLAND!!!!

AND THE MAYOR!!!!

AND THE CHIEF!!!

AND THE FUCKING BOSS!!!!

Currently listening : Killing Joke By Killing Joke Release date: 2005-07-26

Ummm.....

Current mood: OOGA BOOGA!!
Category: OOGA BOOGA!! Music

When i awoke this morning, I felt a bit bad about blasting off at Kevin Shields last night...

Yes boss, remorse isn't something that comes often to PG£, but I did feel some over MBV.

Thing is I tend to think everyone is as ruthlessly ambitious as I am, and it isn't always the case.

Therefore, in the warm light of day, I can't help but reason that Shields probably is the kind who doesn't give much of a fuck about how many records he sells - it's all about chasing the inner sounds and trying to grasp at something...

That I don't like what he makes, doesn't really warrant the overly fierce and cynical approach I took last night...


Anyway, I've spent this last little while doing CHG9 and further researching and developing the Giovan-shop which will be online before too very long.

I now have the basic mechanics and am working out how to work them and make it look nice..

Yes boss, my entry into calculated and crude Giovan-merchandising isn't some kind of sick joke, it's a necessity of the modern independent writer and I intend to be the brand leader!!

Therefore, when SAVE PAUL GIOVANNI £RD MERCHANDISING!!!! is released, it'll be crammed full of limited edition works, memorabilia and any other old crap I can pretend to turn into art in the name of making COLD HARD CASH!!!!

I'll also be putting my the Giovan-record and book collection up for sale...

Basically, I need space, and all the good stuff is in my head or hard drives anyway...


Oh, and does anyone have any ideas for improvements on my websites front page?!?! I'm going through one of those spells where I think it looks like a dogs breakfast THAT NEEDS SERIOUS WORK!!!!

In essence, I like the pictorial nature of it, but feel greater compactness might be the order of the day...

What do you think???

Currently listening : What’s Going on By Marvin Gaye Release date: 2003-01-14

My Bloody Valet Service....

Current mood: I NEVER INTENDED RELEASING IT.....
Category: I NEVER INTENDED RELEASING IT..... Music

Another old friend of both Giovanni & Quoasis, Alan McGee, has been putting his oar in recently...

Apparently McGee has used his myspace blog to label the reformation of My Bloody Valentine as being 'nostalgic cabaret'...

Well, I'm not generally enamoured with McGee's musical opinions and choices of late, his shaky handy with TB, or his attitude when his son started wishing cancer on the readers of this blog - but for once I've got to agree with him...

Yes boss, for me, MBV are one of those 'cool' bands who are impossible to dislike without your whole integrity being called into question.

They have an aura and mystique that draws more knowing nods than a years Freemasonry..

But I'm afraid that despite trying to 'get' them on many occasions and respecting and liking bits of what they've done to a point, I don't and have never quite got them or their HUGE rep...

Yes boss, the way I see it, there are some bands who will come out with an LP that's considered great and not try and follow it, and there are some who try and fail - and I will always prefer the ones who try and fail, to those who bottle it and claim 'intention' or 'crazed genius' or 'it was because we never wanted to'....

My guess as to what really happened with MBV, is that despite what Shields said and says, he's become completely and utterly shit scarred of releasing anything significant - the pressure got too much, he blew his mind and upon recovering it, he doesn't know what to do...

He essentially knows that unless he produces the musical equivalent of the bible, his next LP will ensure his myth will fall into tatters, so he ain't gonna take the risk...

He's joined the group that includes or has included Kraftwerk & Axl Rose and the Stone Roses - big acts, that have prevaricated for too long, thus making critical and mythical success close to impossible to achieve...

For me, the lesson of MBV for me has therefore always been about alt.PR and mystique..

AKA

Playing or honestly being the tortured genius is the shortest cut to credibility....

Currently listening : Dope for the Robot By Metamatics Release date: 2001-03-27

You’ve gotta roll with it.

Current mood: WOOF WOOF!!!
Category: WOOF WOOF!!! Music

I'm not a fan of Quoasis...

A few singles aside, I think they suck longer and larger than a 1000 Girls Aloud gigs, and I feel sure we can all look forward to this new 'psychedlic' LP of theirs with the kind of belly laughs we usually reserve for a VERY VERY FUNNY COMEDIAN!!!

'Highlights' are said to include their very FIRST remix...??!??!

Yes boss, about 10 years after The Chemical Brothers were contemporary, Quoasis have apparently roped in 'The Brothers' to work them out...

But....

as much as I dislike the tedious monotone of Quoasis's music, I'd certainly pay to see Noel and Liam talk. When they get going, they are true and sharp entertainment in every definition of the word, and on this weeks Radio 1, Noel once again showed his credentials...

Yes boss, coming in well off the ropes after that Jay Z mauling, Gallagher has somehow managed to land some great, though sometimes cruel punches, on the noses of Amy, Ronson and The Kaiser Chiefs, and I repeat them here in the interests of amusing myself...


'After re-naming Scouting for Girls "Scouting For Idiots" and comparing Winehouse to a "destitute horse," the guitarist joked that Ronson had "ruined" many of his peers' careers.

"He [Ronson] wants to write his own tunes instead of ruining everyone else's," he said. "Mark Ronson needs to learn three chords on the guitar and write a tune."

Referring to Kaiser Chiefs, whose forthcoming new album 'Off With Their Heads' Ronson has co-produced, Gallagher said:

"I did drugs for 18 years and I never got that bad as to say, 'You know what? I think the Kaiser Chiefs are brilliant.'"

Currently listening : Midrange By Dykehouse Release date: 2004-05-04

Primal Scream plan new riot....

Current mood: HAHAHAHAAAAAAA
Category: HAHAHAHAAAAAAA Music

Regular readers will remember my blasting off once or twice in the past at the ever so middle class rock act that is Primal Scream...

Yes boss, whatever this aging cabaret act were in the past (and I personally doubt they were ever really that much), I fail to see how anyone can see their circa 2008 roadshow as being anything other than a very well polished and lightly gilded turd floating down the stream of mediocrity towards the big sedimentation tank in the sea...

At least that's my opinion...

But whatever you think they are, one thing is for damn clear - Bobby and the creeks are certainly not anything approaching dangerous, raw, rock 'n' roll, vital, revolutionary or any of the other words that are continually attached to them by their evermore sycophantic and brainless press and nothing illustrates my issue with them better than the following...


Bobby (my brother has a budgie called Bobby - it wasn't named after Gillespie but it should have been) and the boys are about to embark on the NME Rock 'N' Riot tour...

HA HA HAAAAA!!!!! HA HA!!!! I hear you laugh out loud - the words 'NME', 'Rock' and 'Riot' in the same sentence?!?!? But that's nonsense!!!!

YES IT IS!!! But add the words 'Primal Scream Headlining!' and slip this list of rock horror SHOW ME THE MONEY £$£$ VENUES!!! in...

Oxford Academy (November 20)
Cardiff University (21)
Bristol Academy (23)
Southampton Guildhall (24)
Reading Hexagon (25)
Nottingham, Rock City (27)
London Hammersmith Apollo (28)
Norwich UEA (30)
Sheffield Academy (December 1)
Brighton Dome (2)
Birmingham Academy (4)
Cambridge Corn Exchange (5)
Leeds Academy (8)
Newcastle Academy (9)
Manchester Apollo (11)
Glasgow SECC (13)

and you've got the best joke going AKA the easiest shot for a Giovan-tirade for some time!!!


Yes boss, lets be frank - this is a FUCKING STUPIDLY FUNNY FARCE!!!

We're talking a bunch of middle aged, middle class men, pretending to be dangerous rock and roll stars playing about the most corporate set of 'small' venues the UK has to offer and calling the tour the NME Rock 'N' Riot tour

HA HA HA HAAAAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!

HA HAHAAAAAAAAHHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!


Now, don't get me wrong here, I don't object to Bobby and the boys getting themselves a nice new set of bricks and a couple of hundred grand in the bank per year for their working efforts...

I WANT THE WORLD TO BE FAT SMUG AND RICH!!!

Neither do I mind the 'Scream complaining about the LIVE music being too loud in their local pub, because it disturbs their sleeping children...

I don't even mind Rolling Stones tribute acts playing to people who enjoy hearing that kind of thing - each to their goddamn own...


What I do object to the facade and lies of it all...

Yes boss, it's very fake and horrible..

I mean why not be honest Bob?!?!?

Call your tour the 'Boring old men saving money for their new extension and kids school fees tour '08'.

At least there'd be a joke there and it wouldn't be on yourselves...


Yes boss, you hear all these folk queuing up to lay into the likes of Simon Cowell for being money grabbing obsequious cunts - and when I saw him winking and fawning his way around the goodish contenders on last nights opening X-Factor, I can well understand why he's HATED....

COWELL IS INDEED A HORRIBLE AND SUCCESSFUL CUNT!!!!

But Cowell is at least an HONEST and successful cunt - he's exactly what he says himself to be - an 'in it for the money' music business freak of nature...


Meanwhile Bobby and the boys are LYING FAKE ASSED CUNTS!!!! who piddle one thing and poo another...


So, I therefore say:

Primal Scream: If you're gonna be fully paid up members of the shiney haired club, please don't come out with all this 'RIOT AND REVOLUTION!!!' chitter chatter..

It's false, boring and stupid....

It's the kind of thing Cliff Richard would do if he were short of a few bob..

It's AN ABSOLUTE AND COMPLETE FUCKING EMBARRASSMENT!!!

PLEASE STOP IT NOW!!!!

Currently listening : Introducing Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci By Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci Release date: 1996-08-20

G-Day...

Current mood: JOY GLOWING....
Category: JOY GLOWING.... Life

Today started with the Mens Sprint race...

Yes boss, one thing I like very much with the Olympics being in China is that I wake up daily to instant high quality LIVE sport!!!

Thing is I always suffer a shaky opening seconds to every day...

If I've been in a particularly deep sleep, am drunk or generally confused, it can take quite a little while to organise my brain as to what's really about to happen and what isn't...

I then have to evaluate the likely days events and until that's done, I can't really progress...

Therefore, having something as no-nonsense and practical as Olympic grade sports to contend with, makes everything a lot easier - especially when there's something taxing ahead.

Yes boss, rather than thinking or worrying about that taxing thought, I can simply tune into thinking and worrying about who's going to make it around the track the quickest, whilst adding myself a few 'spazzing friends' and drinking the required number of cups of tea to start the brain running....


So...

Today was laden with a few potentially tricky events, the most important of which was the second ultrasound scan of the Baby G...

Yes boss, it's 5 months in, the bump's growing and today was G-day..


Now, I've never understood why people want to wait until the day of birth before knowing the sex of their child.

The way I see it is we've already had 5 months of speculation and evaluation of the merits and guessing preferences of boy vs girl, and that's quite enough to be going on with....

Yes boss, knowing this basic fact makes preparing a good deal easier and given that life always seems to throw up a good side order of chaos, I like to eliminate all that I can, as soon as i can ...


Anyway, before we get to the result of Gender-Day, I have a question for you all....

Has anyone else seen this Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt??

The way he runs is something else!!

In todays 100 meters heats, he was both moving at enormous speed and appearing to be completely still at exactly the same moment?!?! He was looking around himself as if he were jogging - it was almost like he was playing with the very essence of time itself...?!?

On such a relaxed and competent performance, it's difficult to see him being beat in the final - even though fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell also looked remarkably smooth and concise..

Let's hope he doesn't test positive...


Anyway, top grade track cycling and athletics action, enough tea and pasta later, Mrs Giovanni, her sister Rosalie and I wandered down the canal in order to catch the Number 25 bus to the hospital...


Excuse me another aside, but I'm currently engaging with a program of loss recovery on the Number 25 bus..

Yes boss, in a story so ridiculous as to warrant it's own blog, I was recently fined £240 for being on a bus without a ticket when I (unbeknowst to myself) had a ticket...

Since paying up, I've so far recouped aroundabout £30 of that loss in 90p installments, and though I've bunked more public transport down the years than most people have 'taken', I feel sure I need to be refunded the full £240 on that particular route, before I can feel good about it...


Anyway, the 90p fare successfully bunked, we get to the Royal London Hospital, walk the prehistoric corridors and once again find the ultrasound room...

Inside it, the woman doing the scanning is very odd, and after checking the complete condition of our child, and announcing (only upon request) that everything looked to be fine, this woman announced that our baby was almost certainly a girl...


Which was a pleasant surprise because we both had the Baby G down as being a boy...


Well, we're both delighted, but I do think this fact has rattled Mrs G slightly as well...

Thing is, she had a somewhat turbulent relationship with her own mother as an infant which resulted in her being thrown out of the house on an almost daily basis, because she was impossibly over active and religiously naughty...

So, what with the possibility of this coming back on her (as such things often do) and the general trend that daughters are closer to their fathers and sons closer to their mothers, I think Mrs G might well be worrying as to just what she might be taking on....


I find myself delightfully confused by the whole situation.

Yes boss, I have absolutely no problem with having a girl, but I'm not sure what to do with one...

Assuming Baby G was a boy, I was thinking: Football in the park, riding bikes, doing stunts, smashing things up, getting dirty, playing soldiers, falling in rivers, throwing things about and getting excited by vehicles, might be the order of the day - but it turns out to be not so...

Of course some of you might be feeling that in the free west of 2008, all of these things can be done with a girl - and if she's a tom boy, I dare say we'll do some or all of them - but if she's a girls girl and likes Barbie, pretty dresses, being clean and that kind of thing, it might turn out to be me who struggles rather than Mrs G...


I guess we'll soon find out....


Anyway - here she is....

Collecting culture.......

Current mood: Original.....
Category: Original..... Art and Photography

You can call me a BASTARD COMMODITY LOVING MOTHAFUCKA!!! if you like, but I'm a sucker for cultural artifacts....

It's a vanity thing, an investment thing, and an aid to my own creations...

Yes boss, I'm of the definite belief that seeing, hearing and reading original issues, paintings and contexts, adds something to ones experience and understanding of them. It perhaps only counts for 5 or 10% extra than the 11th printing - but such percentages count...


For example:

Hearing the original Beatles records in mono on scratched to fuck vinyl helped me to understand The Beatles completely - until then I'd had the blue and red double hits LPs but I didn't quite get the fuss...

But one spin around a well worn Rubber Soul, and I soon understood why they have the rep they do...


So, yesterday I went to the Amuti Gallery in Woburn Walk, to see an exhibition of their Top 10 pop cultural artifacts...


The Amuti Gallery is a rare and quality place.

Yes boss, it's the only privately run dealership that sells rare cultural artifacts worth tens of thousands of pounds that doesn't make me feel nervous, out of place and paranoid the minute I walk through the door..

In fact within minutes of turning up there, the boss Laurence asked me to mind the front of shop, whilst he went for a piss...?!?

Now, though I've been there once or twice before as a punter, I've never spoken to this bloke before in my life, and there I am being entrusted to hold guard over the collection..?!?!


Well, I resisted the obvious temptation to barricade Laurence into the lav, call a cab and make off with the lot, and instead set about studying the work on display in great and quiet detail...


Amongst other things there was the following:

One of the last ever silkscreens by Warhol (The Mac Logo) £20,000
Campbells Soup prints by Warhol
A handbag belonging to and signature of Marilyn Monroe
The 4 editions of Playboy in which Monroe appearred, including the very first ever issue of the magazine...

A Banksy print.
3 fully signed original US issue Beattles LPs framed (£8000 a pop)
2 fully signed original issue Rolling Stones LPs framed


Downstairs were the books...

Yes boss, things got really interesting down there...

The piece de resistance was a First English Hardback edition of Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse - it's the only known copy with the original dust jacket...

£1500 if you're feeling rich...


Well, I was rather enthralled with it all, AND with the free beer, and I hung around all night in the manner of someone who turns up at your party and stays until the end, even though you don't quite know who they are and aren't at all sure why they're there...


Here follows some of the things I learnt:

Drinking free beer is all very well, but loosing count of your bottle total isn't...
Being rich has advantages...
Playboy might be little more than a plastic wank fest now, but back in the day it played host to some of the best writers of the times...
And no matter how good you are at collecting, you're always gonna end up selling some stuff far too cheap...


So, there's another private view there tomorrow night if you fancy it...

Take money!!!

And if you see me there, doing another performance of 'SILENT PAUL' and guzzling all the beer, punch me and see if I scream....

Currently listening : Born Under a Bad Neon Sign By The Flaming Stars Release date: 2006-10-09

Grace Jones...

Current mood: Drama....
Category: Drama.... Music

was (together with George Clinton) the joint highlight of the Meltdown Festival of a couple of months back...

But due to an excessive number of dates and resulting blogs, I never got around to writing the review of that rather marvelous night - but I'm now doing it for Hazy Day Magazine...

It'll also be in the Meltdown report...

The Meltdown report will be the first, or maybe the second of my series of Ltd edition printed works..

Each of the very few copies produced (available from www.paulgiovanni.com in a couple of months time) will come with a used ticket/aftershow pass and comprise of 23 pages of reworked reports, pictures and blah blah of that festivals life and times...

So, until the review and report is done, fill your boots with these two Jones classics...

Currently listening : Slave to the Rhythm By Grace Jones Release date: 1990-06-15

holy fuck....

Current mood: disappointing.....
Category: disappointing..... Music

are a band my attention has been drawn to on more than one occasion by more than one person who's taste I most normally respect highly...

They're an alright sounding band....

But I so far feel they contain one enormous flaw - they're name...

Specifically: How can they ever live up to it???

Yes boss, if I see a band with the name Holy Fuck I want the music to not so much leap out of the stereo, as BE and EAT THE FUCKING STEREO AND THEN VOMIT IT'S REMAINS ONTO THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF ME!!!

After an hour of listening to them, I WANT MY HEAD TO BE SO BADLY BATTERED AND DERANGED, I DON'T RECOGNISE THE SMELL OF MY OWN NOSE!!!

They need to be louder and more intense than My Bloody Valentine and Napalm Death jamming through a 4000KW sound system in a sealed nuclear bunker 2 miles underground!!!

And afterwards, I want my eardrums to be completely failed for at least 12 days and my mental compass to be so badly damaged, I'd be happy to live in -22 Siberia and bash rocks ALL DAY LONG, just to regain a sense of the real world...

And Holy Fuck isn't that band....

(though I'd like to see them LIVE just to be sure, so if anyone can supply me with a ticket for free please do get in touch...)

Currently listening : Viridian EP (ed. 2) By PHTHALOCYANINE

NEWS FLASH!!!

Current mood: EUPHORIC!!!
Category: EUPHORIC!!! Sports

INCREDIBLE SCENES HERE ON FISH ISLAND....!!!

The Mens Cycling Time Trial is taking part at the Olympics - Paul Giovanni £rd has taken a an early night (in bed before 1am for the first time in weeks if not months) in order to be up bright and early to watch the race LIVE from Beijing...

To watch the race, Paul Giovanni £rd is wearing The Cap of Cobbled Champions.

The Cap of Cobbled Champions is a red and black baseball cap signed by the winners of the 2006 and 2007 editions of Paris Roubaix bike race.

Fabian Cancellara
&
Stuart O'Grady

Paris Roubaix is considered by all who know it, to be THE toughest and nastiest one day bike race on the planet!!!

So, I, Giovanni am wearing The Cap of Cobbled Champions to watch the Olympic Time Trial, because I believe Cancellera has a very good chance of winning a gold, to add to his bronze in the Road Race.

I further believe that if I'm wearing The Cap of Cobbled Champions at the moment Cancellara takes gold, EXTRA good and strong vibes will descend onto my Giovan-head guaranteeing prosperity and endless success!!!

Well, Cancellara WINS THE GOLD and just look at what happens to Giovanni as Mr C crosses the line?!?!?



This first picture is taken early in the race as Cancellara slips into second at the first time check, behind and incredibly fast starting Alberto Contador



But Cancellara fights back and as he approaches the finishing line everything gets fuzzy - THE VIBES OF SUCCESS AND PROSPERITY ARE REIGNING ONTO THE GIOVAN-HEAD!!!



CANCELLARA WINS THE GOLD!!!
&
GIOVANNI TURNS GOLD!!!


REMARKABLE!!!!

Currently listening : We Are the Champions B/w We Will Rock You By Queen

I am the Soul Sensation Alexander O’Neal

Current mood: OH BABY.....
Category: OH BABY..... Music

Yesterday evening, I was watching Celebrity Wife Swap in which Soul Sensation Alexander O'Neal and his 'Valet Wife' Cynthia traded places with Wine Critic Jillly and her super polite English Gent Husband Paul..

It was great TV...

Not least because the Soul Sensation likes to have everything done for him...

And whereas Jilly his temporary wife, was far from used to that, she mucked in with incredible vigor and determination even when Alexander flipped into his twice daily tantrums ...

Yes boss, as Alexander huffed and puffed his glazed eyes down dark, Jilly accommodated him as if he were a naughty child, until the air inside his head cleared, and he returned to being the gentleman we all know him to be......


So what does this have to with me PG£

Well, that piece I wrote earlier about retiring from music writing was my equivalent of an Alexander O'Neal tantrum, and as I move my written operation back towards the paying magazines, I'm likely to have many such flips...

Yes boss, as much as I'd love to stay in my sealed blog box forever only writing as the mood takes, the pitter patter of tiny giovan-feet means I have to start injecting petro-dollars into my written operation or else GET A REAL FUCKING JOB!!! (and no-one wants to see that - except perhaps Mrs Giovanni, and Giovanni's Mum & Dad...and his sister, and probably at least one of his brothers..)


Anyway, until I can capitalise my website and the like, I'm having to send stuff out to paying outlets and tolerate the hokum abuse they like to dish out to their writers...

Suffice to say then, that the major change with this here Blinger is that it (and you) are going to have to be my virtual 'Valet' wife, and I AM NOW THE SOUL SENSATION ALEXANDER O'NEIL!!!

The death of the music writer....

Current mood: BLASTING OFF AGAIN!!!!
Category: BLASTING OFF AGAIN!!!! Music

Well, you can probably tell that music writing is doing little more than annoying the shit out of me at the moment...

Yes boss, I think I can consider myself retired as a 'music writer' now...

Truth is, I find the whole musical game depressing.

Furthermore, I feel I've learnt what I need to know and that now I want to write more about sport, feelings, people and relationships between people....


My time as a music writer started pretty well...

In fact way back when the very first free CD popped through my letterbox some 18 months ago, I was impossibly excited by the huge bevy of free shit that was about to come riffling my way!!

I was also excited by the idea of being in and about the music business on what looked to be something close to a free lunch!!!

However time breeds learning, and in the last 18 months I've learned that as a trade, music writing isn't for me...

No boss, it's just another PR job and the key downside in that is that it's slowly killing my passion for music, rather than fertilising and increasing it further...


I realised the game was up yesterday, when I started flicking through Stool Pigeon with the idea of pitching a feature to some mags in an attempt to resurrect my interest in a way that could see payola fall into the highly barren Giovan-coffers....

In the consumation of this act, I found that rather than being inspired by ideas and/or jealousy, I was instead incomparably bored by the pieces it contained (even though Stool Pigeon is an acre or so above most of the rags out there...)


I feel that the fundamental problem with music writing is the same as with reading music journalism and the same problem the music bizz is suffering in general in 2008...

Basically, the whole game is mostly completely fucking boring and horrendously over-organised...

Yes boss, there's no danger or risk allowed.

You pay your £3.00 for a can of shitty beer, wander about like sheep, download onto itunes and be HAPPY as LIVE music is throttled...


As I've said before, I find it close to impossible to enjoy gigs now that smoking is banned.

In place of fags, I end up drinking 3 times as quickly, which causes problems.

Furthermore, I can't relax and I get enraged each time I go to the bar and get charged £3.00 for something that would cost 89p from the nearest corner shop...

Thing is, I've always understood bars could charge more for drinks beacause they provide something extra...

In drinks terms I expect this to be:

1) THE DRINK IN A BASTARD GLASS
2) THE CONTENTS OF THE GLASS TO HAVE COME FROM A BARRELL VIA A BASTARD PUMP!!!
3) I ALSO EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO SMOKE (NOT EVEN REGULARLY - BUT OCCASIONALLY) AND DRINK AT THE SAME TIME WITHOUT HAVING TO ADHERE TO MORE RULES AND REGULATIONS THAN ARE REQUIRED TO ADOPT A CHILD.


Gigs aside, my problems with music writing as a practice are easy to isolate and I'm running out of energy and desire to fight with them...

The key problem is that each and nearly every piece in the genre of music writing has the same dull format:

1) Music writer meets musicians in bar/cafe/aftershow
2) Music writer asks samey questions about musicians 1st/2nd/3r/4th LP/Tour/Single (delete as appropriate)
3) Musician answers them in what they consider to be an amusing or surly fashion. 4) Music writer asks for an opinion about some fashionable cause
5) Musician tries desperately hard to say something interesting or better still radical.
6) Music writer opines that (if there is any justice in the world) we'll be hearing a lot more from this act in the future!!!

or

this band/act is crap.

End of piece...

If you don't play by these rules or abide to the taste of the magazine (Stool Pigeon included) you get nowhere - basically, it's the story of normal life in miniature and if I'm doing the story of normal life, I want (more to the point - NEED) to get paid...


Of course, if the products of these 'interviews' made good copy, I wouldn't be complaining so much as lining up 10 for next week.

And I don't mind reading about the inane thoughts of the musician if the artist in question is in some way important, has achieved something BIG, has a way with words or something to say - but most have nothing of any of these and nearly all of the younger bands have none of any of it at all...


Which brings me onto age...

It recently occurred to me that nearly all the good 'new' (new to me, that is) music I've seen and heard recently both LIVE and on the HI-FI, has been made by old and/or dead artists...

George Clinton, The Coltranes, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Billy Childish, Grace Jones, Herbie Hancock, Sparks, The Fall, Iggy Pop - they're all bloody gerrihatricks!!

And without hardly trying, these acts piss on what's available now, with very few exceptions...?!?


I think what's happened is there was a musical development BOOM blip between the 1960's and the mid 1990's and now everything has flattenned out....

Excepting the odd electronic innovation and innovater, there really is very litte that's genuinely new, different and interesting...

For all the fuss, Hip Hop hasn't changed much and none of the stars of the genre have very much to say, meanwhile indie rock is a corpse and dance music keeps repeating itself...


So...

From now on I'm mutating this blog...

I'll tie up a few loose ends with the half done music pieces, and from then on I'll be largely writing about whatever I feel like, without feeling at all compelled to occasionally tie it into music.....

Of course music will still feature in both an off and on the cuff way, as it has throughout because music and sound remains a big part of my life - but the day of traditional GIG and LP reviews is most likely over full stop...

Currently listening : Hercules and Love Affair By Hercules and Love Affair Release date: 2008-06-24

The Foals

Current mood: BANG BANG BANG....
Category: BANG BANG BANG.... Music

GOOD SHITTING CHRIST!!!!

The latest hoodoo boodoo big boohaa band is Foals.

Yes boss, the alt.hype music is in full flow with this lot, and in the last week alone I've read 2 pieces ranting and raving, that this bunch of Oxford boys are quite possibly as important as The Sex Pistols


WELL, I'D LIKE TO GO ON RECORD AS SAYING FOALS AREN'T AS IMPORTANT AS THE BOO RADLEYS, LET ALONE THE FRIGGIN PISTOLS!!!

NO BOSS!!! FOALS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN AN OK INDIE POP BAND, WHO BORE THE CRAP OUT OF ME AFTER 2 OR 3 MINUTES!!!

THEY'RE FRANZ FERDINAND WITH A SIDE MORE BEEF!!!

AND GIVEN THE INTERVIEWS I'VE READ, THEY'RE ABOUT AS LIKELY TO SAY SOMETHING INTERESTING AS THE MOON IS ABOUT TO TAKE UP SMOKING!!!!


And herein lies one of the key problems with music writers - most of them haven't lived in or even close to the hoi poloi to know what is going to strike a chord and/or put the fear of god into the man on the street...

And I can't claim to know what's required either - if I had any clear idea I'd be doing and making it instead of SHOUTING ON A BLOG!!

In fact, I'm more of the opinion there's nothing required, that music is a dead duck in many regards - except to fulfil it's most normal basic role of being a pacifying entertainment for the masses...


SO THERE!!!!

Currently listening : Messe Pour Le Temps Présent By Pierre Henry Release date: 1999-07-15

Italy in danger of succumbing to political correctness shock!?!?....

Current mood: WATCHING....
Category: WATCHING.... Travel and Places

'Italian champions Inter Milan have been order to pay a Napoli fan €1,500 (£1,190) for "existential damage" caused by banners in the San Siro which described Naples as the "sewer of Italy".

A number of banners were displayed in the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza during last October's Serie A game which mocked Naples' refuse crisis that left rubbish rotting in the streets.

"Ciao cholera sufferers!" read another of the banners which the unnamed fan's lawyer, Raffaele Di Monda, said made his client feel "indignant and deeply hurt".

Inter, who won the game 2-1, had already been punished by the Italian league with the closure of the sections of San Siro for their next home match.

The club fought against the lawsuit arguing that the Naples court did not have jurisdiction.

Offensive banners are common in Italian football, although authorities are taking an increasingly tough line in dealing with the problem.'

Or perhaps not...

Millionaires and Hollywood stars visiting Italy have been put on notice that they no longer own the beach after a group of celebrities led by Flavio Briatore, co-owner of QPR football club, were pelted with wet sand and showered with water as they tried to land dinghies on a crowded Sardinian beach.

Already victims of shrinking spending power and sky-rocketing rates for renting deckchairs, Italians have descended on their beaches this August in a surly mood, and the sight of the Briatore-led flotilla as it carved a swath through alarmed swimmers was enough to spark a near riot on Friday at the packed Capriccioli beach.

The Italian newspaper La Stampa seized on the episode as the start of a fightback against celebrities flaunting their wealth on the country's top beaches, stating: "From north to south, the rebellion against those who show off their money and power is growing."

The authorities also appear to be clamping down. Last week, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones came ashore from their yacht at the Italian resort of Santa Margherita Ligure, the same spot where locals were kept awake in June by thumping music from Wayne Rooney's rented yacht. After failing to notify the coastguard of the names of all the members of the landing group, the captain of Douglas's yacht was fined £1,600 under immigration and anti-terrorism legislation.

Hostilities erupted in Sardinia when Briatore, the manager of the Renault formula one team, came ashore from a yacht to inaugurate his new restaurant, which opened on Friday just behind the beach and is close to his opulent disco Billionaire, a bastion of the super-rich.

Briatore and his new bride, the TV showgirl Elisabetta Gregoraci, were met with grumbling from sunbathers as they hopped off the first dinghy, rising to whistles and shouts when the Italian newsreader Emilio Fede climbed off the second, while "terrorised children wailed between the waves", reported La Stampa.

Yelling "Shame! Louts! Go home!", a mob formed to greet the third dinghy, attempting to push it back out to sea, as mothers filled their children's buckets with water to sling at the passengers and wet sand bombs were hurled.

The episode marked a tough homecoming for Briatore, who has enjoyed an extended honeymoon since his star-studded Rome wedding in June. "We are nice people and we get rewarded like this," Corriere della Sera quoted Briatore as saying after he returned to the beach to find out why his guests were being drenched. "I will close down everything," he warned. "I pay taxes, this is my right."

With his new restaurant designed as a lunch stop for passing mega-yachts, Briatore may be wondering how Arab princes and Russian oligarchs will react to lobbed sand. But a Billionaire spokesman hinted that all may be in hand: "This year we are opening the restaurant, but from next year we will manage the beach as well."

The Olympic Dream....

Current mood: PAUL GIOVANNI MEETS JAMES DEMAN....
Category: PAUL GIOVANNI MEETS JAMES DEMAN.... Sports

is of course a big old bag of crap, but to say my head was blown off when I stumbled into a rerun of the Beijing opening ceremony in the early hours of yesterday, would be an understatement...

Yes boss, that whole shindig was like being on drugs - I could barely believe my eyes, and I couldn't work the dimensions....

'OH FUCK!!!.....OH FUCK!!!!!' I kept muttering...

Furthermore, the whole Olympic complex is stunning.

I guess it just goes to show what can be achieved with excessive state control and a BIG BIG LOOK AT US!!!! kinda budget...

(this was the preamble)

I say it was like being on drugs - but I suppose I was on drugs...

Yes boss, I spent yesterday all over the place:


The late morning and afternoon I was looking at baby things and maternity clothes in Central London.

Shopping about town for clothes with Mrs G (and for that matter any other woman or women) usually vents me into paroxysms of severe, irrational and tired boredom, but over time, my tolerance is improving and I've recently developed coping strategies..

Yes boss, I can be trained (a little), and it might well be only a short matter of time before the only thing you hear from Giovanni is the faint polite humm of the lawnmower and the smooth and calm purr of the brand new people carrier, as i happily take the little tykes to their piano lessons...

AKA

I might yet become normal...


The fatherly bit done, Mrs G headed home and I was left alone to stroll around town doing natural Paul things.

I was enjoying this immensely, until Mrs G called to tell me she was at St Pauls and that I had the house keys....

Fearing for any bottles of alcohol I might have left in the house, I quickly jumped on a very sweaty tube train and handed them over..


This hasty change, left me in pole position for the first of my nights entertainments - a book launch by Sexton Ming at The Aquarium Gallery...

I love browsing the Aquarium Gallery.

It's a feast full of art, books and music by Billy Childish, Jimi Cauty, Jamie Reid (creator of the Sex Pistols artwork) Geraldine Swayne...

I spent more than 2 hours fully ingesting everything on display.

I started forming lists:

The stuff I will buy next time I have money..

The stuff I would buy if money wasn't an object...

etc

I soon realised there are only a few pieces I wouldn't like one way or another

Next up was they came from the stars I saw them at The Bethnal Green Working Mens Club...

The BGWMC is so damn cool it has genuinely working class folk in the room downstairs and foppish arty types upstairs - it also has a real LIVE Banksy on the outside wall and an enormous heart as the backdrop....

And the music???

Well, this was the first time I've seen the stars play for some weeks and by the time the gig started I was well oiled courtesy of 6 beers and a half bottle of whiskey that I was using to deftly anoint the pints of coke I bought at the bar...

The gig was first class, the crowd were Morris Dancers, there was LIVE Lionel and the cuddly leopard was wearing a gold skinsuit...

Put simply: The LIVING stars get better and better...


But upon completion of the music, and brief chats with the band, I rapidly realised I was very very drunk indeed.

I took a seat to recalibrate myself, but it wasn't enough, so I wandered outside and sat down on the opposite green..

At such times as this, I often find it beneficial to roll around and scream - and had I not have been wearing my exceptionally new and pristine Adidas white and gold tracksuit top I'd have no doubt indulged myself, even though my arms and legs appeared to have gone numb...

But lacking the desire for grass stains, I hoisted myself into a dead mans time trial back to Fish Island and starving and still drunk I saw the Olympics...


So, yes, when watching the Opening C, I wasn't quite in my right mind...

But I've mostly detested all such flounce shows - they mainly seem to consist of a whole bunch of folk running about waving bits of cloth...

This one was however something else and if the trajectory of improvement continues, there soon won't be any actual need for the professional sport at the Olympics..

No boss, they'll simply have the big whoopsie - a day or so's running - and then another big whoopsie to close...


And the devil that is China??

Well, I don't have much problem with China.

As a country, it does strike me as being a mite paranoid, and more than a little stuffy, and I am certain I wouldn't like to live there myself..

But I do find it nauseating how everyone's got onto this cause celebré of Tibet and the two faced moralism with it all is absurd ..

Yes boss, all enormous conquering super powers have their shameful oppressions, but the reason the media bash China is because before very long they're gonna own our asses every which way....

Meanwhile, I don't remember hearing many complaints about all the cheap Chinese goods we increasingly live on, and the credit they're constantly chivelling us to keep our increasingly desperate economies afloat...

And anyway - HOW IN THE HELL CAN WE IN BRITAIN OR THE US COMPLAIN ABOUT OPPRESSIVE POWERS BEHAVING BADLY?!?

Is it China in Iraq or Afghanistan?!?!

Jesus...

Currently listening : Opera’s Greatest Drinking Songs Release date: 1995-04-11

ROK TV!!!!

Current mood: KAZZZIINNNNNGGGG!!!!
Category: KAZZZIINNNNNGGGG!!!! Music

HEY GROOVERS!!!!

Current mood: YOU TOO CAN BE FAMOUS.....
Category: YOU TOO CAN BE FAMOUS..... Parties and Nightlife

Hi ya,

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Do what your heart tells you to do and sign up!!

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Sam Williams

Last Friday on Fish Island

Current mood: PERFORMANCE.....
Category: PERFORMANCE..... Art and Photography

I pride myself on not knowing anyone on Fish Island other than Mrs Giovanni.

Yes boss, living in a place for 3 years and only knowing the wife is some achievement - or else a clear sign of medically treatable social inadequacy...

Whichever - I don't much care...

The fact is, I like privacy and peace and quiet - and I don't have time for a great amount of company, designer mental diseases, or folk knocking on the door every 10...


However, there is now a slim chance I've found a local haunt, whereby lay another slim chance I might make fishy friends....

Yes boss - I could be branching out - but don't hold your breathe..


Now, I'm not prepared to reveal the exact location or name of this place because it doesn't play by the rules when it comes to drinking and smoking, and the those who don't play by the rules deserve privacy so they can keep not playing, until they either get found out or decide to start playing by the rules.....

Suffice to say, it's location is a short stones bobble from Fish Island, it's an art gallery and if you want more info contact me direct, do some research or work it out...


The first time I went to this locale was to see Sculpture...

That was a pretty good evening - it was nearly all music, but as per usual the quality seemed to go in reverse order, with Sculpture playing first...


This last Friday held an evening that was mostly about performance art...


Performance art is a wierd one...

Yes boss, I'm not sure I fully understand it - but like all and everything, I've been able to ascertain that there's degrees of talent vs pretenders. There are also those who are simply and blindly going through the family line:

My Dad was a Bohemian - I'm a Bohemian...


If I had one, I suppose the main problem with some of the performances on Friday, were that they didn't make me feel anything...

No boss, with the exception of a few, I was left either scratching my head, or in a state of simple boredom, and that isn't what i want from art or performance....


But never mind the bollocks - hereafter follows the highlights:


One guy had 5 (I think) tape players all stripped down to the mechanics. These mechanics + some other mechanics were spread out incredibly neatly on a perspex sheet upon a table. This guy then played Viola and it would go all around the machines in a loop and he would play with two knobs on an amp and something else to create great feedback drones....

THIS WAS THE BEST BY FAR - IT WAS WONDERFUL!!! I COULD HAVE LISTENED FOR YEARS!!!


The headliner was a guy playing a pre-recorded tape of a speech about cocks - he then played with a dead chicken, before SMASHING THE DEAD SHIT OUT OF IT WITH A HAMMER THAT WAS TAPED TO HIS HAND!!!!


Earlier in the evening was this:

Boy shouts to clear a space. He erects a stepladder and hangs a few Tescos bags at it's peak. He then tapes a section of yellow sandpaper to the wall and announces the piece. He continues by rubbing his upper arm on the sandpaper several times. He then climbs the ladder, throws 6 or 8 plants against the wall and tops it off with a pinch of glitter....


Lastly and all-nightly:

Still smarting from the chaos of the previous evenings vodka throwing (and knowing it's never a good idea to go out on the town on the back of the domestic row (especially not to a gallery full of wonderful looking artsy looking girls)) Paul Giovanni £rd makes an unofficial and unlisted performance entitled

SILENT PAUL!!!

In this performance, Giovanni says nothing to anyone from the moment he enters the gallery until he leaves it 4 hours later...


So...

It was a mixed bag, and in general, I'd have to say I remain unconvinced by performance art...

I do however love the feel, view and the attitude of this gallery and I'll most likely be back there for this Fridays Private View...

Currently listening : Dvorák: The Symphonies Release date: 1992-02-11

Until the end of the world...

Current mood: ........
Category: ........ Music

Currently listening : Plagiarism By Sparks Release date: 1998-09-22

A hard Bono’s night....

Current mood: BV OR NOT BV....
Category: BV OR NOT BV.... Music

We had a bit of a Bono problem here on Fish Island the night before last...

Here's what happenned...


Mrs Giovanni was about to go to bed, and her phone went and it was Andrea, the Italian Paparazzo..

Regular readers will know that Andrea has spent the last few weeks floating up and down the Mediterranean in his boat, looking for celebrities to photograph...

All told, he's had a pretty good haul, including those naked Sienna Miller pictures
(Sienna is now suing Mrs G's employer claiming they were taken on a private beach - they weren't)

The next day, it was Kate Moss topless off of Sardinia, today it's George Clooney and Cindy Crawford and the list goes on...

Yes boss, thanks to his novel mode of transport allowing him access to areas other paparazzos can't reach, Andrea is getting strike after strike...

His pockets are beginning to bulge...


Well, the night before last, he called up at aroundabout 10.30pm, saying he'd got some photos he was hoping were Bono and perhaps Bob Geldof 'n all...

He reported that he thought they were swanning it in some secluded bay in the Med, he was morred a way off and was using his big lens...

However, he wanted Mrs G to check the images - he wasn't too sure it was Bono...


So, Andrea emailed the pictures and we looked...


The first one looked all wrong - it looked like a man trying to be Bono, but not Bono himself...

The second one made us think again - I mean who in the hell else behaves like this, and looks vaguely like that, on a yacht in the Med...??

Yes boss, it was soon clear that whoever it was certainly thought he was Bono - even if he wasn't...

But after a half hour and 20 or more pictures, it didn't look good...

Wanting to be completely sure, we got some pictures of the real BV up, and cross checked them over for the detail...

'HIS EARS AREN'T RIGHT!!!' Mrs G would say..

'I THINK HIS EARS ARE RIGHT!! BUT I'M NOT AT ALL SURE ABOUT THAT NOSE?!?' I'd reply..

'WHAT ABOUT THE LIPS??? BONO'S GOT VERY THIN LIPS!!!'

'IT'S DIFFICULT TO TELL...'

Well, we tried our best to make the imposter into the real Bono - but it wasn't to be, and after checking and cross checking Bono's profile, we finally called Andrea off...

Which was lucky, because the very next morning Bono pictures came in of him somewhere else entirely with Claudia Schiffer...

I would imagine they were discussing their charity work...

Jesus Christ give Lee ’Scratch’ Perry more Pum Pum for his Kitty...

Current mood: Perry + Pum Pum...
Category: Perry + Pum Pum... Music

A letter from home....

Current mood: APPALLED...
Category: APPALLED... Movies, TV, Celebrities

SHITTING HELLL!!!!

MRS G KEEPS TUNING INTO BIG BROTHER AND IT'S DRIVING ME MAD!!!

Which could well be half of the reason why she does it...


On tonights episode of this ever running bore fest, some of the contestants recieved 'letters from home'

The letters driveled 'loving' cliche after cliche, upon which each housemate took it in turns to cry and wail, and be cuddled and comforted as they assured the watching public of how much they loved their Mum and their Brother and their Great Aunt Maude...

It was all gut wrenchingly fake and/or tritely awful...

In fact it was like watching a funeral except that everyone was still alive...


I think it's fair to say that this 'letters from home' episode illustrated my one and only problem with BB:

It's not that I mind the concept of the show at all, more that I object to them only ever getting dull fuckwits in the Big Brother House...

Yes boss, on the rare occasion some proper and genuine nutjob slips through the selection net, they're rapidly kicked off the show because they talk too loudly or bully the other idiots, or because they leave of their own sensible accord...

This filtration process leaves behind all the bores who then sit around all day like they're on school camp and jabber endless nonsense punctuated by shreiking...

It's a long way from good enough...

Yes boss, to keep my attention and empathy, they need to load the house up with proper freaks and subnormals - the type of folk you try to avoid on the train because you're afraid they might stab you - the sort of folk who'd offer your hopeless 12 year old brother drugs...

Until that happens, I can only dream that one day 'a letter from home' will say something like the following....


Dear Son,

I hope you are well.

I'm sure you're expecting some kind of 'you're the apple of my eye and I think all your friends in the big Brother House are amongst the finest and funniest people since Gandhi,' - but I'm afraid you're gonna have to prepare yourself for a shock.......

Yes son, rather than salivating over your choices in life like small and obedient dogs, I'm afraid your mother and I are going to have to buck the trend and deliver you some hard home truths...


The first of these truths, is that when me and your mother were working 2 jobs each in order to raise you and your 3 sisters to our highly thorough and demandingly exact standards, we never in a million years dreamed that you, OUR ONE AND ONLY SON would do something as idiotic, banal and DOWNRIGHT STUPID as go on a TV program like Big Brother...?!?!

No son, we sincerely hoped that one day you'd go out and explore the world and discover something new - that perhaps you'd be a scientist or a merchant seaman or a poet.

We dared to dream that one day you would find love, and perhaps have children and really get the most you possibly could from life...

But no...

Rather than doing something keen and clever with your obvious talents and skills, you've instead reduced yourself to a pathetic and lame attempt to gain temporary fame, by way of playing idiot games, shreiking and screaming 'OH MY GOD!!!' 7 or 8 times every ten minutes, like a sorry, needy and dismal child...

Yes son, to say we're appalled by both your choice to go on TV and your apparently shameless attempt to be famous at all costs would be an understatement - WE'RE HOPELESSLY MORTIFIED!!!!


Perhaps the most disappointing aspect in this whole sorry episode is that your mother and I are forced to watch your lame ass attempts to pull that shocking harridan of a whore who calls herself 'Genniney'

Yes son, to say that this girl is a WASTE OF FUCKING SPACE!!! would be the understatement of the century...

Sure, we recognise we might not have been perfect parents, but we did our very best to show you right from wrong, and we did honestly think it possible our lifes work and effort might enable you to see the difference between a good and useful woman and a fucking awful fame grabbing charlatan whore like 'Genniney'...


So son, we'd like to take this opportunity to go on record as saying we don't like what you're doing, we don't like your 'friends' (Genniney in particular) and we really are horrendously disappointed in you, and hope to God that you soon see sense and GET THE HELL OUT OF THAT HELL HOLE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!!!!

Yes son, we want you to know that we are HUGELY HUGELY disappointed in you and earnestly request you stop embarrassing yourself in public any longer...

SO PLEASE SON, LEAVE THE BIG BROTHER HOUSE NOW!!!

FOR ALL OUR SAKES!!!

Lots of love from

Mum & Dad...

PS: And please do stop fawning over the disabled person like that's what you do when there are no cameras around...

We remember you getting sent home from school, because you used to bully 'four eyed' Johnny Kember for being a bit simple...

You're not fooling anyone...

Peter Stringfellow deals with the Middle Eastern problem....

Current mood: A clubbing guide to...
Category: A clubbing guide to... News and Politics

'The Millionaire Club introduced me to another very different clientele. They were a mixture of Jews, Iranian, Lebanese and Turks. The Middle eastern crowd were mainly students at the engineering college in Manchester. They weren't your archetypal impecunious undergraduates; they were sons of oil sheiks and rich businessmen. At the other extreme was the rich Jewish set, who were dominated by incredibly powerful ladies. In mt typically Libran way, I loved both communities, and became friends with them all. I wasn't aware of any racial tension until one of the Jewish group called me over one night and told me I was letting in too many Iranian. I said, 'Where are they? I don't know what you mean.' He pointed to a group of good looking guys sitting in a corner. Up until then I'd thought they were French. To me, they were just smart, sophisticated young men with a slight accent. I'd never encountered racism before I went to Manchester. the closest I'd got to tribal tension was the rivalry between the miners and the steelworkers back in Sheffield.

The nationality of my customers was immaterial to me. I'd never seen spending power like it. I became surrounded by people who had money to burn - when they weren't drinking it away in champagne, that is. One week I'd be invited to an Israeli Independence Day party by my Jewish friends and the next I'd be having dinner with Amer Medani, a relation of the Saudi royal family, whose father owned a big construction company in Manchester. Amer and his brother, Imad, were both honorary princes and incredibly generous people. In Manchester my affection for middle eastern people developed. In my experience, they are generous to a fult and have imecable manners.

Of course, this view wasn't shared by everyone at the Millionaire, and I began to notice a strain building up between the Jewish set and the Middle Eastern crowd. Not only that, there was political tension between different Middle eastern factions. One evening a group of them started telling me about the impending revolution in Iran. The struggles in the Middle east had not become headline news around the world in the late 1970's so I'd no idea what they were talking about. Not long afterwards a few cars belonging to one group were vandalised by extremist students. There was nothing I could do about fighting in the Middle East, but I did try my best to create racial harmony in Manchester. I decided to have special nights for each of the different countries. I knew I couldn't start off with an Israeli night, because this would upset the Iranians, and vice versa, I decided to introduce the idea slowly and to start off with a Gypsy night. There was a small problem in that I didn't know any Gypsies, except for a car dealer called Tom Hartley. He was a multi -millionaire because he only ever dealt in top of the range cars, like Rolls-Royces and Ferraris. Despite his wealth, he was proud that he came from a Gypsy background. Tom was our token Gypsy and king for a night. I booked a Gypsy dancing team and we had a fabulous evening.

The next 'theme' night was for the French, even though once again I didn't know any French people. We had traditional French music, which went down well. Now it was time for the serious stuff. When I organised our first Israeli night, the whole of the Middle eastern lot turned up. I got the turks, Lebanese, Iranians and Jews all dancing to 'Hava Naglia' by thee Spotnicks. From where I was standing on the decks, it looked like the United Nations. When it came to Turkish night, the Turks had to outdo the Israelis. They ordered sheep's heads for the restaurant; the Iranians followed this by ordering a whole sheep with couscous. The only failure was English night. I booked some good morris dancers, but the club was half empty and nobody liked them.'

And whilst we’re on the ambient theme....

Current mood: BURN BABY BURN....
Category: BURN BABY BURN.... Music

Asphalt Eden is a blog full of ambient mixes of a more classical and bleepylicious kind...

I'm not sure I'll be hearing too much of what they have to offer just now - but back in the day, I used to more or less live on ambient music. Of course I was smoking shitloads of pot then, and magic mushrooms were also something of a regularity each Autumn...


The Autumn 1995 was a particularly good one for the mushrooms. I was working at this here Fort, nearside which sat a tonne of high grade mushies, of which we took full advantage...

That Autumn was my second stint at the Fort

And, before I get onto my favourite stories of that spell, I think it's high time I covered my favourite memory of my first stint working there, back in 1993...


Basically, 1993 threw up what I consider to be one of my finest (claimed) megalomaniacal telepathic achievements to date!!!

Here's the story....


Though the general situation of the Fort was ace, the area surrounding it was besmerched by a bunch of oil refineries and one power station...

Now, I really didn't like the idea of there being all these oil refineries in my line of sight - and I certainly resented the fact they'd been sited amidst such a beautiful area of coastline that was and is a National Park...

I therefore spent quite a bit of time thinking

'IF I COULD HAVE ONE WISH, IT WOULD BE FOR ALL THOSE FUCKERS TO FUCKING WELL FUCK OFF!!!!'


Well, the Sunday before my contract was up, I was away up the coast on the Forts boat, visiting the Island of Ramsey for the first and only time and sometime in the early afternoon we heard a distant BANG!!

It sounded like it might be an inflatable boat exploding spectacular stylee and at the time I didn't think too much of it....

But when we re-boarded the Lord Hurcombe to return to the Fort, the Boatman told us that one of the refineries had been hit by Lightning and had GONE UP IN FLAMES!!!!


Things got better...

We had dolphins riding the bows of the boat (the first and only time I saw them on that bit of coast), there were hundreds of Manx Sharwaters swooping about on their way back to Skokholm Island in time for bed, and as we turned the corner to moor up, the rumour became fact, and there was the refinery, smoking away like Uncle Saddam had suddenly become effective...


Well, to be perfectly frank, as horrific as it could have been (barely anyone was injured let alone killed), I was overjoyed by this turn of events, and later that evening, had what could well turn out to be one of the very best romantic pro-disaster apocalyptic times of my life:

Yes boss, we had no electricity, no phone lines, and there I was, sat alone perched up on high atop the fort, with a 4 pack of Murphys Stout, a cigar, and an excellent view of the sun going down to the right and the refinery burning to the left...

IT WAS PURE DARK APOCALYPTIC JOY!!!!

Colossus::: Open...

Current mood: lapping the beach...
Category: lapping the beach... Music

A band I didn't include on my round up of who's moved on from where was Colossus...

In fact, I was supposed to be doing a Part 2 to that piece - which I will do - but not just now...


Anyway the thing that's marked Colossus out throughout the last 18 months, is their regular consistency...

Yes boss, a key aspect of this bands ethos is a daily schedule of recording and rehearsing, and this means they keep knocking out the tracks - and each time they're different in sound and scope...


The most recent track of these is out on their myspace player today.

It's called Open...


Jon from the band describes it as being ambient and it is - but not as you might know...

No boss, there's no bleeps or bloops, or sheep barring royally in echo leaden triplicate......


Instead Open meanders in over light guitars and percussion.

It bubbles and floats and you're expecting a 'Creep' like KICK IN AND AWAY IT GOES!!!! - but that never comes...

It remains almost still...


It's a very soothing number, with an oozingly warm vocal and I like it very much


To hear it, go over to their myspazzing player now....

Much pausing....

Current mood: UPDATES UPDATES!!!!
Category: UPDATES UPDATES!!!! Music

Lots happening...


THURSDAY:

I pick up a 35kg battery with which to run the solar panels I will buy on Monday...

WHAT?!?!? PAUL JAMES DEMAN FRANK GIOVANNI £RD WORKING ON HIS CARBON FOOTPRINT?!?!?

HELL NO!!!

Solar Panels are full of toxic shit and this 35kg battery weighs 35ks because it's full of fucking lead - which is one of - if not THE - most poisonous and toxic material on the planet!!!

DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!!!


Truth is, I'm going solar, because I can't afford stupidly priced oil, and because I have acres of south facing glass, and because I LOVE THE SUN AND I LOVE THE IDEA OF MY GIOVAN-EMPIRE BEING RUN BY IT!!!!


Later, it was over to Camden to see Sculpture play another high class set in some kind of art Roman Church...

Sculpture never disappoints. I've seen him play a few times now and he (or they - now performing with a top grade images man) are almost always criminally low down on the bill.

Yes boss, so often what follows is amateurly CACK!!! Whereas what he plays (peculiar and challenging as it may be) has proper and pure proper energy...

You can see part of a performance of his below - but you really have to be there...

I made it to the Sculpture gig, via flybys of Amy Winehouses flat in Camden and her old flat here on Fish Island

Yes boss, rumour had it that Winehouse was back on Fish Island...

But there was no sign of her, and the allegation turned out to be an administrative error...

Her place in Camden was quiet too - a couple of photographers playing with themselves in their car, but otherwise just a normal street in a West End world...


Did I mention that Winehouse used to work for a picture agency that deals with a lot of paparazzi pictures???

Perhaps she's not as naive and exploited as she may sometimes seem...


With Winehouse shuddering her efforts indoors, the major problem of Thursday was that MRS GIOVANNI WAS LOCKED OUT?!?!?

Yes boss, due to ANOTHER?!?!? administrative error, Mrs G was left without complete access to the Fish Island Fort?!?!


Well, Mrs G was EXTREMELY unimpressed with this situation and was even more unimpressed when she saw me being bought vodka in the corner shop on the way back to letting her in?!?

She therefore erupted into the house, retrieved the bottle from the 10 packets of stars candies, and hurled it off the balcony into the greenery below?!?!?

I WAS ASTONISHED AND TEMPORARILY FURIOUS!!!!


But, I'm pleased to now report, that everything is once again calm and that I've learnt one thing from the experience...

Buy (or be bought) a bottle of vodka by all means - but always take it with you into the toilet (even though you have no plans to decant it's contents until after you've left the toilet) in case of RAGE!!!!


PETS WIN PRIZES!!!!

Currently listening : Telegram By Björk Release date: 1997-01-14

Lots and lots of....

Current mood: warm...fresh hot...
Category: warm...fresh hot... Music

Tippy tricks....

Current mood: VODKA DOESN’T WORK...
Category: VODKA DOESN’T WORK... Music

Here we go with a few links to some wonderful and worldly musical and other resources...


First, here's a blog called Trackwerk full of plenty of free downloadable mixes of a techno, jazz disco bent....

AND MAKE SURE YOU COMMENT GODDAMIT!!!!


Secondly, here's one for all you music makers who use that hellish program Cubase VST...

Frankly I've never got on with this beast at all, but I know plenty consider it standard and essential....

It's called Elogoxa and it's stacked with Plug-Ins..

This next link might well be my favourite new site...

It contains...

'a list of over 3600 titles recorded from my collection of 78 rpm records. Many of them are linked to MP3 files and will play what was recorded. No sound enhancement, just what was recorded. I hope to eventually have all the titles linked to music files, though that might take a while.

Right now, there are 2,800 titles on this page linked to mp3's. Only about 800 to go! Let me know if there is anything in particular you'd like to hear and I'll hook it up when I get the time.

CLICK HERE to see a blog chronicling updates to the web page, starting July 25, 2008.

I have about 2500 more records to record, so I'll be adding more titles as time permits over the next hundred years or so.'

WAY TO GO!!!!


basic.ch is basically another big old stash of mostly electronic DJ mixes available to stream...


Lastly, fishhighway.com is my very favourite fish site of the week...

It illustrates a fish highway...

Auditioning the front man....

Current mood: RESEARCHING THE NEW BAND...
Category: RESEARCHING THE NEW BAND... Goals, Plans, Hopes

Todays ta da...

Current mood: SUNNY...!
Category: SUNNY...! Music

There's nothing I like more than to feel good, proper and justified and I often feel this way at about this time of night...

Yes boss, at about 1 and 2am, I'm just the right side of the nights drinking (or slowly teetering towards the wrong side) - and I quite often think:

'OH FUCK!!! THIS HAS TO BE SAID!!! I KNOW WHEN I'M RIGHT AND GODDAMN IT, I'M RIGHT RIGHT NOW, SO HELP ME GOD!!!!!'

Thereafter (if I can write) follows a blog, in which I lovingly inform you of my charming and canny observations on life, music and everything...


Well, tonight, there must be something wrong, because I don't really have a BIG bone of contention, or a particular thing I feel RIGHTEOUS and/or WRONGED about...?!?

There are however 3 small scraps I'd like to share with you...


The first is that I'm a bit annoyed with this current trend for sportsmen to suggest that there errant druggie team mates and fellow professionals who get caught, should be going to prison for their doping...

It's nearly always kids (who've yet to weather a rough spell in their careers), or fucking puritans who haven't got the balls to take drugs and/or take a proper risk in life or sport who come out with this crap...

It's chicken shit and stupid


Secondly, I'm a bit annoyed by UK residents who complain each time the sun comes out...

It really does my head in when such people suggest that morgue like temperatures as engendered by aircon systems are about right for comfort...

Shit, I'll happily sit in the fridge when I'm dead, but NOT BEFORE!!!

AND COMFORT CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF!!!

Yes boss, according to my square little head, the sun is everything, and the minute it pokes it's podgy little head from behind the clouds in this squalid and god forsaken country, is the minute I get all gay and happy...

I've therefore thoroughly enjoyed sweating my little heart out this last 4 or 5 sunny days and long may this continue!!


Lastly, I got ever so slightly annoyed this morning (as I do most) by the lack of giovan-groupies waiting outside the fort gates for me to hurriedly brush them aside AS I GO OFF TO A VERY VERY IMPORTANT MEETING INDEED CONCERNING MY IMMINENT MULTI-MILLION POUND BOOK DEAL!!!!

Yes boss, I don't know what literary talent scouts spend their days and nights doing, but they sure as shit should spend more time reading my collected works, after which time they should set about sending me flowers, parrots, xylophones, magnums of champagne and specific proposals as to how they are going to knock me into publishable shape and make us both millionaires!!


These three things aside, I'm feeling pretty fucking good, living pretty fucking well, and tomorrow I'll get up when I like and do what I like - and that's gotta be a pretty good daily victory for anyone...


Oh shit, it's started raining....

Currently listening : Sun - Greatest Hits By Sun Release date: 1998-06-30

Dennis the money maker....

Current mood: BORED SHITLESS...
Category: BORED SHITLESS... Music

About the only time I watch the box these days is for sport, major world disasters and/or political events - and the occasional film...

But this last 3 weeks I've watched a fair bit of everything, because of a rather unspectacular edition of the Tour de France...

Yes boss, cycling is cleaning itself of the fabric of it's corrupt, drugged and cheating fundamental past - and I think that's a shame, because for me, sport and music should never be about clean living nice people - that's what the suburbs are about.....

This years tour winner, Carlos Sastre, is a truly lovely bloke.

I got his autograph at last years launch of the Tour, and whereas a whole bunch of other riders scribbled something quickly and dismissively, Sastre stopped and took enormous care and attention over writing his name and then thanked me for asking....

I thought:

'Oh, what a lovely bloke!!!'


Yes boss, there's no question Sastre's a diamond good man - but as insane as it might sound, when nice guys start winning bike races like the Tour, you know there's something wrong with the direction of the sport...

Lance Armstrong didn't win 7 consecutive editions of the worlds toughest mainstream sporting contest because he was a nice guy - but because he was a selfish, bullying, cheating cunt...

And as far as I'm concerned, that's the way it should be...

I want to be able to hate, fear and love my sporting heroes - not see them as being nice guys I want to have a curry with...


Anyway, this last 3 weeks, I've seen too much TV - the same adverts time and time again - and my tour TV time has slipped into all manner of other crap that's followed...


Dragons Den is very similar to X-Factor except the people turning up with their crazy dreams of grandeur importance are inventors and entrepreneurs rather than wannabe pop stars..

Or at least they normally are - but this last episode flipped the mould...

Yes boss, it started with a band called Hamfatter who were pitching for £75,000 to make 30,000 copies of their 3rd LP...

And you know what???

THEY SUCCEEDED!!

Furthermore, they had the Dragons, falling over one another to forincate a bit of Simon Cowells action, with which to perma-gell their glossy fucking pants.....

I WAS ASTONISHED!!!


Yes boss, I've seen a few Dragons Dens down the years, and never before have I seen such a 3 way GIMME GIMME GIMME!!! as i did over a shiney well spoken band called Hamfatter...

WHO SAID THE MUSIC BUSINESS WAS DEAD?!?!?


Of course, until the advent of indulgent comfy kack like Radiohead and The Strokes, bands like this would be laughed all the way back to their middle class schools - but as we all now know, Rock 'N' Roll (with very few exceptions) is no longer anything approaching dangerous, poor, raw or vital, so much as consistently bad cabaret designed to make $£$£$£$$£$ and enforce the social order...

And so nowadays wannabe musical stars go on entrepreneur programs and cleverly pitch their bands marketing strategy to a bunch of smart suited self important cunts who behave like Greek Gods...


AND LIKE THE CYCLING - IT'S GETTING BORING BORING BORING!!!

Currently listening : As Time Goes By By Bryan Ferry Release date: 1999-10-19

Cooking with the queen....

Current mood: ON THE ISLAND...
Category: ON THE ISLAND... Music

A while back, Paloma Queen of Infinity and Mary Jane (No1 Go Go Dancer to Paul Giovanni £rd) came to stay here on Fish Island...

Important PGC strategy meetings were had, scones were baked, and I think it's fair to say I, PG£ gave both the Americans a proper lesson in how to drink the English way...


A year on, and once again, Paloma is on a plane with her daughter Madi.

I have no doubt more strategy meetings will be held (probably in The Chairs Of Pop Power) and more scones might also be baked - but I wouldn't have thought there'll be much drinking because Madi isn't old enough, and I for one believe that children are our future and that we should show them the way..


One thing that WILL definitely be happening, is the production of an episode of Paloma's wonderful new cooking program LIVE FROM FISH ISLAND!!!

Which leaves me to ask the question: Has anyone on this - the right side of the pond - got a video camera we can borrow???

Currently listening : Form & Function, Vol. 2 By Photek Productions Release date: 2007-10-01

Peter Stringfellow was a genius...

Current mood: REAL....
Category: REAL.... Music

Here we go with todays reading from the book of Peter...


'Three weeks later, I was still in hospital with my leg in traction. I was in so much pain the nurses pumped me full of morphine. Up until then I hadn't ever taken a hallucinogenic drug of any description, other than laughing gas when I had a tooth pulled out. When I finally came out of hospital I was as high as a kite. I sat down and wrote a waltz, which I called the Royal Waltz. Now bear in mind that I have no musical talent whatsoever - I have no idea where all this musical theory came from. When I finished the waltz I started writing stories, songs and poetry. By the end of the first week Coral managed to get me in the bath. I had hardly got in the bath before I was demanding that Coral bring me a tape-recorder because I felt a new song coming on. Then I started singing about God and how the world was so sad. Michael Jackson's 'Earth Song' had nothing on this. Coral thought I'd lost it - totally. When the effects of the morphine wore off I was back to my talentless self.'

Currently reading : King of Clubs By Peter Stringfellow

A letter from the bankers....

Current mood: LOADSA....
Category: LOADSA.... Jobs, Work, Careers

Well, after having such fun yesterday, I figured that today might prove to be harder work....

But it hasn't really been too bad...

Except I did get some slightly unpleasant post...


Yes boss, after almost 4 years of faffing about sending me letters that were so fucking boring, I haven't even been opening them for the last 18 months, Barclays Bank is saying it's going to make me bankrupt over £5,710.45 that I owe them...


Well, my first thought upon opening and fully understanding this letter was:

'ABOUT BLEEDING TIME!!!'


Yes boss, since I started defaulting on my various repayments to 7 separate financial institutions which total aroundabout £50,000, I've been waiting for this kind of a gander to kick off...

In fact, I expected to be in deep shit of this kind within 3 or 4 months of the first default!! And all told I've been utterly amazed it's taken almost 4 years for them to get serious about reclaiming their monies...

I guess it shows how much cash they've been making that such figures are barely worth bothering about...


The wierd thing about going bankrupt in the UK, is that if you want to do it yourself, it costs a few hundred pounds to set up...?!?

That's a feature that's always confused me:

I mean, the sceanrio is that you don't have any fucking money - but to get that confirmed by a court of law, you have to pay the courts a few hundred pounds....


For this reason and others, I've not gone into bankruptcy voluntarily - even though (had I of done so straight away) by now, I'd have been well through it all and on the way to claiming a new line of credit....

Instead, I felt it best to wait for a creditor to declare me bankrupt - they then pick up the tab, ask me for the money and I say:

'Well I haven't got any money anyway...'

and very little changes...


The thing that disappoints me about todays banks (other than the fact that they are the worst kind of parasitic and selfish cunts) is that bank staff take no responsibility for their employer...

Yes boss, every time you speak to them either in the branch or on the phone, they always refer to their employer in the third person..

'Oh, I can see what THEY'VE done here..'

or

'Oh yes, THEY'VE levelled that £35 charge because your direct debit was taken 2 days early..'

I'm looking at them in their uniforms, and I'm thinking

'BUT YOU ARE THEM, YOU CUNT!!!!'


Annoying as this self reality denial is, you can't deny that making their own staff so embarrassed to be associated with THEM, is yet another a clever move on behalf of the banks...

Yes boss, to hit someone effectively, you have to be able to see and then strike a target - and the poor bastards who work on the bank counters are pretty badly paid, and harrased looking, and many enraged people (myself included) think...

'Oh, I'm not going to blow off at them, because they look like they hate their job and they aren't even THEM!!!'

But they are...


Meanwhile, the clever big guys who are definately are THEM, are hiding away like rats in their glass towers, well, WELL away from the anger of the average punter, who's been charged an illegal £35 fee for being slightly disorganised...


I guess I might sound bitter or angry at the banking world, but I'm not - far from it..

No boss, I don't hate the banks at all - in fact I love them!!!

By way of their own greed to hook me, they've inadvertently donated a fantastic £50,000 to the Save Paul Giovanni Fund.

Yes boss, I can happily confirm that I feel no guilt and that I've had an absolute whale of a time spending their cash in all manner of frivolous and stupid ways..

Furthermore, despite their best attempts to get it back, I reckon these bankers are going to be very hard pushed to get more than £1 or 2000 before the bankruptcy passes into the past tense, which leaves me with something in the region of a £48,000 profit on the whole operation!!!!

Not only do I have no bastard cash to give them, but to get at my insignificant assets, they have to come to my fort here on Fish Island, and then I have to let them in - for this kind of unsecured debt, they can't just break down the door and clean you out...

I have to let them in...?!?

And do you think I'm gonna let them in???

Why do you think I live in a gated compound with 3 big FUCK OFF metal and glass doors between me and the outside world?!?!


I guess what I'm driving at here, is that if there's one thing I've learned and attempt to practice in this world, it's that you should try and treat as you yourself are treated..

And given that banks and bankers only aim and desire is to make as much fucking money out of me as possible - my only aim and desire with banks and bankers, is to take them for every last penny I can...

Moon Song Video Episode 2...

Current mood: MU MU...

Currently listening : What Are We Doing Here? By They Came from the Stars I Saw Them Release date: 2003-07-01

Moon Song Video Episode 1...

Current mood: HAPPY!!!
Category: HAPPY!!! Music

Today has been COMPLETELY FUCKING FULL!!!

The key stage of the Tour De France up Alpe D'Huez, the release of CHG 8 (included therein the first PGC approved and rather awkward remix for about 18 months) and the making of a new video by my very favourite band..


Here's part one of the preview of that there video...

.

As usual, The Gay Masters controlled everything...

how can they not be stars???

And how many layers of unreality do you want???

shine on...

concentrate on the game....

to be continued.....

Currently listening : They Came from The Stars I Saw Them vs Reality Release date: 2007-09-18

CASA HASA GIOVANNA EPISODE 8 ::: LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY...

Current mood: SPEND IT WELL....
Category: SPEND IT WELL.... Music

CLICK THE PICTURE TO STREAM OR DOWNLOAD!!!

This weeks book...

Current mood: PRIORITIES....
Category: PRIORITIES.... Parties and Nightlife

is the autobiography of Peter Stringfellow...


Those of you who've heard of Stringfellow, probably won't need much more introduction..

For those of you who haven't, this picture probably tells you everything you need to know about the man...

Basically, he runs (and has run) a whole series of big and influential nightclubs, has been known to swan in a thong and runs a serious sex habit (even funerals turn him on)

He also makes a shitload of money...


A BARE FACED COCK???

OBVIOUSLY...


But an entertaining and inherently optimistic one, who's ambition and achievements are the kind that deserve more respect than they get - not least because he's willing to make a fool of himself...


So, I'm enjoying this book.

It has a very nice pace to it, and provides something of a history of the evolution and development of nightclubs in the UK and The States without getting all technical and cold...

Yes boss, it starts with Stringers putting on The Beatles in Sheffield, procedes through The Millionaire in Manchester and The Hippodrome in Piccadily, to his outposts in Miami and Beverly Hills...


Of course it's as interesting for what's been left out as what's in, but what is there is certainly worth a few quotes, starting with this one....


'One night a man brought a big frog into the club and sat it on the bar with a cigarette in it's mouth. He was one of the 'connected' Italian boys with a warped sense of humour. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. Frizzby was heartbroken, of course. I didn't find it particularly funny either and so I asked him to take the cigarette out of its mouth. As he was leaving, Frizzby pleaded with me to take the frog away from him. The Italian was cool: 'Hey, you want the frog, you have it.' Frizzby and I were going out that night, so the last thing we needed was a bloody great frog. She wanted to release it in Central Park, but we didn't have the time. Curtis wasn't around that night so I had to pay another limo driver $100 to take the frog into Central Park and put it into the pond. Frizzby insisted on taking the guys phone number. Two hours later she called him on his mobile to check he'd taken the frog. 'Yes, ma'm, I took the frog. I parked the car and walked to the pond and let him go' I'd been in New York a lot longer than frizzby, and I didn't know one limo driver who would go to Central Park, walk to the pond and release a frog after taking a $100 cash advance. I thought it wise not to tell Frizzby just how far away the car park was from the pond.'


I for one would like to see more frogs smoking cigarettes in nightclubs...

Are they covered by the ban????

Currently reading : King of Clubs By Peter Stringfellow

A Bottle Of Martini, A White Wine and a Stella please...

Current mood: OPPULENT!!!
Category: OPPULENT!!! Jobs, Work, Careers

I'm not sure quite how widespread a phenomena 'Freecycle' is, but it goes on around the trendy east end, and being terminally short of cash, I like to take good advantage of anything that contains the word 'FREE' whenever possible...


The idea of Freecycle is simple..

It's a Yahoo newsgroup dedicated to recycling people cast offs..

Basically, if you have some old crap you want shot of, you put a message out to the group, sit back and watch your inbox fill up with desperate pleas and stupid rationale as to why THAT INDIVIDUAL SHOULD HAVE YOUR CRAP...

Alternatively if you want to fill your house with other peoples rubbish, you recieve the emails each time something is listed, get your clicky finger CLICKING TO TRY AND GET IN THERE BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE RUNS OFF WITH THE PRIZE!!!!


Now, it could be said that it's a sign of the opulence of our times, that the kind of things that used to be sold in the freeads, jumble sales or in small cards in shop windows are now given away for free...

I for one used to love jumble sales for this kind of thing when i was young.

Yes boss, aroundabout age 14, I'd get the local papers together and do a good agenda for the weekends sales, I'd then take my push bike out and do as many as I could and come back with a vast haul of stuff with which to trouble my mothers sense of tidiness...

This picture was taken one night when I was younger than that, after I'd made a particularly successful haul.

I was so pleased with the days work that I refused to remove my new various accessories to sleep - I really was enormously happy with them...

Well, to cut a longer piece short, I've done very well out of freecycle this last year. It's given me a bike, a dining table, 2 leather armchairs, and the snails (RIP)..

Most recently, I found myself in possession of aroundabout 150 cassette tapes of reggae and soul, and then today, I saw this ad and couldn't help but leap right in...


Hey guys!

Up for grabs:

1) 13 bookends, 8 steel and 5 plastic.

2) Sennheiser neckband headphones

3) Multiplug with individual switches to save energy - 4 sockets but
only 3 are working.

4) Bag of stationery with an assortment of pens, box of black clips
and multi-coloured tabs for notes/books

5) Digital cordless telephone

6) Folding jeff chair from ikea - black

7) Drinks - 1 big bottle of Martini Asti, 1 bottle fo Stella Artois, 1
bottle of French white wine, 4 cans of tonic water and 2 bottles of
soda water.

Once again, would be really great if someone offered to take all or
most of the stuff. I live in E1, collection asap please. Email or text
at 07*875*30*3. Thanks!

Shafa x


Well, I got in SUPER QUICK!!! took the lot and am now sitting in my black jeff Ikea folding chair, drinking Martini Asti and drawing pictures of The Pope with the multi-coloured pens...

Shit, I might even pretend call people on the
5) Digital cordless telephone before the night's out....

The funny thing....

Current mood: AMAZED...
Category: AMAZED... Music

about my mothers 70th birthday party...

Wasn't that there were 3 prayers, a hymn, and a presentation about a school in India..

So much as that my cousin Ruth told me that her 18 year old son was seriously thinking about doing a degree in music journalism...

People often say....

Current mood: calm and collected (against all the odds)....
Category: calm and collected (against all the odds).... Music

'I BET YOU'RE SOME KIND OF A CUNT GIOVANNI!!

YOU CLAIM TO BE THE BEST MUSIC WRITER THE PLANET HAS EVER SEEN - AND YET YOU DON'T EVEN WRITE ABOUT MUSIC HALF THE TIME.....

AND YOU'VE NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED BY ANY OF THE DECENT MAGS THAT I BUY FROM MY LOCAL NEWSAGENT!!!

FURTHERMORE, THERE'S NO SUCH PLACE CALLED FISH ISLAND!!I LOOKED ON GOOGLE AND IT DOESN'T FUCKING WELL EXIST!!!

AND YOU RECKON YOU HAVE A WHOLE BEVY OF STAFF WHO DOT YOUR I'S AND CROSS THE T'S - BUT THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST SOME RANDOM CUNTS YOU'VE MET ON MYSPACE...!!!'

I RECKON YOU'RE FULL OF SHIT GIOVANNI!!!'


To which I reply....


'I think you've been eating too many e-numbers...

Have yourself a log, and watch this wonderful new video by Paloma Queen of Inifinity AKA The Official Epicurean to Paul Giovanni £rd.....

It really is top notch...!!!'

Small Details....

Current mood: YEAHHHH!!!!
Category: YEAHHHH!!!! Music

I've got the headphones on...

And I'm thoroughly amidst Casa Hasa Giovanna Episode 8...

Yes boss, almost 8 down, 15 to go - and for the first time I'm going to reveal the cover and theme a few days early....

This mix is proving to be quite a challenge...

For one, the theme is a little boring and for 2 it's very overt - which makes the task of joining it listenable - HARD!!!


It'll get done - work always does itself if you fully apply yourself - there's never any point worrying about it...

To catch up with the previous 7 issues - pop along here...


Other than this I've been working on some other audio bits and considering forming a new pop act called Money...

I've noticed that money is now god, and though I don't worship it - I reckon I should at least start a band called it...


The other main news is that Riccardo Ricco - my main boy for this years Tour De France, tested positive for a new variation of the blood boosting drug EPO...

This was no real surprise to anyone in and around cycling...

Ricco clearly thought he'd got a untestable drug on the go - but it was testable...


The thing I loved about it, was that he got busted, lost his 2 hard fought stage wins, his reputation as cycling's new big 'little' boy, his highly paid job to a 2 year ban and he now awaits trial and possible imprisonment for 2 years - and this was how he looked as he was deported back to Italy...

As Madonna once said...

WHATEVER HAPPENS - YOU'VE GOT TO KEEP SMILING!!!!

BRAVO RICCO!!!

Currently listening : Orbital By Orbital Release date: 1992-10-12

LESSONS IN PARANOIA NO2

Current mood: KEEP IT CLEAN...
Category: KEEP IT CLEAN... Music

Currently listening : Ambush! By DJ Scud Release date: 2003-04-08

LESSONS IN PARANOIA NO1

Current mood: YES
Category: YES Life

KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!!!

THE SHABBY ROAD RADIO HOUR - THE STORY SO FAR.....

Current mood: COMPLETELY SPIFFING!!!
Category: COMPLETELY SPIFFING!!! Music

EPISODE 1





EPISODE 2





EPISODE 3

EPISODE 4

For more information about (and to subscribe to) the forthcoming episodes, go and visit Roger The Record Producers Blog..........