Our street is strewn with discarded Christmas trees. They look like they have been thrown out the door, without the residents even making it onto the pavement. Is it OK to just throw trees onto the pavement? Do they just get collected or have they arranged collection? And why are there always TVs abandoned on certain corners? I chopped up and bagged our lovely tree in a manly fashion to the sound of “Remain In Light” by Talking Heads. Maybe I didn’t need to bother.
I have just been writing and heard a police car’s siren speeding past outside. They were chasing a kid on a pushbike,. He crashed into a parked car outside our flat, went flying over the handle-bars and across the bonnet of the car, then ran off. A policewoman raced after him on foot, and the car followed. There are now two helicopters circling low overhead; it is LOUD. I presume the kid has done more than just steal the bike, which is now crumpled and leaning against our railings. More of this and I will end up writing that inner city Clash album, which I am sure Jim would love us to make…
The writing is going fairly well. As Martin Stephenson said “My subconscious and I are back on speaking terms”. When you first start on a new project it takes a while to get back into the swing of things. I find that it is once I have written a song that I think is pretty good that I relax, start to enjoy it and pick up speed. Writing is akin to hopping alone into a small boat each night and heading off exploring across a big black sea. You are keen to travel and discover somewhere new, but there are powerful currents that can mean you end up in a place you gave been to many times before. Conversely, sometimes you set off for a familiar destination and land somewhere completely new. It is a solitary, exasperating, fulfilling, calming, cathartic process.
Of course, most of the real writing does not happen at a table, in front of a book, or a laptop. It happens walking to and from work, in the bath, or most annoyingly, awake in the night. This is where ideas take shape and problems get solved. I remember Woody Allen saying something similar, how he really worked things out while walking round New York, or taking a shower. He said that in the early days he could walk round Manahttan happily thinking things through, but now he gets stopped all the time, so is forced to either walk up and down his balcony, or take a shower. Hence he regularly takes three showers a day, staying in there for forty-five minutes or so, just working things out. No wonder he is small.
As I am enjoying the writing, I occasionally think I should just carry on until I get bored, maybe write all year. But then the album would not be out for ages. But maybe it would be a better record… or maybe not. You have to make a call on quantity versus quality. Two heroes of mine have gone in opposite directions. Scott Walker declared years ago that he would rather make one album each decade that he is truly happy with than put out stuff which he does not love. That is just what he has done, producing three albums proper in the last three decades. Whilst I love Scott taking this approach, as a fan, I can’t help wish he was putting out more albums. Bill Nelson has taken the opposite route. For the last twenty years or so he has created a piece of music almost every day, and has then released most of it, as it is, without further adornment or edit. Whilst I love Bill’s approach, spontanaeity and work ethic, as a fan, I am overwhelmed, and can’t help but feel that he could produce a truly great album if he cherry-picked and edited his output. So I think that the typical artist output of an album each couple of years is probably about right. I still intend to write until March then see what I have got.
After much alcohol accompanied debate, Bridie and I have finalised our list of favourite films of 2009. Bear in mind that we err on the side of arty (while always willing the mainstream to be great), and that this is a joint list. I raved about the movies of 2008, and 2009 was even better. It was a year of genre excellence, with amazing War, Horror, Musicals, Sci-Fi and Documentaries. The great directors revelled in the sheer joy of making films and it showed. Even mainstream studio movies fizzed with energy and invention. So here we go: 1 Inglourious Basterds (just SO entertaining) 2 Antichrist (could also have been 1; very beautiful and manages to capture Man’s ultimate inability to understand Woman) 3 Michael Jackson This Is It (left to my own devices I would probably have had this at 1: real pure genius captured on celluloid) 4 Synecdoche New York (not cheery, but a great allegory of a life) 5 Funny People (don’t get why people don’t love this, surely a classic?) 6 Beaches Of Agnes (another beautiful, bold tableau of life) 7 Let The Right One In (super-cool vampire flick) 8 Moon (super-cool sci-fi flick) 9 Two Lovers (really under-rated movie take on Ronnie Corbett’s “Sorry” or Dostoyesky, depending on your viewpoint) 10 The Cove (preaching to the converted to Bridie and I, but this is a fascinating, tense, thriller of a documentary) 11 Where The Wild Things Are 12 The Hurt Locker 13 Gran Torino 14 Frost/Nixon 15 A Serious Man 16 Bruno 17 Up 18 Drag Me To Hell 19 Coraline 20 Last Chance Harvey 21 Curious Case Of Benjamin Button 22 Orphan 23 Whatever Works 24 Adventureland 25 Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist 26 Fantastic Mr Fox 27 The Class 28 Creation 29 In The Loop 30 The Damned United 31 Mesrine 32 Mid August Lunch 33 Marley and Me 34 Le Donk & Scorzayzee 35 Paranormal Activity 36 District 9 37 Surveillance 38 The White Ribbon 39 Sunshine Cleaning 40 Frozen River 41 Encounters At The Edge of the World 42 The Informant! 43 A Few Days in September 44 Me & Orson Welles 45 Newtown Killers 46 Hush 47 Looking for Eric 48 State and Play 49 I Love You Man 50 Star Trek 51 Vicky Cristina Barcelona 52 The Reader 53 Revolutionary Road 54 (500) Days of Summer 55 Nowhere Boy 56 Trick r Treat 57 The Children 58 He’s Just Not That Into You 59 Bolt 60 Slumdog Millionaire 61 35 Shots of Rum 62 The Girl cut in Two 63 Choke 64 Wendy and Lucy 65 Cold Souls 66 Quiet Chaos 67 The Grocers Son 68 Kamikazes Girls 69 Telstar 70 Not Quite Hollywood 71 Taking Woodstock 72 Paris Is Burning 73 Doubt 74 Management 75 Julie & Julia 76 The September Issue 77 The Gray Man 78 Dead Snow 79 North Face 80 Gonzo the Life of Hunter S Thompson 81 Anvil 82 Public Enemies 83 Dorian Gray 84 Lakeview Terrace 85 Is Anybody There? 86 Helen 87 Defiance 88 Genova 89 Coco Before Chanel 90 Cadillac Records 91 Private Lives of Pippa Lee 92 The Day The Earth Stood Still 93 Bottleshock 94 Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 95 Outlander 96 Monsters vs. Aliens 97 Observe & Report 98 Il Divo 99 The Baader Meinhof Complex 100 Religious Here’s to 2010…

(Soundtrack: A lot of mumbling and coughing as I am in the Library)
It is dark and pouring down out there. Bridie and I just spent a really nice, quiet Christmas in London having cancelled plans to head North at the last minute due to illness. Probably our last Christmas in London I would guess, but we shall see. It is New Year’s Eve tomorrow and we are pulling together our Top 100 movies of the year, which I will share with you, as I am sure you are interested. Or are you? Si said I may as well text him these entries, as so few people probably read them. But Bridie does, and her folks do (thanks for the t-shirts!). I am not sure whether we should finalise the list straight away as there are some films we still haven’t seen, such as The Informant, Bright Star, The White Ribbon, that are sure to make a dent in it. On the other hand we already have over a hundred great films as it has been such an amazing year for movies.
A few years ago I would also have been compiling my Top 100 albums of the year, but not any more. I am sure the great albums are out there, but there are probably only ten or twenty from this year that I have discovered and really rate. I have found this to be the case the last couple of years and assumed this is because I am at an age where I start to listen to more older music and keep up less. I saw the NME’s Top 50 albums of the Noughties listing, and I read it with enthuiasm, thinking that it would lead me to the great albums I have missed recently. It is the first time in those ten years that the NME has held my attention for longer than a minute. I expected to not know most of the records on their list, but in fact I knew them all. A lot of good albums on there, but as a showing for an entire decade it is pretty uninspiring. It got me thinking about “Rock” and its lifespan.
I came to the conclusion that Rock is in fact dead. Not just pining for the fjords, but deceased. Think about Classical music. That had its day. I am sure there are still great pieces of Classical music being composed now, but nobody would dispute that it is music of the past. Jazz was alive and kicking and a real movement from the twenties to the sixities. After that, great Jazz albums continued to be made, but they were either meldings with Rock or Funk, or retro takes on previous glories. In other words Jazz had five decades as a real movement, and then it was over.
I contend that the same thing happened to Rock. Its five decades were from the fifties to the nineties and it is now over. Don’t get me wrong: people will still make fantastic Rock albums for years to come, but as a vibrant, innovative, living movement, it is over. And Rock was a *movement. *As I grew up, it was how you would express yourself. It could change people’s feelings, set their moral code, it could actually change the world and it was what you did if you had something to say or something to protest about. Different phases inspired new fashions and slang and gave personality to each decade. Of course, The Beatles, Bowie and Punk all happened in a world in which there was no Beatles, Bowie or Punk. After 50 years of this music, artists either have to replicate the past or purposefully steer clear of it – it is hard to just ignore it. We are now making music in a world that has five decades of Rock n Roll. Elvis wasn’t.
The albums on the NMEs Top 50 list are a collection of magpie-like refreshes of previous styles. None of them changed the world, or even said anything about the world. This decade, kids with anger, energy and something to say went onto Facebook. Rather than queue up for new release seven inches they queued for Games, which now sell even more than the singles used to. The Noughties has been about technology, reality TV, the internet, social networking and gaming. It was not about music. I am not grumpy about this. Social networking is not my cup of tea, and there is more than enough wonderful music to delve into from those five decades to ever need any more anyway. And there will be more great records. There will be enough of us out there making albums, like those soldiers in the forest who don’t realise the war is over, to guarantee a few corkers.
I have always been a passionate defender of what has been happening each year in music. I don’t like it when people say things are not as good as they used to be. They have been saying that all my life and they have always been wrong. If I am now talking like that, the likely explanation is that I have been watching too many movies and not listening to enough albums this year to realise the exciting things that are actually happening. If that is the case, then I look forward to hearing that music. But I stand by my theory – I am not saying things aren’t as good as they used to be, I am just stating that Rock is dead.
Speaking of which, we finally met up for our Pop Wishes evening after a couple of postponments. The boys were on good form and there was much toasting – 2009 has been a good year for Spearmint. We are dead proud of the Shirley Lee and Telley abums, our tours of UK and Germany, the “A Week Away” re-issue, the “LIfe In Reverse” EP, the book of graphic interpretations of our songs, and the ICA show. We opened up our Pop Wishes from a couple of years ago and we had achieved seven and a half out of thirteen of them. Not too bad. We then came up with some new ones, only five actually. Along the lines of doing the next Shirley Lee and Andy Lewis albums and getting going on the next Spearmint one. They have been ritually sealed and slipped inside a Burt Bacharach album, to be opened in two years time. This time they are inside “Make It Easy On Yourself” rather than “Hitmaker” to see if Burt can rustle up any extra magic.
So here’s to 2010. I hope it is the year you wish for…

(Soundtrack: Traffic and sirens as I am in an Internet Cafe on the Uxbridge Road)
I just went to the dentist, well the dental hygenist, for a clean. She asked when I last had one and I said five years, but it is actually at least fifteen. Her objective seemed to be to cause as much pain as possible, and to punish me for not coming for so long. She said I have caused irreparable damage to my gums, and then she really went to town. I started yelping and kicking my feet in the air, with the blood spurting down my chin, and she asked in a matter of fact way, “Are you OK?”, as though she had picked up that I might have a mild headache or something. She says I have to go back in six months. I am not good with pain.
Since the last diary entry I have been working pretty hard on writing the next album. I would estimate that I am now about halfway through, but then it is hard to say you are halfway to somewhere when you don’t know where that place is. Or hard to estimate the half when you can’t see the whole. There comes a point when you are writing a big project that you are suddenly “in it”, suddenly inside looking out, rather than outside looking in. I am now at the point, which is good, but not necessarily pleasurable, as it is the point when you start to obsess on ideas for songs, and get frustrated about the things that you know are not working, or are not good enough. I am impatient. I want the songs to just fall into place and for me to love them, but it is actually going to take some effort to get there. And there is no kidding yourself – you know you are being lazy, or untrue, or faking, or stealing. I am a more fulfilled person when I am writing, but not necessarily happier, except when I get the odd big break-through or get close to the end.
I set myself a plan for the writing which involves keeping going until Easter. I find that having a plan works for me; deadlines and a schedule encourage me to get on with it. I allow myself to change the plan at any point, and I am sure I will, but I find it a productive way to work. The album still seems to be shaping up to be a solo album, and I feel it would be good to attempt to do the whole thing myself, so that it comes out completely differently to our previous albums. I mean playing everything and producing it myself. Good for me, but not necessarily for you! It occurred to me over the last couple of weeks that this means I am beholden to nobody. Not that we normally get much interference in our music, but I can literally do whatever I want with this one… If I want to try a comedy reggae song or a jazz instrumental there will be no-one around to stop me! Only joking… (at least about the jazz)…So I may take this opportunity to push things a little, and make this one as Shirley Lee as it can possible be. After that I am sure you and I will both be gagging for me to do some stuff with the band again.
We didn’t do our Pop Wishes night, hopefully we will get this in before Christmas. Bridie and I did go to see Cliff and The Shadows though and it was fabulous: Hank Marvin confirmed his place as the coolest man in rock and that guitar sounded perfect. They didn’t play any solo Cliff tracks, just the early Cliff and Shadows stuff, but Cliff has great, still for my money the best voice for ballads in Rock’n’Roll. It is hard to communicate how great they are if you don’t get it, but in terms of British music they are right up there with The Beatles, The Clash, The Stone Roses and all.
We have also caught some great movies: In The Loop, The Cove, Up and Le Donk spring to mind (“Come on Deirdre Barlow!”). Paddy Considine has become a bit of a hero – everyone knows Dead Man’s Shows is a classic, but try watching him in In America and then Le Donk. Best movie though, and I suspect this will end up being my favourite of the year, is the Michael Jackson film. I was absolutely blown away by it. I think that is the best film about dance ever, beating Shall We Dance, Top Hat, Carefree, An American In Paris, all of them! Also the best film about Soul Music that I can think of. I highly recommend it.
After we did the ICA gig, I was feeling “pretty good” about the band and myself and came across a review of the Shirley Lee album on the internet. I usually try not to read reviews as it is pointless, but I thought I would boost my ego a bit more by having a read. Unfortunately it was a rotten review. Clearly if you put records out you are going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews. This was one of those where they put the album on, listen to it for the first time, and make some notes as they go. It really laid into us, saying it was track after track of boring indie and quoted a fragment of a lyric and then said “Wow, that’s deep”. I am quoting from memory – I won’t bother to check the details, as it was also full of inaccuracies about the record. Now clearly this is my own fault for reading the bloody thing (and for making track after track of boring indie obviously). It is always a bad idea, not because good press is likely to go your head, but because they always hurt you and make you angry. People in bands tend to be sensitive types to say the least; the good things that are said go straight past us, we zoom in on the slightest criticism, and see red. I have seen band members read reasonable reviews and act as though their family has been physically attacked. After all these years I am pretty good at dealing with negative stuff, but this hit home. It not only brought me down to earth (probably a good thing), but made me boil with anger. I went to the bottom of the piece to find out who wrote it and there was no name. Definitely a good thing as if I had been able to get hold of them at that moment, I would have physically attacked them. I mean it. I calmed down after a couple of hours, and can now see it in context. I can’t complain – we have always been lucky and got really good reviews, and the Shirley Lee album got more glowing press than anything I have been involved with. Not that I really get the point: did anybody buy the album because they read the review? Though I suppose it at least tells you it’s out if you see a review. Anyway, the same thing happened to Ronan yesterday – he found a long, badly written, luke-warm review of the ICA show that was littered with mistakes about the band and the night, and it made him really really angry. I suppose at our level, the people who write this stuff would like to get into journalism and are practising their craft, including being negative. The person who wrote that got in on the guestlist as “press” too. I’ve had it with that – they can pay next time, in fact they can fuck off! I don’t feel too good about paying to see a band when some wanker has got in for free just to frown all the way through, then write down negative prose and get it circulated! Rant over… but I am serious: no more guest list places for journalists.