Friday, 30th July 2004
Language Junkies
I like to be surrounded by a huge quantity of books. When I was a kid, this meant that I loved to spend time in the library and joined the school book club so as I might be able to get cheaper books. Thank god my parents indulged this pleasure of mine wholeheartedly and I still, to this day, have some wonderful books from my childhood on my bookshelves.
As I got older I started spending more and more time in bookshops and as my obsessive compulsive disorder grew steadily larger - second hand bookshops. Buying used books is the only way I can afford to keep up with my habit. I don’t only buy books that I want to read now, I also buy books that, at some point in my life, I will want to read, or know I should read. Therefore, I buy books at an alarming rate and accumulate them at a far quicker pace than I can read. I’m exactly like a vinyl junkie in that sense, except my pleasure is words, pages, paper, images, smells and the names of strangers I love to imagine on the strength of their names and penmanship. What was it that they thought of this book and why is it that they parted..?
So, needless to say, I was a little worried for how I would feel by removing my one constant pleasure from my life. Whilst I have occasionally wandered into bookshops here, it was only in moments of sheer sadistic torture that I did so. All of those wonderful beings on shelves that I could not comprehend. My compulsion nearly made me buy one anyway, Just In Case™, but thank god the lack of a job made me see sense.
And if I am honest, one of the things I have missed the most about making this move, is the simple fact that I cannot spend hours in a bookshop or a library anymore. All I have ever really wanted for myself was a personal library and so this compulsion is merely fuel for the dream. I am storing my future between the pages of other peoples words. It is why I had to fork out all that money and ship my books from America to here. I couldn’t leave them or sell them because they are my future and so they came to France with me, late but luckily undamaged, at a huge expense to my pocket.
Recently I remembered that the Friday morning market I can get to now I have the use of Cecilia, houses within it a book stall that sells English language books. This area of France is overrun with the English and so what better business to start? However, being as though I am a total snob, I avoided the stall since I assumed it would be full of crap like Robert Ludlum, Wilbur Smith, Dick Clancy and regular holiday tripe. These are not books to me, they are paper teevee.
Anyway, last week I overcame my snobbery since I was having extreme book buying withdrawal symptoms that had lead me to stalking Amazon.co.uk. Afraid of what I could do to my measly bank balance, I made the trip to town and was pleasantly surprised! Not only were the couple running the stall really nice, but they have the Best Puppy Ever™! Ha! Over seventy percent of the books are utter shite, however, I was able to find a good enough amount of decent books to warrant making regular trips to them. They will, most certainly, tide me over until Butcher Boy and I go to London in October. Last week I bought, Les Mots by Jean-Paul Sartre, Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas and The Knot of Vipers by Francois Mauriac. The most I paid was 3 euros and that was for Before Night Falls which was in pristine condition.
So, because I am a junkie, I went back this week and bought - Swann’s Way by Proust, All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes by Maya Angelou (I actually have read this and used to own it but it is one of the many books and records that mysteriously vanished from my parents supposed safe keeping 
), The Farewell Party by Milan Kundera, Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley and Nausea by Sartre. I talked with the lady some more and she is bringing me a good French vocabulary book next week which she said I can have for free. Weee! I spoke with her regarding the difficulties I am experiencing learning French because I have no-one to talk to and consequentially, the only voice I ever hear French in is my own. Which, as one might imagine, is completely fucking useless and leads me to staring blankly at the few French people who have had to communicate with me. It is really frustrating because I know that if I were to read what had been said, I would know exactly what was being communicated but that is of no use in day to day life. She confirmed what I am loathe to admit - that I need one on one tutoring. I don’t know what to do about this since I just simply don’t have the cash for French lessons but unless I get some serious tutoring, I am arsed out and can’t get a job to get some cash. Catch 22 really; I am yearning for a solution because the last thing I want is to go back to the UK when my money runs out.
The moral of this story? Don’t be a snob, for when you overcome your prejudices you get promises of free books and puppy dogs gnawing your hands and other stuff I am not sure of yet so have a quote instead:
“Be self-satisfied, and other self-satisfied people will love you, rend your neighbour, the other neighbours will laugh. But if you hurt your own soul, all other souls will cry out.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mots
Wednesday, 28th July 2004
Tipping Memories
The best summer I ever had in London was the summer of 1994, which would be, dear Mathematical Hero, 10 years ago now. I had been made redundant from my job in that spring and so was signing on and working for cash in clubs - it was the beginning of what really has only just ended now. Upon finding out I was signing on, my live-in landlords at the Elephant (Old Kent Road), decided to evict me. I think I had one week to get all of my belongings out and that left me as a wandering nomad, sleeping on friends and random strangers floors. That is a story in and of itself, but not the one I am telling now.
So, I was working at Iceni, the Saturday night party called Flipside run by Rachel Bee, and on the top floor was a jam session hosted by the most fabulous Laura Mohapi. Nou and I were standing on that 3rd floor when three huge bastards came through the doorway. We looked at each other, both thinking the same thing - that there was no possible way they could be British since they were just too, collectively, fat. They had to be, we surmised, American. To top it off, one of them had an upright bass, so now they were big, fat American musicians…
So they jammed and they were amazing and somehow Nou began talking with them. They were called The Roots and if memory serves me correct, only Thought, ?uesto and Hub were present that evening. It turned out that they were on a huge European tour to promote their 2nd album, although first with a major, Do You Want More?!!!??!. I recall going to that live-in studio in St. Johns Wood with Nou to visit them one evening, (is it called Rack?), crashing on a sofa after a VERY heated debate with Rich (Nichols - the manager), about Ursula’s poem The Unlocking, and then walking all the way back across the water in the morning. I hated that poem on first hearing back then, but now I love it. Anything that has the power to incite that much emotion in someone is a very powerful thing.
Anyway, those were the Rum and Coke days so it’s all a little hazy, but I do know that at some point they all decided they wanted to use London as their base and Nou helped them find a flat. It was a large place in Queens Crescent, Kentish Town above the Post Office. It was quite rare in design, for London, in that there was a largish communal roof terrace that all four flats shared. Nou moved in with them and at some point she managed to persuade them to let me move in too and so I was given a corner of the floor to rest my weary bones. Hahahaa. But hey, at least I wasn’t homeless anymore.
I don’t really remember much of that summer at all. All I have is this overwhelming feeling that I really never had a better time in that big, old city. That was the summer I met the first love of my life, Louie Stone, and so as well as living with strange, American musicians, I suddenly found myself in the throes of love and all that could mean for a person. I was brimming with so much experience. I could not keep up. Life was flowing in and over me and all I could do was silently watch, drink, love, listen, scream…
After a little while, a room in the flat upstairs became free and I moved in there with a woman named Sarah Porter who introduced me to more music and had some great stories to tell about the Dingwalls days in Camden, and the beginning and height, really, of the Acid Jazz days. Suddenly my whole life was about music. I was in heaven. I started picking up more and more work in clubs and ended up making quite a fair amount of money since it was all cash in hand. I think it was the following winter I actually first met Ben and Pete, huddling outside some club promoting their club night - Barely Breaking Even. Actually, I think I met Louie promoting outside the BBE night at Bar Rhumba. What a web! And look at Pete now, just look at him now…
But back to that summer. It was about rum and coke. God, it was about buying 2 litre bottles of coke, pouring out two thirds of it, filling the bottle back up with rum and then smuggling the bottle into clubs so we could get drunk cheaper. It was about music. It was about love. It was about severe contact highs. It was about defending my beloved Marmite from American bastards who called it “spreadable shit” and “a yeast infection”. It was about relishing the fact that they loved the vegetarian stew I cooked them that was heavily flavoured with it. It was about watching someone pour nearly an entire bottle of honey on their curry. It was about Rahzel walking into my room singing / beat boxing me a song and since I had NEVER heard someone beatbox live before, I was overwhelmed with awe. It was about watching people eat “cheese fries” for the first time in my lard-free life. It was about festivals like Reading and Glastonbury. It was about rolling in the fields at a festival with some dude who, 8 years later, walked into a restaurant in Philly on South Street, (Guru), with King Britt who I was meeting also. Who knew he would do so well too? Ha! I refuse to name him to protect the innocent. It was a potent summer with many miscreant activities culminating in a huge 21st birthday party for Nou which also served as her leaving party as the next day she left the UK to serve as The Roots tour manager and then moved to America with them. That party was famous in London for years. I would meet people who congratulated me on the party and I, to my knowledge, had never met them before.
So ten years ago I was in love, and I was listening to an album that really changed the way I listened to certain kinds of music. That album has always signified that summer to me and so, regardless of how much I have loved subsequent albums The Roots have created, DYWM has always retained the number one spot in my Roots hierarchy…
A couple of days ago, I got a package from The Geegy Monster which contained, amongst other things, a copy of The Roots new album - The Tipping Point. This is a really, really good album. I also got a copy of Roots TV 2 which lead me to feel a little nostalgic for them. I now question whether or not I am being honest when I say I want a drama free life. Anyway, the nostalgia took me on a jaunt down memory lane and here I am, here you are, reading something that started off as a Tipping Point review. Ha!
Truly, this is a really good album and were I not to have had that summer, it would take crowning glory in The Roots pantheon in my opinion. It is short, sweet and to the point. It reminds me, in terms of the attitude or vibe of the album, of Labcabincalifornia, which is one of my favourite albums across all genres. It feels like a mature turning point for The Roots because they are suddenly old enough, and less self-conscious, to actually be able to laugh at themselves. I think Ahmir called Phrenology a “departure album” but to me, The Tipping Point is more deserving of this title. I am not one of the Phrenology Haters, but there was definitely something forced about that album, a sense of something being tried for. TTP seems natural to me. It is how it all is meant to go. Lyrically, BT has obviously grown a lot and is able to discuss issues other than his own cunterrific status. A battle MC he maybe, but I am more than grateful for songs like Guns Are Drawn as I was for Water.
As I said to The Geegy Monster, this album feels, simultaneously, like a debut and the work of a master. It is wonderfully defining in its flexibility and inability to state the future. Tank and her Jiggle Bags gives it Two Thumbs Up. For me, it is a PERFECT summertime album. I have been listening to it all day today as I was separating seeds which is what your days are made of when you have no Fedex, Kinko’s and ATM’s. 
I think I can leave Jeff Buckley, Modest Mouse, A Perfect Circle and John Martyn alone for a couple of months so that TTP can be my theme since it works perfectly with the southwest of France, trees, fields and fields of sunflowers and incredibly hot, lazy days with light, skin tickling breezes.
Tonight I am drinking Hoegaarden and remembering doing such at The Latest Dish and feeling that maybe pieces of me can love Philly some…