We moved back to the UK from upstate New York in the summer of 2024 and, apart from a lot of touring to promote Amy’s album Hang In There With Me we seemed to spend the rest of that year climbing over cardboard boxes. When we first arrived we lived a simple and beautiful life - we had everything we needed and nothing more.
One day a large container truck arrived and big men filled our minimalist existence with everything we owned packed into cardboard boxes. So 2025 has been a year of unpacking boxes, moving boxes around, wondering why we own so many pointless objects, and occasionally rejoicing at the reappearance of some long forgotten piece of ephemera.
I also made an album - England Screaming.
But first I rebuilt my recording studio. I worked every day until I couldn’t stand up anymore. Rebuilt a floor, soundproofed walls, ran cables, wired in equipment... Actually our friend Rick, the local Norfolk builder form Kansas, rebuilt the floor but I watched and gave helpful advice…
When I was finished with that I dug out the tracks I had hastily recorded before the move with my friend and neighbour Sam Shepherd playing drums, and set about making them into an album.
There was a deadline, and again I worked every day until I was incapable of thinking, standing, sitting or staying awake. My eyes were burned by computer screens. And then it was finished and I anguished about the cover with my friend Karen Hall, my surrogate sister, who did the technical stuff and argued about some of my choices, including the randomness of my punctuation and the scrappiness of my cut outs (more like a Jackie annual than a high class graphic). And then it was done and nothing matched the guidelines, so it was tweaked and adjusted until everything fit, and we anguished together late at night on the phone, me and Karen being fearful that they’d got us all wrong.
But they hadn’t. And one day the product arrived (more boxes) - LPs and CDs - and they looked just right so I braced myself and made some videos. Hour by hour…the progress was slow, clipping and flickering at a rate of fifteen seconds a day.
I burned two hard drives and both my eyes. I made three full length videos of three of the tunes. I did it all sitting at the kitchen table. I made several short videos too, promoting my gigs in support of the album, promoting the album ahead of release. The record company were pleased - there were so many orders that they had to repress the LP ahead of release. I posted my videos all over Facebook and Instagram and worried that people were getting thoroughly sick of me. I steadied myself for the complaints that were sure to come:
While you’re busy bigging yourself up there are wars, atrocities going on, people are dying and you’re not much help...
The complaints never came but I understand the view of the people who might have made them. But this is my job - more than a job in fact - it’s what I do with my life. If I don’t do these things I’ll just stare into the abyss. There’s very little a seventy-one year old can do to save the planet and the people on it. Best I can do is try not to clutter the place up with my worn-out body and use, rather than lose my mind while I try to help some other people to not lose theirs. I won’t stop - there’s no choice in this - if I give up then that’s another small victory for the forces of darkness, the warmongers with their utter waste of time, money, resources and lives. So I keep on keeping on. What the fuck else am I going to do?
Of course there are the grandchildren, nine, eleven and fifteen at the last count, with their death metal, dancing, and junior computer hackery; there are frequent walks on beaches; notes to be found from Amy on the kitchen table when I get up: took a bus to Cromer, let’s meet for coffee; a trip to Los Angeles with my daughter Luci for Amy daughter Hazel’s wedding - Luci at the farmers market: two Jambalayas please in a phony Yorkshire accent; there’s the garden here, long, breathtakingly beautiful, divided into (I think) five sections, a slow, magical progress to the final garden shed and Brenda’s bungalow behind the eucalyptus hedge, with its mysteries of the bypass and industrial estate beyond…
But as for work it’s either music and all that entails (and which I love), or try for a part time job at the supermarket.
We did one rehearsal - in a village hall - four hours in a complete racket box. We recovered our hearing and did our first gig at the Latitude Festival. It was a bit of a mess but I think we got away with it.
We’ve played a good few more shows since then and got a lot better. The other week, on release day, we played the whole of England Screaming plus some of Leisureland and a few old favourites, and it was great, the best we’ve done so far. Tomorrow night we’re going to do it all again in Brighton.
Before we went on at Latitude I mentioned to one of the organisers that I hope everyone would be okay with what we were about to do and he said: ‘You’re Wreckless Eric, at this point you can doing anything the hell you like and it’ll be great!’
I like his optimism and positivity, and I’m carrying this idea with me, though I’m aware of the possibility that it won’t be great if I don’t put the work in. I suppose I’ll find out when I put out my next album.
In the meantime there are gigs:
can i pay on the door at Holt? not sure if i will be in hospital or not yet
ReplyDeleteI thought I'd ordered the new album, but it hasn't arrived. I'm disappointed. I'll have to order it again if it doesn't arrive soon.
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