The Hurricane House Concert

We were in Memphis when the storm (sorry superstorm) hit. Or we might have been in Chicago. Or somewhere in between because we played in San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Memphis and Chicago on consecutive days and my memories are already beginning to blur.

I was a bit concerned. Catskill was directly in the projected path of Superstorm Sandy. (I've been calling it a hurricane but it's slowly coming to my attention that everyone else is calling it a superstorm so I'm attempting to join in here). I was worried that a tree might fall on the house. We've got a lot of trees. Occasionally I take a stroll around the back yard, count them up and catalogue them all, marvelling in a fearful sort of way at the fact that I own so many trees (if you can actually own a tree – it seems like an odd idea). And then I lose count or forget. I think there might be eight of them, fucking great big maples lined up along either side of the property line towering over the grass in between with branches touching one side to the other. In the summer, when they're in full leaf, the effect is faintly terrifying. Especially at night - it's like being in a vast organic cathedral. I've often been out there on my own at night, tending the barbeque with just a wall light between me and the murky towering blackness, cicadas kicking up a deafening racket and the distant wail of freight trains rumbling through the night from Buffalo to New Jersey...

Catskill's very own celebrity slum lord Frank Cuthbert started off the second set with Drunk On Love (Amy on 12 string, Eric on bass) and the beautifully insipid Pasa Robles Wine where we almost turned into The Archies...

We really should have employed the services of a tree surgeon but we couldn't afford it. So somewhere on the road between Memphis and Chicago I was trying to console myself with the idea that what we saved on not hiring a tree surgeon we could put towards the cost of repairing the house and paying the increased insurance premiums.

It was all going to be fine - I grew up on a high cliff top on the south coast of England, constantly buffeted and battered by violent south westerly gales. Roads were frequently rendered impassable by shingle thrown up from the beach. Waves would hit the ninety foot cliffs and water, shingle and seaweed would fly another twenty feet into the air. I used to go to school in this weather – on a double decker bus listing at a thirty degree angle as the wind smashed into the side of it. 

They showed us pictures of buses being tested for stability and sometimes the bus conductress used to laugh it off but I could tell she was just as scared as I was. Thankfully the bus never blew over. There weren't any trees – I think I was eight before I actually saw a tree in real life – they wouldn't grow where we lived. I read stories from some parallel universe where boys climbed trees and got lost in the forest, and I felt vaguely inadequate as though it was my fault that in Peacehaven and Telscombe Cliffs the only vegetation apart from grass was hardy privet, gorse and Spanish broom.

We listened to news reports of rising tides, warnings of imminent disaster and so on, and I texted a friend in Asbury Park, New Jersey asking if he was OK. He sent me a photo of his girlfriend's house. The storm hadn't happened yet, the tide was still rising and the ground floor of her house was almost completely under water.

The David Greenberger Formation, a 75% spectacle wearing celebrity superstorm supergroup perform "Snakes"

They said it was going to be worse than Irene. Personally  we were very lucky there. I became the proud owner of a dilapidated Cape Cod two days before Irene. We were in England getting ready to start a new life in America. It occurred to us that we really ought to get some house insurance so Amy called a few insurance companies. They told us to call back after the hurricane. We saw footage of water flowing over the top of a road bridge across the creek near our house in Catskill. We looked at a house there back in the summer during one of our many house hunting expeditions. It was creepy – Amy didn't like it because there was an old pair of crutches built into one of the walls of the rather slimy basement.

I almost quite liked the place in spite of the traffic noise from the bridge you could see if you looked upwards from the back yard - the bridge that later had water flowing over the top of it. That house must have been almost totally submerged. Fortunately for us there was a loud wail and suddenly I was in that parallel universe - the one where othe boys climbed trees and so on – 'I love that sound!' I exclaimed, and then we couldn't hear ourselves speak for the next ten minutes as five miles of freight train thundered across an adjacent trestle. So we did the sensible thing and bought a house on a hill an attractive distance away from the railway line.

We were very lucky. The town was devastated. The ice cream place by the creek where we dreamed of having a root beer float, all washed away. The t shirt printing shop – that had to be gutted and completely rebuilt (we got our new t shirts printed there before we went on tour). The restaurant down where Catskill Creek flows into the Hudson river was destroyed. And so it went on. And miraculously our house and surrounding neighbourhood came out of it unscathed.

We arrived at Newark Airport and drove through torrential rain to our new home in a national disaster area. The rain never stopped tipping out of the sky for four and a half days. We stayed in a friend's house with a tin roof. In the middle of the third night Amy asked me if it was the end of the world. I thought it probably was though I didn't like to say.

Catskill wasn't the worst affected – in the town Pratsville which is only thirty five miles away just about every building was badly damaged. We drove through there only the other week, over a year later – it was like a ghost town. Some people have given up, they're not coming back. There were a lot of shabby houses with new roofs. On Saturday night at our house concert someone told me how they bought a few groceries in the only remaining store in Pratsville and the owner was moved to tears of gratitude.

All this might sound depressing but I'm trying to talk about our house concert and why we did it.

We've been lucky twice – Sandy took a left turn before it got to us and ploughed off into Pennsylvania.

We were going to put on a house concert as part of our Kickstarter campaign to raise money to put out our latest album but we only sold one or two tickets so the idea put itself on hold. We weren't even sure if we could get away without either – someone always gets upset if you do anything noticeable. But if it's a charity fundraising event...

The house was a mess and we'd been away on tour for two months. In the second month we drove eight thousand miles coast to coast and north to south and back again. It was a little bit overwhelming but we did it and I'm glad we did. We're like Ike & Tina Turner doing Proud Mary – we never do things the easy way. In between touring and recording we're fixing up the house. We love this place and we're doing it with pride and on a low budget. We do a bit, we run out of money, we go on tour, come home, do a bit – a few repairs, a bit of paint, tiles, a shelf or two... We're very lucky.

The house concert was almost like a housewarming party, even though we didn't know a lot of people who came. We sort of did though – I recognised names from emails, mail order, facebook and so on. And there were some we knew from other shows we've done. It was fun – I wanted it to be a celebration as much as a fundraiser. We should appreciate what we've got. People lost their homes. We were lucky enough to have one to come home to.

Everyone bought something along with them. People helped out, laid out food, took turns overseeing the list of ticket holders, that sort of thing. The police chief who lives across the street was very nice about it all - he actually said well done and told us not to worry about the parking restrictions. David Greenberger helped me to paint even more signs which were meant to be helpful but probably ended up being charmingly confusing. I'd already painted some large ones - "3 hours of Love, Peace and Dischords" in honour of the Woodstock contingent (there's nothing going on in Woodstock so they all have to come to Catskill to get their kicks), a big Eric & Amy sign that we hung in a tree and illuminated with a torch. 

A selection of signs. We're thinking of starting a business.

Frank Cuthbert bought a load of folding chairs along from his art gallery in Catskill, Brik. His lovely girlfriend Danette somehow managed the catering and put me in mind of a Pan Am air stewardess. Next time we're going to get her a uniform and turn the place into a homemade aeroplane. Later on she commandeered the kitchen as her personal dancing space.

We raised $1300.16 and donated it to Occupy Sandy. I know they say they prefer 'in kind' donations and only take money as a last resort but there's no bartering system for gasoline and heating oil so I hope the money does some good.

And finally I should mention the vinyl - we have vinyl copies of our new album!!! We've got boxes of them hidden under beds, in cupboards, up chimney flues... We've got so many of them we're having to sleep standing up in a corner of the bathroom. Help us to regain our sanity - buy a copy here: http://www.amyrigby.com/amyshop.html

Across The Great Divide

Seattle...

Excuse me you cunt, we've driven three thousand miles coast to coast across the USA, turned right at San Francisco and done a further two days hard driving to get here so would you mind shutting your fucking trap or leaving because we don't want to hear you trying to impress your dolly-bird date when we're trying to play for these people.

A fine opening to the show. Amy actually heard the guy say to the girl stop trying to sleep with me. Well, really. He looked quite offended after my reprimand but he left and everyone was pleased and we started up with Astrovan off our first album in two different tempos because I was a bit adrenalised by the diatribe.

I love Seattle. It's about as far from England as you can get without doing something daft like crossing the equator so it's a mystery to me why the musicians here are so compatible. Same wit, same jokes, same spirit. Grunge gave them something to kick against - the Seattle music scene is open to anything so our free-form-folk-rock-metal-pop-skiffle thing really works.

We wound up with another impromptu Seattle subsupergroup - Johnny Sangster on guitar, Jim Sangster on the bass, Mark Pickerel on tambourine (Is this what I'm reduced to Eric?), Amy on the organ and me on my first broken string of the tour doing Reconnez Cherie as an encore. We just had to do an encore after the soundman had engaged us in a post-set group hug. Never been hugged by a club's sound engineer before - threatened, but never hugged.

Johnny Sangster's solo opening set was a sensation as was Mark Pickerel - two great supports and then us  - a real value for money musical event. I wish Seattle was on the East Coast so we could play there more often though the excitement might be a bit too much for us. As it was we were glad to have the next day off.

Two weeks ago we were playing at a house concert on Rhode Island. We stopped off at our place on the way to Pittsburgh where we stopped off on the way to Indianapolis for an intimate Tuesday evening show in front of maybe as many as twenty people. And then we carried on to Springfield Missouri for a fabulous early bird special between the bingo and happy hour. Loads of people - no one comes to Springfield so we were a bit of a novelty. And it was a good show which I hardly want to mention because they've all been good shows.

I can't begin to explain how bizarre, back-breaking, mind-numbing and just plain exhilerating the next four days were. I haven't driven across America coast to coast since 1979. From Missouri onwards it was like being in a giant film set, watching John Wayne country onfold in all its vastness beyond our filthy windscreen.

We stayed in Wichita, in an instantly forgetable motel. We had dinner in an Italian chain restaurant. The waitress was a young woman from California who came to Whichita for college. She wanted to go back to California. She told us downtown Wichita was quite picturesque but we never found it. All we saw were shopping malls – Staples, JC Penney, Starbucks, Panera, Macy's, Sprint, AT&T, Radio Shack, Sports Authority, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Claire's Accessories, Vitamin Shoppe, Gap, Arby's, Autozone, MacDonalds, Burger King, KFC... It seemed to go on forever and then it was back to Burl Ives and The Big Country and I'm singing Wichita Lineman in my head all the way to Denver. We could tell we were in Denver and not back in Wichita because the retail outlets were in a different order - Home Depot, Autozone, MacDonalds, JC Penney, Macy's, Gap, Target, Walmart, TJ Max... a thousand miles of shopping malls and back to the scenery. It was freezing too. And in Denver it started to snow.

Somewhere along the the highway in... it might have been Kansas, we saw signs for the world's largest prairie dog, a five-legged cow, a six-legged cow and a miniature donkey called Roscoe. The World's Smallest Zoo - we didn't actually get to see all these wonders because the place was closed, boarded up with a For Sale sign hanging off it. And the night was coming down and it was all faintly terrifying. Who needs a zoo in a place like that? Who ever came to see it? No one perhaps, and that's why it was boarded up.

Out here you could probably tell people anything and they'd believe it. A brilliant strategy – train 'em up in the ways of ignorance and they'll believe anything you tell them – there are little brown men coming to rape your unborn fetuses in the middle of the night, there's all manner of evil out there beyond the safe confines of Kansas, or Wyoming or Nevada. Pro-Lifers, the Assembly Of God. When You Die You Will Meet Your Creator – what ever are you going to say to him? Fine bloody job you've done there Jesus God old mate – loved the shopping malls. No evil there.

Pro-life – it seems to me that with that lot a human life gets the best protection as long as it stays in the womb. Get born and you're fucked. A sixteen year old girl from a trailer park with a deadbeat boyfriend, no prospects, no hope, but the baby must be protected. Until it gets born. Then it's just useless human trash, the product of a godless unmarried mother.

Strange, these people who hold human life in such value. Do they really give a flying fuck whether or not people live or die. They just need livestock for their people farm. A capitalist society needs a workforce, a healthy well-nourished, properly housed workforce would surely be more efficient but that's not how it works here. - here on the People Farm we're heading for a subtle form of slavery.

I hope you've all registered to vote. I hope everyone in America who reads this bothers to go and cast their vote. I haven't got a vote here, I'm a resident but not a citizen. I pay taxes - income tax, property tax, school tax, village tax... plus the tax on all the gas we've put in the car to cross America - but I don't have a vote. So I say please, please, Vote For Me. I don't mean Vote For Me, I mean VOTE FOR ME. Or do it for yourself and everyone else. But please do it!!

We met up with Roy Loney in San Francisco. I would have liked to have had him get up and do a couple of songs with us but I didn't want to put him on the spot and I was too shy to ask. Anyway the soundcheck was too short to sort anything out – the soundman was three quarters of an hour late and generally seemed to have a lazy attitude. You find that in some towns – it's as though it might seem uncool to make anything more than the minimum effort. He was nice enough though, and the sound was probably OK in the room, and when Amy's microphone fucked-up he at least came over and waggled the stage box connections until it was sort of working, so I don't want to slag him off. I don't think it's worth driving the entire width of America to play at the Hemlock Tavern. I hope we can find a better venue next time.

We had a house concert in Chico the night before. The hosts, Marcel and Mary, have a house surrounded by beautifully planted and landscaped gardens. We stayed in a room full of cowboy memorabilia and western trinkets. The morning after the concert I got up early – eight o'clock - which is early for me though Amy had probably already been up for two hours. Amy has a secret morning life which I know little about, she writes in a notebook, does sewing, stuff like that. And sometimes she even sneaks out for coffee. Or so I believe though I can't be certain of any of this because I'm usually punching out zeds.

But this particular morning I was up around eight and Mary gave me a guided tour of the grounds, pointing out exotic birds in the equally exotic Californian plant life. It was a great start to the day and one of the highlights of our west coast adventure.

And then we got the terribly sad news that Jim Wunderle was dying back in Springfield Missouri. Amy's known him since nineteen eighty something – Last Round-up recorded their album in Springfield - Lou Whitney produced it and Jim Wunderle was the engineer. I met Jim in 2008 in Kansas City. He came to see us play at a club called Knuckleheads, a place that looked almost exactly like the country 'n' western venue in The Blues Brothers (we have both types of music here - country and western...) The show went really well in spite of expectations and afterwards we hung out in front of the club which was festooned with neon signs and surrounded by railway lines. I've got a load of photos of Jim, his wife Terry, Amy and me silhouetted in front of the neon signs. I'd put one in here but they're at home and I'm not.

I was really pleased we were going to Springfield and seeing Jim again - I recognised him as a kindred spirit or whatever. Someone sent me a clip of him performing Whole Wide World with some of The Skeletons and I felt that there was something completely unique about him. I was glad to see him again, a bit nervous because he and Lou Whitney are like Amy's uncles and older brothers all rolled into one, and I wanted their approval for what we're doing together.

We had a great time - Jim was a delight and we railed against the world together - men with pony tails, young shop assistants who answer your thank you with no problem (that was one of Jim's particular peeves), five string basses (ungodly), the inadvisability of eating near the railway station...

He wasn't in a good way - his health had suffered and he'd age considerably since we last met but we would never have imagined that less the two weeks later he'd be dead. Amy's very sad about it as I'm sure you can imagine, and so am I. I made a friend and now he's gone. But at least I had the pleasure of knowing him for a short while. That makes me happy.

The Screen Age

I spend half my waking hours muddling and befuddling my way around the internet. I think the internet is like new town grown old,  a Utopian dream gone wrong. When it started I was naive enough to think it was going to be this great instrument of world peace - we were finally going to communicate directly instead of through this or that third party and find out that we're all basically the same and so on...
Of course I was younger then, bright-eyed from not having spent ten years or more staring hopelessly at computer screens. Now everywhere you go people are staring at screens and myopically jabbing at them with stunted digits.  That's where we're at now - we've had the stone age, the iron age, the bronze age, the machine age, the space age, and here we are in The Screen Age.
I routinely sit and wait for crappy adverts to load up before I can check my emails - weightloss, middle-aged women in your area just dying to meet you, car parts, fishing tackle, viagra, holidays in Corfu, eczema cures that have doctors infuriated...  Occasionally I click the close ad option and a box pops up offering me advert-free browsing at a not immediately obvious price. So it's not about weightloss, dodgy dating, car parts, fishing tackle, viagra and all the rest of it - no, the purpose of the advertising is deliberate nuisance, a form of extortion - pay up and we'll stop tormenting you with all this crap.
I am determined that these people (whoever these people are) won't manipulate and control me and my life so I sit here steadfastly waiting to read my emails or see what's happening on Facebook while little annoying adverts for breast implants, grapefruit juice, garden furniture, incontinence cures and even Barack Obama load up in side panels. Twenty-first century civilisation. We've come a long way.

I'm sure Gary Horowitz won't mind me putting his wonderful photo of me and Amy being whisked away from the Take Me To The River Festival in Hastings-on-Hudson last Sunday. We had a great time though it's always a fearful business playing in the open air in cruel daylight to an all-ages crowd who are as intent on soaking up the sun as they are listening to music. Looking at all those people from the stage and seeing the kids running around and the tree tops against a brilliant blue sky I must admit I had one of those it's great to be alive moment. Don't tell anyone I said that - I've got a position to keep up.

I used to think I was an unhappy person and I'm sure a lot of other people did too. But I'm not - I may have been, but not anymore. Life is full of annoyance, day to day stuff like the crappy ads, and bigger annoyances like what happens when I get old / have a stroke and end up paralysed down one side / break a leg in a freak gardening accident and can't afford the medical bills... But I keep managing to push it all away and have a great time on an almost daily basis. I'm sure that's going to worry a few of the fans I have who think that you can only write songs when you're practically down and out. I've never subscribed to that idea, the starving artist in his lowly garret. People work better when they're warm, dry, well fed and healthy, and that includes artists. I wish the Republican party understood that - I can't believe the stupidity and cynicism of a ruling party who don't see the sense in looking after the workforce. We had enough of that in England under Margaret Thatcher. Here's a track from our new album:

07 1983 by southerndomestic

It's actually by Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby - Southern Domestic is the record label. But that's the internet for you.
And to finish, in another shameless attack of self-promotion, here come the tour dates. Come and see us play, stick around afterwards and say hello, buy an album and maybe even a t-shirt - help us pay this months health insurance which we have courtesy of Obamacare. We'll blunder through live versions of some of the tracks off our new album, A Working Museum, plus a few old favourites and you might even have a good time.

And don't forget to register to vote.

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby on tour….

13 ASBURY PARK NJ USA, The Saint buy tickets
14 PHILADELPHIA PA, The Tin Angel - EARLY SHOW - 7:30pm!! buy tickets
15 SOMMERVILLE MA USA, Johnny D’s buy tickets
18 WASHINGTON DC, The Black Cat buy tickets
19 RALEIGH NC, Berkeley Cafe http://www.berkeleycafe.net/events.php
20 COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, Conundrum http://conundrum.us/concerts/index.html
23 RICHMOND VIRGINIA, Banditos - details to follow
29 PEACE DALE RI, Roots Hoot house concert – email rootshoot@cox.net

OCTOBER
02 INDIANAPOLIS, Do317 Lounge 1043 Virginia Ave, Suite 215 buy tickets
09 SAN FRANCISCO CA, The Hemlock Tavern http://hemlocktavern.com/
11 SEATTLE WA, The Funhouse, with Mark Pickerel + Johnny Sangster http://www.thefunhouseseattle.com
13 PORTLAND OR, Mississippi Studios EARLY SHOW – 7pm!!! buy tickets
16 SAN DIEGO CA, The Soda Bar buy tickets
20 PASO ROBLES California, www.vinesonthemarycrest.com  info@vinesonthemarycrest.com
21 LOS ANGLES CA - details to follow
25 DALLAS TEXAS, The Allgood Cafe
26 AUSTIN TEXAS - details to follow
28 MEMPHIS TN, (to be confirmed)
30 CHICAGO - details to follow

NOVEMBER
02 ROCHESTER NY, house concert
03 ITHACA NY, The Nines

A Working Fantasy

We have the CDs of the new album. The UPS man delivered them this morning just as we were starting one of our whacky rehearsals, trying to figure out how to play the new tracks live.
I had it all worked out – we were going to film the delivery man coming up the path – ‘No love, cut, cut CUT – could we just take that again and could you just try to look a little more like, you know, like a delivery man…’
It reminds me of the time my dad called to see what I was up to and I told him I’d formed a group called The Len Bright Combo and we were about to release an album called The Len Bright Combo Present The Len Bright Combo By The Len Bright Combo. There was a silence on the other end of the line and then my dad’s disapproving voice – ‘I sometimes think you live in a fantasy.’
I probably do just that for a good half of the time but we’ve managed to turn the fantasy of yet another album into a reality and I’m very happy about that.

And if you happen to be in New York City we'll see you tomorrow night (September 7th) at Bowery Electric. Here's a ticket link: http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=4715595
Sorry about the hard sell.

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One Dover Soul

The Alan Clayson album is finally upon us! I seem to have been recording it for years and I actually finished it in France last spring, just before we moved to America. But it's still taken ages to actually make it into a living breathing and totally inert CD album thing.

We started recording at my house in Norfolk back in 2005. Alan was much enamoured with my Bungalow Hi album and hoped to make his version – as Alan might say (and probably did) my Satanic Majesties to your Sergeant Pepper's... An impossible undertaking, I assured him of that but I think we might just have achieved it.

In the absence of a recording budget, and because it was a labour of love, I chipped away at it in our studio in France between sessions for the first Eric & Amy album, between Rotifer sessions and Two-Way Family Favourites. I interpreted Clayson cassette demos and deciphered chord charts which he sent to me in triple-sealed anti-plagerism envelopes. I slowly constructed backing tracks.for the songs which he then came over and sang, once in an August heatwave and again during a freezing January when we almost willfully ran out of heating oil in honour of his visit.

I say interpret and decipher because a typical Clayson demo might start out as a cassette of him singing and playing his slightly out of tune upright piano, which he transfers to a second cassette player with him playing an orchestral keyboard line, possibly on the keyboard he found in a rubbish skip back in nineteen eighty something. The differing speeds of the cassette players put the end result into questionable key signatures. And there was always the matter of what I came to know as Clayson Time – a weird amalgam, somewhere between four/four or two/four with bars that stretch just ever so slightly and chords that change just before or just after a beat somewhere within the bar...

Alan is a unique individual. Fools might find him easy to laugh at – I've done gigs with him where audiences tittered nervously - I don't know why you're laughing, I haven't said anything funny. Yet... I've sat transfixed in my corner, the sole member of The Alan Clayson Orchestra, clutching my guitar as Alan further bamboozled an already puzzled audience with tales of insane record collectors – and I'm not just talking about obsession as in someone who might name their cats Jerry, Lee and Lewis... show-biz sleaze - you could hear the dandruff falling from her hair... an intergalactic extravaganza with audio visual aids made from Shredded Wheat Packets and readings from The Readers Digest Atlas Of The Universe – I don't know how Eric proposes to extricate himself from this psychedelic maelstrom but I'm going to achieve this by simply switching everything off at the main socket...

Very hard to translate to an album if it weren't for the fantastical world that his songs inhabit. People meet in buffet queues, they go to soirees, young men lurk outside village halls befriending rodent vermin in the half light. A DJ with a catch phrase (I bet that scared yer!) plays death discs until it's time to go home and mow the lawn, and who knows what mad things patrol the moors in a previous century – racing clouds at evetide down and Cressida clad in the season's gown...

Joe Meek and Screaming Lord Sutch, matching guitars, matching stage suits - stained but shiny - grease paint, Russ Conway and Brickwoods Pale Ale - a world of cardboard suitcases and squalid trysts in boarding houses in Margate and Weston Super Mare - a madman controlled by voices on a homebound commuter train – not a modern day train - this one's doubtless a swaying Southern Region job packed with bowler-hatted extras from Tony Hancocks The Rebel - the train is howling like a wounded beast... and he stumps off leaving God knows what devastation in his wake, and then we're by the seaside where pram-pushing housewives brave networks of queues and their brats sometimes scream and see visions, though they bawl and catcall under sepia skies far from the Old Dover Road.

I want everyone to hear this album, to own a copy. Not to make me and Alan rich - that's probably not going to happen though Alan has at times phoned me with the news that he thinks he might have a hit record on his hands. The last one was Ug The Caveman included on this album - just right for Ed Stewpot and Junior Choice.

Everyone should get a glimpse of the world from the Clayson perspective.

You can buy the album from my site: wrecklesseric.com/shop or from Alan's site where you'll find out all manner of interesting stuff about him... http://www.alanclayson.com/

Hope I don't appear to be pushy - I'm doing this for your own good!

Lol Coxhill

I was sad to hear of the passing of Lol Coxhill. I first became aware of him back in 1969. I was fifteen and he was a member of Kevin Ayers & The Whole World. I heard Clarence In Wonderland on John Peel's Top Gear programme and I was transfixed. I've been a fan of both Kevin Ayers and Lol Coxhill ever since.

Later on Lol Coxhill teamed up with David Bedford as The Coxhill/Bedford Duo. They recorded a 45, Pretty Little Girl, for John Peel's Dandelion label. It was a jolly little ditty – possibly subversive for its apparent lack of any kind of subversion.

I was lucky enough to see them at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol in either 1972 or 73. I was a student at the art college in Bristol at the time. The concert, billed as An Evening With Lol Coxhill & David Bedford, had a profound effect on me - haunting instrumentals silly songs, free improvisation and outright slapstick comedy. Lol Coxhill's impersonation of Frank Sinatra was extremely accurate and for that all the more bizarre visually.
He also impersonated Kevin Ayers – more wine David? Oh I appear to have spilt it.
He pirouetted in a grey boiler suit, they rubbed party balloons on the piano strings and burst them with evident relish. They were weird, freaky and baroque - disturbingly middle-aged to the eighteen year old me. Lol told us that he didn't know why he was always billed as a busker because he'd only ever done it once. He also mentioned that Pretty Little Girl had only sold nine copies. Apparently there was a warehouse full of them somewhere. I wish I'd been able able to find one.

The Arnolfini crowd was artsy and older. Rich bohemian chic. I don't know what they thought but I left the place irreparably altered. I was already into free jazz but I'd never witnessed such an irreverent presentation.

I don't see him play live again until some time in the nineties when he played in Brighton with The Melody Four. In 1978 he appeared on the second Damned album and that was a mystery to me – produced by Nick Mason of the Pinkfloyd - a guest appearance from Lol Coxhill – it was everything that The Damned were supposedly against at the time. I thought Lol was an inspired choice but Nick Mason was an idiocy – that was probably Dave Robinson's idea.

A friend of mine saw Lol Coxhill play in Rotterdam. He was evidently being treated disrespectfully by the organisers. He came on the stage, unpacked his soprano, announced to the audience that he was contracted to play for forty minutes, set an alarm clock and played until it went off.

I met him once - not in my capacity as a minor celeb – I was just a fan bothering him after the show. He seemed very kind.