Inside,
He dances more than he used to
Walks with a purpose
Lean and sharp
A look,
And sometimes he imagines it
A video game
And he’s levelled up
But he still says hello
In his own way
Even after the silence has faded
Remember there is always
Music
She’s an artist who emerged with a complete look and sound which touched on both past, present and future. She made albums of afro futuristic r’n’b and yet she’s remained a pleasurable secret.
Dirty Computer is where she comes out with an album which captures her sound and ideas in such a succinct and immediate way.
There’s a lushness to the production, set on crisp, impeccable beats and dashing forays into delicate electronic pop (Pink), Beach Boys harmonies about vulnerability (Dirty Computer) and dirty, knowing funk (Make Me Feel).
The guest musicians contribute without overwhelming Monae and she gives off a playful, inventive and sexual energy which reminds me of Prince.
Much like Glover, with his persona Childish Gambino and ‘Awaken, My Love), Monae has curated and refined the sensual-spiritual pop funk into something unique and immediately compelling.
It’s also fun, instant and sexy in a way which also rewards repeated listening. There’s moments of utter musical abandon (the drum machine fill locked in with the chicken scratch guitar in Make Me Feel is pure excitement.)
Got The Juice has the call and response swagger of Rihanna and early Madonna, and it will dominate the airwaves if it becomes a single.
Her voice is delicious, smooth and subtle yet capable of vulnerability and bruising defiance without falling into histrionic vocal inflections. Her lyrics are clever and funny, poignant and insightful. Don’t Judge Me has the lines:
I know I’ve got issues
But they drown when
I kiss you
There’s a wink and an open heart in every line of the album and it opens up into vistas of shimmering compelling music.
The whole thing is bliss from beginning to end, there’s a lovely film to accompany it and she’s making appearances framed as the star she is. Dirty Computer is one of the best albums of the year so far.
The 7″ Sign O’The Times single was the first record I brought. When I heard his music, it was a radio signal from a better world than this.
I tune into it from different artists who bear his influences, directly or otherwise. He remains pivotal to me for a few reasons, and not because he could dance in heels either.
(I can’t dance unless twerking counts)
He made it ok to be weird. There was always a sense he made his own world and the music was the radio signals, sent from a world where the parties were great, people didn’t hurt each other unless they were into it and there was no difference between sex and spirit. He was a library of music, a gateway drug to jazz, blues and funk as well as a proponent of fluidity of genre and a professional discipline which meant his backing band and collaborators were honed and rehearsed to precision.
Prince made it look effortless but never hid the work involved in making it look that way. His music was a soundtrack to my life, still is and I hear his influences everywhere. People used to try and insult me by claiming he was gay but I’ve seen the audiences at his shows and there were women in throes of delight at the smallest gesture he gave. Even if he had have been, he gave out all the masculine virtues and then some.
When my grandfather died, I grieved by walking my dog Milo and listening to Sometimes It Snows In April as I wept. There was a poem here about it, but yes I found a path through the grief through his music.
My daughter broke the news to me and I cried again. The circumstances of his death were sad but they don’t tarnish the power of his presence and diminish the absence. There’s a vault of unreleased material I hope to binge on someday.
He’s never disappointed me as a musician or a human being. He never will. It’s been two years now and I want a world with him still around, but there you go.
Paul took over on bass with my band, The Spooky Electric, after Lenny, our original bass player developed ALS and retired before the worst of it kicked in and killed him.
El recommended him said they had played together a few years ago, jazz and hip hop but El shared old files and we saw the guy could play. It came down to the simple matter of we liked El, and if El vouched for someone, it was worth a go. He had been the most recent member of the band, stepping in when Lewis got religion and went out to the desert.
Paul shook hands with everyone, set up with his own bass, tuned down a whole step, and with his own rig. Jenny peeked over and raised an eyebrow.
‘You’ve got Lenny’s set up?’ she said.
He scratched his beard and gave a short nod.
Jenny switched on the Moog. She smiled with curiosity, her glasses perched on the end of her nose as she ran her fingers over the keys.
El counted us in and we jammed through Sense Of Place before it became clear to everyone Paul was a natural fit for the band. Jenny never took her eyes off him. He had a telepathic connection with El which was tighter than anything Lenny could manage, even before the ALS kicked in.
I had questioned carrying on but there were people depending on us. We had good years, and Paul was coming out on tour to support a greatest hits compilation which took us out of our contract with Empire Records and covered Lenny’s medical bills until he died.
‘What do you think?’ Jenny said.
I took my guitar off and passed it to my tech. I looked past her and saw Paul stood with El, comparing notes and pantomiming variations they could work on.
I was thinking about calling time on the whole thing. My songs sounded like cover versions or parodies of earlier work, and I was faking the joy I took for granted.
Yet it was still my band, at heart, and Paul fitted in too well to make me comfortable with him. He was in, but I would watch him.
‘He’ll do for now.’ I said.
Jenny and I had split up five years ago. It was all amicable, but I still hoped nostalgia would bring her back and it was a test of my capacity for romance I kept my priapic reputation up as a matter of habit and reputation over any real need. The curious glances between her and Paul stung me but I couldn’t justify it to the rest of the band if we had gone with anyone else.
Hindsight has such awful clarity to it.
2.
He stood to El’s right, and he looked at Jenny as he played. She doesn’t miss a note but there was a focus to her playing which ramps everyone up. It’s a balancing act, between meeting commercial considerations and wanting to develop as artists. Jenny played more blues and jazz, and she would hide herself away to write songs for herself. I had one roady keep an eye on Paul but he was smart, hung out with El and the technical crew but I was sure he was sneaking time with her.
The paranoia fed on me, made hollow reeds of my bones as I pushed myself onstage, each night, throwing myself into the adoration of strangers rather than tell the people I loved how frightened I was, how I wanted to stop being the performer but I wasn’t sure I could live without it.
Paul worked with me when I played solos, pedalling notes to make my runs down the fretboard sound more dynamic and less technical. He turned down solos, preferring to make the more established members shine onstage. He picked out a fretless bass guitar when Jenny played new material, performing with a nuance and ease which makes me grind my teeth with envy. I wanted him to be a cunt. I learned he was married, but divorced now and one morning, we’re sat having breakfast together when I talked about my marriage. Jenny has slept in, but El and Paul were there.
‘Were you married, Paul?’
He looked up from his heaped plate of breakfast meat and nodded before he returned to his food. El narrowed his eyes before Paul poured himself a coffee and looked at me.
‘What split you guys up?’ I said.
Paul lowered his glasses down the bridge of his nose.
‘A lack of self awareness. How About You?’ he said.
My temples throbbed with indignation but El had given me a hardened stare whilst Paul carried on eating. I looked at the greasy meat on the plate, appetite gone and I got up from the table without thinking.
El grabbed me after a show. He was uncomfortable as he asked me if I had a problem with Paul. I waved him off, but I derived a shallow enjoyment from knowing I still held power over things. The tragedy is I’d lost the ability to wield it with any skill.
When Leon called to tell me Paul’s left the tour, I poured myself a scotch and lit a cigarette, and it all tasted the same as Leon asked if I want to sue for breach of contract. I looked at my reflection and say why the fuck not?
Why the fuck not?
Jenny stormed into my dressing room, whilst I was getting a massage. She was in tears, and she told me how fucking twisted I’d become. Her beautiful face was twisted with anger and grief as she pointed at me, and I laughed at her, despite the increasing pressure in my head.
El told me in person he was leaving. Paul and El shared the same manager, and they were floating a constructive dismissal charge. We had a whole leg of the tour cancelled, and I told Leon to find musicians who could play the songs. The accounts showed we were bleeding money everywhere, but I stopped caring about it.
Jenny left the tour and spoke to me through lawyers. I went out to the beach house and switched my phone off as I poured myself a drink and went out to watch the waves.
Leon had a whole band waiting for me and I didn’t want to finish the tour. He quit and told me he’d see me in court. I poured out another scotch and sat in the living room, watched the shadows grow thick and full like mould in a cheap apartment.
Something twisted in the back of my head, filling me with heat and thunder as I threw up down myself and felt the glass fall from my hand. A blockage in my basilar artery which wasn’t enough to kill me.
I was found alive but there was enough damage to see me classified as pseudocomatose. I can move my eyes, but a stroke wiped away all the connections to everything else.
I’m trapped in here. My silence was my sentence, and I watched Jenny debut her band, with Paul and El as her rhythm section on a live feed.
They were married a year later. My children were involved and I had Leon scroll through the photographs, apologising for having accepted. He had changed his mind about leaving when he did the accounts on my back catalogue value when I died. The stroke wiped away my control of my body and I watched everyone I knew move on without me.
Jenny came to see me and ranted at my immobile face until she collapsed into hoarse sobs and was led away by Leon.
Paul came over. He knew I disliked him and why, but he bore me no ill will over it. I glared at him until he lapsed into a mournful silence and stood up.
He looked at me, the hate and frustration alive in me was so powerful I wanted it to reach inside his chest and burst his heart but instead he smiled at me without malice and walked out of the room.
The next video auto played. It was the eighties, we came back with the double album, four hit singles and Lenny starting to drink more to keep his hands steady. I look at Jenny’s eyes and will my heart to grow cold. The attention makes it burn all the more, but I bear it without complaint.
I have no other choice
This is what I’ve been listening to, reading and watching. For disclosure, if you click through on these, I have an Amazon Affiliate account and I get something for it.
Music.
Bilal, In Another Life.
One of the unsung geniuses of neo-soul. The duet with Kimbra, ‘Holding It Back’ is a song I can listen to on repeat without being bored by it.
Prince – Purple Rain 25th Anniversary Edition.
Remastered brilliance and some gorgeous unreleased tracks. I have a lot of love for his music, and I’ve said before, even his bad stuff is interesting. He set a high bar for musicians with me which only a few of them have ever met.
Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral.
It has an operatic intensity without forgetting the dichotomy of beauty and ugliness which informs the best art. There are some beautiful melodies and deep, hard drops of harsh intensity which adds up to a classic album of anger, love and madness.
Books.
Nick Harkaway – Gnomon.
A complex, rewarding and challenging meditation on surveillance culture, digital selves, mythology and society. It is exciting, complex and beautiful storytelling without compromising on the need to explore and expand on these ideas in the service of the story.
Jordan B Peterson 12 Rules For Life
He’s lauded as the next popular intellectual. I enjoy the pragmatism of his ideas, and his delivery is compelling. His ideas speak to a direction men should know, or consider. I don’t agree with everything he says, and I might put my thoughts down in a post at some point. His lectures on YouTube are fantastic and he is stimulating to listen to. I have this on audiobook and also a copy reserved for a present. I’ll get my own copy too, but he’s compelling and passionate.
Joyce Carol Oates A Book Of American Martyrs.
She goes after the issues lesser writers avoid, and finds the innate humanity in disparate positions. Oates’ work intimidates me as a writer and she channels a terrible intensity into her work before she gifts us with prose and emotion as subtle and involving as a missed connection.
It arrived in
The post
His writing on the envelope
Your hands shake
And it starts,
A warmth in your pelvis
Like the moment you begin
Singing along
with a beloved song
Taking the tape to bed
You slip earphones in
Lay down and slip away
Enjoying being horizontal as
The music
Explores you
You run your fingers
Over the handwritten note
Send prayers through
Your fingertips
To him
It arrives
In the mail
You recognise
The handwriting
The tape is warm in your
Hands
Press play
Because this is
How he expresses
Feelings too large
For words
He could write
That he loves
Misses you
But you know
When you press your
Fingers against the words
He’s written
And he tells you
Shows you
Each time
You
Press
Play
