It Might Get Loud

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."

Jack Kerouac

Hendrix - New York 1968 - Shot by Elliot Landy

A is for Attitude... E is for Everything

"The difference between Pop and Rock 'n Roll? You might get fucked!"

Robert Fripp

Peggy Van Alden: How dare you think such cheap tactics would work with me!

Vince Everett: That ain't tactics, honey. It's just the beast in me.

Jailhouse Rock

If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry

John Lennon

"Women want what you've got. They want what they don't have."

Chuck Berry

We love our Queen...

I met Sid Vicious for the first time at the ICA that night. I was there with Kenny Morris, who'd later be the drummer/pillow in Siouxsie and the Banshees. Syd asked if either of us could play drums, Kenny said he did... Then, without really a blink, Sid said "Do you want to be in my band?" I remember laughing when Kenny said "Perhaps..." and got the job, despite his not so rock 'n roll vocabulary. Christened by Johnny Rotten as The Flowers of Romance, they rehearsed for a few of months with Vivienne Albertine and Steve Walsh on guitars, until the Sex Pistols sacked Glen Matlock and took Sid aboard the good ship Malcolm... Viv Albertine moved on to the Slits while some time later Steve Walsh joined Manicured Noise.

Ironically, some years later, Glen asked me if I'd be interested in joining a reformed Sex Pistols with Steve Jones and Paul Cook... For me, it was a none starter... I'd have made an appalling Johnny Rotten. The plot thickened even further when Allan Dias, my friend and the bass player in my previous band Uropa Lula (below), joined John Lydon in the wonderful Public Image Limited... A circle of incest only bettered by Fleetwood Mac.

Ladies... Still don't know what to wear tonight?

Call our 24 hour Rock 'n Roll hot line at AskDavid.com

Mikael Jansson for Vogue Nippon

Neon of the Week

Painters, Victoria Lucas and Richard William Wheater created a joint project called “12 Months of Neon Love” . They took a string of popular songs and turned them into a series of twelve neon citations that have been installed on the roofs in West Yorkshire, England. Shouldn't every city have half a dozen of these on the rooftops...

For Newcastle...
'In Every Dream Home a Heartache,'
'We Gotta Get Out Of This Place'
and of not forgetting...
'Something Kinda Ooooh!'

This week plugging Women Make Noise - My friend Jackie Badger one of the contributors in both text and music.

Film of the Week

Mentor: I like you, Clarence. Always have. Always will.

“I come from a generation whose soundtrack helped empower the listener, helped people to be all they could be and revelled in individuality. I’m living proof that music has that potential. Today many of these ideas have been lost as we increasingly become passive consumers, slaves to the rhythm who are emotionally detached from the planet. There used to be an element of manipulation on the part of the record companies and the media, but nowadays it seems like there’s a strange complicity. When I was starting out, music was an anti-establishment thing. Now people get into music to be part of the establishment. I mean how radical can you be if you want what the man’s offering? It’s all about new values.

The current cultural climate feels as if punk never happened. Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame has become a nightmare of people that can’t justify three. During the punk days we used to say never trust anyone over thirty, nowadays I sometimes think never trust anyone under thirty! For the most part Western culture has become increasingly conservative, if not darn right stagnant.

Nevertheless I remain optimistic. The punk spirit is like the force in Star Wars - you can’t stop it. There’s always something going on, you just got to look in new places and like Strummer said, ‘Make sure your bullshit detector is finely tuned’. Look to the amateur and the naïve for the new ideas in the future, everyone else is reading from the same book. Punk attitude still serves me on a day-to-day basis. As I’ve said all along, a good idea attempted is still better than a bad idea perfected and I’m still turning my problems into my assets.”

Don Letts -  'Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers'

Until next time... xxx

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