19th April, 2008
“Roads girdle the globe”
As the freeway reaches the Minnesota border, steel plate cloud draws over the lowering sun. Joni Mitchell’s lush re-arrangement of “Refuge of the Roads” stirs around the van. No leaves on the trees here, the big freeze having only recently crept away but it’s balmy tonight and grateful Minnesotans congregate around patio-heaters outside bars and restaurants. Such is the ferocity of their winters, every building has multiple sequences of doors and the small square windows of our hotel are hermetically sealed. We browse a surplus store opposite the gig; a hundred kinds of glove and Navy coats so thick they seem to stand erect unaided. Men are empty overcoats, Groucho said.
I was here, at the Fine Line Music Cafe in 1990 and it retains a sort of quaint 1980s smugness. A venue for the discerning professional. Exposed brick and tables and chairs and an ironic catch-phrase on…—More Tales
17th April, 2008
To Chicago
We pass rolling fields of yellowed stubble, kites suspended overhead eyeing the rat-runs. Road-kill raccoons litter the shoulder; I speculate that it’s mating season, that they’re throwing themselves across the freeway to reach potential mates whose ripe scents are wafting on the wind. You could get three coats and a good stew from the carnage.
Enormous road-side billboards invite us to Adult Superstores (1000 yards off Exit 56) and budget motels and family restaurants. There is not much view for them to obscure. A pair of hipster dudes zip by in a vintage Buick, wearing vintage shades and vintage T-shirts and vintage facial hair. Then a pick-up passes towing a trailer loaded with blasting material. That’s followed by a truck carrying medical waste. There’s a pile-up I’d like to see.
The lady in the truck-stop admires my shirt. I seem to be appealing to the older woman these days. Once they’d…—More Tales
15th April, 2008
Morning flight from the lump strewn landscape of Tennessee up to flat Michigan, the sausage factory’s walls adorned with huge ads for visitor tours of the JD distillery. They encourage responsible drinking, apparently. What that means I will never unravel. Akin to considerate joy-riding. We try to find a soul station around Detroit in our fuck-the-climate vehicle with no luck. I hear something about a hot-dog eating contest and take in some morsels of PBS news. A little Obama chat breaks out among us.
Ann Arbour is Michigan’s Madeleine Stowe to Detroit’s Mae West. All a little too tidy and brittle. We browse a second-hand book shop filled with pristine cellophane-wrapped volumes. Peter turns us on to Wuthering Heights and I stifle the urge to mention Kate Bush with her dope and her washing machine. I pick up a tastefully presented copy of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, more through duty…—More Tales
14th April, 2008
Down and outs shuffling around country town at dawn, no place to be poor but where is? A black woman whose hair is dyed green shouts across the canyon of the street for change. I greet her with a limp excuse and a counterfeit shrug. Dead bird on the road and that one on the thin tree outside my hotel room isn’t sleeping, it’s stuffed. Everybody calls us gentlemen, good thing we’re soft and forgiving. Are you playing music? No, I’m carrying these two guitars for a man who does floors. Ranch dressing, so reminiscent of the high plains – all those steers squirting out blue cheese and herbs. The public library stands solidly amongst a forest of hollow car-parks. The accents are heavy and sweet like warm treacle. You find yourself getting drowsy in their slick. Many are shuttered behind dark glass in black trucks. If they are shadows…—More Tales
18th January, 2008
I eat too much. I get on top of people. I take and take. I feed the animals. I frown at priests. I walk all over the grass, away from the paths. I despise. I resent. I field questions and force doors. I rape as I write. I crucify. I crucify kids. I prefer The Rolling Stones. I wallow and I waste years. I dream bad scenes and perform ungodly acts. I cry, cry like a horn. I upset tables and tear up wires. I drone. I drone on. I drink to excess. I bore the walls rigid. I fly jets into pets. I take up golf. I play with fire and fire-hoses.
I bury everything in earth, hate in spades, I cruise grim streets, I fake concern, I re-make the world with a hammer. I am polite. I worry. I make mistakes and I pay and I fade away. I…—More Untruths
11th December, 2007
Justin Currie’s top 10 Glasgow pubs
1. The Persian’s Forehead
An enormous hanger-like place tucked down a grim Dickensian back lane in the most sullen and sallow quarter of the east end, The Persian’s Forehead features low-lifes of every persuasion; stabbers, dealers, pimps and perverts – dipsomaniacs all – begging for another taste of the landlord’s special: Black Thunder, a mixture of Guinness and red wine. I wouldn’t recommend going here without a weapon of some sort – perhaps a saw or a table leg.
2. Dorothy’s
Dorothy’s lies in a low-ceilinged basement on Sauchiehall Street (pronounced Sickle Street) at the bottom of a flight of steps so steep and uneven that many customers and staff-members either permanently limp or use crutches. Dot is famed for her repartee, her elliptical Polish riddles a particular delight.
I once played here on Valentine’s day and was assaulted in the toilets by a one-eyed ballerina called Mary. She…—More Untruths
13th November, 2006
As there are so many frequently asked questions I receive through this site I thought it might be useful to set out a few standard answers in the blog section to save everybody time. I shall deal firstly with the issue of songwriting, a subject about which I know virtually nothing but am constantly quizzed upon by those presumably even more talentless than I. Of course, remarkable ignorance of a topic has never prevented me from expounding upon it at length before and I see no reason why it should stop me now.
1. Mood, Environment and Ambience
The first step in the manufacture of a successful song is the manipulation of the composer’s mood. Critically, he (or she but for the sake of convenience I shall stick to the masculine singular) must be hungry. Very hungry. Try missing breakfast. Then lunch and dinner (and if applicable) supper. Keep this up for…—More Untruths
13th July, 2006
Binned Onions (Serves 1)
Ingredients;
Three large Spanish onions
Six medium sized French onions
Eight medium shallots
A bunch of spring onions
First find the bluntest knife you can find. You can recognize this by the ghastly bleating sound it makes when you slap it off the edge of a wooden table or, if you wish, the kerb.
Take the three large Spanish onions and slice about half a centimetre thick (about the width of a fake pound coin). Throw them in the bin. Open a cold can of beer. Drink.
Then peel and roughly chop the six medium French onions and carefully tip them into the bin. Open a can of cold beer. Drink.
Now chop the shallots as finely as you can manage with your blunt knife. Probably best just to mash them to a lumpy paste with the flat of the blade and then add them to the other onions in the bin taking care not…—More Untruths
18th December, 2005
There is piss and vomit upon the ground, deep and crisp and even, in some places dusted with polystyrene snow. There are restive plugs of shoppers, close to riot crammed into retail entrances like human stuffing. The pubs are full of an unusual sort of idiot, the one who has spent everything he has on those that he loathes and is now taking revenge on his own body with a cocktail of beverages so ill suited that just two in a small bowl would kill a dog.
There are hugs for hated underlings and kisses for the normally ignored from a tosser in the top job who’s vibrating already in expectation of the vile powders his sneering assistant has gone to fetch. Soon he shall be selecting his coterie of cokers for the night and sensing a new omnipotence; the kids’ schools paid up for another year, the villa held for…—More Rants/Slates