The northlondonhippy

Archive for June, 2008

Well fuck me, look who it is!

I mean me. Where the hell have I been?

I’ve been nowhere, doing nothing. Honest, officer, I swear.

That’s not strictly true, because I am still the part time libertycityhippy, so you know where I’ve been hanging out sometime.

I’ve also been working a fair bit, but my schedule has been all over the place without any sort of pattern, rhyme or reason.

I’ve been distracted, I’ve been unfocused, or as it say in the larger, yellow font above, I’ve just been “coasting through life.” That means anything requiring the slightest of effort has been relegated to another day…and when another day comes, I am gonna be one busy hippy.

I wish I could be telling you otherwise, that I’ve been busy recording my album, or writing another book, or providing sexual favours to a small gang of voraciously demanding 16 year old glamour models. I wish I could tell you lots of things, but I won’t lie to you.

I can’t lie to you. It would be easier if I could.

I get up everyday and seem to be busy, I don’t actually just sit in a dark room all the time, yet I couldn’t tell you what eats my time away. Maybe its some time-eating monster from another dimension.

How cool would that be? To be a time-eating monster from another dimension, travelling to north London to eat hippy time. I wonder what time tastes like?

Probably time tastes like chicken. Everything tastes like chicken.

Never mind time monsters, now its just time to meander…

I was very disheartened and sad to read of the passing of George Carlin, yet another big influence on me when I was younger. Along with Hunter S and Kurt V, George Carlin was a hero of my youth.

I used to listen to George Carlin’s albums endlessly with an absolute obsession. His humour, on the surface, could be seen as crude, but when you explored what he was actually saying, it was genuinely profound. His comedy dealt with word-play and idea-play and nothing in this life escaped his critical gaze.

Just off the top of my head:

Words that go together, yet are contradictory:

Jumbo Shrimp
Military Intelligence

But the words he’s most famous for are the following seven:

shit
piss
fuck
cunt
cocksucker (not a bad man, but a good woman!)
motherfucker
tits (sounds like a snack. I’ll have the cheese tits)

And later on he added:

fart
turd
twat

And one that still makes me laugh, “You can prick your finger, but you can’t finger your prick.”

Carlin continued to perform practically right up to his death on Sunday, his final gig was the previous weekend. While in the business for nearly 50 years, his jokes never went stale and he never, ever ran out of material. How could he? The human race excels in stupidity and that could have continued to fuel his humour for centuries.

Sorry to see you go, George. You left your mark on this world and we won’t ever forget you. Something tells me that another generation will be discovering you very soon, thanks to your untimely demise.

Speaking of death (and inappropriate segues), my Logitech Harmony 885 remote bit the big one this week. It thinks its working, when you press the buttons, but it doesn’t seem to be transmitting any infrared signals. This is a bummer of enormous proportions, as it it is the central command for my small, yet perfectly formed media centre. My life is now awash with too many device-specific remote controls.

The upside to this is that the remote is still under warranty and I am waiting for a call back from Logitech support which I hope will result in them sending me a replacement. The first guy I spoke to tried to help me sort it out over the phone, but his remedies didn’t do diddley. I’m missed their return call yesterday, but they should phone me back again later today.

And staying with my electronic theme, I cancelled my Vodafone contract today, in anticipation of having a brand new, shiny, lickable iPhone 3G on launch day, which is 11th July, just over a fortnight from today. Vodafone were surprisingly mellow about my departure, no hard sell, the phone call was brief and painless. Actually, the guy was so nice, I told him I was switching to O2 for the iPhone – usually I don’t tell these people anything, so this is out of character for me. I’m a marketer’s worst nightmare!

Once I get my fancy new iPhone, I’m going to experiment with blogging from it. I’m not sure how it will go, but I like the idea of providing short posts on the fly. We’ll see if the reality keeps up with the fantasy!

I did consider playing around with Twitter, but I got frustrated at the registration phase. The character limit of your screen name on Twitter is far too short and I couldn’t fit northlondonhippy into the tiny little box. None of that matters anyway, I mean who in their right mind would sign up to follow me around on Twitter? How many times can you read: “had a piss, now smoking a spliff”, over and over every day?

While you ponder that, I’m going to go for a piss, then smoke a spliff.

See, I told ya it would be lame…

I’m going to be paying more attention to the US presidential race now that we are fairly certain who the two main candidates will be. It’s not that I haven’t been paying attention all along, I just haven’t written much about it so far.

I’m not actually going to write that much today, but rather I am going to let one of the candidates speak for himself.

This video was put together by Robert Greenwald of “OutFoxed” fame; that’s the film that ripped the shit out of Fox News. It’s worth seeing, if you haven’t already. Here’s his latest on presumptive Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.

Seems to me this guy is not qualified to be the next president, if his contradictory statements are anything to go on. Of course, the current incumbent wasn’t qualified to be dog catcher, never mind president and he got two terms. Though to put it in perspective, Bush the lesser now has the LOWEST APPROVAL RATING OF ANY PRESIDENT EVER.

If that many people really hate Bush now, how can McCain stand a chance? A McCain presidency would just be four more years of the same and I can’t see anyone voting for that, can you?

Hey ho hippyfans!

I am very pleased to announce that the official bubbler contest draw took place yesterday and I have before me a list of the winners of the 16 prizes available.

I did the big draw on Wednesday, all the email addresses of the entries were on small pieces of paper, placed in a big bowl. From there, I withdrew the sixteen winners, in reverse order.

As promised, here’s a list of the winners’ initials:

10 x flavoured rolling papers:
==================
16)AM
15)SC
14)AC
13)PS
12)SB
11)NT
10)WU
9) AM
8) JC (this is number 8, damn automatic smileys!)
7) BD

5x Smiley Face Pop Tins:
================
6) SL
5) MW
4) AS
3) JP
2) DS

And the big winner of the Midnight Blue Bushmaster Bubbler is…
========================================
1) RT from Wiltshire!!!

Congratulations to all of you who won prizes and a big thanks to everyone who sent in an email entry!

All of the winners will be contacted via email before the end of today, asking for your postal addresses and I hope to despatch all of the prizes as soon as possible. Any addresses received before Friday morning, will see their prizes posted by lunchtime on Friday. All prizes will be sent by first class post.

Don’t worry if you didn’t win this time, I’m sure I’ll be having contests again in the future. There may only be 16 contest winners, but in my book, all of you are winners! Thanks again!

Last night, Mrs. H and I went to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Emirates Stadium, here in north London. There’s nobody better live and they don’t call him the Boss for nothing.

I’ve been a Springsteen fan for decades, around three to be precise. I got into his music back in 1978, when he released his fourth album, “Darkness on the Edge of Town”. I was 15 years old.

The first time I saw Bruce live was 1981, on “The River” tour. It was at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey and he played for something like 4 hours. I was exhausted, just watching, but he kept on going with a level of energy that amazed me. It still does, he did 2 and 1/2 hours on Saturday night and he’s pushing 60 now!

The following year, 1982, I met Springsteen for the first time. I lived on the Jersey Shore at the time and saw him in a bar in Asbury Park one Saturday night.

The bar was called “The Fast Lane” and I’m pretty sure its gone now. It was a small live venue, which usually was home to bands on the local circuit as well as the occasional name act. I saw the Stray Cats there, Dave Edmonds, Marshall Crenshaw to name a few from the 80s that might be known to you, or not.

I was there one Saturday night in the summer of 1982 with a friend of mine. We were getting drinks at the bar, when I saw a guy on the other side who looked a lot like Bruce, until I realised it was Bruce.

You have to appreciate that I was a huge fan, especially at the age of 19, living in NJ, riding around in my car, playing Springsteen cassettes all the time, worshipping his music and being star struck.

I worked up the nerve to go over and just say hello. Bruce was sitting on his own, the crowd all cool enough to give him some space, except for me. I went over and shyly said “excuse me, Mr. Springsteen, but I just wanted to say hello. I’m a massive fan”, blah blah blah!

Yes, I called him Mr. Springsteen and I blathered on about how amazing I thought his music was. He told me to call him Bruce and asked me to sit down. We chatted a bit, I asked him about stupid things, like his guitars, his new album (he was recording the tracks that would become “Nebraska” around this time) and he was incredibly cool and down to earth. He just seemed like a normal guy. He actually shared a few minor, personal things with me, that I won’t repeat here. Nothing amazing, just the sort of crap people talk in bars.

Bruce got up to go to the bar and asked me if I wanted a drink. He brought me back a Heineken beer. How cool is that?

Even sadder, I kept the bottle. I think I still have it, somewhere. I ended up hanging out with Springsteen for a couple of hours that night.

After that, I ran into him at least once, every weekend through the entire summer. I didn’t hang out with him again, but whenever he saw he, he always made a point of saying hello, as if he remembered me. I doubt he ever knew my name, but he knew my face.

The cool thing about seeing him every weekend was that he usually jumped up on stage with whatever band was playing and led them through their final set. I saw him with loads of local bands, mainly in three different venues; the aforementioned Fast Lane, The Stone Pony – also in Asbury Park, and Big Man’s West, in Red Bank – which was owned by the Big Man, Clarence Clemons – Springsteen’s sax player.

Bruce would mainly do classic rock songs, like Twist’n’Shout, but occasionally he would do some of his material and in one case, played a song of his publicly for the first time. The song was “Light of Day”, which was the name of a film and the title track from the soundtrack album – starring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett, about a family with a rock band.

The thing about Bruce is seeing him in a stadium or a bar with 100 people, is he gives the same level of performance. You can see how much he genuinely loves what he does and why when he is not touring or recording, he’s still out jamming in the same bars I saw him in, which are really the same places he started out in back in the late 60s and very early 70s.

And seeing him live last night, just a few tube stops from my north London lair brought back memories of a much different time in my life. I was a much different person back then. I knew very little about life or the world. I pretend I know more now.

It was just dumb luck that I lived in the same area as my favourite rock star, who at the time was the biggest thing in the world. Sometimes, I still have trouble believing it myself.

It’s funny how certain songs evoke times and places in your life and they can stir long dormant emotions. Sometimes I feel so disconnected from my past, and then something pops up from my subconscious and reminds me of where I come from. I haven’t written much here about my NJ connections and past because of that disconnect, whether intentionally or not. Maybe I should more often.

Anyway, back to Saturday night’s gig. Bruce still has it and remains one of the best showmen you will ever see. He can work a crowd and have them dining from the palm of his hands. He’s still fit and agile too, criss crossing the giant stage and executing one of his patented knee slides across the stage at the end of one number.

The E Street were also as tight as ever, though it made me sad when Bruce spoke of his recently departed keyboardist, Danny Federici, who passed around a month ago. He dedicated “Sandy (4th of July, Asbury Park) to him.

The stadium was packed and I think it was nearly sold out, though I heard rumours of standing tickets still being available on the day.

My biggest issue with the entire thing was the fact that I couldn’t have a cigarette for several hours. Towards the end of the gig, I could feel myself going into a homicidal rage and I know it was because I needed some nicotine. Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal, is an open-air venue, so I don’t really understand why they don’t allow smoking. It’s really stupid and puts me off ever going there again.

The smoking ban puts me off doing lots of things. I barely go to bars, pubs or restaurants any more because of it, the same for many of my smoking mates. And when I do go out for a meal, instead of dessert and coffee, I quickly ask for the bill, so I can head outside and light up. It must be bad for business, as I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Here’s the setlist from the show I saw:

May 31, 2008
London, England
Emirates Stadium

Out In The Street
No Surrender
Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Gypsy Biker
Radio Nowhere
4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
Growin’ Up
Downbound Train
I’m On Fire
Because The Night
She’s The One
Livin’ In The Future
Mary’s Place
The Promised Land
Backstreets
The Rising
Last To Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands

Jungleland
Born To Run
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out

(courtesy BruceSpringteen.Net)

By the way, if you want to keep up with my musical likes and dislikes, find me on Last FM – my login is the n_londonhippy and I scrobble all my tracks!

Greetings my loyal and faithful readers of the northlondonhippy.com!

I’m writing to formally confirm that the closing date for entries to my bubbler contest has now passed and I am no longer accepting any. You’ve had nearly two months to email me, if you couldn’t get it together in that time, well, maybe you don’t really need my bubbler.

I will be sifting through the entries and drawing the winners this week, expect to be notified by email if you are the lucky one, before the week is out and be prepared to send me your postal address.

I’ll also be posting the initials of all SIXTEEN winners on my site.

A big “thank you” to everyone who entered! You’re all winners already!