A New Process - Writers and writing, Art and Artists, Music and Musicians

I have found a new process.  After being stuck with my Light Gate opera for a long time, I recently began a novelization to try and work out the story better.  I had written a couple of prologues before, which I envisaged being liner notes to accompany the album but over time I began to realise that I really needed to explain why the beacons in the story are so important; and in doing so, this brought up so much about growing up as child in the 1980s during the Cold War.  It enabled me to identify something specific to my own generation and at the same time multi-generational.  It was all going on and we were there.  In my case, I knew it was there from an early age.  That's just the way my mind works.  Maybe its over-sensitive.  I know that I am.  I don't apologise for that.

The last post I made, the first in a long time of any kind, was the first chapter of what is turning into a novel.  What did totally surprise me was that I've suddenly found it easy to write music that draws directly from the novel.  At the moment I pretty much have the first two chapters complete with the rest of the book worked out.

Its actually the first time that I've enjoyed writing in years.  I think that it was simply a lack of confidence.

In January last year I started a process largely drawn from Julia Cameron's excellent book The Artist's Way, having dabbled with it from the autumn of 2012.  I stopped writing for a long time.  In fact, I stopped music pretty much totally for a year.  I felt as though I had completely lost my way with it all and it was a pretty terrible void.  Cameron's process involves writing stream of consciousness prose every day.  I found myself writing - with occasional period of interruption - pretty much everyday.  At around the same time, I rediscovered my lost fountain pens and took a lot of joy in writing with proper ink.

One thing that I came back to was my opera and that I needed to finish it.  I'm trying that at the moment and this new process seems to work.  Instead of random lyrics that I like to pretend tell a story thematically, I'm actually writing songs that tells a story.  I think that there will be a balance of about 50/50 in the end because in rock n roll, you don't need to spell it out.  It isn't a musical.  It isn't primarily theatre and I really think that you need to create a structure in which you provide a prop to the imagination of your audience.

I think that you have to allow creativity to take time.  It isn't a tap that you turn on and off.  My life is very demanding, I have a very committed professional life - as unbohemian as that may be - and it is very difficult to strike a balance.  I don't like doing something and being half arsed about it; I always want to give my all.

All of which leads me on to something quite interesting musically.  I've decided to form a new band.  I'll need to lose the paunch for it because this will be more like what the Light and the Change did back in the day, my old bands.  That means a proper rock band with all the hearing loss (which thus far has proved to be temporary), cut fingers and housemaid's knees that that entails.  I don't really see it as the natural setting for the opera but I figure that its age limited in some respects.  I probably will look ridiculous trying to do windmills, scissor kicks and jumping bean ballet poses like I did ten years ago but its business.  You know.  Its the proper business.  But I think that I'm more open to shades of tone in music now than I was.  I'm probably less of an outspoken high self-minded arse hole now, I hope.  Others may disagree but these days, nobody would bother telling me.

The thing is, I really am enjoying writing this novel.  Its so rewarding.  Its also picking up on lots of experiences that I think that others probably shared about my life up until now.  There's always a twang of middle class awkwardness in my stomach when I 'fess up (as the kids say, apparently) by putting autobiographical references in stories.  But I've decided just to do it.  You see, in truth the Light Gate has these references, a certain setting in the real world but heads off into fantasy and I think that fantasy is based upon my experiences with post-traumatic stress disorder (que awkward twang).

And who knows, if and when it is all done, maybe I'll be better positioned as a 33 year old (I hit this age next week) with a hairline that ain't exactly superstar to make the most of it all.  Anyone that knows me knows that I am a massive Who fan (que another self-aware twang about writing a rock opera...a second one at that) and when I saw Messrs Daltrey and Townshend play Quadrophenia last year - both of them knocking on the doors of their eighth decade - it made me realise that there aren't any rules about this.  Not that I could ever liken myself to masters of the art like them but I figure that many years in the future, I might just have created something epic that I can be truly proud of.

You know, when I was younger I gave up so much for my music.  I hurt a lot of people.  People who asked me if they would one day get a chapter in my memoir.  I figure that I have debt to myself and a debt to them.
And deep down, I still do truly believe.  One man and his guitar can change the world.

The Light Gate Chapter One

Ok.  After reading this I am scared:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26442381

And this makes me bring forward the first chapter of my novelization of The Light Gate my long gestated Cold War rock opera.  I am no writer of prose.  I am a musician.  I never intended for the following to be public consumption but sometime things change.  Something changed tonight.   God bless.

The Light Gate

On the counter-point of darkness

Stand my glass gates

On foundations of light,

That guide with a brilliant beam

Holds the blinded navigator

Still searching for his sight,

And this magic light show

Has now begun

Like a razor sharp laser

Brighter than the sun.

Chapter One:  In Polished Destruction

He remembered them from his childhood.  Standing out on the horizon from his parent’s bedroom window as the heavy red orange summer sky hung like satin from the heavens to the ground.  Twenty or so steel towers stretching up to the setting sun in the West.  They were thin and delicately structured forms; intertwining strings of metal precisely strung and rigidly linked together.  He thought that they were beautiful and when dusk was settling he always thought that they were at their best.  That’s when lights came on like bright ruby beacons becoming more brilliant as the darkness came down.

When the night came and the sky was dark - Coca cola dark as he called it – you could see them bright and clear.  Like hundreds of red stars in the near distance, he told his four year old self.  They were awake through the night and being scared of the dark he took great comfort in this.  He thought of them as friends.

He asked his mother once about them.  “They’re radio masts, dear” she explained “those lights are there so that aeroplanes don’t fly into them at night”.  

“Clever!” he thought. They were very clever.

                                                                                ***

The dark brown Vauxhall Cavalier pulled up outside the fish and chip shop in Hilmorton, a small suburb of Rugby, Warwickshire.  Rugby was famous for its radio masts, some of the biggest ever built. They were first brought to life on New Year’s Day 1926.  In 1927, the site grew and provided the first transatlantic commercial telephone service connecting New York to London; at its peak it hosted twelve 250ft aerials.

As well as scientific research and telegram messaging, it was also used to communicate with the Royal Navy submarine fleet under the call sign, GBR.  It was where the BBC broadcasted its electronic time code pips on Radio 4, the ticking clock at the heart of the United Kingdom’s psyche since 1972. 

It is 1985.  The year that Gorbachev became Secretary General of the Communist Party and three years before he becomes Head of State of the Soviet Union.  The Doomsday Clock is at three minutes to midnight according to the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , the closest the world has been to nuclear apocalypse since 1952 and the invention of the Hydrogen Bomb.  Time has moved on since then with East and West Cold War rivals posturing for the dominance of their competing systems with easily enough fire power to annihilate life on the earth. 

In the early 1980s the Soviet Union began developing a Doomsday fail deadly deterrence called The Dead Hand.   Should a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity and overpressure sensors it would automatically launch its nuclear arsenal of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) at their pre-destined targets by computer control.  One accident.  One incident.  And the world would be ravaged by annihilation. 

Outside the fish and chip shop the little boy waited with his mother as his father brought a bag to the car with the warm smell of batter, cod and fried potato.  The heaters were on in the car and he felt snug in the back seat with a soft glow from the digital display of the in car radio.  Outside rain came down and the street lights shone on the road in the early night. 

The 7pm Radio 4 news started and the father turned up the car’s radio.  Blip.  Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip.  Beep. As car turned around to head home his parents listen intently to the headline news and after a silence break into conversation about the story that they’ve just heard.

“That’s us” the mother says, sounding concerned.

“W-w-hat’s us, Mummy?” asked the little boy, he was still learning to speak and had a terrible stutter.  He didn’t like the tone in her voice.

“It’s the radio masts.  If the Russians launched an attack, we would be at Ground Zero” his mother said matter of factly, as though she was resigned to an immovable fact.

“What’s g-g-g-round zero?”, he knew what zero was.  It was a numberless number.  He’d just learnt about that at school.  Zero meant nothing.

“Well, it means that if there was a war, the radio masts would be the first thing that they would try to bomb and if the Royal Navy don’t hear the Today programme pips two days in a row or something like that, then they attack the Russians”.

“Does that mean we would die?” the little boy was worried.  He didn’t want his parents to die.  He felt protective of them.  The radio masts looked a long way away when he watched them from his parent’s window, he wondered if he could do something to save them.

“Yes” she replied.  “But don’t worry…we wouldn’t know a thing”.

***

Tucked up on the top of his bunk bed the little boy felt uneasy.  He was worried about the Russians and their bombs.  He felt comfort from the landing light falling through the window above his bedroom door but he could feel a distant terror.  He snuggled up with his favourite teddy bear and hid himself under the blankets.

He’d never really known fear like this before.  It was his first taste of something that felt really bleak.  He couldn’t sleep, so stayed awake for hours with his young mind imagining the darkness falling over his towers.  The corners of his bedroom grew darker, so dark that he thought he could see things living in them like they were in another world.  He had visions of the destruction hanging over his world.

***

26^th April 1986.  01:23H.  Chernobyl, Russia.  Engineers are undertaking a systems test at the nuclear power plant near the city of Pripyat on the border of Belarus in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.  A sudden power serge causes a reactor vessel to rupture.  A series of violent steam explosions damage the structure to expose the graphite moderator to the air resulting in a fire bursting up into the night sky spreading a plume of highly radioactive fall out up into the earth’s atmosphere containing four hundred times more radioactive material than in the first atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

27^th April 1986.  The little boy’s mother ran out into the street of a small Northamptonshire cul-de-sac.  She found in one of his favourite haunts at the end of the road playing with one of his friends.

“Darling, I need you to come inside.  Its nothing to worry about” she said trying to hide her mild panic “I just want you to come inside.  There’s some kind of toxic cloud that they talked about on the news.  Something to do with Russia.”

“Can Charlie come?” the little boy asked, gesturing toward his best friend.

The mother said that she better check with his parents and walked the boys to the house across the road.  Soon afterward he walked with his mother up to their family’s semi-detached house that sat up at the top of the road.  There was a dense wooded embankment running alongside the road with a wire fence and a long strip of grass between.  Charlie’s mother had thought it was best that he stayed inside his own home.

He watched the television news in the living room with big windows that looked out onto the road.  “Those Russians” he thought “they’re rubbish”.  The television said it was an accident but with an unshakeable impression that it was the result of inept operation and poor maintenance.  There was it seemed to his young mind another notch on the meter of bad things that could happen.  Maybe the Russians would be too busy to fight a war and bomb him.  Edward Sun slept soundly that night. 

Shortly after the extensive environmental devastation brought on by the Chernobyl incident - that poisoned the heart of the Soviet Union with pollution mainly affecting Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine, as well as much of Western Europe to a lesser extent - Glasnost, or as it translates ‘publicity’ meaning transparency became the dominant movement within Soviet politics.  Ultimately, it is seen as the process by which the Soviet Union led by Mikhail Gorbachev began to re-assess its modus operandi and led to the federation’s collapse in the late 1980s and until 1991 when the Doomsday Clock reversed back to 17 minutes to midnight.

The world breathed a sigh of relief.  Nuclear war no longer seemed like an immediate threat.  In the United Kingdom, Irish republicans bombed shopping centres and banks across in England.  In Belfast, a civil war raged between paramilitary terrorist organisations and the authorities of both sides.  The bombs were different and as the little boy grew into an awkward teenager, he didn’t worry too much about them.

***

On September 11^th 2001, Edward Sun was working in a munitions factory building parts for the Queen’s personal jet when the news broke.  Nobody paid much attention when the newscaster’s voice crackled over the speaker.  A plane had flown into a New York skyscraper.  Details were scarce at the time and his Mind’s Eye he imagined a little single prop light aircraft. 

Gradually the provincial radio DJ began to play more sedate, melancholic music as the extent of the Al Queda attack on the Twin Towers in New York emerged.  The news then came in that a second aircraft had followed, which began to ring alarm bells.  He decided to forego the promised over time he had booked in to get home and watch the news on television as it came in.  His co-workers sneered at him for being so earnest as he left but he was excited by the news; it seemed like something important was happening.

When he got home the television were pictures looked apocalyptic, huge plumes of heavy dust laden smoke stretching up into the sky.  It was surreal.  He felt enthusiastic about engaging with the drama unfolding; they’d even managed to hit the Pentagon.  Even though it was happening in a land far, far away he knew enough to know that the repercussions and went to bed that night a little drunk and half suspecting that the United States would drop a nuclear bomb somewhere that night.

The terrorist plan had been ingenious.  Their approach to death was chillingly practical.  Fly a plane into a building and kill three thousand people.  Their fatal commitment to religion lethally more so.

 A new war had seemingly begun but it still seemed remote.  The newspapers, television commentators and politicians all seemed to stress the great severity of what had happened.  World leaders expressed condemnation and promised vengeance but as time marched on it started to ring a little hollow; there would be no turning point just a slow, bloody pursuit of those responsible that would in the process claim the lives of many innocent people until Western pride could be restored.

The same leaders conspired to use the whole affair as a shameless opportunity to preach fear and remove the odd dictator or two for economic gain until nobody – except the devout, insane and blindly patriotic - quite knew which side of good and bad they lived on.

Edward Sun found himself living in a strange world.  He had grown to become awkwardly gregarious by nature, serious and intellectual.  Hugely driven but with a capacity for self-destructive idiocy; he sneered at his peer’s sense of fun, particularly in pleasure derived from creative pursuit other than that that he derived from his own inexplicable global view.  He thought that tortured artists were self-indulgent but justified his own self-indulgences as a necessary part of his creative process.  His deep introspection led him to troubling guilt over the contradictions in his high self-minded value system.

It was a gamble.  If he delivered, it would all be worthwhile.  If he didn’t  then he’d be a fraud, a failure or dead.  There was no rational line of mediation between the two.  The battle lines were drawn indelibly in his psychology.  One man and his guitar can change the world.

The BoHo Scarecrow Plays The Good Ship - August 20th

On August 20th, we're playing the Good Ship in Kilburn, supporting Who's Next who are performing the whole of Quadrophenia. We are going to have projections and I think that they are too, the stage at the Good Ship is theatrical pit with a huge blank space perfect for doing this.

I have been rehearsing with Charlie Moon Fox who is going to be on drums for me. We have been rehearsing a 45 minute set including my micro opus (ho ho), Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher: A Mini Opera. Charlie is playing some really good stuff. You can tell when he's really on it, because he starts to do these really visual drum moves. There's undoubtably sprinkle of that Moonie genetic magic in his veins. Charlie has one of Keith's old ride cymbals. It is the loudest thing in the room. It would be great if he had full set of those cymbals, he'd be devastating.

We have been rehearsing over at Josh Townshend and James Manningly's Boston House Studio in Brentford. Its a bit out of the way for both Charlie and myself, but a good atmosphere and the location - that is to Minder, what 70s Manchester was to Life On Mars - feels appropriate.

I think that we've got a couple of smoking tunes already. I'm playing mostly electric and it feels suitably wild but still reasonably dignified.

We'll be showing some films before the gig. Haven't decided what yet. It should have some sort of relevance to Quadrophenia or Kilburn, I think.

Tickets are £11. And available from here:
http://www.musicglue.net/thebohoscarecrow/gigdetails/20-aug-11-whos-next-the-good-ship

BUY MILLIONS OF THEM KIDS!!!!!!!!

I think that this is going to be a lot of fun. I have been playing so much more music recently. Its like I've rejoined the musical fraternity.

I went to see Blushing Bones on Monday. Lovely people. I did a gig last night at the Old Crown in Highgate Hill. It was good fun. A bit of an experiment but I want to do something bigger there in the future. What about a Bohemian Scarecrow Festival? Music, film and making scarecrows.

See you in Kilburn on the 20th!

Unplugged Subterranean Music Night

Its been a while since I've played a show.

I spent the last six months ensconced somewhat uncomfortably numb in the bleak mid-winter. It was hugely depressing. Hurtling toward 30 at the speed of light and with little or no sunshine on the horizon. I must be a real sucker for seasonal affective disorder.

But then the magic clock ticked at 5:35pm on March 13th and I was risen. Or thirty at least. And that particular melodrama was over. What next?

I took some advice from a well meaning friend late last year after we had organised a rather successful art exhibition. "Go out and make some money, then you'll have all the time in the world for music". I questioned this a little at the time but I took there advice and spent a time pretending that I was Gordon Gekko.

This did in fact make me slightly richer. It also made me quite ruthless, depressed and very fat.

More recently I took the advice of my ex-girlfriend, who quite amazingly still seems to think that there is some value in my BoHo musical mojo. She said I should play some gigs. I agreed and decided to organise one. My whole mindset changed overnight and it felt very good. Now there are a couple of shows that I have on the books that I am promoting and playing at. In August, Who's Next are performing Quadrophenia in Kilburn and The BoHo Scarecrow is supporting and in May, the Unplugged Subterranean Music Night will rock the Constitution Cellar Bar in Camden out.

Its a great line-up. My pal Mikey Cuthbert, he of In The Attic fame (which seems like a lifetime ago now but you can see a bit of it here) will be trekking up from Southend to take a bow. Mikey is an immensely likeable guy with some great stories to tell. He fits right in with the venue and the whole unplugged theme. Plus, I haven't had a pint with him for a while.

We also have Blushing Bones, who Josh Townshend is playing with for this show. I met Josh last year when he was playing with Thunderclap Newman and I was organising The Who Convention at which he played. He's another nice bloke, who has been doing lots of exciting things recently including opening a new studio (http://www.bostonhousestudio.co.uk) and supporting the revitalised Big Country at the Shepherds Bush Empire .

Then there's this BoHo Scarecrow character. Not quite sure what to put in the set. There's part of me that wants to do this new Light Gate opera that I've been working on, or dust off Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher mini opera for the night...or maybe just play a bunch of songs that seem to work.

What I do know is that quitting smoking has filled me full of energy and I've been out training and its been a revelation. It will be a great night. Brilliant venue down a back street in Camden Town on the canal. The Cellar Bar where the show will be opens onto the tow path and we'll be doing full classic album playbacks. You can tweet me suggestions for which ones you want to hear to @bohoscarecrow.

You can also check out the group page for the facebook group at:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111029512316338


Hope to see you there on May 20th at the Constitution Pub in Camden. Doors open at 7pm and entry is £3. We will be partying past midnight with the albums getting more classic as the night goes on!

Hope to see you there.

The Mercurial Mr Clark & His Magic Concert Bus

Last week, my friend - the mercurial - Sebastian Clark announced his latest project, The Concert Bus. A sustainable, mobile music venue that will be funded from crowd sourced sponsorship.

You can read about it all here and there's a great video that Seb has put together.

He lives in Seattle now. When I met him, he was here in the UK on tour and was originally from LA. His concept is pretty amazing. Experimental but well thought out.

It got me thinking too. What an amazing opportunity to do something good. Touring across the United States bringing music, a kind of rolling situationism with the destination board marked, "Even Further".

I want a slice of that particular pie and so am going to try and help Seb in some way with the project. Part of this, I hope, will be to take a trip on the bus. Where the journey will take me, I've no idea but I want to see the project happen. I want to participate. I've talked to a few friends about it and not one of them thought that I was crazy. In fact, everyone just said "do it!".

The United States is a most amazing country. If you haven't been there, then you have no idea of what the definition of a "big country" is until you've seen it. I went to Seattle about three years ago - how time flies - and it blew my mind. Islands, volcanos, mountains,sea, lakes and so much land stretching out. I enjoyed playing the gigs that I did there and had been very fortunate that there was someone at the time who believed in me enough to make them happen.

It left me with a taste for it and I want more. I want to see that country and rock it. I want to film it, to breathe it in and to come back to England as a better BoHo Scarecrow. More than anything, I want to actually DO something rather than talk about it.

I have been trying to get all sorts of projects off the ground with mixed success. I have started promoting, which in truth scares the shit out of me but I seem to be quite good at it and have been learning a lot. Each time it gets better but I want to see the big one come off. I think that I could move a long way forward with a trip on the bus with my writing, recording and just learning how to be a real musician again.

So, it could be a short trip, it could be open ended; the best stories always are. As Edward Fox once said in character of Major General Brian Horrocks "Gentlemen, this is a story you will your Grandchildren, and mightly bored they'll be!"

I have a gut instinct that this is going to fly. In fact, I think more than that it is something that will grow into all sorts of different adventures. Whatever part I play in it, even if its only a very small by writing this blog, the Concert Bus will be one of the most happening happenings ever to hit the road.

If you want to donate, please take a look at the link. Seb will send you fantastic things. He'll hate me saying it, but the man is a visionary. I just hope that he knows how to drive a bus.



What do you get if you cross Kurt Schwitters with He-Man? Sebastian.

Cash / Trash ! Lyrics

Ladies and Gentleman, this is what is commonly known as, money....

Here's the intro from the Magic Christian which riffs all over this theme and was directed by the Goon show accolyte, Joe McGrath.



Recently, The BoHo Scarecrow appeared at an event - in cognito - called the Culture Hack Day. At this day, Leila Johnston (@finalbullet) talked about the idea of cash machines being fun. You plonk in your PIN code and BANG! Money.

Earlier today, having failed to buy any wares from the designer cheese counter in Crouch End (see facebook photo stream), I sat down and started to write about a line that entered my head last night, something about "I deserve my cash reward". It sounded like electro in my head. But then, and as these things usually do, it changed and I quickly had a clear song in my head and a set of lyrics called "Cash!/Trash!".

Below you will find two things, one a fragment contextual inspiration and the other
the set of lyrics for the aforementioned song. The Youtube trailer for the Magic Christian features my chums from Thunderclap Newman, a Pete Townshend side project from the early 70s, who had a number one hit with "Something In The Air". I am proud to say that on October 3rd last year, when they played the two day festival I organised...that in the wake of my lost voice, Andy Newman himself did offer me not one, but TWO, Fisherman's Friends. Alas, it failed to cure me and I had to settle for playing guitar with the headlining act on their encore. I played a Lennon Edition Gibson Casino worth more than my father's BMW and managed not to drop it.

BMWs? Expensive Guitars? Money. The most pleasurable experience that I've ever had with money, was getting my cash card for the first time and entering my PIN in the machine. It sounded like a touch tone phone. Like KITT from Knight Rider. Is it possible to combine Ray Kurzweil's concept of singularity with the ATM and a bit of fraud to give me access Mark Zuckerberg's billions?

That would be nice but it'll never beat loved up spooning.



Anyway, here are the lyrics. I'll pick up the guitar in a minute and put it together. Hopefully will have something on youtube quite soon. Its been a while, as I've had the most horrific writers block. Enjoy.


Cash! / Trash !


Its the only game,
that you'll ever play,
where you get to choose,
what the winner gets paid.

CASH! TRASH!
Its just a game, just a game, just a game.
CASH! TRASH!
Its just a game, just a game, just a game.

If I had a penny,
for everytime I've withdrawn cash,
I could have bailed out Barings Bank,
before it crashed.

CASH! TRASH!
Its just a game, just a game, just a game.
CASH! TRASH!
Its just a game, just a game, just a game.

They say "fun is in direct proportion,
to how much you earn".
But you'll stop smiling,
when your overdrafts burned.

C-C-CASH! TRASH!
Kerching, Kerching, Kerching.
C-C-CASH! TRASH!
You win! You win! You win!

He's got more money than you,
his skies are always blue,
But you don't need a PIN Code,
to make sweet love or screw.
But he's got more money than you,
he's got more money than you.

Its such an easy game,
that anyone can play,
You'll earn yourself bonus points,
if you get your Balance On Display.

CASH! TRASH!
Kerching, kerching, kerching.
CASH! TRASH!
You win! You win! You win!

At the Corner Bank,
and the High Street Arcade,
Its the Post-War answer,
to the Piggy Bank Raid.

CASH! TRASH!
Its just a game, just a game, just a game.
CASH! TRASH!
Its just a game, just a game, just a game.


The BoHo Scarecrow

Long Live Rock

I had a long and very deep sleep earlier this afternoon. It was so good to catch up on some rest. The past few weeks has been absolutely flat out and a few days ago, I started to come down with something nasty.

All hands to the pumps at the moment. The Who Convention 2010 is taking off and hitting London next weekend. Sounds terrifyingly exciting, doesn't it! I met up earlier in the week with the Chief Executive of the Teenage Cancer Trust and Angie Jenkison who recently organised The Whodlums show up in Newcastle for the charity. They were very supportive and have taken a few headaches away from me.

I have some time to really focus on this event over the next few days without kamikaze late nights sandwiched by long days at work. This is good and will really help me stay sane.

We are well set. There will still be hiccups along the way but I think that we are going to deliver a great weekend. People are coming in from around the world for this show. Its crazy, but it says something about rock n roll and its ability to bring people together. The thing is, "convention" is such a geeky title for it. I could have sexed it up - I always loved the title they had in the states of Wholapalaza - but in the end, a convention it is and a convention it shall be.

There won't be much rest for me until a week or so.

Aside from The Who Convention, I am also helping organise London's Biggest Pop Up Art Exhibition at 210 Pentonville Road for the Cross My Art Exhibition. The Private View is this Thursday. It came about very quickly, I linked up Art & Escape Gallery, who have masterly put together this show in a very short space of time with the building, which we have got for free. I maybe could have stepped away from it there but it was too much of an opportunity not get more involved with. I decided that I wanted to learn how to do an art exhibition. I'm not very keen on his stuff but we've got Damian Hirst's work there.

You see, all of this is experimental for me. Its all lessons. All learning. I would explode if I didn't push myself out into these places. I need to know how to do it. Its very important for what comes next with The BoHo Scarecrow and The Light Gate opera.

I better go now. Much to do. Long live rock!