Rest in peace, Damo - your sound carries on, you crazy sound carrier

I love this quote of Damo's on the back cover of 
the memoir published in 2023 - but I'd also like to
slightly disagree. Damo belonged everywhere, and
everywhere he went belonged to him!

Don't worry. I'm not reviving this moribund blog. But not giving it a coup de grace either.

Just have to add at least one more post,  to remind all about that mysterious electric disruptive delightful soul Damo Suzuki who died yesterday aged 74.

When I think of Damo I think first of all the sound he caused to be created and to hum and sing around the planet. His own version of the never-ending tour, the Sound Carrier network - hopping across oceans and continents non-stop more or less since he left Can, 50 plus years ago. 

He met music-makers and sound carriers in big cities, small towns, remote villages, the network kept on swelling and vibrating and humming, and it all somehow seemed to be infused with Damo's cosmic sense of music - whatever music is - and I find it hard to separate that from the smile on his face as he made or listened or contributed to these sounds.

Last time I saw him was at Rough Trade East in London, what three or four years ago: and I curse myself for missing him on many other occasions at easy to reach locations. On that evening, where he was talking about his days on the publication of his sort-of autobiography - titled, in a wry tribute to Mark E Smith - "I Am Damo Suzuki".

MES had of course written a song of the same name, a typically oblique bit of musical fanmail to be found on The Fall lp This Nation's Saving Grace.

Smith had died  the year before, and in a wonderfully strange tribute Damo, visiting Manchester a few months after his demise, met up with the last members of The Fall for a cheeky photo-opportunity: "I Am Mark E Smith". Only because it was Damo and the final iteration of the Salford phenomenon, could they get away with it, knowing MES would have loved it.

This delightful story is one of hundreds told in this marvellous book, which includes loads of autobiographical fragments woven into a series of in-depth interviews wwith some of the hundreds of musician and others he performed with, influenced, loved and in some cases fell out with. His joint author, Paul Woods, does a brilliant job both in the interviews and stitching thr whole thing together to make a very readable book, whether straight through or through infinite dippings-into. 

As well as assembling all those irresistible lists, discographies, and some truly priceless photos. There are also some examples of Damo's weird and cheerful artworks.

Paying tribute to a tribute: Damo Suzuki slips into the gap
 left by the Fall's founder Mark E Smith, who died in Feb 2018,
three months before this photo was taken. Damo is surrounded
by the members of the final iteration of the ever-changing band. 
Photo @ Michelle Heighway, from her documentary about
Damo's Network,  ENERGY following Damo Suzuki's
 Network over 7 years.

If you don't have this book, get a copy asap. It's available at £16.99 from publishers Omnibus Press.

That evening at Rough Trade, when Damo answered questions about his life and work, and also spoke a bit about his illnesses (which had been extremely serious, as described in gruelling detail in the book) turned out to be one of his last appearances in the Uk. 

He had recovered from the cancer which had returned decades after a first bout, but sadly it turned out this remission was only temporary. 

That night you could see he was clearly feeling the reduction in energy that such suffering have on the toughest of souls. But it did not stop him crossing the planet, carrying with him some sort of burning magical musical energy which infected, inspired so many others young, old, every type.

Thanks Damo, we love you still!

Getting the hump over speed bumps, and other stories

Here we go again. Your 40-year-old pushbike and the 71-year-old lump of fat, bone and gristle pedalling it like mad (aka me) almost take off as we hit one of those stupid mini-speed-bumps on Silverthorne Road, at what for us is quite a decent speed.

If you think the idea of having two bumps, one in each lane, is to spare cyclists from the often quite dangerous jarring they get from these escarpments in nearly every residential street in inner London, think again.

No, it's more to allow ambulances and cop cars a smooth passage if they're having to proceed at high speed. Trouble is every other driver also knows they can give their fabulously fast and manoeuverable vehicles a quick flick around these obstacles, meaning anyone on two wheels has to be very watchful as said cars swerve into their paths.

But should we abolish speed humps? Of course not. They're absolutely essential to protect the lives and limbs of those foolish enough to be traversing these rights of way on foot or in pram or pushchair, wheelchair, scooter, bicycle or tricycle.

What rankles is that the bumps are ONLY necessary because drivers are too arrogant,  too infantile and too selfish to stick to the legal speed limits. 

Also, it's apparent some cars are now able to zoom over a whole series of the humps without wallowing at all. Maybe makers have tinkered with suspension to enable this? It's certainly not true for long low sports cars and boy racers: there's so often a delightful scrunching sound as they nose-dive into the tarmac, scraping their soft and expensive bellies on the hard stuff.

Many of these bumps are steep enough to launch the unwary cyclist into unexpected aerial acrobatics. They are just a pain in the arse for other road users, but they are positively dangerous for us. 

They also result in many drivers choosing the few roads kept free of speed bumps for the sake of emergency service vehicles. Trouble is I live on such a road and notice that barely a single private car adheres to the 20mph limits. A majority seem to exceed that by a factor of two; some three; and some even four.

So, what about using all this digital surveillance stuff to do some good road safety work?

Here's the boring rest of menu stuff:

1. Corsodyl tooothpaste.  Used to buy this as was only one that seemed to be unsweetened. Now they sell the "Original" with a "new improved taste". Well, if it has a new flavour it cannot any longer be the original. And the "improvement" turns out to be a noticeably sweeter and therefore to me quite disgusting new paste. Why do they force-feed sweetness, whether from sugars or synthetics, onto the British consumer? Obvious: profit for sugar companies, sweetener manufacturers, and the extortionate dentists who will later be dealing with the literal fall-out.

2. BBC radio trails: Still love the BBC for all its failings, but the noisy trails between almost every programme drive some of us mad. So often they seem to involve shouty sportspeople. Surely they know not all listeners to Radio 4 or 3  or even local stations are fans of such stuff? It's also odd that promotional stuff on BBC TV is so much more careful and sometimes even delightful, though even here we see the gradual invasion of Hollywood-style sound editors. And most of the promotional trails and jngles on local radio - even Radio London - are downright embarrassing. You can feel some of the more grown-up presenters wincing as they have to punctuate their sometimes very good programmes with these inane interruptions.

3. Beep beep! Drivers' ever-increasing willingness to blast everyone else (but especially cyclists) with their ridiculously powerful air-horns or hooters. This has been covered in painful length in earlier posts on this site, passim.

4. Idiot wind - the petrol-driven leaf-blower: A curse and a menace that is still rising as more of the recently-created gated private residential developments are completed. The racket of a Monday morning is unbearable. Often as not it's a bloke chasing two or three leaves around a small patch of expensive paving slabs, the turning and parking area of a new block of luxury apartments (which should by law have remained as grass and trees, but never does in this strange inner-London borough.) Electric versions are available: why not make the two-stroke stinkers illegal?

5. Flying ants in sporty pants: The visual pollution of the first sunny days of spring, when the male yuppies strip down to shorts, flip-flops etc and cover the local parks like pale maggots on rotting meat. Actually, since Covid they seem to have been wearing those shorts all year round, along with white trainers, white socks and and padded  gilets over sporty shirts - de rigeur gear for non-office days it seems. They go with the brutal squaddie-style half-scalp-razorings which might look good on a Brazilian footballer but not so hot on a pale pink City boy.

6. It used to be small is beautiful. That's all gone. Now, big is always better in Obese Britain. Another example - it's getting hard to find normal-sized baskets, notably in budget supermarkets Lidl and Aldi. They seem to be replacing them with dumper-sized baskets on wheels, with a little handle so shoppers can trundle them around the crowded aisles like all those ghastly wheelie-bin suitcases at Gatwick. These bigger baskets are worse than the massive trolleys, which are at least properly manoeuverable. They block aisles, trip other shoppers up, and generally make the shopping experience even more miserable than it needs to be.

Amen.