Blasting the Past

I WAS REALLY DEFLATED ALL WEEKEND. The methadone miseries.

In a way I shouldn't really complain as the alternative to a methadone script would be a life of unimaginable chaos (not to mention insecurity) ...

Methadone holds you - whether you're on the verge of sickness but not quite there, or you're OK, or even slightly stoned. It holds you and does so persistently once you've achieved a level in your body. But the upshot of methadone very often is -- and I'll hardly be the first one to say this -- you live a flat existence of a life. Monochrome and uninspiring. As if someone's turned down the colour and brightness on your TV. Everything comes through. What can you complain about. No one specific thing is wrong. And you certainly don't deserve to complain. But it's there. All the time. This consistent, persistent, sunken feeling ...

My video blog has really cheered me. Firstly all the musical stuff there (apart from some of the foreign rave trailer type things -- but all the stuff by vocalists and bands) I trawled specifically for. I've departed upon a magickal mystery tour of my past musical loves. You will notice I value the female voice far above the male (can't explain why: always have done). And my tastes in a lot of things (especially as I've got older) are very middle of the road and I don't apologize for this. Two tunes have been whirling round my head.

Eurythmics' "Angel" which got into my subconscious a few years back when I fell asleep to a Eurythmics concert on telly, waking up from tangled dreams with this playing out. The video's pretty dreamlike, too, which is why I went for that over the live version ...

And secondly that Tammy Wynette + KLF track ... For a brief while in the early 90s the KLF were slapping out dancey pop tunes of the highest calibre and what they lacked in "credibility" they cannily made up for in "ironical" value amongst the critics of the day. If you listed the elements of a really catchy pop production on a piece of paper - the KLF's stuff would tick all boxes. They sold shedfuls of albums, then went quiet for a while, appearing only intermittently in bizarre media stunts done in the name of "The K Foundation". The last of these (and the money was real) was to withdraw the £1,000,000 cash they'd made out of their music out of their bank in £50 notes. This they piled in a great heap. Journalists of all persuasions and all manner of publications were invited to the mass burning. And that's exactly what they did. In the name of art they doused paraffin over this money, set fire to it and burnt the lot. £1,000,000 cash.

There's a proverb that in so many words says the following:

Making a million is one thing. Keeping hold of a million: now that really takes some doing.

About a year later one of the K-Foundation "bandmembers" appeared on TV looking sheepish and regretful. He admitted to questioning the wisdom of his actions on that day when his entire life savings went up deliberately in smoke ... all in the name of ... I don't know what. I wonder, does he?

You can see a brief history of their music and madness by clicking here ...