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The Waterboys



Last Updated: 11/19/2009

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City: Dublin
Country: IE
Signup Date: 4/17/2006

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Thursday, October 08, 2009 
The first time The Waterboys toured North America in 1984 we were guests of U2, playing a 45 minute opening slot.  Every night pre-show someone from U2's crew would collect our guestlist and because we didn't know many people in Canada or the States it was often blank.  When the tour got to Washington DC, for a lark I put "Ronald Reagan plus one" on the page.  After all, he lived in The White House just up the road.

That night after we played I went outside the venue for some fresh air.  It was a frigid December night and I wandered to the front of the building, a grand old masonic pile called The Constitution Hall.  From inside I could hear U2 coming on stage and blasting into their opening number.  But standing in the cold at the main doors, unable to get in because they had no tickets, were a couple of teenage girls, both crying, with their bemused-looking parents.  I was really touched, especially because the parents had brought them.  There was something really homely and sad about the little heartbreaking scene.

My brain switched into gear and, as in one of those comic strip moments when a lightbulb flashes above someone's head, I had a Brainwave.  "Ronald Reagan plus one" was on the guestlist.  If the two girls said THEY were Ronald Reagan plus one they'd be able to get in!

I went up to them and explained this, but it didn't sound as sensible coming out of my mouth as it had in my head.  The parents had no reason to believe my story that I was in the support band, other than perhaps my odd accent which marked me down as an exotic Brit foreigner, and when I outlined the bit about the guestlist (what on earth was that?) and "Ronald Reagan" (?!?!?!), I was met with disbelieving stares from mum and dad and confused expressions from the girls.

Nevertheless I persevered, explaining it all over again. The girls, recognising I was their one last hope of seeing the concert, urged the parents to believe me and to let them pose as "Ronald Reagan plus one" if that was what it took to get in.  The parents reluctantly agreed and we all trooped up to the door together.  I banged on the glass, and a steward came and opened up.  I explained my story about the Waterboys guest list and "Ronald Reagan" but was told: "I don't know nuthin' 'bout that. You'll have to go to the stage door". 

This did nothing for my credibility in the eyes of the parents, and as I led them, disbelievingly, round the perimeter of the building to the stage door, the dad fixed me with a skeptical eye and drawled in a slow no-nonsense tone: "Are you on the level, son?"

At the stage door another steward went to find the Waterboys' guestlist.  To my horror, when he returned he said there was no such thing.  My credibility divebombed.  I protested but was told 'the opening act didn't even submit a guestlist' and I guessed that some humourless member of U2's entourage must have decided against presenting a list with only "Ronald Reagan" on it.  

I was scuppered, the skeptical dad was confirmed in his belief that I was a dangerous lunatic, and the two girls were crying again, attendance at the gig now irredeemably beyond their reach.

Just then I caught sight of an Island Records promo guy I knew slightly, a really good fellow.  Island was the American record company for both U2 and The Waterboys and this was one of the dudes who accompanied the tour and fixed up radio interviews for us.  I called him over, explained about the guest list and asked if he could help.  He looked at the weeping girls and the distressed, disgruntled parents and sized up the situation in one.  "We're gonna get the girls into the show!" he exclaimed, heroically.

He led us back round the building to the front door, knocked authoritatively on it, flashed his important looking access-all-areas pass and instructed the steward to take him to the U2 office.  Two minutes later he came back with a couple of passes for the show.  He hung these over the necks of the two girls and, weeping now for happiness and thanking us profusely, they ran into the building. I watched them disappear into the venue, swallowed up by the concert lights and the sound of the rock'n'roll.  Our promo-man-cum-saviour then dashed off leaving me with the two parents, who were completely won over and gobsmacked.  The poor dad was speechless but shook my hand enthusiastically, pumping it up and down with a great big smile on his face.  And I got a kiss from the mum.

A year later The Waterboys returned to America for our first headline tour, playing small clubs.  We arrived at the Washington venue in the late afternoon, a bar by a river I seem to remember, and to my surprise there were some familiar figures standing outside waiting for us.  It was the two girls and their dad and this time they had their concert tickets.  It was a great reunion and from that day on, every time I've played Washington the girls - Annemarie and Joanna - have come to the show.
3:44 PM 
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Friday, October 02, 2009 
See my reply to previous blog comments!
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

MY ROCK’N’ROLL SKOOL


I've been looking at the website of one of these rock schools where you take courses in how to be a performer.  Maybe it works for some people but that kinda thing wouldn't have drawn me at the age 16.  Rock + school just don't mix.  So I think I'll start my own ALTERNATIVE ROCK'N'ROLL SKOOL.  Courses to include:

 

1. How to dress like a proper fucking rock'n'roll star (rule one: dress the same offstage as onstage. And I mean dress offstage like you would ON, not on like you would off)

 

2. How to choose a musical instrument (it's the way it looks, stupid!)

 

3. How to write HOOKS. (If your songs ain't got 'em, get another job)

 

4. How to play your instrument not with your head or fingers BUT WITH YOUR LIFE

 

5. How to confound your audience's expectations

 

6. How to creatively joust with the mysterious race of beings known as ROCK JOURNALISTS

 

7. The lore and evolution of rock'n'roll (and how not to GO BACKWARDS. Rolling Stone magazine take note)

 

8. The occult science of the killer song intro  

 

9. The occult science of the extended outro (rule one: earn it by preceding it with a disciplined and economic song arrangement)

 

10. How to get people to do things for you (eg take care of the money stuff) without surrendering your power or authority to them


I'm taking applicants now. Send a stamped undressed elephant to Mick Puck, Dublinjungle™, Hibernia.

    

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Wednesday, September 02, 2009 
I used to have a Bullworker, one of those chest-expander style keep-fit things that you press inwards, and I'd huff and puff with it for ten minutes every morning.  It built up my arm muscles, and hardened up my chest, and I was disciplined enough about doing it that when i went off to do a few weeks' recording, during the making of This Is The Sea in early 1985, I took the Bullworker with me.

The studio was fifty miles southeast of London, near the town of Hastings, and when my co-producer and I were shown around, to my surprise I noticed a Bullworker leaning against the wall, just outside the studio control room.

"Whose is that?" I asked the assistant who was showing us around.

"Oh, that belongs to Level 42's bass player," came the reply.  "They were in last week and he must have forgotten to take it with him."

Level 42's bass player was a huge musclebound geezer called Mark King who wore sweatshirts manfully marked "LONSDALE" and whose vast stature made me look like a pin.  I was amused to see that, despite the difference in our physiques, we used the same exercise gizmo.

Three weeks passed, during which much of This Is The Sea was recorded, which is another story, and when the day came to leave the studio I packed up my gear and stashed it in our van.

I was dropped off at my flat near Ladbroke Grove, in London's Notting Hill district, and went for a long walk.  Spring had arrived in my absence and the leaves were blossoming on the trees that lined the West London streets.  There was magic in the air.  I see from my notes of the time that when I got home I stayed up that night listening to Steve Reich albums and writing lyrics.

Next morning I woke late and after a shower went to my Bullworker.  I confess I'd let my daily exercise slide while I'd been in the studio.  With the late nights of recording I'd forgotten all about exercising in the mornings.  Returning to my discipline now, three weeks later, I expected to find the exercise tougher than usual; surely I'd have lost some musclepower during the layoff.  But nothing could have prepared me for how difficult I found it to use the Bullworker!  It was incredibly tough and hard to work.  And bloody hell, it made my arms and chest ache something rotten.  My God, I thought to myself, I've got really, really weak while I've been in the studio! 

I'd been in the habit of marking on the Bullworker with a felt pen, to keep a record of how far I could move it.  And I looked at it now to see how far short of my usual mark I'd got.  But my felt-tip marks were gone!  I looked again.  No, they were gone all right.  

And then it hit me.  I'd brought Level 42's Bullworker home instead of mine! 




2:54 PM 
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009 
I met up with a chap from Edinburgh yesterday and we spent a happy hour or two reminiscing about old mutual acquaintances.  This chap is a drummer and has recently been working with one of my old bandmates, Steve Fraser, who played bass in my groups Another Pretty Face, Funhouse and The Red And The Black, between 1981 and 1982.

I think of Steve Fraser as the "other" Steve in my musical life, and I remember him with a lot of affection and humour.  But my friend told me yesterday that Steve was pissed off at something that had been said in the unauthorised Waterboys biography that came out a few years ago (which I haven't read; my Superb Wife's description of it is enough for me).  Apparently Anthony Thistlethwaite is quoted as saying something about Mike having "a few musicians from Scotland who weren't up to much" at the time we met, which, if accurately quoted, doesn't sound very generous (and not worthy of Anto's usually good nature).  As one of these musicians, Steve Fraser was somewhat nonplussed.  And because Steve deserves his rightful place in the pantheon of Edinburgh musicians and former Mike Scott alumni, I've decided to write a blog about him.  Here it is.

In 1978 my mate John Caldwell and I had just moved to Edinburgh to start our band and we were looking for a bassist and drummer.  One night we went to a Stranglers gig at the Kinema in Dunfermline, just across the Forth.  The gig was full of punk rockers and during the intermission I said to John, with a little bravado, "I'm going to go and find our new bass player, whoever he is.  He's here tonight.  I can feel it."  I walked round the venue, eyes skinned for a likely band-member candidate, pushing through the mohicans and the weekend punks, the girls in plastic macs and oxfam cardies with panda-black eyes and their hair teased into tubular spikes.  And then I saw him.  A handsome young guy of seventeen or eighteen leaning against the wall wearing a black leather jacket - of course - with jet-black spiky hair and a pout, looking like Dirk Bogarde's kid brother crossed with Sid Vicious.

This, I felt sure, was our bassist, but the guy looked so impossibly cool I didn't have the brass neck to go up and say "Will you play in my band?" without any preamble.  So I logged him in my memory bank and soon enough I started to bump into him at Edinburgh punk gigs.  Somewhere or other we got talking.  His name was Steve, he lived in Edinburgh and he played lead guitar with his own band, the dubiously named Belsen Horrors (affectionately known round Edinburgh as "The Belsens").  I went to see them at the YMCA off Princes Street and they played angular, chordless prog-punk in a Siouxsie And The Banshees vein, Steve rattling off chimy guitar figures while lead singer Lenny caterwauled.

With his good looks and bored attitude Steve was easily the coolest dude on the Edinburgh punk scene and he became friends with John Caldwell and me.  When he needed a place to stay I recommended him for a bedsit in the building where John and I stayed on Edinburgh's Viewforth.  Our landlady was an exciteable Iranian lady called Mrs Afsharian, who laid down rules like "No guests after 10pm."  If any of the inmates broke this rule she would burst into the room and address the unfortunate guest with a high-pitched tirade of "I AM LANDLADY. WHO ARE YOU?!?" then bustle him or her out of the house.

Steve and Lenny moved into the top floor bedsit and we spent a lot of time hanging out together.  Meanwhile John and I had found someone else, who wasn't already in a band, to play bass with us and were busy playing round Scotland and getting our first single, All the Boys Love Carrie on the radio.  But a year or so later, by which time we'd had and blown a major record deal, toured the UK a couple of times, and retreated back to Edinburgh to lick our wounds and rage at the moon for a spell, we found ourselves bass-less again.

Steve's band - since renamed The November Crimes, another cheerful Nazi-associated name - had split, so I asked him to play bass with us.  Two and a half years after the fateful sighting in Dunfermline, he said yes.

He was a cunning player who came up with great bass lines, the kind that someone who's really a lead guitar player would invent - almost like lead riffs, with strong, hooky melodies.  He played sax too, occasionally blowing on stage with us and on a couple of recording sessions.  He was also a very, very funny guy, with a wicked, scathing sense of humour.  When we briefly had a drummer whose face creased up every time he smiled, Steve nicknamed him "Crumpler".  Steve played a dozen shows with us and then we scored a new record deal with Ensign Records of London.  A move to the big smoke beckoned and in the summer of '81, John, Steve, myself, our sax player Gordon and my girlfriend Mairi all moved to London.  Steve never got himself a proper place to stay, but slept on our floor, or, for a while, in the rehearsal room.

I would turn up to rehearse and see a pair of feet sticking out behind the amplifiers, which signified that Steve was in residence and still asleep.  He was a famously late sleeper, rarely surfaced before 2 in the afternoon, often much later.  When Another Pretty Face - by now renamed Funhouse - split 9 months after the move to London, I asked Steve to stay on and play in my next band.  He agreed, and it was around this time that he concocted the bass line for my new song I Will Not Follow, faithfully reproduced on the first Waterboys album a year or so later by another player. 

Steve's only released recording with me was the Funhouse 'Out Of Control' single, from 1982.  He plays on both sides ('b' side: This Could Be Hell; another great Fraser bass line).

For several months in early 1982, for no apparent reason, Steve and I shared a two-man craze for stealing advertisements off London underground trains.  These were thick embossed card things, a couple of feet long, with brightly coloured ads for all sorts of stuff on them, and they were inserted into metal brackets above the seats on the train, or in frames up and down the sides of escalators in the stations.  With a little bit of pushing and shoving, they could be extracted.  Steve and I would nick them on the tube journey home after rehearsals and sometimes even stay past our stop, in a frenzy of theft-inspired excitement, in the hope of finding an unpopulated train car with some more booty.  When we found an empty car we'd clean it out between stops, emerging from the train with half a dozen big card adverts stuffed down each of our coats (Steve's a wool gentleman's coat, very cool, mine a swallow-coat from the bootboy fashion heyday of 1974 with double breasts and big lapels).  Then we'd walk rigidly down the platform like men in an Eric Sykes and Bernard Bresslaw comedy film.  We'd have a flutter of giddy terror when we passed the ticket collector (who probably wouldn't have cared anyway if he'd discovered what we were concealing), then finally get back to my flat in Wembley Park where we'd show off our loot, like cats depositing a dead mouse on the doormat, to a bemused and utterly unimpressed John Caldwell and Mairi.

Because one of the ads, for what I now forget, was written in cod olde english speak and featured the word "visibly", but spelt "wisibly", Steve christened these things "Wisibles".  "Let's nick some Wisibles!" we'd say gleefully to each other.  In time we covered the walls of our rehearsal room with them, floor to ceiling.  It was the strangest craze I've ever been possessed by, and a seriously good piece of fun.

In April '82 Anthony Thistlethwaite joined the band on rip-roaring sax (and probably wondered why our rehearsal room was covered with ads).  With "Crumpler" on drums we played five or six little gigs round scuzzy clubs in Willesden and Fulham, doing Red Army Blues, The Three Day Man, A Girl Called Johnny and other tunes to tiny audiences, before Steve decided he'd had enough.  One day, walking through the streets of south London after a rehearsal, he nervously told me he wanted to return to Edinburgh.

I was cool with it, understood that the dude wanted to go home and do something different - playing my music had only ever been a stop-gap for him anyway - and he left London that June.   I only saw him a couple of times after that, on later Waterboys gig-visits to Scotland, but a few months ago I came across him via the magic of the internet, still playing in a band in Edinburgh.  We exchanged emails and the old connection was just as it always was.  Next time I'm in town I'll meet up with him and see if he still looks like Dirk Bogarde's kid brother crossed with Sid Vicious.  You can see a couple of pictures of him on our myspace pics page, in the "Before The Waterboys" gallery.




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Saturday, July 11, 2009 
Heavy Springsteen vibe in south Dublin city today.  He's playing tonight and tomorrow at the RDS, an open-air venue not far from where I'm living, and as my wife Janette and I stroll to lunch at a neighbourhood restaurant the streets are full of Bruce fans wearing their t-shirts from the last tour, arriving in twos and threes and fours, ready to queue up and get a good spot near the stage when the venue doors open.

And as we leave the restaurant an hour later we can hear the soundcheck starting.  Bass drum and snare checks followed by the sound of the E Street Band (or perhaps their roadies) rollicking through a great sounding slice of old school r & b (when that term meant real rhythm and blues, not the strangulated slick pop of today).

I'm not going to the show myself because I have a confession to make.  I loved Bruce when he was in his 20s and his first 3 or 4 albums are among my all-time favourites, but - and this is the confession, which says more about me than Bruce - I kinda lost interest when he stopped writing about weird and wonderful wild characters like The Magic Rat, Crazy Davey, Wild Billy, Kitty and hustlers, criminals and failed poets like the heroes of Meeting Across The River and Jungleland.  No, when Bruce left those dudes behind and started singing about working men, factories, union members and 'Glory Days', often in either doleful tones or through the medium of cheery six-pack bar music, there was a parting of the ways and my interest flowed elsewhere.

I've often wondered what songs Bruce would be writing if he'd followed the fortunes of Wild Billy and Crazy Davey; I mean if those characters hadn't just become 'normal' and gone to work, like the people Bruce has written about since 1978, but if they'd stayed crazy, were still working at a circus, still hustling, still trying to set up stings.  Where are they now?  Bruce invented them; they must be around somewhere.

Just when I'm musing on this, six or seven streets away from where the E Street Band's (or the roadies') soundcheck is booming, I see a seriously weird looking character walking towards Janette and me.  He's in his early fifties, wearing a black fisherman's coat, massive white beard halfway down his chest.  Something clicks in my head and I think to myself: "It's Wild Billy!"

Suddenly I realise that, like discarded symbols, the neglected characters of Bruce's early career haunt the streets around where he plays his concerts, dispossessed phantoms, shades, the ghosts of the heroic-age visions of Bruce's youth.  If I walk these streets long enough today or tonight I'll meet them all: the gunnerman, Kitty, Mary the Queen Of Arkansas, Crazy Davey, the Mission Man, Spanish Johnny, Puerto-Rican Jane and the Magic Rat himself.  Shit.  If I walk these streets tonight myself some 'Working On A Dream' fan walking home from the RDS is gonna see me and whisper to his mate: "Look.  It's the ol' Magic Rat, haunting Bruce's show!"
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Friday, July 10, 2009 
In the wake of his death, I see constant references to Michael Jackson as the "King of Pop".  I remember when this term was first used.  Michael's PR handlers enforced it in 1993, warning journalists and magazines that they had to use it to describe Michael otherwise they wouldn't get access to him.  

This is an unusually crude way of conferring a title on a star, and while it would have been an appropriate title for Michael during the years when he really was the "king of pop" (1982-3, the era of Thriller's dominance of the world's charts), by 1993, when his handlers insisted on it, he was nothing of the kind; more like a king of shadows, or of wierdness.

The throne of "King Of Pop" is a revolving chair, and no one artist has a claim on it.  And several have a greater claim than Michael, based on the breadth of their work and the longevity of their heyday.  

Frank Sinatra was the King Of Pop in the mid 1940s; perhaps the first bearer of the crown.

Elvis Presley was King Of Pop from 1956, when he exploded like a supernova onto world consciousness, until 1960, when he emerged from the army and began his fade into a routine of bad Hollywood films.  

The Beatles were the Kings Of Pop longer than anyone, towering over the worlds of music, youth culture and fashion from their arrival on the TV screens of the USA in early 1964, till their split six years later, and it's arguable that as solo artists both Lennon and McCartney - and even George Harrison during the global success of All Things Must Pass in 1970-1 - continued to occupy the throne for a year or so afterwards.

Marc Bolan and David Bowie were consecutive Kings Of Pop in 1970s UK, Bowie for longer, while David Cassidy was briefly King Of Pop in the USA in the early '70s.

Michael Jackson's ascent to the throne came with Beat It and Billie Jean, his fantastic 1982 singles.  I still remember how Michael's very name, during those two years, stood for a lighting-sharp energy, a fusion of incredible singing and supernatural dancing.

But then Prince trumped him in 1984, releasing Purple Rain and displaying equally outrageous dance moves, equally exquisite singing, a prodigious armoury of musical and arrangement skills - not least of which was the most soulful lead guitar playing since Jimi Hendrix - and a sly, sexy mischievous humour that made Jackson, by contrast, look tense and two-dimensional.  Prince's name replaced Michael's as that most synonymous with brilliance and sharpness, and he occupied the throne till 1988, when Lovesexy failed to maintain the standard of his previous four albums.

Since then Kings Of Pop have come and gone with increasing rapidity (and some might say with increasing vapidity), but Michael Jackson hasn't been among them. He deserves to be remembered as a superlative talent, but he was only truly the King Of Pop for two years in the early '80s.  



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Friday, July 10, 2009 

Category: Music

"WILD HOLY BAND" – MIKE’S NEW SONG ON BELIEVER MAGAZINE CD

The home demo recording of Mike Scott’s new song A Wild Holy Band, a ten minute-plus epic narrative starring a handsome taxi driver, two sad lovers, a crumbling druid college and a roll-call of gods, sailors, literary characters and at least one briefly-glimpsed Waterboy, will get its unexpected world premiere on a music CD accompanying the July edition of the American arts magazine Believer. The recording is a rare opportunity to hear Mike’s work behind the scenes, to experience a song in the raw before it has been taken to the band, and it features only a drum machine and Mike’s own vocal, guitar and piano. The CD comes with Believer’s annual music issue, and among the 13 other artists included are Stuart Moxham, Lisa Germano, Lloyd Cole, David Sylvian, Mary Margaret O’Hara and Stephen Duffy. The magazine comes out is available now from here.


LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS – NOW WITH FARSI SUBTITLES

LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS, The Waterboys’ video/song tribute to the Iranian protesters is now uploaded to youtube with the song’s lyric, written by W.B. Yeats, in Farsi (Persian) subtitles. View it here.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009 
Mike Scott, his wife Janette and Waterboys’ webmaster Ian Barratt have created a 3-minute video titled LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS in tribute to the Iranian protesters. The film shows fantastic images of the uprising in Iran to a soundtrack of a split-new Waterboys with a lyric by the great Irish poet WB Yeats. Says Mike: "Let The Earth Bear Witness is inspired by the amazing scenes of hundreds of thousands of Iranian people standing up for their rights and freedom. I took the words from two old Yeats poems, in which he was writing about Irish freedom fighters. But his words apply to any freedom fighters, anytime, anywhere in the world."

The film is live on youtube now and can be viewed here.

We’re working on a version with subtitles in Farsi and this will also be posted shortly. If you find the film inspiring please pass on or tweet the link to everyone you know.

LET THE EARTH BEAR WITNESS words by W.B. Yeats

They shall be remembered for ever
They shall be alive for ever
They shall be speaking for ever
The people shall hear them for ever

Let the sea bear witness
Let the wind bear witness
Let the earth bear witness
Let the stars bear witness!
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009 
I'm Working my way through AE's book The Avatars, and now it turns out to be about two gods who appear on earth and their impact on a group of friends, including the poet, seeker and seer mentioned in the last blog.  As before, as I go through the book I'm noting quotes that speak to me with a spiritual energy and wisdom, and here again is a selection:

"What we really love in others is not what they seem to the outer but to the inner vision."

"I always thought the Golden Age never really departed from earth. Driven out of cities and palaces, it still lingers in remote valleys like this."

"Civilisation began in some primæval forest when a woman first plucked a flower and put it in her hair, and appeared like a spirit to her savage lover."

"I read books prophetic about the future but the writers conceive only of more perfect mechanisms, not of a lordlier humanity.  They imagine nothing about ourselves. Yet what could me more exciting? Whether, for instance, in ten thousand years we may not be able to send our thoughts as we will to distant friends; whether we might not be able to extend consciousness into nature and interpret to ourselves the life of rock, water, earth or tree. Our prophets do not speculate on human destiny, whether that other world which shines invisibly about us might not gradually become as native to us as this; whether we might not find the wings of the psyche unfolding and a spiritual body be born from the womb of this mortal body. We have in us in germ such powers. Their development is not incredible."

"The wise ones assume excellent forms in secret."

"How great a price we must pay to be made luminous within!"

"When I woke yesterday morning I felt like a boat whose anchor had been lifted and the wind was blowing it out of harbour."

"The universe itself is nothing but Imagination ceaselessly creative. The Imagination and Will which uphold it are in us also."

"You and I carry the universe in our packs."

"That young girl has been burdened with great mysteries. You were right to question nothing, to ask no more. These are things which are lost through speaking of them.  It would be wrong to break her mood of wonder. In solitude she may recall and make those marvels all her own. When she has made them secure in memory she will tell us about them and I am sure she will understand. I do not believe vision is vouchsafed to any without its interpretation."



8:45 PM 
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Sunday, May 17, 2009 
I'm reading a very obscure book, The Avatars, by A.E., the Irish mystic of the early 20th century.  It's a book long out of print, purchased a fortnight ago for €65 in Cathach Books, the Antiquarian shop just off Grafton Street in the centre of Dublin.

The Avatars is sub-titled "A Futurist Fantasy" and it's a strange tale - at least so far; I'm a third of the way through - about a poet, a youthful seeker and an older wise man, and their visions.  

As I read through I keep noting wonderful quotes full of spiritual energy.  I have the feeling these are perhaps more understandable now than they were in A.E.'s day, due to the cultural and scientific advances, and increased spiritual freedoms, of the past century.  I mark each of them in pencil for future reference.  I may want simply to remember them, or I may want to co-opt them into a song or piece of writing (source acknowledged of course), or I may want to quote them.

Or I might just want to share them with you.  

So here, for your pleasure and inspiration, are Scott's choice cuttings, culled from the pages of A.E.'s The Avatars:

"There was a spirit in the wild people who lived among the hills which was not in the people of the cities.  They belonged, however remotely, to some mystic empire.  The dullest peasant might break silence with a phrase in which the mountains seemed to speak rather than a man."

"As he brooded on the picture he felt a quickening of the imagination.  His fingers began to quiver as if what he had imagined had run from head to hand."

"To the ancients, Earth was a living being.  We who walk upon it know no more of the magnificence within it than a gnat alighting on the head of Dante might know of the furnace of passion and imagination beneath."

"The soul of Earth is our lost Eden."

"The real betrayal of Jesus was not by Judas, but by the other apostles who would not speak of the laughter of Jesus."

"I want to wear cap and bells before the Throne, to clash cymbals and dance, not abase myself before the Lord with my nose in the dust and my hinder parts pointing to the heavens like crawling saints in religious pictures."

"The majesty which held constellations and galaxies, suns, stars and moons inflexibly in their paths, could yet throw itself into infinite, minute and delicate forms of loveliness with no less joy, and he knew that the tiny grass might whisper its love to an omnipotence that was tender towards it."

"Everything, little pimpernel, is hurrying godwards, and you will get there, changing from flower to star on the way."

"Atoms are the creation of the infinite and bear signs of the majestic ancestry."

"The final gift of the infinite to its children will be itself."


I'll post more as I progress through the book.



7:06 PM 
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Monday, April 27, 2009 
Several times recently I've read the comments on our myspace page and have noticed something that is becoming widespread all over myspace: the fan comments and messages are being usurped by ads and announcements.  I had our web team put up a 'please don't post ads or announcements' sign a few months back, but it hasn't had much effect.  

This is a shame because comments pages used to be interesting.  Once upon a myspace time I used to enjoy going to other bands' pages and reading comments from their fans and friends.  It was interesting and offered a window on the relationship betweens bands and their audiences.  Now whenever I look at another band's page, the comments are at least 50% ads, often far more.

The drag is: it's other myspacers who're doing it.  The hijacking of the fan/comments space for the promotion of peoples' own pet projects, releases, ventures has become acceptable practice.  But that doesn't make it OK.

That this is a vile practice which - ad by ad - destroys the quality of the online environment for everyone else is self-evident.  I won't labour the point.  But I would like to share with you an interest of mine: unpacking the myriad creative ways that the hijackers use to muscle in on our space.  Here goes:


Mick Puck presents (fanfare)

A FEW OF THE DEVIOUS AND CREATIVE METHODS OF PLACING YOUR AD ON SOMEONE ELSE'S MYSPACE PAGE

1) The ad masquerading as a thankyou

lots of people send automatic "thanks for the add" messages, which is fine, but many of them include a picture of their album, or an ad for their gig, or an example of their artwork services.  As we all know, these people are really just taking the opportunity to plug whatever they're doing.  But to be more honest, they should drop the second 'd' from the word "add".  Example on Waterboys comments page: Ghost Of A Dog, March 7.


2) The ad masquerading as a supportive message

like 1) but instead of "thanks for the add" it will say something enthusiastic but not band-specific, like "brilliant! I love your stuff', then the inevitable artwork/ad/announcement.  By giving the enthusiastic comment they hope that the gullible band owning the page will mistake them for aficianados and so not delete their ad.


3) the repeatedly sent "message"

it always amuses me to come across serial comment-makers who send an almost identical comment every few days, or perhaps weekly, in a creative but transparent attempt to ensure that they permanently occupy a space among the shown comments, so as to pick up as much online "traffic" as possible.  The following lady sent messages to our page every week for two years (almost all deleted by our trusty team) always with the same cheesy impersonal one- or two-word message:  http://www.myspace.com/glorianuti


4) The generic-but-could-conceivably-be-directed-at-you begging message

Excerpt from one such sent 4th March: "I don't expect you to read this, and I wouldn't dream of you listening to my stuff but I'm inviting everybody to listen to the latest tune I've uploaded and I just couldn't leave you out. It's called...."  The dude will have sent this to everyone on his friends list.


5) The no-nonsense free ad. 

In which someone simply posts announcing their event/record release/whatever.  Still annoying and a hijacking of the space, but in its absence of deceit or guile this variant is preferable to 1) - 4)


6) The ad leavened by a brief Waterboys-specific message.  

The Mahones from Toronto are adepts at this one.  A huge gurning photo of the band, with a click-through to their site, has underneath it a short one-line message like "Waterboys we love ya!" which is very nice, but still an ad.  The Mahones look so charmingly preposterous in their ridiculous hats and tattoos that we always leave their comments in place anyway.


7) The ad disguised as a greeting with band name inserted by software.

Some people use a software program to insert the names of all their individual 'friends' into otherwise generic ad messages in an attempt to make it look like an authentic personal message.  We can always spot those ones because they address us like this: "Greetings The Waterboys" or "Hello The Waterboys" which is how the software detects us but which no sane person would say.


8) The shameless pleader.

This commenter simply says things like "Please listen to my new song" or "Please read my new chapter" and has no shame.


All of these people have a right to publicise their work, but the way to do it is to pay for an advert, not hijack a space intended for bands and their fans.  It's a kind of freeloading, a looking for free advertising space without consideration of the consequences.  And perhaps the saddest thing about the phenomenon is that it makes it harder for bands to discern who is a real fan or friend and who is a freeloader.  Lots of genuine fans post goodwill messages with pictures, and they can look very very similar to the dodgy ad-posters.  

A last word. If any of you ad posters are reading this, I've got a message for you.  You're dumbing down the world.

8:08 PM 
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Sunday, April 05, 2009 
Last Week I posted the lyric, by JM Synge, of the recent Waterboys recording The Passing Of The Shee, here:

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=71722921&blogId=478732958

but I left out the note, inserted by Synge, that he'd written the words after looking at a painting by AE.

AE was the pen name of George Russell (1867-1935), a writer, poet, activist and painter who lived in Dublin and was a friend of WB Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory and all the other figures of the Irish/Celtic literary and artistic renaissance. Several of you who tracked down the lyric in Synge's poetry book have helped me try and discover which of AE's works it was inspired by. We haven't found out yet, but a wonderful side benefit of the research has been the exposure to the paintings of AE, many of which can be found as jpegs on the internet.

For AE wasn't just a writer and artist, he was a mystic, and this is represented in his work. He saw other dimensions of reality, and the inhabitants of these realms. And he brought back these visions in the form of his paintings so we can see them too. Sometimes the visions were of plumed and luminous spirit beings, but even when AE was painting simple earthly scenes, for example children dancing or paddling in the sea or workers resting against a country wall, he framed them in a mystical light, as if he was looking at this world through the veils of another.

I find his paintings beautiful and evocative, and they touch me on a soul level. Yesterday I posted a number of them on my twitter photos page and judging by the response, a lot of other people feel the same way. Maybe you will too. You can view them here:

http://twitpic.com/photos/mickpuck


1:42 PM 
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 
THE PASSING OF THE SHEE / VIGILANTE – download single

Two brand new Waterboys tracks are available NOW to download at our website store.

http://www.townsend-records.co.uk/sites/waterboys/index.php?productId,,00192&pTypeId=6

The Passing Of The Shee and Vigilante form a double ‘a’ side download single available only on our website, price £1.49. The Passing Of The Shee has lyrics by Irish author J.M. Synge and was set to music and recorded by Mike Scott to mark the centenary of Synge’s death a hundred years ago today. Vigilante is a brand new Waterboys song, featuring Mike on most instruments and Steve Wickham on fuzz fiddle.

Samples of both tracks can be heard on the store, and the full-length Passing Of The Shee is available to listen to (but not download) on our myspace player.

Paige
xx
1:20 PM 
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 
To commemorate the centenary (today) of the death of one of my favourite Irish writers, J.M. Synge, I've taken one of Synge's poems, set it to music and made a two-minute mad whirlwind of a record out of it. It's up on the myspace player now and later today it'll be available to buy as a download (along with another new track) from our website store.

Synge is most famous for his brilliant plays which include Playboy Of The Western World and Riders To The Sea, and his book The Aran Islands. He was a mate of W.B. Yeats and my recording of The Passing Of The Shee gives a faint kinda taste of the one of the flavours of the big Yeats music project I'm working on (which will become a stage show and album in 2010).

Here is Synge's wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Millington_Synge

And, in answer to a request from my superb wife, here is the lyric of The Passing Of The Shee:

Adieu, sweet Aengus, Maeve and Fand
ye plumed yet skinny Shee
that poets played with, hand in hand
to learn their ecstacy

we'll stretch in Red Dan Sally's ditch
and drink in Tubber Fair
we'll poach with Red Dan Sally's bitch
the badger and the hare!



Mike S


9:11 AM 
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