I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous Let's begin at the beginning: we're lovers and we're losers, we're heroes and we're pioneers, and we're beggars and we're choosers. We're skirting round the edges of the ideal demographic. We're almost on the guestlist, but we're always stuck in traffic. We've watched our close associates up and play their parts; they're chatting up the it girls, and they're tearing up the charts, while we were paying with coppers to get our round in at the bar. We're the C-Team, we're the almost famous old friends of the stars. Justin is the last of the great romantic poets, and he's the only one among us who is ever going to make it. We planned a revolution from a cheap Southampton bistro. I don't remember details but there were English boys with banjos. Jay is our St George, and he's standing on a wooden chair, and he sings songs and he slays dragons, and he's losing all his hair. Adam is the resurrected spirit of Gram Parsons, in plaid instead of rhinestone and living in South London. and no one's really clear about Tommy's job description, but it's pretty clear he's vital to the whole damn operation. Dave Danger smiles at strangers, Tre's the safest girl I know, Zo and Harps will skamper up to victory in the city we call home. We won't change our ways, we will proud remain when the glory fades. I am sick and tired of people who are living on the B-list. They're waiting to be famous and they're wondering why they do this. And I know I'm not the one who is habitually optimistic, but I'm the one who's got the microphone here so just remember this: Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings, about fire in our bellies and furtive little feelings, and the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering, and help us with remembering that the only thing that's left to do is live. After all the loving and the losing, the heroes and the pioneers, the only thing that's left to do is get another round in at the bar. Reasons Not To Be An Idiot You're not as messed up as you think you are - your self-absorption makes you messier. Just settle down and you would feel a whole lot better. Deep down you're just like everybody else. She's not as pretty as she thinks she is - just picture her after she's had kids. I bet she sits at home and listens to The Smiths. Deep down she's just like everybody else. He's not as clever as he likes to think - he's just ambitious with his arguing. He's crap at dancing, and he can't hold his drink. Deep down he's just like everybody else. I'm not as awesome as this song makes out - I'm angry, underweight and sketching out. I'm building bonfires of my vanities and doubts to get warm, just like everybody else. Amy thinks her life is lacking in drama, so she fell for horoscopes, faith-healing and karma. She's so wrapped up in her invisible armour that she'll never grow into herself. And it's OK thinking me and all my friends are just wasters, but all the same I can still see through her airs and graces. I guess she's scared her life won't leave any traces, kind of like everyone else, and that's not the point anyways. Oh Darling, I felt compelled to call you up to say: So why are you sat at home? You're not designed to be alone. You just got used to saying no. Because it's a lovely sunny day, and you hide yourself away. You've only got yourself to blame. Get up, get down and get outside. Photosynthesis Well I guess I should confess that I am starting to get old. All the latest music fads all passed me by and left me cold. All the kids are talking slang I won't pretend to understand, all my friends are getting married, mortgages and pension plans. And it's obvious my angry adolescent days are done, and I'm happy and I'm settled in the person I've become, but that doesn't mean I'm settled up and sitting out the game - time may change a lot, but some things they stay the same. Maturity's a wrapped-up package deal or so it seems, ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams. All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will have to grow up, be an adult, be bored and unfulfilled. But no one's yet explained to me exactly what's so great about slaving 50 years away on something that you hate, about meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity. Well if that's your road then take it but it's not the road for me. And if all you ever do with your life is photosynthesize, then you'll deserve every hour of your sleepless nights that you waste wondering when you're going to die. Now I'll play, and you sing - the perfect way for the evening to begin. I won't sit down, and I won't shut up, and most of all I won't “grow up”. Substitute The first girl that I fell for was a fair and faithful fighter, she smouldered with a will to save the world. I did my best to help her, I stood shoulder to shoulder on the frontlines with that visionary girl. I wish that she had cared for me, but in the end her ideologies occupied the fortress of her heart. I wrote her fifteen songs but still we had to part. If music was the food of love then I'd be a fat romantic slob. Music is my substitute for love. The last girl that I loved was a low and lusty liar who set my heart on fire and made me choke. Her beauty was a sight to see, but she didn't save it all for me. I found other fires by following the smoke. I wished that she had either cared for me or let me be, but she drove me from my mind and from my home. I wrote her sixteen songs but ended up alone. If love is really all that we need then even all my singing is never going to save me. Music is my substitute for love. I’ve had many different girls inside my bed, but only one or two inside my head. These days I cuddle up to my guitar instead. But oh, what I would give, not to stumble but to really fall in love. And I could substitute my singing for the sound of someone sleeping next to me. Better Half Oh my friend loneliness, where have you been? You left me to the lure of a lover who left me alone. And now you come crawling back, and I’ll let you in, and we’ll slip back into grooves that we cut in ourselves long ago. Oh my dear distance, I've met you before, in the longing of a lover who's lost on a far distant shore. And all my imperfections are all that remain, on the days when I love you and leave you, and you wish that I would stay. But there must be a better half, somewhere out there, and she lives a better life, a life that she shares, shares with a better man, a man who is there when she calls in the night, who says "Hey, it's alright." And I know what she looks like, her face and her skin, her smell and the rest. I know the feel of her soul but, God help me, I just cannot find her address. Oh how I've tried and now all that is left is my old friends distance and sweet loneliness. Love Ire & Song A teacher of mine once told me that life was just a list of disappointments and defeats, and you could only do your best. And I said: well that's a fucking cop out, you're just washed up and you're tired, and when I get to your age, well, I won't be such a coward. But these days I sit at home, I'm known to shout at my TV, and punk rock didn't live up to what I'd hoped that it could be. And all the things that I believed with all my heart when I was young are just coasters for beers and clean surfaces for drugs, and I've packed all my pamphlets with my bibles at the back of the shelf. Well it was bad enough, the feeling, the first time it hit, when you realized your parents let the world all go to shit, and that the values and ideals for which so many fought and died had been killed off in committees and left to die by the way-side. But it was worse when we turned to the kids on the left, and got let down again by some poor excuse for protest; by idiot fucking hippies in fifty different factions, locked inside some kind of sixties battle re-enactment. So I hung up my banners in disgust and I head for the door. Oh but once we were young and we were crass enough to care, but I guess you live and learn. We won't make that mistake again. But surely just for one day we could fight and we could win, and if only for a little while, we could insist on the impossible. Well we've been a good few hours drinking, so I'm going to say what everyone's thinking: if we're stuck on this ship and it's sinking, then we might as well have a parade. Because if it's still going to hurt in the morning, and a better plan’s yet to get forming, then where's the harm spending an evening in manning the old barricades? So come on old friends, to the streets, let's be 1905 but not 1917. Let's be heroes, let's be martyrs, let's be radical thinkers who never have to test drive the least of their dreams. Let's divide up the world into the damned and the saved, and ride to the valley like the old Light Brigade, and straighten our backs, and not be afraid, and they’ll celebrate our deaths with a national parade. Leave the morning to the morning, pain can be killed with aspirin tablets and vitamin pills. But memories of hope and of glorious defeat are a little bit harder to beat. Imperfect Tense Naked and wretched and retching on a hotel bathroom floor, somewhere in the city. Three days not sleeping, not eating, not feeling good any more, drenched in sweat and self-pity. It's not a pretty sight. Breaking, I'm shaking, it's taking a long, long time to come down off this murderous medication, trying to remember my reasons for running myself into the ground with such dedication. What to say in my defence? I was imperfect tense. I used to have such balance, but I don't know where it went. So would you be my present sense? And it's not meant to be, but I am lost at sea, so mermaid, sing to me, of better times and of things that could be on an island in the Mediterranean Sea, and of sleeping and eating at times when I should, and of washing the drink and the drugs from my blood. I've nothing to say in my defence, I'm far from perfect, I'm still tense. But they say that love can change you once, please say that love can change me once, come on and change me. To Take You Home I come from the land of the Wessex downs, from the Hampshire valleys near Winchester town, in the country where the soft south rivers flow down to the English Channel I roam, and this is where I call home. I sing for my supper and I'm pretty well fed, I cross this island and I make my bed where I can find a crowd and somewhere to lay my head when my travelling day is done, and all of my songs have been sung. But honey I was lonely on the road, I was all on my own, hanging out sad at the back of a death metal show (CONVERGE). I saw you standing there with your hair down low, a kink in your step that made me want to know if you would like to take me home. And who'd have thought that a French kiss from a Parisian girl could capture an English boy. he comes from the Channel's other distant shore, from the land of revolution and of Agincourt, from a king's bloodstain on a Tricolour, and a culture a little too high for an English boy like me. She doesn't know the island I grew up upon, the valleys and the rivers that I've roamed along, and she doesn't like my clothes and she doesn't like my songs, but she's still my mademoiselle, and “it goes to show you never can tell”. Because she was a quiet one, she was a shy one, she was the prettiest at the show. But she crept up so slyly, crept up behind me, but still she pretended that she didn't know. But oh then she fixed me, and then she kissed me, and she's yet to let me go, and though I'm far away across the sea, I'm singing for the hope that she will ever remember me. So honey when you're lonely on the road and you're all on your own, hanging out sad at the back of the country show, picture me there with my hat down low, a smile upon my face to let you know that I would like to take you home to the hills that I know, to the places I go. And that's the way that a French kiss from an English boy can capture a Parisian girl. Long Live The Queen Well I was sipping on a whisky when I got the call: my friend Lex was lying in the hospital. She'd been pretty sick for about half a year, but it seemed like this time the end was drawing near. So I dropped my plans and jumped the next London train; I found her laid up and in a lot of pain. Her eyes met mine and then I understood that her weather forecast wasn't looking good. So I sat and spun her stories for a little while, tried to raise the mood, tried to raise a smile, but she silenced all my ramblings with a shake of her head, drew me close to listen, and this is what she said: "You'll live to dance another day; it's just now you'll have to dance for the two of us. So stop looking so damn depressed and sing with all your heart that the queen is dead." She told me she was sick of all the hospital food, of doctors / distant relatives draining her blood. She said "I know I'm dying but I'm not finished just yet. I'm dying for a drink and for a cigarette." So we hatched a plan to book ourselves a cheap hotel in the centre of the city and then raise some hell, lay waste to all the clubs and then when everyone else is long asleep then we'll know we're good and done. The queen is dead, South London's not the same any more. The last of the greats has finally gone to bed. Well I was working on some words when Sarah called me up, she said THAT Lex had gone to sleep and wasn't waking up. And even though I knew that there was nothing to be done, I felt bad for not being there, and now she was gone. So I tried to think what Lex would want me to do at times like this, when I was feeling blue, so I gathered some friends to spread the sad, sad news, and we headed for the city for a drink or two, and we sang: We live to dance another day; it's just now we have to dance for one more of us. So let's stop looking so damn depressed, and sing with all our hearts: Long live the queen. A Love Worth Keeping I rise in the morning at sunrise. The strangers around me sleep soundly at rest. Phones and computers become me, signals stretch back to the land that I left. And oh, in the quiet times, I count up the things that I lack, and slip through the road lines; the betrayal of wandering back. I left you while you were sleeping, I left you the warmth in your bed where I lay. You left me a love worth keeping, you left me a diary to count off the days. And so in the quiet times, I savour the things that I miss, and slip through the road lines, and wonder how I came to this. I guess you never know loss till you have something to lose, choice till you have something to choose. So give me my quiet times to mourn for the things that I've lost. You'll find me on the road lines, counting the miles and the cost. And so I never knew loss because I had nothing to lose, choice because I had nothing to chose. But oh, all the things you do, the way that you close your door, the way that you guard your shores... Darling I'm coming home soon. St Christopher Is Coming Home Monday morning comes a-crawling in from another weekend choked with cigarettes and sin. And I've been busy so much lately that every time I get some time to spend I end up drunk or sleeping in. And I miss you, you're busy too, we call each other up when we're messed up and say we'll meet in the new year. But it's perfectly clear that we'll do no such thing come the spring. Friday evening barely even begins before my phone begins to ring with people asking where I am. And I can't suppress a smile, we talk a-while, but chances are that I am far away and so I'm phased out of the plan. And that's how I miss out on another night, the kind of night where nothing really happens, but everything goes down. And in the end I'm just a promise to pick up the phone when I'm in town. But when the evening casts its shadows on the corners of my days, and I am old and I am settled in the place where I will stay, when my wandering meanderings have finally reached their end, yes whatever else may be, I will not forget my friends, and may my friends remember me. Jet Lag I've heard it said the trick is to set your watch when you hit the plane, and that way you can trick the workings of a tired brain. But sometimes I feel sick, sometimes I just feel so drained, and cut down to the quick, longing for that voice again. On the phone, you always ask if I'm OK, but it's not the same as being happy. Airports make me sad - I'm sure they shouldn't all be the same, but they're just landing pads for boring tourist shopping chains. I think of times we had, drinking while we wait for your plane, and feeling kind of bad, and wondering which one of us has changed. Because we used to be slick, WITH supple young hips, romantic young kissable lips, Unbearably sharp unbreakable heart, wide eyes and faith that life could never pull us apart if we were OK... But distance kills the best intentions. I travelled 40,000 miles last year and I'm working on the same again. I fell for 15 different girls and nearly lost all of my friends. And though I'm jet-set jet-lag jaded, you're always sixteen hours ahead, quietly reminding me how I used to be. I used to be slick.