Author Archives: Bob the Chiropodist

It was summer 1984 when I went for a drink with my cousin Digger and he couldnt stop singing this song hed heard on Peel the night before: “I spied a Jelly Mountain, and I chased it to the sea. I waded in with a banana skin and had it for my tea. I swam the English channel, and climbed up onto France. I said the 12 times table, the French for gloves is gants.”

Its fantastic when something like enters your life a magical moment Ill never forget. It was so bizarre, so funny ……so Ivor Cutler. Continue reading →

ges birthday and the Undertones were in town and he wanted to see them so..we enter The Cockpit just as theyre starting up with the intension of going to the bar but hearing the first few bars of Ive gotta getta we ran to the front and moshed with the oldies. Everyone had the broadest smiles on their faces and the evening was a great success. There was no sense of in it for the money.

Sledge and myself went to see the Damned at the Irish Centre a few months later and the entrance fee was worth it just to hear the supporting Wreckless Eric sing his missive on 45s Theyre just bits of plastic to you, but theyre slices of my life Wonderful! The Damned were in effect Capt Sensibles backing band. Dave Vanian still has a fantastic voice – if youre an electronic duo looking for a distinctive voice to front your next project get him on the blower now! but it was obviously Sensible who was calling the shots. His re-living the glory days of Happy Talk gave the event a distinct cabaret feel.

For my stag do in March 2006, 25 of us went to see the Buzzcocks in Manchester. There was nothing cabaret about that, just full speed cranked up guitars with a dizzying energy. There new LP Flat pack philosophy (14 songs in 36 minutes) is a cracker, fizzing with riffs to plicate any punk air-guitarist. I managed to last for nearly an hour in the mosh pit before retreating exhausted but happy to the rear of the venue (where Stuart Pierce and Bez were spotted amongst the crowd). By the time they did Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldntve I was only able to watch and smile as the crowd went ballistic. A wonderful evening.

My mate Si and I went to see ex-Stranglers front man Hugh Cornwell at the city varieties in Leeds. I was a HUGE fan of the Stranglers (see 40th Birthay report) and loyally bought everything they produced for years. Being devoted to a band like that, you end up buying things like dodgy 12 versions of below par tunes – things that if they were by any other band youd give a wide berth.but when that male trait for collecting kicks in you find a load of very average, hardly played stuff in your collection. The last few LPs the Stranglers did with Hugh were definitely in the category. Id stopped buying them as they came out after Aural Sculpture, waiting till they were in a bargain bin. I still havent bothered getting a copy of 10. The rocking tunes with wild bass lines up front in the mix were gone and Jet Blacks banal drumming style was beginning to do my head in.

Si had bought me Hughs song by song book for my 40th an interview book with Hughs take on what all the songs on the Stranglers LPs were about. It makes very interesting reading for Stranglers anoraks like myself.

When he saw the poster for Hughs gig, billed as being based on the book (whilst at a Chumbawumba gig – still waiting for that review Si) .he got us tickets. After a pint in North Bar we got there just after it had started. It was poorly attended and I was the only bloke in there not dressed in black! Hugh was on stage being interviewed by Jim, the books co-author. After a wooden start, they both relaxed into it and it was quite entertaining.

Hughs song writing process, Tony Visconti and his bass clarinet, his excitement when the Kinks from just down the road made it to number one, his disappointment at Jet Blacks insistence on programming the drums (Jet felt it gave a better sound to their latter albums!) The Gospel According To The Meninblack was his favourite Stranglers LP to record (the revelation that La Folie was his least favourite LP was met with a startled Youre Joking! by one punter!).

When they opened up the mike to the audience, it became apparent that everyone in there was a Stranglers obsessive, only asking questions about his days with them. Do you miss them? Of course I do.I always read interviews they do and theyve never said anything complimentary about me. If they did itd give me the opportunity to phone them up and say Thanks for that but they never have. Hed done a track on a recent Mojo magazine CD of Dylan covers I asked him how much you get for doing that sort of thing Nothing it actually cost me money. My agent rang Ive got some good news and some bad news. The good is you can do all 11 verses of Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again 7 minutes, but youre not getting paid for it

There was a break and in the 2nd half hed changed from his T-shirt and jeans into a snazzy oversized black zoot suit and with acoustic guitar in hand, did a set of songs alternating a Stranglers song with a solo song. There were a few gems, Midnight summers dream from Feline that Id totally forgotten about sounded great and when he did the guitar solo from Hanging around it was so familiar that Id never noticed how intricate it was before. Overall however, his song writing limitations were rather exposed in the solo setting. A series of awful rhyming couplets had us trying to second guess what was going to end the next sentence Who gets the job, of pushing the knob

We left agreeing that it had been an interesting evening although Si commented it was a bit of an endurance event for me!. I came out vowing to see some new bands in the future..then went to the Falls 30th anniversary gig

Bob the Chiropodist Continue reading →

y iBook has been superseded umpteen times since it emerged from its box, and 3) What do I need a posh walkman for anyway? It would have been handy during my globe trotting days but now, I dont use a walkman!

So when my brother Ste got me a 40GB iPod for my 40th birthday I was chuft to bits but still thought it an extravagance I didnt need..how wrong I wasIts now my constant companion in the car on shuffle mode where you never know whats going to come on next, but you know youll like it.

The weird thing is, it has somehow tuned into my neural network in Borg-like fashion. The first time it happened I was driving along in my CBGBs T-shirt when on comes Blondie Pretty Baby. Ah thinks I wouldnt it have been great to be at CBGBs in the late 70s. The fantastic bands that grew in that environment, The Ramones, Talking Heads on comes Cities by Talking Heads..spooky!

I was driving to Sheffield & just as I got off the Motorway an entered the city limits Hard Times by the Human League came on followed by Cabaret Voltaires Nag Nag NagHmmmmm

My other half has thought this notion ridiculous until…we were driving form my mums in Swinton near Manchester, to my mates in Chorlton, chatting about our impending wedding when My Bride to Be by Winston Samuels comes on (Id never heard it before – its from one of those Trojan 3 disc box sets that I loaded up and hadnt got round to hearing) but odder than that, we then drive past Old Trafford and Manchester United Calypso by Edrich Connor* comes on!!!! Sideways glances to each other with raises eyebrows.

I remember talking to a friend Matt who lectures in philosophy about million to one occurrences

How many millions of people are there in the world?

About 5 billion?

Well million to one events should be happening to 5 million people all the time

Which kind of takes the mystery out of life

Bob the Chiropodist

*For the record, Im a Man City fan but I still love this track. My folks are from Salford and were Roman Catholics and so should, by rights, be United fans. My Dad + Grandad (Jim) used to take my older brothers Ste and later Dave when they were old enough to the football on a Saturday (after they finished work at 12). Somewhere in the mists of time, United put up their prices and Grandad decided we would support City instead (thanks Jim!). By the time I started going we were a true blue family and I hate that more than United is still a family saying. Being a City fan was great in the 70s, not bad in the 80s, a joke in the 90s and thanks to Keegan and Psycho, becoming respectable again in the naughties. As the games become obsessed by money Ive become less and less interested it (even Blackburn could win the championship with enough cash). I hate to say it, but I even like to see Man U do well, except on Derby day of course Continue reading →

y and what with the inevitable spills of orange juice or stray marmitey fingers on it at some point, youd be mad to splash out on a fancy system for the kitchen. Jammy Smears is my favourite Ivor Cutler LP but I dont want them on my Denon amp or my beechwood Mission speakers!

Which brings me to an article I read in the Guardian recently about special power supply cables for your hifi to make it sound better. The article suggests its a nonsensical idea and I must agree that I could never get to grips with this one, even in the days when I was single and relatively loaded, when I would look seriously into all aspects of hifi before buying.

Quality speaker cable has always been a must – my present ones are from a hifi buff colleague who claims theyre platinum and from a fighter aircraft (cheers Andy). Speaker and hifi stands that have spikes on the bottom to isolate vibrations that improves sound I could understand and invested in (although the parquet flooring now means we are a spikeless home).

But power cables..I remember seeing David Baddiel talking about how hed bought into the idea (I think it was on Room 101) and has subsequently felt foolish.

When I was 13 I got a mono portable Radio/Tape recorder. It meant I could tape Peel shows in the evening after Id gone to bed (only 45 minutes worth as the technology for recording both sides of a C90 was way out of reach). It was my pride and joy and I still posses some of those tapes I made on it. I remember taking it along to a birthday party in the local church so the kids could play pass the parcel. I turned it up full blast thinking it would fill the place & all you could hear was a distorted wail. Lesson if you have a big room, you need a big sound system, unless youre Jonathan Richman who Ive seen perform to big venues with the tiniest of amps and even then sing most of his songs off mike.

Unfortunately Ive never lived anywhere big enough thats warranted a huge stereo but that hasnt stopped me from spending cash on hifi that would fill it if needed! My first proper system was thanks to my cousin Johnny. He was about to get married to Trish and realising that this may be his last opportunity, he sold me his excellent Rotel amp + Wharfedale speakers and bought an even better ones.

That was around 1986-87 and I had recently moved to London village to start my first ever job, working for Bloomsbury Health Authority. Tottenham Court Road was in my patch and with the spare cash I had (ie that not spent on gigs and booze) I trawled the hifi shops to put together a top quality system. A Revolver turntable (£250.00 a beautiful thing) A Yamaha double tape deck (£150.00 – you could record both sides of both tapes one after another.amazing) and a Sony receiver (£80.00 – cos it was cheap in the sales).

When CDs came in a few years later, I was determined not to buy into them, until I borrowed my cousin Diggers one time when he was in Jamaica on holiday and then I just HAD to have one myself bought an ex demo Onkyo that was in the sales for only £250.00.

This system was my pride and joy until I moved to Leeds in 1995. I was burgled (well I was living in Harehills) and the whole lot went, along with most of my (rather large collection of) CDs. The insurance people did me proud & I took my money to Richer sounds and got another great system, this time with a Digital Audio Converter (DAC) that makes your CD player sound better honest!…but it never really felt like mine anymore, and they no longer made Revolver turntables.

When that got burgled too (I no longer live in Harehills) the insurance company replaced everything with of like quality and I had no say in the matter*. Its the system I have today and whilst at first I thought the sound was too clinical, it does the job.

Elderly neighbours and small siblings means I rarely let the system rip these days (do your kids tell you to turn the music down too?) so having clean electricity into the system to make the sound that much better doesnt really enter the equation.

Bob the Chiropodist

*They replaced the DAC with a DAT (Digital Audio Tape recorder) which I still have, unused. If anyone wants to buy one..

PS hours after writing this I opened an email from Dr Peacock whos just got a sonos system. Continue reading →

So when Jim and I saw him heading our way at Glastonbury, I made a beeline for him: “John, Bob the Chiropodist” I announced shaking him by the hand. “I was just thinking about you! My foots killing me!”. Unfortunately, I was in no fit state to look at his foot and suggested he see one of the team in the Medical tent. All I could think about afterwards was “I’m in his consciousness Wow!” Continue reading →