Firstly, this is the best website I have stumbled across since BBC.co.uk.

Second, Nixon was a bigger cunt than even I thought.

Like, I’m still freaking out about those touch screen things they’re using to elect unelectable Tories in America, (over there they call them Republicans) and are coming over here. We need to do something about that shit before it is TOO LATE…

But maybe it is. Because if someting like this exists (like we didn’t know, but having is spelled out is pretty chilling), then we might as well all kill ourselves.

I don’t mean that. I live in hope. But read that, and then wonder what it was that Nixon was planning. That the Cheney Gang is… and why didn’t Bill Clinton do something about it?

Because yellow

Stupid questions get stupid answers.

Anyway, this FEMA… I was talking with my friend Jeremy the other night about the LA riots. Another, Jeff, told me he saw the beggining of those tapes, and said King was, like, totally spazzing out on those coppers. Which lead me to wonder, for the first time - why would the swine in charge show something on TV that would obviously lead to huge civil unrest?

Leading to the answer: they wanted the riot. If you think, around then poor slash black people in America were getting politicized again. Public Enemy are the biggest band in the country. Etc.

But then I read about this FEMA. And it all starts to make sense.

“On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA’s new goals. The goal was to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect. National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the “Use of National Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances.”

So they can do that stuff. (Channel hopping in New York last week, I was shocked to see that Oliver North has a talk show, by the way)

FEMA has been “stood by ready for emergency” three times, as far as we know. April 1984, under Regan, who signed of on the engagement of a “readiness exercise”, REX84, that would involve taking into custody an estimated 400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants, to be taken to 10 detention centers at military bases throughout the US.

Also.

“REX84 also advocated the rounding up and transfer to “assembly centers or relocation camps” of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder”

Ah.

FEMA 2: Under George Bush in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted.

FEMA 3: “The third scenario for FEMA came with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King brutality verdict. Had the rioting spread to other cities, FEMA would have been empowered to step in. As it was, major rioting only occurred in the Los Angeles area, thus preventing a pretext for a FEMA response.”

So there you go. The question is, will they, anticipating losing the forthcoming election, Bomb The Fuck Out Of A Bit Of America?

The answer is, probably.

Oh, and that shit also answers the Big Question I’ve had echoing about my brain for a while - why did they introduce crack to the ghetto?

“I don’t think, a lot of times, the rap on top of stuff really means or meant anything. To a lot of kids, as long as the beat was low-down and filthy, they loved it. A lot of times, you could get up and say anything on top of it: “My asshole hurts,” or “I got a hemorrhoid,” or anything. It really didn’t matter.”

Rick James, in an interesting interview he did with The Onion, a little while back.

“People come over to my house, musicians, and Lenny won’t touch an instrument, because he feels inferior. Think about it, its like Hootie & the Blowfish trying to come up on stage and jam with me.”

Ho ho. He said that talking with AllHipHop.com.

I think I’m sadder about Rick James than I was about Kurt Cobain, and I was fourteen when Kurt Cobain died and I was so into that band, he meant so much to me. The thing with Rick is, I only got into him last year, I got some records from Oxfam, because the sleeves were so amazing, mainly. And he was such an incredible producer, and musician. That’s the thing. I really look up to Rick James.

AH, so this is jetlag. I tried, and failed, to sleep. So, after hours lying awake on the sofa in my Mammy’s front room, I have risen, and found my email to be infested with viruses. Or is that viri? Anyway, I have them. I am not surprised.

I am going up the loft, in a little while, to reclaim my old Story Tellers. I hope to use them on the new mixtape, which I’m also doing today. I hope the dusty part of my brain they are sure to open doesn’t cause the melting some important circuitry, however. That is likely. My head is more delicate than it was. I remember little of them, other than they were fucking scary. Gobbolino was a witch’s cat. “Eat toy tyres”. That sort of thing.

There are some very lovely new photos of me and Birddogg in the pictures section, which were taken by the hot and talented Holly Rose Wood just before we went to Americaland. The sky looks amazing. And so do we.

RIP FunkMaster. It is weird but right that as Rick James’ body was being wept over by his family, I was dancing around Jeff’s apartment to ‘Shake It Up’.

I wrote the following for PlayLouder:

RICK JAMES RIP
The Superfreak Sleeps tonight
09 Aug 2004

Funk punk pioneer, king of soul, slept-on Super Freak and Man Of The People Rick “motherfuckin’” James is dead. Long live Rick James.

He died in his sleep sometime on the morning of Friday, August 6th, around the same time I was dancing around an apartment in Bleecker Street, New York, to a CD of Greatest Hits. Midway trough the collection, it occurred to me how fresh those records sound now, compared to all the rap songs in the nineties that ripped them off, and and all these “new” punkfunk records that have been coming out over the past few years. None of them are fit to sniff Rick’s crotch, even ‘U can’t Touch This’. The only Rick-ripping piece of music fit to share a glass with the mass-ter of The Funk is Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s cover of ‘Cold Blooded’, which Rick is said to believe better than the original. It wasn’t - it was another side of it. The ugly side.

Rick James had a fucked up childhood and a fucked up life, but he made some of the most joyful, and the funkiest music of all time… and he wrote, produced, and performed it all himself, because he was a genius. His bass lines will never be beat, his primal scream never equaled. He made truly universal, genre redefining and defying music, that will live forever.

To me, his single greatest piece if work was 1982’s ‘Throwin’ Down’, which not only has the greatest record cover of all time, but the finest record back too. It is awesome from start to finish. It sounds like the biggest party ever. It is a perfect record.

But then, it’s not like he ever got wack. His last album was amazing. Everything he did, pretty much, even at the height of his coke lunacy, was dope. The tragedy of Rick James is that this should not have been the end. The last fifteen years of his life might have been as nightmarish as the first, but we were about to enter a new golden age of Rick James - he was just about to take over again. A new album in the can, a recently completed autobiography, a movie, tribute album, tour… “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” T-Shirts pepper the landscape, his bass lines squelch out of car windows, kids all over were just starting to realise who their heroes had been stealing from…

Ah, but fuck it. Rick James will, in death, achieve the respect and stature he never got in life. And at least we won’t have to see him sell himself short on reality TV. We can just enjoy what he left us - a legacy of amazing music for us all to enjoy for ever. Ol’ Dirty said it best in ‘95 - Rick James was fresh to death.

Adam Alphabet (I’m Rick James’ bitch)

A public memorial service and viewing will be held from 5-8 PM on Wednesday, August 11, 2004, at Forest Lawn Mortuary, 6300 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068. Check RickJames.com for Rick James radio, a video interview, songs, love, and a lot more.

One of the best records I heard last year was Adam Green’s ‘Friends Of Mine’, which had this tune called ‘Jessica’ on it, which I discovered upon enetering Americaland was about a real person called Jessica Simpson. She is said to be “unhappy” about it. Observe MTV’s freakish reaction.

Meanwhile, Wordsworth has been battling Bush. Check it.

My mixtape is going nicely thank you. I’ve had some nice freestyles from random memebrs of the world too. If you have anything to contribute, holla at your manchild.

Still freaking about FEMA and the touch screen evil. That has come here. Even Chris Rea can’t help.

Still, the Theodore Unit LP is fucking ill. I reviewed it for PlayLouder here…

“So then Will Young Grandadded me and I was writhing in agony and wine. what’s more is ‘Time for Heroes’ was playing all the time. I mean, it’s not their worst song.”

Said my little brother Alex, (the guy with the big coat on the Places page) who just returned from a weekend of debauchery in North Hampton. “Last night I tried to wear a sanitary towel to get into the genral vibe of being a lady,” he said, with some little regret. “I didn’t know where to put it though. I’m not a doctor.”

He had a very good time “until the Grandad”. Grandadding is when someone knees you really hard in the upper thigh. Usually small children.

I know this because I am back at the Maternal homestead in Englandland, and so are all my little brothers. We are about to play Monopoly, actually. It is very cosy.

Anyway. I’ve downloaded all my PlayLouder emails. There are 20,436 of them. No shit. I have started working my way through. I got a couple hunnerd out the way.

Anyway, it feels good to be back in Englandland, which is very beautiful right now. I was in London for 24 hours, and took the oppurtunity to hop off my wagon for a spell. I hooked up with Jeres and Jeremy yesterday morning and had four pints. I actually broke the booze ban on the plane, when I accepted the air hostesses kind offer of a red wine with my chicken. I felt like celebrating.

I worried I might go crazy or something, but I didn’t. Miraculously my tolerance level doesn’t seem to have budged much, despite my 15 months abstinence. However, the hangover from 4 pints was so extreme I don’t think I shall be going back to a life of booze. I also forgot about the gross clamy skin thing you get afterwards, which is far too disgusting to bear on any kind of regular basis. However, I really, really enjoyed the bottle of champagne I shared with young Jeremy Not Jeres last night, but not as much as the conversation. And we watched Solaris, which I’d forgotten was one of the most beautiful and true things ever commited to celluloid.

For all you Americans who think your eduation system is bad, and that your leaders have foraken your poor, this is for you.

Well, you can consider me a bit more than very happy to announce that Limbo is OVER. My soul is sold. I have put pen to paper and signed my white ass to Interscope, a modern American recording company home to such cultural juggernauts and spiritual bredren as Dr Dre, Nine Inch Nails, Eminem, That Unit Of Gs, Helmet, Jadakiss, and, um, Keane.

Yes it is true.

So expect amazing videos and things. And a Dre collaboration.

Hmm.

Dre collaboration.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Dribble.

Saying that, he might, like, HATE ME. But I bet he won’t. It’s not like I’m a dick!

Usually.

Peeping the Interscope website, I notice Bryan Adams is on the list. Word up Bryan! Let’s make music!

Ahem. But prior to all that ridiculous shit, I shall be going ahead with the plans made before this bizzare American adventure. All News Soon.

Today I love you all.

x

I have spent a lovely afternoon in the Apple store in Manhattan, using the internet for free. I have responded to most of my emails now, and read a great deal. The music they play is mainly very bad, and my UK people may find it interesting to note that they played Keane, Coldplay, The Verve and Badly Drawn Boy in a row. Right now we’re going through a stage of bratty US punk.

Anyway. The greatest threat to our civl liberties right now is the ugly rise of these Touch Screen Voting Bastards. If we don’t all make as much noise as possible about them, they will bring about 1984 proper. Bear in mind, we are CLOSE. Continuous war is upon us. When reading that book, I wondered how they could rewrite history (if you have not read it, the main charcater’s job is to do just that, go into books, news reports, and “correct” them at the whim of the governent) - with everything going digital, it is as easy as it was for me to go in to my last posting and correct the spelling misstakes. We must never allow the priciple of the iPod to infiltrate everything, because then we really are doomed. There are a lot of articles about this touch screen issue on the internet (ironically they are few and far between in the printed press), read this, then go look for more.

While a solution to this horrifying predicament has yet to be floated anywhere I’ve seen, it filled me with something approaching relief to read that Michael Moore’s Farenheit millions will be going towards this particular cause.

OK, so that’s things for you to read. If you are stuck for things to listen to, I highly reccomend the work of young Joanna Newsom, a truly inspired modern folk artist, whose ‘The Milk Eyed Mender’ is the best record I’ve heard in many months. She has that knack for gorgeously simplistic melody shared by fellow Big Thinkers and noisy folks Cristy Moore and Sandy Dillon, and acheives, seemingly effortlessly, that magical quality the likes of Tim Burton and, say, Mercury Rev have tried for so long to capture. And she’s, like, ten. Fucked up.

I walked the Earth again today. I saw civilizations many, humanity in all its splendour. I reopened the wounds that trouble my feet. It was good.

As you know, I am currently a sofa burden. So in the morning I woke early after three hours sleep and walked thirty blocks to see a lady about some apartments, only to be told that Manhattan apartments are not for the likes of me, but for “Wall Street types”, and that my lack of social security number, US credit history, etc., would prevent “pretty much all landlords” from renting me a place in which to dwell and make noises. Also, the places I’d come to look at were “unsuitable”, then “gone”.

Dicks!

How rude, I thought, dejected, and dragged my carcass back, and had a nap.

Zzzzz.

So I had a wee siesta, then I got myself up and I showered and clothed and set out. I had a number of places to see, mostly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and a map I’d peeped on the internet indicated I had merely to walk across the Williamsburg Bridge, pretty close to where I’m staying, which is Bleecker Street, Lower East Side Manhattan.

The bridge was a lot bigger than it looked on the map. When I got to the other side of it, an hour had passed, and I was almost late for my first appointment. I found myself amid a crossroads of sorts, nearly getting run over by intense traffic. A nice young man sold me a frozen bottle of water for a dollar.

I haven’t many of those left. But the sun beat down hard, and my small white “Brum Peace Run 1986” T that Tim gave me six years ago, that his old man wore in the actual race, was soaked through.

I miss Tim.

And it turned out to have been the wrong bridge. It was Brooklyn Bridge. How I didn’t notice that initially is beyond me. I am a right turnip sometimes.

Brooklyn looks just like the New York in rap songs and The Warriors. It is brown and dirty and run down covered in graffiti. I love it.

I was on the end of the wrong bridge, and like I said late, so I made my way across Brooklyn to Williamsbourg, and when I got to the agency it was as shabby and gross as those in Hackney. A great sweating man was rude to me, and said without a social security number, or a US credit history, I could “forgeddaboudit”. So I walked a few miles to an open house, that was dirty and cramped, and owned by a creepy squat Italian gangster guy in a dirty white vest, and then another hour to another place, that was less dirty, and less cramped, but essentially dirty and cramped. And also owned by the same guy, who appeared in the doorway as I turned to leave, and spooked me the fuck out. “Ah, you,” he frowned. “You want to make noise. It is a pity.”

I wandered a while to my next stop, and arrived early, so I whiled away the time until my appointment reading a Hate comic on a patch of grass by a road. I was pretty content there, reading my comic, watching the Spaniards wander by.

And so the next house, small, cramped, gross cooker, and the next, small cramped, gross shower. Now it was eight o clock, and I was tired, limping, and heartbroken by the squalor of the places I’d been checking. But there was one more place to check, a place a lady earlier had told me was in a “bad area… not for you.” Also, it was a good three quarters of an hour journey from where I was.

But I had a good feeling, burning somewhere at the bottom of my aching belly. I got directions off of a nice old Spanish guy and heading East, uphill, for Park Avenue.
,br> I felt like Cain in King Fu, although I never saw Cain in Kung Fu, and doubt very much my spelling. But I felt like that, as I wandered the earth, clock upon block, corner, hill, through these communities the people out on the street, on their porches, nodding, smiling. Tipping their caps. For a while it was the like Hackney – black, white, yellow, brown, poor, dusty, abandoned shopping trolleys, litter, fried chicken shops, offies. And then it was not.

Suddenly, the buildings were taller, and the streets became deserted. I felt a little shift in time and space. In the distance people dotted, and grew taller as I drew closer.
,br> And all of a sudden, I was in a little village, where everybody, and I mean everybody, was a Super Jew. Like, a real, hardcore. Super-Jew Are they called Hacidic Jews? I am not sure. Anyone out there that can educate my sorry ass on this elegant culture, please do, I only know little bits, like they’re not supposed to use electricity on Sundays.

Anyway. There they were. Hats tall, coats long and black, curls swinging out from under the brims of those big black hats. Tiny ones ran about playing in the gutters, little curls sprouting above ears that framed little skullcaps. riding tiny bikes, gurgling and giggling in the gutters. Teens with patchy fluffy beards gawked along awkwardly. Men of age and distinction with grand grey beards strutted elegantly, confident in poise and pose. Those old Super Jews are amazing. And the women, assembled on corners, with identikit calf length skirts and light blue shirts, nice big hair, no makeup. In every shop, on every doorstep, all the same. Some eyed me strangely, some smiled, as I ambled along, swinging my carrier bag, singing a jolly song I made up on the spot.

The movie set shifted, and the people thinned out, until there were but a few. And then none. Up front I saw a bus stop, at which stood a great big black lady. We smiled at each other, and said hello.

And then, just as quick, another shift, another leap. The litter became more colourful. The buildings shorter, redder. And all of a sudden, everybody was black, and I was in the projects of those old records, standing outside Marcy Houses. Little kids worse doo rags and baseball caps, and rode tiny bikes and giggled and gurgled in the gutter. Teens preened and strutted, and young women assembled on corners, while old men sat on benches, laughing and cursing and swigging booze.

A short walk later, I came to my destination. I was met outside by a beaming, twenty something Super Jew, who’d got out of the awkward phase, and looked confident and good in his garb. He took mer inside, and we made small talk about the transparent efforts of those “in charge” to scare the shit out of New Yorkers this week.

We went upstairs.

And the place was wonderful. I think I gasped. Huge, bright, tall ceilings, clean. A door opened, and led out onto a private roof terrace, overlooking the neighbourhood – a playground full of laughing children. Tress. Broken houses. It was perfect.

I was very happy on my way home. I hope I can live there.