Bulletin Board of Bad Behavior

He's doing a signing at Borders downtown in less than two hours so I'm going to go get him to sign my CD booklet for "Back To Basics" then he plays a SOLO ELECTRIC show at UW tonight that Stuart and I are going to go to. Well Stuart is going to try to get in, he doesn't have a ticket. Anyway I've had too much tea and the caffeine is making me bounce off the walls right now as if I wasn't excited enough! Shit! Anyway Stuart is going to borrow my Ian Curtis book and he is bringing some CD's for me too.

Also I am excited that the new Killers album is out next week but that's another thread entirely, and I haven't heard it yet except for the single once a long time ago on BBC radio.

Also last night I heard a really cool song playing when I was at the grocery store and today I called them and left a message with some guy who is supposed to know where the music comes from and I'm hoping I can identify it. At the time I didn't want to ask about it out of sheer embarassment and because I knew the cashier wouldn't know what it was. Anyway it was something from the 70's with kindof a laid back disco tempo and it had flutes and this bass line that was kindof funky and really impressed me and mostly it was instrumental except for these falsetto vocals at the end that sortof reminded me of Earth, Wind & Fire.

Oh my god. I got more than I bargained for. Apparently it was a book signing, he actually has a book out now. At first I was kindof skeptical about it all, but he gave this really interesting speech about identity and
nationalism/internationalism and ancestry and British history and culture and this nebulous idea of "British values" and of course politics, though he didn't say hardly anything about Bush it was all Brit politics...really just fed my brain, talked about his early punk days when he was in a band called Riff Raff (whom I've heard and weren't that great), and how the Clash changed his life, and he even talked about Tom Robinson, that musician that was an out gay man around the time of punk, which was really radical (though I've never appreciated Tom Robinson's music, too conservative rock and roll, rather bland - for those who don't know Robinson he never came across as effeminate or anything, in fact I'd say Freddie Mercury came across more gay than he did). And he talked about how the whole cultural climate has shifted over there since the London bombings and that, etc etc. So anyway by the time we all stood up in line to get him to sign stuff, I had decided to buy the book (I mean it's just so much more than music, really, just an anglophile's dream, the whole thing, lots of history in there etc) and I started thinking a few times that I would start crying but I was determined not to cry even though they had started playing Back to Basics very quietly in the store and I bit my lip a few times but luckily did not cry. But when I got up to meet him I just knew I wouldn't be able to say a word. He shook my hand in a very friendly genuine way you know, he said "good to see you" something like that and I managed to say my name was Mark and he asked if I wanted that in the book and I said that would be nice. And he shook my hand again very nicely and that was it. And on the bus ride home I looked at my Back to Basics CD sleeve that he had signed with black marker and I got this really odd feeling I can't describe that his signature had always been there. I know it sounds crazy but it's like...there seemed something familiar about it. And I've had this CD for nearly 20 years.

And what I can't believe is it's not even over yet. He's fucking playing in a mere 4 hours from now. And I need a beer. Seriously. I need to calm down.

Another thing is he said he'd never actually done a signing before, he seemed a bit nervous at first when he started talking, but he'd make jokes and stuff, he was funny.

Another thing he said that I found particularly interesting is that it was actually Simon & Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" that made him first aware of his "Englishness" and how crazy it was that it happened to be these two guys from Queens, NY that had done this! He said that song had gotten "all medieval on my arse at 12 years of age" and also he mentioned Dylan, he said there's stuff about Dylan in the book, too and how he came over there in the 60's.

The book is called "The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging". He talked about how he thinks it's about belonging for these Muslim immigrants that come to the UK and end up committing terrorist acts. Anyway I'm paraphrasing now because I can't remember much more details, but you get the picture.