I tell you what.

It's good to have a "fuck you" attitude, these days, because when you think about it, that kind of attitude is the LAST thing that your all-male rock'n'roll heroes would dare to have.

All those bands - Jet, Dirty Pretty Things, Kasabian, Fratellis, Pigeon Detectives, Wolfmother etc, play it safe. Their sound is "classic", they write "proper songs" and they look like a band "should" look like. Some people think it's cool. I think it's lame.

I saw the poster for the new Jet album yesterday, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry...that "classic" B&W photo, lots of hair and leather jackets, proper lads, man. It could be Oasis. It could be any new wannabe rock god. It's so dated, so old, and what surprises me is that people STILL want all that dated, old shite. It's truly, truly depressing. Their new album is called "Shine On". Can't imagine anything more obvious, clichéd, meaningless and done to death than the words "shine on" in rock'n'roll. Fits perfectly with Jet, actually.

 So, it's in the middle (or rather, in the fringes) of that sorry situation that Dirtblonde always stood. We are freaks, fucked up pissed off losers, and why be any different?

Some boring people thing we "must" be putting on an act – if I look all messy and dirty, I must be "pretending I'm on smack", rather than being dirty and messy coz that's how I am, and its pathetic that one should think you can't be like that naturally – maybe not surprising, considering most people in bands are vain self-conscious trendy assholes.

If I smash my guitar I must be pretending to be a "rock god" – but I just happen to feel excited and I like smashing things. Big deal.

Its upsetting, that people think we must be putting an act because what we do is not well-behaved and obvious. I guess some people not only expect the obvious from bands, but love the obvious. All those bands who you read about on NME just reinforce the status quo, they never challenge it.

And that's where we stood when we got onstage at the Leeds Festival in August. The previous band was some shit act (probably from Leeds) with guys wearing shades, playing proper "tunes" and trying to look like Liam Gallagher, like a "proper rock'n'roll star". In other words, a load of bullshit as far as we're concerned. The same could be said about most bands playing the Topman stage or the Main Stage as well.

So we get there, and look like we do (Lula not only is a girl, but is not even thin – oh terrible sin!) and we're loud, messy and don't give a fuck. Why should we? Its GREAT to play loud, to have so much distortion on your guitar that it feedbacks a lot and people can't even hear the chords properly…some people leave, some people come, some people love, some people hate us. And why not? All your supposedly cool rocknroll lads want to be loved, they want stardom, they gotta play it properly, and  in the end, they are just a bunch of pussies. We truly don't give a fuck, because we KNOW some people will love us. And we KNOW some people will hate us. And that's fine with us. THIS IS ROCK'N'ROLL. What bands like the Frattelis do, ain't. It's bullshit.

All those "lads" bands are shit. I never see one bit of true rocknroll in them. To me, rocknroll is stuff we've heard and seen from Little Richards to The Who to Jesus & Mary Chain…people who looked and sounded individual. Nowadays, to get any attention, it seems, the LAST thing you should be is individual, because all those bands sound like each other (or like The Libertines) they all have a similar look, a similar sound. And therefore, all the rocknroll bands we read about on NME are not very rocknroll anymore at all. Fuck ' em…

And that's why I finish this rant with two pretty interesting reviews of our messy, not great Leeds Festival gig, that curiously enough, pretty much say the same thing: that Dirtblonde divided opinions, that some people thought we were great and some people thought we were shit, and that THAT was rocknroll. Read on…and A wop bop-a-lu bop, a whop bam boom!  

"Conversely, Dirtblonde on the Topman Unsigned Stage are far more divisive, attracting looks of adoration or disgust from passers-by with their scuzzy rock'n'roll. Arrogant (one fan offering them a CD is knocked back with the words "I don't want it if I'm not on it"), bolshy, rough around more than just the edges, it's the second most rock'n'roll thing to hit Leeds today." ROCK MIDGETS

"Liverpool's Dirtblonde are the most enigmatic of the bands on this stage. They're a punk duo with a spitting and snarling Ivan Hell on guitar and a gentle bass playing vocalist in Lula Blue. They have a drum machine that doesn't help as much as it could. But DIRTBLONDE achieve the wonderful result of driving a lot of bored people away while a small but fierce cluster of disaffected and wonderful looking kids are drawn like bruised moths to a rather guttering candle of venomous wax. Hell savages the security rails with his guitar in the finale and the new fans are in raptures. For worldweary me the music itself is too tame. But for the kids who love it this is the real thing, and probably the only dose they're going to get all weekend." Whisperin & Hollerin

Sometimes you play good gigs, sometimes you play shit gigs. Sometimes you gotta almost fight with shit promoters to get some money. The life on an unsigned band can be quite undignified.

The most important thing in a band, is, to have some conviction. Take the blows with a brave face, and just know that most people who criticize you are just wrong!

Last night, we played a gig at Pacific Road Arts Centre…more or less organized by us. It was good when the staff told you the gig attracted more people than Mark Knopler (Dire Straits) gig at the same venue the night before! Haha…you sell 30 million albums and 20 years later no one gives a fuck…makes you think, innit…

It was great when, the next day, here I am walking in Liverpool, and some teenage girls who saw us there came to talk to me, asking for hugs, asking for autographs, saying they thought Lula was fit, saying they wanted my babies and that they want to be our groupies, haha! Felt like a proper star!

But the point is – it’s ALWAYS like this. People think we’re great, people love us, and we have so much potential….so how come record labels don’t see it? They spent thousands trying to make your next shit boring indie band, like Boy Kill Boy, look exciting…just for them to be forgotten a few years/months etc down the line.

Bands that can only excite people who read about them on NME. Fuck that!

So, fuck them, as long as we can afford pizzas at the end of the night and replace broken strings, being fantastic is better than being big. Hopefully we’ll be big enough one day, because I can’t carry on like this much longer – at the Pacific Road gig, I had to play a borrowed guitar, because I smashed my guitar at a previous gig and couldn’t afford to buy a new one!!!

I fuckin’ hate ipods. They are truly satan’s latest tool to make the world just that little bit worse, in the days before the inevitable Armageddon.  I mean, everyday I almost pray for the inevitable collapse of our civilization, if it means getting rid of ipods once and for all!

First off, I was never a big fan of walkman to begin with. I like listening to music blasting loud out my stereo, not thru earphones. I like music to fill the space surrounding me rather than being pumped directly into my brains, like a rhino storming thru my front door.

Second, I like having a record collection (or a collection of CD-R’s considering I’m poor most of the time). Call me old fashioned. But, all that stuff is just down to my personal tastes. My dislike for ipods goes well beyond that.

Well, one thing I hate about ipods is that they are everybloodywhere now. Just a few years ago, you didn’t use to see that many people with their personal walkman or radio listening to music, everywhere you went. Certainly not on the scale we see the ipod-ites today. So, how come people suddenly felt such an urge to listen to music all the time, now?

I love music. And still, I don’t feel as if I need to walk around listening to it ALL the time! And, by the looks of most ipodites, I think it’s a safe bet to say that they are not the most passionate music lovers in the world. No no no bloody no. Because when it comes to ipod, it’s never about the music. It’s about the gadget. If Ipods pumped horseshit through your ears, instead of music, people would still buy them. One could argue that that’s exactly what happens most of the time, anyway!

And I hate the way ipods, in my view, devaluate music. Music is just something you buy to fill your ipod, to give a purpose to this oh-so-amazing piece of technology, that you HAD to have.

In modern society, gadgets are king. People like being surrounded by them, maybe it gives them status or whatever. Or maybe, you must buy an ipod because all your friends got one and it’d be weird if you didn’t have an mp3 player too. That kinda thing. Good thing I don’t have that many friends, never mind ones who carry ipods everywhere.

Now…the thing I hate the most about ipods, is not the mp3 player itself, but the hopelessly irritating zombies who use them, the brain-dead ipodites. Ipods are supposed to be personal music players, which means:  the person listens to their music through their earphones, and only themselves can listen to it. That’s what earphones have been invented for. Alas, that is not the case when it comes to ipodites.

The bloody ipodites, the ever-expanding army of darkness created by Satan to spread misery throughout the world, use their ipods in a much less personal way. The music blasts so loud, that we can hear it almost perfectly, even a few feet away from them. When I’m sitting on a train and the person sitting in front of me is blasting their usual trancedanceeuropoptrash from their earphones, I fight really hard to control my urge to grab their ipods and throw it through the window. Well, I actually fight REAL hard not to smack the moron on their face! WHy do them people have such a terrible taste iin music? I guess, bad taste in music and being obnoxious go hand-in-hand. You never hear an ipodite blasting GOOD music, do you?

I think that, today, ipodites are one of the single greatest nuisances in my life. I just fuckin’ hate them.

Finally, there’s the fine point that  ipods are so expensive. I can’t believe that people pay that sort of money for something so useless. If you like music so much, you could spend the same amount of money buying loads of records, or even, buy a guitar and learn to play it.

Say no to ipods.

Oh dear, the good old days of punk are long gone, nothing but a memory in the hearts of some, or the mockery of high street fashion. On BBC some time ago they had a feature on the 30^th anniversary of the Sex Pistols 100 Club gig in London. The tone was hardly celebratory – more like “That was punk then, how silly isn’t it, now it’s gone, people don’t even know about punk”. The mainstream won.  The NME celebrates no-folk (boring as old folk), new prog, and the fakers, shakers, assholes in trendy haircuts who dress in whatever is the indie uniform du jour, who play whatever is the musical style in vogue at the moment. We live in the kingdom of mediocrity, the empire of shit, the hopeless land where teenage angst has fizzled out and been replaced by savvy consumerism and cynicism. 

The old formulas that get reprised, the 4 boys in nice haircuts playing their instruments properly, its always the same, and always boring, but people are so desperate for something that they always go for whatever the media says is cool…I almost wanted to cut off my ears listening to one of the latest NME compilation CD, that kinda crap always bores the shit out of me.

Its not that I’m nostalgic, never mind for a time when I wasn’t around. The past has always been as shit or as good as you want to make it out to be, depending on how you see it. Most mainstream music has always been shit. For instance, Engelbert Humpershit sold more copies of his single than the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever”, proof that even in the “Glory golden days of the 60s”[ © MOJO] rubbish music was more popular than good music.

It has always been the case, but it does feel that there are less space for truly exciting music in the mainstream now. People say we live in such great times for music, but why do they say that? Just because there are lots of so-called indie bands in the charts…but if most those bands are shit, or even if they are any good, still fairly unoriginal and safe, then big deal!!! Not that I long for the past and ignore the good things now...there are lots of cool new bands that i like (most, unsigned, like Ruby Tombs). But when people say we live in exciting times for music, its for the wrong reasons!

In the past, you cud have The Who and Jimi Hendrix smashing their way thru TOTP, Sex Pistols and The Clash in the Top 10, even Jesus And Mary Chain singing “I wanna die, I wanna die like Jesus Christ” in the Top 10!!!  And now, the NME or whatever says we live in such exciting times because the Kaiser Shits take their  “na na nananana” crap to the top of the Charts. Or because “synth rockers” Boy Kill Boy are Top 20. Oh my god! Indeed such exciting times for music! Jesus wept, God farted and you can feel the future generations’ indifference already. And I’m still bored. 

This is just a melancholic look at the past. I realised that, there are few moments in life when you feel as excited as in the first years when you discover that you love music, and you dive in this seemingly bottomless pool of wonderful sounds…an amazing discovery almost everyday, certainly every week.

Thankfully, as you grow up, and since you’re born, really, you’ll inevitably find yourself finding music, in the most diverse ways...family members playing something, on the telly, in a film…and I remember that even before I ever considered buying a record, I loved music, it fascinated me: the “Satisfaction” riff hypnotizing me…Mozart’s music when I watched “Amadeus”, “Penny Lane” and “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” in some Beatles documentary on telly…”Love It Loud” by Kiss…and so on and so on…slowly but surely I had music sweeping into my consciousness, and the pleasure…the pleasure was astounding, immense, I didn’t understand why or how, but music touched me in mysterious ways, I didn’t have any records or CDs or anything…but I remember sticking a VHS tape on the vcr just to hear just a bit of a song I might not even know whom by, or what it was called. I’d stick a tape just for a few moments, before going to sleep, for that little fix of pleasure. I wanted The Beatles, or Mozart, or whoever, to soundtrack my dreams…and, thinking of music, I’d fall asleep.

Then one day, in the 90s, I fell in love with music, big time. It ALL came at once, so quick and powerfully, so irresistibly, it was really amazing. Music suddenly became the biggest obsession in my life. It probably started out with Nirvana…then listening to Sonic Youth’s “Teenage Riot” on MTV…then, made a friend at school who told me about The Clash. And then…then I found a small record shop that was getting rid of all vinyl, selling records really cheaply…I’d buy a record almost everyday, instead of buying lunch at school. I remember buying a book about The Beatles and other about The Rolling Stones; the Clash’s Singles Collection album; watching a documentary on telly about punk – first time I saw/ heard Joy Division, Patti Smith, Sex Pistols, The Clash’s “London Calling”…saw Blow Up by Antonioni, and just loved The Yardbirds…and then, I’d just buy everything and anything: from Nirvana and Sonic Youth (how I LOVED – still do – “Goo”…on cheap vinyl) to Cream, Chuck Berry, Animals…Eric Clapton & The Bluesbreakers. And finally, I discovered a VERY cool record shop that had all sort of cool obscure indie records, and at the same time a radio show that’d play that sort of stuff: thanks to Nirvana, I found out of a whole world of noise, bands like Mudhoney, Vaselines, My Bloody Valentine, J&MC, Telescopes…I remember I just loved those 90s guitar bands like Eugenius, Flop, Madder Rose, Unrest, Belly, Breeders…

Anyway. It lasted a few years. There’s a point in your life, when you never heard a Mudhoney album, never heard a Sonic Youth, Bowie or Beatles album – and there are dozens and dozens of stuff to go thru. And then, finally, inevitably, there’s a day when you’ve heard all those albums, and there’s little else to discover, and…its kinda sad…not that often you find out a new album as good as Art Brut’s…Maximo Park won’t do it for me. The joy of discovering music is almost gone. You will ALWAYS find old (Serge Gainsbourg, Jorge Ben ) and new (The Long Blondes, Automation, Ruby Tombs) stuff that you’ll love, but it’ll never be with the same intensity and rate of those first years. And its sad because that was one of the best feelings EVER. And now it's gonegonegone...

The greatest pleasure now is playing and writing songs. 

When discovering music is not enough, that’s natural! You’re in a band, and the kick of creating a new song, out of nowhere, is amazing. I never know how we make one. How did such and such song came about? No idea. It just appears when its not expected. Music never waits for an invitation, it’ll land on your lab and you got to make sure you’ll grab it while it’s there.  You don’t purposely write a song – they always end up shit. There are so many people out there, “crafting” songs, and its always boring. Music is like a dream. You don’t choose to dream. Music is fragile. It’ll go as easily as it comes. Try too hard and you’ll break it. Out of boredom comes excitement. You play your guitar so hard, like you hate it, just want to make some noise, hope you’ll at least cut your fingers, bleed and break the strings, and vent some frustration that way…and then suddenly something appears. Or sometimes you feel bored, drowned by the world, and can’t even pick a guitar, and nothing appears. You never know. You are truly powerless. You are at the mercy of your muse, of your music.

Music belongs to no one, cruelly enough. Just look at “geniuses” like Paul McCartney. How many good songs he’s written…but now, he’s incapable of writing ONE single decent song, his talents are now no better than that of the pub band playing “Mull Of Kintyre” in Bootle every Friday night. How can a “genius” be mediocre? It's weird. I remember lots of interviews I read in the past, and people always say that the best songs were those that wrote themselves. Paul McCartney wake up with “Yesterday” in his head. Keef with the “Satisfaction” riff, and so on and so on. Good music is truly a dream. And you don’t choose to dream.

Alas, recently, my sleep has been without dreams. Or too many that I don’t remember, with words and melodies just a faint memory…”lie down lied down, la la la”…. Once I yearned for sleep, now I feel as if its just robbing me time.  Sleeping you have dreams, but you must be awake to make them happen…

"Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government."

cool guy.

Boredom is a wonderful thing. Sometimes i feel I could kill myself out of sheer boredom. Sometimes i make friends with the cat. Sometimes i decide to write some exciting email to someone to try and get somethig exciting to happen to the band. Sometimes, no matter how bored I am, I still won't watch telly. I make chips and mushy peas, drink some tea. Read a book, design a poster, play guitar, write a song, pull my hair, feel like crying. Or, as was the case today, most of those things and then some...like drawings of Merseyside figures that from time to time haunt, amuse or annoy me.Here they are.

The Wirral Rocker. (Lula said those figures should have a name...this could be a Dave)

The Scally (maybe he's called Bazza - for Bastard - or Tommo)

The Piss Lady On Princes Road. A legendary figure in L8, for Lula and I anyway. She's very real. And she deserved the colour treatment!!!

Playing in London, is, habitually, not the most pleasant of experiences. More like, banging your head against the wall, and carrying a ton on your shoulders. Upstairs @ The Garage, on 23rd June, was little different. But yes, it still was different. Why? Because, for the first time, we actually enjoyed playing our set!

Of course, not everything was great. The headliner act, Sek Loso (and his band) arrived at the venue 2 hours late, and sound checked for over 1 hour, including wanky Jimi Hendrix cover – how many bloody songs do you need to sound check before deciding the sound is ok??? In true punk spirit, we hardly ever sound check for more than 15 minutes…anyway, we had to wait and wait and wait until it was our turn, and it pissed us off…but only slightly, because the Sek Loso guy and his troupe were actually quite a nice bunch of fellows.

As usual, our non-existent London fan base turned out en masse, thus assuring that the place was half-full or half-empty depending on your point of view, though, in strictly mathematical terms, “half” whatever is maybe the inaccurate word.

rock'n'rolling Upstairs @ The Garage (thanx Kitty xxx!)

Well, we had fun with the gig, and we are SO used to things going wrong, especially in London, that we were unfazed when they finally did go wrong, and carried on with the usual panache. We did a Sonic Youth-style cover version of Ladytron’s “Sugar”, because we love it. Don’t remember the other songs, but it was all noisy, messy and badly played as usual. In other words, fun. Yes, we did jump offstage and shit like that but no, we didn’t try to demolish the stage – that’s for proper rock stars, as its too expensive!!! I’d LOVE to destroy every single fucking London venue I ever played at, and one day I just might, but for as long as I’m a poor punk rock boy, all I can do is abuse me guitar, and that’ll do for now, baby.

Unfortunately, we had to come back to Liverpool that same night, and missed the opportunity of sharing some delicious Birthday cake courtesy of Sek Loso & Co, ‘cos it was Bonehead’s (Loso’s guitarist) birthday that day. Good actually, because otherwise I’d have a really pathetic story to tell everybody for years to come, the “I had Bonehead’s cake” one, because most people might not care about him but anyone who played on Definitely Maybe enjoys legendary status with me!

More gigs are-a-coming, more noise and confusion, more bruises and scars, more cheap alcohol and cheap make up. Will we still be alive, pretty and intact comes December? Oh my, I have my doubts…

more pics here:

http://www.streamload.com/dirtblonde/dirtblondeupstairsgarage.htm

3rd of June. Lovely Friday. Hot summer day. Plenty of wine, beer and friends. Nice barbecue. Playing boule like an old man. Birthday cake. And, as a surprise for our friend Kath, visiting us all all the way from San Francisco, a proper garage rock gig in a proper garage! We must say, she enjoyed the present, the least we could do for someone who introduced us to the ace Duke Spirit, Holly Gollightly and who finds time to split an atom or two.

AND we still found time to go to a classic party in Liverpool, attended by half the local punk scene...it was ace, and they had some bands playing in a tiny basement, including Bendal Interlude, of our friend Dave (who played drums for Dirtblonde a long time ago...for one practice anyway, before Dee Dee was found).

Cavern Club...at least got a good pic out of it!

(c) quote by Frederick Douglas...i like it a lot. It's so true!!!

Ah! We dunno if its a great sensible idea, but we decided to do this last minute gig in Manchester, this Wednesday 25th May. We'll be onstage around 8.15pm...Dry Bar, Manchester.

Just posting this in case anyone cares!

Alas, as we all know, this whole 80s metal cheesy rock bullshit is back. As if the revival itself wasn't bad enough, now we gotta face the return of Motley Crue, the ultimate pompous, druggy, macho assholes, Kings of Cheesy Metal bullshit.. Of course, one of those bands I always tried to avoid, because soulless polished corporate crap disguised as "rock" is not my thing. But, upon reading the NME this week (yeah, I read it sometimes) i was DISGUSTED to find out that Vince Neil fucking KILLED a person and left others brain-damaged, in a car crash caused because he was driving under the influence of alcohol. Being a "rock star" is not an excuse to kill people is it? What a fucking stupid asshole. How can anyone for a second think he and his band are cool? Spare a few moments to listen to his crap? And now, you get something like NME and they write shit about oh, Motley Crue are back, aren't they wild etc etc, and yeah, they killed someone, but nevermind, etc etc. As if its something trivial. I find it deeply offensive. I find it offensive that they are allowed to exist, that vince Neil only got 30 days in jail, that people waste their time raving about them or listening to them or going to their gigs. I mean, i had to get up and write this straight away, otherwise i wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.

I'm sick and tired of this world of bullshit, and in few other places you can find as much bullshit as in the music industry! Fuck irony, 80s hair metal has never been good and will never be, and Motley Crue are not and have never been cool, anyone can see it, unless they are as brainless and stupid as the band themselves. Its not clever to pass hepatitis-C to your wife, have drug overdoses or Kill people. Its fucking sick, pathetic and repulsive.

I hate people who think they CAN'T criticize "wild" rock bands for fear of sounding boring or whatever. Especially considering that most so-called "wild" bands are little more than pathetic spoiled boys desperate for attention, and more often than not, sucking some corporate dick or the other.

And if they are so wild, why their music always sound like soulless, clean and polished commercial crap, manipulated by rich boring people devoid of any passion other than that for money? Man, that’s wild…

Fuck the lot of them. Fuck this crap 80s revival. Fuck Motley Crue, kill Vince Neil!!!

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM LIFE?

Many things, good and bad, but few things are as certain as: getting shit. People shitting on you. That's what happens, aall the time. And, sometimes, it makes me so fucking angry, you gotta tell people to fuck off. Sometimes in a nice way, sometimes not. I'll tell you a few cases.

My life's not particularly great at the moment, i got no money, can't get any of that (humiliating , anyway)dole money, and if it wasn't for friends and family, I'd probably be selling the Big Issue on streets! Thats how i feel like. Fucked. Can't live off music (yet...), can't get a job...and yet, I get a letter from teh City Council asking to pay something immediately. So i HAD to tell them it was a joke, ridiculous, that when people don't have enough money to pay, they take it to summons so they have to pay an extra £25 on top - in other words, they penalize people who don't have money, by making them pay even more!!! That's teh shit poor people get. Its ironic innit? Rich people can get clothes and drinks and food for free, even jewels! But people who desperately need money are asked to pay for things, people who starve have to beg for food. How wrong, fucked up and unfair can the world be? Its really fucking ridiculous.

So...when people shit on me, I gotta tell them to fuck off.

Juz the other day, some guy from a local magazine said they "could write about Dirtblonde, but we won't." because he doesn't like us. And i was like...was there ANY need to say that? he was just being a cunt, like "haha, i have power, so i can shit on you". So i just replied "fine, whatever, smart ass" because i'm not begging for a few lines, fuck them if they don't wanna write about us, you don't have to be a cunt about it do you?

I'm not begging for anything in this fucking life, be it money food or attention for my band. I'm a proud person. I rather starve, I rather be a failure. I rather have no friends than be one of those phoney superficial popular people. Why cheapen yourself, when people already do that for you? Here's son, take this shitty job, enjoy a hopeless mediocre life, pay your bills and pretend to be happy, Stuff yrself with a bit of booze/drugs/telly, and it'll be just fine...that's the lot most of us can expect. That's the lot most people learn to accept. And that's cheapening yourself.

I'm reading a book now, and it makes you think: what if you had only 5 more minutes to live, and knew it? Wouldn't you feel like you didn't live your life as you wanted...maybe even, you'd feel like you wasted most of it? Guess thats why people don't think about death, if they did, it'd be unbearable to face their routine...well...i'm not saying I'm any better than most people, that i know how to live my life or anything...but at least I think. At least I have a few dreams, and try to fight for them. At least I won't let people shit on me. At least I might have my eventual little victories that will keep me going and keep my dignity intact...better than nothing, anyway.

HERES WHAT I READ:

"This man had once been brought to the scaffold in company with several others, and had had the sentence of death by shooting passed upon him for some political crime...A priest went about among them with a cross: and there was about five minutes of time left for him to live.

"He said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a most interminable period, an enormous wealth of time; he seemed to be living, in these minutes, so many lives that there was no need as yet to think of that last moment, so that he made several arrangements, dividing up the time into portions—one for saying farewell to his companions, two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking over his own life and career and all about himself; and another minute for a last look around. He remembered having divided his time like this quite well. While saying good-bye to his friends he recollected asking one of them some very usual everyday question, and being much interested in the answer. Then having bade farewell, he embarked upon those two minutes which he had allotted to looking into himself; he knew beforehand what he was going to think about. He wished to put it to himself as quickly and clearly as possible, that here was he, a living, thinking man, and that in three minutes he would be nobody; or if somebody or something, then what and where? He thought he would decide this question once for all in these last three minutes. A little way off there stood a church, and its gilded spire glittered in the sun. He remembered staring stubbornly at this spire, and at the rays of light sparkling from it. He could not tear his eyes from these rays of light; he got the idea that these rays were his new nature, and that in three minutes he would become one of them, amalgamated somehow with them.

“The repugnance to what must ensue almost immediately, and the uncertainty, were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea, ‘What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return to life again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! I should turn every minute into an age, I should lose nothing and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant!’ He said that this reflection finally filled him with such bitterness that he prayed to be shot as quickly as possible."

Bullies. Always fucking cowards. Insecure little people. I read the Tao, you know, and what it says is true. The truly powerful don't need to show his strength. And its always like that...bullies are failures, and they know it, they need to assert themselves on others in order to feel better. Lula's been bullied at school when she was younger, and where are those girls now? Probably stupid tarts who got pregnant at 18 and are stuck in a dead end town.

I never had many bullies though. There was one guy who used to bother me A LOT. So one day i went to the school library, got a really thick book, and hit the prick in the head. I always believed in the power of words. He never bothered me again.

But I've been kicked in the face for looking different. I have the blood splattered tee to prove! Violence is a common currency in this world innit. Its cheap...people who use violence think they're tough, but they're weak, afraid. And they ALWAYS need to feel accepted and be surrounded by mates.

I think all of us who ever took a beating, physically, or verbally or psychologically, those are the really strong people. You know, its harder to put on a brave face and carry on with life, than it is to bully or hit someone.

Ha! Our gig last nite at the Zanzibar in Liverpool was pretty good. Maybe...being pissed off always helps. First, teh venue wanted to move our slot, trying to make us play ONE HOUR earlier than we were supposed to. thanx to delays, we only went onstage 10 minutes earlier. They also confiscated our bottle of wine. Funny, venues don't provide riders for small bands, and we can't bring our stuff...you end up not only not getting paid, but is forced to buy drinks off them...

But, what REALLY pissed us off, was some scally band, who were just horrible. Funny thing about those scallies, they all have shaved heads, look tough, but sound like sissies, playing their shitty acoustic love ballads! Why do they even form bands? To show their mates that they are onstage? Anyway...their drummer, a perfect cunt, swaggering cocky asshole, acting like a bully. Asked what we were called, "dirtblonde" we said, so he comes close to Lula, almost touching her hair, and say, "nah, she's not, don't understand" and then ask if we are an all-girls band. Ha ha and fucking ha.

Then, I'm onstage, setting up my shit just before we go onstage, and this fucker is just strolling onstage, smoking his fag, goin "alright 'la" as if to show that that was "his area"...WHO the fuck walks around the stage when someone else is setting up their shit? Its not as if they were the band who went on before, or even playing after...no...he was just being cocky.

Anyway. Some people might think we look like some too-cool-4-school indie fops. But we're not. We fucking rocked louder and rougher than most, certainly than any scally band with their fucking acoustic guitars. I never fucked up so many of our songs live before...ON PURPOSE, just because i didn't care if it sounded messy and fucked up, the uglier the better...some nice shouts..."DEADHEAD DEADHEAD DEADHEAD AAAAAAAAAAAAAH" "BURNBABYBURNBABYBURNBABYBURNBABYBURN" and who cares about playing teh right chords...just before we started our set i said "we don't play scally music" and we did our best to prove that point! OF course, we didn't want to let those fucking scallies off the hook so easily, so for all to hear, Lula blue said, later on, "And just for those scallies over there to know, we don't like being intimidated", before we lashed into another song. We finished our set with the usual noise and confusion, I broke a beer bottle on my guitar and threw it oon the floor. Bye bye honey. Gig is over. and FUCK those scallies! They didn't say one word about us, or to us after that, just like they should.

Those fucking scallies, or any others - they should all just fuck right off, who they think they are? A bunch of assholes dressed as if they just left their call centre jobs, with their ben sherman shirts tucked inside their pants and shiny shoes, hahah ha! Acting tough, and sounding like sissies, with their acoustic crap. They could NEVER rock half as hard as we do...and they learned it then, and they know it now, and I bet it must've been a humiliating experience for them, because they obviously didn't respect us and thought they were better and harder than us.

I just hope if we ever play the zanzibar again, if a scally band is on the same bill, they'll behave better, or at least keep their distance from us. Fuckin fuckers the lot of them.

Dirtblonde 1 x 0 Scallies