Blog 2009 are polar bears extinct yet?

3rd June 2009
Washing Machine

From crawling and pushing for those first steps, to being amongst the smallest in school, to striking out of class, to that whole bigger life thing where you travel, pitch and prepare to embrace the amazing things, maybe never realising they were embracing you throughout; from your birth, through the here and now, to some future tumble and crawl.

I wonder if somewhere, in a Douglas Adam book maybe, there's an anology that shows the Earth as a washing machine, inside which we of many colours are shaken and soaked in chemicals, spun and dried out, colliding, moving places, never quite in control because gravity is an erratic master. And how mankind the scientist, the mathematician, the poet, the musician, throughout time has sought to understand the spin cycle, peer through the convex glass door, has sought to prise an opening, through prayer and machine.

You know I think the closest I ever got was one moment as a hormone fuelled teenager, when I got up to speed and shouted 'spin baby!' across some dancefloor somewhere. Can't quite remember the moment, but I'm sure it happened.

I seem to 'blog' a little less often these days. Maybe on a happy note, it's because my work and my music has brought a whole new reason for being. Maybe I've become distracted by positive actions a lot more, and maybe it takes days like today - when I both visit the doctors and mull over a disapointing live performance - for me to sit and reflect.

Those who've read previous blogs, please don't think I've mellowed - oh no!! Our churches are still being used by liars and hypocrites, our history is still being written in the blood of attrocity, and our so called economy continues to cause great pain and suffering.

That misunderstood word 'economy' is popular right now. Suddenly there's no money anywhere, and it doesn't take an idiot to realise that it is somewhere, and someone knows exactly where. In layman's terms it is being passed around small circles of greedy, selfish, so-called human beings, people for whom there is no reality, just an illuision of grandeur that sadly for them, only lasts until the day they die. The current economy makes people do things they do not want, for people who do nothing, for little of what they need. Result: crime, discontent, spiralling social conflicts. So what if it's in trouble? Just give those who need a wheelchair, a wheelchair. Those who need pain relief, pain relief. Dignity for every adult, a person centered education for every child. We have all those things available to us and so much more, it is the economy that takes them away and leaves us to fight amongst ourselves for what's left.

"What?" says the man in the pub, "that's bollocks". Ah yes Mr Man, you still live in this bubble of western culture where the weather is quite mild, the seasons are gentle and the spin cycle merely brings with it a delicate wash. Were your history lessons to teach you a little more than 'we won the war' you might just realise that the end of one conflict, is merely the catalyst for the next one. The fighting continues, even in your own home, where your own children's fears and concerns have driven you to soak solace here in the drink.

It's only just dawned on me that the raison d'etre of a washing machine is to create revolutions, cycles of revolution after revolution. But to what end? Are we really so dirty? Is this over crowded planet being driven to madness or some unseen heavenly purity? Is our solution simply a new brand of detergent, linked by 6 degress of separation to catastrophic ethnic cleansing? Vast nuclear arsenals, chemical warfare, blatant bombing and mass murdering of entire families for a cause justified by some hideous high ranking prat of a soothsayer, who claims not only can he see through the convex glass door, he can hear a voice from the other side. These things are the shadows that suffocate the sun.

I have so many stories to tell you. This statement says that I am still alive, despite moments when I've believed I was nearing the end. I hold many of my own stories back, so that you can find your own. I am not a selfish man. I am ready to embrace, and be embraced by, amazing things ...

lotsoflovenstuff as always,
dp x

15th March 2009
Love Will Tear Us Apart
It's been my lovely pleasure to have played the most beautiful, dark love song at a number of gigs this year, to find many requests for a recording waiting for me on my return home. Therefore here's the update on where and when:

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Darren Poyzer with John Ellis on piano) 2009
Update soon, I've laid down a solo version for the forthcoming 'Bloody Love Songs' collection.

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Darren Poyzer with John Ellis on piano) 2008
Recorded somewhere out front, there's apparently a bootleg doing the rounds featuring the brilliant John Ellis (Lily Allen / Corinne Bailey Rae) on piano, recorded live at The Legendary Manchester Busker @ Matt & Phreds in June.

There's also a Live In Wolverhampton version, and a Live In Runcorn version ... I have these somewhere, kicking aboput on rough mini-disks, so I'll go listen and see what's worth keeping.

Love Will Tear Us Apart (Poyzer, Fluff and Farrell) 2007
Produced by Nigel Stonier, this studio version was recorded at the very end of 2007 and is a co-owned recording. Out of decency to Kevin and Fluff therefore, I've not set out to distribute this, and I don't think we'll do anything with it unless we decide to promote the trio as a practical gigging and recording project. However, it can be found on My Space as none other than Peter Hook (Joy Division / New Order) has obtained a copy and is promoting it via his My Space page as a 'country' version :-) ... here ya go, enjoy: www.myspace.com/peterhookneworder

17th February 2009
People Watching In Chester
It's been, on a personal level, a quite fabulous start to the year ... ok, in perspective, it's not been a time of concern, and once again I have to say that the gigging just keeps getting better. And there's the new songs that are happening for real, and some ... So much so that after a recent stint of gigs and traveling, with a little break from teaching for a few days, I actually chilled recently, and watched the world go by in Chester city centre.

Now mention the city of Chester and if the stereotyping takes place, you either get mention of Hollyaoks - a tv show - or the ancient Roman heritage, which brings a strange little feeling to my senses. You see, I am intrigued by the River Dee, and the way it works it's way towards the city in the same way it did during Roman occupation, and this brings me poetry for the mind.

This feeling I get is tainted by a little conspiracy chat I came across once during pub talk, this being that a city rich in historical significance, has had many scenes and segments of significant heritage deliberately destroyed and buried to make way for the profits of modern design and construction. The right thing or not? Is history important, and more so, more important to preserve at the cost of employment for those who need to feed their families in the modern world? There's dilemma, a political dilemma that reverberates onwards, an undercurrent of human conflict and ancient bloodline that flows in unassuming whispers, like the very river itself.

~ ~ ~

For me there are currently two parts to Chester city centre, and the boundary a historical one. Taking the road from the station, towards the city, there is for example Brook St, a street loaded with small cafe's, independent shops, a couple of bought and sold's, and the spirit of traditional independent trading. It's the kind of street that I grew up with, and like many of my generation, left behind when the lure of Virgin Records and HMV made it cool for independent thinkers to create our identity in the image of multi-national corporations. Left behind whilst the likes of Guitar Experience have recently closed, leaving aspiring musicians with little more than Dawsons to choose from when seeking the soul of musical inspiration and instrumentation. Now don't get me wrong, I have bought good things from Dawsons, but the packaging that gets in the way is way too suffocating.

The result of this migration has of course wiped the life out of many traditional city and town centre streets, and the detetriation in the current climate, like global warming, is an ever increasing, widely ignored, concern. Here it's not just the closing businesses and the empty places that surround the surviving independent traders, but the people themselves. As someone who rarely goes shopping or looking around town and city centres these days, I particularly noticed the way in which so many more people now appear to be declining in various stages of desperation. Maybe it's me being sensitive, but I cannot help but comment that whilst many still laugh at this whole 'credit crunching' nonsense, the real victims who are taking a seriously good kicking are alive and feeling quite unwell, and in ever increasing numbers.

It's incredible what you see in a street when you choose to stop and look around. You see how people survive, and I would say thrive however the modern world has now placed Ivory Towers in virtual worlds, so this all takes a while longer to visualise. I think it helps to know a little history and to understand and realise that empires fall, quite dramatically, and rapid social decline is a clear sign of this happening. Ask the Romans, they were here once you know ...

It's not lost on me that this street is outside the 'city walls' that form the inner circle that today houses a totally different city centre experience. True the feel of history is not altogether lost in Chester, quite substantial amounts of historical architecture and design remain, however once you get into the centre itself, it's all about chain stores and franchise, new marketing, and you know it appears at first view, a different race of people.

~ ~ ~

Foregate, North Gate, East Gate ... welcome to the inner sanctum of Chester city. Here it's difficult not to notice the ladies, from the young and trendy fashionables, to the middle aged hanging on to fashion with a war-like passion. It's a picture, and as close to swingin' London or Paris as the North-West of England gets. And yet today, it's a group of yound lads, college age, taking advantage of the 1/2 term and I guess a temporary liberal approach to sound 'pollution', as they hold a portable notice board high declaring that their band has a new cd, and this is what you are hearing through a portable amplifier, at quite considerable volume.

Wonderful. Well done The LP, for this is their name and they've realised that if the people ain't coming to gigs, they are going to go to the people. It's on the third occasion that I walk past that I take a liking to a song, and realise that I need to tap into this energy and inject something of me back into the community. They want £3 for 4 songs, or they have an album for £7, so I give them a tenner for the album. I subscribe to the idea once more, contentedly, that giving brings a good feeling ... and I look forward to hearing the album, it sounds quite decent.

It's not lost on me that during the day I will see middle aged people glare with distaste and quite ironically, younger 'scene-teens' chuckle, and yet unknown to all those with prejudice, this band of young indie ('independent') rockers - who remind me of Bauhaus actually - have a sound and an identity that they are happy to shout about in public, and this strong sense of being is something that the majority of people on this street strive for daily, and would love to posess.

~ ~ ~

Even here, in this inner sanctum, beneath the surface, the designer clothes and the face paint, we now see the onset of considerable store closures, the failure of the so called economy as the last gasp of determined capitalism looks for a feed. I reflect again on the fall of the Roman Empire, the times when the Generals were discussing the inevitable withdrawals ... would they be gradual, or rapid, and in the modern sense, is this English city like so many others, going to continue with a gradual decline, or are we about to be swallowed by a much more immediate and shocking collapse in modern culture?

Or are we walking blindly with tv eyes, as the remains are buried underneath yet more layers of new polish and paint, oblivious that history is not yesterday, but the morning that shapes all the day of all our lives?

~ ~ ~

I am people watching. I am merely an observer, a human one. I need to feed, I need to rest. I need to collect my watch as time is passing me by, it is being fixed with a new battery and re-sealed by a man in a white coat, in a shop called The Watch Lab. He is an independent trader in the inner sanctum, telling me how lovely and special my watch is, preventing me from thoughts of replacing it with something cheap and cheerful from the market. Then he tells me the new battery placement will cost £20.

I make my way home. I am approached for the 5th time by RSPCA street teamers, but my sense of charity has already been disolved. I am inspired by the way that some still look to shelter the animals, even when most around them are busy with human re-conditioning. The bigger picture tells me there are grey skies omnipresent, maybe there's a storm approaching, Not today, but history suggests there may well be one on it's way.

1st January 2009
Starting the New Year with a very special >THANK YOU! <
Dear friend and fellow human being,

It is, as it always is, the start of a brand new day, another chance to create a fantastic new era, another chance to say sorry, to say hello, to right wrongs and to write poetry and songs.

I'm sure that the words 'thank' and 'you' aren't enough on their own, so I can only hope that for those of you who have given me personally any amount of warmth through this last year, and / or done good things to help make our small worlds into better places, I can through the next year and beyond, return that warmth in many ways, as exciting and inspirational as I wholeheartedly wish they could be.

thank you, may that mean a little something ...
dp x