UNTRUTHS 2025
An archive of that which was written about.

January 1st 2025:
A new year... Meh. Up late after last night's exertions, feeling rather tired and slightly muzzy. I did some accounting work for our books (and the taxman) and the sales over the last couple of months have been really good. I am finally getting to remember some basic formulas in Excel without having to look them up.

The 'Slade In Flame At 50' book sold more than what I expected it to do in the first couple of weeks.... and it is still selling. It has made the sales of some of our other older books pick up as well.

I started work on our next Slade book a while ago, but I am feeling slightly burned out with book work at the moment. It's a lot of work and I do tend to throw myself into it, working at all hours - even in the middle of the night, if I am having a bit trouble sleeping - when I am writing or compiling. Next week I will dip back in and do a bit. While the band is down until the 11th, I want to spend some (more) time being lazy and doing nothing.

That said, Graham has given me some more new lyric ideas and I will probably get some drum pattern going in the studio and mess around with those and see what comes out.

Listening to the BBC Radio Scotland Justin Currie interview.

January 3rd:
A lovely visit from my daughter. We went into Bolton and had a good walk around. The February issue of Classic Rock Magazine with the Slade In Flame At 50 review is in the shops.

January 8th:
I was really pleased earlier in the week when my son visited us. Lots of book work going on. I'm building up my collection of Japanese Slade CD's - the excuse being that they will be good in a book. It was nice having a weekend without gigging. Lynda and I were laughing about what I would be doing at various times on Sunday.

Current listening - Pete Townshend, White City.

January 9th:
Graham gave me some more song lyrics to work on before the band started its break and I was a little bit dubious about putting the time and effort into them at present, as we are not even playing the songs from the current album onstage. The album just feels to have been still-born after all of the effort that I put into it, which has just deflated me, plus the reaction from some people to the idea of parting with money for it has really been a downer, so why should I knock myself out and go to the trouble of doing it all over again? However, I decided to have a muck around this morning and managed to pull a reasonably decent rough demo of a song called 'Just A Pub Rock Band'. The few people who have heard it so far quite like it.

January 12th:
I ordered a copy of the Slade In Flame At 50 book for a reviewer. Last night's gig in Garstang was a little bit of an early trek - setting off at 5pm for a 7pm start. I looked at the stage space and wondered if we'd fit in it, but we did. We had a nice crowd for our gig and a chap asked about booking us for a rock festival in the summer. That would depend on what we have in the diary. Home at around 10.30pm.

I was knackered this morning. The day was spent doing some book work and dicking around on the internet a little. No jam night this week.

January 13th:
A lazy day spent doing as little as possible.

January 14th:
I went into town to meet Mike for a catch-up.

January 15th:
I re-recorded the vocals for the new song and put the new mix up for listening. I am looking to move my main websites back to my ISP webspace over the next few months.

Lynda got a letter from her consultant saying her heart function has reduced significantly (it's now at a quite worrying level) and they are going to get on with putting a pacemaker in. We went for a meal with friends in the evening and Lynda was crying off 15 minutes before meeting them as she was struggling a bit. We got to park up across the road from the restaurant and nearly had to turn around and go home because Lynda was struggling to walk the 50 yards to the restaurant. We did make it inside, but Lynda looked particularly shaken.

January 16th:
I got up at 9.15, fed the pets, had a coffee and then took Tom for a walk to pick up Lynda's prescription, followed by the ordeal of giving Oscar a bath.

January 17th:
My late first wife Julie's birthday. She would have been 63 today. I went to meet some of the Union reps from Bolton DWP in the afternoon.

January 18th:
Website update work in the morning, moving the websites back into my ISP webspace. I have given notice to members on the Slade forum that I am going to have a go at moving it to some where other than my web host some time in the next year, or closing it down if I can't. In the evening, the band played a good local (for me, anyway) gig at Hogarths in Bolton. We will be back in September. That's all of our available Saturdays booked up now.

January 19th:
A restful day, followed by the first jam night of the year in the evening. I actually quite enjoyed the jam night this week. It was nice to have a break from doing it.

January 22nd:
I caught up with recent blog entries and did a little web work this morning. Our gig on Saturday night has been cancelled as the guest of honour is in hospital. Can't be helped.

January 24th:
The guy from the venue that jerked us around on December 24th is making a pest of himself. I used a photo of the band from that show for our Facebook banner image. He put a sarky comment on it about using his photo from his venue, so I amended the photo slightly.

That's better.

Some wonderful family news from yesterday.

The band played our 'ninth anniversary' gig in Leigh this evening. I hated the first half as I kept getting a burnt lip off my microphone, due to what was probably a faulty four way cable provided. The bottom end on the bass was getting a bit over-powering too. I swapped the power supply out between sets and cured the zapping problem. There's not much room for the band there and it wasn't an entirely comfortable gig, but once the power issue was sorted out I played better.

January 26th:
A night off from gigging last night, due to a cancellation. Our dates don't work for a return to The Musketeer this year, as we were offered a choice of five dates and we were out on the first three. I am determined to have a nice long break over Christmas and the first two weeks of next year, so the 26th or 27th don't work for me either.

I woke up this morning with the visual disturbances of a migraine and took 4 tablets and tried to go back to sleep. Rachel has just posted an announcement about her new daughter Lyra, so I can now follow suit. I got a message from a venue that has a new FB page, asking me to shift any mentions to include the new page, rather than the old one. FB wasn't letting me find the new page in drop down menus and the effort just made my migraine flare up again. Fabulous.

We did the jam night in the evening - again enjoyable. I forgot my phone and spent the evening actually talking to people instead. Humanizing. My migraine hadn't completely worn off and my head was muzzy throughout and our opening slot sounded a bit bad to me, as I didn't feel like I could play properly and my bass sound felt horrible. It got better later on.

January 27th:
Boring fact of the year: Our cardboard bin was emptied this morning, for the first time in quite a while. The bin men missed it last time, so I have had to do tip runs with cardboard. Sales of our Slade book THE NOIZE have picked up slightly again, which is nice.

January 28th:
Off to the hospital to have bloods taken for my PSA test. I get the results on Feb 6th. I then went into town to meet my friend Mike. I had a chat with another of my friends while I was in the old Market Hall.

January 29th:
I have started to put a lot of items on Ebay. Books that I am not going to read ever again, some CD's that I don't want. It's currently free to advertise them, so I might as well. I spent an amount of the day doing that.

January 30th:
Sparks have announced a tour and new album. They are playing two nights in Manchester and I will have to duck out of a jam night to attend one of them. In the afternoon we went over to meet our new grandchild Lyra. Beautiful.

January 31st:
Woke up with a bit of a headache after coming to bed very late last night. My fault. I saw a post on Facebook and as a direct result, I did some serious consideration of my musical future. I'm not quite cancelling everything yet, but I'm not looking at doing next year with the band now. I do feel like I am too old for this shit, as they say.

February 2nd:
Last night's gig was a rather terse affair. An advert for a guitar player was briefly and rather heatedly placed on Facebook this morning, then pulled. We've had offers of assistance at gigs, so we could keep going. Two of the band went off to talk about it before we played. As usual, I am not sure what good it actually did. But we have bigger concerns now and all that two of us want to do is simply get on with it while we can.

The gig itself was streamed live and I checked the youtube stream out and the live sound is unfortunately that not great. The mics simply couldn't cope with a rock band's volume. I managed to get a couple of decent images from it.

We did our jam night this evening and discussions were had about our recent problems. We will see what good those discussions did. I cancelled an audition for tomorrow afternoon as I can't be arsed doing it. I can see the end of my playing career in plain sight now. I will not opt to carry on with the jam night next year and if the band are still going then, it will have slowed down considerably.

February 8th:
The week has gone by in a blur of book work and tiredness. I've been going to bed at stupid times for a while now, and it is catching up with me. The updates, additions and and re-writes to the book I am working on are endless and have expanded the book by about 50 pages. I got a phone call from Oncology on Thursday that my cancer reading has gone down to 0.03, which is a bit of a relief. I've seemingly changed from being a hoarder to an Ebay trader, putting a large number of books and CD's up for sale, as well as a couple of guitars. I've done well this last week, but let's see if that continues. I can't see any significant space on my bookshelves yet.

I had a good long phone catch up with one of my friends yesterday, after my cancer result came through. He's been through it a bit over Christmas and January and has been keeping himself to himself. He seems to have come out the other side of his woes. If I had known, I would have gone over to see him.

Last night's gig in Burnley was ok, and we played fairly well but...... I was tired.... and I didn't really get much of a lift from playing. On the way home, I heard on Radio 4 that Donald Trump is saying that, for the UK to avoid crippling tarriffs, the Government has to give unfair tax breaks and exemptions to Amazon and a couple of other companies. The man is clinically insane if he thinks that's going to happen. Time to mend fences with Europe.

February 11th:
I've sold a few more things on Ebay. A lovely Gibson SG guitar went on Sunday. I felt a slight pang at letting it go, but it's hardly been played and I sometimes wondered why I bought it. It's mainly books and CD's that are going. Plus a couple of quite valuable vinyl EP's.

I went to the hospital this morning and had an interesting and very rewarding appointment with the Audiology department. It's sorted a couple of problems out quite noticeably.

February 15th:
I had to back out of going to see my grandchildren today as I am full of a cold. We are gigging tonight and I am slightly worried about singing. Quite a few more things went on Ebay over the last few days. The gig went quite well but my voice was beginning to become a bit of a problem towards the end.

February 16th:
I woke up early feeling quite appalling, went to the loo and then went back to be until lunchtime. I only awoke when our dog Tom decided to play rough with his sleeping Dad who was snug under the covers. I was not impressed. A late afternoon bath helped to stop me feeling like a total corpse, though my nose was running like a tap all day. I cancelled and rescheduled a Zoom chat I was due to be doing on Monday, as my voice is an issue.

I got through the jam night, just about - though Lynda kept telling me during the day that I shouldn't go. It would have caused chaos as I have part of the PA and the relevant cabling and also, I was on stage just about all of the evening. The good part of the evening was finally getting another song from the band's album stage-ready. We played it twice and it went very well both times. I played with some young people whose bassist was on holiday. I got a really dirty look from the guitarist when I dropped a slight bum note during Sweet Child Of Mine, as he had tuned the guitar he was using down. Not that he bothered to tell me - or to retune the guitar properly afterwards, which caused the next act up some issues. I mentioned to Graham that I don't want to do the jam night next year.  This actually wasn't inspired by the kid shooting me the dirty look. I have been saying this to a few people recently anyway. I have just made it official now. I have no problem with them getting someone else to play at the jam night. I'm utterly bored with it, backing people who are not very good and nobody bothering to tell me what song is next..... Next year will be a slower pace - maybe 40 - 50 gigs at the most, and I want my Sundays back.

February 17th:
Up at about 10 after far too few hours sleep. Feeling pretty grim.

February 18th:
I have been sweating about what I am going to be fit for at the weekend. The sore burning feeling when I swallow convinced me to bite the bullet and to cancel Friday night's gig. The venue took it well, as they know I won't muck them about and I tried to fix them up with another band. A CD I ordered from Japan turned up this morning and another is on the way.

We have apparently got a five star review for our recent Flame book in Record Collector (Feb 2025 issue). And this one from The Beat's Feb 2025 issue......

February 19th:

The Record Collector review.

February 23rd:
A couple of days of resting, sleeping in late, not gigging and taking it easy, so I start getting better. I still have a runny nose and tickly throat and I have to do do the jam night this evening. Not overly looking forward to it, but what the hell. I will try to take it easy, but it always depends on who turns up. Quite often when I need to lie down and avoid it, I end up standing up playing all evening.

I listened to a couple of the 10cc Consequences podcasts this morning. Interviews with Kevin Godley, a man who thankfully doesn't have his head up his own arse about the fact that he has made some great records and has done very well from music some years ago. Some other people from the same era think that they are practically some sort of Gods of music, when what they have done is put a beat and a tune under some lyrics of varying quality. We all have an ego, but I think realising your real place in the scheme of things is important. Musicians come a long way behind doctors in my humble opinion.

The jam night in the evening was quite enjoyable. Our drummer Graham's lovely wife laid on some food for his birthday, but I was stuck on stage working until the vultures had picked it clean. Oh well.... He's got a tough week this week. Thinking of him. We ran through the album track a couple of times and I think we are doing a reasonable job on it.

February 24th:
Lynda and I were just getting ready to set off for the hospital for her cardiac nurse appointment at 11.30am, when they rang up and did it by phone to save her the stress of traveling to the hospital, parking and getting her to J block.

I went to bed for a few hours in the afternoon. I seem to be tired a lot these days. Plans for tomorrow have been abandoned, due to other prior commitments at the other end. Unable to reschedule this week or next week.

February 26th:
Booked Oscar in to see the Vet this afternoon. Antibiotics and painkillers for our little chap who has a sore and swollen throat.

February 27th:
I've been putting some items on eBay. One thing I put on that finished today was a Queen Works tour tank top type piece of clothing from 1984. It's basically been unworn all of these years, as they sent me a small sized one in error and couldn't supply a medium. I didn't return it at the time and it's been at the bottom of various drawers since 1984. They didn't actually sell them on the tour. I thought I would be cheeky and put it on with a starting bid of £75. I was amazed when I got a bid for that amount, but didn't keep an eye on the item. I had some messages from someone who told me repeatedly that I should stop the auction and sell it to him for $125, as he's been looking for one ever since. It's a good job I didn't listen to him, as it went for £1020.00. I couldn't quite believe it. I got rather stressed about whether the buyer would pay for it or not, but she did. I sent the item fully insured via UPS to America. The postage cost me a packet, but hey ho.... It's fuly tracked and there will be a signature for it when it arrives, so hopefully there will be no issues from that.

I also parceled up a 1977 German XTC single, that I've possibly never ever played, very carefully, as that went for £102.00. Things I haven't looked at for years, books I'm not really going to read again, guitars I don't play. Better off in new loving homes.

February 28th:
I uploaded this demo recording of one of our album tracks to YouTube. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I recorded it, as it goes on for 8 minutes and is painfully slow. It's the very first working version of the song and the sound quality is a bit scratchy. I went over the mulitrack of this recording to do the re-make that ended up on the album, so unfortunately, I can't get a better mix of it. I do find it interesting to listen to, as the song moved on quite a bit in later versions. I like the guitar solo that I put together for this version. I'm not sure why I moved away from the melody I used, though I do prefer the eventual finished result.

I held off from watching the news during the day, as I was worried about what would happen when Trump met with Zelenskyy. It turns out that I was absolutely correct to avoid the news for as long as possible. Driving to the evening's gig, I was told by Radio 4 exactly what transpired at their meeting. At a pre-arranged point, Vance laid into the Ukrainian President about his apparent 'ingratitude' to the USA for all that had been done for them. Trump is trying to reclaim the US assistance by raping and pillaging Ukraine's natural resources (precious minerals and metals etc) to the tune of what they say the have paid up so far. Zelenskyy acted with considerable dignity and restraint while trump and Vance rounded on him like a pair of rabid attack dogs. It was hideous to watch. Trump won't even admit that Putin was the initial aggressor in the war.He talks about 'getting the deal signed' but shows no interest in the actual peacekeeping that will be necessary.

Our gig that evening was to a really packed pub and we struggled manfully to get any reaction at all from the assembled masses, who had turned up in works vans, shorts, and with identikit Barbie girlfriends. Their priority was getting pissed. We might as well have not been there, apart from us coming home with money in our pockets. Some songs (let's be honest, most of them) ended to total silence from the audience. Some of the girls had a dance to us but we knocked off slightly early, leaving our usual closer out.

The radio was full of the Trump debacle on the drive home. It's too awful to think about.

Europe is going to have to get behind backing Ukraine without the USA being involved. That effectively turns Europe and the UK into a battleground. If Putin gets Ukraine, then other coutries bordering it will follow and like Hitler, he will come for the UK. Once Putin knows for sure that Trump won't go with the NATO countries, he will start using nuclear weapons and then it will be a slow crawl to GAME OVER. I'm not cancelling the milk yet, but Jeez, it's just depressing.

March 1st:
The feeling of impending doom after the Trump debacle hasn't calmed down yet. The news and media is full of it. It's too awful to watch. The evening's gig was much better than last night, though not quite as well attended as I would have hoped for. We were on our last song and the village druggie kid walked in, was refused service at the bar as he looked totally spaced out. The girls who had been dancing to us all evening fled the dance floor bit of the pub and the moron was forcibly ejected and all of the impact of our last song went fzzzzzt. Oh well.

March 2nd:
A quiet day. I relaxed a lot, walked the dogs round the nearby park with Lynda to get her confidence at going out up a little bit and did quite an amount of spreadsheet work for the taxman. Recent cumulative Ebay sales have triggered the need to do a set of exactly itemised accounts for every single sale, as well as for books and the band. If you list everything exactly as it says on Bay when you finally get paid, it's no hassle. So I sat there with Excel open - I love Excel, before you ask. It absolutely fascinates me - every formula is a triumph - for a couple of hours this afternoon until I got a headache. I remain one of those stereotypical British males who can't resist filling in a form. I spent some time talking to my co-author about the BFI premiere for the re-issued Slade film. I couldn't get to either of the two screenings at the BFI that are taking place last week and this week. The evening's jam night was fun and we managed to get through a number of songs from our album, played quite decently, which cheered me up quite a bit. I got off the stage for a lot of the evening as there were other people in who could play bass. Home for 11.30pm and out went the grey bin. This amazing pop star existence, eh?

March 3rd:
I spent the day sorting a few Ebay things out, walking dogs and so on... I got sent a video from Slade's Jim Lea to do a little editing on. I got to bed at 2.30am, as I got stuck into some book work.

March 4th:
Up at nearly noon as my head was killing me. I did some book work, walked the dogs, did a bit of shopping, and got some stuff ready for putting the band's album on Spotify.

March 5th:
Up at a sensible time. Some book work. I took myself off up to the hospital on foot. Exercise is good for you - laziness is not. Let's talk about the important stuff. I'm going to restrict my blog to REAL issues in future.... Married At First Sight Australia is back on TV. One of the grooms has walked out on the most delectable lady and it's been obvious all along that he was a time waster (as well as a fool). You can quote me on that.

March 6th:
Where do the days go? March already... Apart from dog walking and watching TV, not much to report.

March 7th:
More of the same. Lynda's a bit tired out today. I did a run out to the Post Office to send some parcels from Ebay sales, Tesco for pet food and some essentials, dropped of prescriptions and finally called into Asda as a book about The Bangles book that arrived yesterday was damaged, so I returned it, unexamined. The replacement comes tomorrow. I spent a while listening to music and doing a little book work, and faffing about on the net .

March 10th:
More Inconsequentia.

The band's gigs went fairly well this weekend, though I wasn't really very much in the mood for doing them. I'm tired out. The jam night was ok. We found out that there's a music festival on in Tyldesley in May and for the second year running, we - the band who have done more to encourage and foster live music in the area for the last 9 years - haven't got on the bill at our own venue, as the landlady seemingly didn't think we'd want to do it. I had to laugh. I contacted a venue that have been trying to book us for a while and have put in a date there on the day of the music festival at a lot more than we get for doing the jam night. I am fed up of the jam night and would be more than happy to take it somewhere else or even stop doing it altogether, but I appear to be outvoted at the moment. Our full album is going on Spotify shortly.

I got a phone call during the day and had a chat about joining a band that has had some chart success years ago. I have done some recent session recording work with them. This probably means learning a lot of songs and breaking my own vow not to have a passport. God knows when we are going to fit in any activity.

I've been having fun with a couple of Ebay buyers and deliveries. But I / they seem to have sorted the issues now. I was getting a bit stressed out and ill because of the issues, which was a bit pointless. I have a sick wife and a sick dog to worry about and will stick to worrying about them instead.

Two rather nice Slade CD's arrived from Japan and South Korea this morning. I did a brisk walk to the post office to post a DVD and there was this shouty and sweary bloke in there ranting about his GP. Fabulous. I kept my head down as I queued at the counter. There are too many loonies around.

March 11th:
Up at a sensible time. Our lovely little dog Oscar seems to be on the mend after a few days of being unwell, touch wood, I went into Bolton to do a couple of things and, incredibly, on a chance visit to my local record store came across these two Japanese CD's at fantastic prices. Card out. Home.

March 13th:
Up at a sensible time. Sorted some eBay stuff out, I fought with our local pharmacy and GP surgery over missing items from Lynda's prescription. Sorted some more eBay stuff out. I am getting slightly fed up of eBay.

March 17th:
Dear Solitary Reader.... No entries for a short while. I've been a bit busy with more important things. No gig on Friday. Saturday's gig was notable for the bald village loony with his belly hanging out from under his t-shirt, running round, circling the pub at very high speed with his arms out like an aeroplane while we were playing. He decided to stop and lecture me about the lack of Marc Bolan on our PA playlist. He also grabbed my arm at one point in quite a bit of a grip while he pontificated at me and was right in my face. He was obviously a bit 'disadvantaged', so I kept it all polite. I simply said we wouldn't be playing anything else if he broke my arm. I spent the rest of the break effectively hiding from him. He kept coming up saying exactly the same things. Even when we were playing.

I started working on a new song about The Orange Menace on Sunday morning. I found a nice drum beat and jammed over that until I had a decent backing track. Sunday's jam night was ok. We have a group of younger people come down and they have started to try to take the night over a bit by asking to get up with people during sets. It throws things and some of the songs turn to crap, but it gets me off the stage, so I sit away from the stage and listen to the carnage. I want to be there less and less. I told their bass player that I had given my notice in and that he could probably have my job when I went. He beamed at me. He doesn't realise that it is mainly stunting musically and the Groundhog Day-ness of it will make him want to stop playing and go train spotting instead.

Lynda's got some sort of stomach bug. It started in the early hours of the morning and she was up very early feeling really unwell. She won't let me ring an ambulance or a doctor (bearing in mind her heart problems), so she's just going to have to wait for it to settle down. As I type, she is sleeping herself better. I was a bit sleep deprived this morning, but hey ho. I started moving some furniture round in my studio room last night. I don't know exactly what I have achieved, except for a ruined audio cable. It's mass of power and audio cables. I just ordered a replacement from Amazon, then found a suitable one that I got recently and cancelled the order. A circular series of chats with customer services at UPS and eBay.

I've spent a few days now, cutting down my social media presence. The internet is not a museum. I've already given in my notice to step back from doing jam nights next year and a few other things will go along with that. Facebook is going to be just for close friends and family only. This website will probably be reduced to just a single info page until the domain expires. I'm not going to renew my web hosting when it comes up again next year, so the Slade site and forum will go. I will keep the band domain for another year, all depending on if we are still working then, of course.

MAFS has already lost its most stupid man and now its most ignorant and self-possessed one has gone. The way he tried to manipulate people (including her) into thinking that she was in any way to blame for his disinterest was pretty bad. Katie was lovely.

Maybe not his type, but to be honest who would be??? He had no excuse for his utterly shabby treatment of her.

March 18th:
Lynda seems to be in better shape than yesterday, but she is still having trouble with the idea of eating. I have put off leaving the house at all until tomorrow. I finished off the new song today.

March 21st:
It seems to be the current fashionable thing to do, to pare down websites to the bare minimum and to cut out the excess fat. While I was in the process of doing some trimming, I happened across my ISP's webstats page, which I haven't actually looked at for a few years.

It seems this page is getting a lot of views. I have no idea at all why. I can see to a degree which IP addresses are visiting which pages on the site in some detail and how many times. A couple of the individual IP addresses are not much of a surprise. The Slade site is attracting a fair amount of traffic, as is the forum.  I'm glad to see that my prostate cancer information page is getting some views and I really do hope that it's helping and reassuring some people. That's what it's there for.

Kicking Melica out of the process on The Apprentice for trying to voice her opinion on how a task was going That's mistaking involvement for disruptiveness. Sir Alan Sugar's lost quite a bit of his judgement since the time back in the day when Lynda knew him.

March 22nd:
Our gig in the evening was at a venue that I have only given two dates to this year. I was reminded why. A lot of the guys in there were pretty much lunkheads and most of the women were identikit barbies with bad eyebrows, who spent most of their time running round from room to room taking selfies. Our music meant little or nothing to them. It was definitely one for the money.

March 23rd:
Our jam night was the usual. Some of it I enjoyed, some of it I loved, some of it I hated. I'm hating a bit too much of it recently. Soon be April...

March 25th:
Into Bolton during the day to do a couple of things. I'm quite hopeful of tracking a couple of CD's down that I have been chasing.

March 26th:
I recently got roped into thinking about a top 40 for XTC. Here's my list. My #1 was voted to #160 by everyone else, because it only appeared as a download single with a box set and is therefore quite an obscure track to most.. I'm not wrong.

March 28th:
I'm reading a nicely-detailed officially approved biography of The Bangles. I love the Bangles.

Bands... Dreadful things, hotbeds of jealousy and such. In the case of The Bangles, one of the band got picked up on by press and TV, so the others constantly obsessed over who had the most time in the spotlight, who got most seconds onscreen, who wrote or sang the songs, etc. The others then all seem to have insisted on making each other as miserable as possible, hating their biggest hit, instead of simply celebrating their success and being thankful that they actually had something working in their favour.

Bands get people in for what they can do and then it always seems to be the case that the person who is brought in is then resented because they get some attention for what they do. It's childish and sad that people fell out with someone who the record company felt had a more commercial-sounding voice, or who maybe looked better at the front of the band, because they felt they were then unfairly overlooked or pushed into the background.

I used to be in a band where I did the website (being the only one who understood electricity and computers) and the utterly OCD drummer counted everyone's images and then frequently reported loudly back to me, about various things like the sizes of them and which order they were in. In the end I snapped and took it down to one photo each. Later on, I did something even better, namely reducing the number of drummers and guitarists in that band that I was working with to zero.

March 31st:
No gig Friday. All good. My son came round on Saturday and came to our evening's gig, which was nice. I did the tetris thing and managed to get three of us plus my gear in the car. Off we went to our gig in Horwich. We brought the crowd in the main. A good job, too. There was some tension when one of the songs fell apart. Fortunately not my fault. Sunday we went to my daughter's house in the morning and later on it was the jam night. Business as usual. Some songs went for the usual crap because of people not knowing what they are doing. There were some strange things happening on stage. When people can't play a 12 bar, but insisting that they get up and play - that's just weird. I was glad to get out of the venue this evening. I'm really looking forward to the end of June when I get three consecutive jam nights off. I have tickets for a gig on the 22nd and had made the band not available for the next two weeks. I just don't want to do the jam night if I can get out of it.

I had a chat with the drummer out of the other band that I am going to be playing with about some of the cover material that has been chosen. I've not been consulted at all about those choice of songs, as they had been working on them before I was asked. I am loath to venture any opinion to the guy who asked me to join, as if I do, I will probably end up withdrawing from the project. And we haven't even rehearsed yet. I have said I don't want a microphone in front of me.

On Thursday of this week I am having a songwriting day with Graham.

Up at about 10.15am. I got to bed at around 3am. I got stuck into adding some stuff to a book. Once I put something on a page, it moves things on the following pages. We are taking THE NOIZE out of print in late June until the third and final edition arrives in December. It's currently at about 350 pages.

The April Foolery.

April 1st:
I woke up with an idea for a re-work of one of our Slade books and had a quick chat to Chris about it. It seems like a goer and will make the book a lot more complete. I also finally managed to sort out an order for two CD's that I had been trying to track down to complete a set. I caught the bus into Bolton and met my former workmates Mike Sreve and Mark at lunchtime. They had gone out to lunch a bit early and had neglected to tell me, so I had waited outside their office for them for a few minutes. I got home as quickly as I could after concluding all of the business in town.

April 2nd:
I went through part of the book re-work 'til about just after 2am. I can see the content increasing really well and the page count is now not the burning issue that it was. I took Lynda to our GP surgery mid-morning and we walked the dogs later on.

April 5th:
Graham came round on Thursday and we managed to get my music down on demo recordings to two of his lyrics. I have also been listening to / playing along with the song material that was selected for the other band project. Some of the original band's song arrangements are a bit complicated, but I have written them out. It's just a case of getting them into my head. At least I don't have to sing any of those songs. I have played music that I don't particularly like that much before. It's all about having the self discipline to just stick in and play it, regardless. There are a couple of songs on the list of covers that I normally sing. Hopefully I won't be expected to sing those as they have officially announced the new singer, but not me. Things appear to be moving at a glacial pace, but now there's a complete band, that pace should step up. Apart from the inevitable jam night, it's a weekend off for the band.

April 7th:
Saturday night saw Lynda and I go to watch the first set by a friend's band. Not bad at all. Nice to hear people sticking in and learning the songs to play them accurately and sounding right. Last night's jam night was 'more of the usual'. Stage-hogging (I heard some people complaining about one act who was doing about 7 songs, meaning some people missed out on playing) and insisting on getting up and playing stuff that they can't really play. A little effort to learn what you're going to get up and do might be good. That's what YouTube is for, kids, not just for your porn and clapped out 70's TV crap. All I watch on Youtube these days is guitar repair stuff.

I spoke with my co-conspirator about the remit and reach of our side project - what availability we actually have, the songs we will be doing, what we actually intend to do with it. Then we have to consider the logistics of touring (hiring gear etc). Whether I need to apply for a passport yet or not. There are connections for some decent placings on tours and some theatre gigs, but there are also some issues. On Thursday we will see if it really hangs together musically.

I have been talking at length to one of our venues who have recently had a change of management. They insist on the band using a system called C247 for invoicing and payments.  The old management tried to get us to use it. That was a dog's breakfast. I registered and supplied all the ID and tax info as requested and it never ever worked for me and the venue ended up paying us cash on the night. That's not an option now, so if the venue can't get this sorted, they will lose 90% of their bands. The upshot of the day's conversations is that I will send the pub invoices and they will get us paid.

I've noticed that The Bootleg Beatles are in Manchester on Sept 7th (a Sunday). I've just booked a ticket for that.
Graham was talking about also taking time off when I am off at the end of June and getting the jam night covered for 3 weeks.

Saddened to hear that we have lost Blondie's Clem Burke. A consumate musician taken too soon by cancer.

April 8th:
A flurry of sudden activity on the additional music front. I have been provided with the dots for songs I have already worked out, 4 more songs on mp3 that I have not been told we were doing - too late for this Thursday - and (finally) an address to go to on Thursday. I went into Bolton and on the way back to the car park, I ran into a friend who invited me to do some gigs with him. I sort of went a bit pale at the thought of so many more songs to think about for a very very occasional gig and invited him to call round and chat to me about it.

April 9th:
Happy birthday to my son.

On this day in 1979, I started work for DWP (or the DHSS as it was back then). I started work as a Clerical Assistant working on the National Insurance Contributions team. I later worked on Sickness Benefits and Pensions, then the brand-new benefit Income Support. I wasn't paying people then, I was linking and filing post in casepapers. Later on, I worked on Computer Support and finally on Jobseekers Allowance and finished my career working on the brand-new Universal Credit. It has been erroneously reported by an utter imbecile that I was a Fraud officer, specialising in taking steps off my own bat to deprive single parents of their money and to starve their babies. That's utter slanderous garbage. I never spent a single hour working on the Fraud team. I didn't even work in the correct grade for the job. The accuracy teams are probably still finding emergency payments that I made to people who had been crying on the phones to me, whose suspensions I had lifted in the run up to my leaving. But never let the truth get in the way of some internet nutjob's character assassination.

I left DWP in October 2015 after thirty-seven and a half years, partially because as a Trade Union Rep I was a management target, walking around with a hypothetical bullseye on my back. After having half of my thyroid gland removed and having been given strict recovery conditions, my immediate line manager tried to discipline me, on my return to work, for following the Doctor's instructions, saying that the DWP guidance that actually protected me 'was for me, not her'. That guidance vertainly was 'for me' as it stated quite clearly that I WAS covered, but she was determined to get me disciplined under Managing Attendance. Probably at the insistent bidding of her HEO, who once distinguished herself at a staff gathering by saying it was 'not her job to speak to staff', when asked to do so by the site manager. Once I had won that particularly simple-to-win battle, I checked out what my pension position was and gave 6 months notice to quit and to take my pension early. I took a hit on my future income and left my job, entirely because of one woman's gross stupidity. After I put my notice in, they totally left me alone. She was later rewarded with a promotion. I think she's still using crayons and plastic cutlery.

There's always a plus: Leaving DWP inadvertently saved my life, as Lynda spotted the tell-tale signs of my prostate cancer and urged me to get myself checked out.

I had so many songs listed to learn for tomorrow's rehearsal that when I was sent even more song titles to look at I wigged out a bit and decided to just go out for a while riding on some buses, trains and trams instead for a couple of hours. A quiet evening in. Involving NO musical instruments.

April 10th:
I rehearsed with the other band project today. Annoyingly, the batteries on my Fender Precision Deluxe bass died (after I had been using it yesterday to record, which I found out totally unexpectedly on plugging it in), but at least the active bass had a 'switch to passive' option, so I could carry on, once I had worked out what it was that had actually happened. An auspicious and embarrassing start. I had put in a hell of a lot of prep work for the project, maybe too much, as the list of covers I had sat down and worked out were not even touched. It went better than I expected, was a very comfortable gathering, and some related business hassles were discussed and seem to be partly resolved. There are a couple of thingsto resolve, but they can be discussed later on. It's just a case of when we can get together again, now, as we all have demands on our time.

April 11th:
A lovely sunny warm day. My old mate Tony turned up to buy a Boss tuner pedal from me in the morning. Off to Tesco to buy a pair of new batteries for my bass, which is now 100% again. It takes two batteries as it runs on an 18v circuit. Now working perfectly. Dogs walked. I spent some time chopping some web content and some Ebay admin. I was quite tired in the afternoon.

April 12th:
The band played a decent enough gig at the Hindley Arms.

April 13th:
People do send me some rubbish. It has come to my attention that my writing (above) about my DWP career history is being disputed by someone who more than a bit sad and pathetic who seems to take issue with everything I say, do, or write. He is quoting the late Dave Graham (a Slade fan of some repute and renown, sadly deceased) as saying that I had talked to him about my illustrious career on a DWP Fraud team. I was not employed in the correct grade to work as a Fraud Officer and so I never did. I don't think I ever spoke to Dave Graham in any great detail about my Civil Service career. I was working on Computer Support at the time when I did speak to him and may have mentioned that. I have not said anything at all about Dave Graham, despite him misrepresenting his actual conversation with me. The internet nutjob I was actually referring to lives in Birmingham.

The assertion that an Admin Officer cannot make a decision to lift a suspension on a UC claim is totally incorrect. The majority of AO grade staff do it all day every day when they are tasked to do so, or upon accepting suitable evidence that a claim can be restarted. It is regarded as a simple decision and is a normal part and parcel of the job. It's merely a case of ticking a box on a screen in the payment system, putting a note in the case notes to cover it (eg, signing not missed, or something similar - and the claimant's word CAN be accepted) and then putting the case back into payment and sorting a same day bank transfer. This can be done after speaking to a Work Coach, or simply by accepting a claimant's word about what has happened. Not everything goes to a EO grade Decision Maker. They get the far more complex decision case work and an Admin Officer can still accept regular evidence to restart a claim. I trust that this clears matters up. I don't get it... people who haven't had a job in centuries spouting off at about the working lives of other people that they have no actual clue about...  I'm just baffled.

The evening was the jam night. I managed to spend an amount of time offstage again, as the kids seem to want to get up and play with everyone. I sat around bored witless by the goings on and was wishing that I was at home. Our guitarist is going to get some helpers in for the jam nights that I am not doing at the end of June.

Like most of the world, I have been so bored that I have fallen prey to chatGPT's AI silliness. It actually looks like me to a degree. Weird. On sale at shows, a limited edition for certain geographically removed halfwits to stick pins in.

Book review: Flowers In The Rain: The Untold Story of The Move by Jim McCarthy

April 15th:
I stayed in bed all morning as I have an awful cold. My meet at lunchtime with Mike got cancelled as we are both unwell. I rang the dentists and moved my appointments that were booked with them for later on this week. I'm trying to stop my throat from giving up so we can play on Friday.

April 16th:

So.... Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have fired Zak Starkey from The Who after this recent performance.....

I find it absolutely staggering that some of my favourite musicians could go out and play like that, being so badly under-rehearsed, and then turn round and blame the drummer for it all. To be honest, Roger Daltrey's voice stopped being great years ago and Pete Townshend did very well to stand through that show, following his recent complete knee replacement surgery. He soldiered bravely on through the pain, but his best years as a guitarist have also long gone. If I were them, I would have taken the band back into a rehearsal room for a week or two and have looked honestly at what, if anything, is lacking. 'Go To The Mirror Boy' - to quote Pete Townshend. It really pains me to say that The Who are nothing like they used to be at all.

A man's got to know his limitations.
Lesser mortals like myself have set sensible end dates. Quit while you're ahead, I always say.

Still full of a cold. I'm told I have offended one of our jam night regulars by calling him 'listenable' on a poster image. That was his one word 'review' of our album. I have sent a message apologising. That appears to have resolved the issue. I am speaking with the person concerned.

April 17th:
One of the things that's part and parcel being a musician is all of the chat and socialising that goes with it, week-in week out. I will talk to anyone, but as some of you will know, since COVID kicked off, it has become plain that, having dealt with cancer and now being blessed with the gift of little or no immune system and having a wife who is classed as rather vulnerable (it's no joke taking her to A&E), I have tended to keep myself to myself a bit, especially at packed jam nights. This may probably make me look aloof and stand-offish, but throat infections etc lead to cancelled gigs and I have a 'show must go on' ethic.

It's not you. It's me.
Unless of course, it's you.

April 18th:

April 19th:
I woke up very early, went to the bathroom and then back to bed until almost noon. I did a bit of eBay stuff then went back to bed. I'm utterly wiped out after last night's gig in Todmorden. Graham rang me because he'd left his hat there at the back of the stage. We do an idiot check before we leave and Graham didn't remember to pick up his hat. For some reason, he asked me for the venue phone number - which I got for him. Our youngest cat, Baby, decided to go into our top bedroom, which has a net barrier on the door to keep the pets outside (so if anyone with allergies stays, it's a pet-free area). He got under the net three times and howled for attention.

Oh yes, and in other news, Zak is now still in The Who.

April 21st:
The jam night last night went pretty much as usual. I sat with some friends for a large part of the jam for a change, because I wasn't required onstage.

I was woken up quite early this morning (at the ungodly hour of 8am) by Lynda, asking me to put our cardboard bin out, as she couldn't manage it. I missed it out last night. I then went back to bed as I was feeling decidedly unwell - this cold is hanging on and doing its worst. I woke up a few times during the morning and gave up each time and went back to sleep. It was a little bit after noon when I finally came downstairs. Still feeling rough. I gave it a short while, then I unloaded my gear from  the car.

I have made the executive decision not to go to the Flame premiere in London next month, simply because of the cost involved and because I have been absolutely lazy and have done nothing at all about booking the necessary rail transport. Hotels are really expensive down there and then you have to travel to the venue and back. It's just not really worth the expense. The advance train fares to London and back have also crept up. I have been (last week) asked about doing a Northern event at a cinema in Liverpool the next day and I am currently also a bit unsure about that. I don't have a stock of our Slade In Flame At 50 book - I probably wouldn't get them in time if I ordered them now, either - and I just don't want to lay out money on something that probably will not sell on the day, leaving me stuck with a bunch of surplus copies. It's sold quite well through Amazon, so it's probable that a lot of fans have it.

An evening of TV. We are getting towards the end of The Following. The main villain in the story was executed in the episode that we just watched. The death penalty -  I can only think of a couple of people that I have ever met that I can say for sure deserve to die. One occasionally threatens to die, but fails. I wish he'd just stop farting around and get on with it. I will be on the train with a mate to go to the nearest pub to fill up and then piss on his grave.

April 24th:
Lo and behold, the invite to the Flame premiere came this morning from the British Film Institute. We had been given the word that we'd definitely be invited, but were wary of booking rail and hotels without the invite. So it has dragged on for the last couple of months with us waiting to hear. It has all been done on a very last minute basis by them and it was with a heavy heart that I passed on the opportunity to attend. Plus, I have seen Flame so many times now....

April 25th:
On this day 9 years ago (April 25th 2016), I was up and ready to set off for The Christie Hospital in Manchester at 6am. There was no traffic, so I was there by 6.30am and was sat in a dark restaurant area, alone with my dark thoughts until 7am until things started to open up.

I checked in at the admissions Department and went through a list of questions that had been covered in my pre-op meeting a few days before. I was also given one of those awful gowns that your backside hangs out of to wear and a pillow to hold onto. The staff could obviously see that I was in some sort of anxiety state and sat one of the porters with me, to make sure I didn't bolt off at speed down Wilmslow Road with one of their pillows and my backside hanging out of the gown.

At about 10am, I was put on a trolley and wheeled into the operating theatre. They checked my identity was correct and stuck a canulla in my arm. I waited for the countdown. They merely said 'let's get started'.
I woke up about 8 hours later, on a ward, with the throat from hell and I was having trouble swallowing, because I'd had a pipe down my throat. I was flat on my back and really uncomfortable. I soon managed to get the attention of a nurse and she came over and slowly raised the top end of the bed and sat me up a little.

Everything in my mid-section that had been moved aside during my surgery then slid back into place. I felt like a sliding block puzzle and I never want to feel anything like that ever again. I managed to make a couple of calls to tell my closest family that I wasn't dead.

I didn't try walking immediately. I had a set of bandages around my swollen middle (they pump gas in to inflate the area to give them more room) and 5 new holes had been made in me that I didn't have before. One of them had a tube coming out of it to drain stuff off into a bag. I also had a catheter inserted.

My throat was utterly ragged after the pipe had been taken out and I was in such discomfort in the middle of the night to have an X-Ray. I was fed with rocket lollies to soothe my throat.

It would be the next day when I was asked to try walking. I just slowly shambled around, feeling quite pathetic. Due to some complications evident after my surgery, I stayed in for nearly two weeks instead of the usual two days.

Eating was an adventure. I was starving, had a painful throat and was practically terrified of eating anything. That wore off. More awkward was that the major surgery I had had had switched my bowel off. It started to recover after about 10 days.

The surgery was generally a success, though the cancer that had cost me my prostate gland decided to flare up again in the fat that surrounds where my prostate gland was and I had a course of hormone treatment then 20 doses of radiotherapy in March 2018 at the Christie in Salford.

My PSA levels stayed low for a good while, but in 2023 I ended up having another course - this time of targeted stereotactic ablative radiotherapy at the Christie in Manchester. The cancer had decided to move to a lymph node in my groin and my levels had started to rise worryingly. That was only 5 sessions and I was left exhausted by them.

9 years after my operation, thanks to The Christie, I'm still here. I get my blood checked every 6 months to see if anything at all is amiss. At the moment, all seems good, but I don't want to jinx anything by getting overconfident.

I have to thank Lynda for making me go get checked out, because she spotted that I went to the loo a lot. I put it down to drinking too much coffee. She started me off on the process that saved my life.

I also have to thank my surgeon Mr Lau for his wonderful work and the extremely kind and patient staff who have looked after me throughout. Without them, I probably wouldn't be here now.

I have told my story on my website at http://www.crazeeworld.plus.com/ian/cancer/index.htm and, as I always do on this day every year, I urge men of a certain age to go get themselves checked out if they think anything at all is wrong. It's a quick blood test and it can save your life.

April 27th:
My ears are not behaving this morning. Last night was one of those gigs where our guitarist decided that his amp had to be painfully louder than everything else. I tend to carefully pick my battles with him, so I just put some earplugs in. I don't get on with earplugs, as I can hardly hear myself sing, so it affects the vocal balance and distracts me. We went down really well and played a couple of songs we don't usually touch as requests. I had a talk about the side band project and it was suggested that if I'm unhappy about various things that are going on, that I don't do it. I was hoping that that would take over from the band next year, as personality issues in the band are just getting me down.

With some gratefully recieved help from another band, I seem to have finally sorted this C247 payment system mystery out, so it looks like our gigs in Whalley will still be on.

I sold a Tascam recording unit this morning. I wasn't using it (it's never been used, so it was just sitting there). A Boss distortion pedal went to a new home tonight.

Listening to Paper Doll, the new album from Samantha Fish. It's really good. My CD (with bonus track) should land tomorrow.

April 29th:
Yup, the Samantha Fish Paper Doll album is a cracker.

April 30th:
CUSTOMER SERVICE OFFICIALLY PRONOUNCED DEAD.
I'm the guy who walked out of a city centre Indian cafe (I wouldn't call it a restaurant) in Manchester today, after waiting five minutes second in the queue, while the chap serving had a very very long conversation with a woman who was before me. I counted to ten and walked out and he only noticed that I was there when I was leaving. I didn't want to interrupt his conversation for something so trivial as food. I got a sandwich from Sainsburys.

I was at a loose end today and decided to travel from Bolton into Manchester, eat at This & That and do a couple of guitar shops. Oh well, never mind.

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