Re: John Martyn

[Philip Rush <philip_rush@ye...fsnet.co.uk>]

Dear Aviators

The thing is, when the Blue Aeroplanes released some new material, a lot of us said, oh, we don't like that, we prefer the older stuff.

So, we want new stuff, but, apparently, only as long as it's just like the old stuff.  So we might be better off getting a new set of hi-fi speakers and just listening to the old stuff again.  (actually, I did; got an unexpected bonus at work just in time for my birthday and bought a pair of somethings from that posh shop down Park Street.  Don't be jealous:  this has never happened to me before.)

Maybe we'd like some new stuff which is good but quite different from the old stuff.  But why should we moan if Gerard doesn't produce that?  Surely if we want new stuff which we'll grow to like which doesn't sound like the old stuff, we don't need to bother with The Blue Aeroplanes at all:  we can just buy a Sigur-Ros album or get The Shins' new one posted to us from Canada.

So, maybe we want new stuff which sounds like the old stuff only in a slightly new way?

I think, and I wonder if you're listening Gerard, I'd rather hear new stuff I don't like than no new stuff at all.

So hurrah for Cavaliers and Record Player!  And please get a fan-club (that's what we are though we're terribly grown-up and sophisticated about it), a fan-club-only release out to trouble the waters, as it were.  See where to go from here ... 

Everyone liked the solo stuff with the guitarist which supported the Lit release.  More, please. (As they say on the letters page of the Radio Times.)

And I, for one, would like a book of poems, and an essay on the influence of the Auden generation on rock music.  And a book of chords.  And a glossy pin-up calendar with half-naked Polish dancers (you know the scene) and instructions about how to dance like a helicopter.

This year, by the way, it's Jura single malt.

Philip the Fifth

(I'm sticking with Fifth for a while)