Quarry St. kids in leather take Hamburg

Creole was sharp but his guitar was acoustic, go Johnny go, use your electric

A proper fairy tale

Although Elvis did meet The Beatles (in August 1965, many years after John was in Hamburg), this photograph is a fake. But it makes you smile doesn't it? Talking about fake photographs, a friend of mine is currently researching the Cotttingley Fairies: now that's an enchanting story. But not content with just turning it into a three minute folk song, PP Woodlands has plans to to take a full blown musical production of 'Away with the Fairies' to the West End later this year. I'm there.

What did you do today?

So far, so Saturday: got up around seven, put the kettle on and made a brew. Checked my email, read a couple of chapters of my book and then took a cup of tea to the lady of the house. Had a quick shower and dressed before going down the town to fetch the paper. Came back, fed the cat, did a couple of crossword clues and then decided to bake some bread.

Oh, then I nipped down to the crossroads and sold my soul to the devil.

With thanks to Phil Friend, one of the best photographers in the business

Lundy

Lundy. You know the name from the Shipping Forecast (Lundy, Fastnet, variable 4 becoming cyclonic), but you probably haven't a clue where it is. If you had to stick a pin in a map you'd probably pitch it somewhere off the North East coast of Scotland heading for Norway.
It's a actually a tiny island in the Bristol Channel. With a population of only 28 you'd just about be able to man up two teams for a game of footie, with a ref, two linesmen, a fourth official and one man and a dog to watch. And don't forget the puffins: the literal translation of Lundy is Puffin Island. As commemorated by their coins and stamps. At the turn of the millennium the island's once enormous puffin population had been thinned down to just two breeding pairs. Now, thanks to island warden Phil Friend, who helped oversee the removal of the brown rat population from Lundy, that number has increased ten fold in ten years. Phil couldn't be happier - 'When I first came here you'd be lucky to see a single Puffin. Now they're everywhere.' His glamorous assistant, Jane, however, is not so sure - 'I don't know where they all come from. You turn your back for a minute and another one appears. It was never like this when we lived in Leeds.'

Brid

A big thank you to David Swann, Phil Friend, Martin Heaton, Robin Bunton, Martin & Penny Robertson and all the other great musicians who helped to make yesterday's Bridlington Old Town Festival such a great success. We had a fabulous little sound stage and PA and were made to feel really welcome by the organisers, town folk and visitors alike.

Please be assured I don't normally play wearing sunglasses, but yesterday was the time and the place.

A special thank you to Paula Ryan for her kind words.

Well starred and signed

PP Woodlands is one of Leeds' finest exports. His songs combine a turn of phrase rooted in West Yorkshire with tunes that get under your skin and stay there. His recorded output, however, was limited to a debut platter from 1971 that should have kept him in hookers and gin without ever picking up a guitar again (Sugarman, anybody?) and a cassette only live album made three years later: Live at The Catweazle caught Woodlands at the peak of his powers. Recorded in front of no more than 100 people, you can hear the effect his songs had on a crowd who knew they were in the presence of a legend. Unfortunately I can no longer play the recording on my trusty Teac tape deck - the ferrous oxide has practically disintegrated.

Instead, I've paid homage to the great man and recorded a lo-fi version of the third track on the album. It's called Love Will and is obviously written about somebody very special in his life.

Leeds, 1972

Dave Mackay: not a big fan of Billy Bremner

Living in Leeds in 1972

If you didn't like Billy Bremner

There wasn't a lot to do

© John Medd 2014

With apologies to anyone out there who really did live in Leeds in 1972; not least my two favourite wessies, Phil and his glamorous assistant Jane. Anyway here's my rough and ready homage to the city that brought you Ernie Wise, Keith Waterhouse and Marks and Spencer. And contrary to repeated taunts in the 1970s, I'm assured it's very clean.

John Medd: Leeds, 1972

Ginger

Tom was on hand at The Medd Gallery yesterday overseeing the hanging of his picture. As the title of Sonia Rollo's 'Lady Marmalade' etching would indicate, it's not actually him. But he does do that stretchy thing every morning when he wakes up.

Anyone wondering, like we were in the pub last night, just how many more ginger toms there are compared to their female counterparts - here's the answer and the science behind it.

We're going to see Martin Taylor next week at The Early Music Centre in York. We've seen him numerous times - he made my 50 odd gigs recently. Here he is performing Ginger with fellow stalwart Martin Simpson.





A big thank you to Phil Friend - Honorary Curator at The Medd Gallery.

Understudies

We've all walked across that zebra crossing in North London and recreated The Beatles' most iconic of album covers. But when was the last time you tried aping a Coen brothers movie poster?

Owning a ginger cat and living opposite a bearded folk singer, the idea for this photo shoot practically wrote itself.

Phil and Tom, everyone. Phil's the one with two legs.

                                                       

Pop-up

Beguiling cop, slightly menacing cop

Pop-up restaurants may be nothing new in London, but they are around here. We received a heavily disguised email earlier this week which indicated that a couple of local foodies were indeed 'popping-up' soon. A subsequent text arrived giving us a little under twenty four hours notice to slot it in our diaries, set the Sat-Nav and make sure we could acquiesce to their quirky dress code.

So on Friday night, after battling against unusually heavy traffic, we arrived in the nick of time at the covert eatery where we were greeted by, it appeared to me, the shopkeeper from Mr. Benn; we never did find out his name but he's the sort of person who would probably seek you out rather than the other way around; I was told, in no uncertain terms, that details of our evening were not to be broadcast to all and sundry. Which is why I'm under strict instructions not to divulge anything that could identify where we were - so the menu and wine list, I'm afraid, amazing as they both were, have to remain a closely guarded secret. I know, it's crazy isn't it? But it was that sort of night.

However, our bearded friend didn't say anything about the music that was playing while we devoured course after course. I can, therefore, tell you that we listened to a lot of this:

Ramblin' Man

Welcome to the Heffer Dome

Left to my own devices, and home alone, my default position is invariably sitting in a favourite chair with a glass of something and reading a book with a cat on my knee. But when the mood takes me I love to walk. Into the great wide open. And living where I do, the great wide open is nearer than it’s ever been.

On Saturday the Lady of the house went on a 48 hour smash and grab raid in search of shoes and handbags. I went rambling. And  I was joined by two wingmen. Well, one of them was a wingman – he sported a black beard and seemed to instinctively know where he was going. She was a vision in red ankle socks.

We rambled up hill and we rambled down dale. The views were stunning and the weather held. We swapped stories, cups of tea and chocolate bars. And we saw some cows, 12 to be precise. It was a figure of eight route with more follies, monuments and gargoyles than you could shake a shitty stick at.

Three hours later and we repaired to a hostelry for a well earned flagon of frothing ale. Note to self: I must do this more often.

Sky Ground

A lot of column inches been given over to the highly influential San Francisco music scene of the late 60s and early 70s. Bands like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane rode a psychedelic wave that would transport them seamlessly from one decade into the next. Others struggled: Fifty Foot Hose and The Chocolate Watch Band might have been tearing up trees in the Fillmore district at the same time as Jerry Garcia, but ran out of gas before they could show their full potential. Likewise the rather aptly named Sky Ground (left) could regularly be seen on the bill at The Bear's Lair, Cinnamon A-Go-Go, Mandrake's and Sugar Hill. Fronted by Phil 'Parsley' Woodlands (originally from Leeds by all accounts) and Berkeley resident Dill Dilbert they never found an audience outside of the Bay Area and sadly folded in 1973. Woodlands and Dilbert did, however, record an EP in the back of a Cantonese restaurant on the corner of Mission & Third a mere two weeks before they disbanded: One Tree was pressed on blue vinyl in a limited run of only 250 - one of the reasons why copies often exchange hands for hundreds of dollars. That and the fact that Carlos Santana plays on it.

Down at the doctors

'The guitar doctor will see you now Mr. Medd.' I couldn't make out the glamorous assistant's name badge, but then again, I was distracted by her beguiling smile. She told me to go up: three flights of stairs later and I found myself catching my breath on the threshold of what can only be described as a quite magical six-string emporium: guitars hanging on every square inch of wall space; some signed by his clients - I'm sure I saw Clapton's spider-like scrawl on the headstock of a '57 Strat.

'Take a seat John. I can call you John, can't I? Now, what appears to be the problem?' I pointed to my guitar case, whereupon the Doc slowly took my prized possession out of its cocoon. 'Mmm' he said, barely disguising his disdain, 'I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.'  'I beg your pardon?' was all I could come back at him with.  'Your local priest should have read this...this instrument its last rites long ago.' I was crestfallen. 'But can you save her? She's all I've got.' I was desperate and he knew it. ' I'll try. I can't make any promises, but I'll try.'

I'm not at liberty to divulge what happened over the course of the next couple of hours, suffice it to say that copious amounts of lemon oil were used together with a Mr. Sheen type substance, phosphor bronze strings and, strangely, some winceyette pyjama off cuts. It was like watching Woody being fixed in Toy Story 2. I was nearly falling asleep when, a couple of minutes shy of midnight, my guitar almost sprang off the operating table like an instrument half its age. Like I say, what happened in that room stays in that room. No doubt the good doctor would forget about me the minute I was ushered off the premises. But I'll never forget him. Or his entrancing assistant.

Kings & Queens

'So what's this new song all about then?' my friend Phil says as we walk down to the acoustic jam. 'Kings & Queens? Sounds like a homage to The King's Head and Queen's Arms in Leeds.' Spoken like a true Wessie.

No, I've not written a song about public houses; in Leeds, or anywhere else for that matter. But I may have breached my own code about crossing over into (*looks over shoulder*) political songwriting. I say may: it'll be on the new EP later in the year. Tell me what you think then. Bloody hell, get me with my new EP. I'm still banging the drum for Pickering Place (named after London's smallest square, since you ask). Oh, and I'll be playing it in its entirety at The Kirk Theatre with my good friends David Swann and Frozen Gin.

Kings and Queens will line their pockets

The jokers call the shots

We're fighting for our pride here

It's all that we have got

All that we have got

© John Medd 2013

Friends

You can say what you like about this Blog (and many do) but I try and keep personal issues on the other side of the office door when I write it and, to that end, it's not what you'd call a Dear Diary; obviously it's got my fingerprints all over it (as you'd expect) but I've never gone down the road of logging every bowel movement as some people out there are prone to doing. My friends will often get mentioned here - sometimes by name, sometimes not - and, for the most part, I write nice things about them.

Some friends are like stray cats: they come to us and, if they like what they see, they'll stay. Others just come round for a square meal and disappear, never to be seen again. Since our move last November we've befriended some real Friends: they moved in over the road on the same day as us. Phil is a great songwriter and laughs like Basil Brush and Jane makes Mary Berry's cakes look like roadkill. And she's got a most beguiling smile. I really hope they like it here and stay a while.