A walk in the park

Walking through St. James's Park, one of London's eight Royal Parks, is never not an experience to savour. After the Saturday afternoon jostle thru Covent Garden and Piccadilly Circus, this most tranquil of gardens provided the necessary counterpoint to the hot and humid trek that had begun some 15,000+ steps earlier after a boozy lunch in King's Cross. And to have a local Sherpa on hand as our guide (he knows London boozers even better than me), we then, very conveniently, landed on a very exclusive subterranean cocktail bar on the far side of The Mall. Located beneath Café Francois in SW1 I think I can sum up Franks in eight words - they certainly know how to make a negroni. Thank you to David & Lisa and James & Natalie (and, of course, Jenny) for a beautiful day.

Up the junction (box) #2

After my initial post on this most bodacious genre of street art I'd like to post some of the photos you've been sending me. This is turning into the best game of i-SPY ever!

Harry Harrington Harris (left), who supports Leeds Utd. for his sins, got in touch: ''Here's one for you, John - Elland Road in Leeds where it all started. Here's a link to the artist, Burley Banksy.'' Thanks, Harry. Yep, Leeds is where I first became aware of the phenomenon.

Adam in Manchester: ''Two junction boxes in Chorlton, one in Sale with a cat (tying in nicely with August's PC theme) and a junction box in Brussels.'' Thanks, Adam.

Tim asks: ''Does a substation count? (Asking for a friend 😉) - Gdansk, Covent Garden, Berlin and finally a lovely piece outside the Vat & Fiddle in Nottingham. I had heard Leeds is renowned for these. Think the same artist does a lot of them. There is a strange structure in Stevenson Square Manchester that’s constantly updated but I can’t confirm whether there is any junction box involvement. Love it when mundane things, hoardings round derelict buildings etc. are covered with art.''

Tim goes on: ''A brace from my street art pics. Hiding in plain sight in Sheffield - Now Then. And Tower Hamlets. I'm now on the look out for new ones!'' It wasn't until I put your Sheffield pic side by side with the one I took, Tim, earlier in the year (above) I realised that if I'd just stood a tad to the right the Now Then on the junction box would have lined up with the Now Then on the wall!

Pete Zab also spotted the one in Nottingham: ''Not sure if it's still there, John.'' Judging by Tim's pic I'd say it was, Pete. 

And finally, Ernie's been to Athens mixing business with pleasure. And, fair play to him, he's found that the Greeks also like to tart up their boxes. ''That's yer lot'' said Ernie, ''It's 37 degrees, I'm going for a lie down.'' You do right, Ernie. Thank you.

And so it's my assumption that these painted junction boxes are everywhere; many, as my good friend Tim alludes to, are hidden in plain sight. If you do happen to see any on yer travels please do send them to me. What's the betting we can't get a third instalment out of this...

Bittersweet

When Richard Ashcroft wrote the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony in 1997 he knew he was skating on thin ice; using an uncleared string loop sampled from Andrew Loog Oldham's orchestral version of the Rolling Stones' The Last Time, Ashcroft ended up ceding all royalties from the song to Mick Jagger & Keith Richards thanks to a writ served on him by the Stones' former manager Allen Klein (Klein's company AABKVO Music owned the publishing rights). Ashcroft effectively waived goodbye to an estimated $5M. Ouch.

But unlike the George Harrison My Sweet Lord/He's So Fine saga, this chapter of Rock & Roll Plagiarism has a happy ending. In 2019 Ashcroft's management reached out to Jody Klein at ABKCO (his father had died in 2009) and appealed to his better nature to right this injustice. Klein in turn contacted Mick 'n' Keef who magnanimously relinquished their song writing credits with immediate effect. Relations had warmed somewhat the previous year when the Stones had asked Ashcroft to open for them on their latest world jaunt.  Ashcroft then finally started to see the royalties for what is considered by many to be one of the defining songs of the late 20th. century.

The Andrew Oldham Orchestra - The Last Time (From The Rolling Stones Songbook) (1966)  

Interestingly, almost 50 years later, Andrew Oldham revisited the scene of the crime releasing The Rolling Stones Songbook and Friends Volume 2 and only bloody covered Ashcroft's tour de force. Bittersweet, indeed.

The Andrew Oldham Orchestra - Bitter Sweet Symphony (2014)

The Players:

Allen Klein (1931-2009)

Mick Jagger (b.1943)

Keith Richards (b.1943)

Andrew Loog Oldham (b.1944)

Jody Klein (b.1963)

Richard Ashcroft (b.1971)

Holding out for a hero

With the country, nay the world, facing something of an an existential crisis, never before have we needed a saviour quite like we need one now. But whether you believe in the big man upstairs or super heroes who get changed in phone boxes you'll be waiting a long time for that kind of deliverance. However, if you fancy a spot of divine intervention on the cheap look no further than the independent space warrior permaclad in black & grey with a dustbin on his head. Say what you like, you'd be hard pushed to disagree with any of Count Binface's manifesto pledges; a few of which include:

* Bring back Ceefax

* Nationalise model railways

* Pensions to be double locked (with a little chain on the side)

* Spend £1Tn a week on the NHS (that's one trillion)

* Allow Czechs to remain on the Irish border

* '99' flake ice creams to be capped at 99p

* HS2 to be renamed FFS1

* Tries in Rugby League to be increased from 4 to 5 points - in line with inflation

And if he gives that skid mark Farage a bloody nose into the bargain then it's got to be a win win. So come on Clacton, we can do this.

Clinging on

Taken yesterday morning from a nearby boatyard

It's hard to believe that the iconic cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station are still scheduled to be demolished in the next couple of years; although the Twentieth Century Society is fighting the good fight to keep some if not all of them, it's not looking good. The TCS was set up to preserve post-1914 architecture; the country's cooling towers, often referred to as the Stonehenge of the 20th century, are fast disappearing. Within ten years the fear is they'll all have been blown to smithereens and will exist only in history books. How tragic would that be?