Introducing to those who’ve never heard of him one Johnny Winter (before he pops his clogs - he’s not that young anymore). I’m also rather intrigued as to what wars North Korea has been fighting to allow its generals to award themselves so many medals. After that just a few bits and pieces of the usual shite

Here’s a song I’m sure many of you know, but might well be unfamiliar with this version. Give it a listen. As far as I’m concerned he does the song justice, where others might well have reduced it to Saturday night chicken ’n chips cabaret. It’s by Johnny Winter.



On Sunday, April 14, my mate Pete and I are going to see Johnny Winter play at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in West London. I’ve always like Mr Winter’s music since, in 1972 in my last year at college in Dundee, I turned on the radio and heard the track Funky Music and thought ‘shit, that’s music I like’. Below you can hear two tracks.

I bought several of his albums - that is LPs - almost as soon as I got heard it. The one I bought which has that track was  there was Johnny Winter And which featured Rick Derringer - no convenient Amazon website then and I had to got to a ‘record store’ to order it but, as these things happen, they all got lost. Since then I’ve since acquired several of the ones I owen on CD.

Bach enthusiast, Mozart enthusiast, Palestrina enthusiast, Haydn enthusiast, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Ravel, Beethoven, Dave Fiucyzinski, Freddie Jackson, Bob Dylan blah-di-blah enthusiast that I am (how many more composers and artists can I name without blowing it all and merely coming across as a show-off, name-dropping cunt rather than a man with admirably eclectic tastes?), I have a soft spot for Mr Winter. He’s not subtle and Radio 3 won’t give him a lot of airtime between now and Kingdom Come, but the man has something, and I must admit I’m looking forward to gig. (And this is as much a nod to Pete that I still owe him for the ticket and I shan’t forget, as I’m not that sort of guy.

Mr Winter is one of that very rare breed, an albino rock star. There are, as far as I know only two of them and the other is his slightly better known brother Edgar. (Albinos are, if you don’t know, men, women and other animals who have some kind of genetic ‘defect’ - I have to put it in inverted commas in case we now should call it a ‘lifestyle choice’ and it’s illegal to call it a defect and I don’t really fancy appearing befoe Bow Street magistrates charged with a hate crime - which means their hair and skin are completely white. Good news, of course, for any Ku Klax Klanners and British National Party supporters who still froth at the mouth at the very mention of reggae and that kind of thing.) Here’s a second song by the man.



. . .

Well, that’s a shortish entry so I should, according to the Bloggers’ Code as set down in the Marseille Memorandum of 2008, add a little more to make worthwhile the space I am taking up on the web. I mean who knows what gems I am displacing by my neurotic insistence on making a noise and taking shite at length? A quick flick through the various media websites reveals that North Korea are at it again and now claim they are at war with South Korea and the U.S. Quite what they are up to I don’t know and don’t even claim to know. Perhaps young Jim Jam Kim or whatever the young shaver’s name is who inherited the throne from his dad was given an Samsung Galaxy III which isn’t working quite as he would like. And incidentally, take a look at the picture below which has appeared almost

everywhere. Who are they kidding? Are we really expected to believe that the assorted generals surrounding the young shaver really are taking their orders from him? I know it’s a bit below the belt, but he looks to me as though he still needs written instructions on where to find his cock. But what the real power set-up in North Korea is would be anyone’s guess. And where the hell did they get all those medals? As far as I know the last war North Korea was involved in was the Fifties’ Korean War, so what have they done to earn that bunch each and every one of them is wearing? Answers, please, on a postcard addressed to the usual dustbin.

. . .

The really big news here in Old Blighty is the utterly bizarre weather we’ve been having. Summertime - that’s ‘summertime’ as in the clocks go forward - begins early tomorrow morning, but most of the country is apparently snowbound. I say apparently, because we lucky ones down here in Cornwall are only getting the rather cold weather. Freezing temperatures, blizzards (or what passes for a blizzard here in Britain - our descriptions usually have the Swedes, Alaskans, Norwegians and the good folk from Siberia in stitches for them -12c is a welcome relief) are taking place further up North.

I rather suspect we are in for a belter of a summer - ‘highest overnight temperatures since time began’, that kind of thing (‘Most dramatic headline since Caxton cribbed a printing press from Gutenberg!’) Or not. See that’s the beauty of Britain: like our national football (U.S ‘soccer’ - nambies), rugby and cricket sides almost everything about Britain is unpredictable. Our national sportsmen, for example, will play a real blinder one minute, then redefine what it is to be a pratt the next by losing (as our Test team almost did in New Zealand - bloody New Zealand. The only reason we held them to a draw was because their best players had to go home to help with the shearing. Talk of luck!)

Anyway, back to the weather. It has been awful, shivery cold down here and shivery cold and very snowy further north. The weathermen say it could even carry on till the end of April. Give me a break!

. . .

Finally the bits you have been wating for:

Arch WAG Abby Clancy put on a beige dress and has gone off on holiday!

Model Care Delevingne (I’ve never heard of her either, but then I am 103 years old - make allowances, please) has been showing off her toned torso.

Katie Price (who was once the King of Jordan or something, but we’re not supposed to mention that any more - apparently she’s taken out a super injunction) has got married again. Yes, got married again. I’ll repeat that in case anyone reading this still can’t quite believe it: Katie Jordan has married again. That’s right, again.

Meryl Streep’s daughter has split from her boyfriend. Isn’t life sad? And there was me thinking she might have starved to death in the Ethiopian desert. Funny how you can get these things sooo wrong.

Jessica Alba has supper with her hubby.

Kim Sears looks summery in a white dress and floral cardigan. Anyone care to tell me who Kim Sears is? Is she anything to do the nutter who inherited North Korea from his dad. No? Well, she could have been, couldn’t she, I mean the names are reasonably similar. Do your reckon Jim Jam Kim wears summery dresses? Not in public, probably.