FlyTheNest

Football team facing relegation play-off against a club miles better than them, a mother who can't remember your name, drinking through hangover after hangover because you know soon you'll be facing another Work Capability Assessment. Sometimes life really is shit and no matter how much you force a smile and a witty quip it's not enough. It's all a pretense. All that 'wellness' bollocks they taught you has about as much staying power under adversity as a cognitive behavioral therapist on the surface of Mars.

Thankfully cannabis exists and is easily available. Within seconds it can mask such gloominess and make everything seem awesome again.

Why exist in misery and pain when you can take drugs and run away from it all like a total coward?

You can live in a place where everything is soft and comfy all the time. All your thoughts feel good. And...

Something.

I can't remember.

I just found this, life is brilliant!

Saw Roddy at the Artists Against Apartheid demo/festival 'Bop Against Botha' in 1986 in Battersea Park. Big Audio Dynamite were also playing - I think they met up and banged heads and came up with this.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

At the same thing Sting was at the edge of the stage waiting to come on, took off his guitar (not a bass - he was doing a solo set) and put on a big leather coat, then walked out onto the stage, did a big 'phew' shrug and took off the coat. Twat. Good song though - lots of good police songs - even if it was really all about the drummer.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Sade too. I am still, to this day, the a fan of Absolute Beginners, despite the two leads being awful. Just about everything else about it was great.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Sue Lawley, Sue Lawley, Sue Lawley!

Mr Sumner is a massive twat though isn't he? My objection is with him desperately losing his accent then finding it again when it became left wing and trendy to sound regional but by that time it had morphed into some New York/Geordie monstrosity.

I did like The Police when I was a kid though...

Ah those were better times...

1979.

January.



February.



March.



April.



May.



June.



July.



August.



September.



October.



November.



December.

1979 was indeed a good year, maybe the peak of post-punk creativity.

And the Police did some genuinely good stuff, unfashionable as it is to admit this now for well rehearsed reasons.

Personally while imagining that song I didn't see an idiot with a washing machine open on spin but each to their own.

There's a good bit in Giles Smith's book 'Lost In Music: A Pop Odyssey' when he has a page of '1979 and bliss it was to be alive' with the kind of list you have there, and then on the next page '1979 and what hell it was to be alive' with an alternate list of the year's songs. 'When people complain that the charts are full of crap they forget that the charts have always been full of crap. That's what the charts are made to be full of.' UK's top three songs of the year - Art Garfunkle Bright Eyes, Cliff Richard We Don't Talk Anymore and Dr Hook When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman.

A couple of more unlikely ones I always had a soft spot for from that top hundred. In at number 38...



And one for the boys in leather at number 72..



And something that sounds more like Rainbow than Rainbow would probably care to admit, just with different instruments, holding there at number 83

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Favourite Boomtown Rats' song.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

More 1979

My friend Gavin had booked some space in a rehearsal studio for 'Bobby and the Asbos' - the band he and his friends who worked together in the PRU had put together - and he was told 'you've to to finish early so you're out dead on time, we've got another booking' and as they finished Joe Jackson walked in. He said 'Joe, don't you wanna jam with us?' and Joe Jackson said 'I'm a busy man, son', which I think is the perfect Joe Jackson response.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Went to see this lot tonight.



Priests from Washingon DC.

She asked when she came on stage if this was all of Leeds as there was a somewhat paltry turnout and looked disappointed and pissed off throughout.

I had a chat to the bass player after they finished and didn't do an encore but that was entirely about where she got her awesome boots.

Yes precisely, the charts were always full of crap and why not? All of us like what others would regard as crap. What stands out about the late seventies is even the stuff we don't like is quite good. Although of course this could be due to age. I was a massive Depeche Mode fan and my dad hated them, but now admits after a few pints that they were better than anything you get now.

I don't agree but...

Wham bam crash awesomeness

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Fairground music. Give me this, warm cider, the waltzer and probably a little bit of sick in my mouth.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Which, bedroom DJ style, seems to run musically into this, Prince at his most majestic?

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Although I think this might be my favourite Prince song.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

More Go! Team shouty wonderfulness (and this one leaves you a bit less exhausted)

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Now there's a song title for you. I give you The (International) Noise Conspiracy, with 'Capitalism Stole My Virginity'

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

You've ventured outside of Dare you fool...

I bought Dare for myself with my christmas money in 1981, and I then went on a trip with a friend, staying in a youth hostel, and I was so pleased with Dare that I took it with me, even though there was no possible way I'd be able to play it where I was going.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Warning! Lengthy 70's German intro.

While this is nice as a borderer I can't help hearing it as the further geordification of Northumbrian folk music. Along with everything else in Northumberland.

Gruesome, isn't it?

A splendid old hippy bloke on the bus told me about this today.

I couldn't believe I'd been previously unaware of its existence.

Went for a job interview today and afterwards the woman interviewing me told me she'd been the original drummer for Kaiser Chiefs.

She said they weren't named as such at the time, gave me a convincing account of playing in the sadly now defunct Joseph's Well, and said they were all a bunch of wankers.

Which was good enough for me.

That's more like it.

cha cha cha

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

You magnificent fellow.

I have nothing to offer, until...maybe I do.

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It's not the despair, I can cope with the despair, it's the hope I can't cope with.

Talking Heads imagining what Joy Division sounded like.