The Clothed Maja

I think that’s it with me and music writing. I have sent myself on a long and slow walk back to the pavilion. My first published piece concerned We Love Life by Pulp, an album which I got to hear and Laura didn’t. Pulp were still our favourite group at that time and now I never want to hear from them or their frontman again. Still, a quarter of a century isn’t a bad innings.

I began my first blog, The Church Of Me, as a method of dealing with grief and bereavement. Its whole purpose was to use my residual knowledge of, and gut response to, music in order to, as the late Mark Fisher put it, dig myself a tunnel out of hell. The subsequent half-decade was, to say the very least, not pretty but I eventually emerged into the light and not only got my life back but achieved a better one.

Today, despite numerous health impediments with which I won’t bore you again, I am probably happier and more content than ever. The mourning has long been spent and I have, in that least sufferable of phrases, “moved on” – and consequently so has any urge to write about music; not to stop listening to or enjoying music, you understand, but I am getting on a little now and would prefer to devote whatever time remains for me to enjoyment rather than homework.

This week I attempted to begin a new book, and once again it was about that huge ball and chain of a blog Then Play Long, albeit from a different and hopefully Jamesian angle – I considered Henry, Clive or Marlon before soberly realising that I was none of them – but I quite rapidly brought the experiment to a halt because, frankly, how many more times can I bear writing about Sinatra or my parents from any angle, and what would any of it have to say to people now?

It also doesn’t help that so many of my favoured musicians have, bluntly, let me down, most recently Mr Geordie Greep, to whose album The New Sound I listened infinite times, astounded by its boldness and invention, but wholly on the understanding that the record’s intention was to satirise a fictitious character closely modelled on the most pathetic and depraved man on Earth, and the attitudes arising from same.

All that has now been ruined forever by Mr Greep’s recent misadventures in Vancouver. Nobody came out of it with any credit except the poor woman subjected to his unauthorised lecherous actions while not even awake (her, not him), and Greep’s American keyboard player Cameron, who promptly quit the band; I would imagine that the bassist, drummer and percussionist – all very fine musicians who I hope will find more salubrious collaborators or employers in the future - have taken similar action.

On a par with that exceptionally low bar is Cameron’s testimony that, while drunk, Greep also made unwarranted comments about homeless people, as well as people of different gender and colour. Thanks to nearly thirteen years of Warfarinisation (which my doctors changed to the wine-friendly Apixaban in November 2024), I have not had the opportunity to become drunk for some considerable time now, but do recall that even when I was, I always kept my tongue and brain in check and didn’t say stupid and reactionary things because I didn’t (and to this day don’t) believe in them. The inference with Greep is therefore that alcohol has merely brought out feelings and thoughts that have lain suppressed in his mind for perhaps too long.

On a superficial level, I’d say: that’s blown for good his chances with fellow BRIT School pupil RAYE, who is only looking for a really nice, straight-up guy who knows his jazz and will make her feel happy and loved. It is depressing that he has turned out to be exactly the kind of man about whom RAYE warns us on at least four (and possibly another two) songs on her new album. How can someone who has waxed so eloquently about Leo Ferré, Bach and the 300 or so ECM albums that he apparently owns end up such a clot? Has he, in fact, understood any of those ECM albums?

On an egotistical level I’d say my greatest personal offence is that, as a music writer, Mr Greep has made me look ridiculous and stupid; cue the mass choruses of “you manage that fine all by yourself.” On a deeper level I feel personally betrayed that I put any trust in him or his work despite multiple warnings from whom I idly assumed were merely grumpy old gits.

On a whole other and far more profound level I worry about whether Greep, who is rarely photographed without a pint of something in his hand, is going to make it past twenty-seven, since he appears to have closed off all potential escape avenues – he has not amassed the goodwill necessary to see him through, and it perhaps puts his abrupt departure from Black Midi into perspective (mild-mannered bassist Cameron Picton, now MD of the excellent My New Band Believe, has not entirely surprisingly turned out to be the good guy).

On a more subjective level, however, the entire Greep farrago is perhaps an ideal excuse for me to absent myself from the field of active music writing. It is now down to others, younger and with fresher perspectives, to push the envelope in another direction. Hence I would hang up my hat, were my head the right shape to wear one. I have other things to be getting on with. In the meantime I will leave you with my final new recommendation; Cowboy Hunters, an admirably unruly girl-boy duo from somewhere near Glasgow. But don’t wait for me to kill their verve with sticky words; witness them for yourselves.

"Ay ay, that's your lot!" Roll the end credits: