Reading the latest edition of a nameless rival magazine during a recent plane journey (alright, it was Uncut), I was shocked, saddened and appalled in equal measure to see a section devoted to pornographic chat line ads.

Leaf toward the back of the magazine and there it is in all its full-colour, poorly designed, shit quality glory: a quarter page of advertisments inviting readers to ring “Young Girls”, “Filthy Older Ladies” and, worst of all, “Barely Legal Role Play Babes” and all for 36p a minute.

Over the years I’ve noticed these ads slowly taking over in newspapers and publications such as Viz and the various grubby lads' mags (natch), but is this where the big music mags are headed, too? Call me naïve, out of touch, old-fashioned or whatever you will, but this lurch downmarket into telephone porn sits uneasily with me and it’s not something I like to see infecting the major music magazines, most of which I read every month.

“Would you like a masturbatory aid with your free cover-mounted CD and Dylan/Beatles/Stones/Floyd best/worst list, sir? “

And, most importantly of all, how would we feel if our beloved The Word magazine took the porn industry shilling and started running these kind of ads?

Examining the sleeve of the 1986 Charlie Sexton LP Mixed Impressions earlier, I was mightily - ahem - impressed by the sheer size and scale of the gravity-defying haircut he affected back then. Naturally, this got me thinking about other inspirational, outrageous, bonkers and just plain cool barnets.

Best haircuts in rock?

Extraordinary scenes in Canberra during the Australia Day celebrations as Prime Minister Julia Gillard was dragged into her car by bodyguards after being trapped in a resturant for over an hour by protesters.

At one point she stumbled, lost a shoe and almost ended up on the ground.

Meanwhile, the opposition leader Tony Abbott whose typically inflammatory remarks about removing an Aborigine squatters camp sparked the riot, can be seen on the right of the picture.

Julia looks genuinely scared here.

More pics:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glanceview/212625/gillard-dragged-from-protes...

Why, it's Newt Gingrich, of course (boom, tish!)

What's the deal with American politicians? Their rhetoric may be rubbish, but their names are GREAT!

Newt Gingrich
Barack Obama
Reince Priebus
Saxby Chambliss
Orrin Hatch
Spiro Agnew
Chaka Fattah

There should be more of it.

OK, Spiro is no longer with us, but he’s immortalised in song by Frank Zappa (as is Orrin Hatch – the title of a guitar instrumental to be exact).

There are some tunes which sound effortless, like they've always existed and have just been plucked from the air for our enjoyment.

Many of the Beatles' songs fall into that category which is, I suppose, what makes them so good.

Here's another stupendous melody which sounds like it was carved out of stone a million years ago and has been handed down to us by the gods.

It's Sylvia by Focus.

Any others?

And that's a seldom-seen Gibson Les Paul Personal model Jan Akkerman is playing there. It was one of a number of short-lived orphan models that Gibson knocked out in the 70s.

There's some interesting idiot dancing and proto headbanging going on in the front row of the mosh pit btw.

On another thread I suggested that the July 1966 album Blues Breakers: John Mayall with Eric Clapton (aka The Beano Album) just might be one of the most important British records ever. A bold claim perhaps, but allow me to explain.

To the casual observer it may appear to be just a loose collection of 12 bar blues numbers, but The Beano Album 's massive influence far exceeds the sum of its parts. Firstly, no white guitarist (British or American) had ever played electric blues with the authority and authenticity that Clapton brought to this album (not many black players had, either). By insisting on playing his guitar parts at stage volume in the studio, Eric pushed 60s recording technology to its very limits, sending the VU meters into the red and the white-coated Decca technicians into meltdown. Luckily he had a hip young producer and engineer on hand in the shape of Mike Vernon and Gus Dudgeon who backed him all the way - as, it must said, did his boss John Mayall.

Before long, every group in the land would record like this and Clapton’s sweet, overdriven sound quickly became the holy grail for guitarists the world over. That guitar sound would soon kick-start the entire British blues boom of the late 60s which in turn developed into heavy rock and subsequently heavy metal. No Beano Album, no Led Zeppelin or even no Metallica, perhaps? Should that sound fanciful, let's remember that Edward Van Halen name-drops The Beano Album at every opportunity and actually recorded a tribute to Clapton titled Bluesbreaker on his Star Fleet Project collaboration with Brian May.

The album had some influential fans early on, too. When Chas Chandler was trying to persuade Jimi Hendrix to come to London in late 1966, the deal-breaker was the promise of an introduction to Eric Clapton. The then-unknown Hendrix genuinely wanted to meet the man who had made one of his favourite records, The Beano Album.

Some accuse the 60s white blues bands of exploiting black musicians, but I’d disagree with that. The impact of a young, good-looking white kid in Carnaby Street clothes playing fierce authentic blues guitar, the like of which had never been seen or heard before, did more to introduce the music to a mass audience than anything that had gone before. This in turn would benefit an entire generation of black musicians. B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Albert King and a host of others suddenly found themselves escaping the Chitlin' Circuit and playing lucrative gigs in front of wildly appreciative white rock audiences at venues such as the Fillmore (East and West) thanks to this new-found awareness. Black musicians also gained exposure when their songs were covered (and, yes, sometimes stolen) by the new wave of rock bands.

Above all, The Beano Album played a massive part in selling American music back to the Americans, which in turn directly changed the course of rock music in general.

The Beano Album not only had a profound impact on the music itself, but it also prompted major changes to the equipment and technology that made it possible. Along with the Fender Stratocaster, the Gibson Les Paul is without doubt one of the most famous and recognisable guitar models in history. It seems incredible now, but in the late 50s Les Paul sales had slumped and it actually went out of production at the end of the decade. The model was then unavailable for the next eight years. Clapton’s use of a 1960 Les Paul on The Beano Album (and onstage with Mayall and Cream) popularised the instrument again and suddenly every guitarist worthy of the name had to have a Les Paul in order to get that elusive Beano Album sound. Second-hand prices soared and this lead directly to the guitar's reintroduction in 1968.

Similarly, Clapton’s use of Marshall amplifiers, first with Mayall, then Cream, would also have far-reaching implications for the tiny British company about to become a world famous brand name.

The Beano Album - not just a yawn-inducing collection of 12 bar blues after all, then?

The English language version of Wikipedia is blacked out today (Jan 18) in protest against proposed legislation:

"the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia"

Anyone know anything about this?

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Early 1967.
Matlock Bath Pavilion , Derbyshire.
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Peter Green

It’s hard to credit now, but in the mid 60s blues guitarists such as Peter Green, Mick Taylor and, of course, Eric Clapton were something akin to teen idols. There were always plenty of excitable young girls at blues gigs and I knew several who could distinguish Savoy Brown from Chicken Shack and tell a Jeff Beck guitar lick from a Clapton solo at 50 paces.

Those were different times indeed, so when Peter Green replaced Eric in the Bluesbreakers, it was big news for young and old alike. After weeks spent devouring every note of the A Hard Road LP, I was keen to check out the pretender to Eric Clapton's guitar god title. So, together with a school chum, we skipped lessons and hitch-hiked to the Derbyshire spa town of Matlock Bath.

Although details of the show itself have long since faded I vividly recall speaking with Green afterwards. He was cocky, confident and his speech was peppered with expletives. With his black curly hair and washed-out Levi's 501s (next to impossible to find in Britain at that time) he couldn’t have looked cooler.
To a couple of 16-year-old provincial oiks like us, he was everything we wanted to be - and much more besides.

As we walked away, Mayall was actively engaged in chatting up a couple of the girls hanging around outside the venue, while Green seemed more interested in going back to his hotel with a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

1982.
Richmond, Surrey.
Peter Green breaks cover.

In 1982 while browsing through records in a Richmond Oxfam shop, I noticed the light hearted banter between the two ladies behind the counter had taken on a more conspiratorial tone. "Look, Mabel" whispered one, "there's that strange man again." I turned to see what was occurring and there, peering into the shop window, hands cupped to his face to cut out the glare, was a hunched, yet curiously familiar figure. Although looking vastly different to the last time I'd seen him, it was unmistakably Peter Green.

I left the shop and followed him as he shuffled along the street. With his matted hair and shambling gait he cut a sorry figure. He was grossly overweight and by the look of his clothes he had been sleeping rough. Unable to restrain myself, I stepped in front of him and uttered the immortal words "You’re Peter Green! You used to be my hero".

Noticing this brought little response other than an embarrassed shrug and an incomprehensible mumble, I made matters worse by insisting on shaking his hand while making inane small talk about his earlier triumphs. While gripping his flaccid, seemingly boneless hand, I noticed that the heavily nicotine-stained fingers ended in grotesquely long fingernails which would have made playing guitar next to impossible. Where was the guitar hero of yore? What had happened to the whisky-drinking character I had first met 15 years previously with John Mayall? Back then he had the world at his feet and now it had come to this.

Clearly something was very wrong here. I'd read stories about a breakdown, naturally, but nothing could have prepared me for this. The Peter Green whose hand I was shaking was little more than a bloated caricature of his former self. Deciding not to prolong the agony, I let him go, watching in quiet disbelief as he shuffled off up the road.

This is a real book, available for the hefty sum of $95 on Amazon as we speak. It's also begging for a witty caption.

I should warn you, the winning caption on Twitter was rather good:

Well, if you can't get it out Doctor, can you at least change the batteries?

But I'm sure the Massive can match that.

While surfing the net to find possible entries for the "Appearances On Album Covers" thread, I landed on the site below.

There are no words to describe it except to say it triggered an entire squadron of klaxons, all of them screaming “nut job!”

You'd think he'd check the spelling at least, wouldn't you?

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Rock-n-Roll/shame.ht...

Who says men can’t multitask? This is what happens when I'm entrusted to babysit in a house full of records.

He will probably hate me for posting this, but here's a picture of mojoworking Jr taken a quarter of a century ago when he was just a nipper.

I’m proud to say he’s a now a perfectly normal 26 year-old and a full-blown Zappa fan to boot, so there must have been some kind of osmosis going on there.

What other indignities (music related or otherwise) has the Massive imposed upon their offspring? Photos please.

Gotta love this. I posted it before, but it fell on on stony ground.

All together now "...and a tattoo of Oz-zy!"

Formbyman’s mirth-inducing Bjork post on the Nature vs Nurture thread got me thinking. Everyone must have a story like that about their parents.

Here’s just one of mine. Hard to believe now, but this was something of a national cause célèbre at the time. In early 1965 three of the Rolling Stones were arrested for urinating in a garage forecourt after being refused use of the toilet. When the case came to court the garage attendant testified "when told they couldn't use the toilet Mick Jagger said 'we piss anywhere man' and the group took it up as a chant".

"After the incident they drove off in their car making a 'well known hand gesture' out the window", he continued.

Well, my mum was absolutely mortified by all this and it was decided that Rolling Stones' records would be banned from the house forthwith. This was tough luck on me as I'd just saved up my paper round money to buy their single of Not Fade Away.

Thankfully the embargo didn’t last long and normal service was resumed a few months later.

I spent a productive weekend ripping these CDs to iTunes. Most of them were bought at Camden Market and similar under the counter outlets and they must have cost me an arm and a leg over the years. That's ironic when you think that all of them (and a lot more besides) are now available to download free of charge from various blog sites around the internet, if you know where to look.

Since The Anthology series of 3 double CDs arrived in 1995 I haven't really listened to too many Beatles' boots, certainly not in this quantity or at this intensity and I wasn’t expecting too much from the venture. But here's the thing, I was shocked. This stuff is unbelievably, staggeringly good. This is joyous music on an unparalleled level. Even when they were simply arsing about making stuff-ups and mistakes, The Beatles were creating magic.

For example, I listened to six (count ‘em) different takes of That Means A Lot, a 1965 Lennon/McCartney pot-boiler that wasn’t considered good enough to appear on a Fabs' record and was eventually given away to P.J. Proby. Yet, listening to this work in progress, you can can almost taste the chemistry between John and Paul as they whip a fairly average song into shape with some glorious vocal harmonies.

A simple throwaway, naïve B-Side like Thank You Girl starts off rough, then after only a few takes begins to sound like a well-rounded, polished pop song and again, the harmonies are breathtaking. This was early 1963 and they were provincial lads barely out their teens with just a couple of months of studio experience behind them, yet here they are totally at home with the process and sounding cocky as they joke, snipe and banter with old lags George Martin and his engineers (and each other).

Pop music isn’t recorded like this anymore and probably never will be again. That’s why listening to this stuff taking shape before your ears, deconstructed and creaking on the scaffolding of primitive technology is so fascinating. There’s genius at work here.

It's March 2005 and Her Majesty The Queen is meeting four of Britain's (and indeed the World's) most famous guitarists. Left to right we have: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Brian May.

Over to the Massive for some witty captions along the lines of:

"And in just a few years, gentlemen, at least one of you will copy my hair colour."

(but much funnier than that, of course)