The Five Things My Weekend Would Be Rubbish Without: Steve Diggle
Have you ever fallen in love with a day of the week that you shouldn't have? Steve "Higgle-Piggle" Diggle from Buzzcocks has! Except he hasn't. But that's only because he's been too damn busy reading, boozing and riding his Vespa. Do you see? Anyway, this is what Steve likes to do between 6pm Friday and 9am Monday...
"Enjoy a ride on my scooter"
I have a 1966 Vespa SS200 that I love to ride. I like to get On The Road like Jack Kerouac! I've had it for years - I used to have three scooters - but this one has been with me for ten years. I had one when I was about 16, so it's great having one again. I try to get down to Brighton on it every now and again, that's a great run! I used to do the tricks on it - standing up, lying on my stomach - but I had a crash after a long party on Mykonos a few years ago and had to have a metal plate put in my wrist, so I'm more careful now…
"Get pissed and take drugs"
I'm a Friday night man. I head to Soho and start drinking in The Spice Of Life. I meet the boys there and end up god knows where. I need to get a watch so I know when to go home. I have a magic pipe and sometimes it means I don't get home for two or three days.
"A trip to the park - via Ryman's"
I live just nearby and after a few nights out you need some fresh air. So I head to Ryman's on Great Portland St to buy a big new pad of paper and head to the park to write lyrics. I've written there for years now - it's great for a hangover. People watching on a Sunday is fantastic inspiration.
"Enjoying my iPod destruction fantasy"
I'd love to drill all the earphones out of people and make them reconnect to what's going on around them. There is a whole ambience to life that you miss if, like these simpletons, you're wearing headphones all the time. There is a rhythm to life and the city and I love how it makes you feel spatially aware.
"Some light relaxation"
I'm not married, so I don't spend much time at home watching shit telly, but I do like a good DVD. I saw The Future Is Unwritten the other night and that was fantastic. I knew Joe and liked him very much. I buried my own dad the other week and Joe was like the punk rock dad. The movie really captures the times and the feelings. He wasn't perfect - I would hate it if he was. And reread your Nietzsche! Beyond Good And Evil is a brilliant book. Don't get sucked into the narrow frame of religion. We're all superhuman gods!
Buzzcocks are on tour now. They play indigo2 on November 30.
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Old Punk New Songs
Over the last few years several of the 'Old Wave of New Wave'
have put out albums upending most contempory pop pretenders.
The Stranglers - Norfolk Coast
New York Dolls - One Day It Will Please us.....
John Cale - Black Acetate
The Damned - Grave Disorder
Buzzcocks - Flat Pack Philosophy
And most recently The Wolfmen Marco Pirroni's new band .
Saw them on Wednesday they played a swaggering, snarling set of glam garage punk and bangrha break beats - screaming guitars, flutes and sitars. And they open and close with a thundering cover of Eno's 'Needle in The Camel's Eye'.
Fantastico!
Enjoying my iPod destruction fantasy
Well, I'm a simpleton then. I love walking around the City while music swirls around your head. A bus journey without an ipod? Bet he dosen't do that often. There certainly is a 'whole ambience to life' on a no.19 these days but I don't mind blocking it out.
Wow....
If only I could live my life like the fantastic Steve Diggle.
Going out on the piss with his mates....what a revolutionary...read your Neitzsche!...ooh no thanks.