Seinfeld Series 4, Episode 3; George & Jerry are in the coffee shop having just left a commissioning-conference with NBC TV executives. George stormed out of the meeting in a huff when the assembled execs told him that they were less-than-impressed with his pitch on a ‘show about nothing’, so Jerry is giving him what-for:

Jerry (extremely peeved, but somewhat resigned): “What was going on in your mind...?!! Artistic Integrity? Where did you come up with that? You’re not ARTISTIC! And you HAVE NO INTEGRITY.... You really need help. But a regular psychiatrist couldn’t help you – you need to go to like... Vienna or something! Y’know what I mean?! You need to get involved at the university level - like where Freud studied - where there’s people looking at you, and checking up on you - that’s kinda help you need! Not the ‘once-a-week-for-80-bucks’ – no - you need a TEAM! A team of psychiatrists working round-the-clock... thinking about you... having conferences... observing you - like they did with the Elephant Man! That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s the only way you’re gonna get better!”

Pause.

George (sheepishly): “I thought the woman was kinda cute...”

I am George Costanza. I used to think I was a Jerry - I so desperately wanted to be a Jerry - but I’m all George. In real life, my second name really is George. I’m medium height, thin, with a full head of hair (though there is a satellite dish slowly emerging through the crown), but otherwise I’m 100% Costanza (or Larry David, if yez wanna be pedantic). I can be crass and headstrong, I’ll blurt out a slew of thoughtless bluster, I’ll say the wrong thing at the wrong time, I’ll talk when I should be listening, I strike poses that invite ridicule, any attempt I make at playful banter or small talk only seems to aggravate the unfortunate recipient. And that’s now! 47 years old and still a man-child cursed with a crippling shyness and a deep-seated self-loathing that I had to drown with drink.

And believe me, it took a lot of drink to drown them demons.

Can you imagine what I was like when I was 15? Ugly, spotty (the neighbours had to blindfold their pets!), but I thought I was God’s Gift. I’ve been in bands since I was 14; I left school when I was 15. I was so confident that I was going to be a superstar that I didn’t study for my o-levels (I had a series of gigs lined-up – Punk Rock, dammit! Responsible for the shattered dreams of so many has-beens or never-weres) and I read nothing other than the music-press and Marvel comics. So imagine my dismay, when a week ago, me mammy was clearing out some old boxes and she came across a jotter containing lyrics from my teenage years. Oh, sweet jeezus... they were woeful; full of self-pitying, existentialist drivel... My lyrics are bad enough now, but God, they were ten times worse circa the time my balls dropped. My only consolation is I’m in good company.

Now, I would say, you can always get the measure of a man by his attitude to the Beatles, isn’t that so? When you first meet someone, asking them ‘what do you think of the Beatles?’ is the perfect poser to sound-out a potential pal. Grown men, I’ve found, tend to bond over a discussion of the Fabs. Everyone has an opinion, young or old (how many of you bought your kids the Guitar Hero computer game to pass on the torch to your progeny and have an excuse to bore them with your obsession?). It doesn’t have to be unqualified praise, just a well-argued, thoughtful assessment – especially if it’s someone old enough to have been-there-‘n’-done that.So, there I was,talking to a man in his 60s about the ‘60s; here in Norn Iron, the 60s weren’t so much ‘swinging’ as booming, banging and petrol bombs after dark, so to avoid traversing a rhetorical minefield about the ‘Troubles’, I asked him what he thought of The Fabs. Says he: “Och, sure all that ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ and ‘diamond rings’ shite... the lyrics were so awful I gave it a miss. I was more of a Dylan fan meself.” I furrowed my brow, bit my tongue and lost all interest in taking the conversation any further forward. At my time of life, life’s too short. Like I said, I’m a bigmouth, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from making a social faux-pas, so to avoid doing a Costanza, I made my excuses and fled.

Now I can get it all off my chest (isn’t this interweb-thing wonderful?)

Before I start: Dylan. Genius. Cultural icon. Mercurial, maverick, infuriatingly fickle... sings like a scalded sheep, but a natural musician nonetheless. His lyrics are great – I just can’t get past that awful voice. But he ain’t pop music and he only had 30% of the Beatles commercial clout – even if it was his influence that set the lads on their path to true glory in late ‘64. What really annoyed me was my erstwhile companion’s attitude toward their lyrics, especially in 63, when the Beatles hit their stride.

Thanks to good old Ian Macdonald (may he RIP), those of us too young (just) to have been there, have a greater understanding of how ultra-modern Lennon/McCartney’s song-structure was and how bizarre they sounded to folks in those halcyon days (by-the-by, if you haven’t read Peter Doggett’s You Never Give Me Your Money about the financial wheeling & dealing that plagued the Fabs after ’69 – go get it now. It’s not as boring as it may sound, Doggett’s description of poor old George H’s demise had me in tears – buy it, borrow it, take a day off work and gag the kids - but read it! It’s a bit dry in places, but there are genuine revelations – especially if you want a balanced account of Lennon’s final years. But be warned: it’s a real heartbreaker, keep the Kleenex handy!). When contemporary musicologists heard She Loves You, they put down their fountain-pens, lit their pipes and cocked an ear. The harmonies alone (Jazzy sixths – in a pop tune penned by Liverpudlian urchins?!) had the musos flabbergasted. Much chin-stroking followed - the words were the only thing that got in the way of unqualified adoration.

The Beatles lyrics had to be bad. The music was so ahead of its time, the words had to be all-inclusive and unchallenging. I mean, did yez see the BBC4 doc on The Beatles in Russia? Most of the tribute bands thereon were more enamoured by the early LPs where the English is plain and the sentiments are trite – I never thought the words ‘Listen, do you want to know a secret?’ could sound subversive until I heard those poor guys sing them. Yeah, I know a lot of it was aimed at little girls, but it was the inherent joie-de-vivre that inspired the youth of oppressive regimes and gave them hope in a world of secret-policemen and tanks in the high-street.

Do words matter when the music tugs at your heart or makes it skip a beat?

Can you honestly say that you’ve dismissed a good tune because you didn’t like the lyrics? Would Elton’s oeuvre be any more appealing if Taupin hadn’t penned the prose? Did all that swearing put you off punk? Did Morrissey’s libretto spoil your enjoyment of Marr’s guitar? Did all that Satan-is-my-master shite deter you from purchasing some grade-A HM plank-spanking? Did Bolan’s talk of pixies and airy-fairy-folk prevent you from appreciating some of the greatest pop the 70s had to offer?

Which brings me to gibberish. Beefheart? What the feck was he on about? Do we care? Would that eek-eek- chigg-a-chigga-bonk-tish-splat sound any better if Don V was wholly sane and coherent? Bowie’s Billy-Burroughs-cut-up technique had us scratching our nogs, but he had the skill to make it sound profound. Did we care? Not a jot (well, I didn’t; mind you, there was a lot of Evo-stick and Merrydown cider involved). And then there’s the Cocteau Twins - 'peephole people panned doors pump the dolls...?' Did any of yez ever play Treasure to your mates and their only opinion was ‘what’s she on about’? (a friend of mine opined: "she yodels like Heidi on her first f*ck!") The more enlightened will know that Liz bends silly words to suit the melodies, but what melodies! Seductive & sexy. Confounding but uplifting. A lot of you will bemoan the repetitive waltz-time weirdness of it, but in the 80s, the Cocteau’s were the go-to band if you wanted to woo a woman who wore leathers. How many little goth-kids were conceived while the Blue Bell Knoll LP played on your dad’s Panasonic? And the great thing was your lover wasn’t going to be distracted by the lyrics, because there weren’t any, just that glorious harmonic morass – instrumentals with swoony gibberish. The chin-strokers probably preferred Joni Mitchell or Kate Bush, but for us plebs, the Cocteaus were the best by a mile – unless you’re a soul fan, alas, it’s just not my bag - all the girls I dated were Goths, so you’ll just have to excuse my ignorance and my taste in music & women.

Did someone mention sex? Here's fun: the other day, in a fit of nostalgia, I downloaded Summer (The First Time) by Bobby Goldsboro. It was one of those songs that struck a chord with the prepubescent me. I was as naive as they come, I hadn’t a clue that it was about some horny old MILF seducing a virgin, I just loved that diddle-liddle-liddle-dum bit and the eeriness of the melody. I asked my father if he would purchase it, along with Amateur Hour by Sparks and Killer Queen by Queen, for my 12th birthday. Now, the Goldsboro song was long out of the charts and had been supplanted by Honey, that old weepie about a dead kid, so me da got me that instead – I was furious - but thank God, eh?! There would’ve been red-faces all round at my birthday party if I put that on. Me granny would’ve spat-up her jelly & tinned-mandarins when it got to the “I saw the sun rise as a man” bit! Because, I didn’t give a hoot about the lyrical content, the song reminded me of a girl I loved from afar... oh, Helen Thompson, you of the Sophia Loren eyes and the braided chestnut ponytail... (last seen diving into a portaloo at a Chris De Burgh concert – so maybe I dodged a bullet? But those eyes...)... which brings me back to my teenage angst and the childish scribblings in that dog earred jotter. Because my lyrics, though quirky & wry at times, didn’t get any better. I just wanted to ROCK.

It was only after rehab, when I experienced the dark night of the soul and-all-that, that I sat down and worked on my lyrics properly. And when you actually write about your life, you can’t fake it. You can’t just string a series of platitudes together and hope that the loud riffs will drown out the dodgy doggerel. I don’t care if I’m good at it or not – if you’ve checked me MySpace site http://www.myspace.com/hudd2 - you probably they’re a pile of poo - but recording that album has helped me a lot more than all the medication and psychotherapy I’ve had to endure in the last 8 years.

(Pretty brave of a man who dared to take a shot at Squeeze, eh? And if you’re thinking it’ll just be a heap of boring old crap from a hoary old Goth – check out Childlife and The Last Love Song, my friends tell me they’re the best things I’ve ever done).

Be safe, be well.

Wop-bop-a-loo-mop-alop-bam-boom!

PS: sorry if this is all over the place, but I'm still filled with that first flush of acquiring a coterie of new pals! Too much to say! I promise to be more concise in the future.

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