SATURDAY JUNE 24 2006
From: Jeffrey Salford, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
I read your Whatsgoingon piece this week and simply couldn't believe you could say that ‘getting married' to your partner felt like applying for a driving licence. He must feel amazingly insulted. I'm surprised he continues to live with you.
JEFFREY SALFORD
You have what is known as ‘reading comprehension deficit'. Sometimes this is caused by ‘dyslexia', other times by being a complete cunt. Even if the meaning of the words eluded you, the large heart at the top of the piece might have made its point. It certainly wasn't put there for the likes of you.
SIMON
FRIDAY JUNE 23 2006
From: Eric Lindsey, California, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
This evening I heard a track from the 80's, called "This Is It" by Kenny Loggins, and I was struck so much by how the production and feel so reminded me of George Michael solo.
Any thoughts?
Best
ERIC
I reckon the day he first heard this track George had his Damascus moment. Like being presented with a new voice in a gift box. But didn't he take it and use it brilliantly! You can't fault that. For Kenny Loggins it was a throw away idea for one song. For George it was something he turned into his trademark singing style. And why not? There's nothing wrong with a bit of ‘borrowing' to get yourself started.
(He nicked the hairstyle too. Look at Kenny Loggins circa 1980, i.e. the cover of his Greatest Hits Album, and look at George's hair at the time of Wham!'s second album. Same style, different colour.)
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY JUNE 22 2006
From: Nora C. Deakin, Salt Lake City, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
I am a God-fearing lesbian Christian. From reading your website I deduce that your faith level is dangerously low.
You should contact me for help.
NORA C.DEAKIN
Fortunately, my fuck-off level is wonderfully high.
SIMON
WEDNESDAY JUNE 21 2006
From: Nick Briggs, Lincolnshire, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
Are you sick of Simon Cowell or are you free of him in Thailand? When he came on TV he appeared sharp and funny but after reading in your books about characters like Kit Lambert he seems rather tame. Now he just appears boring.
Out of interest have you been pestered to go on reality TV?
NICK
The problem with current reality shows is, if you get caught up in them they eat your life away. I did loads of talent type shows in the 80s, but in those days you could choose – be a judge one week and not the next.
As for Simon Cowell - I've known him for years. He's never been any different. To begin with he was quite a novelty – Bruce Willis face with a Kenneth Williams voice. Ten years ago he came out to Thailand for a holiday just when he was breaking up with Sinitta. It was a bit awkward because I was managing her, so we were both on the phone to her everyday, but about different things.
He's the most straightforward person I ever met. If he's begun to look boring it's because he's got bored.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY JUNE 20 2006
Tracy Cunliffe, www.dirterecords.com , London , UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Morning Simon
Belatedly logged onto your website and loved your 'Whatsgoingon' June 11 piece. It's so true what you say, (trying to sleep straight!). Maybe you should take up smoking the weed (no calories, but of course danger of munchy attacks). A spliff b4 going to bed works a treat. I can personally recommend it but it does tend to wipe out your capacity to dream.
Love
TRACY x
Hi Tracy
I know plenty about smoking to get to sleep. About fifteen years ago I had to give up drink for three months because of an intestinal infection. Only way to get to sleep was a cigarette in bed. As a lifelong non-smoker, inhaling the tobacco had about the same effect as a joint. Sent me off beautifully. But after a week, I found a second one made it even nicer. About a week later I discovered how good a cigarette was after breakfast. And the next thing was after lunch too. Since no-one in the office knew I was smoking, I took a cab home to smoke it.
Soon the after breakfast one turned into two, as did the after lunch one, and then there was a mid-morning one, and a mid-afternoon one too. And before I knew it I was up to fifteen secret cigarettes a day (not too mention all the cabbing to and fro).
By the time I was allowed to drink again I was addicted. And it took me five years to give it up. That was tobacco, not grass. But even so, I think I'll stick to booze. And if I can't have that, I'll just stay awake and think.
Love
SIMON x
MONDAY JUNE 19 2006
From: Timothy Gee, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon!
No doubt by this time you know that you have been placed no higher than 11th in 'The Observer' Music Monthly's list of the '50 Greatest Music Books Ever'. What can they be thinking of? Moreover the book they have chosen is 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' (possibly defensible in view of the projected Jonathan Demme film about Dusty Springfield) in preference to 'Black Vinyl, White Powder'. This latter figures as 'See also:' But then their encapsulation of 'YDHTSYLM' only rates it 'Gossipy, camp and wise'; not even superlatives! (Though I am not sure that I know what the superlative of 'gossipy' is - 'most gossipy' sounds a bit tame.)
TIM
Hi Tim
I agree it's disappointing not to see BVWP in the Top 50. I guess none of the journalists who gave it great reviews were on the panel. But I was delighted to see YDHTSYLM at number 11. At least it shows the judges don't take the music business too seriously. In fact, on balance, I'd rather have it this way.
Yes– it's the right choice – I'm pleased.
SIMON
SUNDAY JUNE 18 2006
From: Adam Simmonds, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Do you not think it is rather dangerous saleswise being rude to people who profess to like your books?
Ms Imogen Dwyer did after all only encourage you to write a new book sooner and more quickly because, apparently, she is keen to read it.
Yours
ADAM
Not at all – I suspect her life is profoundly empty and being rude to her won't discourage her one jot. People like her are an internet disease – telling you what you should eat, what you should think, the best way to breathe, the best way to shit, how to find God, even how to be a better atheist.
You'd better watch out too. You sound like you're on the verge of becoming one yourself.
SIMON
SATURDAY JUNE 17 2006
From: Imogen Dwyer, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Like James Sandys I have read all of your books and have liked them and want more. When people like me and others have helped build a fanbase for your writing why do you want to make writing books a secondary priority? I think you should be flattered that people want to read your books and you should try harder to give them the books they want to read.
I hope this is food for thought
IMO
Imogen - if you look around in London you might still be lucky enough to find a hardback version of Black Vinyl White Powder (in Foyles, perhaps). It's about 7” wide by 10” tall by 1.5” wide, and has a really good stiff cover. To pass the time until my next book comes out try shoving it up your arse.
SIMON
FRIDAY JUNE 16 2006
From: James Sandys, Munich , Germany
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
I've read all three of your books, and re-read them all too. Now I want to know, when are we going to see a new one? No-one puts the music business in such good perspective as you do.
Yours
JAMES SANDYS
Thanks James
I have to own up… I haven't started a new one yet, though I think I'm just about to. It will be music-biz, travel, comment (same as all the others I guess), but the difference will be, this one's going to be about the present not the past.
But don't expect it to be finished too soon. Lots of things come first - working, eating, travelling, enjoying life. Currently, writing's not top of the list. So you'd better hunt around for a few other authors to enjoy in the meantime.
All the best
SIMON
THURSDAY JUNE 15 2006
From: Larry Ashmore, London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon and Yo
Suzy thanks you for her birthday greetings. We have found that we have to go to a funeral ! Poor John Bell, a colleague and an excellent arranger, suddenly died last week so we're off to the crematorium this afternoon and then back to tea with the grandchildren and a birthday cake. Suzy sends you both her love and a hearty hug and a slap on the back.
As for your flu when you were in London - join the long queue of visitors to England who expect May to be sunny and warm. I tell 'ee, lad, "ne'er cast a clout till May be out. Just wrap your clout up to your snout and sip a nice hot Mar--mite " (Old Proverb )
See you in July
SUZY & LARRY xxxx
John Bell? I seem to remember, late 60s/early 70s, going to his flat in Westbourne Grove at 2am in the morning to deliver scribbled, wine-stained, untranscribed arrangements of my grandiose orchestral ideas for whatever rock group I was producing - and having impeccable parts turn up at 9.30am in the studio, looking so perfect the musos thought it had all been printed. Don't tell me he's gone and had a career and a life and a death and all that sort of thing while I wasn't looking for five minutes.
The speed at which it all whizzes by....
Anyway, I hope Suzy's cake was good and that there was wine with it rather that tea.
Lots of love to you both
SIMON xx
WEDNESDAY JUNE 14 2006
From: Gerry Atwell, Manchester, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I saw your email about not liking to listen to pop singers talk. So how on earth do you manage them?
Yours
GERRY
I try only to work with people who write their own songs, forge their own direction and have something to say. It's depressing seeing all these TV programmes looking for people who have a singing voice but need an A&R men to find songs for them and a producer to ‘give them a sound'. As you can imagine, talking to them is no big thrill either, which is why I try and avoid it.
Regards
SIMON
TUESDAY JUNE 13 2006
From: Eric Lindsey, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
Sometimes on your site I read the most horrendous stories about how homosexuals are treated worldwide.
I am a straight man, 49. To be honest, if the idea of homosexuality had never existed or been brought to awareness to me, I never would have imagined it on my own. That said, as preternaturally heterosexual as I am, when I read of stories of how homosexuals are all too often treated worldwide, my heart hurts profoundly.
I mean this from my soul. I offer my deepest personal apology to all homosexuals, male and female, from this heterosexual, for all the persecution and pain you may have received in the world from short or small minded/hearted heterosexual folk.
Sincerely
ERIC
Hi Eric
Nice thought but quite unneccessary. Imagine sending a similar email to everyone in the world who was gay, everyone in the world who was black, everyone one in the world who was Jewish, or everyone who was simply at the wrong end of not being liked.
Like most people, the majority of gays are happy with who they are, and in a perverse way that seems to include everything that goes with it - good and bad. In fact most gays would be horrified at the thought of being straight.
All the best
SIMON
MONDAY JUNE 12 2006
From: Rob Astbury, Jomtien, Thailand
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
I recently discovered the Fame talent program on BBC Prime. The inside view of all students as they go about their daily activities at the academy is revealing, at times controversial, always entertaining (that's the key) and all this making for captivating and compulsive viewing. I would be very interested in your views of the talent, the judge's opinions and the program in general.
Yours
ROB
Hi Rob
Pop singers bore me and the less I see of them the better. At least on American Idol we don't see much more than their performance but on Fame Academy we have to hear them talk too, not their forte.
Because of this I find the programme unwatchable. Consequently I don't watch it.
All the best
SIMON
SUNDAY JUNE 11 2006
From: Alec Ewe, bambuddhahut@aol.com, Ramsgate, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Jo and I have decided to sell up and move to Asia – time to do something new. Have you any ideas how we'd best get a good price for our restaurant? As you know, it's got a steady clientele, is hugely popular amongst Ramsgate residents and even has a review on your website.
All ideas welcome.
Love
LECKY
Hi Alec
I think it's a great idea to move onto something new. Even though you've made the restaurant such a success, you're never going to rule the world from Ramsgate. It's more of a place for a local businessman.
It may sound daft, but you should try Ebay. Through their property section Uri Geller recently found Elvis Presley's first house and put in an offer. (He then got gazumped). These days, everything seems to find a sale through Ebay. Vicki and I even thought of putting the lyrics for You Don't Have To Say You Love Me up for auction with a reserve of
5
million dollars.
Lots of luck with it.
Love
SIMON
SATURDAY JUNE 10 2006
From: Ron Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dear Simon
Foot note to the policeman part of your tail-light experience, not that its relevant but it just brought back memories….
Years and years ago I was driving in Puerto Rico with my partner (my very first one too!) whose father was Commissioner of Police of Puerto Rico, if you please. I was unaware of the local highway regulation at the time that you could not wear shorts on a public highway. We ran out of gas and my partner, Salvador, set out on foot to a gas station a mile or so away. I stayed leaning outside guarding the jeep (it was an unmarked police jeep used by the family).
Along come the cops in a cruiser and start making fun of my shorts with all sorts of innuendos and threats. Salvador arrives back at the car with a container. They start the same crap with him, then take the container away from him and empty the gas in the field next to the road. Not a hint of money, just having sadistic fun, probably because they must have put 2 +2 together. Then one of them then notices the license plates and goes red, asks to see Salvador 's driving license (he had the same name as his father with jr. tacked on the end) and he starts shaking.
The rest is obvious. When they accompanied us with sirens blaring to the General's compound where we were staying Sal asked them to wait and brought out his Dad to whom he told the story. The General told his aide present to disarm both men and ordered them to take off all their clothes down to their underwear. “Now WALK home,” he said, “and I will forget this whole incident”
Still, I think I prefer the Thai way.
Love
RON
Hi Ron
Funny thing, shorts, how on earth can people get so upset by them? One sunny August weekend in the Seventies when I was in New York, I hired a nice white Oldsmobile from Avis, bought myself tennis shorts, plimsoles and long white socks from Macys, then drove out to Little Hampton to meet Kit Lambert. But there was a by-law which forbade shorts and when I parked the car and tried to cross the road to the restaurant where we were meeting I was arrested and taken for the afternoon to the local jail.
Ridiculous! But these days people are being shot for it in Baghdad. They say it's the Sunni's, but perhaps it's Americans from the Little Hampton National Guard.
SIMON
FRIDAY JUNE 9 2006
From: Justin Morey, Sheffield, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hello Simon
I hope you and Yo are both well and enjoying Thailand .
I was interested in your piece about the Thais being far less politically correct than, say, the British. Cultural differences aside, I wonder if it has anything to do with the Thai language being much more direct and no-nonsense than English. My girl friend being Cantonese, I'm often amused by the directness her language, so I was wondering if Thai is the same in apparently doing without a lot of those polite socially lubricating words and phrases that we take for granted in English.
Regards
JUSTIN
Hi Justin
Actually, no! the Thai language is as devious and circumspect and ‘lubricated' as English.
Despite this, Thais love to say all sorts of things straight out that we would be most reticent to say and this results in delightful political incorrectness. But underneath this, there's a social correctness that way outweighs ours.
Thai society is a society of patronage. Every person has their own unique position in it with people both above and below them. (Everyone, that is, except the King, who's at the top of it all and often complains how awful it is that no-one dares correct him or offer him advice).
In this multiple class structure, the people above are supposed to offer protection and help to those below in return for respect and politeness (we might call it obsequiousness). For the people below it's the reverse. But the fact is, everyone in Thai society is both ‘above' and ‘below' according to whom they're with, and when. As a result, no-one escapes the necessity of knowing both forms of behaviour, and there's a wonderful equality to it. The Prime Minister has to endure just as much bowing and scraping to those above (and being shat upon by them too), as does a beggar or a hooker.
Political incorrectness aimed at people below is a Thai's way of getting his own back for the excessive social correctness he has to endure with people above.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY JUNE 8 2006
From: Geert Heins, Haarlem, Netherlands
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon – Referencing your sore throat to a ‘buggered bumhole' seems offensively homophobic. As a gay spokesperson shouldn't you know better?
G. HEINS
The few times in my life I've had a dick shoved up my bottom it's been bloody sore afterwards, just as my throat was on the night in question. I don't think of myself as a gay spokesperson and see nothing homophobic in telling things the way they are (you miserable, interfering, shrivel-arsed, faggoty, foreign shrew).
SIMON
From: Tracy, www.dirterecords.com , London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Good evening Simon
Thanks for that fantastic night at Café de Paris with Brothermandude. I hope it was a success. It was also a great pleasure to meet you and I enjoyed the band. I'll be interested to see what London makes of them. Is it true the singer is a prince?
PS. Sorry for being such a sad fan!
Take care
TRACY
Hi Tracy
When ‘sad fans' run their own record companies, and have great bands like your company does, I'm happy to have them.
Sorry I was unable to chat for longer. Everyone thought I was being beastly unsociable but I had flu. My throat felt like a buggered bumhole and all I wanted to do was get back home, suck lozenges and go to sleep.
The response to the gig has been fantastic, especially in America . (We flew a couple of people over to see them). And yes, the singer is a prince, or rather, a Bahraini sheik. Next week they're going to play on Newsnight, which is something of a first.
Lots of love
SIMON
TUESDAY JUNE 6 2006
From: Jim Bedford, Bournemouth, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Adam Sweeting in the Sunday Times said that, ‘Being written about by Rogan must cause his subjects to consider changing their identities and retiring to the Yukon since he pursues them with the relentlessness of a marching army of termites'
Neil Young, the Byrds, Van Morrison, the Smiths and Morrissey - all of them have suffered from his biographies. Rogan's problem is that he listens to people's stories then works out what he, Rogan, would have done in the same circumstances. Anyone who behaves differently from that is deemed morally inferior.
Somewhere in his soul I suspect he has fearful, unnameable guilt.
Yours
JIM
Hi Jim
Nice to get your interpretation of Johnny Rogan, but personally I don't see him as that deeply fucked up. Besides being interviewed by him, I've done radio chat shows with him and seen what he's like. He's just a silly busy-body with a nasty moral streak. He should have been manager of a works canteen, or a junior detective in a seaside town that never has good weather.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY JUNE 5 2006
From: Andy Downes, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Last week I came across a book called ‘Starmakers & Svengalis' by Johnny Rogan, written in 1987. There was one chapter each about the best British pop and rock managers, though some of them were people I'd never heard of. Amongst the ones I knew about was you, but to tell the truth he made you sound like a cunt.
Have you read it?
Yours
ANDY D
Andy, you may not know this, but a lot of people are crazy about cunts. Personally I'm not turned on by them, but on the other hand I do rather like myself. Maybe that means Johnny Rogan got it wrong. Or it might just mean I'm a prick.
SIMON
SUNDAY JUNE 4 2006
From: Doug Connell, Austin, Texas
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
As part of a music management course I am writing a thesis on the emergence of rock music in the sixties. Part of my research was to read your book Black Vinyl White Powder. In it you appear to suggest that rock music was something totally British, evolving from guitar-based pop groups like the Beatles and the Kinks, through the Rolling Stones (who added aggression), to the Who and Led Zeppelin, at which point drugs and anti-social behaviour became a necessary requirement of rock status.
Is there any way you could enlarge on this?
Yours truly
D. CONNELL
What you've written above is a two line précis of six chapters in my book. If you want it enlarged, go back and read those six chapters.
Don't you feel a career in pop music might be over-reaching yourself?
SIMON
SATURDAY JUNE 3 2006
From: Torb Jensen, www.torbtown.com
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi
Sorry to pester you, but I'm at my wits end... I'm trying to find a song called "Stoned in Saigon ". I began my search with nothing but a childhood memory of a haunting melody and a few lyrics.
Do you have any ideas or information on where I might find a copy of that song?? That song was an important part of my childhood. My daughter is two years old now, and I'd like it to become a part of her childhood as well. I consider that song to be a valuable part of world history, and the music is beautifully arranged... it saddens me to discover that it is melting into obscurity while less elegant works of art are being pounded into my daughter's brain...
Sincerely
TORB JENSEN
Hi Torb
Well, as you already know, the song was on an album by a group called Fresh, which was produced by Ray Singer and I in 1970. Ray and I also wrote that song, and I have to agree with everything you say about it.
Looking back over many years in the music business there are few things I care about not having happened. People I might have managed, for instance, and then didn't, only to see them become successful - I'm never regretful about that - who knows if things would have gone the same for them with me in charge of their career, and anyway perhaps we wouldn't have got on. But that one song was a disappointment. Ray and I wrote it at just the perfect moment in the saga of the Vietnam War. It was an obvious contender for a Number One single in the USA, but we hadn't realise the complete impossibility of AM radio playing a record which suggested, however gently, that US troops might be smoking the odd joint or two.
FM, however, went overboard on it. It was their way of proving they were the new thing - free of the censorship that plagued Top Fifty AM radio. But FM radio wasn't enough to convert it into the hit it should have been.
Somewhere in a drawer in London I have a copy. But just today I have returned to Thailand where I shall stay for the next four weeks. When I'm next in London I shall copy it and send it to you.
Best regards
SIMON
FRIDAY JUNE 2 2006
From: David Alberton, Manchester, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I only just read your “What's Going On” piece this week. I'm confused. I simply can't believe you don't agree with sensible behaviour in regard to the planet - Kyoto protocol etc.
Please explain yourself.
DAVID
Hi David
The part of me that's just one more human-being believes in it. But the part of me that sits outside of human riff-raff thinks differently.
Why should we be so arrogant as to think the planet was primarily meant for us? Perhaps we were put here specifically to destroy it. What right have we to interfere with that?
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY JUNE 1 2006
From: Enrique Morales, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Brothermandude at the Café de Paris last night was fantastic. The group, the songs, the voice – I was completely knocked out. I can't think when I saw a group for the first time and was so immediately impressed by them. What a brilliant party it was. The audience response confirmed everything I felt about it.
Thanks so much for the invite. I'm hooked. When will the album be in the shops?
Cheers
ENRIQUE
Hi Enrique
Glad you came, glad you enjoyed it. It really was a great show, wasn't it!
Current plans are for four more weeks of recording followed by a possible three of four weeks of dates in the UK in July. In August they're off to America to do showcase dates and the album will be released there in the first week of September.
From next week their song ‘Automatic' can be downloaded from I-tunes.
All the best
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MAY 31 2006
From: Luc Hervet, Paris, France
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
So Simon, what makes you think you can become an instant expert on the French psyche? For my part I feel insulted to hear Monsieur R call my country a ‘bitch' who should be ‘fucked' and treated like a ‘slut'.
Even more insulting is to have an Englishman tell me I should not feel that way.
LUC HERVET
Delighted to know you were more inuslted by me than by your own second-rate frog-rap. For me, though, all this ‘bitch & slut' stuff is too grotesquely heterosexual.
SIMON
From: Marc Gaspard, Perpignan, France
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
Do you know about our French rap star Monsieur R? In his video he dresses as a gendarme with two naked chicks rubbing on the French flag. In his rap he says, "France is a slut. Don't forget to fuck her dry. You gotta treat her like a bitch, man."
Our local MP heard the album. Now he proposes a law to make it a criminal offence to insult the dignity of France or the French state.
What's your take on that?
Yours
MARC
That's applying the law of blasphemy to the State - elevating France and Frenchness to the status of religion - but your MP's objection is pure class prejudice. Imagine if a nineteenth century French poet had written, “France, you are my whore. I shall sleep with you until you're exhausted and treat you like my harlot.” By now he would be a venerated member of the Académie Francaise.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY MAY 29 2006
From: Paul Rymer, www.nightporter.co.uk
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Regarding the toilets, I have been plotting since I got back. I think there is a huge untapped (excuse the pun) market there. I've found out that you can get washing toilets in the UK but they are marketed to people with disabilities and the elderly. I do think they could become popular with the general population though.
Best wishes
PAUL
Hi Paul
I'm sure you're right about the bum-washers. Britain is going through a very hygienic period at the moment. Blair has a reputation for having turned it into a nanny state so why don't you take it a stage further?
“Taking British bottoms into the 21st Century”. It's epoch-making. You might get knighted. Like building the railways.
Cheers
SIMON
SUNDAY MAY 28 2006
From: Paul Rymer, www.nightporter.co.uk
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Just a quick note to say I loved Japan, as you predicted it exceeded my expectations in so many ways. I am missing it even though I have been back in the UK for only a few days. The people were fun, the food amazing, and the feeling that I had as I walked around was so optimistic and carefree it totally revitalised me.
The toilets with washing functions are something that I really miss.
Best wishes
PAUL
Hi Paul
It always amazes me when I come back to Britain, or go to America, and find all these millions of people who crap every day with no efficient way of washing their bottoms afterwards. In Thailand, as in Japan and most of Asia and all of the Arab world, it would be unthinkable to have a toilet without a water douche with which to wash yourself. Shame to say but the UK is a nation of shit-smearers. Rather than wash their bottoms after crapping they simply wipe the residue around with a bit of paper. When it comes to this, even the French are cleaner than us.
For a visitor (for these days that's what I am when I come to the UK ) it's so annoying to find I have to undress and get into the shower, or hang my arse over the bath, to wash myself after a crap.
Maybe you could start a campaign to install Japanese bum washers throughout Britain.
All the best
SIMON
SATURDAY MAY 27 2006
From: S. B., Harrow, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Your reply to Mark Sanford yesterday pissed me off... I can tell you for sure that Mark does not enjoy restaurants one jot more when he goes to them with other people… Mark is simply a born complainer… sometimes I think he only goes to restaurants to find fault with them… it is grossly unfair to blame me… you got it one hundred per cent wrong.
MARK'S GIRLFRIEND
You both sound equally obnoxious. Why not make a whole lot of restaurants happy - call the whole thing off and never eat out together again.
SIMON
FRIDAY MAY 26 2006
From: Mark Sanford, Harrow, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
because my girlfriend grumbled at the restaurants i chose i tried some of the places you recommended in 'eating out'... we had a lousy meal at wolsely.. another at le colombier.. and at la brasserie we had to wait in a queue.. got a bad table.. a rude waiter and tasteless food...
MARK
Hi Mark
Try the same restaurants with someone other than your girlfriend. I bet you'll enjoy them a lot more. (Or why not just ditch her altogether?)
All the best
SIMON
THURSDAY MAY 25 2006
From: Drew Charlton, Cape Town, SA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon Napier-Bell
You should immediately retract one of the restaurants you recommend in your Eating Out section. Last month my boyfriend and I suffered a meal at Wolsely that was totally without enjoyemnt, and we went on your recommendation.
A hundred and twenty quid down the drain and all your fault.
Yours
DREW
Hullo Bullytits
I've eaten many meals in good restaurants that were 'totally without enjoyment'. Usually it was due to having someone like you at the next table.
Regards
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MAY 24 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Herfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
The word "moderation" is a very deceitful word, don't you think? It leads people into thinking that somehow, if they take less than they're naturally keen for, life will reward them with extra time.
I think behind the word "moderation" is a fear of death and life's real and giddy possibilities.
So there
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
I agree, I agree - moderation is Puritanism for the ordinary man - abstention for Mr. Average. What can you know of anything if you've had to experience it in portions smaller than your instinct demands?
Life will be endlessly luke warm.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY MAY 23 2006
From: Alison Leeds, Birmingham, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Mr Napier-Bell
While enjoying your website it nevertheless concerns me that you frequently write in a celebratory fashion about the pleasures of alcoholic excess. Since your reputation as a rock manager causes young people to look up to you could you not act responsibly and occasionally emphasise the importance of moderation?
Yours
ALISON LEEDS
Dear Ms Leeds
It's been my experience that drinking moderately is a complete waste of time and I wouldn't like to recommend it.
Regards
SIMON
MONDAY MAY 22 2006
From: Keith Anderson, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi there
I like the fact that you're a cocky shit. Are you looking to manage anyone else at the moment?
K
I love the fact that I'm nothing whatsoever to do with you and will never have to be.
S
From: Sean Petersen, Bridlington, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
A while back you were telling us about Brothermandude, a band you were involved with. What's happening with them? Will we ever get to see or hear them? You talked as if they were the next big thing. So where are they?
Regards
SEAN
All over the place, actually. They're in the middle of a small UK tour – a warm-up for showcase dates to be played in the USA in a few weeks' time. Their album will be released in September (in the USA ) and there are several tracks downloadable from their website or at Myspace.com
If you want to see them, you should do it now before America grabs them up. They're at Peterborough tonight, Stourbridge tomorrow, Bournemouth Tuesday, Twickenham Wednesday.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY MAY 20 2006
From: Tony Hulse,UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon,
I just wondered if you would tell me what you think of this self-recorded England World cup track - ' Kings of the beautiful game'. (Just click and it should play in a few seconds).
So far, people, even the ones I suspected would be sceptical, have been very enthusiastic.
Regards
TONY HULSE (aka Jules Rimmer)
Me? Football songs? Unfortunately, your song seems to have all the necessary qualities - out of tune, easy hook, clichéd history of the World Cup, plonking rhythm, thoroughly home-made feel. It will probably be a smash. But unwise of you, I would have thought, to put your phone number on the website. You could get half world calling to insult you.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY MAY 19 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshite, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Y'know you could put the most beautiful classic piece of jazz before many people's ears and still they'd never get it. Some folk are just greedy; they want to be knocked over the head with gratification within the first twenty seconds. One can only imagine what average obvious exhausting lovers these people must make. With jazz, as with good love-making, you must never expect or demand anything; then all heaven will be gently revealed.
I was breast fed on Motown, Bowie, Sex Pistols, whatever... It's just so cool how jazz now gives me the comfort where I once craved brutal sensation. I'm in awe of younger folk who get jazz early on. They must come from good loving homes; raised by less heavy handed parents perhaps.
Yours
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
Beautifully put. But Jazz when I was setting out to be a teenager was the rock music of its day - the music of rebellion. At boarding school the headmaster saw jazz on a par with atheism and homosexuality, thus encouraging me in all three simultaneously.
By the time I left boarding school and re-joined the outside world, rock had taken hold. But for all its rebelliousness rock was a sign of conformity – part of the correct teenage uniform – so I stuck with jazz, my ‘outsider' badge.
These days, however, my preference isn't so clear. At home in Thailand I leave the FM radio set to a channel called Eurodance, which is what is says mixed with jazz-fusion - comfort music (feelgood, nostaligia, class, and sometimes gentle excitement).
When I exercise, I get on the running machine and do a forty minute ‘dance-walk' to something that swings with a vengeance – old Shorty Rodgers records are pretty good, but then so is the Jools Holland's big band.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY MAY 18 2006
From: Don Hanson, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
I used to enjoy your website but lately have been finding it less amusing. In particular I did not enjoy your recent pontification on jazz and rock. It contained no new insight and seemed biased against rock without any serious substantiation.
It would be nice if you could write with more depth.
G.HANSON
Gordon - I have good news for you. There are more than four million websites you can visit other than mine.
For me the news is even better. There are more than six billion people in the world other than you.
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MAY 17 2006
From: Ed Shaft, Philadelphia, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
simon…
re this week's piece about jazz and rock… most jazz is deadly boring and undisciplined whereas rock is nearly always carefully constructed…. for me rock often swings while jazz (despite what you say about it) all too often doesn't…
ED SHAFT
Hi Ed
Seems you're saying pretty much the same as me, though I can't agree that rock (or anything else) in a straight-eight rhythm can ever swing. Sometimes it can get into a totally hypnotic groove (bands in the seventies used to call it ‘coaching'), which is what the best rhythm-and-blues does too (think of ‘Good Times' or ‘We Are Family'). The only rock that ever ‘swings' is rock'n'roll played with a triplet-type rhythm, i.e. a Status Quo finale.
SIMON
TUESDAY MAY 16 2006
From: Visible Woman, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
'David Sylvian' and 'fun' in the same sentence??! I been livin' too long...
Examples please. Please!
VB
Hi VB
The first three years managing Japan was the most enjoyable period of management I ever had. During the second year the group had success in Japan (the country) and played for 12,000 people at the Budokan just two nights after its previous biggest gig - a hundred people at the Red Lion in Hammersmith. For the next three years they made annual trips to Japan as megastars only to come back to Britain and be nothing. Sounds depressing, yet no other band I worked with had me laughing so often. Finally, of course, they had success in the UK. After that David Sylvian got rather hung up on being serious.
Judging from your email you don't sound a bundle of laughs yourself.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY MAY 15 2006
From: Debbie, Ashton, Phoenix , Ariz , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I was just wondering… Whose was the most embarrassing bed you ever woke up to find yourself in?
Yours
DEBBIE
Hi Debbie
That might be an indiscretion too far, even for me. But perhaps the most embarrassing place was a disco in Tokyo. I was under a sofa asleep on the floor.
I was woken by a vacuum cleaner banging against my head as it was shoved underneath the sofa. When I crawled out I found myself in the Lexington Queen disco, glaringly lit by neon strip lights with half a dozen cleaning ladies emptying ashtrays, polishing knobs and pushing vacuum cleaners around.
I don't know how often they found leftover people under the furniture, but they didn't seem too concerned.
Cheers
SIMON
SUNDAY MAY 14 2006
Francis Connor, Sataheep, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dear Simone
Re your kind loan of Donald Richie's book Japan Journals, I found it overly edited. I would have liked to hear more of the bubble years when Ueno Park was bursting with lusty Iranian guest workers and Richie could be found in the copses in the park giving blow jobs left right and centre.
By the way, yesterday, skimming through your daily post column, some of the things you say to your less favoured correspondents had me jumping out of my chair with alarm.
Toodlepip
FRANCESCA
My dear Francis, forgive me if I make an old friend jump out of his chair, but…
Whilst your many years in Tokyo no doubt gives you the right to talk about Donald Richie with authority, in an email you sent me about your time in the Gulf States, you once said, “I sometimes wonder how I managed to accommodate all those illegal immigrant Iranian labourers in Kuwait.“
Do I detect double standards in your Richie-bitching?
All my best
SIMON
SATURDAY MAY 13 2006
From: Doug Sheen, Glasgow, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
simon – how can you dismiss jimmy page as an ‘asshole'… that's sheer stupidty… just dumb rudeness... jimmy was/is one of the true guitar greats of his generation…
D. SHEEN
I wasn't discussing his guitar playing (which I admit was quite adequate, though more technical than sensitive, more raucous than passionate, and never with much feeling for the blues), I was discussing his talent as a prick.
This needn't be taken too insultingly. An artist's work depends on his technical ability to interpret his emotional state. Zeppelin's tour de force-ism was an exploration of four decadent psyches. The most intriguing one was Jimmy's, fired up by whatever irked him. That Zeppelin were a great band was due to him more than anyone else. Being a prick has its rewards.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY MAY 12 2006
Ned Shepton, Boston, Mass, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
Who was the shrewdest, sharpest, cleverest person you ever managed? I'm not talking about musical talent (though presumably they needed some) but who was the person most determined to succeed and had a brain to go with it? And who was the biggest asshole?
Same person perhaps?
Yours
NED
Hi Ned
Sharpest, shrewdest, cleverest and wittiest -
Marc Bolan.
Sharpest, shrewdest, cleverest and most fun to work with -
David Sylvian.
Sharpest, shrewdest, cleverest but still something missing -
George Michael.
Biggest asshole - Jimmy Page.
Most talented - Jeff Beck.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY MAY 11 2006
From: Sean Reilly, Liverpool, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I loved your piece this week about the elephant on the beach. I was shocked to read that elephants working in log camps in Thailand are fed amphetamines to make them work harder. Is that really true?
Yours
SEAN
Well that's what plantation owners did to black slaves in Louisiana two hundred years ago. It's what the British and American governments did to their troops in the Second World War. And in Thailand it was the traditional way of getting elephants into battle – fill them up with speed and send them off to trample the Burmese army. The Burmese, however, often won. Better drugs or better elephants, who knows?
Cheers
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MAY 10 2006
From: Ron Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Re last week's piece on circumcision: Jews have it done to the baby almost at birth… within 6 days if I am not mistaken. If you have ever been to a ‘briss' its quite a non event…. The razor is so sharp and the instrument used so efficient that some babies sleep through it (I apparently did). The whole idea is health, as is all that kosher bull's shit too….
In actual fact I couldn't care less, although growing up in Copacabana, Rio, the amount of smelly cheese odours between those beach bums' legs was nauseating.
Love to you both
RON
Hi Ron
My point about branding them with their religion still stands. And if it's just for health, why not take out their appendix and tonsils too? Or, in these days of genetic science, why not adjust their brains so they're guaranteed to grow up with mainstream thinking rather than awkward opinions and antisocial viewpoints?
To be honest, I was just being my usual bigoted self. Religion is loathsome and that's all there is to it (though Copacabana cheesebums sound even worse).
Lots of love
SIMON
TUESDAY MAY 9 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
oh come on Simon...pot is a fantastic little tipple.. provided one's not greedy with the herb, it's one of life's truly cerebral pleasures. I love to smoke the smallest joint after Thomas has gone to bed and play my Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans records. I bet you'd be fantastic company under the influence of the smoke and the jazz
love your essay this week
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
Really, I'm not putting down any of these drugs (each person to his own), but from a truly social point of view, only alcohol works.
I used to like smoking pot, and I agree with you it's perfect with jazz, but it's a drug that sends people flooating into dreams. You say I'd be fantastic company under its influence, but that's simply not true. I'd choose to be alone, stretch out on a sofa and put on some music. You yourself say you prefer to smoke it 'after Thomas has gone to bed'. You see what I mean?
The great blessing of pot has been its tendency to be smoked by Middle-Eastern people. For six hundred years it's dreamy qualities have been relatively succesful in dampening the fires of Islam. The danger with modern Islam is that it's spreading to countries where pot offends the law and without their medication the mob get out of hand. Perhaps people of religious ardour should be required to take a daily dose of valium.
(Incidentally, Christianity, though I hate to admit it, has a saving grace - because of communion it spread the art of wine making in its wake.)
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY MAY 8 2006
From: Dean McLoud, London , UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Looking back at your old emails I am interested to notice how you invariably equate alcohol with speed and pot and coke or even heroin. I'm writing a thesis on recreational drugs and want to know, do you really put alcohol into that category? I.E. do you really think of it as a recreational drug?
Regards
D. McLOUD
Of course it's a drug, you twat, and if it's not recreational, what the fuck is it? But as for being in the same category, certainly not!
Speed and coke do little more than energise the brain by sticking pins in it. Heroin is just an emotional pain killer. Pot makes people giggle too much or sends them floating into tedious oblivion.
Alcohol is the one, true, great, recreational drug - one of the world's most cohesive and civilising influences.
SIMON
SUNDAY MAY 7 2006
From: Albert Sheldon, Portsmouth, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Good story yesterday about getting the boat back to the UK. I may have been on the same ship. I'm a musician and I worked on it for a while back in the 60s. From Quebec to Germany to Ireland and then on to London. Was that the one?
Regards
BIG AL
It was. It cost about around $100 including all meals, but it was rough the whole the way. The cabins slept six but I stayed in the library most nights because everyone in the cabin was vomiting. (For some reason I never got seasick).
The boat first went to Bremerhaven in Germany, then to Cork in Southern Ireland. By that time I couldn't stand it any more so I disembarked with a guy I'd met on board.
We decided to hitch-hike to London but round dusk got stuck in drizzling rain outside a small Irish village. A local policeman turned up on his bike and invited us to come back to the police station to sleep. He unlocked an empty cell, gave us a bunk each with a blanket and told us we could leave whenever we wanted.
At 2am he shook us awake from a deep sleep and presented us with two steaming mugs, “I thought you might like a good cup of tea,” he told us. “It'll help you sleep.” Then he left us till morning.
It was the first time I realised that the Irish aren't quite like other people.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY MAY 6 2006
From: Rory Sheen, Belleville, Ontario , Canada
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
Why did that Damien guy make you so angry? If you didn't like what he said why did you post his email? Anyway… we don't need to hear about all the people you've ‘shagged'.
RORY
Rory...
It's sometimes good to vent a little spleen but today I shall avoid spleen-venting and tell you instead why I picked out your dreary little email. It was because I saw you were from Belleville.
About a million years ago, when I was nineteen, I was hitch-hiking from Toronto to Quebec where I was going to get a boat back to England. I'd bought the boat ticket with my last bit of money and had none left over to get me to Quebec. It was deadly cold – well below freezing – I didn't have a proper coat and about ten at night I was standing by the highway in a blizzard. There were no cars on the road and I honestly thought I would freeze to death, so I knocked on the door of a house and told the man who answered what my situation was. As a result I got a meal, a bed, breakfast in the morning and a lift to the local bus station where he and his wife paid for a Greyhound bus to Quebec .
And that was in Belleville .
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY MAY 5 2006
From: Damien Blaine, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon Napier-Bell
You probably don't remember me, but if I were to remind you of the circumstance of our acquaintance it would be with the word ‘Sombrero' (circa 1981). You met me there and took me to your flat in Richmond where you shagged me rotten.
Though it was long ago, I think we both enjoyed it. Enough I hope that you will accede to my request for you to listen to my nephew's songs.
Sincerely
DAMIEN BLAINE
You bigmouthed toad. Whatever happened to tact and discretion? And anyway, how do you expect me to remember everyone I slept with twenty years ago?
Piss on your nephew's songs. Tell him to peddle his own arse round town - better than relying on favours called in by his uncle for a long-forgotten fuck.
SIMON
THURSDAY MAY 4 2006
From: Tracy, Dirte Records, London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hiya Simon
Check out the EPK of our new group the Dirty Feel. We'd love to know your thoughts.
A bit of background…
Virgil the drummer's dad is Steve Howe from prog-rock supergroups Yes and Asia (but don't let that put you off!). When Charles Shaar Murray saw Dirty Feel live he went up to Verge afterwards and said… ”Your dad's band were shit but you're fantastic!”
Your comments would be much valued.
TRACY xx
Hi Tracy
I managed Asia for a couple of years, complete with Steve Howe. I remember the amount of grass he smoked and how long his hair was, then one evening sitting in a taxi with me in Tokyo he went on about worried he was ‘cos his son was growing his hair too long and might one day take up smoking dope. (I guess that's Virgil.)
Steve was a moody bugger! When we went to America he refused to travel with the band but toured around in his own car - an ancient white Mercedes he'd kept there for years - and he absolutely refused to give anyone a lift in it. One night in Germany he refused to play because the hall had been re-decorated and smelt of paint (and that was the night the record company had chosen to come and see the gig).
But what a brilliant guitarist. He did a ten minute solo spot which was the highlight of the show every night.
Cheers
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MAY 3 2006
From: Harry Selbert, Boston, Mass, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Sir
I understand your ardour in opposing religious bigotry but your narrow-minded rejection of people who use religion as a gentle cushion against the rougher and more confusing aspects of daily life makes your views feel far from fair or well-balanced.
HARRY SELBERT
Writing in a fair and well-balanced manner not only causes pieces to be of unnecessary length and complexity but also leads to a reduction in their emotional impact which in turn lessens the writer's ability to rouse readers to instant thought on the subject in question.
I go for the tabloid approach. Take your position, ramp up the rhetoric, keep it simple, make it short. If people don't like it - fuck'em.
SIMON
TUESDAY MAY 2 2006
From: Geoffrey Keene, Huddersfield, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Re your piece this week… Why do you have to pull Christianity into a piece that starts out about circumcising a thirteen-year-old Moslem boy. My mum and dad are Christian, I'm eighteen and my foreskin is still safe and sound. Aren't you being a little unfair putting the two things together?
Yours
G. KEENE
Hi Geoffrey
Christian or Moslem, moderate or extreme, priests or mullahs, causal believers or passionate ones, they're all part of the same thing - international religionism - dumb, dangerous and dogmatic. I see no reason to separate them (even your own nice mum and dad).
SIMON
MONDAY MAY 1 2006
From: Christine Holmes, Michigan, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I read with interest your take on the rise of the British pop music culture, vis-a-vis the gay culture of the 60's-70's. I (and I'm sure many other readers) would be most interested in hearing your take on the legendary Brian Epstein's influence on the world of the 60's and beyond.
Perhaps it's only my own perception, but I really do not think the Beatles would have gone anywhere if it hadn't been for him. Consequently, if it hadn't been for Eppy, the world would be a different place today and our American culture (as it were) would even be of a much poorer quality?
CHRISTINE HOLMES
Hi Christine
Brian Epstein was a pleasant, personable man. His private life had a hole in it which the Beatles filled. As a result he got all fired up and wouldn't stop till he got them a record deal.
I agree that without his obsession the Beatles probably wouldn't have happened. I also agree that certain things in the world might be different - Yoko Ono, for instance, wouldn't be so rich. But to credit Brian Epstein with the influence the Beatles exerted on world culture is like crediting the man who planted the apple tree with Sir Isacc Newton's discovery of gravity.
Chance rather than foresight.
All the best
SIMON
SUNDAY APRIL 30 2006
From: Gerry Samson, Torquay, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I was in New York on Friday and heard you on Larry Flick's morning show on Q radio. You were talking about coming out in the music business in the 60s. For some people it still seems a difficult thing to do, even now, 40 years later. What made it easier then?
GERRY
Hi Gerry
Easy or difficult? I haven't a clue…. It simply never occurred to me to pretend to be what I wasn't. Anyway, I was caught far too often in indiscreet circumstances (at show-business parties, for instance, where journalists were present) to be able to pretend otherwise. But I agree it's lucky I lived in a country where the worst downsides were not life-threatening. Had I lived somewhere like today's Iran (or Nigeria or Jamaica ) I'm not sure what I would have done - left the country perhaps, or found an androgenous slim-hipped girl, got married, then watched in horror as year by year she turned into a slack-pussied middle-aged mother demanding conjugal cuddles that couldn't be consumated.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY APRIL 29 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
I must tell you..there is nothing absurd about my compliments... There are many people who would find your mug extremely handsome. I mean.. it just is! .. and it always was. But the very best photograph of you ever taken in your whole life is the one second from the left at the top of your home page. You look filthy in that one... disgruntled... almost angry... like you're thinking about ripping the camera out of the photographers hand and rogering him fifty shades of blue.
Another good photo is the one of you in your swimming togs on the roof of the Belage in L.A. Those are great swimming togs arent they? I've looked long and hard at that photo and for the love of me I can't tell how big yer knob is, but i'm guessing it's kind of cute.... not a horrible long knob... more cuter than that...kind of short, but chubby..am I right? You told me I was right that you wear briefs and not boxers... does my intuition serve me well again?
In the background of that photo you can see the horrible Hyatt hotel where I lived for six months. In that photograph I fancy the idea that you were having a quick swim before coming round to my inferior hotel to give me the fuck of the century... and then to leave me discarded on the bedroom floor... before heading off for dinner with David Geffen.
Totally harmless and benign flirtations
GREGORY
'Benign Flirtations' has the ring of a 1930s movie about it - high class romance with a tasty murder towards the end. And of course, a hero with fabulous good looks and the promise of a perfectly proportioned willie.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY APRIL 28 2006
From: Jardine Short, Leeds, Yorkshire, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon Napier-Bell
Basking in compliments as absurd as those sent you yesterday does not become you. Frankly, my own father looks better than you do, even at the advanced age of 78. I have to presume you pay people to write such things, or do you make them up?
Perhaps Gregory Gray is simply a nom de plume for your ego?
Yours
JARDINE SHORT
Jardine Short, you nasty old bitch. What sort of twisted screwball are you that you can't accept me enjoying a little praise from an admiring correspondent?
As for ‘Gregory Gray' being a nom de plume for my ego... perhaps you've hit the nail on the head. Gregory is one of my most regular contributors and never fails to speak nicely of me. How could my ego fail to respond to such sensual massaging?
When did yours last get some?
SIMON
THURSDAY APRIL 27 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
you look ravishing in that picture of you in boyz magazine this week… pretty darn good for sixty seven don't you think... it's a fun little read
i zoomed in on your face and had a close inspection... it really is a good looking mug isn't it....sort of butch.... great
hair too…
regards
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
I can't pretend I don't like compliments, but be warned - firstly, the shot was taken a year ago, so not really 67 – secondly, it was a very good photographer (Emma Jepson) who came to visit me for a day, took over a hundred shots, then very kindly threw away all the ones which weren't as good as that one. Pop star tricks, you see. Well why not?
Cheers
SIMON
.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 26 2006
From: Caspar Llewelyn Smith
Editor, Observer Music Mgazine, London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hey there
I've been thinking about running a gay-themed issue for some time. I think there's a great, not crashingly clichéd, issue to be done, tho' haven't thought through the ins and outs yet, and I'm asking you for any thoughts, whether you might contribute in any way!
Do you mind having a wee ponder?
All best
CASPAR
Hi Caspar
In Black Vinyl I suggested that gay culture has had a similar degree of influence on British pop music as black culture has had on American pop music. Perhaps a piece about that would work for you. Basically, as you know, It started with the coincidences of..... (1) the supressed 50s gay community watching Larry Parnes define a new area of entrepreneurism which they could enter - pop/rock management, and.... (2) the end of National Service creating a ready flow of management-needy groups.
Moving on from there was the influence these managers exerted on their groups in terms of fashion, image (and most important) tolerance of all things gay. This was coupled with the odd situation that... because the only outlet for pop until the sixties was the variety theatre circuit, young anarchic teenagers were turned into professional all round-entertainers and became familiar with the luvvy atmosphere of the theatre.
When the seventies came along, there were many artists who'd been around this gay tolerant music business for long enough to think it worth including in their own imagery - Bowie, Bolan, Elton, Freddie Mercury. And then on to the Blitz crowd in the 80s - Boy George, Erasure, Take That, etc, all the way to today's Robbie Williams still delighting in being a gay icon.
Gay culture seems to have been the heaviest constant influence flowing through British pop, but despite volumes of camp, gay culture in British pop music has only ever been one single strain of the industry rather than the basic driving force, which has always come from fun, self-expression and sex, with money coming a poor fourth.
Best regards
SIMON
TUESDAY APRIL 25 2006
From: Carol Bridle, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
Not a mention, and I was on every show with Eddy Cochran and Gene Vincent, and unfortunately on the last one with Eddy at the Hippodrome, Bristol. I was then called the Golden Voice of the 60s and took over from Gene Vincent at the Manchester Hippodrome.
Just thought I would mention it as I'm still alive and singing
Regards
PETER WYNNE
Hi Peter (or Carol)
You've confused me. You say ‘not a mention' but by that do you mean in Black Vinyl White Powder, or on my website?
I can't say I remember your name from the 60s, neither as Peter Wynne nor Carol Bridle (nor even as the ‘Golden Voice of the 60s'). Were you then Peter and now Carol? Did you make records? Perhaps other people who read this website will remember you.
You must be ancient by now!
SIMON
MONDAY APRIL 24 2006
From: William Baxter, Ryde, Isle of Wight, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Mr. Napier-Bell
My son drew my attention to an email you sent last week to someone in the Isle of Wight in which you really maligned this fine island. It is more than just a tawdry tourist resort; it is an integral part of British history.
Having read some of your website and noted your atheistic views and predilection to condoning drugs and drinking, I must say you fit well into the public's view of a rock and roll manager. Nevertheless, I feel you owe all of us on the Isle of Wight an apology and would like you to be man enough to place one on your website.
Regards
WILLIAM BAXTER
William, you're being unnecessarily cuntish, though living in the Isle of Wight I guess that's inevitable. Somewhere near you, also living on the Isle of Wight, is Robert Stigwood, another rock and roll manager (Bee Gees, Saturday Night Fever, Jesus Christ Superstar). If you chance to see him (buying his groceries at the local Tescos, perhaps) you'll notice he's not much more than a jibbering wreck. There are those who put this down to a lifetime of cocaine and rock ‘n' roll debauchery. Myself, I think it's more to do with his bad decision to move to the Isle of Wight and inhale all that bad sea air.
Cheers
SIMON
SUNDAY APRIL 23 2006
From: Artie Fink, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Wonderful site. Insightful, entertaining. Be great to see your 'what's going on' pieces collected in book form some day.
As a fan of both yours and David Sylvian I was interested to read the latter's comments recently…
DS: "When I was in Japan , Simon would talk to me endlessly about what we were capable of and what we could achieve, as if I should automatically want to pursue the same goals as him. A wit and raconteur, he enjoyed nothing more than attempting to extract large sums of money from record companies…. He could charm his way out of the most difficult situations. I had to find another, less commercial way of working, which was why during the recording of Tin Drum [ Japan 's fifth and final album] we kept Simon as far away from the studio as possible. Simon wished for me to see the industry through his eyes. He manipulated because manipulation was more entertaining from his perspective than a more passive (he would argue less creative) form of management and while this was quite an education, once I'd been given room to breathe, to gauge the situation, to size up the music business for myself, I realised that I could make it work for me in ways devoid of cynicism and crass exploitation, and that there were potentially greater returns in establishing relationships in the industry based on trust ..."
Any comments?
Keep on evolving
ARTIE
Hi Artie
What David says is fair enough. When Japan came to me they wanted to big stars, but by the time they'd become big stars, they'd begun to prefer the benefits of being little stars. It is, I admit, much more enjoyable - a certain amount of notoriety and appreciation but without the mobbing and screaming. Actually, I totally agreed with him. From my point of view, to be a pop star would be vile. Mostly, though, that's what artists and groups want, so I help them to get it
David decided he wanted to be just a ‘small' personality, “like a left-bank poet” is how he put it. It wasn't too difficult for him. To shed a little fame is much easier than putting it on. And he did it well.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY APRIL 22 2006
From: Ron Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon!
Tong and I would like to wish that gay, god-hating, globe-trotting, over-indulging, wine-aholic, opinionated, gossipy, cantankerous, endearing, cerebral, super-energetic, curious, undaunted and fetching (I am told) British pop manager the best and Happiest of Happy birthdays and both of us shall raise our glasses filled with Dom Perignon 1963 (or, if we can't find that, some other god forsaken plonk that you find in supermarkets here) and think of you today. “The Road of Excess Leads to the Palace of Wisdom ”
Love to Yo also
TONG & RON
Well thank-you
I shall try to live up to your expectations and excessivate throughout the day, though I can't promise any wisdom. Actually, all that's planned is dinner with Yo. The owner of Pattaya's best Italian restaurant, Tratorria Toscana, went yesterday to somewhere north of Chiang Mai to collect a wild boar which is to be barbecued tonight. I plan to eat a small amount of it with a bottle of something good, Italian and red - Barbaresco Sori San Lorenzo, perhaps - and then a swig or two of good grappa..
Love to you both
SIMON
.
FRIDAY APRIL 21 2006
From: Paul Rymer, www.nightporter.co.uk
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
I hope you can solve a mystery for me. A 'Japan' collector recently sent me some images of a picture sleeve he found showing a hand going into someone's trousers. The strange thing is, the single sleeve has "Shut Up" written on it but the songs on the record are "Adolescent Sex" and "Don't Rain on My Parade". It is certainly attention grabbing, but apart from that, is there a story behind it?
Best wishes
PAUL
Hi Paul
I never heard of that photo being used as picture sleeve. It was conceived as a flyer to advertise Japan's first album in the UK, 'Adolescent Sex'. The original blurb said 'Get Into Japan'. (Incidentally, this was 1977, nearly thirty years ago.)
Another part of the campaign was a cutout cardboard penis, which on the other side turned into a sword and said, 'Japan Are Up and Coming'.
The campaign was put together by a new advertising agency who were anxious to make a name for themselves. They planned the campagin with me and Peter Meisel but Peter forgot to tell Trudi, his wife, about it (and it was Trudi who really ran Hansa Records).
On the day all the paraphanelia was delivered to Hansa's London office Trudi saw it and had a fit. She screamed up and down three floors of offices haranguing everyone and saying it was the most embarassing thing she'd ever seen. Finally Peter and I got her into her office and calmed her down enough to ask which part of the campaign offended her most.
"The penis," she screamed. "It's SO embarassing. SO ridiculous. Whoever saw such a perfect penis?"
Later she quite got to like them and enjoyed giving them away at Midem. They came in two sizes - three foot and one foot.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY APRIL 20 2006
From: Nick Nastyballs, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
listen you knobfaced opinionated prick lover… noone who is straight is ever going to like you, so if you continue to alienate your own kind as you did with your email to that ALBI “i'm-a-sad-poofter” guy, where will that leave you????????
in the fucking doo-doo i hope
NASTYBALLS NICK
Hi Nick
Excuse me saying this, but I have a feeling you're in your first year at RADA?
And since your UK and US slang don't mix, I also have to presume you're from downunder. And probably the proud possessor of a pussy too (since I can't imagine any Aussie bloke, gay or straight, being too prim to use the word shit), though of course you might be one of those drearily loud drag queens New Zealand has begun to export lately. Or perhaps you're just some ancient Aussie export school teacher who thinks she has a sense of humour.
Anyway, nice to know you like my website. Hope you die soon.
SIMON
WEDNESDAY APRIL 19 2006
From: Sheena Westland, Aberdeen, Scotland
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I just saw an article in a newspaper about George Michael getting Sony to stop Stirling University from showing the original cut of film director Lindsay Anderson's documentary about Wham! in China. Everything in the article seems to dovetail beautifully with your descriptions in I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch. It quotes from a letter by Lindsay to Michael Winner. Lindsay refers to George as a “shivering aspirant plucked out of the street, who turns almost overnight into a tyrant of fabulous wealth, whose every command his minions must dash to execute.”
That George won't let the original cut be shown seems to confirm everything that Lindsay said about him.
Cheers
SHEENA
Hi Sheena
Actually, the people at Stirling had written to me asking how to get permission. I'd already warned them that ‘tyrant George' would be unlikely to give it.
Sad, isn't it.
Regards
SIMON
TUESDAY APRIL 18 2006
Albi Harbin, Santa Monica , CA , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
I cannot help but offer a riposte to your flippant dismissal of my request for you listen to my album of songs. Maybe it was my own fault for not choosing my words more carefully.
I am not an angry teenager, unhappy with his sexual orientation. I am a mature adult of over forty, a trained classical singer, and have spent most of life my working in medical services and living in a stable relationship. My album is not a ‘protest' in any normal sense of the word. It consists of wry, insightful, humorous songs that comment on the difficulties of living within the phenomenon known as gay America.
Sincerely
ALBI
Sounds hideous! I think I got it right first time.
SIMON
MONDAY APRIL 17 2006
Albi Harbin, Santa Monica , CA , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I'm a singer and I've just completed an album of gay protest songs which I'm going to release on my own label. Can I persuade you to listen to it and give me your comments?
Yours
ALBI
Albi, you dumb dick licker. Why would I want to listen to your dreary, faggy, miserable, protest songs? If you're gay, be pleased with it. Try singing some happy songs instead.
(And send them to someone else.)
SIMON
SUNDAY APRIL 16 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertforshire, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Have you heard of this new London restaurant called "Dans Le Noir"?? I bet you have…
It's from the original in Paris … eating in the dark... heightening taste senses, blah, blah, blah…
Apparently, if you need to get up to go anywhere, you call a waiter to guide you (they're all blind). You can hear the clattering of knives and forks hitting the floor... people tripping up.. but the best thing is, when you get the ever-so-special ice cream, your taste buds are now so paranoid that the ice cream tastes like furniture polish.
It sounds horrific and I can't wait to go.
Cheers
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
Yeah, I read about ‘Dans Le Noir', but I wouldn't call that going out to a restaurant. Perhaps it's an experience we should all have, but it's more like going into one of those special interest booths in a good museum, isn't it? Learning about how other people see things, or what the world would be like with only half your senses.
Years ago I was a musician in Montreal (more than forty years ago, actually, I was nineteen). I played trumpet with a band in a strip club. We were all jazzies and lived for jam sessions after hours. The pianist was a black blind guy, Leroy - a brilliant jazz and r-&-B muso. We did terrible things to him. He saved up his money, wanted to buy a second-hand Cadillac, but we bought him a Chevy and made it feel heavy like a Caddy by putting bricks in the trunk. And we'd take him to the whorehouse and try to fob him off with cheap ugly old hookers so we could take his money and go clubbing. But we never could. He just seemed to smell attractive girls. He was totally blind but could walk into that brothel and go straight up to the prettiest girl every time.
Still - getting back to ‘Dans Le Noir'... I remember, he hated ice cream. I guess it's too cold to really taste, and without being able to see it becomes nothing more than cold sludge.
All the best
SIMON
SATURDAY APRIL 15 2006
From: Andy Sheldon, Isle of Wight, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Don't you think it's time you called it a day? You used to be a top rock manager, now you're writing about net curtains.
Can we have some sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll please?
Yours
ANDY
Andy
I notice you live in the Isle of Wight. The last time I was there it seemed the principal industry was filling litttle bottles with silly coloured sand and selling them to tourists. Is that what you do? Or are you still on the training course?
SIMON
FRIDAY APRIL 14 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Simon
Re the correspondence about your friend's restaurant in Ramsgate….
Net curtains are truly vile, but I'm amazed how Ian Shraeger is using them everywhere. They are there, right there in the window of St Martins hotel in London . At the Delano in horrible Miami you can't move for nets. And then at the Mondrian in West Hollywood you can have a camp English moment in your bedroom by twitching your net curtains to peep at the sewer of cars down on sunset strip.
If I had my way, we'd abolish all curtains forever as a kind of metaphor for having nothing to hide.
Always
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
My mother talked of net curtains as a synonym for bad upbringing and lower caste, yet in the end she installed them. A desire for privacy, I suppose, though I can't think of anything that went on inside our house worth hiding. (Not on the ground floor, anyway).
The most striking thing about arriving at Schipol airport and driving into Amsterdam at night is the complete lack of net curtains and the brightness of the rooms inside. But it also confirms that nothing of interest goes on in Holland whatsoever. Grudgingly, I admit that net curtains maintain a hint of mystery, albeit very dingy mystery.
Californians, of course, prefer black glass, while the French go for shutters.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY APRIL 13 2006
Ed Piller, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon
By way of a quick introduction I have been working on a rather stop-start biography of Peter Meaden. I'd appreciate any comments you have on the following story of his…
Meaden bumps into you and a young David Jones in the Ship on Wardour Street... Leaving your charge in the corner you approach Meaden at the bar and tell him that you are having trouble breaking Jones in Soho to the mods, did he have any ideas? Meaden arranged a gig at the Birdcage (pre Hoogstraaten) in Pompey but it died on its arse.
Let me know.
Best
Hi Ed
Meaden's got me muddled with someone else. The David Jones you're talking about is of course David Bowie, late sixties model. I was never his manager but a chap called Ralph Horton was.
Ralph called me out of the blue one day and introduced himself. He asked if I would come to see him and have a chat about a project. His flat was a basement in Pimlico and the project was sitting in the corner – David Jones (later Bowie). Ralph asked if I would be prepared to help with David's management and as an introductory offer suggested I might like to have sex with him.
Although the boy in the corner seemed acquiescent, the overall sleaziness of the idea rather put me off, so I turned it down. Consequently I neither slept with Bowie nor managed him.
In retrospect I admit both things might have been worth doing.
Regards
SIMON
WEDNESDAY APRIL 12 2006
From: Bobbi Marchini, Zakynthos, Greece
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Morning's a misery without your site. What's happened?
luv
BOBBI
Hi Bobbi
I'm sorry to ruin your last couple of mornings (and everyone else's too) but my server went down. I thought I had a good server till this happened, then I checked them out on a website forum. These are the first five reviews I found...
“Avoid ‘CI Host' like the plague.”
“‘CI Host' are completely terrible.”
“‘CIC Host', the must horrible host company in the world.”
“Folks, never host with ‘CI Host'.”
“‘CI Host' is a huge waste of time and money.”
Needless to say, I'm changing. Meanwhile, I hope your morning's are back to their former orgasmic glory.
Lots of love
SIMON
TUESDAY APRIL 11 2006
From: Alec Ewe, Bambuddha Hut, Ramsgate, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dear Simon
Re the Thai restaurant down the road from us (Surin)…
Her husband works for the BBC. The amount of "string pulling" he does for her is unbelievable. Her restaurant is the most written about. She gets press releases on ‘women in business' from The Guardian and The Times, then claims she was voted the best Asian restaurant outside London by a Times newspaper food writer.
I'm livid, how can she claim to be the best Asian restaurant outside London when she has net curtains?
LECKY
Hi Lecky
Travelling during the last few weeks I've bumped into two people who rave about your restaurant. Pianist Simon Mulligan (who was in Kuala Lumpur last week playing with the Malaysian Philarmonic) told me his parents live in Ramsgate and eat there all the time. And in Hong Kong, DJ Phil Whelan told me almost the same thing.
But re those net curtains... In this week's ‘Winner's dinners' Michael Winner raves about a restaurant in Switzerland that has net curtains. Perhaps there's more to them than you think.
Love
SIMON xx
MONDAY APRIL 10 2006
From: Mike Dash, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
My wife's just drawn my attention to a recent blog post in which you mention me.
I'm very flattered indeed by your kind words about Batavia's Graveyard, but more than a little puzzled by your recollections of a meeting in Hong Kong. I certainly was at the festival there last month - but I have to confess I actually have no memory at all of being introduced to you.
I'd have thought I would have remembered a meeting - I have heard a fair bit about you over the years, enough, indeed, to have been quite keen to have had a chat... so I wonder if possibly you have confused me with someone else. I'm not actually that old - 42- for one thing. (If it helps to jog your memory there's a picture of me on my website).
If it was me, and if I was rude, then certainly I apologise. It may have been jet lag - I flew in and out of HK in rather a short space of time - or possibly I was being rushed by someone somewhere. Still, standoffishness is unforgivable in any case, and I'd certainly hate to think I offended you.
Kind regards
MIKE DASH
Hi Mike
Firstly, thanks for writing. You can consider yourself immediately removed from the 'standoffish old sod' list.
Actually, I was meant to be on your panel - a discussion on writing fact with the style of fiction. It was on that premise that I'd originally agreed with Madeleine Dignam that I would attend the festival. And although I agreed to do a separate talk about the music business, it was the idea of talking with you onstage that most interested me, particularly as my own last book, 'I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch', was written specifically with the idea in mind that it should read with the pace and page-turning-ness of a novel.
Just before coming to the festival Madeleine Dignam emailed me to say I would not be on your panel. I was disappointed, but not much surprised, since her first email ever to me had expressed doubt that I could be found a place at the festival at all, because, she explained, "We normally deal only with fiction and literary non-fiction." What a slap in the face!
Anyway, none of this is intended to belittle you or your writing. After your talk on the Saturday evening I came across to speak with you in the bar where you had just been signing books. I introduced myself and mentioned that I had thought I would be on your panel. I also explained what my last book was about and told you that I thought ‘Batavia's Graveyard' was about as good as I could imagine a non-fiction book ever being in turns of pace, readability, information and page-turning-ness. Quite brilliant!
I felt you weren't too interested in my comments, so I buggered off. Perhaps I miss-read you. Never mind, your nice email completely makes up for it.
Shortly after I spoke to you I gave my talk on the music business, together with local dj Phil Whelan - it seemed successful and quite a few people bought tickets. But seeing that the money went to the organisers, and, that I'd paid all my own expenses to be at the festival, it would have been nice to receive a subsequent thank-you note from them. Because one didn't materialise, when I wrote my piece about the event I probably viewed it with a slightly sour eye, and perhaps you suffered. I apologise. Moreover, I certainly agree that 42 isn't old.
By the way, let me advise you next year to go to the Shanghai festival. There the organisers are helpful, fun, generous and welcoming. (Even if you turn up too late to give your talk).
Best regards
SIMON
SUNDAY APRIL 9 2006
From: Ron Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi!
I just read last week's What's Going On piece in which you describe yourself as a.... "gay, god-hating, globe-trotting, over-indulging, wine-aholic, opinionated, gossipy, cantankerous British pop manager".
You forgot to add: "endearing, cerebral, super-energetic,curious, undaunted and fetching" (I am told!). Now, do you know anyone else that can command so many adjectives?
RON
You make me feel like some second rate noun, urgently in need of definition. Anyway, I hope I can be all those things at lunch next week - Wednesday at the Oriental, Normadie Grill, 1pm.
Lv
SIMON
SATURDAY APRIL 8 2006
From: Hank Shires, Washington DC, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I have to take an opposite stance to you on something you said recently. You said ‘to be an American' was like a religion - that to be an American you had to ‘believe in America '.
I'm an American but these days I often find myself not believing in America , in fact a lot of the time I feel quite ashamed of it. So where does that leave your theory? Should I be stripped of my nationality and deported?
Regards
HANK
A lot of Americans might think you should be, but what you're talking about is nothing to do with what I said.
What I said was that foreigners coming to America and wishing to take up American citizenship have to do nothing more than ‘believe' in American ideals - free speech, democracy, freedom to worship (or not) - in order to be accepted as Americans. Whereas, if a foreigner who wanted to become a British citizen were to profess admiration for all the best British qualities (eccentricity, stiff upper lip, cool understatement), he'd look a bloody fool – because those are the very things that the British themselves most enjoy making fun of.
So there's the difference. When it comes to national identity, Americans are boringly serious – they like to wave the flag and boast about the constitution. Brits, on the other hand, see things as they really are. To be considered a real Brit you need to be born in the UK, have a British accent (anyone of the hundreds that are available will do), and understand British jokes. Nobody really cares whether you believe in democracy and free speech or have facist tendencies and advocate censorship, but one thing is totally essential...
It doesn't matter a damn what colour or race or religion you are, but you'll never be considered British if you have a foreign accent.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY APRIL 7 2006
From: Dominque Rowe, Hong Kong
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hello Simon
I'm Coming to Take You to Lunch was your third novel. Were there any lessons from the others that you put into practice when you sat down to write this one?
Best wishes
DOMINIQUE
Hi Dominique
I'm afraid you've got it wrong. I've never written a novel. I'm not too interested in them. I like to know that what I'm reading is the truth and not someone's imaginary story. But when I'm writing I like to rebalance factual events to give them the pace and excitement of a novel. There've been some great books written this way. Have you read Batavia's Graveyard by Mike Dash - bloody brilliant! (Although I have to admit, when I met him at the Hong Kong Literary Festival, he turned out to be a standoffish old sod, to say the least.)
In I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch, I kept a fifty-fifty balance between Wham! and the other people in the story, particularly the character called Professor Rolf. But the truth is, every last minute I spent with the professor is in the book while only 5% of the time I spent with Wham! is. And why not? The time I spent with Professor Rolf was always memorable whereas much of the time I spent with Wham! was not. Bloody boring, a lot of it!
The rebalancing makes it a more honest memoir.
Best regards
SIMON
THURSDAY APRIL 6 2006
From: Neil Simms, Machester, UK
To: simon@blaclvinylwhitepowder.com
Hi Simon
I was just reading your book Black Vinyl White Powder and reached the part about a Jimi Hendrix concert in London which you went to and everyone was there – the Beatles, the Stones, etc. You said it was just in a small theatre. Which one was it?
Yours
NEIL
Hi Neil
It was the Saville theatre, now a multiplex cinema in the part of Shaftesbury Avenue nobody goes to go (to the east of Charing Cross Road ). Brian Epstein (the Beatles' manager) bought the theatre in order to put on pop and rock concerts every Sunday at 5pm. They were open to the public, of course, but the events were so stunning that the whole music industry turned up every week – artists, managers, record company people – the only downside being we had to rush through Sunday lunch to get there (and our Sunday lunches were quite a tradition). They took place at the Popotte restaurant in Walton Street. Prior to the concerts at the Saville, these lunches often ran right through to 7pm , then sometimes re-started as dinner and ran on till midnight. Most of the camper end of the music business was at the Popotte every Sunday (Dave Clark, Cilla Black, Dusty, a couple of Stones, an occasional Beatle, all the managers, that sort of thing). It was a run by London 's best gay restauranteur, Christopher Hunter. Between the mid-sixties and the nineties Christopher had five restaurants, all of them brilliant, but all of them coming to the same sticky end….
Christopher always took too much money out of the till, using it to finance expensive weekends to Tangier where he fell in love with a succession of well-hung Arab boys. As each restaurant reached its peak and fizzled out under the strain of his Moroccan adventures, it would close, and Christopher would have to raise finance for another one. A forty year history of Christopher's restaurants would be a perfect social history of gay London 1965 – 1990.
Cheers
SIMON
WEDNSEDAY APRIL 5 2006
From: Cyndi Dish-Delish, Warsaw, Poland
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
i was a tranny singer with a bi rock band that got busted for being too gay… all i did was show my tits which is only from silicone anyway… it's tough here in poland… the new president is big antigay homophobe… he once was pretty boy filmstar with his twin brother… (i bet they got a molestation)… now they ban the gay parade in warsaw and stop all gay rights... just like iran… but i heard abba is making a charity record to get back at them … isnt that great…
keep watch out for me… i'm off to munich to make it with a new band… gonna grow my tits even bigger and keep them on show 24/7
loveyawebsite
CYNDI DISH-DELISH
Hi Cyndi
Myself, I'm not a great tit fan, but for those who are I shall recommend you. When you're new band is under way, send me the name and a photo.
As for the Abba thing, it's true. They've re-formed for the first time in ten years specifically to promote gay rights in Poland. So grow your tits as big you want.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY APRIL 4 2006
From: Naveed Hussain, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
There was talk of ‘WHAM!, the musical'. What are your thoughts on that?
What's your favourite George Michael album?
Best regards
NAVEED
Hi Naveed
No thoughts at all on a musical. No financial benefits come to ex-managers, so a musical about Wham! is of no interest to me.
As for a favourite George Michael album, I've never really listened to one right through so I've no idea.
Best regards
SIMON
MONDAY APRIL 3 2006
From: Ron Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dear Simon
Feisty as ever!! Such a pleasure seeing you and talking after so long …glad you gave a piece of your mind on behalf of all gentlemen everywhere to the long haired whore and backed me up on that! Tong thought I was imagining the rudeness when I told him, but with your eruption he believed me.
Oh, language, what a barrier it is sometimes! As the famous saying goes “YOU OUGHT TO BE THANKFUL, A WHOLE HEAPING LOT, FOR THE PLACES AND PEOPLE YOU'RE LUCKY YOU'RE NOT”
Love to you both
RON
Hi Ron
I enjoyed last night a lot… or at least, I enjoyed talking to you again after so long – but all those party people doing coke didn't add much to the evening, it puts them on another wavelength.
As for your ‘long haired whore', the problem is, he isn't a whore at all (if he was he'd learn to be a whole lot politer or he'd never get any business), he's just a kept Thai kid whose English has got better than his manners. He probably hardly noticed me being rude to him since someone as obnoxious as him must have people being rude to him all the time. Amazing how such a pleasant body should be linked to such a dismal brain.
I loved your quote. It's gone into my library of quotes to be regurgitated in future pieces I write.
Lots of love
SIMON
SUNDAY APRIL 2 2006
From: Jill Ashby, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
i was just wondering… what makes you so rude to a person who sends you a cd to… like jim renton yesterday… and so polite to another…
i sent you a cd about six months ago and you wrote me a really nice email telling me.. pretty much, that it was no good… but very polite anyway…
so why the difference ??
cheers
JILL
Hi Jill
I can't remember your CD, but normally, if someone sends me something that is half way decent - or sounds like they've tried hard, or have something going for them even though they haven't quite got there yet – then I try to answer politely.
But if someone wastes my time with something carelessly sung or played, out of tune or toneless, with stupid lyrics or just plain smartarse, then I don't have time for them.
The person I answered yesterday was all those things, plus he sent a photo of what he thought was his cute arse. Unfortunately it also showed his face and I can tell you – he's an ugly little runt.
Hope that answers your question.
All the best
SIMON
SATURDAY APRIL 1 2006
From: Jim Renton, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
My bum's a decent shape so I'm sending you a picture, but that's just to grab your attention and get you listen to the CD I'm sending with it.
What I really want to know is – what do you think of my songs – both the lyrics and the way I sing them?
Regards
JIM
Hi Jim
Your songs are crap. Your bum looks like the right place to shove them.
SIMON
FRIDAY MARCH 31 2006
From: Sol Landis, Chicago , Ill , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
I was searching the net for restaurant recommendations in Paris and I chanced on your review of Bofinger and the story of a group you managed in the sixties who stole a guy's wooden leg in the middle of the night at their hotel then set off the fire alarm. Amazingly, it reminded me that I'd met you some years before that when you were staying in a big house in Montagu Square in London where a fat old ex-colonel called Stewart let rooms to young guys and cooked them all dinner every night. I think you were about 18. Do you remember it? I was a friend of one of the other boys who stayed there. What happened to Stewart? He was quite a character.
Yours
SOL
Hi Sol
I couldn't have been 18, must have been more like 21. I'd just come back from America and was working in the film industry as an assistant editor. The ‘fat old ex-colonel' was Stewart Goodall. Apart from being a sensational cook he was an artist, a picture restorer and a great raconteur, but above all he was a glutton. He killed himself restoring the watercolours at Rules restaurant. They had about five hundred of them and the deal he made was to restore one picture a day in return for them giving him whatever he wanted for lunch. He'd go in around 10am, eat two dozen oysters and drink a bottle of white wine while he restored a picture, then at 3pm sit down to a five course meal with two bottles of claret followed by a selection of deserts and half a dozen cheeses. He'd only restored half the pictures when he got a heart attack and died during a visit to the dentist.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY MARCH 30 2006
From: Francis Connor, Sataheep, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
My Dear Simone
I have been terribly busy (aka dizzy) and consequently quite remiss in keeping up with your daily post bag. You cannot imagine my delight to read the latest entries from Sister Charlene (is she of the holy orders as well as being a nurse?) and the born-again Derek. What an all embracing audience you do attract. Enemas with group prayers - now does this imply that the enemas are administered en masse?
In all, the reactions of Sister Charlene (she has to be American, or perhaps a Hong Kong Chinese) and the reborn Derek, both remind me of a drop dead gorgeous Japanese male prostitute in Tokyo years ago who told me that I gave the best blow job he had ever received. Praise from Caesar, given that he was the hottest number in Shinjuku.
For complete satisfaction and feeling closer to Nirvana there's nothing better than a good, down to earth, blow job.
Toodlepip
FRANCESCA
Hi Francis
I'm pleased to learn you can find Nirvana for no more than the price of a Shinjuku rent-boy. However, while you make it clear you're a wizz at delivering blow jobs, you leave it unclear as to whether it's their delivery or receipt that renders you such sublime bliss.
Re Sister Charlene… I took ‘Communal Christian Colonics' to mean a stadium full of the faithful, seated on commodes that drain into a water-feature of boating-pond dimensions where a preacher on a central island sings hallelujas surrounded by a sea of holy shit.
Cheers
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MARCH 29 2006
From: Sister Charlene, Santiago, Chile
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Mr Simon Napier-Bell
I am a music fan but also a Christian (the two are not incompatible). In the last two weeks I have read emails on your website which accuse you of perversion, lechery and substantial rudeness. We all already know you are both Godless and gay and to add to this you have even described yourself as ‘Disgusting Dustbin'.
I am one of a group of people who believe in the benefits of Communal Christian Colonics. As a nurse I assist in the administration of enemas given together with group prayers.
A Christian enema will calm you. It will cleanse your digestive tract and soothe your mind. It will leave you in better health, less sexually contorted, more spiritually relaxed and closer to God.
More about Christian colonic irrigation can be learnt from www.cleanse.net
SISTER CHARLENE
Hi Siss
I'm not sure I want a Christian nurse near my backside. You tried pumping religion into my head as a child, now you want to pump God up my bottom.
Are you sure he'd like it up there?
SIMON
TUESDAY MARCH 28 2006
From: Derek Jones, Germany
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
This is amazing. With one letter of yours, you could wash my brain and bring me into the presence of mind and transform me into what I should have been long time ago already. I'm really so grateful to you, because it's true. The time has come, to be myself at last! In other words, because of you, I will become absolutely Derek Jones and nobody else.
Best regards
DEREK
Hi Derek
But you're not Derek Jones, for God's sake. Your CV says you're a mix of Russian, Arabic, German, and about ten other things and speak five languages, English being the most recent one you've learnt. Culturally you're not English at all, yet your singing sounds like someone in a karaoke bar imitating George Michael.
If you become ‘absolutely Derek Jones and nobody else' you will be continuing to act a totally false character and your songs will continue to sound shallow, as will your voice.
Along with singing lessons, you need someone to help you with some character focus. I hesitate to suggest a psycho-analyst, but try calling yourself whatever it was you were called at school. Write songs from that perspective, and in that language. Remember all the things that made you run away from life and hide in this dumb Derek Jones character.
Get rid of the fake and find some honesty. If you find the real you, your songs will start to have intensity and your voice might stop sounding like a whimpering George Michael copycat.
Hope this helps
SIMON
MONDAY MARCH 27 2006
From: Bobbi Marchini, Zakynthos, Greece
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
This piece by Andrew Sullivan is vaguely relevant to what you've been discussing and I thought you might like it...
luv
BOBBI
Hi Bobbi
You'll notice that Andrew Sullivan (the writer of the piece you sent me) is one of my regular links. Lots of people ask why. It's because two years ago he was a staunch Republican and Catholic, which is very against what I'm interested in, but he was also gay and very loud about it, which made him quite an anomaly. But things have changed.....
Websites have a strange way of bringing home the truth. You get all these emails and in answering them you have to search your position more seriously and with less flippancy. What has happened to Sullivan is he's become a firm anti-Bushist, anti-fundamentalist, almost an anti-Republican, and is now coming close to ditching the Catholic Church too. That's why I find him interesting. It's not so much the originality of his views, which can be found coming from many other journalists and pundits, it's that over the last two year his whole world has turned upside down in full public view. Which is pretty interesting. And is still in progress.
In the end, he'll probably end up a left-wing atheist. Trouble is, if he can shift that much, he might end up straight too.
Luv SIMON xx
SUNDAY MARCH 26 2006
From: Ellie Santos, Atlanta , Georgia , USA
To: simon@blackvinylwhiteopowder.com
Simon...
I bought your book Black Vinyl White Powder when I was in the UK last summer. It opened my eyes as to how British pop music has infiltrated American youth culture over the decades. I was particularly struck by your observation that gay culture had influenced British pop music to almost the same degree that black culture influenced American pop music.
Does that mean the current appalling upsurge of gay shrillness in the US can be blamed on you Brits and your music?
Yours
ELLIE SANTOS
I really hope so. It would be nice to think British pop music has been so socially useful. Quite a contrast to the dreadful influence American black music has had on youth fashion throughout the world, requiring teenage kids to wear baggy back-to-front waist-less trousers that hang down round their knees so that the chance of glimpsing a decently shaped bum has also but disappeared.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY MARCH 25 2006
From: Bobbi Marchini, Zakynthos, Greece
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
What a pity you've closed the "wine waiters" discussion....only because it all makes me miss you and it jogged my memory.
Was wondering if you remember a Chinese we shared once in Sydney... early 70's (meal, not the waiter). If I've ever been that drunk again... and I probably have.... I can't remember. The food was OK, the wine was very good but for some reason you wanted a joint... so we found some and I think, smoked it in the back of a taxi... what were we thinking? Then totally confused each other with a rather marvellous kiss... then couldn't remember where I lived.
The two are not related.
Luv
BOBBI
Hi Bobbi
Sounds like a normal night out. As for the 'marvellous' kiss, I seem to remember in those days you were a trifle boyish (or perhaps I looked a little girlish - was that the attraction?). Besides, with all that booze and a joint......
Funnily enough, though, I can't remember a thing about it. Perhaps it was good fortune you forgot where you lived. That kiss could have led to even more confusion in the morning.
As always (and with more love than one kiss could convey)
SIMON xxx
FRIDAY MARCH 24 2006
From: Paul Granville, Shanghai, China
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
I'm the other "Paul" that was mentioned in your diary piece last week and I don't think for one minute that your behaviour was ‘rude', ‘lecherous' or ‘perverted'. To clarify things a little better for Miss Lucie Harris…
There was at dinner a cantankerous Indian professor, a gay restaurant manager and one Simon Napier-Bell. Obviously, if you throw that little lot into a mix you get a thoroughly good night's entertainment. I for one, had one of the best evenings ever that night..
Simon - come back soon, for longer next time, and bring Yo with you (and a decent copy of Black Vinyl White Powder as mine has simply fallen apart).
Regards
THE OTHER PAUL
Hi Paul
This subject has run too long. Normally I never let any subject run more than three days, and this is now the fourth. But something you mentioned is important. There seem to be badly bound copies of Black Vinyl White Powder turning up all over the world – they just fall apart in hot weather, something to do with the glue I think. Anyone who has one should email me. I'm going to try and make sure the publishers replace them.
Now then - that's enough. From tomorrow I must get back to the important business of insulting people who send me stupid emails, of which there is a whole stack waiting.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY MARCH 23 2006
From: Paul French, www.access-asia.info, China
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Clarification
As one who was there in Shanghai, hopefully this will help Lucie Harris deal with her obvious issues:
- He did eye up the waiter though refrained from overt leching;
- He did consume a vast amount of wine (as did we all);
- He wasn't rude to the guests;
- He was great company.
However, he is the man who wrote a 250-page book about how difficult it was to get Wham into China and what a mass of red tape and pointless bureaucracy China is - and then forgot to get himself a visa!
In England we call that a 'plonker'. Without the Jimmy Page stories later Simon had already provided Shanghai with a good laugh.
Hopefully this will be of some help to Lucie Harris. I don't think I can help her dad but it's sweet to know they are so close perhaps he should be her manager?
PAUL
Hi Paul
It's a good thing my book stripped a way any last vestiges of homophobia in you because, for sending such a sweet reply to that odious father in Miami, I'm sending you...
...one great big wet kissX
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MARCH 22 2006
From: Dave Harris, Coral Gables, Miami, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Sir
It was my daughter to whom you were so gratuitously hurtful yesterday. She drew my attention to your website and the reply you made to her email. We are a tolerant, loving and forgiving family, surely you can do better than to speak so hurtfully to a young person who comes to you in sincerity.
God will forgive you.
DAVE HARRIS
Dave, sweetheart….
Up yours!!
SIMON
TUESDAY MARCH 21 2006
From: Lucie Harris, Miami , Florida , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
I read your piece about the literary festival in Shanghai. You sound like a drunken old pervert, leching young waiters and being rude to the guests. And you sound so pleased with yourself too.
I am a struggling singer and musician trying to get somewhere in the music business. From people like you I expect serious advice, not descriptions of debauchery.
LUCIE HARRIS
Hi Lucie
Leching the waiter? No way! I was simply admiring his graceful manners and excellent wine etiquette. As for being rude, I hope I wasn't, but if I was it would be for the other guests to decide rather than you. Anyway, here's that ‘serious advice' you wanted……
Don't go to church. Find a recreational drug that suits you. Masturbate often. Give up ‘struggling'. Start being pleased with yourself.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY MARCH 20 2006
From: Daniel Theo, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I have to be honest I have not heard of you before until today when I was doing research for gay men in pop music, specifically music managers. In that one single moment reading your history, you have now become a true inspiration to me.
I am starting out as a manager myself, I represent French electronic pop artist www.myspace.com/williambesson, and I find that there aren't many gay people, apart from perfomers, within the music industry. Or maybe I just haven't met any!!! Who knows!!!
Big respect - best wishes
DANIEL THEO
Hi Daniel
It's nice to get such flattery, but the reason your email's here is more because I like the mood of your artist's singing. At the moment, none of the songs sound sufficiently pulled into focus, but they have a good mood. One of them ‘…faith' has a nice hypnotic chorus line which deserves a better overall finish than he's given it. He's good. And if I was you (or him, or whatever) I wouldn't get too hung up on singing just in English. To be bilingual and bicultural must be an essential part of him, and if he were to slip in and out of both cultures he'd get closer to his real character. Selling yourself in music is not about being an actor and playing a part, it's about projecting your full self in a distinctive musical framework.
All the best
SIMON
SUNDAY MARCH 19 2006
From: Dave Brand, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I went to Brazil five years ago, met a Brazilian girl and bought her back to London last year. By then I'd learnt Portugese and that's the language we always talk in, even though she can now speak good English.
After reading your piece last week, I wondered... I know you speak Thai, but do you and your boyfriend talk in Thai or English? Or both?
Regards
DAVE
Hi Dave
Strangely enough this subject came up over dinner last night with some friends in London.
I always talk with Yo in Thai, except when we're with English friends who don't speak Thai. Yo's English is excellent, but if we use it to talk together we always get bad-tempered. When Yo watches British TV programmes he starts picking up phrases from Little England, or saying the word 'What?' like they do in Absolutely Fabulous. Because he hears the audience laughing he doesn't realise how bloody rude it is (until he sees my face).
So we stick to Thai.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY MARCH 18 2006
From: Jeremy Salter, Seattle, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Sir
Re your comment - ‘Art has no ethics'.
Ethics is the systematisation, defence, and recommendation of concepts of right and wrong behaviour. In art, an ethical flaw is not to do with the artist's ethics but with the intrinsic property of the work itself. To be ethically flawed the work must express an attitude toward its subject matter which if expressed by a person toward that subject matter would be ethically improper. So - if racism is ethically wrong, art becomes ethically flawed if it defends or recommends a racist attitude.
Sincerely
JEREMY SALTER
That's crap. Art and ethics have no connection. Art is an expression of how the artist feels – something that can't be put into specific words or expressed in any other way. If something in the artist's unconscious causes him to express racism (or any other sort of concept that is considered unethical), so be it – if it flows from his subconscious it's art, and has no connection with ethics.
If, on the other hand, the artist uses his artistic ability to try to convince people of a particular point of view he holds (something that could be defined and expressed with words), then what he creates is propaganda, not art.
Propaganda, of course, is totally to do with ethics. But it ain't art.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY MARCH 17 2006
From: Jill Frost, Auckland, New Zealand
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Yesterday I read a reply you'd made to an email. Then, when I came back to your website later, I saw you'd shortened your reply and taken some of it out. It seems a strange thing to do - to change your answer once you've written it and posted it. Sort of artistically unethical isn't it?
Regards
JILL
I see no reason why I shouldn't do what I like with my own website. For instance, the piece I post every Sunday often gets changed and polished up as the week goes on. That's the beauty of a website. Unlike writing for the newspaper, you can correct your mistakes even after the piece has been published. As far as yesterday's email was concerned, I thought it sounded a bit pompous so I took some of it out.
Art has no ethics, by the way.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY MARCH 16 2006
From: Dick Weldon, Birmingham, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hey simon… i like your website but it would be good if we could ask you questions and be sure to get them answered quickly…. i've sent several emails to you and you've never answered any of them… it's disappointing… and i'm sure other people must feel the same… shouldn't you make it more interactive?
DICK WELDON
Like many other people you seem to think my website is some sort of public service for the mentally depleted. If I tell you to ‘sod off and stop sending me emails' would that be interactive enough for you?
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MARCH 15 2006
From: Sara Wilkerson, London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi honey
I have to say, life is particularly dull at the moment. No bloke. Not having any sex – and bursting out of my size 16 jeans! I'm thinking of having a gastric band attached, seriously it's the new crazy here, the weight just falls off – not much bloody fun though.
We are what we are. I'm starting weight watchers in a couple of weeks in a vain attempt to loose 2 stone for my hols…. the thought of my current hulk of a body trussed up in a swimsuit horrifies me (and I'm sure would scare most people who saw me in it!)
Extend your next trip by a day and we'll have a L-O-N-G lunch – I need a good lunch to cheer me up.
Love
HOG WOMAN
Hi Sara
God I'm busy - you're email's been sitting in my inbox for a week. Too much to do - overseeing a group (that means travelling round the world every month) - giving talks (last Saturday I was in Hong Kong for the Literary Festival, Sunday in Shanghai for another one, Monday (yesterday) in LA for a music-biz meeting. Tomorrow it's New York , then two days in London , where I have a day of interviews, 3 business lunches and two dinners - how the hell can I do all that??
Someone just emailed me pictures of myself in Shanghai on Sunday - I am DISGUSTING DUSTBIN - even bigger than when you saw me in London last time. Diet starts NOW.
Lots of love
SIMON xxx
TUESDAY MARCH 14 2006
From: Nari Bakhar, Toronto, Canada
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Mr Napier-Bell
I was very much interested in the problems you encountered with your lamb Vindaloo.
Vindaloo is a Goan dish and the name comes from ‘Vigne d'Alho', a Portugese stew of ‘wine and garlic'. A correct Vindaloo is made only with dried chilis (never fresh), in fact some recipes use no chilis at all but only black pepper. Moreover, although you thought the Vindaloo you ate was made entirely from fresh chilis I am pretty much sure it also contained dried chilis, for it is these, ground into a powder, which can cause that morning-after feeling you called ‘fire around the bottom'. An unpleasantness most worth avoiding.
It is, I think, the worst effect of chilis.
Yours sincerely
NARI
Hi Nari
Thanks for your elucidating comments. But there is a worse effect.... To be given oral sex by someone who has just finished eating som tam. (Hot Thai salad).
Blistering!
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY MARCH 13 2006
From: Manouk Tiz, Switzerland
To: simon@blackvinylwhitepowdwer.com
yo simon, wass up??
i'm cool super gay rapper whos hate god and womans and i got cool supper anti jesus end pro gays stuff 4 yo!! yo man, gimme yor adress end check it out........
make of me star and dont cha regret (i'm single) so take yor chance man
MANOUK TIZ-A-LA-BIZ FROM SWIZZ
Hi Manouk
Do you speak English? If so, perhaps you could translate your CV and send it to me again.
Regards
SIMON
SUNDAY MARCH 12 2006
From: Jamie Ishmael, Southampton, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I have a tape of songs I want you to listen to. Can you tell me what I should do with it?
Regards
JAMIE
Fix the end of the tape to a post or a wall, then run with the spool or cassette very fast in a straight line until the tape runs out. This should be several miles during which time you should hopefully encounter a pond, a brick wall, a pig trough or a busy main road.
If you survive, go out and buy your self an Ipod or a CD recorder. I haven't had a machine that plays tapes for more than fifteen years.
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY MARCH 11 2006
From: Corinne Chimenti, France
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon
After visiting your website many times I've spotted the mail of "Madame Soong Meng" talking about the dangerous Simeon's diet, I couldn't remain quiet. As a French dietician, I can honestly say that fortunately we don't practice the same methods on the human beings in France. I find it so sad and horrible to suggest the people to be treated like the rats of laboratory with those injections of hormones.
I disagree with Madame Soong Meng's criticism of your going to the restaurants for having ‘Gourmet Menu'. Losing weight shouldn't be associated with being deprived of eating tasty food. Even if you want to lose weight, it's always possible to enjoy yourself if you know how to compensate it later. Among my customers and patients, I have a lot of businessmen who go frequently to the restaurants and lose weight at the same time, following my advice. In case you're interested in losing weight in comfortable conditions without suffering, I could help you willingly.
By the way, I'm not only a dietician, I'm a songwriter, arranger, and performer, alias Alison Wright.
Sincerely yours
CORINNE CHIMENTI
Hi Corinne
I am endlessly being written to by people who have ideas on how I should live, eat, drink, think and generally purport myself. But since your email suggests that returning my body to the svelte and beautiful condition it used to be in during my teens requires nothing more than to continue living as I already do, it sounds an attractive proposition. The down side, of course, is all too glaringly obvious. I shall have to listen to your songs.
Still, since you're you're offering something in return, you're welcome to email me your dietary proposals. When I'm once again looking like the photo of me circa 1983 in my CV, you may follow up with a CD of your songs.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY MARCH 10 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
You blow the cover on religion better than anyone.
As well as religion...I'm beginning to wonder if the word "love" is also a mere abstraction. Just like religion, too much pain has taken place in the name of love.
I've been with my sweet partner now for eighteen years... this is because we LIKE each other. This is no shallow feeling... Most nights he goes to bed before me and when he does I go up and kiss him goodnight. As I leave the room, I've always said to him "I love you" he says he loves me too.
Tonight I'm gonna say "I like you" ...somehow the word "like" seems more powerful because it's tangible. The word "love" is so loosely used, don't you think? It's just so off the peg and conveniently abstract.
Regards
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
If you've been using the word love for 18 years, comfortably, and without worrying about it, to change now is likely to suggest to your partner that something has suddenly changed in the way you feel about him. So I'd advise you against it. But like you, I hate the word ‘love'. It feels like something imposed on us by other people – and for me, certainly has overtones of religiosity about it.
As a child I never heard the word ‘love' used once in our household by anyone to anyone – mother, father, brother, sister, aunties, uncles the lot - so I never learnt to use the word comfortably and without embarrassment. The first time I ever heard anyone tell me ‘I love you', it was a male hooker in Naples to whom I was giving one up the bum. Since a few minutes earlier he'd been negotiating an extortionate price for allowing me to do so, I presumed his use of the phrase was part of the overall package I'd purchased rather than the result of some sudden deep-seated affection for me.
With Yo (my boyfriend now for 16 years), I solve the problem by speaking in Thai. The Thai word is ‘ruk', and it comes to me with none of the baggage attached to the word ‘love'.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY MARCH 9 2006
From: Deirdre Solsen, Melbourne, Australia
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
With regard to the jocular ending of your piece about entering a Buddhist monastery, I find your dismissal of every religion without exception most puzzling.
Personally I am a Christian, but I understand that God cannot make all of us love him in the same way. In some cases I see other religions as having real and almost equal value. People need to develop their own relationships with God. For example, because I am married to a Budhist, I am able to see that Buddhism is excellent for people who simply cannot understand God as a responsive spirit. Through the teachings of Buddha and the Buddhist church they can still find spiritual support.
You see, although I am a Christian I am able to look at other religions and beliefs in a most broad-minded way. Why can't you?
Regards
DEIRDRE SOLSEN
Hi Deirdre
My objection is to ‘belief' itself.
Belief in anything means abrogating responsibility in that particular subject to someone else's analysis and conclusion. And that includes Buddhism. Should we really believe in animism? Were you a frog last time round? Might you be a scrotal crab the next?
To 'believe' is to have a buggered brain. How would you feel about voting for a Prime Minister or President who believed in Father Christmas? What sort of snap decisions would you expect a man to make in a national emergency if you knew he hung his stocking up on Christmas Eve genuinely believing Father Christmas would come down the chimney and fill it? Well that's what you're doing when you vote for people of religious conviction - Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist.
Belief turns brains into bottoms and religion into a big buggering penis. People like you are the KY.
Yours
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MARCH 8 2006
From: Simon White, London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Simon
Excellent report on your visit to Yo's family on your website. Your writing at its best.
You must have noticed that your friendly reviewer Julie Burchill is taking a year out to study theology. What is all that about? Or will she just do an expose on it all? But the whiff of incense is getting closer - the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to be getting ready to side with the homophobes of Africa against the holy queens of America. May the best handbag win.
Are you due in this part of the sphere soon? Love to see you again.
Love to Yo
SIMON & VICTOR
Hi Simon
Glad you enjoyed the piece.
Re Julie Burchill. It's genuine. A few weeks ago I did an interview with her for a TV show about 'Celebrity'. Despite a passion for drugs and booze, and having the most enormous ability to see and write common sense in every situation, Julie is also a passionate Goddie. Sort of Christian cum Jewish cum whatever else takes her fancy that particular week. She says she's taking a year off because she feels completely written out. She's just sold her house in Brighton for one and a half mill so feels able to say 'F off' to things she doesn't want to do. Maybe a year studying theology will bring her to her senses about religion. Or maybe she'll fall deeper into the trough. Either way, I bet she'll write about it brilliantly.
As for the silly Archbishop of C and those vile homophobe Bishops in Africa, we can hardly be atheists and tell the church how to run itself. Though come to think of it, a bit of objective outside help is just what they need.
I shall be in London for a few days around the 22nd and 23rd. Let's fix lunch.
SIMON
TUESDAY MARCH 7 2006
Jeremy Ferrick, California, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
You can put the link back up.
I'm working on some new stuff right now. That CD was made in 2001 but it's the only thing I have online. I was more embarrassed over my haste of assuming you were Jewish because of your quote in the 'Blade' article, and was just trying to make a connection.
I'm from Northern California and just moved to L.A., so I have a lot to learn about the business. When I play my songs live with just guitar and vocals I usually get really good feedback so I was a little bit surprised at your reaction, but I respect your opinion and we all know that criticism often helps more than praise.
Sincerely yours,
JEREMY FERRICK
Hi Jeremy
Never trust what people tell you when you play songs live for them. Lying is much easier than telling you you're crap.
I've now re-posted your previous email together with the link you gave me. As for your new songs - try to sing them in tune - it helps.
SIMON
MONDAY MARCH 6 2006
From: Judy Dee, Blackpool, UK
To: simon@blackvinylwhiteopowder.com
Hi Simon
I've got a question...
Of all the artists you ever managed what was the best thing you ever saw any of them do live – I mean something that just flipped you out so you found yourself watching them like a fan rather than a manager.
Cheers
JUDY
Easy! Way back in the 60s when I was managing the Yardbirds, we played a gig in Catalina Island off the California coast and Jeff Beck got into a long blues solo which was as good as anything I'd ever heard by anyone, BB King included. For ten minutes I was a blues fan, not a manager. Then he finished the solo, got in a strop, had an argument with the band and walked out on the tour. And I was back being a manager.
Since then I've thought it's probably best for a manager not to care too much about his artists' music. Just think of it as work.
All the best
SIMON
SUNDAY MARCH 5 2006
From: Tony Franks, Newcastle, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I noticed someone who wrote to you has had their email removed from your site ‘by request”. What's that all about? What are the rules for someone who writes to your website then doesn't want their letter seen after all.
Yours
TONY
Hi Tony
No rules. The site is chiefly for my own amusement. The person in question seemed unhappy about me saying his music wasn't up to much. Also, he probably felt he'd made a fool of himself by sending me an email saying ‘from a Jewish Californian to a Jewish New Yorker'.
I agree with him - he DID make a fool of himself. If he'd gone to my CV or read any of my former emails he could have found out who I am, where I come from and where I stand on religion.
But the silliest thing is, by asking to have his letter removed he's also removed the link which would have enabled people to listen to his music and judge for themselves.
Regards
SIMON
SATURDAY MARCH 4 2006
From: Charlie Jitt, The Hague, Holland
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Seems like bad mood rules the last few days. Still, I listened to the songs on Jeremy Ferrick's website and had to agree with you – bedroom demos, ‘60s style. But your other poor correspondent seemed only to be expressing his genuine opinion that your books are enjoyable and you bit his head off.
Now then – give all fans of your website something interesting to read today. Tell us what you had for dinner last night.
Cheers
CHARLIE
Hi Charlie
Hope you're well. Sounds like you are.
Today I had to get a taxi to the airport at 2.30am to catch a 6am flight to Roi-et, where Yo's brother is about to go into the monastery for a week. Consequently there's a big family party. I wanted at least a tiny bit of sleep so the trick was to get my head on the pillow in full sleep mode by about 11pm . I decided to cook myself a prawn omelette and opened a good bottle of red. The omelette was a triumph – Spanish style, not folded, but turned – stuffed full of chopped peppers and prawns with masses of ground black pepper over the top. The wine was a Vega Sicilia Unico 1991, bought from England a while back to share with someone special. But in the end, who more special than me?
The most interesting thing about Vega is there's no fixed formula, some years there's 20% Cabernet, other years almost none. What I had was Cabernet 2%, Merlot & Malbec 13%, and the balance Tempranillo. The colour was huge and the taste full of all those flavours that wine writers search for words to describe - aniseed, leather, cloves, treacle, toffee. All in all, it was smooth, silky, complicated and bloody expensive - the best wine I've drunk so far this year.
(And it did the trick - for three and a half hours I slept like a log).
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY MARCH 3 2006
From: Jim Dermot, Wolverhampton, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I've read all your books and loved every one of them. Now I want to send you some of my songs and make you like them as much as I like your books.
Please give me an address to send them to.
Regards
JIM DERMOT
Jim - Don't you know... indiscrimate arse licking is bad for your health? Anyway, I've heard all your songs and hate every one of them. They're sent to me every day by people all over the world.
SIMON
THURSDAY MARCH 2 2006
Jeremy Ferrick, California, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Mr. Napier Bell
I'm a 30 year old aspiring songwriter/ guitarist/ singer/ bassist, etc. After a discouraging couple of hours at Musicians Institute's open house, listening to a teacher discuss the woes of the music industry, (how not even 1% 'make it' in this business, etc), I came across an article about you in Blade! Very interesting, very optimistic and something I needed to hear!
So anyways, from a Jewish Californian to a Jewish New Yorker, check out some of my stuff.
Thanks
JEREMY FERRICK
Hi Jeremy
What does that mean…from a Jewish Californian to a Jewish New Yorker? Are you really mistaking me for a Jewish New Yorker? You certainly haven't paid much attention to my website.
And while it's nice to be told that something I said filled you with optimism, having listened to your music I think it's time for some pessimism. Rough and ready was the first thought that came to mind - so rough, in fact, that it's not ready to be played to anyone. If you're 30, and that's as far as you've got with it, it's time you applied yourself to something else.
Regards
SIMON
WEDNESDAY MARCH 1 2006
Aaron Cummins, VH1 Radio, New York , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Mr. Napier-Bell
I just wanted to take a few seconds to apologize. When I interviewed you earlier this year about I'm Coming to Take You to Lunch I hadn't actually read the book.
Now I realize this is a minor offense and I'm surely not the first totally unprepared "journalist" you've come across. And you, sir, were certainly not the first, nor the last, person I'll interview with a total disregard for proper preparation. To my defense, I only received the book the morning of the interview, and I never did finish that speed reading course.
That said, I've since read your book and have recommended it to several people. I've even used things I gleaned from the book in pleasant conversation with friends in the music business, and even credited you along the way. They were, I'm happy to report, quite impressed with my ability to shamelessly regurgitate from a book.
This is a small penance for my crime against respectable journalism, but I hope, in some small way, it makes up for my horribly misinformed questions during our interview.
Speaking of that, one final question: What's the worst interview you've either seen conducted with one of your artists, or had to sit through yourself?
All the best
AARON CUMMINS
Hi Aaron
What you really deserve is a public roasting on the website. But since you've apologised, I'll admit I've done the same thing myself a couple of times.
Once, back in the 80s, MCA Records asked me if I'd like to manage the Alarm. They'd had loads of hits - both singles and albums - and everyone had heard them except me (I've no idea why). It sounded like a good piece of business so I went to see them play a gig in Glasgow . I intended to buy a couple of their albums at Kings Cross station and listen on my Walkman on the way up, but the records weren't in stock. Worse still, the train arrived late and I had to rush straight to the gig. Afterwards, I went backstage to talk to them and the first question they asked was, "Which of our albums do you like best?"
I tried a bit of bluff. "I deliberately didn't listen to your records because I wanted to be introduced to your songs through live music. I thought it would be the best way to assess the real impact of your performance."
What a lot of guff! They were hurt and angry and told me to piss-off. Not that I cared - they had daft hair-styles and were a bunch of raving Goddies.
Anyway, coming back to the subject of interviews... I remember the one you did with me and it wasn't too bad.
As for really bad ones... On one occasion an American DJ started a live radio interview with Wham! by asking, "Which one's George and which one's Michael?" And recently I did a phone interview with a radio jock who kept rambling on about food. Like you he hadn't read the book and presumed "I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch" was a cookbook.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28 2006
From: Christine Holmes, Grand Rapids, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon Napier-Bell
Just another person here who has become addicted to your website.
Having been a teen in the "swinging 60's," I've been wondering about something for more than many years -- but until now it hasn't become a personal issue!
That is -- how do you pronounce your hyphenated last name? I mean -- when I'm recommending your website to various people (the ones in "real life" other than the internet) I'm forced to attempt pronunciation. I end up looking like more of an ass than usual.
By the way, I can pronounce the " Bell " part. I think.
All the best
CHRISTINE HOLMES
Hi Christine
British people never have a problem with this. Apart from anything else there are Lord Napier pubs all over the place. On top of that, many a Napier has made a name for himself in British history, not least Lord John Napier who was appointed Chief Superintendent of Trade in Canton in 1834 and rather screwed things up with Governor Lu, the local Chinese bigwig, causing a contretemps that eventually led to the British occupying Hong Kong in 1841.
To make the pronunication easy for you, it rhymes with rapier, that slender, sharply pointed sword, that Errol Flynn liked to use to use in old Hollywood movies. But if the pronunciation still evades you, here it is simplified to the nth degree…
The ‘Na' bit rhymes with ‘hay' (or even ‘gay' for that matter). And the ‘pier' bit, is like any old pier where boats tie up. I hope that resolves the matter.
Now you know how to say it properly, I suggest you nip round all your friends and recommend the website like mad.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY FEBRUARY 27 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hello Simon!
Just read that rape anecdote. The thing that I find compelling about it is the tone in which you tell it. There's nothing of the victim in you... You just dust yourself down and get on with life. I can't help thinking that it's this very thing that's made you successful in life.
It's like your Wham story and how just as things were ready to seriously clean up financially, George decides to take a left.... Again, when you recount that tale, there's no anger.
Do you think it's this total lack of bitterness for things thats made you successful?
I have an Andy Fairweather Lowe version of that song "Travelin' Light" I think I'll play it right now... As you'll know, it's a song about carrying the least amount of baggage.
Warm regards
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
If what you say is true it's certainly not deliberate - it's just the way I am. Getting upset is so time consuming. You watch all these people 'taking offence' - Moslems at cartoons, Jews at Red Ken - and you wonder where they get the energy from. I don't think I've ever been offended in my life.
But about the piece... When I came to do the links I looked for things about rape but I couldn't find anything that came near to how I felt about it. I mean - a fist in your face, a coconut falling on your head, a dick up your arse - what's the difference? These things happen!
SIMON
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 26 2006
From: Bobbi Marchini, Zakynthos, Greece
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Had a smile today trying to imagine living on 500 cals a day. Rather be plump, self indulgent and sensual.
Not long back from a week in Athens and I took your book (“Lunch”) for company on the bus. Good thing too as returning, a strike by the ferry workers saw me stuck on
the other side of the water with a thousand disgruntled strandees (is that a word?....spell check rejected it...) and three coffins complete with occupants. I found myself a quiet place and sat and read, hoping that at some time
common sense would prevail.
Then I reached your story about dragging the cotton out of your ear...and started to laugh... out loud... and laugh and couldn't stop. Chaos all around me as only happens in Greece. Placards and riot police and trucks and buses, mourning families and unionists. Three days they'd been waiting to get to the other side... except of course the permanent residents of the coffins who had already reached the other side and didn't care.
When I stopped laughing and wiped away the tears, I looked around and thought how lucky I was to have a friend who can still crack me up after all these years.
(Common sense did prevail and they allowed one crossing on humanitarian grounds).
That's all. A small hello from my small island. Thanks for the laughs.
Lotsa luv and a kiss
BOBBI
Hi Bobbi
You send the nicest emails. Not just because you write them so nicely, but because you don't give me the task of having to write something clever in reply to them.
So it's like being given me a day off, so to speak.
Thanks.
Love
SIMON
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25 2006
From: Madame Soong Meng, Lyons, France
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Mr Napier-Bell
A few weeks ago you wrote about trying to lose weight. You said you were ‘a fat-looking bastard and it doesn't make a pretty picture'. Actually I do not agree, the pictures on your website make you look rather pleasant, but I certainly agree you appear overweight. And really, if you are trying to lose weight why were you eating the ‘gourmet menu' at a local restaurant two nights ago? And just three weeks earlier you wrote about a meal in New York which cost an enormous amount and involved seven courses, no less.
Now then Mr Napier-Bell, you need to get a hold of yourself. I can supervise you on a diet, the Simeons diet, which will leave you 48 pounds lighter in just three months. This is achieved by daily injections of human chorionic gonadotrophin, a hormone derived from the urine of pregnant women. It enables you to exist on a diet of just 500 calories a day, entirely protein, and you will lose a steady 4 pounds a week for three months.
If you are interested I will send you details of the cost and how to arrange for it to be administered to you wherever you currently are.
Sincerely
MADAME SOONG MENG
Dear Madame Soong
I know you're going to find this strange, but your diet doesn't appeal to me.
I admit in my younger days I occasionally swung both ways and was once persuaded by a young lady that we should have sex in the bath and pee over each other. As part of the overall passion of the moment it was pretty enjoyable. We were little more than teenagers, ferociously sexual and both rather gorgeous, so it's understandable. The added requirements of your diet - that the bath be dispensed with, the woman be pregnant, the golden shower be converted into a lethal injection - all rather detract from its attractiveness.
I think I'll give up puddings instead.
Best regards
SIMON
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24 2006
From: Justin Hart, Vancouver, Canada
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
About your restaurant pages, it seems you mostly remember meals by who you were with rather than what you ate. So please tell me – what was the last meal you ate which you remember solely for the quality of the food - and what dish in particular do you remember - or does that simply never happen?
Regards
JUSTIN HART
Easy! It was last night. The restaurant was Casa Pascal in Pattaya, Thailand. And I had their six course prix fixe ‘gourmet' menu.
Between the first course (tartar of scallops) and the third course (prawn in black butter sauce) came a consommé, something I normally avoid because it tends to be so deadly boring. This one wasn't.
A clear soup, slightly reddish, in a shallow white dish with two ricotta ravioli and seven or eight large shavings of plum tomato (the flesh, not the skin). For attractiveness on the plate it was perfect - a fine piece of abstract art. On the palate, it was as full and flavourful as any clear soup I've ever eaten, beautifully balanced by the sharpness of the tomato pieces and the creaminess of the ravioli. I would have happily cancelled the remaining three courses and eaten nothing but consommé for the rest of the evening.
So there you are! Sometimes I actually take notice of what I'm eating.
Regards
SIMON
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23 2006
From: Randy Keller, Beijing, China
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I heard you were going to talk at the Shanghai International Literary Festival this March. I'm working in Beijing but would love to hear you talk and will come if it's definite, so…..
Will you be talking for sure?
What day, what time?
What about?
Regards
RANDY K
Hi Randy
I'll be talking on the afternoon of Sunday the 12th, around 4pm, I think. Subject – not sure!
They asked me to talk about writing, but with an audience of authors I would be far too nervous to do that. So I'll blind them with science and talk about something they don't know about – probably the music biz.
Hope to see you there
SIMON
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 22 2006
From: Paul Rymer, Middlesborough, England
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
As promised I've sent you some excerpts of writing by Rudo Moyo (Tatamba), who grew up in the late sixties in a remote area of Zimbabwe .
As a blind child, Tatamba was expected to amount to nothing, to die. Gifted with intelligence and the skill of listening taught to him by his grandmother, he took in everything that was going on, took responsibility for his own future and thrived.
Along the way he encountered missionaries from opposing faiths, bigoted teachers, political youths and the emerging popular music scene before becoming a teacher of sighted children, surpassing the expectations of his family by having children of his own.
I found the work touching, humorous and in places very shocking - it needs some editing, but there is something about it which is exciting. I hope you feel the same way.
If anyone would like to get in touch with Rudo Moyo they should email me at Action for Blind People.
Best wishes
PAUL
Hi Paul
I've put some excerpts up for people to read. His story sounds fascinating. I really hope you can find him a publisher.
Best regards
SIMON
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 21 2006
From: Francis Connor, Sataheep, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dearest Simone
I am looking forward immensely to my State luncheon for your visiting brother-in-law, Reg (I'm sure he won't mind me referring to him as Regina ).
Sadly, Grandma (my aged but beloved cook) has fired the Hobbit (our fresh and energetic new maid) with hands caught in the cookie jar. This means that we to have to start again the dreary round of musical chores to find a successor.
Never mind - menu for the day will be…
Chicken liver pate, which is quite light and slips down a treat mixed with a drizzle of cognac.
Fish Tom Yam soup
Big prawns sautéed in garlic & chilli with salad & mustard dressing
Chicken curry with ‘pak pat ruam'
Cheese, desserts, mousses, coffee, brandy, etc
Two barouches have been hired to first collect Irwin and John (the mad Irish) from their chateau at high noon and then proceed in tandem to collect you, with the guest of honour, Regina . (The Lady Booth was very coy about the location of her residence, ‘slightly out of town' was the evasive term used, and since scouring the outskirts in search of her may be a little time consuming, I have suggested she proceed chez vous) You can then choose your travelling companions for the onward journey which should mean confluence at my abode about 30 minutes post noon for pre-prandial champagne.
(By the way – a question nagging at the back of my mind… Who was the only female pope? Have you read about the enthronement chaise with a hole in the seat for checking on male genitalia?)
Toodlepip
FRANCESCA
Hi Francis
Sounds like you're going to over-indulge us as usual. Once, I seem to remember, your pre-lunch drinks consisted of two bottles of champagne per person, which was followed by eleven courses. I'm glad, this time, you've decided on moderation.
Re your lady pope, it was a ninth century Englishman, John Anglicus, who wasn't all he seemed. He first went to Athens where he gained a reputation for scientific knowledge, then to Rome where he lectured at the Trivium, and in 863, when Pope Leo IV died, he was unanimously elected Pope John VIII. But after ruling for two years, one day while out riding he stopped and gave birth to a child at the side of the road. Shocked to find their pope was a transvestite intruder, Romans tied the lady's feet to a horse and dragged her around Rome till she died. For the next three hundred years the chair used during papal consecrations had a hole cut in its seat which allowed the consecrating official to have an investigative fondle of the pope's naughty-bits.
See you Thursday
SIMON
MONDAY FEBRUARY 20 2006
From: Erika Shuzak, New York , NY , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
You make light of one of the most evil regimes the world has ever known..... Siberian death camps, Stalinist murders, Eastern European despots, insane world-endangering nuclear plots..... the Soviet Union was no joke… no ‘interesting place to go for a weekend break'..... you should take pride in having been part of the western world that fought for the freedom of its people….
(AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON)
ERICA SHUZAK
Hi Erica
That was a very long email you sent, so excuse me for not printing it in full. I just wonder what you do with your life that gives you so much time free. Do you have a machine that does it for you? Just press a button and it spews out automatically? What a lecture!!
Thank goodness I only received it as an email and didn't find myself sitting next to you on a transatlantic flight.
SIMON
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 19 2006
From: Jeremy Parks, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
My dear Simon
The acerbic wit you have hitherto displayed in replying to idiot emailers seems to be failing you. I can only wish you a speedy return to full tongue-lashing form. Or are you becoming benign?
Regards
JEREMY PARKS
Jeremy - I never set out to be intentionally unpleasant; it's just that certain subjects push me to sharp reactions more readily than others.
Like most people, I'm just a simple bigot. To get a cutting reply you need to taunt me with the things I react badly to. You, though, are like a little boy pulling faces. I'm afraid it won't work. You're not a big enough prick to be bothered with.
SIMON
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 18 2006
From: Ron McCauley, Perth, Australia
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I just finished reading your book “You Don't Have To Say You Love Me” and loved it. It's a hoot!
In it you say that Keith Moon rescued you from brothels on several occasions, but you only mention one of those occasions – in the very last chapter of the book. What were the others?
Sincerely
RON
Hi Ron
You've misread something that Keith said to Kit Lambert (the Who's manager), which seemed to be some sort of private joke between them. However, I admit Keith turned up to rescue Kit and me from an all boy whore-house in Dusseldorf . And in the postscript I describe how he appeared from nowhere in a dive in Mombassa and got me out of a tricky situation with a tranny and her pimp. But don't get the wrong idea...
Keith and I normally met only in the most proper of places – Westminster Abbey for Christmas carols, or Fortnums and Masons for afternoon tea.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 17 2006
From: Steve, Burnham, Bucks, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I discovered your website and got to like it. One evening last week my stepdad came into my room to see what I was looking at because he thinks I spend all my time looking at porn. When he saw your website he looked through all the emails then read the thing about gay penguins and flamingos and the next thing you know I've told him I'm gay which I've never told him before. He pretended to be real cool about it though I think he really wasn't. Then he wrote you that email about how he hated bad English and you posted it the next day.
About me being gay everything seems to be fine. I thought you'd like to hear this story.
STEVE
Hi Steve
That's very touching. Perhaps I shouldn't have told your dad to F off!
(On the other hand, it was a pretty pompous email).
Glad everything's worked out fine.
SIMON
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 16 2006
From: Paul Rymer, www.nightporter.co.uk
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
James Reston's letter made me a little angry - language is a living thing that can be used and enjoyed in many different ways depending on the circumstances.
Emails are (unless you are me) short and snappy, often revealing a lot more about the sender than a letter they had thought through properly. Isn't it brilliant that people from all kinds of odd places who would never meet otherwise can share ideas? You're not going to have as much fun if everything is all flattened under the weight of the Oxford English Dictionary!
Best wishes and sorry for the rant!
PAUL
Hi Paul
I couldn't agree more. You've no idea how many emails I get every day from silly old farts like James Reston complaining about grammar and the like. And yet, the people who've sent the email he's complaining have just told a vivid story.
Today in the Guardian there was a piece by another silly old fart decrying the fact that handwriting had gone down the drain. Well stuff that! I've never been able to ready my own handwriting, leave alone anyone else's. It's only with the advent of computers that I've been able to write books.
So there you are!!! Today you find me in complete agreement. So fuck off James Reston, and everybody like you.
Cheers
SIMON
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 15 2006
From: James Reston, Burnham, Bucks, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
A lot of us got into rock and pop music one way or another in the sixties. We had a great time and occasionally got out of our minds a little, but at least we recovered and went on to live sensible lives afterwards. More importantly, in those days, everyone in the UK could read and write properly. Not like nowadays. How, I wonder, can you bring yourself to publish emails on your website that are so badly written and in such poor English.
Regards
JAMES RESTON
Look James…
I admit some of the people who send emails to this website don't write English too well, but for the most part I rate them better than a fog-brained buffoon like you.
Try writing back again in a foreign language. Let's see how good your Korean is? Or your Albanian?
Don't be such an arrogant Britwit.
SIMON
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 14 2006
From: Sajmir Tosk, Glasgow, Scotland
To: simon@blackvinylwhitepowder.com
Hi Simon
Imeet a guy when Im on hoilidy and hes a drummmer with a band - hes persuade me Im perfect for managfr of his band an netxt thing yuou know Im given up mjob and agreed to manage his band - I don't know shitall bout what to do so I go and buy your book Black Vynil White Poowder - now Ive red it I feel like an expert so lets wait an see what happn to the band -watch out for the name - theyr call Spit
SAJMIR
Hi Sajmir
You sound more suited to managing a band than you probably are for life in general. So that's a plus. But when it comes to contracts, I suggest you don't try drawing them up yourself.
Looking forward to seeing Spit hit the top.
Regards
SIMON
MONDAY FEBRUARY 13 2006
From: Georgie Kim, Seoul, S. Korea
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
i just read your weekly piece and think this weeks piece is trash 1000…
usually i like what you write but this week dont do it... fred phelp sound like a cool guy … i mean a madman… ok… but kinda mad crazeee which i kinda like
as for fag flamingos and and perv penguins i dont want to know… dont forget some people coming to your website is not gay…
stick with writing about music man
GEORGIE KIM THE KOOL
Hi Georgie
When I read your email I planned to reply with one of my blockbuster insults. But when I put my fingers to the keyboard it just wouldn't come out. Your email amused me (though I'm not quite sure why, 'cos you do sound a bit of an arsehole).
But there's one thing you've got wrong. Fred Phelps isn't cool. He's as bad as it gets.
SIMON
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 12 2006
From: Catherine Niels, Warsaw, Poland
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon
I really like the ‘Eating Out' pages on your website but in many instances you don't really say what you think about the food. What I want to know is – what do you rate as your best restaurant of the moment?
CATHERINE
Hi Catherine
It's just not possible to say what the best is – so much changes each time you eat somewhere – the food – your mood, the person you‘re with, are you tired, is business going well – all those things.
The last really outstanding meal I had was four weeks ago at Daniel in New York. I was with Kurt Loder, who is excellent company and had just given my US publishers a great quote for the front cover of I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch, so I owed him one.
We had the seven course tasting meal and asked Daniel Boulud to choose the seven dishes he himself would most like to eat as a complete meal. The result was amazing.
Some people are scornful of Daniel having got two Michelin stars, but I don't see why they should be. The restaurant beats Sketch in London hands down and for me is the best in New York - both the food and the feel of the place. (And Daniel seemed very pleased to be told this).
But it's pricey! With two bottles of medium wine and a couple of glasses of calvados afterwards – the bill was $900 with tip. However, for that degree of comfort and service you have to be ready to pay, and the food was stunning - dish after dish as perfectly prepared and presented as it's possible to imagine.
Superb. My current favourite.
SIMON
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 11 2006
From: Paul Rymer, www.nightporter.co.uk
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Ryuichi Sakamoto released a track called "Self-Portrait" way back in '84 and although instrumental it works because it includes a bit of every style he had worked in up to that point, although it was a new composition. I love it.
Unfortunately, it was part of the soundtrack to a Japanese children's film about kittens, which was cut for US release due to alleged cruelty to animals. Well, the cruelty wasn't really alleged, it was there for all to see - a kitten is shoved in a box and sent down some rapids before being attacked by a crab. Anyway, by the time the film came out in the West it was re-cut and had a soundtrack by Randy Newman ("The Adventures of Milo and Otis"). Need I say more?
Best wishes
PAUL
Hi Paul
I expected to get loads of emails telling me I was wrong and that there had been lots of musical works entitled ‘self-portrait', but it seems Sakamoto's is the only one. Perhaps, because music is so much more abstract than painting, any serious composition ends up being something of a self-portrait, so it becomes unnecessary to call it that. As for sending a kitten over some rapids in a box and allowing a crab to attack it - I love the way the Japanese can be so politically incorrect.
Now I'll get the cat brigade emailing me!!
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 10 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hello Simon
There's a lovely story behind this painting. Francis Bacon gave it as a gift to a lovely sweet old lady who worked at the Marlborough gallery. Her name was Valery Beston and Francis used to called her "Valery from the Gallery". She would do anything for him, from getting him new underwear to sending him emergency cash for when he'd be out gambling.
The Marlborough gallery was always getting itself into bother with crime of some sort ... first the police were called in over Mark Rothko paintings and then a short while back with Francis. This resulted in "Valery from the Gallery" being sacked by insurers or something and left to die in her tiny flat in Harley St. So I guess someone has called round and got this beautiful self-portrait up on to the market place.
I think it's a bargain at under two million… Surely the auction will spin out and it'll sell for loads more?!..
Oh who cares.... it's an amazing painting no matter what.
Regards
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
It's a strange thing about self-portraits, painters do loads of them, but when it comes to musical works I can't think of a single one entitled ‘self-portrait'. Yet musicians must be just as self-obsessed as other artists. Maybe it's because a painted self-portrait has the advantage of being seen instantly in its entirety, the artist's self-critical observations being immediately balanced by his self-complimentary ones. Whereas with music, because it evolves, a composer would have to present his self-observations separately, perhaps making them too stark for him to take.
Too intellectual by half! I'm off to have lunch with a book, overlooking the sea - Indian, I think - a lobster tandoori and a bottle of Sancerre.
SIMON
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9 2006
From: Derek Jones, Germany
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
My name is Derek Jones, I live in Germany . You surely wouldn't believe that I've been wishing to contact you for almost a decade now. By a great chance I've spotted that there's a website where people contact you and receive answers from you, so I hope I'll be lucky enough to be one of those.
I'm a singer/songwriter/arranger and producer. I make R'n'B music based Pop and Disco with some jazzy and erotic touch. Most of the people tell me I've been trying the impossible and my parents accuse me of being stupid and wasting my youth in vain.
I would like you to judge me Mr. Simon........I can't describe in words how important to me it is, that my example of work reaches your hands.
Sincerely Yours
DEREK JONES from GERMANY
Hi Derek Jones from Germany
It seems odd! For ten years you have wanted to contact me yet you have never thought of forwarding a letter to me through my book publishers, or my music publishers, or PRS, or through the company for whom Wham! recorded, or of looking in a music industry white book, or searching a UK telephone directory, or keying my name into a search engine on your computer. It certainly doesn't bode well for your music. But who knows…. Perhaps you are one hundred per cent an artist and live in a dizzy-tizzy world of pure creativity, unable to address the normal problems of every day life.
In case there's a small part of your brain kept aside for the complexities of envelopes and stamps and post offices, I'm sending you an address to which you can mail a CD.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 8 2006
From: John Dang, London, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Simon
Your religion bashing seems to be inspiring others! Reminds me of when I was an argumentative 8 year old, trying to assimilate into my new Manchester council estate by attending Sunday school (yes, Oriental parental wisdom!). The priest, clearly on a mission, bribed all the local rough kids to be quiet once a week with biscuits and chocolates, then one day asked that fateful question about the chicken and the egg.
Priest: Where do eggs come from?
Children: chickens
Priest: And where do chickens come from?
Children: eggs
Priest: So where did the first chicken or egg come from?
Children: (stunned silence)
Priest: (cue drum roll and smug smile) God
Me: So where does God come from?
Needless to say, like the winner in a casino, at the end of the afternoon I was quietly asked by Priest and Co not to come back again. My parents were nonchalant... they never sent me to church for the religion anyway.
JOHN
Hi John
You were lucky to get out of religious tuition so early. For me, compulsory religious education went on until about 14, then it became one of the subjects we were allowed to opt out of. But there were always certain masters who went on trying to push it at me, just as there others who were always trying to push their hands into my crotch. Of the two, a clammy hand in the crotch seemed the lesser of two evils. At least it was only my willie they were after, not my brain.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 7 2006
From: Bobbi Marchini, Zakynthos, Greece
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hello gorgeous person
Oh don't... please don't get me started on the religion thing... I've tried so hard not to comment as it infuriates me so.
A few days ago a woman friend fell sobbing into my arms... pissed as a bandicoot and telling me how her sex life had been ruined by the Catholic Church. The local wine is quite strong but I'm used to it and was in better condition to answer.... (it's not only gays that have suffered).
This all male group of anachronistic power mongers who pray to an object of torture have instilled such guilt and shame on women of her generation. She suffered a nervous breakdown as a teenager and was too afraid to leave her room as she'd been told by a priest she'd go to hell… he described it in glowing terms (pun intended) and as she was impressionable she believed him. They work guilt well.
True story! A local old bloke here broke two of his 80 year old wife's ribs trying to shag her. He was 90. Must be the olive oil.
Love'n hugs
BOBBI
Hi Bobbi
Here's an excellent recipe… take three Viagra tablets, six rock oysters, one fluid ounce of olive oil, put it in the blender with crushed ice for forty-five seconds and serve it with a treble shot of best vodka. It‘s called the rib-buster. Poor Yo. Not ‘cos his ribs get mashed but because I'm turning into an ancient old fart who prefers a load of booze (Calvados, mostly) at the end of the evening to a good shag.
Now then…. What were we talking about? Oh yes, religion!!! Well that's very depressing indeed.
Anyway, it's good to know you're still alive and managing to survive on your strange Greek island (which I loved so much when I visited you, though my view of it was definitely enhanced by all the champagne we drunk, and of course by YOU).
You can probably tell – tonight's ration of Calvados is already inside of me. So time to say goodnight.
Lots of love, lots of kisses
SIMON
MONDAY FEBRUARY 6 2006
From: Gerry Laine, Boise, Idaho, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hey Simon
So now you're ranting on about Jews too, are you? Wow! You're too much. Not that I'm Jewish, but my wife is, and I'm a Baptist.
How can you lump all those religions together? Ease off, man. Think again.
G LAINE
Sorry Gerry, but religions are like diseases. It's not the people who've got them I'm going on about, but the diseases themselves. Just imagine…
If the World Health Organisation were able to implement a successful worldwide campaign for the eradication of religion you'd be able to live the last few years of your life with a fully functioning brain.
SIMON
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 5 2006
From: Christina Clowes, Luanda, Angola
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I am a singer in a progressive Christian rock group and was wondering if you could .....
Actually, I've just come across your site by chance when I was searching for some David Sylvian gossip. I loved reading your postings, and have just spent the last few hours looking at the back catalogue! You have a real talent for writing, and it's spurred me on to get round to ordering all of your books. I am currently living in Angola (yes, really) - a cultural desert - so am really looking forward to reading them.
What I wanted to ask Simon is, are you still in touch with any of the ex-Japan members? Also, can you tell me why you feel Japan split at the height of their fame?
P.S. We are coming over to your neck of the woods in April; Phuket, is there a restaurant in the area that you can recommend? (We are staying at The Dusit Laguna...) Thanks Simon
With love
CHRISTINA CLOWES
Hi Christina
Yours is the first email I've had from Luanda. The last person I knew who went there came back with a terrible story about soldiers playing football with a dead baby (well - it wasn't actually dead when they started), so I hope things have got a bit better. I spent some time there in the early seventies with a friend from the UK restaurant business. We were looking for stocks of good wine left over from colonial days. In the end, the small amount we found we ended up drinking while we were there, usually as the only means to wash down a local dish called fish calulu.
I'm not in touch with Japan any more, though I frequently corresond with Paul Rymer who runs their excellent website ( www.nightporter.co.uk ). But re the group's break-up....
I could tell you to the last detail what caused the break-up. But the simple explanation is that Mick Karn's girl-friend moved in with David Sylvian and it created an impossible situation. If we happened to have dinner together while you were in Phuket, you might hear more. Except that - I don't live in Phuket so you're not likely to. Nevertheless, you'll eat marvellously while you're there - Thai, Italian, French, you name it. The Dusit Laguna is a nice place too, but if you can manage it, eat at The Boathouse. It has the best wine list in the coutnry.
Now then - isn't that a benign reply! Today I just don't feel up to being stroppy.
All the best
SIMON
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 4 2006
From: Nick McGeachin, San Francisco, USA
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Me again...
Watching a DVD of 'Girls & Boys;' (the TV version of Black Vinyl White Powder), I just saw Tom Robinson.
In the late '70s I went to a free festival in Hackney's Victoria Park and the Tom Robinson Band was on the bill. No surprise, the entire crowd joined in with "2-4-6-8..." - great fun. Last number of the set was "Glad To Be Gay" and the entire crowd gently sang along with the chorus. It was a beautiful experience.
I finally got the opportunity to meet Tom in Sydney a few years ago. He was doing a gig in some non-descript music pub in the suburbs - superb show - and I spoke with him afterwards. I reminded him of the Victoria Park experience and he said that it was one of the most touching moments of his musical career. We spent over an hour nattering, and I met him again for a drink the following evening. Tom Rob is, without doubt, THE nicest person from the music biz that I've ever met. Period. What a lovely human being.
NICK
Hi Nick
Sorry to learn I only rate second in the nicest music biz person top 100. Still, I have to agree with you about Tom being so nice. He's been a great friend from the first day I met him – on a dodgy talk show we did together in the mid-eighties. These days he's stopped doing gigs and has a radio show (talk plus records) on BBC's digital music channel. I had a chat with him on it a short while ago. Nowadays he's married (to Siouxsie) and has a son, which seems a bit weird to all the people who remember him as a core figure in the Gay Lib days of the late 70s.
But they give great parties.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3 2006
From: James Renand, Cheltenham, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon
My eldest son is about to take a year off from studying and travel around the world. He's nineteen going on twenty and very hung up on electronic music. He plans to take a piece of recording gear with him on which he can compose things – New Age type stuff, I think. His idea is to get back to the UK in a year's time with hundreds of musical snapshots and turn them into a ‘travel symphony'. (Well – it's nice to have a project, isn't it? Better than travelling aimlessly!)
Trouble is – he's so wound up in music he hasn't thought enough about the practicality of the trip. So I'm trying to find one person in each of the countries he plans to go to whom he could contact. And I wondered about you.
I've read your website and feel I know a bit about you, and besides, I don't know anyone else who lives in Thailand. Would it offend you?
JAMES RENAND
Offend me? Not at all. Especially if he's personable and good-looking and knows how to flirt. Particularly, if he doesn't mind being flirted back with.
I'll introduce him to all my unattached male friends. Perhaps he'll have a holiday romance. What a nice kind father you are.
Oh, by the way… He is gay, isn't he?
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 2 2006
From: Bobby Sura, Toronto, Canada
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hey simon
I've been following your website for quit a while now. I just started listening to Wham! albums recently, heard them on and off since I was a kid as my sisters were playing them since the 80s. I'm just curious to know, what was the real reason that Wham! split, if it was just an independent decision or as I've been reading rumours on some websites that you sold shares to a south african company dealing with apartheid?
Kudos on all your work
BOBBY
Hi Bobby
Wham! split because George Micheal wanted to be a solo artist. The timing, and the reason for them to split at that particular moment, were compounded by various things.
All the facts are in my book I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch. The English edition is available from Amazon.co.uk through my website, or the US edition can be bought from Amazon.com
Best regards
SIMON
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 1 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertforshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
I discovered a man in Soho last week.... His name is Sebastian Horsely. He's an artist. Heeeeeeeeee decided he wanted to paint the crucifixion, but in order to be qualified, he felt he must undergo a real crucifixion first. Now........
Sebastian learnt that in the Philippines, Catholic fundamentalists have phoney crucifixions every year... so off Sebastian hopped for a good crucifying.....well!!!!...you should see the photos...him standing there looking slightly worried in a field in the far east in his savile row trousers...... waiting....... then you get the photos afterwards.. him wearing a loin cloth, the blood drained from his face and in a state of shock. www.crucifixlaneproject.com/
I'm obsessed with Sebastian Horsely. He got thrown out of St Martins for forging grant forms. He gambled on the stock market and made loads. He tried being a male escort, but he got bored. His wife buys him time with whores as gifts. He's a drug addicts and he's been crucified. He got ten grand for each painting, which isn't a lot when you figure that galleries take fifty percent commission ... Tell that to a pop star!
warm regards
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
Thanks for turning me onto this guy – he's great – a genuine ‘art is life' person - a living novel in progress. If he'd taken a guitar with him up on the cross and sung a natty death song he could have been number one in the Philippines right now and sold a million bootlegs. He's a perfect successor to Bacon and Hockney, but....
Shame about the painting.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY JANUARY 31 2006
From: Nick McGeachin, San Francisco, USA
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Hope this finds you well. I finally got the DVDs of the Black Vinyl White Powder series (‘Boys & Girls').
Lovin' it...! I'm currently watching the Seventies section and I just saw the clip from TOTP when one of the doggies simply upped and left the stage as Pan's People gyrated to Gilbert O'Sullivan's appalling "Get Down". I was actually watching TOTP when that happened and clearly remember howling with laughter.
I'm not sure if there have ever been any awards given for crap lyrics, but Gilbert O'Sullivan ought to get one... How bad was this....? "I'd like to tell you, I might as well do, about a girl who I met in May. Her name was Rita and you should see her when she goes Oo-wacka-doo-wacka-day"
I rest my case.
Love and respect
NICK McG x
Hi Nick
Poor Glbert. Up to that point his lyrics had been pretty good, and his tunes too. That appearance on TOTP was his last Number One and shortly afterwards his songwriting ability just folded, which is what happens when the pop machine pushes you too hard. He went into some sort of mental decline and by the time he came out of it five years later most of his royalties had disappeared. Another classic music biz story.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY JANUARY 30 2006
From: Steve Abbot, Atlanta, Georgia , USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
Your casual attitude towards sexual commerce makes the fact that you have spent your life as a manager of young musicians most worrying. Many gays, myself included, believe that homosexuals should avoid such ghetto talk. There is no reason why being gay cannot fit well with belief in Christ.
Have you tried going to www.christiangays.com ?
Yours in hope
STEVE ABBOT
Have you tried shoving a crucifix up your arse?
SIMON
SUNDAY JANUARY 29 2006
From: Russell Cutress, Jönköping, Sweden
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello kind sir
Last night was the final of this year's U.K Celebrity Big Brother.
The much maligned Michael Barrymore came a very respectable second place.
In 1995 I was asked to write an essay to gain admittance to an 'Access to Higher Education' course, so I chose to explore the mainstream press's handling of the Barrymore coming out story. I did once have an evening in the company of Mr Barrymore and found him to be anything other than a perfect gent… drunk... high... indiscreet about other famous folk (deliciously!)
As anyone will agree, whatever happened that night at Mr Barrymore's… and the death of Stuart Lubbock… was an awful thing… yet in the absence of any conviction from a very vociferously pursued case, the British public have apparently taken him back to their hearts.
What's your take on this Simon?
Best regards
RUSSELL CUTRESS
Hi Russell
About a year ago I was working with Freemantle TV (producers of Pop Idol amongst other programmes) on a TV idea called – Celeberity Rehab. Not a Big Brother format but a more correctly run version of group therapy – filmed in a clinic, with correct medical oversight. Not surprisingly, amongst the proposed contestants was Michael Barrymore.
The pivotal point was… the last stages of his rehab (and that of the other disgraced stars we had in mind) would have to take place in public if he were to be accepted back into the fold… like some sort of religious show-down – forgiveness from the Lord – “I've seen the light” - that sort of thing.
How much of Barrymore's outpourings on Big Brother were genuinely spontaneous, and how much were due to his awareness that, if he was to make a return to primetime TV, the public would first want a good display of emotional pouring-out, is difficult to know. Either way, he seems to have got it just right and no doubt the TV companies are now planning new shows for him.
(Of course, he's got a more difficult task with the Lubbock family. But the same technique on a more one-to-one basis would probably pay off.)
Cheers
SIMON
SATURDAY JANUARY 28 2006
From: Craig Sedon, Ouagadougou , Burkina Faso
To: simon@blackvinlwhitepowder.com
Hi Simon
How are you doing? We played cards together with a flashlight during a power cut at Belgrade airport about ten years ago. ‘21', because you said it was the only game you knew. Remember??
I cleaned out an old drawer and found your name card. I typed your name into Google and found your website. Congratulations on everything you're doing. I'm supervising a construction project in Burkina Faso .
Amazing thing the internet, isn't it?
CRAIG SEDON
Almost as amazing as living somewhere called Ouagadougou.
When I was in New York last month I had a taxi driver from Burkina Faso who told me it had the world's best quality cotton, so at least I know something about it.
You're right about the internet being amazing. Seems like you can find just about anyone anywhere - even someone you only knew from a dim flashlight while waiting for a plane during a power cut.
Good to hear from you
SIMON
FRIDAY JANUARY 27 2006
From: Doug Freeman, CEO, Medben, Newark, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon:
Enjoyed your interview on Bob Edwards - XM Radio this morning. I also liked the clip of the new group you are "not managing", but didn't catch their name. The one with the Arab singer.
Who is it and is the CD out yet?
Thanks
DOUG FREEMAN
Hi Doug
Nice to know you heard me and enjoyed it. The group with "the Arab singer" is Brothermandude, though if you met Hassan, you'd probably think he was American. In fact he's from Bahrain - a great singer and songwriter, and the rest of the group are the very best of UK musicians.
The album will be released in the States late summer, and the group will be touring from June(ish). As regards 'not managing' them, it's not quite true. It's just that day-to-day management is something I've given up on in favour of overall strategising. BMD have someone else to deal with the daily machinations of a rock group in full flow. But really, the two of us are partners in management - me with the cushy job, him with all the hard work to do.
More importantly, the group are brilliant. I'll let you know when the album is imminent.
All the best
SIMON
THURSDAY JANUARY 26 2006
From: Simon Mulligan, www.simonmulligan.com
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
A real pleasure to meet you after I played at the old Durstonian knees-up earlier in the month.
Love the website – can't believe you too are a fan of Bambuddha Hut in Ramsgate, (my folks live around the corner). It would be great to meet up again when you're next in London / US.
Am off to play Brahms first concerto in Paducah, Kentucky tomorrow (only the best gigs...) Have attached the biog.
All best wishes
SIMON
Hi Simon
Great meeting you. Even better, listening to your impromptu concert. I love the way you alternate from Brahms to bebop, from Wagner to Waller (Fats). It's a great talent. And the chat in between is charmingly insouciant. I would certainly enjoy an evening of it over dinner. And for that Bambuddha Hut would be more than perfect.
But that's not essential. Next time both of us are in the same part of the world, let's do it.
All the best
SIMON
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 25 2006
From: Mike D, Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
i love the way youre rude to people but please dont be rude to me… im seventeen and in my last year of high school… i sing in a band with other guys from school… we are all gay and the band sings about things like that… i told my dad im gay… hes not mad about it in a bigoty way but says mike youre not really gay just wait and youll grow up and find out it was a passing phase… he says no way can i become a musician or singer… i have to go to university and study law
simon what do i do… i love music and live every day with an erection for good looking guys
MIKE
Hi Mike
First, work off that erection as often as necessary, with or without help from others. Secondly, learn to punctuate your emails properly. Thirdly, do what the hell you like with your life and tell your dad that's what you intend. Fourthly, send me a tape and I'll tell you whether it's worth giving up university for music. Fifthly, your dad doesn't sound too bad, so tell him, even though you're going to do as you choose, you'd like to go on having a good relationship with him.
Hope that helps
SIMON
TUESDAY JANUARY 24 2006
From: Harry van den Borg, The Hague, Holland
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon Napier-Bell
This is the seventeenth email I have sent you since I started writing to your website in June of last year. Your consistent refusal to acknowledge my correspondence or the contents thereof is not only extraordinarily ill-mannered but in the light of the opposing viewpoint that I hold on so many subjects about which you propagandise must be considered as something akin to censorship. I must conclude that you are afraid of my opinions and fear that posting them on your website will highlight the vacuous quality of your own thinking.
Let me start again and list the points of disagreement I have with you…………………........................…………
………….................................................................................................................…
HARRY VAN DEN BORG
Harry - YOU are one of the downsides of running a website.
You're right I don't post your emails, and lately haven't even bothered to answer them. It's not because I'm afraid of your opinions but because you have the unfortunate disease of ‘garbage fingers'. Every time your hands come near a computer keyboard you type pages and pages of unreadable, over-intellectual, boring crap. Like the email above, which went on for nearly EIGHT PAGES. (Haven't you got anything better to do with your life?)
Today you can have the pleasure of both a posting on the website and an answer to your latest email…
Piss off! It would be a great pleasure never to hear from you again.
SIMON
MONDAY JANUARY 23 2006
From: Richard Cranford-Brooke, Toronto, Canada
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dear Simon
I hope you remember me from the days when you were visiting Hong Kong frequently in the 70s & 80s (seemed like you were there every week). I'm no longer working in banking, in fact, at the ripe old age of 67, I'm embarking on a career in show-business.
No, I'm not about to become a rival pop manager, I'm going to do something even more strange. I'm going to be a stand-up comedian. Moreover, I'll be working in drag. It's an idea I've had for years. I'm going to do political stand-up.
I'm starting off as Margaret Thatcher – jokes about politics and politicians, and inferior brands of whiskey, things like that. But I suppose when she dies, it will become bad taste, so I might then move on to Angela Merkel, or maybe Cherie Blair. Or I might do several of them in one evening. (When I was in India I used to do a rather good Mrs Ghandi).
I'm hoping you might give me some contacts I can approach to get bookings.
Sincerely
RICHARD
Hi Richard
It's certainly not what I expected from the chairman of a bank. Though I must admit I never met you in that role and always wondered how you pulled it off, knowing you as I did only from occasional meetings in Dateline and Disco Disco and other less reputable haunts of the Hong Kong gay crowd.
Good luck with your new career. Mail me a video or a CD, and if it's any good I'll tell the world.
Cheers
SIMON
SUNDAY JANUARY 22 2006
From: Russ Cutress, Jönköping, Sweden
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Having stumbled upon your website last week, I was greatly entertained by your forthright stance and views. I can't wax lyrical about your books, yet. Nor can I claim to have ever met most of the folk you've had the pleasure of doing business with, consider as friends, or just plain offended. Although from your descriptions I feel I certainly would like them. I believe the reason for this is the heartfelt and empathic way you portray the 'cast of thousands' your life has witnessed.
Admiration is certainly another adjective I would bestow upon you, and believe this view would not change if even we met, as I know and love many a grumpy yet… (stumbles for for correct words, and it's embarrassing, erm).... cogent old cunt.
RUSS CUTRESS
Hi Russ
Cogent old cunt, eh? It might look good on a tombstone, preferably of one of the other old grumpies you know. As for ‘meeting', ‘knowing' and ‘loving', I'm afraid my diary's a bit full. But I like your flattery so you're welcome to write again.
SIMON
SATURDAY JANUARY 21 2006
From: Morten Kahl, Stockholm, Sweden
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
A couple of years ago I was at a book talk you did in London and you told a story about a record producer who analysed singer's voices looking for one that could produce the same soundwave patterns as previously successful singers. Can you tell me who was that producer?
Regards
MORTEN KAHL
Hi Morten
He wasn't a record producer, he was Peter Meisel, owner of Hansa Records in Berlin . In the seventies, as a record production company, Hansa were responsible for masses of hits with black artists working out of Germany – Ami Stewart, Donna Summer, Boney M, etc. Peter was always looking for ways to find out what made a hit. He spent days every week analysing current hit singles from every country in Europe and then working out the average tempo, or the average chord structure, or the average melody line – daft things like that - then commissioning producers to make records according to his findings. Amazingly, the company got hit after hit..
Then he came up with a new idea. He would use a computer to analyse the sound-wave structure of three of the greatest voices the world had ever known - Elvis Presley, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler. He would produce an average sound-wave pattern of the three voices and hold auditions to find a singer whose voice matched it. But it didn't work out and no hits came from it.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY JANUARY 20 2006
From: Jidi and friends, Lagos, Nigeria
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hey man… we love your so open with what you feel… i mean… “god is trash”… what sort of cool offense is that??
for me religion dont cut it… but my mother believes in jesus… i dont want to tell her nothing bad … i sleep with men but no way i can tell my family... why make them mad?? if people get mad better not say it…
in nigeria church people hate gays the most… they tell people to kill us … so we hate them back but we don't say it
JIDI & FRIENDS
Hi Jidi
I've got several gay friends from Nigeria who tell me how bad it is. And you're dead right. Don't even think of speaking out. It's tough, but even I have to agree - it's best to hold your tongue.
Good luck with everything
SIMON
THURSDAY JANUARY 19 2006
From: Annie Sengalen, Boston, USA
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
Two days ago I heard you talking on Boston radio about your book about Wham! … ‘I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch'.
I was already a mum when I became a Wham! fan… I fell for them when my daughter took me with her to see their show in Chicago in 1986.
Yesterday I went and bought your book. It told me so much more about you than I thought it would. What a great read. I started last night when I went to bed and read it till I finished at 5am .
I feel as if I spent the night with you.
ANNIE
But thank goodness you didn't.
SIMON
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 18 2006
From: Tia Benkhedidja, Metropolitan Uni, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Greetings to you Mr Rudee,
My friend has recently emailed you to get guidance about your book instead she has received a feisty comment which I thought was quite disappointing! I have personally greatly enjoyed your book and concluded that you were the man but hell what was that all about Simon? Don't get me wrong I know that your book has covered everything that has to be covered on the British music industry, no doubt!!! However there were absolutely no need to be so rude darling! I suggest you smoke a spliff and chill, I tell you what I might even join you. By the way thanks dude, I know I passed my exam thanks to your great book!!!
Best regards
TIA
Hi Tia
Great to know that you passed your exams, that you enjoyed my book, that you can write a clear coherent email. You should give your friend Miss Poonam a few lessons in letter writing. Probably, Miss Poonam should have held back on her spliff until after she'd finished writing her email to me. Or could it be that Miss Poonan's head has been jumped on so many times in the past it's no longer good for much. Either way, it's nice to know that you guys found my book a good read.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY JANUARY 17 2006
From: Poonam Ahir, Metropolitan Univ, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hello mr Napier Bell.
i am a student currently studying music and media management. your book 'black vinyl white powder' is one of our core textbooks we have to read. i have read it and found it very interesting.
i have an exam on this particular text and i was wondering if it would be possible just for you to summarise and condense the music industry within those years in order for me too look at it from your point of view. i would deeply appreciate this as i am aiming to contribute to this industry and make a success of it.
yours faithfully, please get back to me, thanking you
POONHAM AHIR
Dear Poonam Ahir
Re Black Vinyl White Powder....
Having managed to squeeze fifty years of the music industry into one book, I thought I'd already condensed it enough. If you really want to condense it even more, I have an idea. Read the book again, and then, when it's safely inside your brain, lay your head on the pavement and have someone jump on it.
Best regards
SIMON
MONDAY JANUARY 16 2006
From: Harry K, Dublin, Ireland
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
hi simon
i just read your book “you don't have to say you love me”… it reads so well… like you knocked it off in a weekend... it's the funniest thing i've ever read about the music business... how long did it take you to write it…?
HARRY K
What reads the easiest usually takes the longest time to write. Apart from the thought put into creating a nice flow of words, there's the bother of gathering up the material in the first place. That was my first book and I wrote it in 1982. I was born in 1939, so there's your answer… it took 43 years. That's two thousand two hundred and thirty-six weekends, not one.
Seems you got it a bit wrong.
Cheers
SIMON
SUNDAY JANUARY 15 2006
From: Simon Napier-Bell
To: Julie Burchill, Brighton , UK
Julie
I just loved talking with you. I could have stayed for hours. If only interviews were always so good
Love
SIMON xx
Maestro
Have been racking my brains for days for a line that would express to you how much I loved being with you and, once again, you took the words right out of my mouth. Don't be a stranger, and let me know if you ever fancy coming to Brighton . My Art Deco flat, nay, MY LIFE! will be at your disposal
Your friend and fan
JULIE x
SATURDAY JANUARY 14 2006
From: Mary Cigarettes, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hey stud
Your retorts this week have been pure class. I particularly enjoyed "permanent painful festering erection". Sometimes I like to imagine the good spirit of Francis Bacon bleeding out from your very pen.
By the way, I saw Madelene Bell at Ronnie's a while back. She looks and performs amazing.. looks better than she did as a youngster... truly beautiful ... supple of voice. Her material was awful. I can't believe no one does a great songwriterly project with her... all brand new material from one great writer.
Warm regards
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
It's a shame about Madeleine. She's such a phenomenal singer. In the sixties when I was more a record producer than a manager, I used her on backing vocals on every single thing I did.
I particularly remember one session. It was for a singer I was trying to launch who was very pretty but not much in the vocal department – Nicky Scott. And he was attempting something pretty difficult too – an old Jimmy Hughes R&B number - ‘I Want Justice'.
I called the booking agent and asked for five backing vocalists to beef up Nicky's not very substantial voice. None of the people he sent me were known outside of music biz circles. Yet two years later each of them had scored a number one hit. They were Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, Julie Driscoll, Katie Sasoon and Madeleine Bell.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," never sounded better.
Cheers
SIMON
FRIDAY JANUARY 13 2006
From: Graeme Winters, London, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Simon
Reading your emails it seems you're becoming a pedant. You state your opinions with no compromise and malign people who do not agree. It also looks like you're becoming a drunk. Five or six Calvados after dinner, indeed.
Although it was many years ago, I remember you as an altogether nicer person. Growing older certainly hasn't made you more agreeable.
Regards
GRAEME
You've got it in one. Promote yourself to genius of the year.
Actually, what you remember as ‘an altogether nicer person' was me when I used to take you to extravagant dinners. But that was because I was trying to get your pants off. Once that had been achieved you became distinctly less interesting to me. Now, you are of no interest whatsoever.
SIMON
THURSDAY JANUARY 12 2006
From: Nathan Statham, Vancouver, Canada
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
I'm a singer and have a band. I don't think of myself as ‘driven' in the way you describe ‘real' stars to be, but I love music and would love to make it my career. I think my songs are pretty good and my singing too. Isn't that enough?
Surely it should be the manager who does the ‘driving' leaving me and the band to concentrate on making the music?
Best regards
NATHAN
Nathan Statham, eh? It's a quite a crap name, isn't it? What's more, it doesn't sound like you understood a word of what I was talking about. Never mind - your ‘pretty good' singing should soon produce enough yawns to give you the answer to your question. But if you want it right now, here it is…
No! Don't expect the manager to provide the drive. It's down to you. If the ‘ambition' lobe in your brain doesn't have a permanent, painful, festering erection - forget it!
Regards
SIMON
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 11 2006
From: Andy Norton, Sunderland, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hello Simon
In your piece this week about managers and singing stars, you say, ‘The manager takes a young person he perceives to be of limited mental ability and turns him into a star. ‘Why on earth would the manager choose someone of ‘limited mental ability?' To me that doesn't make sense.
Regards
ANDY
Hi Andy
The thing that makes someone into a star is some sort of weird driving force inside them that urges them foward. What the manager has to do is harness that mad urgency - help them couple it to the necessary rock star talents – singing, performing, looking good.
Stars (I mean ‘real' stars, and perhaps ‘real' artists of all sorts) are in no way normal people. They're completely obsessed with themselves, desperately in need of reassurance and public attention. Try to turn someone normal into a star and you're doomed to failure. Take the ‘Popstar' programme. Five guys where chosen to form a group and had one first hit. Then they fizzled out. Technically they could sing and dance as well as any superstar singer but none of them had any talent in the ‘I HAVE to be a star' category. They were normal.
Stars aren't. They're slightly bonkers. Sometimes, VERY bonkers. And usually a pain in the arse. Which is why managing them can seem such a dumb thing to do.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY JANUARY 10 2006
From: Lyn Vasey, Chiang Mai, Thailand
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon,
Re what we were discussing a few emails ago… A quick google search, the current equivalent of casting the runes or extruding a chicken's intestines, indicates a paltry 19,200 results for "It made sense at the time." I'd expected a number at least in the tens of millions, as it seems to me to be the all purpose excuse for all sorts of folly, sublime and inane.
LYN
Hi Lyn
‘It made sense at the time' is beaten rotten by the REAL all purpose excuse for every dumb thing that anyone has ever done…. Lee Harvey Oswald's reason for assassinating Kennedy, George Bush's for invading Iraq, Nero's for fiddling while Rome burnt, or mine, for drinking a fifth, sixth and seventh glass of Calvados after dinner last night.….. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.'
For that, Google turns up thirty-eight million.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY JANUARY 9 2005
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Simon, do you like Oscar Peterson?
I've been sitting here all evening smoking grass listening to him. I seek out the more passable recordings.. cause it's such a shame to see so many brilliant jazz performances lost to bad recordings. I love it when there's a good one...one where you hear the buzzes and clicks and pops coming off the double bass.
So much of Dizzy and Charlie's music is lost to woeful recordings or neglected master tapes.. its a crying shame.
So i sit hear tugging on my little grass joint.. wishing you the same - some nice cool jazz and what ever else your tipple is.. wine I guess.
best
GREGORY
.
Hi Gregory
Oscar Peterson was always my favourite - I mean my absolute total favourite. When he was in full flow it was more amazing than can be described. When the tsunami hit last year I read a piece by a German survivor of a previous tsunami (1890-ish). He was swept off the roof of his house in Sumatra by a hundred foot high tsunami and road on top of it for eighty miles inland travelling at around two hundred miles an hour. Imagine that, looking down in front was a sheer hundred foot drop, not to water, but to land. And the tower of water he was supported on was carrying him forwards at that incredible speed.
That's what Oscar Peterson was like in full flow - playing and grunting - with Herb Ellis and Ray Brown speeding along beside him, each one of them in their own separate worlds, heaving and grunting over their instruments, yet the three of them together in a fourth communal world.
I saw Peterson many many times. The best was always in small intimate venues - local jazz clubs with just a few hundred people, or even less. I was in Toronto once when he played at the The Town Tavern, nothing more than a pub. I went every night for the whole week. And I saw him quite a few times on those amazing Jazz At The Philarmmonic road shows - which also featured Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker - well, just everyone.
He had a younger brother, Chuck Peterson, who was a trumpet player and had a four-piece band in a black club in Montreal, where I lived when I was a budding jazz musician. He never seemed to mind when other musicians came and sat in. I used to go with various friends and we played with him endlessly, night after night. The thing was, Chuck really wasn't all that good - he only had one arm and played rather stiffly - so it didn't seem to matter that me and all my friends (eighteen-year-old white boys) went and usurped him with our awful amateur playing.
Cheers
SIMON
SUNDAY JANUARY 8 2006
From: Rob Astbury, Pattaya, Thailand
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Dear Simon
With regard to your Eating Out section, I would hate to get on the wrong side of you but I must take issue on one matter. Do you really think that Fredi would serve New Zealand lamb at Bruno's restaurant?
For someone who appears to be always right, I just cannot wait for the explanation.
ROB ASTBURY
Hi Rob
I'm not sure who is meant to be 'always right' - you or me. Perhaps both of us? But I suppose the point you're trying to make is that Bruno's lamb, like you, comes from Australia and is the better for it. Without wanting to argue, my point was... How wonderful that we can live here in Thailand yet eat “oysters flown daily from Sydney, foie gras fresh from Gascony, or the very best New Zealand lamb.”
Since all these things cannot be found in just one establishment, I choose Bruno's for fresh Sydney rock oysters, buy foie gras de Gascone from Carrefour, and at the Dusit Hotel, on their terrace overlooking the sea, enjoy an occasional Sunday lunch of Carre d'agnello in crosta di pomodori ( New Zealand rack of lamb with a posh sauce).
All the best
SIMON
SATURDAY JANUARY 7 2006
From: Nick Briggs, Lincolnshire, UK
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Dear Simon
Maybe I just want to blast off, but then again your writing always cheers me up and BVWP sealed it for me as far as a career goes.
I'm a mouthy sharp-mouthed scheme-mongerer who met a guy on the beach last July and within 2 hours I was his manager. He was putting the band together and 1st thing I did was fire his guitarist.
6 months on and we have a band that personally I think could be the eq of the Stones/Beatles persona. Our band openly encourage bisexual action and pot smoking along with an intention to be arrested and die young.
Now our drummer has been listening to a mouthy git who thinks he is the saviour of rock n roll…. I would fire him on the spot, but seeing as he has arranged for aforementioned dickhead who thinks he is rocks saviour to be the bands new manager, its awkward.
Its just so bizzare because its all turning out clockwork like in your books, as if nothing has changed in all these years!
Thanks for listening. See if we make it!
NICK
Hi Nick
Sounds like you're finding out why rock management is such a dumb witless unrewarding job.
Let me know what happens.
Regards
SIMON
FRIDAY JANUARY 6 2005
From: Lyn Vasey, Chiang Mai, Thailand
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Hi Simon
It made sense at the time.
After reading your daily posts for the last six months or so, it still amazes me that there are people who think they have powers of persuasion sufficient to get a penitent conversion out of you on your webpage, like Oscar gave on his deathbed. I suppose it is your resistance that gives their agendas meaning.
Damn the epiphanies! Corkscrew at full throttle! Empty the bottle!
Cheers
LYN
Hi again Lyn
“It made sense at the time", of course, was Joyce's excuse for Ulysses, and Faulkner's for pretty much all his books.
As for a penitent conversion - from time to time I've had my little conversions - from gin to whiskey in the early 60s, from boys to girls on odd evenings of my life, and nowadays from grass to wine for solutions to most of life's problems.
You see – I'm not averse to conversions. They just have to be small ones.
Cheers
SIMON
THURSDAY JANUARY 6 2005
From: Lyn Vasey, Chiang Mai, Thailand
To: simon @ blackvinylwhitepowder . com
Regarding Cindy's total make over plan, I can't see how you failed to be hypnotised by the bewitching exhortation, "Believe me". Vampira scuttled across my field of reference. The absence of an exclamation mark made it all the more enticing, in a casual "come wither" way…..
I seem to have hypnotised myself peering into the blinking surface of the internet, waiting for empowerment and inspiration to manifest as tiny internet trainer wheels on either side of my screen lest I fall off and blame a mixture of alcohols rather than a dizzying imbalance of skewed metaphors…..
Van Gogh sends new ear's greetings via Chiang Mai, Vampira whispers to me. She's decided to stay to give me fitness and physique this cool season.
Believe me
LYN
Hi Lyn
I admit to being unable to clearly follow every word of your email (hence the slight reduction in its length), but the general sentiment seems both clear and laudable….
To hell with Cindy Smith-James! Fuck fitness! Open the booze and pour it in!
I approve
SIMON
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 4 2006
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Did you know Francis Bacon?
I only ask ‘cause I guess you had the same stomping ground. Maybe your paths would cross? Did you ever go to the Colony club? Or was that drab compared to the Scotch of St James.
I was always surprised Francis Bacon was ambivalent to jazz, given his streetwise artful disposition. His paintings are kind of jazzed... and you remind me a bit of Francis Bacon in your demeanor.
Sorry for all the emails Simon. I'll send no more… just so curious
GREGORY
Hi Gregory
I went to the Colony club sometimes, but much more often to the Apollo. And that's where I first met Francis Bacon, in the early 60s.
The Apollo was way better than the poncey Colony, where one had to deal with a bad-tempered lesbian belcher, (would you believe the owner was called Muriel Belcher?)
The Colony was full of hard-boozing straight theatre people like John Osbourne and Albert Finney, plus of course semi-straight George Melly, whom I loved, and habitually drunk Dan Farson. (Habitually, by the way, means drunk by ten in the morning.)
The Apollo club was London 's great leveller. And it was THE rent boy club, seedy but sociable. It was always my favourite. It was from there that the whole Elton thing blew up in the Eighties, the rent boy who started the whole story was a regular.
The Apollo was where the camp crowd gathered without concern - stars and unknowns mixing in that wonderful way only gays can do. Francis Bacon, of course, was part of the furniture, as was I, and Kit Lambert and Elton when he was younger, and Long John Baldry, even prissy Dirk Bogarde ventured in on occasion, and many a closseted politician too.
At 50, (1960) Francis Bacon looked amazing. I was only 21. People used to tell me his age and I couldn't believe it. From him I learnt that when you get older get a little fat in the face keeps wrinkles and age away. Francis was always drunk, always fun, always ordering champagne and picking up rent boys – just like all my other friends - me too, I suppose.
Francis' friend John Edwards, to whom he bequeathed all his money, lived here in Pattaya until he died last year. And Archie Dunlop, who owned and ran the Apollo bar and has been a big part in many of our lives, now spends at least half of every year here.
Cheers
SIMON
TUESDAY JANUARY 3 2006
From: Cindy Smith-James, Oakland, California
To: simon@blackvinylwhitepowder.com
Simon, from reading your correspondence during the last two days I see that you need me. I am a motivator. I feel a duty to inspire and empower.
I would like to become your personal online trainer. I will give you fitness and physique, and your mind will blossom too.
Believe me
CINDY
Blimey Cindy, there's a lot of weirdos out there these days! You sound like a gym vicar. What are you after? My body, my brain or my bank balance?
What you're suggesting sounds like online rape. To be honest I'm not in need of a jumped-up over-psyched sales-pitching super-bimbo. If you had a younger brother I might be more interested. Or could it be that you're a transvestite and all your mad energy is really testosterone.
Either way, I think it best if I give you a miss. With regards to fitness training we might not see eye to eye. All I was planning was a little reduction in calorie intake, a glass of wine less each evening and an extra ten minutes a day in the pool.
SIMON
MONDAY JANUARY 2 2006
From: Paul Rymer, www.nightporter.co.uk
To: Simon Napier-Bell
Hi Simon
Your column gave me a chuckle or two, you are so right. I can vouch for everything you say…
Don't lose all the weight - you spend thousands every year on good food and drink - why not have something to show for it?
It is also possible to be extremely fit and carry some weight - ask any gym instructor - it is more important to be active, eat a wide variety of foods and be happy than it is to fit into what the media views as the correct body shape.
Best wishes for a happy new year.
PAUL
Hi Paul
What prompted all this was travelling last month. Hotel bathrooms have mirrors in unexpected places and you get to see yourself from a new perspective. I suddenly realised my body looked like a large heap of moulding clay with a head stuck on the top. What I need to do is get rid of about a third of the stuff, then shape the rest into a fine looking body. Really, this is work for the likes of Michelangelo or Rodin, but I'm always up for a new challenge.
Cheers
SIMON
MONDAY JANUARY 1 2006
From: Ludwig Marsch, Koln, Germany
To: simon@blackvnylwhitepowder.com
Hi Simon
I have come to your website everyday since last March and I saw you say that maybe you would stop it. This would be a pity because it is so very enjoyable. So please don't. And do have a very nice new year.
Yours
LUDWIG
Hi Ludwig
Actually, I never said anything about stopping it; I just said I was tired of finding something to say everyday, then reading it the next day and seeing how tedious it was. I can't imagine how those Op-Ed writers in the New York Times or the Guardian manage to write things day in day out, always having an opinion on everything and usually saying something worthwhile. Still, it's a bit late to stop the website now, so please keep on coming.
Incidentally, I haven't come across a Ludwig for years. I rather thought they'd died out, like Adolfs. Good to know you're keeping the tradition alive.
Happy New Year
SIMON
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