It’s not dark yet … but it’s getting there. I’m a week into my eighth decade and on borrowed time. I’m not thinking (much) about the inevitable physical and mental decline which kicks in about now and some would say already has. I’m more concerned about the state of my nations, here in the UK and over in New England, the home of the Red Sox Nation.

I will be devoting a column to the fall from grace of the 2018 World Series Champions shortly when I’ve got my head round the sacking of Dombrowski and its timing as well as the underperformance of the team from the start to the probable finish of the season. But right now, with Parliament prorogued, the government in chaos, and the country divided, there can be no doubt about the theme for the week.
 
It is, of course, what Donald Tusk has called “a dog’s brexit”.
 
One of the tangential issues of the ‘debate’ has been the diminishing of language. I am conscious that I have been guilty of this as emotion and anger takes over from reason. But I use this word advisedly: it is a coup: a sudden, illegal, takeover of government.
 
As such, it must be fought by all means.
 
Parliament has made a start. A no deal brexit is illegal. The Court of Sessions has found that prorogation is also unlawful and it is to be hoped that the Supreme Court will, on Tuesday, find similarly. It is worth noting that the English court did not make a ruling about the legality or otherwise of the suspension; like Pilate, it washed its hands of the issue, stating that this was a ‘political’ matter that is the preserve of the ‘politicians’.
 
That is not a judgement. It is not even an error of judgement.
 
It is an avoidance of judgement. It is an evasion of judgement. It is a shirking of judgement.
 
So much for the rule of law.
 
In law, the referendum was advisory. It was not mandatory. The country cannot be held to a promise made by David Cameron a few days before he resigned and retired to his shepherd’s hut to write a book I shall never read but suspect will be exculpatory in the extreme. (And there is a great deal to exculpate, which probably explains the rumoured volume - sheer bulk - of the volume.)
 
In law, the prorogation is unlawful because of its motives and its duration.
 
In law, no-one is exempt from the law. Not even a prime minister.
 
I’m entering this eighth decade with a profound sense of foreboding. But I shall be consoled by the generosity of my family: my Dylan weekend chez Grey and Beattie, our night in the New Forest, my birthday lunch and my life in a cake.
 
Thank you. This decade is on loan from you.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: As the talk turned to Dylan covers – covers of Bob and Bob covers of others – Ms Beattie introduced us to a version of Absolutely Sweet Marie by Jason & The Scorchers. I have played it at least once a day every day since my return to the UK and suspect I will continue to do so throughout the next decade.
 
​

Today is the final day of the days between. We started on the 1st of August, Jerry Garcia’s birthday – this year would have been his 75th. And we end today, on the 9th, his dead-day. The days between prompt us to remember the transformative influence of the man and his band; to consider his role as a guru as well as a musician; most of all, to play – as I am doing right now with Dark Star from 20th December 1969 – some of those transcendent improvisations on a theme upon which is based his reputation for providing a mystical, religious experience rather than a gig, a show, a concert.
 
I confess that I am – and have always been - sceptical of Jerry’s guru status. I’m sceptical of the concept of gurus per se. From Christ to the Maharishi, I have resisted them all. Not even Bob does it for me.
 
This is primarily because my instinctive scepticism is more engrained than any leaning towards mysticism or spiritualism or any other form of esotericism. And this (healthy?) scepticism manifests itself most clearly in my response to the arts in general and literature and music in particular.
 
I was a strange kind of hippie. Listening to Dark Star live, back in the early ‘70s, I was in no sense at one with God. I was not transported to a state of other-worldliness. I was not cast into some quasi-religious trance. I was there but I didn’t inhale.
 
“Music is never about anything. Music just is. It’s a lot of beautiful notes and sounds put together so well that we get pleasure out of hearing them.”
 
Leonard Bernstein was being disingenuous when he said that back in 1958. But when he went on to discuss the difficulties of expressing an idea rather than a mere feeling, not so much.
 
But that was then. The issue of popular music, as in culture and society at large, was standardization. In his essay On Popular Music, written in the early ‘40s, Theodor Adorno characterizes pop(ular) music as an escape from monotony. Standardization “leads the listener to become enraptured with the inescapable. And thus it leads to the institutionalization and standardization of listening habits themselves. Listeners become so accustomed to the recurrence of the same things that they react automatically.”
 
What happened in my youth, in the ‘60s, was the sudden fusing of politics, music and technology. It was not ubiquitous – you only have to look at the best-selling music of the era to see that the same old shit was regularly at the top of the charts.  But there was enough of it to know that it was different. It was non-standard and non-standardized.
 
Jerry (and Bob) were at the forefront of this. And they and their music have been central to my world and world-view ever since. I love them, respect them, admire them. But I still watch the parking meters.
 
And as the days between come to an end, I have concluded that Jerry’s enduring legacy is the songs and the performances of those songs. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
David Berman, who sadly died the other day, nailed it:
Songs build little rooms in time
And housed within the song’s design
Is the ghost the host has left behind
To greet and sweep the guest inside
Stoke the fire and sing his lines.
 
 

In France, it is the Fête Nationale and traditionally we would be enjoying a communal dinner and feux d’artifice in the market square of St Quentin la Poterie. But, as Bob sang in 1967, I’m not there.
 
In fact, in 2019, Bob is playing in the parks – Hyde London and Nowlan Kilkenny – with Neil Young, and traditionally we would have been upfront, relishing what we always fear will be the last time we see him. But I’m not there.
 
Two of the greatest tennis players of all time are at Wimbledon, where they produced one of the greatest tennis matches of all time. But I’m not there.
 
And at Lords, England and New Zealand are playing out if not the best ever one day game, certainly the game with the most dramatic and nail-biting conclusion ever. But I’m not there.
 
Instead, I am glued to the TV which is showing the cricket live on free-to-air for the first time since 2005. And I am there for every ball.
 
I am not alone in regretting the decision to sell out to Sky, which brought money into the game, but diminished its profile and appeal for a generation. But I do applaud the decision of Sky to make their coverage available to the country as a whole. (BT Sport also gave up their exclusive rights to the Liverpool v Tottenham Champions Final: Respect.)
 
Despite these acts of charity, these exceptions that prove the rule, it is surely wrong that the audience for these great sporting occasions should be restricted to those who can afford the subscriptions to Sky and/or BT.
 
It is the exact opposite in the US, where baseball, for example, is notable not for its absence from American screens but for its ubiquity. Personally, I cannot get too much, but I am sorry for those who, unaccountably, have no interest in the game.
 
It is, however, this very ubiquity, the fact of being everywhere all the time, which makes it not merely a popular game but part of the national consciousness; as American as motherhood and apple pie.
 
It has the same place in the American psyche as cricket used to be here when I was a boy.
 
I understand that the BBC has rights to the forthcoming and bizarre form of the game, The Hundred. I am not sure to what extent I will embrace this format. But it’s a start.
 
Meanwhile, my thanks to Sky for their generosity. Thanks to them, I saw something unprecedented, something thrilling, something rewarding.

​Thanks to them, I was there.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Thrilled by the footage of Bob and Neil playing Will The Circle Be Unbroken in Kilkenny (where I saw a great Bob show back in 2001, with Ronnie Wood), I have delved back into the vaults for the first time Bob and Neil did this song (hymn?) together, at the SNACK Benefit in Kerzan Stadium San Francisco in 1975. A great show – and the Dead were there too!

It looks increasingly likely that the Ricoh is lost to us. Not merely for another season but for good. Or rather, for worse.
 
It’s not Highfield Road. It is far from a masterpiece of stadium design. And it is not a home where I have ever felt at home.
 
But it’s our stadium.
 
Or was.
 
It now belongs to London Wasps, the cuckoos who have taken over a stadium built for the association football club and compete for the rugby audience with an authentic Coventry club which many of us remember as the breeding ground for some of the England rugby greats.
 
The financial and political shenanigans which have led to the City being homeless once again are impossible to fathom. SISU says one thing, Wasps say something else, and Coventry City Council something completely different.
 
None of them are blameless but the major responsibility lies with SISU and, to an extent, with the previous management of the Club, dating back to the days of Bryan Richardson’s and Mike McGinnity’s chairmanships.
 
It was Bryan who ‘masterminded’ the sale of Highfield Road and the subsequent development of a toxic site. Some said it was “visionary’. Bryan said he was ‘taking a punt’.
 
It was a gamble which failed. Which left us in debt, without a ground to call home, and with owners who don’t understand football and massively underestimated the gravity of the problems.
 
But we are where we are.
 
Which is in Birmingham.
 
And we leave behind at the Ricoh many memories, not all of which are miserable, together with our bricks.
 
Five thousand or so of us bought bricks for the Sky Blue Hall of Fame. Somewhere in that picture is mine.
 
And, presumably, it will stay there as part of Wasps Stadium. Even though we paid for the privilege of being part of Coventry City’s new stadium.

Back then, it was an expression of pride and (misplaced) confidence in the future of the Club.
 
But now, it’s just another brick in the wall. A symbol of what once was before football became not about community but money and ego.

​Today from the everysmith vaults: Bob. The Rolling Thunder Review. Obviously.

Is it anti-semitic for a non-Jew to tell a Jewish joke? The other night, I was told it is. And I was reminded of Jonathan Miller, all those years ago in Beyond the Fringe, who claimed that he was not really a Jew. “Just Jewish; not the whole hog, you understand”.
 
Context is all, and the context was a Labour Conversation in Leamington about anti-semitism. “What it is – and what it is not.” The latter is, of course, particularly relevant in the Labour Party currently, as the furore over Chris Williamson’s reinstatement and re-suspension dominates the BBC.
 
Our speaker was Richard Kuper, founding member of Jewish Voice for Labour and Jews for Justice for Palestine. He showed us a selection of cartoons which have been accused of being anti-semitic. In groups, we discussed each one, including the example from the New York Times, which prompted the newspaper to cease publishing cartoons and also this one, by the acerbic Gerald Scarfe, for which the proprietor of the Sunday Times, Rupert Murdoch, apologised, calling it “offensive”.

It isn’t. It is an attack on Netanyahu and, by extension, on the Israeli government policies. But, and this was the principal thrust of Richard’s presentation, it is not anti-Jew.
 
But many people think it is. Because many people conflate legitimate criticism of Zionism and the policies of the Israeli government with anti-semitism, even though more than 20% of Israeli citizens are not Jewish; many Jews are not Zionist; and the majority of Zionists are not Jewish at all but Christian fundamentalists. (You may believe, as I do, that there is an agenda to this wilful misapprehension, but that is a separate issue.)
 
Equally, when we were faced with a number of statements by various politicians, we found similar confusion, often arrived at by a considerable stretch of definitions.
 
For example: Alexandra Ocasio-Ortiz characterized Trump’s immigration policy as “fascist”, because it was building “concentration camps on our southern border”. This caused offence to the “Jewish community” on the basis that this was belittling the Jewish experience of concentration camps.
 
Of course, concentration camps were a British invention. Of course, there is a distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps. And of course, there is no such thing as a Jewish community. There are many Jewish communities, which differ one from another in class, in culture, in politics, in religion.
 
Anti-semitism exists and must be eradicated inside and outside the party. But it must be allowable to argue against the policies of the Israeli government. It must be legitimate to take exception to the Zionist ideology. And it must be permissible to disagree with someone who happens to be Jewish. I do frequently, not least because some of my best friends etcetera etcetera …
 
How do we reconcile all this? How do we distinguish anti-semitism from criticism of Israel?
 
It’s actually simple. To quote from the declaration of anti-semitic misconduct published by Jewish Voice for Labour and Free Speech on Israel:
 
To be clear: conduct is anti-Semitic only if it manifests ‘prejudice, hostility or hatred against Jews as Jews’.

Today from the everysmith vaults: The Fairports were in town and we forgot, so I've been making recompense by playing Unhalfbricking. Over and over. 

​In the end, I resisted the call of the likes Tom Watson and Alastair Campbell and my own instincts. I voted Labour. Well, someone had to.
 
I am not, as a rule, a follower of the party line, rather the reverse. However, faced with the ballot paper, I found myself unable to vote for the party that went into an austerity coalition of chaos and is currently engaged in the same activity in, for example, Bolton and Lewes. In Bolton, egregiously, the LibDems are in an unholy alliance not solely with Tories but also UKIP. Yes, UKIP!
 
So although I was aware that, in this de facto interim referendum, my vote would not be read by the pundits as a vote to remain and that it would make no contribution to Labour representation in Brussels, I and a mere four thousand others in Warwick District Council stayed Labour.
 
We came fifth. Less than 10% of the vote. Despite or because we are a strong remain area. Despite or because we have a popular, pro-remain MP. Despite or because we voted Labour at the last general election.
 
From a Labour supporting position, I think – or rather hope – that this will change the party policy and its presentation.
 
From a national point of view, I see no change of any substance.
 
The UK remains divided. One can play with the figures any which way. The Brexit party won the election. But the popular vote) was in favour (a margin of 40% to 35%) of those parties which seek to revoke Article 50 or at least achieve a second referendum.
 
And then of course there is the Conservative and Labour parties. The former has already demonstrated its irrelevance and will be tied up in inter-factional squabbling for some time to come; Labour is in danger of doing so. Its constructive ambivalence has no supporters in a context where ambivalence is a recipe for sitting on a fence which divides the whole population.
 
The fact is, Brexit has changed everything. And nothing has changed. It has merely brought the innate divisions in our country into sharper relief.
 
My party has a lot to answer for. And the result announced last night is the answer.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Back in May 1972, the Dead played one of the best shows I have ever attended, at the Lyceum Theatre. Forty years on, I’m listening to the soundboard of that show and loving every second.
 

Now that normal service has been resumed at Fenway, with four series wins on the trot, one can turn one’s attention to the shambles which still prevails in Westminster. It is not something which one does lightly.
 
The opinion polls are clear. Farage’s single-issue Brexit party (actually a private company) leads by some distance; followed, at the time of writing, Labour. I make this qualification because each day brings another point dropped by Labour and another point gained by the overtly pro-Remain LibDems and/or Green Party. The Tingers (another private company) are struggling to establish any relevance at all. And the Tories face wipe-out.
 
Every cloud …
 
But of course we are not voting for parties on May 23. We are voting in what amounts to a second referendum. And this is the dilemma which faces Labour Remainers. Like me.
 
I am culturally, politically, instinctively European. My party is not. Or at least, it would appear so.
 
Precisely what our policy is depends on who is stating it. And I for one cannot fathom the thrust, nor identify any consistency or common thread.
 
Since we voted (twice) for Jeremy Corbyn as leader, I have had no difficulty in justifying Labour policies against increasingly snide and vehement attacks from the Labour right on a multitude of issues.
 
But now, I am struggling. I find my index finger hovering over the like button on tweets from Tom Watson, Jess Phillips and Alastair Campbell. I listen silently to friends and comrades who say they cannot vote for Labour while we continue to ‘bail out’ the Tories and their ridiculous withdrawal agreement. I am conscious that I am a member of a party which claims to be led by its membership but is, instead, being led by a central cabal which is imposing its will on the rest of us.
 
Maybe we should dissolve the people and elect a new one.
 
I am not alone in resenting this. The excitement and exhilaration of a couple of years ago is dwindling fast, and if I am right that Brexit marks the end of conventional party politics, it could be as threatening for Labour as the Conservatives. We lost some excellent councillors in the local elections a couple of weeks ago. (I’m thinking particularly of Kristie and JoJo in Brunswick where the Greens swept the board on the basis of their strong and consistent Remain stance.)
 
And while we have in Matt Western a strong and consistent Remainer MP, who is working tirelessly on the local and national fronts, even he could be under pressure next time.
 
It is still possible for Labour to become the ‘remain and reform’ party which Watson claims it is and which it undoubtedly is in Warwick and Leamington. But I am resigned to a continuation of Labour’s ambivalence.
 
I will not, however, resign. It’s lonely enough being a maverick radical.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I have a dozen or so shows from the late, great JJ Cale – from the early ‘70s to the mid ‘90s; so representative of pretty much his whole career. And I’m listening to those with relish and delight.

​We reached .500 last night for the first time since the second game of the season, in Seattle. And it is the Mariners who arrive in Boston as the season, to all intents and purposes, starts again, with most of the ducks in a row, to play a three game series of which two are day games and thus sit happily in the early evening for those of us in Europe.
 
The British back pages this morning are full of the news of Tottenham’s extraordinary comeback from a 3-0 deficit in Amsterdam. And why not? After all, it hasn’t been done for, hell, at least 24 hours. I am delighted that Madrid will host a final between Liverpool and Spurs. Like most football fans, I have affection for both. They are by some measure my favourites of the Premiership big spenders. Both spring from real communities. Both play attractive football. But although my respect for Spurs goes back to the early sixties, Liverpool, of course, have an intimate relationship with the Red Sox with whom it shares community, great play, and ownership.
 
So I’m telling you now that Liverpool will have my support when the two teams meet on 1st June. Kick-off is at 8pm British time. and the game will take me happily into the early hours of Sunday morning when the Sox play in the Bronx.
 
I am beginning to enjoy the 2019 baseball season. I certainly enjoyed the pitching duel last night. Sale’s 7th inning was sublime: 9 pitches, 9 swings, 9 misses, 3 Ks.
 
Just for once, though, that wasn’t the highlight. The highlight came in the 11th inning - a walk-off home run from Baltimore’s Trey Mancini.
 
Except it wasn’t a home run. From nowhere Jackie climbed the wall, reached over into the bullpen and pulled it back into the park.
 
It was a game-changing moment. As Alex Cora said, “Shoot, if he doesn’t make that catch, we don’t win this game.”
 
And, I think, it was also a season-changing moment. An exclamation mark moment. A moment that is not only going to provide the stimulus for a revenge series win against Seattle.
 
I predict that it is going to provide momentum for the remaining 124 games.
 
Go Sox!
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Back to Chris Forsyth, whose new album All Time Present has just been released. He also features in a truly fascinating episode of Brokedown Podcast - listen via iTunes, GooglePlay, Stitcher, and Spotify - in which he lists some of his favourite Dead shows. I commend it and the album to you.
 

​For many months, 29-03-2019 (03-29-2019 for my American readers) had been keenly anticipated in this household, though with mixed emotions. That Friday was, of course, the date on which for two years we had been led to believe we would leave the European Union. It was also, by tricks of time zones and scheduling, the opening day of the baseball season as the Sox took on Seattle in the early hours. I had hoped, naïvely perhaps, that the misery of the first would be outweighed by the joy of the second. In fact, both went haywire.
 
The UK is still in the EU, the relationship hanging by a thread as confusion reigns inside and outside Parliament. And on the West Coast, the World Series champions are currently 1-5, after being thrashed by the Mariners and failing to score on successive nights in Oakland.
 
Until the last couple of days, the confusing performances of a team which is essentially unchanged from the 108 game winners last year has been attributed to the rotation, which has been widely touted as the best in baseball. At its best, it surely is. But it would appear that all five are still only half way through spring training right now.
 
The velocity isn’t there. Location isn’t there.  We’ve had one quality start in six, in last night’s single run loss.
 
I watched a great deal of spring training. Afternoon games in the Eastern time zone are a delight for European fans, who can tune in at 6pm and enjoy a glass whilst taking vicarious pleasure in the Florida weather and the ballgame itself. And while winning the Grapefruit League comes quite a ways down on my list of priorities, it is always a pleasure to see a W or two.
 
Last year, there were many. And it showed in the 17-2 start which set the tone for the season and the post-season.
 
This year, not so much. In fact, we sat rock bottom in the Grapefruit League, under .500.
 
How many times have I been told that it doesn’t matter? Hell, how many times have I told people it doesn’t matter?
 
But it does. It is no accident, as Marxists would say, that the excellent results last year translated into excellent results in the season. And it is no accident that the dismal results this year evolved into this dismal start.
 
I understand that the pitchers need to be stretched. I appreciate that the hitters need to regain last year’s fluency of swing. I recognize that the development of fitness and skills is a gradual process.
 
But I am confused as to why Cora thought that, for example, Sale could open the season after just two short appearances in Florida. I am confused as to why he would, after such an outstanding spring training last year, change tack completely and adopt a totally different approach.
 
But what do I know? Only that confusion reigns. In the Red Sox camp and the Commons alike.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults:  A gig which took place on the fateful day of 29-03-2019. I like Garcia Peoples, but I love Chris Forsyth. And the nyctaper recording of the show demonstrates why. A good, energetic set from the band. And then an hour of extraordinary stuff with Chris Forsyth: Techno Top > The Calvary Cross > The Other One. Mesmerizing. Literally.

It occurs to me, after a week of (almost) total immersion in the Brexit debate, that the fundamental division in the UK is not the traditional Labour v Conservative but, rather, between Brexiters and Remainers.
 
This does not mean, of course, that the debates and subsequent decisions (should there be any) are any the less binary. Labour and Tories have both been the broadest of broad churches, each united by instinct and emotion rather than specific policy. I mean, have you ever voted for a given party because you agreed with everything they espoused?
 
So it is with those on the different sides of the Brexit debate. Each of us voted with our gut, cherry-picking arguments and points to justify our choice rather than rationalise or explain it.
 
My instinct tells me I am European. I vote Remain, ignoring the neo-liberal bias of the Union. I do not want a Tory Brexit; I don’t even want a Labour Brexit.
 
Your instinct tells you you are British and want British rights, British courts, border controls etc etc; so you vote for Leave, ignoring the fact that every economic indicator tells you that you will be worse off.
 
In neither case will even the soundest, most persuasive arguments convince us to abandon our gut feeling, our emotional commitment to our cause.
 
Can you imagine a Coventry City fan switching allegiance to the Villa? Or A Sox fan suddenly announcing that he or she will henceforth support the Yankees?
 
The Leave v Remain debate is on that level of tribalism. And our democracy is unable to deal with it.
 
That is why we have seen the bizarre breakdown of collective cabinet responsibility; why we have seen the Brexit minister closing a debate with an exhortation to do the right thing for the country and then voting against it; why the PV campaign voted against the PV motion.
 
Yes, as the chattering classes are claiming, politics is broken. Or rather, their politics are broken. Because the TIGS encapsulate everything that Rawnsley, Cohen et al have wanted all along. Or at least since the demise of Blair.
 
We are in the last chance saloon. We are in uncharted waters. We are in unknown territory. We are at the eleventh hour. (These are all banalities which I heard on the radio in the space of about ten minutes this morning.)
 
But there is no way this issue will ever be resolved. Whatever the final result, whatever the means to achieve it, this division will remain, with every issue faced by our country being blamed on the final decision.
 
We are a divided nation, as we have always been. But this time, the political elite cannot cover the cracks. The cracks are widening by the day. They are now chasms.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Signs of Life is an extraordinary album by Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, notable for a beautifully expressive cover of a BeeGees song, New York Mine Disaster, 1941. I should have listened to this more.