Had I been a US citizen, I would have voted for Trump. By which I mean, of course, I wouldn’t have voted for Trump. But I am nevertheless fascinated by the man and even more by his rise to power, a development which I now read was in the confident expectation of losing but building his brand, rather as Boris Johnson expected defeat in the Brexit referendum but saw it as a prerequisite for his leadership ambitions.
 
I read this in Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House, which has been sitting on my Kindle since its publication. Opening it was prompted by the recent visit to our shores of the man himself and his subsequent ‘summit’ with Putin.
 
Who is he? What motivates him? Is there a real political ideology at the root of his rhetoric? Or is he, as I have long suspected, a kind of alt-right situationist: “It is not enough that thought should strive to realize itself; reality itself must strive toward thought.” That’s Marx by the way. But it is also Dadism and it’s also punk.
 
I doubt whether Trump will have any idea what I’m talking about. But I bet that Steve Bannon does.
 
Bannon is by some distance the most interesting character in the book, a bizarre combination of Lenin and Rasputin. It is his finger on the pulse of the electorate, his popularizing of the ideology, his instincts and his ability to pander to Trump’s political ingenuousness.
 
We already know much of the stuff that Wolff records. It's all on Youtube or in the newspapers. What's interesting is the detailed story of how Bannon loses out to the family. Or rather, how he loses out to daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. ‘Jarvanka’, as he calls them and their supporters did not, as did Bannon, give long interviews to Wolff, but it is clear that they are the enemy. Not least because they are part of the political elite which has always been the main target of Trumpism-Bannonism; and also because, when a President is likely to go with those who had the last word with him, the family will always triumph.
 
But the last words in the book are Bannon’s: “It’s going to be wild as shit” he says.
 
Those are the words of an instinctive situationist. Those are the words of someone who looks to create and exploit social disorder and cultural divergence. Those are the words of a man who relishes fire and fury and knows how to sieze the opportunities it creates.
 
That is why Bannon is now embarking on his alt-right world tour. His theory is that Trump’s election is not the realization of Trumpism, merely the start of it.
 
And the only man who can see the project through to its conclusion is not Trump, but Bannon himself.
 
It’s going to be wild as shit. And the rest of us are right in it.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Yesterday afternoon I shoe-horned myself into a crowded pub in Upton-upon-Severn to see the first Swaps gig of the year. Despite the temperatures, around 30C, they gave us a great two-hour set, including a superb new song called Gravity. So today, I have all their albums on shuffle. Welcome back James, Beth, Adam, Dave and Tomo. And thanks.

Last night, Mookie Betts treated us to a 13 pitch at-bat, before hitting a Grand Slam into Lansdowne Street. It was the 10th straight win for the Sox, who are now 37 games above .500 for the first time, apparently, since 1949, the year I was born. And there are still three games to go before the All Star break.
 
In a week which has seen England’s defeat in the semi-final of the World Cup, the Trump visit, the Brexit shambles descending to new depths, and my apparent inability to write anything worthwhile about the 1871 Paris Commune, I can rely on the Sox to provide some measure of cheer as I fall asleep with Dirty Water flowing through my head.
 
The Town Nine are on pace for a 113-win season. Which sounds insane, but is possible. It really could happen!
 
Not least because the last few months have seen many things come to pass which sounded insane on first hearing. And we need something to focus on at a time when the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. 

​Which brings us to inexorably to Boris Johnson.

What rough beast is he, slouching towards Bethlehem to be reborn?
 
Of course, Johnson manages to lack all conviction and simultaneously be full of passionate intensity. His allegiance is only to himself, his ego and his ambition. His resignation was prompted only by his fear of being out-flanked in a future Tory leadership race by David Davis of all people.
 
As Aung San Suu Kyi pointed out, Lord Acton got it wrong.

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it …”.

Johnson is an opportunist who sees his opportunity disappearing and will grasp any nettle to retain it.
 
I am not denying his intelligence, although he does a good job of concealing it. But as Harold Wilson confessed, the trouble with his first cabinet was that there were too many Oxford firsts around the table: a classical education is no longer a useful attribute in politics. And despite my admiration for Mike Duncan’s podcasts, I am not convinced that there are many parallels to be drawn between the situation now and the end of the Roman republic. And if there are, they are not instructive.
 
It may be difficult to conceive of a situation where Johnson outside the tent is less dangerous than inside, but I fear that will be the case.
 
His only roadplan now is for a disaster. He is hoping for disaster. He is counting on disaster. And he will work hard to ensure that the disaster happens. Regardless of the cost to his colleagues and the country.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I have never been convinced by Mark Knopfler, but some recent listening has made me reconsider. My issue, it appears, was not with Knopfler per se but with Dire Straits. The listening has been the complete Dylan/Knopfler recordings – outtakes, alternatives and rehearsals - posted by Mat Brewster recently. Quite excellent.

Today from the everysmith library: Reading Rick Gekoski's A Long Island Story. This is the difficult second album after the triumph of Darke, and I am not finding it easy. I will return to it, maybe next time.

Jerry was irreplaceable. We can all agree at least on that. Even the ‘core four’ of those that remained were at one on this point.
 
But that’s the full extent of their unanimity after 9 August 1995 according to a new book by Joel Selvin, the ‘veteran’ San Francisco-based rock journalist, probably the only such who claims not to be a Deadhead.
 
Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead’s Long, Strange Trip is not an easy read. It records the Machiavellian intrigues which beset the band as they struggled, individually and collectively, to come to terms with the death of Jerry Garcia and find a role for themselves. For any Deadhead, it makes uncomfortable and disconcerting reading as it digs up a succession of skeletons in the closet.
 
At the heart of the book, and allegedly at the centre of the machinations, is Phil – and Jill - Lesh. Selvin has said that “It turned out that Phil and his wife were Macbeth and Lady Macbeth” and that “power went to their heads”. It certainly appears that way in this version of the story, and Dennis Mcnally has agreed that it is 99% accurate. But Phil and Jill did not give interviews and nor did Bill Kreutzmann, so reports of their motives and behaviour are at best partial and at worst prejudiced.  (Selvin and Lesh have form.)
 
Most of the power plays took place in private, but, as Deadheads, we knew there was something going on. The conflicts were evident on stage and in the press. Mickey Hart was reported as saying that Phil, the recipient of a donor liver, “maybe got the liver of an asshole”. Phil scheduled a show a few miles from a previously announced gig by the other three, forcing Deadheads to decide between the two rival bands. (The result was 50-50.) When they did play together, there were musical differences and backstage rows as Phil called the shots that others didn’t want, and granted himself vocals on songs that were traditionally Weir’s territory.
 
Personally, I think that the best of the post-Jerry music was produced by Phil & Friends. I loved the idea of treating the music as repertoire, to be played by virtuosi such as Larry Campbell and Tray Anastasia, rather than Jerry mimics, however brilliant, like John Kadlicik. Although of course Phil then went on to recruit Kadlicik! And I saw Ratdog, Bob Weir’s band, with Mark Karan, and also without a lead guitar at all, and loved both. But then I would, wouldn’t I?
 
Selvin’s book has a happy ending. In Chicago. With all surviving members of the Dead on stage for a run of shows that provided the band and the audience with resolution and reconciliation. It’s not the end – Dead & Co (with Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann) are on the road as I write and rumoured to arrive in Europe this fall. Phil is, most nights, at Terrapin Crossroads, the club owned by him and Jill.
 
So despite everything, the music never stopped. And despite everything, in this household, never will. 

Today from the everysmith vaults: Not as you may think anything by Further, The Dead, Ratdog, Phil & Friends, Dead & Co, The Other Ones or any of the various manifestations of the post-Jerry Dead. Instead, a great duo called Wet Tuna (yes, Wet): their new album, Living the Die, and a Detroit show with a wonderfully spacey I Know You Rider jam.

It was midnight UK time when the Sox surrendered the last out and an Opening Day defeat to the Rays.
 
It had all started so well. The Sox arrived in St Petersburg after a short bus ride from Fenway South, with a 22-9 record in the pre-season. They were looking good. And they continued to do so for seven and half innings. Sale was awesome, nine strike-outs, six shut-out innings. The hitting was fine. A Laurel and Hardy moment in the Rays’ outfield gave Nunez an inside-the-park home run. Barnes pitched a 1-2-3.
 
To be honest, it was all pretty routine. A good day at the office. What could possibly go wrong?
 
Pretty much everything. This is why we watch sport, because you couldn’t predict what happened. No-one could expect the implosion that followed, not even the Red Sox Nation, and we’ve seen it all over the years.
 
Kelly couldn’t throw a strike. He walked three. Carson Smith was no better, unable to get what he’s paid for, ground ball double plays rather than the triple that he did manage. Suddenly, we had conceded six runs. All the walks came home to roost. Why was the outfield so shallow?
 
Should Cora have called up young Bobby Poyner, a lefty but someone who has never pitched outside of Double A? Should he have brought in Kimbrel, the best closer in the MLB who he had talked about using in non-save situations?
 
By the time he had Poynter warming up, it was too late. We’d lost the game. Kimbrel never got up from the bench.
 
So far, so Red Sox. Defeat from the jaws of victory. Criticism of the coach for in-game decisions. Relief pitchers blowing a lead. It’s happened before, back on Opening Day 2003, against the same club. The same 4-0 lead from Pedro. The same final score. I remember it well, as I will remember this Opening Day.
 
But there are 161 games to go. And I like the look of the Town Nine this year. I’ve watched a fair number of the Spring Training games, and although I have to keep telling myself that it is only Spring Training, the record was good and the way we won those 22 games was even better.
 
I know that I will have issues with some of Cora’s decisions. It’s all pretty obvious from where I’m sitting, on my sofa, with a glass of wine at hand. It’s a great deal harder from the dugout.
 
Kelly has never walked more than two in his whole career. Smith will get his command back. Cora had every right to expect better than they gave him.
 
So do we.
 
And we’ll get it. We have a powerful line-up. We have a great defense. When they’re all fit, we have a great rotation. And we have JD.
 
What could possibly go wrong?


Today from the everysmith vaults: The Dead on their first 'trip' to the UK and a crazy weekend at the Hollywood Festival outside Newcastle under Lyme. I've had a couple of AUDs for a while, but this is primarily SBD and it seems that the sound guys managed to keep their heads while all around them (including me) were losing theirs!

​A curious by-product of the Brexit negotiations is the return of existentialism, or, more accurately, the language of existentialism.
 
Every debate, every vote, every meeting is now an ‘existentialist crisis’. Every pundit peppers their arguments with words such as ‘freedom’, ‘responsibility’, ‘choice’, ‘essence’ and ‘identity’. I have even read of one columnist’s ‘existential angst’ at the prospect of a possible result.
 
And, then, a couple of days ago, David Davis accused the European Commission of ‘bad faith’.
 
‘Mauvais foi’ is, of course, a key concept in Sartre’s thinking, and in the context of the Brexit negotiations, it is damning. It refers to self-deception, the way in which we think that we do not have the freedom to make a choice because we are afraid of the consequences of making this choice. (It’s more complex than that of course but it is early on Monday morning after a late night- see below!)
 
Sitting in Deux Magots or Café Flore, comme d’habitude, the example which springs immediately and inevitably to Sartre’s mind is that of the waiter, who is striving to be everything which he thinks a waiter should be. In other words, he is play-acting a rôle, the role of a waiter whose essence is to be a waiter.
 
But in order to play the role, he must know, by definition, that he is not actually a waiter at all. He is a conscious human being who is deceiving himself into thinking that he is a waiter.
 
From the example of this waiter, Sartre develops the notion that while we may pretend that we do not have freedom of choice, we cannot pretend that we are not ourselves; that we are not conscious human beings disconnected from our pragmatically-lived lives. (His conclusion, famously, is that we are ‘condemned to be free’.)
 
Many of the ‘players’ in the Brexit melodrama are clearly playing roles. I am thinking here in particular of Johnson and Rees-Mogg.
 
The former is the jester, the fool, the buffoon. The latter is the “MP for the eighteenth century”, the toff from the kids’ comics of my generation.
 
Sartre points out that his waiter is too “waiteresque”: “his movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid”.
 
Johnson and Rees-Mogg – and Davis and Barnier also in different ways – are deceiving themselves into thinking that they are authentic politicians. Their over-exaggerated histrionics, their method acting, betrays them.
 
They are acting inauthentically.
 
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: My late night was the result of attending a gig by Live Dead 69. Tom Constanten of the Dead, Slick Aguilar of the Starship and Mark Karan of Ratdog gave forty or fifty ageing groovers a great show last night, close - on occasion - to authentic performances of some of the songs that defined us.

This is the set list. Not just any set list either. This is Slick Aguilar's set list!

​The show is firmly and clearly in my head, but as part of a continuing winding down from last night's high, I'm playing a show from Asbury Park a couple of years ago: Live Dead 69 with the Jefferson family.

An interview on Radio 4 this morning, with Antony Gormley, reminds me that Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge is about to re-open after being closed for ‘refurbishment’.
 
I confess I am always a little apprehensive about these programmes of refurbishment in general and this exercise has caused me not a little concern, because the Kettle’s Yard I remember was not an art gallery. It was a home with some great art.
 
For a time, back in the late sixties, I would walk past Kettle’s Yard a couple of times a day, on a journey between my rooms in college and the digs of a girlfriend in Castle Street. In those days, there was no signage to invite one inside. It was all word of mouth. And it was from a friend that I heard that Jim Ede and his wife Helen would hold open house most afternoons, offering tea and guided tours to those who were lucky enough to knock on the door at the appropriate time.
 
On a couple of occasions, I was one of those.
 
I wasn’t totally visually illiterate then, but the art I liked was almost exclusively figurative. Paintings that told a story. Narrative art if you like.
 
The work that I saw on my first visit was revelatory, despite - or more probably because of - the fact that I was stoned. Very stoned. I doubt that I would have ventured to knock had I not been.
 
Helen Ede – it was just Helen on that day - must have realized this, but I was treated with courtesy and respect, given tea and shown round the collection. I was told stories of Ben Nicholson, David Jones, Miro. I saw sculptures by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
 
But I also saw odd stones and pebbles and bits of coloured glass and weathered wood.
 
In my normal, unintoxicated, hard-line rationalist state, I would have paid little heed to these found objects. But on that day, they were wonderful. Not for what they were, but for how they appeared. How they balanced and complemented the art, how the domesticity of the rooms seemed to be the ideal environment for their display.
 
There was no shop, no café. There were no little typewritten notes telling us what to think. Just a couple welcoming you to their house and sharing their love of art.
 
I felt completely at home.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Yesterday was Shostakovich String Quartets, all of them, from the first to the fifteenth. Today, it’s studio outtakes from Dylan’s Desire sessions. As ever, I am unable to understand Bob's decisions to take one cut and abandon others. 

There ought to be a word for it. There probably is a word for it in German. But the loss of one’s most precious sense, the sense that plays a central role in one’s life and work, appears not to have a specific medical or psychological term in the English language.
 
For Beethoven, whose extraordinary String Quartet in A minor, the Opus 132, I heard played superbly by the Brodsky Quartet on Friday evening, it was loss of hearing.

For Bruce Chatwin, it was loss of his sight. “People would compliment me on my ‘eye’” he wrote, “and my eyes, in rebellion, gave out.

​“After a strenuous bout of New York, I woke one morning half-blind. The eye specialist said there was nothing wrong organically. Perhaps I'd been looking too closely at pictures? Perhaps I should try some long horizons?”
 
As John Berger taught us, there are different ways of seeing. And different ways of hearing.
 
Beethoven’s late quartets were written in silence. He was profoundly deaf. But he was recovered from a life-threatening gastric illness and was ready to address in his music his sense of mortality. Nowhere is this contemplation on life and death more emotionally charged and exquisitely expressed than in the third – slow – movement of the A minor, a Song of Thanksgiving for his recovery.

I have never heard it played so beautifully or so slowly, and listening with my eyes closed – a procedure on my eyes 48 hours previously had left me with headaches and blurred vision – I thought of that scene in Huxley’s Point Counterpoint, when the nihilist Spandrell introduces Rampion to this piece, claiming that it proves everything – God and goodness amongst other things – and that only Beethoven could achieve this “counterpoint of serenities”.
 
And one reason why it could only be Beethoven is precisely because his most precious sense was gone. His deafness forced him into introspection. The sounds he heard in his head are the sounds of his hopes and his anguish, uncontaminated by the outside world. And he heard them in the purest manner. He did not sit at the piano to compose. He did not make the compromises of traditional composition. He poured it directly to the paper in profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
 
All this went through my own head during that third movement as the Brodsky dispensed a salve on my self-pity and paranoia at the possible prognosis for my precious sight.
 
It was a genuine catharsis, a much-needed purgation of pity and fear. I feel better now.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: Unaccountably, this is the first time I have seen the Brodsky perform live and I resolve that it shall not be the last. But meantime, delving into the digital vaults, I discovered this morning The Juliet Letters, a joint enterprise with Elvis Costello. I can’t remember acquiring it or playing it before, but it is strangely affecting. 

It took me a while to get Rothko.
 
I have never seen his early, mythic, figurative work outside the pages of catalogues and art coffee table books. The Rothko I and thousands of others ‘know’ are those extraordinarily massive slabs of darkness, through which float almost untraceable hues of tone, texture and colour, the Late Series.
 
As he intended, I was overwhelmed, in awe, when I walked into the Tate a decade ago. And I thought of Dylan ten years earlier acknowledging that “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there”.
 
It was clear that, for Rothko, it had already got there. He was re-working over and over again this sense of imminent tragedy, which we may infer or deduce, was to end in his future suicide.
 
I have known three suicides: a writer, a painter, a scientist. Each was, in their own way, brilliant: clever, intelligent, funny even. I cannot know, no-one can know, what despair drove them to believe that they were better off dead.

I have also known many more people left behind by the suicide of someone close to them; left behind with the guilt that they should have seen it coming, that they somehow failed their lover or friend. Suicide is not painless.
 
Rothko spoke often of suicide apparently, particularly that of Jackson Pollock – suicide by alcohol and a car crash. He told his assistant that “if I choose to commit suicide, everyone will be sure of it. There will be no doubts …”.
 
There wasn’t. He over-dosed on anti-depressants. And slashed his wrists with a razor blade.
 
This was no cry for help. This was no psychosis. This was not even a philosophical desire to die and take control over a life which was failing physically and intellectually.

​I don't get it.
 
Half an hour ago, I had no intention of writing this or anything like it. But first thing this morning, I found myself staring at a Rothko print on our kitchen wall as I waited for the coffee machine to fire up. It is not one of the final pieces. In this one, it is not dark yet, but it’s getting there. I have looked at this many, many times but today, as I sipped my coffee, I was reminded of one of those quotes which I collect in my commonplace book.
 
It’s from Rothko. And it is this:
 
“There is only one thing I fear in life, my friend: One day, the black will swallow the red.’

​Now that I understand.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: A family illness has caused the cancellation of the Atrium String Quartet’s appearance in Leamington a week tonight. Their place is being taken by the Brodsky who will perform the Shostakovich #12 which was to be the centrepiece of the Atrium gig. I was looking forward immensely to seeing the Atrium again, but listening now to #7 is more than fine.

A brief addendum: Back in 2010, when this blog was conceived, I split the posts into Lettres d'Uzès (my hommage to Racine) for those written in France and, thus, Leamington Letters for those written in the UK. Lifestyle changes make this distinction inappropriate, so all posts will now come under the (highly appropriate) Not Dark Yet banner. Numbering of the posts henceforth is as if both were in fact one. The blog itself will now be titled MS for reasons which should be self-evident. The new profile picture was photo-shopped by my late great friend Bill Keningale for my 50th birthday. Er, that's it.

There are few sportsmen for whom my admiration extends beyond their skills and athletic ability. In fact, there are many whom I am sure I would positively dislike outside the football field, the baseball diamond, the cricket square. We would have nothing in common beyond the fact that they possess a talent I'm in awe of.
 
As fans, we seldom get the opportunity to put this proposition to the test. We don’t meet our sporting heroes, so they remain heroes. Even when we read of some particularly egregious behaviour or political opinion, they are still superstars. Our memories are of that superb goal, that home run or no hitter, that exquisite cover drive.
 
The exceptions prove the rule: Ali, David Ortiz, Garfield Sobers, Learie Constantine, Brian Clough, Romario.
 
To this off-the-top-of-my-head list, I wish to add the name of Cyrille Regis MBE.
 
Together with Laurie Cunningham and Brendan Batson, Cyrille was instrumental in achieving acceptance for black players in British football. When ‘the three degrees’ first played together, some season ticket holders at The Hawthorns sent back their tickets in protest. But the football that they played, and the way that they played it, appealed to the vast majority of fans, whatever their club allegiance and in so doing contributed immeasurably to defeating racism and bigotry on the terraces.

So I was over the moon, Brian, when Bobby Gould signed him for the Sky Blues in 1984. He played seven years and more than 200 games for Coventry and his strength and elegance and goals made him an instant favourite. But it was not solely that wondrous talent. He was, on and off the field, a perfect gentleman.
 
I heard Ian Wright quoted this morning: “My generation of black players were like Malcolm X. But Cyrille was Martin Luther King”.
 
I know this from personal experience. I met him socially only after he had moved on from the City. He would meet up from time to time with his City team-mates in Wilde’s, where he stood apart. Not literally – he would be as much part of any conversation as anyone else present; but his demeanour marked him out.
 
He was tall, slim, always well-dressed and very good-looking (when I introduced him to Jill, she looked up at him and said “No wonder my husband worships you!”).
 
He had that air of self-confidence and calmness which the rest of us  envy. He knew who he was and was content to be what he was.
 
He was a gentleman and a gentle man.
 
I am privileged to have seen him play the beautiful game so beautifully, and proud to have known him, if only a little.

​Well, that’s all done, then.
 
Christmas has been cleared from our house. The tree is down, the baubles packed away and the pretty lights carefully boxed up. The Christmas cards sit on the desk – I will go through them to make a note of a new address here, unexpected contact from a friend there and pangs of guilt at those forgotten everywhere. But I am already turning my back on 2017 and setting out on a new trip with my equivalents of Gunslinger, Claude Levi-Strauss and Everything Kool.
 
Ed Dorn’s Cautious Gunslinger has been my travelling companion for many years. Here’s why:
 
Very good. Then you must
never consort with the Perfect,
stick to the Absolute, it’s
pliable, and upon it
you seem to play any tune
you choose.
 
Absolutely. And the tune I have chosen to play in 2018 is writing. Which means, firstly, reading. Reading about writing. And in doing so, I chanced upon David Lodge’s Writer’s Luck.
 
Many years ago – Lodge must have been still at the University of Birmingham – the two of us approached the last remaining empty table on the Marylebone to Leamington train, seated ourselves reluctantly opposite each other and, like synchronized swimmers, reached into our satchels and took out the current issue of the London Review of Books.
 
Had either of us been more sociable, in my case more confident also, this might have provoked an hour of conversation about the state of the novel, the business of writing and any number of other burning issues. It didn’t. We half-smiled to acknowledge the coincidence, nodded and bowed our heads to the printed pages of LRB.
 
I regret this lost opportunity. My silence was the result of not wishing to impinge on the time or solitude of a leading academic and author of one of the funniest books I have ever read, Changing Places. And his? At the time, I may have attributed it to aloofness, a kind of professorial hauteur. From Writer’s Luck, we discover that he is naturally shy, even timid; and he recounts an occasion at which he was snubbed throughout dinner by Germaine Greer, who turned her back on him, literally and figuratively, and conversed exclusively with her other neighbour.
 
The anecdote resonates with me because it brings to mind a similar episode. I have been a snubbee also, although not in such exalted company. I can confirm that being trapped by the cold shoulder in a social situation is not pleasant, even if one’s embarrassment is shared by one’s fellow diners.
 
The fact that both events occurred many years ago, and Lodge and I still remember – ah yes, we remember it well – is testament to that.
 
But I shall try to forget and forgive. And if I cannot forget, laugh about it:
 
Entrapment is this society’s
Sole activity, I whispered
and Only laughter
can blow it to rags.
 
That will be the resolution for the new year. Never consort with the Perfect. Stick to the Absolute. Play any tune you choose. And have a larf.
 
In 2018, “the sheer writing of the poem must be our shelter”.
 
Happy trails.
 
Today from the everysmith vaults: I would by now have ventured an opinion on the latest from Bob, which concerns itself with the Gospel years from 1979 to 1981. I have been listening, promise. And although I was less than enthused by his embracing of Jesus – think I only saw two or three shows during this period – I have to confess that there are some great songs and some brilliant shows. Nevertheless, my Christmas playlists have been heavily weighted in favour of Chris Forsyth, Dream Syndicate and the Dead. No, no regrets.