But yes, it seems this rock n roll mallarkey is a young man's game : For when better to play the game of 'making it' or being 'big in Japan' and yet be blissfully unaware of how tawdry and cynical a business it really is ; When better to devote your energies to the narcissistic business of climbing onto a stage and demanding people take you seriously ; When better to feel the burn of the sexual imperative in every fibre of your being ; when better to be willing to live on a diet of pot noodles and the assorted garbage that is available for consumption at motorway service stations & finally, when better to climb in the back of a van with the rest of the gang and tolerate endless hours of discomfort and beery farts!
But here, a word of caution - "Know This, O Young Ambition, All Mortal Greatness Is But Disease." Chilling lines there from the briny and melancholic pages of 'Moby Dick' but perhaps fortunately, most Rockin Rollin Young Bucks wouldn't know their Herman Melville from their Herman Munster!....
Surprising then, you may think, that the fires here at S t o n e d H o l y H.Q still burn and we play on! Broken Doon n Middle Aged maybeez but these Rollers are still Stoned n Holy....to a fashion! Yes, the waistlines have imperceptibly crept up a size or two, the hair thinned a little on the top of our Stoned Holy Noggins and yes, it does seem that we are indeed Going Gentle Into That Good Night! And as for the Raging ; well, all apologies to drunken Welsh poets, dead n gone before they hit 40, but it's all very well writing about Raging when yir tanked up on whisky but some of us have still gotta go to the supermarket when we're low on muesli and Greek yoghurt! Lasagne doesnae put itself in the oven now, does it?!?! The car needs road tax renewing and petrol in the tank to run!!...So take that, Mr.D Thomas of Laugharne, Wales!!
But the Rage and the Righteous Indignation are there, smouldering away someplace inside. Somehow, impossibly, after all these years spent in the Sensory Deprivation Tank that is Home Town, the fires burn still. And that is why these feelings of Impotence and Frustration can still take hold and sting the heart within this mortal coil - When you find yirsel whiling away the dreary & penniless hours doing anything but actually playing music, all too aware of diminishing returns and the reality of the cold, cold grave creeping ever nearer as you struggle to strike a balance between the conflicting concerns of five or six middle aged losers and what they like to do in their spare time away from the mundane business of doing mundane jobs and paying mundane mortgages and mundane electricity bills! Oh for the heddy days of youth when childcare and the endless yawn of social functions never entered the equation. I grow weary, my friends. Someday, I hope to find me some place where I can lay me down & rest my head & ease my mind and sing the
No Mo' Trouble Blues. A secret hideaway, a leafy bower of a kind, somewhere you can leave all your troubles behind.
Who the fuck would choose the life of the Stoned Holy Roller? Only an idiot like me.............
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