Megastars are created by the people needing someone to argue over that everyone knows something about (or think they do). Last night at Suze's 36th I had two conversations/arguments about Hendrix and Dylan. It's almost embarrassing, actually, you know what? It is embarrassing. I have no interest in either of these figures. I felt like I was being untrue to myself anyway by pursuing the line that I prefer Donovan to Dylan (which I do, but that's fairly irrelevant; neither of them really thrill me) because it was such a hacky way to go. What I would really like to do is erase the whole debate (or wait until that increasingly unlikely event transpires: that I suddenly get why Dylan is a genius, on a visceral/emotional/immediate rather than a theoretical level). And then, for god's sake, Hendrix, a debate inspired by the fact that someone had played a 20+ minute version of Voodoo Chile on RRR as part of a series of 'classics' (yes, that's what we need public radio for - to play all the songs commercial FM has been flogging for the last quarter of a century but without ads). Not that commercial FM would have touched this Voodoo Chile, it was a National Lampoon comedy record of everything that was bloated and foul about the music of the late 1960s, and like all National Lampoon comedy records, not funny. (Unlike the National Lampoon horror records).
I suppose that everyone also has an opinion on Britney Spears I should have steered the conversation in that direction, because I would have liked to know what that opinion was, though frankly I couldn't give a loose root about her either.
Toby and Suze's house is excellent. A yellow brick 1930s-1950s (???!!!) bungalow on a strange shaped block of land, it has those beautiful deco ceilings and fireplaces. It costs them so much money to rent that the landlord will go straight to hell, but show me a landlord who won't, property being theft and so on.
