26th July 2000

Well I thought I had lost it but it came home again in the early hours of
Monday morning. My Mojo, my cats, my sanity, my pants.............no my
Pop Genius. I have had this very mellow tune which was entitled "In Bloom"
and I could not find the words to fit this splendid collection of notes
and then after a few large beers on Sunday night the floodgates opened and
I had more words than your average Countdown contestant. I was just in the
middle of a barren patch in the words department which had lasted for a
month or two so it was reassuring to know that I can still do it. Whenever
I write a song I always worry about whether it will be the last one. If
anyone reading this has heard the songs I have written then you will know
that they are mostly written about other people or other events etc and I
had run out of things to write about. I will be out rehearsing this
evening with Dawson because I want to do some gigs around the country and
it is a bit prohibitive when you have a band like mine who, unfortunately,
are so bloody talented that their services are always required by other
people as well as myself and the financial logistics of doing gigs with
these chaps means that I will have to take a slimmed down version out with
me and that is me and Dawson and two guitars. I am on the phone tomorrow
to start organising this so when the gigs are in place I will put it up on
this page. Tune in next Monday for The Continuing Adventures Of The King
Of Pop In A Foreign Country. Where is he going you may ask. I can't tell
you but I will tell you all about it when I get back.

15th July 2000

I went along to a gig last night with the Rocking Mr P expecting it to be
the highlight of my week. I have been a fan of The Eels since I first
heard Novocaine For The Soul and I have bought their three albums and have
enjoyed them all so you can imagine how excited I was to be going to see
them. Anyway they were a bit crap. This was due to, in my opinion, the
wrong song selection and the sound in the balcony of Hammersmith Apollo
being absolute toilet. I don't go and see bands that often because being a
pop genius I am a critical bastard and there are very few bands that
escape my scathing tongue so the anti-climax of last night's performance
made the journey home from West London seem a very long one. I think it is
the first gig I have been to where the band didn't play their last hit
which was "Mr E's Beautiful Blues" which I believe was a record company
release rather than a choice of the band as it was included on their last
album as a bonus track!! Now I am mobile I am going to be organising some
gigs (again, I hear you groan). My leg is almost back to normal except
that it has been set wrong and in order for me to bend my knees straight
and walk properly I have to have my foot sticking out to the side. I am
off to see my physio next week and get his opinion on the matter but I am
very worried that I will have to get it re-broken and set again which is
something I am dreading considering the bad time I had first time round.
It is either that or walk like Charlie Chaplin for the rest of my life.
Off out for a drink with the chaps from the Sunday Football team and this
will be the last gathering of this talented bunch of athletes because the
team is folding because I have retired from playing and there is nobody to
take over the running of the team. My retirement means that Gerard
Houllier will have to win the Premiership without my silky skills on the
right hand side.

11th June 2000

Hope you enjoyed my little brush with Mother Nature, I could almost hear the collective "aaaar" from here. The new recording session will be arranged and confirmed later this week and then I can get "Le Grande Fromage" rolling again. I am about to buy a computer for my studio and get into this hard disk recording caper and I am certainly not looking forward to the learning curve. I will be meeting up with Grant Boult, my partner in Low, on Tuesday to discuss the release of "Enter The Bigger Reality". I think we may release it under the name of Dr Jolly's Salvation Circus because there is a band in the US that is called Low ( I am a big fan, check them out if you like all your songs slow and moody ). In case you haven't looked I have put some new links on the site which can direct you to all the free nasher mp3's you could ever want. Should you visit any of these sites then please take the time to write your own reviews where you can and let newcomers know all about my pop songs. When I am getting close to finishing the new album I will place some new stuff on a few of these sites and I will let you know when. I will be putting up a DJSC site at www.mp3.com in the next couple of days, or maybe this evening after the footy, and you will be able to hear a few freebies from the forthcoming album. As always I will keep you posted via e-mail so if you have not subscribed to the king of pop's mailing list then do so via the guestbook or e-mail me direct via the links page.

5th July 2000

Spent last Friday and Saturday in the studio doing some recording with a
young man named Dawson recording some of his warped pop. The King Of Pop
has taken this young pup under his wing and is trying to turn this
talented songwriter into the future of rock 'n' roll which will not be
easy as he was born after Punk. It is bad enough meeting people who were
born after Hendrix died but this chap was filling his pants when Johnny
Rotten was filling our living rooms with foul language. They say that
policemen are looking younger these days and this also applies to pop
upstarts like Dawson. When his stuff is up at peoplesound.com I will let
you know so you can check out this precocious talent for yourself. Spent
Sunday with a guy called David Prince who interviewed all the members of
FGTH for an article he has done for Spin magazine in the US. We went to a
pub in Hackney with a cool kitten called Helen and had a fab lunch and a
couple of beers. On the subject of Hackney I went to see my mate Martin
Russell ( he mastered Ripe ) at a studio down there where he is camped out
with the rest of his Afro Celt chaps. For those of you who don't know
about Afro Celt Sound System then check out either of their two albums on
Real World. The material is a groove based soup featuring some great
musicians mashing it on top of the groove. Tuesday was our 14th wedding
anniversary so me and Mrs Nash went out and celebrated with a large Korean
but I refrained from drinking too much because I was recording another
band the next day in the studio and there is nothing worse than listening
to drums for three hours with a throbbing head. The studio time has been
booked in Kidwelly and the Hairy Pie Musical Collective will be assembled
on the 14th August to rock the house in a righteous fashion and lay down
the rest of the backing tracks for "Le Grande Fromage". Even Nigey Nige
has promised to be there despite being the busiest man in Wales. I met a
great guy who turned up at my studio to tune my piano. His name was Alec
and he is a piano tuner at the BBC and does all the stars. He spent three
hours in my studio drinking tea and chatting about people he had met and
talking about the industry. I think this is another to file under great
encounters with interesting folk. I will close by asking for reviews of
any of my music from anyone who reads this because there will be a review
section on the new site so if you would like to be included then mail me
your words. Finally, my faith in the music industry was renewed this week
when I bought the Coldplay single "Yellow". I saw the video on Jo Whiley a
couple of weeks ago and thought the tune was great. It is not often I hear
something that moves me and when I heard this record I was certainly
moved. I would liken it to the first time I heard "Supersonic" by Oasis
and I knew they were going to be huge. I get the same feeling about
Coldplay but only time will tell if I'm right. If they have other tunes as
good as this one they could be unstoppable. Anyway TTFN.