Gay For Johnny Depp

This coming Monday sees the release on my label Captains Of Industry of 'The Politics Of Cruelty' by Gay For Johnny Depp. Read on everything you need to know about this sordid little affair....

Gay For Johnny Depp present'The Politics Of Cruelty'
(Captains Of Industry)

Gay For Johnny Depp's debut album The Politics Of Cruelty is released Monday November 5 2007.

It is by far the greatest piece of music ever recorded in the history of music.
It is also the most adroit meditation on sexual politics since the heyday of Andrew Dworkin, Camille Paglia, Blackie Lawless et al.

Don't just believe our now-customary hyperbole. For once we might actually be right:

"GFJD's conceit is a hardcore rock Village People with added adult content - their debut album gives and often joyless genre a kick up the arse."
- 4/5, Uncut.

"The songs are brutal and short, the words never sung when Marty Leopard can scream them, the lyrics obsessed with bodily fluids"
- 3/5, Q

"A hellacious racket like Black Flag molesting a trussed-up Locust...perhaps 'Sadocore' would be the best description?" - Big Cheese

"Wit, venom, aggression, melody, authority-baiting abusiveness and even purist-pleasing production. And while this thing is so violent it could only be arriving in modern times, it’s also so gimmick-free it could have been birthed in any of the last three decades."
- New Noise

"Blistering genome re-ordering, schizo-punk of whirring guitars emitting alien skin-scraping screeches, half-garrotted laryngeal cancers squeezed through a voice-box over toxic-shock rhythms lubed on the sticky residue of a bathroom speed laboratory."
Sleazegrinder.com

"GFJD pulverise their sound into your ass. Redefining the hardcore sound has never sounded so sexy."
- Keep It Fast.com

"In your face' doesn't quite cut it...super-charged and ultra sexy."
- Tuned

"A consummate lesson in uneasy listening...a quite stunning statement of discontent." - RockMidgets.com

Gay For Johnny Depp voted No 1 in 'Top 10 Greatest Ever Band Names' Sept, 2007 - ShortList

Gay For Johnny Depp will be touring the UK in January/February 2008.

We're hitting the bath-house to celebrate.
Get sexy.

'Bad Slags'

I've written an article for
The Guardian about the
much-marginalised genre of
the true crime confessional.

Here it is, in black on white:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/redeeming_the_true_crime_memoi.html

Soft Focus

America's greatest music critic Ian Svenonius in conversation with Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat/Fugazi.

Stockholm Syndrome

In which kidnap victims fall in love with their kidnappers.
Trust the Swedes and their sexually liberated ways.

Nazis are a bloomin' nuisance aren't they?

Here's a piece that I have written for today's Guardian site
about the relationship between art and the artist's politics:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/10/do_writers_filthy_opinions_soi.html

Ferrets

Riggs stood to one side, poised with his bag in hand as the others noisily crouched down to form a broken crescent of tweed and Barbour in the thick wet grass.
Aside from Riggs they were all city folk, all men. To Riggs their faces were interchangeable, their presence as irrelevant and short-lived in his life as those of those of the previous week’s party. And the one before that. Their goals were always the same: to accumulate over-dramatised tales of hunting, vignettes of derring-do to exaggerate at later dates on squash courts and in Soho drinking clubs.
For once they were all silent. One of them, a particularly moneyed Scots redhead with aspirations as something of a laird of the manor, despite currently residing in the commuter belt suburb of Virginia Water, puffed on a pipe whose noxious odour rankled Riggs, made him want to turn to violence.
But he carried on with the display, reasoning that the money was always welcome and, besides, communication with these bloated old thoroughbreds was pointless. They were mere distractions.
“Right,” he said, and lifted the ferret out of the bag.
It was long and off-white like a dirty tube sock.
“Ho-ho,” chuckled one of the men with boyish glee.
“What the devil is that?” enquired another out of the side of his mouth.
Riggs ignored them and proceeded to the rabbit hole.
The ferret squirmed as he shoved it down into the darkness amongst the roots of an old and gnarly oak.
He stepped back.
The men waited, crouched.
A mobile phone started to ring as its owner struggled to silence it amongst his expensive layers. Curt glances speedied his action and he mouthed an apology.
They waited there in the grass, the morning dew now an ascending mist.
Nothing much happened for a while.
Then suddenly there was an abrasive gurgle, followed by what sounded like a snapping sound as the ferret flew out of the hole, landing a good ten feet away at the feet of a broker named Samms.
The ferret was stripped of a flesh, nothing more than a long skeleton with claws. It was as inanimate as a hairbrush or a broken rollerskate.
Samms let out a scream like a girl.
Riggs lifted his cap and slowly scratched his leathery brown scalp, looking from the remains of the ferret to the hole, and back again.
The men fled, stumbling and flailing in all directions, dropping hats and canes, maps and useless glass monocles.
Riggs heard the morning call of a starling followed by another distant gurgle from deep down in that hole there.

Quote Of The Day

“Masturbation is the thief of time.”

- Anonymous

My Breakdown

I lived in the bushes
by the railway track.

I became sentimentally attached
to a broken Betamax.

I thought I was fine.
I thought I was a fox.

There Are Few More Distressing Sights Than That Of An Englishman In A Baseball Cap

I defend my right
to like
The Libertines.

Why?
I'll tell you
why; here's
why:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/10/ben_myers_thurs_am_pic.html

Poem Of The Black, Black Night

Ever heard the hum
of a solitary electrical street lamp
down a 3am country lane

oscillating marble light
towards the silhouettes
of hedgerows and convex fields?

Yeah.
It’s lonely.

Breakfast In Bed

eggs for a pillow
bacon for a quilt

(bap mattress).

Axl Rose His Boat Gently Down The Stream

I've written my latest 'Nocturnal Emissions' column for 3:AM Magazine. As is so often the way when I have to think of an idea to write about it concerns the slow retreat into insanity of the 20th century's greatest composer, W Axl Rose, told in poetic form. It is essentially 'I Claudius' with corn-rows...or maybe 'À Rebours' re-told in modern day Los Angeles:

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/nocturnal-emissions-vi/

Dead Kids

This is Mike Title.
Mike is a very silly boy.
In his head he rides
white unicorns and fights
Bengal tigers barefoot.

I like Mike. He's funny.
I met him eight years ago
when I interviewed his
old band. They tried to scare
me away with vibes. It didn't work.
We became friends.

Mike sings, you see.
His band is Dead Kids.

Yesterday he called me
to tell me that he had
gone down to Oxford St dressed
as a papparrazi and told the
tourists that he killed Diana.

This is a typical day for Mike.
Once he turned up early in the morning
with a fat lip and dressed as Freddie Mercury
He was clutching a can of empty lager.

Another time he fell through a burnt roof
in Hackney pretending to be spiderman.
Messed his face right up again.

The point is: Mike Title is a frontman
in a world without frontmen.
And you should consider buying Dead Kids new single.
It's called 'Fear & Flouride'. It's out in
November on Salvia/XL. It it does well
Mike can trade in his unicorn for a minotaur
and the world will be a better place.

www.myspace.com/youaredeadkids

Winter: A Novel

A man sits on a park bench.
It's nippy out.
Some migrating birds fly overhead.

- THE END -

Tabloids Of Tomorrow

RAPPER ‘WOOKIE DAWG’ ARRESTED FOR TOOT ABUSE

PM LEVITATES NAKED AGAIN – PICS INSIDE

POLITICS ILLEGAL

PRESIDENT SHITHEAD EATS STILLBORN

SUN ‘STOLEN’: UNIVERSE IN DOUBT

FALAFEL MYSTERY: MURDERED MAN MURDERED BY MURDERER

CHINA CRISIS

ARCHEOLOGISTS UNEARTH LONDON

Indie Rock, On Its Ass

And here
is an article
I wrote for
The Guardian
about
young men
in
tight trousers
and
wonky hats:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/10/2007_has_been_a_stinker_for_ro.html

Redundant Greek Gods

Herpes
Isosceles
Dunlop
Pessary
Biff
Pissoir
Bacchus-Bob Jr

Videos Of Girls

I have some new
Spam-inspired
works over at that
fine literary site
they call Scarecrow.

Here be
poems:

http://www.hodmandod.blogspot.com/

Lisp Zeppelin

Thtairway to Heaven
Kathmir
Thinth I’ve Been Loving You
Bron-Y-Aur Thtomp
The Thong Remains The Thame.

Wheels

I was stunned by Ruth’s physical normality. Her complete average-ness in height, shape, hair colour and, most noticeably, personality.
Actually, I found it a bit of a turn-on, the normality. I was normally used to lusting after girls with strange defects, like leg calipers or violent twitches, or girls with the faces of a sixty year old on twenty year old bodies, and vice verse. Oddities. Women who cursed in tongues every full moon. But this girl was different – she was normal.
Things were going good and normal until Ruth introduced me to her sister Maggie. Maggie had wheels where her feet should have been and I fell head over heels for her. Or as someone far glibber than I might say, head over wheels. Well, after that I couldn’t look at Ruth the same way again. All of her sudden her normality was most conspicuous and made me embarrassed just to be seen in public with her.
I mean, Maggie had wheels!
Ruth only had feet.
How could she compete?

60% Of A Poem

this is
60% of
a poem
about the

Liar (In The Pub)

You never went to Africa seven times.
You never swam with no stinking dolphins.
You were staying at your Mum’s in Bracknell.
I saw you.

Poem For The Future

help
i’m trapped
in the past
oh wait
now I’m
not.

The Suicide Bomber

The suicide bomber was running late.
He picked up the wrong backpack on his way out
and tried to blow up Chicago with a falafel.

Amsterdam

I lost a shoe there in 1998.
If anyone has found it
please mail to Ben Myers
c/o the 21st century.

The Missing Kidney

I have a novel coming it out. It is my second novel. It is called The Missing Kidney. I was pretty pleased with that title. In fact. I thought of the title first, and it seemed so good I had to write a novel to go with it.

I have a lifetime’s worth of titles of other such novels-in-waiting (Increase The Size Of Your Penis, I, Axl, This Must Be Just Like Living In Paradise etc).

I’ll never write them all. I’ll never write 10% of them, just as I’ll never form all the bands I have names and concept albums for (Field Of Fists, The Gulag, Bass Speed, ‘Hate’ On Eight Knuckles, Behold! The Bison etc).

Unless anyone crucial to the creative and manufacturing process dies unexpectedly, The Missing Kidney will be published in 2008 or thereabouts. I say thereabouts, as my first novel took four years to edit and reach the bookshelves, which was odd because it only took six days to write. So you never know. I hope no-one dies.

In the meantime, here’s a little teaser of the opening and closing sentences.

The Missing Kidney begins like this:


On one level The Missing Kidney is a collection of loosely linked short stories, each written in one sitting, like postcards that never got posted. On another level, something else is happening.
Maybe they’re not even short stories anyway. Maybe they’re poems.
Or sketches
Or meditations.
Or diary entries.
Or the crumbs of a quiche stapled to an aeroplane wing.


And The Missing Kidney ends like this:


And with the passing of summer comes the return of this image of a kidney, a reminder and resolution of sorts that just because something has gone, doesn’t mean it has gone forever.
Life breeds death which spawns life and the cycle of memories and thoughts and people and places and observation and moods continues.
And after the flash flood comes the sunshine, yawning and stretching like some weird fire organ of the sky.

The Lone Rasta

i
&
i.

My name is Ben Myers

My name is Ben Myers.

Hello and welcome to my blog. Here I shall post stories, links to articles I have written and poems about the noise gravel makes underfoot, depending upon the season and the choice of footwear.

(Like the world needs another blogger….)

To start things off here is a letter I have just posted to British Telecommunications, the UK’s largest phone company. I gingerly await a response.

Incidentally, if you’re a prospective publisher visiting for the first time, do come back. Things will get better. In November I intend to publish a story about some parakeets, and in December I might write something about fiscal policy or the Norwegian black metal scene, depending upon public opinion. I promise to use as an irreverent and pithy tone as the moden world demands.




7 -------- Road
Nunhead
London
SE15

October 7 2007

Dear British Telecom,

As a long-term BT customer I am writing to you to let you know that as of now I terminating my phone, internet and e-mail account with you. In fact, despite your employers desperate pleas (who actually said “Please, please just give us one more chance, Mr Myers”), I already have cancelled all my connections.

My reasons for this are that I am dissatisfied with the services that you provide.

I find the costs of your phone calls, line-rental and extra charges far too expensive. The ‘money-saving packages’ I been persuaded to engage in by your sales people are useless and save me no money whatsoever. My latest phone bill amounted to £56, yet with my basic broadband costs, it came to £196.

Furthermore, your e-mail connections are unreliable and your help-lines at best unhelpful, at worst inoperable. When my e-mail address recently refused to work I was advised to “take your computer to a computer shop”, even though everything about it works fine otherwise, including the pornography. The e-mail still doesn’t work today though.

I find your phone systems intolerable and can rarely get through to your operators. Though I’m sure your employers are all very nice people (in fact I know they are as my friend Dave used to work for you – perhaps you remember him?), without wishing to sound like a Daily Mail reader, I can’t always tell what your operators are saying. They, of course, could say the same about me, being as I a) mumble and b) am a Geordie, but this is why I choose to sit at home writing long-winded letters of complaint, rather than being a help-line operator. You have to play to your strengths, and guiding people thousands of miles away through their phone bill in a second language is not one of mine.

Maybe it is nothing to do with language differences whatsoever. Maybe your employees are just really thick (as in stupid)?

I even find your hold music offensive. No-one should have to listen to kabuki interpretations of Celine Dion songs. May I instead suggest a little jazz, dub reggae or British folk music in future? Or perhaps some Black Sabbath (but Ozzy Osbourne-era only please. I’ve really never much cared for Ronnie James Dio’s strangulated yelp)?

I could catalogue the comedy of errors that have been my attempts to communicate with you – half an hour on hold here, forty minutes there – but I have better things to do than write words here that will no doubt make it up onto your notice board of ‘wacky’ or ‘eccentric’ BT customers throughout the ages. I’m not eccentric just really annoyed at a service whose rates are – let’s face it – not exactly competitive. I’d rather shoot myself in the cock with a blunderbuss than give you a penny more.

Blunderbusses tend to fire shrapnel. Consider for a moment, if you will, how much that would hurt. Shrapnel in your cock. Have you done that? Great. That’s what attempting to communicate with British Telecommunications is like. In fact the blunderbuss/cock option is preferable to speaking to your company.

I’ve given you many chances BT, but not any more.

Good bye.


Ben Myers