stew sez

hi,
if i believed in heaven (which would be a place that looked like london with berlin’s rents) i’d say something corny about arthur and syd, kindred not-of-this-world spirits both closing shop within something like a week of each other…but since london’s rents will never drop anywhere close to berlin’s let me just say how anemic and gray all music seems when compared to see emily play and how thankful i am for arthur comforting me with the knowledge that us colored folks could come in whatever colors we
wanted…

i met arthur when i didnt know who he was in a living room in LA in the late 70’s…i was into the buzzcocks and james brown and i thought me and my small lapel jacket and straight legged pants knew everything…and arthur was quite full of himself and we snickered under our breath at the old mean attitudinal hippie with the hopelessly hippy band name: LOVE!!! what a joke! good lord what a pathetic laugh this “legend” was to a mod/punk know it all like me…”LOVE”… can you imagine a stupider hippy band name?

a few days later we happened upon forever changes for 49 cents at arons when it was across from fairfax high. “Let’s listen to this hippy shit!” we laughed. So we disappeared into a bedroom on one of them long slow quiet LA afternoons when all the parents in the world seemed like they’d be gone forever…smoked a joint and turned up the colors. When side 1 closed one of us got up in absolute silence and turned the record over…i mean nobody said a word ..we were all terrified at how good it as…after side 2 ended one of us said, utterly floored, “we were just in the same room with that guy.”

some decades later the baby lemonade dears (i owe those guys bigtime) were cool enough to sell arthur on the idea of letting Heidi and I do some shows with them in england…opening for LOVE in ENGLAND??? a challenge and a dream. H and I had the time of our lives…driving from gig to gig thru england…rodewald rocked the wrong side driving like jackie stewart on black beauties…then one night in sheffield one of the lemonades came up to me and said arthur wants to see you in his dressing room… i was slightly terrified as arthur had been known to, well, brandish weapons. He might have scored one of those fox hunting guns for all i kow…When i walked in he was sitting on the couch and he looked up at me in that way only he could look at someone and said “Hey… that Rehab song…that’s a good song.” I should have said “Thank you for making my entire life worth living” cuz that was what I was feeling…but i didnt say anything near that cool.

its impossible to say anything about syd that wouldnt sound even more corny than the above…i never wanted tnp to sound like syds pink floyd but i did want our records to be as filled with surprises as syds were…he is without a doubt my favorite songwriter…

Yippee!
You can’t see me
But I… can… you…
-sb
/s