THE SPIRIT SPEAKS IS BACK – #1 The Crack in Everything

Forgive me dear reader, it’s been several years since my last confession.

In the interval I have committed a multitude of sins: Lust, Greed, Pride, Envy and Lust again, but principally Sloth. I just couldn’t be arsed to keep writing the Alabama 3 Blog. Night after night immersed in empty dipsomania, day after day meandering around provincial shopping centers, afternoon upon afternoon of soul-sucking sound-checks depleted my enthusiasm for describing the countless small indignities that the perpetual hangover of our ‘Strobe Life’ inflicts upon us.

I should have carried on i guess; journalism has a duty to expose the truth, no matter how hideous. Also, I was getting paid by the word.

But I felt my tales of grotty little gigs and soggy little festivals were in danger of becoming repetitive and depressing. And to be in the Alabama 3, to be on a bus with the Alabama 3, and also to have to think and write about the Alabama 3 was more than my mind and soul could bear. I started to feel that if I didn’t have a small space in my head that wasn’t perpetually resounding with Larry Love’s Dalek-esque croak, I would shortly be accepting a long-term position in the puzzle factory.

But since those dark days, a tiny sliver of light has started to glint through the gloom. I hesitate to say it, but things might even be looking up. There’s a Soprano’s film coming out which, although probably not featuring our ‘hit’ single, Woke Up this Morning (it’s a prequel, set in the sixties), will certainly not hurt us, we’re booked for a bunch of cool festivals for the summer and we’re headlining the Brixton Academy, plus a handful of other mega-barns at the end of the year.

The plan is to play the entirety of our first and unfortunately still most successful album, Exile on Coldharbour Lane from start to finish, in order. It’ll be just like when we were big 20 years ago, playing exactly the same songs to the same people in the same venues. And that, my friend, is progress.

And why shouldn’t we have a comeback? Leonard Cohen did it, when he was forced out of his retirement in a Zen monastery after his manger and former lover embezzled $5 million of his money. He did a global sell out tour and solidified his reputation as a pop cultural icon. And he was 74.

So when I got a voice message from our Irish manager, Jonathan (who, I am bound to say for legal reasons, and fears over my personal safety, has never for one single second contemplated embezzling any money from the Alabama 3) asking me to start writing the blog again, I wistfully fired up my vintage walnut-oak crack-pipe and mused to myself “Ah, twenty years” can it be? I was a naive stripling of 36 when I first started writing this blog. Now I’m but a wizened husk of the twinky fop I once was. A tear rolled down my sunken cheek, and sizzled against the barrel of the pipe. A tiny bit of rock fizzed out and started burning a hole in my polyester dressing gown. And as the black plumes of acrid smoke curled around my balding head and on up to heaven, and the first rush of freebase hit my synapses, I said to myself  “No. The story has yet to be completed.”

So I returned Jonathan’s call and assented – on one condition.This time round there would be no gratuitous drug references. That’s just immature and irresponsible. That said, I feel there may be genuine artistic merit in reporting on what may well be a second chapter in these, our pseudo-American lives, and posterity deserves to know how our peculiar and almost-legendary Marxist-Leninist-Crypto-Situationist-Country-Acid-House pop band managed, twice in our careers, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Also, I’m getting paid by the word. And I owe my dealer, Robbie, who is a Trotskyite football thug, £150. Unfortunately I’m only on 674 words so far, which at 20p a word is just £134.80. Let me see, if I just cut and paste the lyrics to a Leonard Cohen song, that should get me past the post:

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Yeah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free
Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That’s how the light gets in
We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see
I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places

Say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
And they’re going to hear from me
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That’s how the light gets in
You can add up the parts
You won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
But like a refugee
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That’s how the light gets in
Ring the bells that still can ring (ring the bells that still can ring)
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)
That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in

Lets see. 1000 words exactly! That’s £200!! Sorted. Might as well get another couple of rocks, while Robbie’s in the yard! Cheers, Leonard!