I'm back home at long last.

A friend died in the spring and I had to sort out the mess he'd left behind. It wasn't made easy  due to the old black dog returning and the endless bloody rain left me feeling like escaping. So I stayed away and rented out this place to a chum who wouldn't leave due to a relationship he'd formed with one of the village people. He also trashed the place after taking 'something he found'. 

All I want to do is settle back into the rhythm of life I like best but so far I've been making a list of what's missing from this place. But I shall scan some more gags because I'm determined to sort out Benyon's debris which I have added to on my travels as everyone who has something of his now thinks I'm an official archivist, which I'm not.

"Between yesterday's acid and today's nihilism I seem to have drifted from the main rut of Groovessence". A groove is a cool rut, or is it ? It's okay staying in a groove but you always have to get out of a rut. Watching the sun bounce brilliantly off the sea this morning while drinking strong black coffee I'm struggling to work out if I am in a rut or a groove. I mean, has my groove, maaaaaaaaaaaaan, become a rut. He who rides a tiger may never dismount and he who is in a rut may never get out.  Gaspo!

Back to the gag which is ancient, about the time Angie Bowie, Dave, Mick and Bianca were going through their transvestite, clubbing period and Ken Russel was still hot. It was an attempt to get El Groover a partner, which failed to get off the ground and was an extra figure to draw which Benyon wouldn't have liked.

The rain started immediately the hosepipe ban was introduced because of the drought and I've been driven off the beach. It's even been too cold and wet to have a liquid lunch outside watching the world, well at least half a dozen people, pass by.

Anyway, I turned up this gag which puzzled me for a moment until I remembered  the publicity for Bruce Springsteen's first London gig. Bruce the Boss, the "future of rock'n'roll' as claimed by an American Journo whose name rather frustratingly escapes me. The first album was great and 'Baby we were born to crash at strangers pads smoking dope' was a favourite of mine.

It seems a lifetime since the Berlin wall came down and the Czechs got to vote Hmmm,  a lot of bands have floated under the bridge since then and gone straight over the weir.

 

I sat up with a bottle of red wine last night and listened to Vanilla Fudge and became so depressed that I needed a quick burst of the Young Rascals before crashing out. So, where did Pronto come from? Obviously he was based on Tonto the Lone Ranger's sidekick but I remember a roadie called George who lived in Benyon's flat for quite a few years. He came down with the Bakerloo Line and stayed on to work for May Blitz. He was a part of the Birmingham lot who knew Black Sabbath from their early days. He used to come back in the early hours of the morning wired up and he'd wake Benyon by emptying the nights takings on him before handing it on to 'the management' or just give him a good shake and as 'cup of tea?'. He was a good guy and strong as an ox. I remember standing in the kitchen at the flat late at abut 3am and George came running up the stairs with a full size fridge on his back shouting 'check this out, man'. He also had hilarious stories about meeting various bands while sleeping in vans on Belgian bomb sites or on the cross channel ferry. These days kids creep off into their cellars alone and post their stuff onto You Tube. It's all very different to transit vans with aircraft seats  and signs saying Hatfield and the North.

 

Classic early Groover from Ziggy Stardust days, waxed spikes and rat codpieces and early hat with references to the Lone Ranger. It was drawn on an odd piece of paper unlike later drawings on illustration board. Benyon had been working with Patto on an album sleeves and some odd adverts for the Melody Maker and met Muff Winwood who was involved with the band and it was in his office that he head Mott the Hoople's version of 'all the young dudes'. He couldn't get Ian Hunter out of his head but after 'roll away the stone' MTH trickled away into the sand. I knew I had the band's first album upstairs and after finding the cartoon I started to look for it and got waylaid by two Vanilla Fudge albums that I can't remember buying and then I saw Benyon's name written on the inner sleeve. He was sharing a flat and wrote his name on his albums in those days. Maybe he lent them to me but I really can't remember how I come to have them. But wondering, looking, thinking and a long lunch took up most of yesterday, c'est le groove.

I'm off to the beach for the afternoon after hearing that summer is ending tomorrow when the temperature gets slashed by a half and were back in the gloom. Bummer



Now, this is an absolute factoid, it was Benyon who first used the term 'Th'Lone Striker' in a gag long before it was used by 'football people' as they like to call themselves. It was a single cartoon with a masked footballer, well looking like exactly like the Groover running with ball towards the goal. Someon eon the side of the pitch was exclaiming 'Far out, it's Th'Lone Striker". I can't find it anywhere, but with luck it may turn up.

I'm getting back into the swing of scanning, although when I climb up the ladder and get into the archive I spend too much time going through the sheets of cards and files and I drift away in thought. So, yesterday I took the train up to town and checked out the Hockney exhibition with a friend and was impressed by his large landscapes and his i pad drawings. Most of the other paintings were sketch book ideas being worked out.

We had a meal in the Chelsea Arts Club bar and I lurched back to the coast on the last train and somehow all the activity has re-aligned me with the changed hour. I woke refreshed and moderately pleased to be alive. Of course it could all be to do with the tropical weather.

Another very early strip which is weird and rather like talking to Benyon late at night with a bottle or two and he would go off on a flight of fancy about the meaning of life and it would end up with some extended surreal monologue. I asked him once why his characters never looked alike from one week to the next and he looked at me  as though I was mad. "I'm not Walt Bloody Disney". He had a low boredom threshold and just like to shake it up all the time. He thought  it was all about the joke and the drawing got in the way, but as time went on he obviously got into the drawing more.

Well, I finally dragged myself into the archive to scan some gags and this one has to be very early if not one of the earliest. The hat is weird and the reference to the Lone Ranger is the only one I've ever found. I'm afraid people my age have their roots in westerns and can actually remember the Lone Ranger in black and white on the TV along with Kit Carson and Hopalong Cassidy etc and Benyon was a big western fan. Hi HO!

I'm also staggered that th'Groover's first codpiece was a horses head which makes cowboy sense. The rat does make an appearance bottom right. But then in Britain you're never more than five yards from a rat, so they say.

Thanks Derek, you've shaken me out of this weird stupour I've been stuck in over the past couple of weeks. By the time I've rolled off my futon in the late morning the sun has been streaming through the window. So, I sit outside drinking coffee, taking in the rays and suddenly the pub is open. A stroll along the beach,  a liquid lunch, a read of a newspaper and before you know it I'm sitting in front of the box watching Lovejoy, although I did notice Peter Gabriel is on the Beeb tonight. Finally I scratch away making notes on several projects I'll never finsh and the days over. Winter is a great deal more invigorating as the elements cut up rough and you can stand out on the headland playing air guitar with surf and storm full in the face. Christ, I must get up to town next week and see who is still alive enough to spend time with. Anyway, the plan is to start scanning tomorrow!

Apologies. I got dragged away last week by some old fiends who had been reading this blog and turned up to discuss my lost night in the caravan of mystery. Well, we went back to try and find it but failed and then decided to see if it was on any other sites we knew of by which time we were a long way from my place but close to a  farm where a friend in common lives. I've known him since he was selling funny tobacco in Camden Town many years ago and much altered by a variety of chemicals he went off to write songs in the country and mutated into a smallholder with the usual pigs and chickens. Over the years he acquired an extended family including some outstanding bronzed and muscular daughters who could wrestle bison. It was a delight to watch them at work, lifting barns onto their backs and placing them elsewhere in the fields.

Anyway, the weather was excellent and we spent our time chatting over drinks, including cider produced by a neighbour which could fuel an aircraft carrier but left me disturbingly clear headed the morning and ready for more. Oddly enough the farmer remembered staying at Benyon's flat when he first went to London where he met someone called Wally who broke into the gas meter and took  him to the Isle of White for the megga festival with Dylan headlining, after which life was hazy for several years. He had no idea what happened to Wally who had left taking his leather coat while he slept but several years later he bumped into Benyon in Soho who demanded his gas money back but accepted the two albums in his bag in exchange.

So, I returned to my place yesterday and the sun was beating down so I went down to beach, found my favourite spot between rocks and spent the afternoon with a chilled white wine, imagining how well the farmer's daughters would surf. They would probably ride the surf in a controlled bronzed and muscular pyramid, dismounting the boards effortlessly as they touched the beach
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I shall scan some drawings today as the sun seems to have given up on us.

The thing is I went down to the pub a few days ago and the next thing I remember was waking up in a caravan on some dreadful site attached to what is best described as Cold Comfort Farm. I have no idea who owned the caravan but my instinct told me to get the hell out so I waded across fields of slurry and onto a road until I came to a petrol station with a Little Chef. Fortunately I managed to get coffee with the loose change in my pocket, I hate cards, and information about where I was which turned out to be closer to an old mate of mine than to my place, about thirty miles away. His lady wife wasn't to impressed to see me but he seemed happy enough so I stayed there for a few days. He has a big place all paid for by royalties from his one hit so we spent most of time I was there in his studio playing tapes and chilling.

Anyway, he eventually drove me back to my place and I was surprised to discover that no one even remembered me being in the pub the night I was kidnapped let alone who I was with. I still have no idea who the caravan belongs to.  Maybe female or maybe a serial killer, probably Danish, who was just about to hang me from a hook over the pig sty.

I can now resume my responsibilities and start blogging again

I started to go through some drawings today and this one popped up. On the back it says "audience from th'Groover's view point on stage, as he starts to play his first number" The shock is evident but I wonder what number he started with? I'm sure I have some old tapes that were put together when th'Groover recorded his EP. I seem to remember a Garry Glitter parody that went something like 'I'm big, I'm bad, I'm butch - you can look but don't touch'.

It was about the time when The Sweet were huge and Benyon really hated them. He drew a caricature of the band in the NME, showing them as being fat and ugly on really high platform shoes. Of course they phoned up and asked for copies because they found it really amusing. It was carpet eating time.

It's illegal to say anything detrimental against St Bob, so God bless him and let's hope he never makes any new recordings

The sun is possitively beating down today. Is this summer or one of those phoney warm days that makes you throw away the fur rugs and strip down to the surfs up shorts and flip flops. I've been mugged like that too many times although I shall lunch outside today if I can find a warm wall in the beer garden and there aren't any screeching children. Quartermass was of course the first terrifying black and white British television thriller which traumatised an entire generation which later turned to recreational drugs for therapy. The BBC has a lot to feel guilty about.

I was looking out of the window thinking "lots of white  horses out at sea this morning" when I though of a band called White Mule. How odd, they haven't crossed my mind for decades. So, I may Google them before walking into the village.

Now, this is a pre Groover strip drawn in response to early Glam Rock, Ziggy Star Dust and the Spiders from the promotions department. When it was hip to be camp, and essential to exhude bisexuality. Every hairy arsed hetro axemen was slapping on the glitter and tights. Ah, those were the days when platform shoes pushed waxed spike haircuts into the low ceilings of sweaty clubs. Note another early appearance of the talking rat's  head codpiece.

Well, I managed to get to the 'archive' this morning, although I can't remember what I've posted and what I've left out.

I must stop wandering about on the beach on cold nights when alcohol has lowered my body temperature. It makes one extremely vulnerable to every type of passing virus especially when one is no longer in the flush of youth. Waking up at dawn face down on wet sand in a torn tee shirt is perfectly acceptable for a sixteen year old, but I can't do it anymore even  in the summer without suffering for days. Anyway, onwards and upwards....c'est le groove.



Ah well, back in the land of the living. But the dreams I had were really, really strange as I rolled about in my bunk. Wow! If dreams like that could guaranteed every night then dope would become redundant. I'll be able to climb the steps tomorrow and reach fresh drawings which I need to scan.

A rather unpleasant virus still has me in its evil grip. I'm starting to think it may be the legendary curse of the Groover. Opening the dust encrusted archive of drawings has triggered his revenge...and other delirious stuff

What can I say ?

The cold woke me up this morning and I had to roll out of bed to get the  fire going. I used to have a free supply of driftwood but 'Artists' have been hoovering every decent piece from the beach and selling them off to tourists while the cleverest have exhibitions of 'Discovered Art'. Shaped by nature and eroded by time etc. The usual conceptual bullshit. I sometimes believe Benyon was correct when he said 'Art is a virus and being artistic is a symptom"....or something like that. I'll look it up

Hmmm, a rather grumpy rant about the death of Elvis. Both Benyon and Ray Lowry were besotted by early Elvis. The Jacket, the hips and the guitar hanging by his side. Erk Alors, you had  to be there when the world was in black and white and everyone went to the 'pictures' on a Saturday night, Teds rocked in the aisle and southern preachers claimed he was the devil.

One of the early strips when the legendary nonentity wore his original squashed top hat and Rocky Thighs had perfected his waxed spike. Ah, those were the days when hair was hair and you could walk down a street without being blinded by light bouncing off massed shaved  heads. Happier Byronic days rather than the ubiquitous Neo Fascist look.

I was talking to a guy in the local last night who plays guitar in the village band, well it's more like bunch of drunks turning out for Xmas, weddings and of course harvest festival when virgins are ritually sacrificed. He thought blazing codpieces would have been a better title for the television series the 'Tudors' which I have never seen, but he claims it included a great deal of codpiece activity. The local band, before my time, first called themselves the 'Local Village People' which must have sounded hilarious after a beer filled night in front of a warm fire but turned out to be a really bad idea. Now they just turn up and play under the name of The Local Band. We don't have a Juke-Box, Muzak or Karaoke but there is an upright piano in the tap room at the back and punters do actually sing but anyone attempting to River Dance is escorted from the premises and thrown into the harbour. River dancing happened after Benyon left the NME, which is a shame.

I can't understand why Tutti Frutti has never been repeated by the BBC, it was one of the best treatments ever on jobbing rock bands, with a sharper edge than Spinal Tap and equally as funny. Anyway this cartoon strip is really early and maybe an album cover with blazing codpieces was a missed opportunity or even a band called 'Blazing Codpieces' would be a  smash. I'll telephone Sharko immediately