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

It wasn't until I'd finished my second lunchtime drink that I remembered the 1989 TV series 'Tutti Frutti'..I looked it up... and the lead guitarist played by Maurice Roeves who set himself on fire while playing guitar at the end of the last episode. It was a staggering image which my visitor was obviously attempting to re-enact in the most absurd way possible, but only suffered superficial burns instead of being reduced to charcoal.

The tales about managers and agents are legion and in a way rather wonderful. Benyon  often said he knew he was in the process of being ripped off but couldn't stop himself agreeing to do jobs that he knew he would never  be paid for. New magazines were just the same 'if you do cartoons in our first issue for free we will pay you double in the next issue'. Of course there was never another issue and the he was often being promised sixpence in the pound by the liquidator of some publication or another, which never appeared.

The guitarist went off this morning and I don't need to say the guitar burning never resulted in a half decent picture of a flaming fender against a backdrop of wild midnight surf. But he wasn't too badly burned, although the tattoo on his arm was partly blistered which pissed him off to a fair degree. But believe me it's an improvement. If he ever sobered up he would  realise that a man of his age looks ridiculous with an ugly blue coloured sexual act  on his forearm. It looked okay in the late 70's but the man has children, somewhere. The misdirected lighter fuel has probably done him a favour. Actually it was a retro rock'n'roll experience which has left me with a touch of elation. Erk Alors, alone again, c'est fabbo!



I keep posting these gags but the stack of drawings in the corner doesn't seem to go down and it's impossible to edit them. It takes time and I have a life, well that's a bit of an overstatement, but my visitor, who has been staying with me for too long, hasn't exactly helped. Fortunately he's been promised a series of gigs and with any luck he'll be off to stay with someone else. I believe it's a limited tour or 'stagger' around the west country and possibly Spain, which sounds like a fantasy of his agent. I doubt they'll get further than Penzance.

He has asked if I'll photograph him tonight on the beach playing a guitar which he is planning to set fire to. Bugger, these things always go horribly wrong but somehow it's difficult not to get drawn into the plans of the deranged. For me, anyway.

Riots and looting are cyclic. Best done when the Tory's are in power because it provides a petito justification. No future maaaaan! We don't riot much on this stretch of beach just drink too much cider and scream into the wind at midnight. I'm pretty, pretty vacaaaaant! You could get really, really cynical about Punk and Mclaren in particular. But I remember talking to Chris Salewicz who had  interviewed Sid and Nancy for the NME, he raised  his eyebrows and looked at me saying "I told  Sid, you look tired, why don't you go to New York for a holiday" and the rest is history. If you've got that issue under the bed, it's all in the copy. Salewicz also wrote some stuff for the Thin Lizzy programme and Benyon claimed the late Gary Moore had a go at him at Abbey Road where they met later on during the ill fated Greg Lake project, because Salewicz had written that he drank battery acid. Which in fcat he hadn't - he just looked as though he had.

Ah, Bruce! Forever the future of rock'n'roll and yet in retrospect a rather show biz kind of dude, jamming with presidents, as one does. Baby we were born to run...for the Senate. Unfair? I guess so and have to admit I played his first album until the grooves had grooves. But I saw him years later at Wembley and it was a bit like experiencing a West End musical, so very choreographed, so very Saturday night light entertainment with every sharp edge filed down.

Sigho, I sound a bit of a miserable sod but it's damn cold this morning and my visitor is still here and drinking his way through his life story.

I really would rather have Meatloaf screaming about hearts flying out of dead peoples chests (wouldn't that be good in NCIS) in a strained mock opera than Born in the USA as performed in the White House.

I'm certain that Benyon had no idea of how many 'drug' orientated strips he wrote over the years but it comes as no surprise. He always thought of himself as a moralist,  and pointing out  the damage drugs can do, like  destroying lives, deleting minds and killing people. The highway to hell thing becomes less attractive as friends, colleagues and family slide out of the fast line and into a fleet of oncoming trucks. But if you were taking a swipe at rock music you had to include the drugs, drugs, drugs and drugs.

I can remember working in an office where bets were being taken on which rockstar would be taken next by the grim reaper. Keith 'how is he still alive' Richards was hot favourite but Benyon who was visiting shook his head 'Phil Lynot' he muttered. Evidently he had been working on a programme for the Thin Lizzy no Sleep 'til Hammersmith tour and he had been face to face with Phil and seen the problem. He never placed a bet but sure enough Phil, very sadly, was the next to go which upset him a lot because he really dug that double album. He had also been to the last Hammersmith gig which he rated but complained about being deaf for three days



Well, more Band Aid and I guess one or two dudes did very well from it. Queen had an immense impact from a magical set that was perfectly pitched. But the idea that managers and agents suddenly become saints in these situations is tosh. Just like that tedious programme 'Location, Location' showbiz is all about 'Promotion, Promotion' which Gaspo! or 'How to make it as a rock star' was all about. Alas, Promotion, Promotion has become 'Self Promotion, Self Promotion' and very tedious it is too with everyone from footballers to 'Artists' scrambling over each other hoping to force their vacuous lifestyles into our homes via every medium possible. Sigho! Even three feet thick of cottage wall fails to stop the constant waves of mundane flotsam and jetsam seeping into my life.