Nomads, Pastoralists, Settlers all,

I’m lying in my bed listening to Sleep’s 64-minute epic ‘Dopesmoker’ and awaiting The Mars Volta album in the post. As a major league At The Drive-In fan, I’m anticipating this new album with considerable anticipation, but if the first EP (a welcome gift from B. Moreton-Cox) is any guide then Omar and Cedric are gonna have me felled with fairly hefty drop-kicks.
The days immediately after ROME WASN’T BURNED IN A DAY were hardly restful, as I had to co-organise the moving of Head Heritage’s offices and tear over to Sunbury, to oversee Jo Ridgeway’s designs of part one of THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN. However, it’s all out of the way now and my broken and burdened body can lament its multiple bruises, bites and beatings without miscellaneous commutes through the backstreets of Bracknell.

Erudite barbarians, I gots to say thanks to y’all for making the whole thing such a gasser! I mean, even my hero Colin Wilson managed to cross the Cornish frontiers to chaperone his dear wife Joy to this cerebration of unmitigated Thang. His introducing the Sons of TC-Lethbridge show was a tremendously valuable addition to the weight of ROME…, so thank you Mr Wilson for transcending your admitted Cancerian reluctance to get out of the house!
With regard to almost everyone else involved, I gots to say they was a bunch of angels. My band razed adobe huts to the ground, courtesy of Donald Ross ‘Donneye’ Skinner (fluoro-Benito Mussolini in pre-lamp post lynching mode), brother Gavin Skinner (no direct link between the two halves of his brain), Dogman Doggen AKA Dogntank (halfway through a Spiritualized tour and still the Godchild of James Williamson and Edward Van Halen), and the errant monosynth of Dr. Holy McGrail (when the soundman looked puzzled, I just told him to imagine it as atonal rhythm guitar).
And though Sunburned Hand of the Man were much younger than I’d expected, and the Rev. John Maloney was even more mystical and balanced than I coulda dreamed, dammit – they cooked right there on the Lyric theatre stage, where they coulda been fish out of water, had they not each one been possessed of far more than their fair share of the Ur-spirit that propels the genuinely deep thinker. Hey, and Ron Schneidermann was a greater and more confused/enlightened bear of a man than I could have ever anticipated – I just wish Chad and the Critter coulda made it. That first night, Psychedelic Paul came in and told me the studio theatre already had 70 Taj Mahal Travellers fans sitting a full half hour before the documentary was shown. And none of them are speaking to each other, he laughed, sociopaths one and all! O, happy daze!
The following night was Drone night, featuring the ambient two hour Ethan Mousike movie about Les Rallizes Denudes, the magnificent Vibracathedral Orchestra and Holy McGrail’s 29-minute ‘Lady Holle’, from the soon-come COLLECTING EARTHQUAKES album. Neil Campbell was a doll but I didn’t get to hang with the rest of Vibracathedral Orchestra the way I’d hoped, so love and thang to all of them, especially La Hayden.
Sat’day night was a night of The Rock, and performing with the mighty Sunn0))) was the treat I’d anticipated. Seeing Stephen O’Malley again was fabulous and hanging with Herr Anderson was the trip I’d only hoped for. Sorry we didn’t get to perform ‘The Ditch’, gentlemen, but we did at least get to re-enact my beloved King Vikar scene, from STARKAD, which informs so much of my Odinism (and everyone else’s if they did but know it). And despite protestations, it was deffo righteous that we showed the early B&W footage of Kiss performing ‘Strutter’, ‘Deuce’ and (most especially) ‘Parasite’.
A special mench should be delivered for The Seth Man’s QUAD ROOM, which was one of the features of the entire ROME… do (was it a function or a do? Cannot quite decide yet). Seth managed a superb white-fringe-suited Ozzy Osmond and responded majestically and cultilly to my Sat-day night introduction of his unreluctant ass on to the main stage at the end of the last performance. He da man – we fucking knows it! Major league yelps go out to Psychedelic Paul for co-ordinating the whole art thing, and a special mench goes to the loved-up woman down the front who squeezed my tackle intermittently throughout Sat’day evening.
Comments must be made about the insider who nabbed my silver sparkle 1969 Fender Jazz bass with brass 1972/3 Badass bridge, as this was the motherfucker that played on the original Zoo 45 ‘Sleeping Gas’ exactly a quarter of a century ago. Damn you, abject abuser. And said non-head also made off with Donneye’s Gibson Thunderbird and the Dog’s vile fluoro-pink excema finish BC Rich. Unholy underachiever!

However, ROME WASN’T BURNED IN A DAY was a resounding success and we shall try and forge something new and special for you in da near future, babies. I failed to get Comets on Fire and Temple of Bon Matin over here for the shows, and have a bee in my bonnet about that. Let that bee grow and grow until it manifests into the greatest buzz of all.

To the future, and to the end of Linear Time!

Education! Education! Education!

JULIAN (M’Lud Yatesbury, Hanging God of Boundaries)