Hey Humanoids,

It’s that time again when the advent calendar goes up and the count down begins. Personally, I’m with Woolies and the rest of the high street in terms of wishing to start X‑Mass preparations as soon after Halloween as is possible. As a lover of between times and always pursuant of anything that even gives the appearance of re-appropriating the Winter Festival from the pious, I’m quite willing to shack up temporarily with those who sing “God rest ye merry, merchants, may ye make the Yuletide pay.”

Meanwhile, in the rock’n’roll world, 2004CE really kicked some potent underground butt indeed. The weird world of Whiteberg hit new levels of Residents/Der Plan weirdness with their third album, the new HAIRYMONSTERLAND; whilst the great lost 7 inch of the year woulda deffo been ‘Teenage Metalhead’ b/w ‘Stranded in Ashland’ by The New Lou Reeds, had some visionary had the nerve to release it! Look to my Album of the Month for a review of Litmus’ amazing debut YOU ARE HERE, and try and check out that split CD that Choukoku No Niwa have released with Boris. The Boris track is fine, but is totally eclipsed by the Choukuku No Niwa track, a heavy percussion-laden psychedelic monster in the tradition of Amon Duul 2’s PHALLUS DEI title track or The Boredom’s VISION CREATION NEW SUN. Compulsive and ever building with their 4 percussionists, this is truly the shit! Also, I’ve finally finished CITIZEN CAIN’D and sent it off to the factory, so early copies should be around and/or on the Merchandiser by the time I write the next Drudion. Moreover, now on sale is the Royal Festival Hall show with Comets on Fire as special guests. It’s gonna be a dark orgasm of a night, ladies’n’gentlemen.

On a more precarious note, Prince Charles made a right fool of himself again the other week. It was leaked to the press that he had hand written a note to a senior member of his household staff saying he was dismayed at the ambition of his female P.A. to ‘rise above’ her social station by becoming his private secretary. He wrote:

“What is wrong with everybody nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? … [modern people] think they can all be pop stars, High Court judges, brilliant TV personalities, or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.”

All this from a no man who was trained to be head of state and waits like the initiate forever standing on the verge of getting it on. But, in the meantime, he chooses to be the jackoff of all trades – farmer, social reformer, educationalist. etc., etc. – because from his lofty perch he allows himself to stoop to conquer these jobs that mere mortals spend years mastering. In the meantime, we Saxon and Keltic plebs are expected to kiss the ring of our Norman overlord and ‘know our places’. I think not. In this Right Charlie statement lies the root of why – despite their current fuck ups – we still look to the USA when enquiring into the possibilities of what humans can become. America’s seemingly all-pervasive culture may be flooding the rest of the world at an alarming rate nowadays, but that is still ultimately because, when confronted with those possibilities, the rest of the world says ‘oh, yes please’. I am no great apologist for the USA, but Prince Charles’ statement was particularly timely in being a reminder of we Britons’ servile and still constitutionless situation. In America (and in Australia too), the sheer willpower and persistence of the few allows them to become precisely what Prinny hates most of all, doing things ‘far beyond their technical capabilities’ and everyday helping directly to ‘contradict the lessons of history’. If it has all already been said in history past, as Charles asserts, why don’t we all just lay down and die, now? Because what he says is shit, that’s why. A one-metre-tall humanoid was discovered in Indonesia last month, overturning all our preconceptions of what the human being is. We can be ANYthing. As I said in the preface of THE MEGALITHIC EUROPEAN, humanity ‘regularly hoodwinks itself into believing that we are as developed as humans can be … [when] we are, in fact, always in a state of becoming…’ Up yours, Charlie boy. We all want some.

Hey Drudion, dig your humanity as the wheel of another year turns,

Eat, drink and be merry,

JULIAN (M’Lud Yatesbury)