Hey Mein Hairies,

I’m back at DH Lawrence’s childhood home gazing out at the September 1st sunset as the great solar orb dunks itself into the milky tea horizon. Beyond the green baize hillock that was once Eastwood’s primary slagheap, towers of Blakean cloud threaten to engulf the entire landscape, reminding me that Hurricane Katrina is right this minute battering the poor of New Orleans to a bloody pulp about 4,000 miles away. Via the media, 21st century humanity is able to live in one part of the world and abstractedly experience disastrous events on the other side of the globe with a feeling of total remove. I do wonder if such circumstances ultimately reinforce in us the notion that the Gods and Goddesses that inform our lives – the weather, the harvest, even certain celestial events – are ultimately all local phenomena that rarely if ever affect everyone on the planet simultaneously. And so, when we view the violent removal of West Bank settlers and the chaos of the Gaza strip from the safety of our living rooms, it’s just one more reminder that Jehovah, Allah and the Christian God of the Holy Land are all entirely different phenomena from those Gods of the same name when experienced upon these fertile European landscapes. And as angry and raging as those three deities can get whilst on ‘their own turf’ down in the Holy Land, it has to be wondered whether they won’t all have lost considerable amounts of fury by being brought up into these more easy going climes by their followers and priesthoods. Moreover, I’m sure that each religion loses considerable numbers of potential followers by each one’s attempt to appropriate the same institutionalised name ‘God’ for their single divinity. When I was a kid, it really pissed me off that the existence of something as abhorrent and filthy as a fly was, by its name, allowed to have become the living embodiment of such a beautiful and wondrous concept as flight. How unjust and unpoetic was this world, I thought, that a bird was not known as a fly? Years later, I still feel equally vicious about the name God having been appropriated by several Johnny Come Lately divinities, each with a hefty PR team. It’s as though some metaphysical Simon Cowell had decided: “Yes, long have there been popstars, but this new performer is the sum total of all previous popstars and so He shall be named… Popstar!” Even English translations of THE KORAN refer to the Muslims’ divinity not as Allah but as God, further obscuring the massive divisions between the fierce God of the Christians, the fiercer God of the Jews, and the even fiercer God of Islam. 

But right now I’ll call a halt to these proceedings, for fear of boring you all stiff. On a more enlightened level, I gots to tell you that DARK ORGASM is now complete and it sounds pretty damned hot. And though the official release date is early November, expect to see finished copies any time in the early Autumn. This week has been spent in Nottingham putting tomorrow’s Brain Donor show together, with plenty of stuff from the impending Donor vinyl-only album plus such obvious classics from the past as “Get Off Your Pretty Face”, “White Van”, “Like A Motherfucker” and “She Saw Me Coming”. Oh ja, and we shall also be performing three songs from DARK ORGASM: “White Bitch Comes Good”, “She’s Gotta Ring On Her Finger (& Another One Through Her Nose)” and “Nothing To Lose Except My Mind”.

Finally, I really want to comment that Holy McGrail’s COLLECTING EARTHQUAKES would be my immediate choice for an Album of the Month if it weren’t for the fact that I’m too much a part of ‘the organisation’ (as those Nabisco-type competition small prints always note) to appear unbiased. Furthermore, this record is one of Head Heritage’s most useful releases ever, and will surely become an album to accompany ritual in years to come.

Now I shall leave y’all, though hopefully will catch up with some of you at tomorrow’s Brain Donor show. Oh yeah, and all you ladies please remember to stand near the front because we – unlike our support bands Om and The Heads – are three sexy motherfuckers with absolutely no regard for anoraks, musos and bumfluff muzzies! 

Love a Fucking Piece,

LORD YATESBURY (Archdrude)