Posted 8:51 AM by Dave Allen
Daily posts from Dave Allen can now be found at his blog Pampelmoose.

Posted 2:04 PM by Dave Allen
Subject: Another Perspective
LIVING WILL IS THE BEST REVENGE

by Robert Friedman
March 27, 2005

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who fell into a well.

I want those crackpot strangers to spread vicious lies about my wife.

I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather for weeks on end, so they can bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

I want all those people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want members of Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his medical training by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, a man who has never made a mistake or allowed his judgment to be sullied by personal or political concerns, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

Robert Friedman is editor of Perspective. He can be reached at friedman@sptimes.com.

Posted 10:13 PM by Dave Allen


Originally uploaded by Pampelmoose.

Nemo Design in sunny Portland, Oregon has a wonderful warehouse in the inner east side of town where I keep an office for Pampelmoose. Studio Nemo, photographer Trevor Graves place, is a great place to throw a party. So on 3.26.05 we did, for my wife Paddy's 40th.

Posted 10:20 PM by Dave Allen

Gang of Four 2005
Originally uploaded by Pampelmoose.

A tour diary of sorts written for Portland, Oregon's Willamette Week.

Gang of Four

The Gang's All Here
After 23 years apart, post-punk darlings Gang of Four reunite, and Dave Allen is there with a more, um, mature point of view.

BY DAVE ALLEN, GANG OF FOUR BASSIST

Editor's note: If there were a Grammy for most namedropped band of the year, the surly post-punkers of Gang of Four would walk away with the golden gramophone this year. A critical favorite since the release of its debut, Entertainment!, in 1979, the Leeds quartet's name began showing up in national glossies in 2003 with the frequency of a sporty new deodorant. As Spin and Rolling Stone rolled out articles on Gang-inspired bands including the Rapture, Franz Ferdinand, Liars and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the influence became an assumption. Everyone loved Gang of Four, even those who had never heard them. A couple of years ago a reunion tour was unthinkable. But massive national exposure can heal wounds in a strange way, and late last year Gang of Four announced its return. Last month Jon King, Andy Gill, Hugo Burnham and Dave Allen took the stage together for the first time since 1981 for a five-city British tour, where they encountered photo-phone wielding fans, the British music press and taxidermy. Allen, the band's bassist, current Portland resident and admitted geezer, explains in his tour diary.

The Montague Arms, London, Jan. 21

From the lip of this pub's tiny stage, past the Karen O-inspired fashionistas, past the chavs (that's new slang for poseurs), just beyond the puzzled stares of the seen-it-all-before bar staff, through the cigarette fog I can make out the shape of an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage carrying a full-sized stuffed zebra and a big-horned sheep! It turns out that the pub's owner is a retired taxidermist and he has decided to decorate his establishment with some samples of his trade. Surreal? Surely, but not surprising considering the circumstances. Finding a pub full of the latest-generation U.K. hipsters sharing space with stuffed animals once seemed as likely as a Gang of Four reunion. Now they're both reality.

Welcome to the "secret show," a fine English tradition that always takes place in London because England is so small and all the music press is based here, or at least what's left of it. Tonight's fans are not the types that spend precious minutes poring over badly written music rags; news travels faster by texting each other's mobiles. They are here to display their original tattered Human League T-shirts and their New York Dolls pins, and although these kids may not have been born when we released our debut album, Entertainment!, they sure look good in their signature chav Burberry outfits. (For the record, Burberry is now declasse, definitely out of style, so please discard any clothing that has its signature check pattern.) In London nightlife your connections are paramount, and these guys all knew whom to call to find out where we were playing. Three hundred eighty fans have managed to squeeze into this venue that holds about 200 people. Earlier, with the help of our road crew, I waded through the crowd outside to pluck my friends from the heaving mess and get them in; right now it feels far beyond dangerous.

We kick off the set with "What We All Want," and amazingly, to me, anyway, the crowd sings along. They whip out their mobiles and snatch grainy and blurred photos that are instantly texted to friends who may just be languishing in the throng outside the venue. Who knows? A phalanx of professional photographers fight for space down front, and as we charge headlong into "Not Great Men," the crowd surges to and fro across the room throwing beer everywhere, a heaving sweaty mass that threatens to engulf the stage. The heat is intense, cigarette smoke burns my lungs, sweat floods my eyes, it is so fucking loud, and I love it. We end with "Damaged Goods," and the place detonates.

The Academy at Manchester University, Manchester, Jan. 24

Having got the first gig under our belts, we are feeling more confident. The chatter in the van is significantly upbeat, but I have a knot in my stomach as tonight is our first official public show in 23 years and all the major broadsheets - the Times, the Telegraph, the Independent and the Guardian, have dispatched reviewers; it's that difficult second show coming off the high of the pub gig. We also know that Jon Pareles, chief music critic for The New York Times, is busy pecking away at his laptop in a London hotel, filing his review of the London show. Oh mercy!

The Academy at Manchester University is cavernous. The road crew is ringing out the monitors, smoke begins to creep across the stage, and the tour support band the Departures sheepishly cross the hall to shake hands. It's an interesting moment: Here we are face-to-face with one of the bands who have openly name-checked us; they are clearly excited to meet us. My limp handshake exposes my inner turmoil; I am probably twice as old as these fresh-faced young men!

The sound check only reinforces my anxiety. The pub gig was incredibly energetic because we fed off the audience that was mere inches from our faces. Tonight we will be separated from the audience by a row of metal barriers and a motley crew of security guards. I presume that Manchester may live up to its reputation for being England's most violent city. That's not the root of my anxiety, though. By definition, large gigs always remove that intimacy between fans and bands. Gang of Four feeds off that energy; we will have to work hard to maintain our edge tonight.

Julian Baggini, an English philosopher, interviews me. We had agreed to meet and finish up an interview that began about a year ago. We have an interesting but contentious discourse on his views of how "success" can or should be measured for artists working within their chosen disciplines.

Showtime. My idea of Gang of Four's current level of success is measured as follows: If you can't begin to play the opening song of your set because the crowd is screaming so loud, that's success; if you don't have to sing the chorus of your songs because the crowd sings it for you, that's success; if you are 49 years old and still play and leap around the stage in front of a sellout crowd that calls you back for three encores, that's success. Julian 0, Dave 1.

Next day the reviews are all extremely positive, and no one got hurt in the very boisterous crowd. I'd call that successful. Tonight on TV, Mark E. Smith, leader of the Fall and legendary curmudgeon, rambles on about how everyone in the British media is a poseur, how all bands except the Fall are crap and how he has had the right to fire the members of each of the 26 different lineups the Fall has had. His criteria for this are simple: "I don't want to work with anyone as old as me, and anyway they were all crap musicians," he says. Various darlings of the media are rolled out to trumpet Mark's genius; I change channels.

Shepherds Bush Empire, London, Jan. 28

The camaraderie that exists among all bands has now reappeared among the members of Gang of Four. After rebuffing the nostalgia crowd who implored us not to sully the reputation that has been hoist so high, we have now performed in five cities to adoring fans both new and old and have been received with open arms. Tonight, though, is the reason we have been honing our chops around those provincial cities. Our public show in London, home of the cynical music press. The knives will be out.

All 2,500 tickets to the show sold out in early January. The Shepherds Bush Empire, on the edge of the West End, is but one of those many wonderful Victorian or Edwardian theatres scattered all over London. In the '60s and '70s it played host to many rock bands as a live venue for the BBC's televised music shows. There was a fallow period for a while, but nowadays it serves as a midsize rock venue full time, and, in an odd way, it is perfectly suited to the job. From the stage, I think that I can see everyone in the building; from the crush of the dance floor up through three tiers of balconies, all eyes are on us. The audience is our friend, a room full of smiling faces; it's ours to lose. London audiences are historically hard to please, but tonight we appear to have their support as the room erupts at the first notes of each song and cacophony greets the end. To have any audience these days respond in such a way to our angular, metallic, white sexless funk is a surprise, but this tour has been full of surprises. More noise, heat, smoke and roaring as we end the third encore with "I Found that Essence Rare." The final song of the first leg of the tour, and with the audience's stomping of the boards ringing in my ears, I finally feel like it's time to party.

Originally published on WEDNESDAY, 2/9/2005

Posted 3:00 PM by Dave Allen
Gang of Four reforms. Yes it does. The interest has been there for years from many people outside our camp and yet within it we could never agree whether we actually wanted to do it. I for one have railed against nostalgia in past newsletters and columns so that's the hurdle that I placed in my own path regarding band reunions, not that it's insurmountable.
November 8th and I find myself on a United flight to London's Heathrow; I even got upgraded to business class. 6.55 AM November 9th and I'm searching the arrivals area for Hugo. 7.10 AM there he is. It was suddenly real, as real as the London drizzle basting the outside of the Heathrow Express as we head in to Paddington Station. We join about a hundred people in line waiting for a taxi. It's at this point that I realize the dollar is worth about 50 english pence, in other words two dollars to the quid. I ruefully presume that Alan Greenspan knows what he's doing as I am to read in a few days that Bush's Treasury Secretary, John Snow, whilst visiting London said that the US would be doing absolutely nothing to slow the dollar's descent into the basement against other currencies. Other countries can now help pay down the debt of US consumer excesses, but I digress.
London's Mayor, Ken Livingston, or Red Ken as he's affectionately known to the inhabitants of Greater London, came up with a plan to combat London's legendary traffic congestion by imposing a daily tariff of about £7.00 (yes, $14.00) to drivers who enter central London so now we speed through light traffic from Paddington. I use speed without irony as at one point in very recent history Londoner's crawled along at a pace less than that of 18th century horsedrawn carriages. Me and Hugo are dropped off outside the Euston Travel Inn. For the price of a suite at the W in Seattle, £90.00 or $180.00, we are offered a room with a twin bed and a pull out couch. No thanks. We park our bags and head over to the offices of Big Life Management in search of Jazz Summers, the man who will be managing the reincarnation of Gang of Four. Cat wrangling comes into my mind but that might be the jet lag.
To be continued.