The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who piss on the toilet seat and those who don’t. Radio 1 and their team of energetic DJs and media graduates have the difficult task of entertaining the seat pissers, and still trying to live up to an astonishing history of great British music. How do they wade through the yellow floods of youth and move on from the mountains of wet grampers?

In England, they speak of the weather, and they piss on the seat. All seats at popular music concerts in England are pissed on - equally by women as they are by men. Radio 1 organise concerts by supporting bands who in turn encourage drinking and recklessness and general snide behaviour, and the piss just flows and flows. It’s an unfortunate by-product of the music industry.

It isn’t so bad in France, Germany, the Netherlands, or Belgium. Spain and Italy are pretty pissy, but that’s partly because of the British tourists.

In the rolling hills and farmlands of Austria, vanloads of young hippies strummed guitars and tended their campfires and waited for the evening concert to begin. There were three bands on the bill. The Yardbirds, The Troggs, and Son of Dave. There was to be no sleep that night again, after so many nights of sold-out UK club gigs and terrible travelling. This night I was playing with Old People, who rock without fear of consequence.

Backstage, I approached the largest and coolest-looking old sixties bastard, and held out my hand. He had a purple tie-dye on and beads. “I’m the nurse with the Yardbirds,” he said. Chris Dreja later explained to me that he had had his gall bladder removed only two weeks before. Jeezuz. He also talked about his love for a portable digital radio. I asked if he listened to BBC Radio 1. He looked at me as though I’d just spat in his sherry. I apologised.

It was an honour to see an ancient posse of British moguls on stage right as I blasted out post-modern blues and pulled the hippy girls onto the stage. They came onstage, stole a maraca and disappeared.

Chris Trogg, the guitarist, did NOT piss on the toilet seat in my dressing room, though he used it a couple times. He is a Great Pirate of rock and I admire him. The question became: will I get any sleep if I try to find the hippy chick who took my maraca? So many tents to rattle. Or will I get any sleep if I go with this pirate into town for a pub crawl?

A cool old person is a joy to be around. Sometimes they can’t help it when the pee-pee sprays out, but it’s entirely forgivable. I gave Honeyboy Edwards one of my handkerchiefs the other day. He’s 93 and sometimes needs to suddenly water while he walks. He was around when Little Walter was showing off the new Cadillac that Chess Records bought him and Muddy Waters went wild with envy. Or something like that. It’s hard to make out what Honeyboy says sometimes. He speaks delta bluesman. And only has a couple beers after a show.

But The Troggs are 30 years younger and spry as foxes in comparison. I chose to forget my maraca and, as always, followed the music and the booze rather than the girl with no social graces. Chris made us drink and chain-smoke in a rock bar until 5am before our flight three hours later. In order to impress a pirate of this magnitude, it’s necessary to move something very very heavy such as an old sewing machine against his hotel room door. Maybe he’d be impressed with my hernia.

No sleep. The stench of cigarettes and service-station schnapps. Oh dear, I’m sitting next to Reg Trogg on the plane. Mad genius. Completely likeable. He wrote ‘Wild Thing’, and plenty of other hits including ‘Love Is All Around You’, recently made famous by Wet Wet Wet (ha ha ha).

It must be said, Reg is a complete crop circle of a man. He talked about his new film starring Ant and Dec, called Alien Autopsy. He talked about Mayan burial chambers and mystic medicines and 2012 doomsday theories until my head was hard and gaping like the ancient stones of Easter Island. I asked if he’s started collecting tinned goods yet. He said that most tinned goods expire in 2011, so it’s too early to stock up. I pulled down the eyeshades and passed out.

I dreamt of Paul McCartney in a grass skirt. He did a DJ set on Radio 1 not long ago. And he had Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters on stage to drum to Beatles and Wings singalongs when he played in Liverpool. Radio 1 like to play the Foo Fighters, but they don’t play much Paul McCartney these days. I wonder how his bladder is holding out. He sure played a good concert.

Radio 1 don’t play much Honeyboy Edwards, or Little Walter, or Muddy Waters, or The Troggs, or The Yardbirds. They play Adele, and Foals, and Vampire Weekend. They keep things VERY YOUNG AND ENERGETIC! Good for them.

Meanwhile, England is becoming renowned for its sour, soaked rock’n’roll concerts, its vile festival toilets, and its shit-smeared Barfly venues. Maybe they will put Neil Diamond music on heavy rotation and the ladies will learn to put their used tampons into the toilet rather than on the floor. Backstage at Africa Express in Liverpool, no sleep, tampons on the floor. Imagine the bogs at last year’s Brit awards!

When you’re not under 30 anymore, youth culture just appears boring. They smell of wee. Didn’t you learn anything from your parents? They rocked harder than you ever will. Or maybe I’ve got it all backwards. I can’t keep up with all these new fangled anal-fisting drug remixes. Back in the nineties, we just had regular-fisting drug mixes. Must sleep soon. Young people taking over… broken glass everywhere. Same as it ever was. When do we move forward?

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