Heaven Knows I'm In Limbo Now

It has been a whirlwind fortnight for Kites.

When I have not been gesticulating and gyrating onstage, I have been
harnessing and honing new material.

Our adventures have taken us to Newcastle, motorway service stations and,
most recently, to a studio situated on an island in the Thames.

In those ephemeral moments when I have been able to lay my weary bones to
rest, I find myself having the most vivid dreams.  This is partly due to
sleep deprivation and partly owing to the fact that I suffer from sleep
paralysis.  This affliction pits its victims in a halfway-house between
consciousness and slumber.  It has become a fitting metaphor for my life.

Permit me to recount one such vision that appeared to me when I was held
captive in this delirious state...

(N.B: None of the below actually occurred.  It is simply the fictional
imaginings of Matthew’s cerebral wonderland.)
...

I was floating in some sort of expectant purgatory.

As I peered skywards, shielding my eyes from the celestial effulgence, I
glimpsed St Peter waving the golden keys of heaven before a brood of
sycophantic hopefuls.  It struck me that St Peter looked uncannily like Sir
John Peel and that the queue assembled outside the pearly gates consisted,
not of the religiously devout, but exclusively of recently deceased
musicians.  In the middle distance I could see Syd Barrett and Ian Curtis
playing a game of croquet and sipping coupes of champagne.  Elsewhere, Buddy
Holly was engaged in a game of French bowels and Janis Joplin was puffing on
a pink Sobranie cigarette. Smug bastards, I thought.

It was with courage and a dizzying sense of vertigo that I tore my eyes away
from that paradise and bent my head downwards.  Through the fumes of the
infernal fire I was dimly able to distinguish the profiles of Lucifer and
his satanic horde.  The horned beast – who incidentally is the spitting
image of Bono – was surrounded by every one-hit-wonder, every reality TV
star, every harmonica player to have ever sullied earth’s harmony with their
vile racket. Bono used to be highest amongst the archangels.  I mean, let’s
be honest, the Joshua Tree is a truly remarkable album.  Regrettably
however, he suffered from that fatal flaw: Pride (In the name of Love).  He
was cast down from heaven for attempting to make his throne higher than the
clouds over the earth.  Yahweh preserved his life in order to tempt man with
generic cock-rock.

As I returned my gaze to my nowhere-land, I was acutely aware of my own
nebulous future.

Is this tale allegorical? Well of course it bloody is!

It is obvious that I currently reside in the realm of Chaos.

...

And then I awoke to grim reality.  I awoke to uncertainty.  It was Sunday
bloody Sunday.

Matthew Phillips (by Merrington)

Armadillo Peccadillo

Please do not ask for an explanation of this title. I am merely fond of assonance. It is my right to be slap-dash, illogical, and downright ridiculous.　

Anyway, I digress. I came here today to beg for your clemency. There is little excuse for failing to regularly update my blog.　 For this, I apologise. Three threadbare entries per month is, dare I say it, pathetic. Of the great diarists throughout history, I do not believe that any have suffered from what can only be termed ‘inertia’. Samuel Pepys did not flinch from his testimonial duties as the Bubonic Plague was sweeping like wildfire through our beloved Britannia; neither did Anne Frank complain of errant Nazis disrupting her creative zen.　

No, I shall not recline here in stately majesty and pretend that I have been wronged. The fault rests with me alone. As such, I feel that you all deserve an explanation. Perhaps you attest, quite rightly, that no amount of grovelling on my part could cleanse me of that grotesque peccadillo: negligence. I have washed my hands more fervently than Pontius Pilate and still the blood of my neglect remains.

*Note to self: Stop making comparisons with historical/mythological figures. Readers will interpret a big-headedness of such magnitude that you will surely be guillotined.*

So you want the truth? You would like me to cease this procrastination and get to the point? Well then, allow me to elucidate: for the last month I have marooned myself at my piano with a hermit-like zeal that would make St Benedict proud. *Oh dear*

I have toiled ceaselessly with a plethora of melodies, fashioning each into a nugget of soaring baritone. Kites recently released ‘Take the Reins’. There is more to follow.

For now, I shall bid you farewell and re-enter my self-imposed exile.

Why the long face?

People  now send me photos of my moody disposition. 
Evidently, I need to cheer up. 

Take The Reins by Kites

Take The Reins by Kites

Dr. Brydon's Retreat

Don Your Suits

Sail Yachts

Earn Big Money

That Sweet Fruit

Will Rot

Inside Your Body

Doctor Doctor, I have what is popularly diagnosed as ‘man-flu’.

My long-suffering manager has begged me to register with a doctor. I have
wilfully avoided his counsel like the plague and yet, inevitably, it is the
plague that has now found me. I have paraded my influenza with a theatrical
melodrama that has inspired sympathy in my acquaintances and mild contempt
in my close friends.

Do not attempt to seek me out in my local tavern. You will find me wallowing
at home with only a radiator and a blocked nose for company. My signature
aperitif has been replaced with a cocktail of Berocca, paracetamol,
self-pity and regurgitated snot.

At least I can take comfort that I am not alone. Much of London seems to
have succumbed to this pandemic, which has stripped the capital’s nocturnal
hotspots of its mini-skirts, pukers and broken glassware. Weekend television
ratings must have skyrocketed. Pharmacists were probably celebrating record
profits as the city’s sick erotically smeared Vicks’ VapoRub all over their
breasts and chests. It has been a time of national crisis.

Ok, so maybe I’m overstating it a smidgen and magnifying the collective
sense of empathy. Such is my solipsism.

The point is, apparently I should not approach my ailment like a child
playing the central, terminally-ill, protagonist in a game of Doctors and
Nurses. Although my symptoms are unlikely to raise a concerned eyebrow in
the most compassionate medical ward, they do exhibit one crippling personal
defect: my voice. Or lack of voice, as any casual observer would note. It is
divine providence that Kites do not have a performance for another 12 days.

In future, I need to take better care of my greatest bodily tool. Alas, this
isn’t a pantomime featuring a prostrate Matthew Phillips. It’s the
difference between playing a live show and utterly humiliating myself.

No, I am not a polyrhythmic. So what?

If, like me, you don’t pretend to be an instrumentalist, you might be able to imagine the quandary I find myself in as a songwriter. You might also like to suggest that I select another profession.

Would you trust a surgeon whose medical training consisted of watching box-sets of ER and Scrubs?

Would you pay a lawyer who had perused a few John Grisham novels instead of attending law school?

Probably not.

And yet, I have somehow deluded myself into believing that the most rudimentary understanding of musical theory is sufficient to pursue one’s chart-topping ambitions.

I find this handicap particularly tedious when I compose melodies on the piano. I say ‘melodies’ because these childish jingles would be viewed with scorn by real masters of the ivories.

Although I sometimes fancy myself as a guitarist, I have never been taught piano. While the rest of my schoolyard chums were being rapped on the knuckles for failing to complete a recital of ‘Three Blind Mice’, I was strumming the power chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.

Thus, to find myself suddenly facing a piano wearing the sort of expression that a monkey would when encountering an iPod is quite a challenge. Attempting to perform and record 4 minutes of seamless piano - albeit piano of troll-like simplicity - is a frustrating and interminable exercise.

Ultimately, let me conclude this self-deprecating entry by stating that I believe an intuition for melody to be the single-greatest faculty that a songsmith can posses. In any case, I was under impression that session musicians could be hired to overcome any instrumental difficulties that might be impeding the completion of a masterpiece.

In time, I may employ one of these virtuosos but, by then, I’ll be able to afford piano lessons.