Missed a day of rehearsals for The Ivors. The idea of doing so was a stress. But I like that awards very much. I was, for the third time (9^th time on jury) chairman of the jury working on Best Song Musically & Lyrically. I think I’ve posted before on that. I am a songwriter, a musician, the proverbial wandering minstrel, and so committee stuff is not really my stuff. Juries not really for me. We do what we do, we move into this demimonde, onto this extracurricular plane, in order to get away from the real world. Makes us sad? Inadequate? Insecure? I expect all those and more are true. But those involved in the travelling-constantly world normally don’t care. I don’t care.

I care that a lady from MOJO mag has been (almost entirely) kind about my latest work. It has restored confidence just a gnat’s away from the start of a big tour.

Knowledge, now, recently acquired, that the critic who tore apart my very raison-d’etre (not just the record) was a man who has held a deep revulsion of all things me for the past 14 years, has come as a great relief. I hinted before that I once employed him as a “publicist” when he had then recently joined a PR firm specialising in the music business. He was recommended. He took The Harley Shilling. He was hard up. He was also useless. Had no idea how to present a new album to the British press, or how to handle a person like me, and all that meant. He was 30-something and I was me, in 1996. He was a helpless case. My manager called the firm he worked for and suggested they might replace him with someone even slightly more in touch with someone like me and my work (Poetic Justice CD at that time).  In essence, the useless struggler was sacked. He never forgot it.

I am very happy to record this, as this knowledge, and I pass it on very happily now,  completely negates his wildly, hysterically personal,  negative review of Stranger Comes To Town. His subjective diatribe can’t really hold water, if you think about it. Why they gave him the album to “review objectively” is beyond my comprehension – unless....no, don’t go there. Get the idea, the way these people work?

Now you know: you can’t believe it’s true, just because it’s in the papers.

I wonder, is he a fan of rock music, and was he a fan of Gene Hunt and his fun Ashes To Ashes cronies? Those in Purgatory will ache. It must be a tough life in there.

I leave at dawn for a flight to Dublin. Friends for dinner. Gather the senses and prepare. Prepare to play concerts crowded with new songs and old additions seldom played. I wish I had stayed for that missing day at rehearsals, but I was chairman of that jury and Lily Allen had written the most moving lyric in a generation with The Fear. She had to win that category. Listen to it, Google the lyric. When you’ve read it a few times and got a grip, tell me it is not magnificent. It is My Generation for her generation.  A masterpiece. I have written an album full of metaphor and allegory and poetry which I know will be difficult for some. But it is mine. And when I told Lily yesterday at The Ivors how deeply I was touched by her phenomenal observations of young womanhood, she cried. I cried, ever so distantly and privately, too. My daughter, who introduced me to Lily’s work, was with us, and asked for a photo. Lily was still crying and thanking us. What a girl. Sensitive. I like that. She’s an artist. She has to dig very deeply to entertain and amuse us. It’s her job. But glossy mag critics:   hard and cruel and unromantic and chippy; nasty, bitter and green-eyed and on and on and on...I don’t like. MOJO has restored much confidence around here,  here in family and amongst the 25 or so people involved in the tour as I prepare to head off to the airport for Dublin. To sing those songs.  To do what I do, and love doing. Missed a day of rehearsals for The Ivors, but I’m ready. Mirror Freak. All Men Are Hungry. Loretta’s Tale...all played as per original recording. 3 hours rehearsed, so some will go by the board. Panorama, assembled late in the day. The Lartey Sisters add a big presence. Plus Mini-Moog...how cool is that?!