I've been hanging about with the Lords of the New Church and am sending photographic evidence of some of us in the pub as they take a break from the rehearsals they are doing in Brighton at the moment.

BJ and Kermit need no introduction but new recruit Steven is an interesting chap with a head full of dark lyric ideas just tailor made for Brians 'riff rockers' methinks. At one point in the proceedings he banged his pint down on the table declaring that he couldnt live a minute longer without a copy of Captain Beefhearts 'Trout Mask Replica' (veritably an avant garde classic playmates)... amd with that he dissapeared, returning shortly tooled up with the goods in the form of a used CD.

Lucky for him there are SO many second hand record shops in Brighton... (as it is for me there are so many vegetarian restaurants, burp).

The uncompromising nature of Trout Mask Replica makes for a difficult 1st hearing for the uninitiated as summed up by some critic or other thus... "it is a classic whose brilliance will only reveal itself after you listened to it 6,000 times or so".

In my humble opinion if you had this record, 'The Polite Force' by Egg, 'Thank Christ for the Bomb' by the Groundhogs, Rachmaninovs 2nd Symphony and the new Damned anthology (plus Grave Disorder of course) and you'd probably be OK on a desert island for music. I'd be interested to hear other peoples 'Desert Island Disks'.

By the way it is one of my unfulfilled ambitions to appear on this great Radio 4 programme so can everyone write in (Desert Island Disks, BBC Radio 4, Portland Place, London) and request they book me pronto, cheers and all that. It would make a bloody nice change from the public school tossers and business creeps they have on every week. And I'll tell it like it is folks, as you well know!!!

Anyway, enough of that nonsense and back to the Lords who have been touring in Europe and may be coming your way soon. Catch 'em if you can and see if you can get hold of a copy of their new recordings in which BJ's guitaring is on top form, gawdblesshim.

Toodle pip - Cap