In search of the lost pizza!

As an avid pizza eater I have spent the last few years at various locations throughout the world in pursuit of a genuine Neapolitan pizza, however I have sadly been disappointed with what is on offer.

Daniel Young the author of ‘Where to Eat Pizza’ which is a volume containing what he claims are the best pizza joints in the world wouldn’t know an original Neapolitan pizza if one hit him in the eye. Forget sourdough base, ‘00’ flour, wood fired ovens taking 90 seconds, San Marzano tomatoes and Mozzarella di Bufala, if the pizzaiolo chooses to load the base with too much topping you’re screwed.

All it takes is a smear of tomato on the base, a modest amount of mozzarella and a handful of freshly torn basil leaves, anything more than that and you end up with more than the proverbial ‘soggy bottom’, you end up with a disaster. I’m really not adverse to the addition of some thinly sliced mushrooms or a little rocket but nothing too over the top and nothing too soggy.

There used to be a restaurant situated at 1a Scholes lane in Prestwich on the outskirts of Manchester called Lagaccio Risorante where you could enjoy the best pizza I’ve ever tasted. Whenever an Italian football team were playing the area they would always make for Lagaccios and their signed shirts adorned the walls as if proof was needed. Lagaccios also made the best Tiramisu I’ve ever tasted with a powerful taste of Masala wine it would just melt in the mouth.

The only other places I can say produced the perfect pizza was a restaurant in Bonifacio, Corsica, a pizzeria in the back streets of Barcelona and a restaurant just outside Copenhagen and I’m still searching. Even places in Naples itself load the base with far too much topping and so it feels like my search is in vain although I am having plenty of tasty fun doing it, I still enjoy the over the top pizzas regardless.

If I could just find that Holy Grail of pizza perfection like the ones Lagaccios used to make I’d be a very happy man, probably break into song, erm maybe not, I would however probably eat my own weight in pizza and that’s a fact.

There must be some like minded pizza lovers or pizza makers out there, people who like a minimum amount of topping so let’s band together and take to the streets with placards and banners, Let’s demand our pizza rights. Let’s go in search of the lost pizza!

Let’s Eat Grandma @ MIF

What a weekend. went to see the Bootleg Beatles with the Liverpool Philharmonic at the Bridgewater  Hall in Manchester doing Sgt Pepper, amazing!

To hear the Sgt Pepper album played in its entirety with an orchestra and then other tracks like ‘I am the Walrus’ as it should be heard was emotional to say the least.

Two days later and’Let’s Eat Grandma’ were on at the MIF ‘Manchester International Festival’ with a local band, ‘Spring King’. It was to be the first time that I’d seen LEG live but after familiarizing myself wit their debut album ‘I Gemini’ for over a year, I thought that I knew what to expect.

Upon entering the Pavilion in Albert Square there were 8 white spotlights trained on the audience and a swirl of dry ice which created an atmosphere just right for the duo.  The stage was set with a collection of keyboards, a xylophone  and collection of microphones. What followed was anticipation and excitement as their arrival was imminent, eventually Rosa and Jenny took to the stage and after a brief onstage discussion between the two of them they were underway.

It has been well documented that the album ‘I Gemini’ was put together when the girls were just 15 however now, 3 years on instead of presenting the laid-back version of songs that appeared on the album unexpectedly these girls can seriously kick-ass. opening with ‘Deep Six Textbook’ followed by ‘Eat Shitake Mushrooms’ from ‘I Gemini’ both songs live were taken to another level, it’s the kind of music that Syd Barrett would have been proud of back in the early days of Pink Floyd, yes, really. Next we had an electric guitar for a new number which I must admit I hadn’t heard before and that was followed by the wonderful ‘Sink’. The girls are certainly not boring visually with lots of interchanging , movement and hair, yes the hair, lots of fucking hair. The propensity to suddenly fall to the floor during a song and then continue vertically until the end takes some courage, and when jenny Hollingworth decided to skip through the audience you realise that these girls write the rules. their attitude is quite unique and quite rightly should be applauded. It was all over too soon, after only four numbers, maybe more next time? I guess I’d been MIFFED.

By the time local band ‘Spring King’ took the stage I’d left the venue safe in the knowledge that I’d witnessed something special, musicians like ‘Let’s Eat Grandma’ don’t come along too often, embrace them whilst they’re here.

New album please!

Trending on the Internet

People who have read this book have said that it’s like something Lee Mack could have written which I take as a  compliment. If you like Lee Mack then you will probably like the book, if you don’t like Lee Mack you might still like it as he didn’t write it!

It isn’t very PC and is a satire on modern society, unfortunately its only available on Amazon kindle which is some kind of modern reading apparatus I do believe, try downloading it and enjoy.

Hitting My Head 3

Are you still with me? ‘Hitting My Head Against the Wall! appeared in the States weeks before it appeared in the UK, it was being ‘distributed’ over here by RSK Entertainment. I there was somebody here called ‘useless’ RSK Entertainment would be standing next to him or her, don’t want to be accused of being sexist.

The book finally appeared on Amazon UK as a CD in the CD section with the chapters listed as tracks and yours truly the artist WTF! I contacted Amazon every day to no avail until eventually the penny dropped and they placed it in the book section as a paperback and as you will know if you have been paying attention it is a hardback book. If anybody reading this is tempted to buy it may I suggest that you pay no more than £14.00 and not the £22.00 Amazon have it listed as, keep searching.

Anyway, for people who don’t appreciate the intricate sounds of Motorhead and enjoy laughing my E book ‘Trending on the Internet’ is available from Amazon for £1.99. The description is as follows:

Take two friends, Keith and Darryl who have contrasting lives, Darryl is a happily married successful man living in middle class suburbia with a competitive wife whilst Keith is in a complicated relationship with his girlfriend. Add a local villain to the story with a henchman from hell and suddenly Keith’s life is in danger and Darryl has had all his furniture stolen. Only a trip to the highlands of Scotland can save them and a surprising encounter in a bagpipe repair shop.
If you think that you’re having a bad day just wait until you meet these guys.
Trending on the Internet is an hilarious tale of life in general and the obstacles that it throws up, a story of two men against the world, with twists, turns and surprises along the way as well as a Dolphin on a skateboard, what more could you possibly ask for?

Believe me shooting the photo for the cover was hard work, the dolphin would not keep still, it kept on wanting to do donuts on the skateboard and it kept on falling off but eventually I managed to get the photo I wanted and the dolphin, don’t ask.

 

Hitting My Head Against the Wall Pt 2

Okay, so my book ‘Hitting My Head Against the Wall! Lemmy & Motorhead The Early Years, was published by Cleopatra Books on 4th February 2017. Most of the book was originally written in 1979 and was due to be published then, Michael Moorcock had agreed to write an introduction and just as it was about to go to print guess what? Exactly, a guy called Alan Burridge released a book about Motorhead and I’d unwittingly helped him with his research, my book was binned and then lay dormant for 16 years until I decided to revive it and update it.

Finally I was going to get the chance to explain to people just what it was like to hang out with Motorhead in the early days in bars, clubs, backstage and their hotel rooms and to recount the hilarious anecdotes from those places. A chance to give people an insight into what the band were really like behind the scenes.

As I waited for the book to be published another book appeared on the horizon to be released on 18th May 2017 by a rock journalist called Martin Popoff entitled ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’ with the line ‘this is the first book to celebrate the classic-era Motörhead lineup of Lemmy Kilmister, Fast Eddie Clarke and Philthy Phil “Animal” Taylor.’  Oh dear what a lie that is, and when I was drinking and sharing the band’s drugs in various locations around the country Mr. Popoff was 12 years old and living in Canada, research is a wonderful thing is it not?

The best thing is that Popoff’s book is available in bookshops and record stores so everybody will have a chance to see it whilst mine languishes in relative obscurity online. Cleopatra Records the publishers of my book see nothing wrong with this predicament but as far as I’m concerned it proves that lightening does strike twice.

Which is it to be, on one side ‘Hitting My Head Against the Wall!’ by somebody who was there or ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’ by somebody who wasn’t, there only one way to find out…..fight!

My book is available now online somewhere in the ether.

Hitting My Head Against the Wall!

Hi, let me explain what this is all about, back in the 1970s I used to produce an ‘arts’ magazine entitled Purple Smoke, after four issues and several visits to Hawkwind gigs I had a change of heart Purple Smoke ceased to exist and Penetration Rock Magazine was born. The first issue of Penetration featured an interview with Nik Turner of Hawkwind and I went on to interview and photograph many ‘underground’ bands of the time as well as several above ground ones. I became friendly with Lemmy and when he was kicked out of Hawkwind and formed Motorhead I conducted their very first interview one week before their debut gig. I continued to follow and write about the band for around ten years.

Later, in the 1980s in fact I began writing comedy sketches for TV shows both in the UK and Germany as well as writing for humorous magazines and also contributing cartoons.

Many years later it was discovered that I had taken the only photographs of the Sex Pistols back in 76 when they first played at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall. Those photos subsequently featured in a TV documentary and then eventually in a book by David Nolan entitled I Swear I Was There which eventually became two books when it was revised ten years later and I was interviewed for the new volume.

Many of my Photographs from my Penetration days were accepted by Getty Images and have since been on sale around the world featuring in books, magazines, TV documentaries and even a movie. I decided to write an autobiography in 2011 entitled May Contain Flashing Images-Manchester, Music and Me! which is currently being revised and re-edited and is available as an eBook.

I followed that book up with humorous work of fiction entitled Trending on the Internet which I uploaded to the Amazon Kindle site where it still remains.

When Lemmy and indeed Phil Taylor of Motorhead both died in 2015 I watched Lemmy’s memorial/funeral live on the internet and what struck me was the fact that all the people who got up to pay their respects spoke about both Lemmy and Motorhead as if they had always been successful. I wanted to tell my side of the story of what it was like for the band in the early days when Penetration Magazine was the only magazine writing about them, when they couldn’t even attract an audience. As Lemmy would say “We couldn’t get arrested”, times were really hard.

I wrote my Book Hitting My Head Against The Wall! Lemmy & Motorhead The Early Years. which I also uploaded onto Amazon hoping that it might sell maybe a dozen copies which I would have been very happy with. It was read by Cleopatra Records in LA and they liked it so much that they tracked me down to ask if they could publish it for worldwide distribution, I said yes and the rest is history. It was published as a hardback book which I thought was going to be available in book/record shops but it is only available online which really pissed me off but I guess that is the publishers prerogative.

I am now revisiting my cartoons from the 1980s and I’m about to publish as an eBook Mind the Doors, a compilation of door cartoons which will be funnier than it sounds on paper but it will be reasonably priced so there should be no complaints!