Dom's Rambles

I finally snagged myself a DOD American Metal fuzz box off eBay last night. Whenever one of these has come up for sale in the past the same thing has happened. The price stays at £5 until a couple of minutes before the auction closes and then goes totally mental, always managing to catch me off my bidding guard. I must have got lucky this time (although I’d much rather be lucky in another department – but let’s not go there), I put a £20 maximum bid on as close to the close of play as I dared and secured the thing for £17.
Someone who worked in a music shop once told me that DOD stood for Donny Osmond Developments! Apparently, they reckoned, the young Donny used to be quite an electronics whizz and when the family’s musical career waned he ended up marketing the guitar effects that he used to build for his brothers. Of course that’s probably about as true as the story of Bob Holness (of Blockbusters fame) having played the saxophone break on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street, but there you go.
I’ve owned a Boss HM-2, which is another classic Eighties stomp box, for years and although the thing is perfectly serviceable I find the tone just a little bit too harsh. The DOD stomp box, an example of which I borrowed to record the first Lovechild demo over 22 years ago, has an altogether warmer quality to it and when using a Les Paul and Marshall combination makes you sound exactly like Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top – which is no bad thing. I’ve been listening to the classic Eliminator album – as well as its vastly underrated follow up, Afterburner - quite a lot recently (which reminds me, I must get to a meeting at Santa Pod sometime soon). I was even intending to take a certain person to see the band in Paris as a surprise. Alas, ‘twas not to be – like a lot of other things.

posted by Dom  # 11:12 AM 0 comments links to this post

Pervy Jayne with a girl who I'm pretty sure was her flatmate (was her name Sue?). I have a feeling this picture was from the first night I went home with her.

posted by Dom  # 1:51 AM 0 comments links to this post

Your gracious host is in an absolutely splendid mood at the moment. This is entirely due to a sexy, stylish, clever, funny, spirited female with a gorgeous smile and who ticks so many of the right boxes that she's got me thinking I must be in the middle of a dream. I even woke up with my arms around her this morning - and that's something I've only ever been able to do with two other women!

posted by Dom  # 2:55 PM 1 comments links to this post

When I deleted my last blog and created this one in its stead, I told myself that I wouldn’t use it to do politics, partly because I wanted the thing to compliment the Down & Out… pieces and partly because there are others who can do that kind of stuff a hell of a lot better than I can.
Tonight, however, I’m going to make an exception as I’m in a rather jubilant mood as a result of the London Mayoral Election.
At long, long last, Ken Livingstone, that loathsome terror-apologist and Islamofascist-hugging, Venezuelan dictator-fellating, Castro-worshiping, eco-totalitarian fellow travelling, America-hating, anti-Semitic pile of snivelling communist shit, is out of office.
Congratulations Boris, good on you for unseating the detestable fucking bastard!

UPDATE: Perusing the Harry’s Place blog I see that Livingstone wasn’t the only one who lost out. That even more disgusting specimen, George Galloway, got a drubbing too.
I always thought that AA Gill summed this clown (and his followers) up quite succinctly when he described Galloway’s Respect party as the Ali G joke of British politics. They adopted the name because ‘respect’ is what the kind of silly, middle-aged, middle-class, white lefties who comprise it’s membership hierarchy think that black street kids say to each other. They might just as easily have been called ‘word’ or ‘holla’ or ‘shizzle’ - even if ‘wanksta’ would be more apt.

posted by Dom  # 9:14 PM 4 comments links to this post