Si­mon Lee

I've been called many things in life, but nev­er to date a tech­no-freak; a more apt de­scrip­tion would be–tech­no­log­i­cal­ly chal­lenged. Com­put­er screens have a nasty habit of go­ing blank when they see me com­ing; wa­ter heaters and elec­tric ket­tles go in­to melt down at a 100 yards; I can leave the me­chan­ic af­ter a tune up and shut down around the first bend. All now I'm strug­gling to reac­quaint my­self with the mag­ic of Mac, cour­tesy Cin­na­mon Girl who took pity on me when my cheapo note­book un­hinged it­self. Cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly sweep­ing it to the floor, she re­placed it with the lat­est Ap­ple off the tree.

Al­though I still can't at­tach a file, I'm deeply grate­ful both to Madame Cin­na­mon and Mon­sieur Mac be­cause I've been suf­fer­ing chron­ic mu­sic with­draw­al symp­tons ever since my ob­so­lete Bose cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly re­fused to play. But now there's YouTube, cour­tesy Mac, and I've been wal­low­ing in sounds I've been pin­ing af­ter for ten years and change.

First off I took a one way to Cu­ba to check out ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry com­posers Amadeo Roldan and Ale­jan­dro Gar­cia Caturla–azu­car! Eso! Then I delved back in­to the 18th cen­tu­ry for con­cer­tos by Guade­lou­pean-born mu­lat­to Joseph Boulogne, Cheva­lier St George–for­mi­da­ble. This boy ranks with Moz, Al­bi­noni and Vi­val­di. Par­tial­ly sat­ed be­cause the fire of de­sire con­sumes with­out con­sum­ma­tion, I head­ed to psy­che­del­ic Cal­i­for­nia of the 1960s just to check if one of the sound­tracks of my teens still had any cur­ren­cy.

Quick­sil­ver Mes­sen­ger Ser­vice still nailed my spine with John Cip­poli­no's sear­ing lead gui­tar on Hap­py Trails; while I rev­elled in the desert goth­ic lyrics: "Walked 47 miles for a bot­tle of wine, got a co­bra snake for a neck tie. Got­ta brand new house by the road­side you know it's made from a hu­man skull."

My small daugh­ter, al­though most­ly ac­cus­tomed to my ec­cen­tric­i­ties by now, sweet­ly en­quired "Wap­pen dad­dy?" when she saw me lev­i­tat­ing to Mona–"I'm gonna tell ya Mona what I'm gonna do, gonna build my house next door to you. When I come out on the front, ya wan­na lis­ten to my heart goin bumpi­ty bumpi­ty bump!"

Hav­ing trav­elled that far and fu­ri­ous I couldn't re­sist look­ing up my old friends The Grate­ful Dead. I won­der what the neu­ro­sci­en­tists would have to say about the sud­den rush in my body chem­istry as the open­ing chords of At­tic of My Life reg­is­tered.

Cin­na­mon Girl shook her head know­ing­ly, mut­ter­ing "Ah hate dem" but was smart enough to leave me right there in the Fil­more East re­liv­ing Dark Star, Friend of the Dev­il, St Stephen, Me and my Un­cle, Rip­ple, Wharf Rat, Keep on Truck­ing and all the oth­er songs I used to jilt Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Faerie Queen and the Dream of the Rood quite hap­pi­ly for in Rox­on days.

This Dead Head trip came com­plete with flash­backs. Among them a vivid two-minute clip of some­one's fin­gers pick­ing the in­tro and then hold­ing down the chords for Friend of the Dev­il. A dilet­tante gui­tarist at best, watch­ing those fin­gers taught me the song. Then I re­mem­bered the smile of the guy with the fin­gers, when I fi­nal­ly joined in with him on rhythm gui­tar.

It on­ly took me a few min­utes cour­tesy Google and my new­found time trav­el tech­nol­o­gy to jump 40 years and find that gui­tarist in New South Wales, Aus­tralia. Goo­day Tony! The gen­tle 1972 hip­pie with a pen­chant for Latin and An­cient Greek is now a big pro­fes­sor and so­cial pol­i­cy ex­pert...but he too still lis­tens to At­tics of My Life and fam­i­ly life per­mit­ting dou­bles up as a star on the Oz folk scene.

Me–I'm still fool­ing with strings and oc­ca­sion­al­ly hide, and won­der where I might have land­ed or be­come ma­rooned had I fol­lowed the fret board. My first of­fer came when I was liv­ing on a witch­es' heath near Ham­burg in a com­mune of hip­sters head­ed east. Thanks to my many hours soak­ing up so­lar gui­tar so­los from the Dead's Jer­ry Gar­cia, I'd shake the mud off my boots af­ter a morn­ing ses­sion in the veg­etable patch, strap on a Fend­er Strat and jam from lunch till night­fall.

The band which made me the of­fer I did refuse, went on to be big in Berlin and be­yond.

I re­turned to Lon­don to shrug off Bowie and an­drog­y­nous glam rock for the grit and fury of Punk when it erupt­ed. A two tone ex­per­i­ment (punky ska/reg­gae) col­lapsed when the Eng­lish per­son­nel aban­doned me and the Ja­maican rhythm sec­tion for Coun­try & West­ern. Hm­mm ...and to add in­sult to in­famy the Spe­cials hit the charts a few months lat­er with pre­cise­ly the fu­sion I'd been push­ing.

Then I was vir­tu­al­ly on a plane for the Big Ap­ple to hook up with John­ny Thun­der and the New York Dolls when my green Doc Mar­tins re­fused me. But now I've dis­cov­ered the Dead's ver­sion of clas­sic kaiso Man Smart Woman Smarter, in the at­tics of my life.