Back at Work

After too few days off, I am now back at work. Yikes says I but what’s a girl to do? Must pay the bills and seeing how I just spent $36.00 on magazines while on my dinner break, it’s probably a good thing that I am back in the saddle. Kind of bummed though – the letdown of having free time to myself over the last 11 days I guess. My last day in the office was on the 11th of February and it is now the 23rd so those 12 days have been really sweet. Oh, drat my boss is wandering around…time to go for now!!!

NUMB

Am really bumming lately. My use has gotten out of hand more or less I guess and I don’t ever feel satisfied – rarely anyway. I am spending about $200 a day on dilaudid and speed but it just never seems enough. I can not shake this apathetic coma that I seem to be existing within. Just getting up in the morning is a chore and it is not because I am dope sick either although that may have something to do with it for sure. I just don’t care anymore. Don’t care about what I eat, wear, watch, read, write, do, injest. Don’t care about anything and I have never in my entire life felt quite this numb. I assume that I am at a crossroads or that there is some sign that I am missing, a message of sorts, a message that I am ignoring or too obtuse to recognize. Doesn’t help that I have had the worse falling out with my dealer – someone that I really and truly considered a very close friend…my feelings were really hurt and I am still sad about this.

Bored now…

Grrrr

Grrr… Just went to the bank and a cheque that should have cleared on December 24th just went thru today so I was $239.54 less than I expected. What a kick in the ass so I wasn’t able to score what I had hoped to either. I am fit to be tied. Maybe a nice relaxing bath will calm my nerves although I strongly doubt it right now!!!

WTF?

This has been one of the most horrific weeks in a long time. I am sick and tired of my so called friend, “the dealer”, TS. As it is I put up with a lot of crap from her but this week, she just pushed it all too far. I am severing all ties. I don’t ever want to see her or any of the other maggots that live at her house. They are all a bunch of sycophantic losers and they can all just naff off. It is bad enough that I let her use my vehicle whenever I am at work and never ask anything in return and she can barely even pick me up on time from work but then she asks to borrow it during the day when my boyfriend really needs it, gives nothing in return for this favour, shows up late and worse. Then after everything that her and her boyfriend pulled this week, here she is calling me today nagging at me to settle the bill that I have with her. WTF?

Sorry, girlfriend but give yourself a shake and put that crack pipe down. She borrowed the car on Wednesday cause she had a dentist appointment and another appointment that she had to get to – actually I ended up giving her the car on Tuesday night around midnight and asked her to make sure that it was back by no later than 5pm Wednesday as Richey had to go to work. So no problem, right? Wrong. Around quarter to two on Wednesday I get a phone call from her boyfriend saying that TS is in the hospital with food poisoning and is really sick. He said that they were at the emerg which is about a 12 minute drive from our house and did I want him to drive it over now as he couldn’t guarantee that she could get the car back to us by 5pm. I almost volunteered to take a cab over to the hospital which in hindsight is something that I should have done but I guess that I was not thinking as clearly as I should have. I said for him to bring the car now and then I could run him back to the hospital. The red flag should have gone up at this point when he said that he didn’t need to go back to the hospital but home. Huh? Why would he need to go home if she were in the hospital? Of course, I didn’t ask this until long after the fact.

He should have had the car back no later than quarter after two. By 5pm I was starting to freak out a little so I called TS’s house. Her roommate answered saying that she was asleep on the couch. I asked if my car was there and he said no. I explained about the phone call that I had gotten from her boyfriend and Steve said that he had made the call from the house not the hospital. So where the hell was my car. Steve didn’t know and TS was “too sick” to really talk to me. And all everyone kept saying was that I had given him permission to drive it. WTF? Yeah, under false pretenses. Apparently he had made the call from the house and was also supposed to ask me if I wanted to take a cab over to collect the car. They had been to the hospital but had been back at the house for quite some time. The long and short of all of this “event” was that my car was missing for over 24 hours in the hands of a lunatic and no one at the house really did anything to help me get it back. I eventually found it by repeatedly calling his parent’s house threatening to call the police. Turns out in the end, he drove it home and then went into his parent’s basement and passed out. At least the car was OK – no apparent damage to it and I have been driving it now for two days.

She did jack to help hiding behind the guise that she was “sick”. On Thursday morning when I called to see if anyone had any new info I was crying because I was so upset. I wasn’t being mean or even raising my voice when I asked her what did she think he was thinking when he took the car when she actually hung up on me saying that she didn’t need this kind of crap right now. Again WTF? These people are not right in the head and do you think that I was even offered a free hit for all the trouble that they were putting me thru? Not so much as a scrap. How pathetic is that? These people are crap and I never want to set eyes on anyone of them ever again. She can keep calling over and over asking for the bit of money that I owe her. I’ll bloody well change my number first. All these months she has had all the benefits of owning a vehicle with none of the responsibilities i.e.. insurance, maintenance so now she can just bite my lily white ass.

MSP – The Holy Bible Re-release

Plenty More Manics For Your Money

If you’re a fan of the Manic Street Preachers you’ll already know that it’s ten years since the band released their last Richie-era record, ‘The Holy Bible’. To mark the anniversary, the band have confirmed they will be re-releasing the album as a 10th Anniversary Edition complete with alternate versions, DVD extras, interviews and plenty more Manics-related extras.

The re-release of the album has been rumoured for some time, however the special edition pack is confirmed to hit the shops on December 6 and will feature more than fifty tracks, videos, interviews and special features.

The album was the last to feature the talents of Richie James, the lyricist/guitarist who in early 1995 disappeared, leaving no trace of his whereabouts. Recorded in a red-light district in Wales, ‘The Holy Bible’ is both a bleak and disillusioned record, and received much critical acclaim upon its release.

The special edition features both a digitally remastered version of the original album, and the remixed American version. The set also includes a number of live versions, demos and radio sessions of album tracks, alongside a bonus DVD of live footage, TV appearances and a thirty-minute interview with the band.

The tracklisting for the set is as follows:

Disc 1: The Holy Bible (Digitally Remastered)

1. ‘Yes’
2. ‘Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart’
3. ‘Of Walking Abortion’
4. ‘She Is Suffering’
5. ‘Archives Of Pain’
6. ‘Revol’
7. ‘4st 7lb’
8. ‘Mausoleum’
9. ‘Faster‘
10. ‘This Is Yesterday‘
11. ‘Die In The Summertime’
12. ‘The Intense Humming Of Evil’
13. ‘P.C.P.’
14. ‘The Intense Humming Of Evil’ – Live
15. ‘4st 7lb’ – Live
16. ‘Yes’ – Live
17. ‘Of Walking Abortion’ – Live

Disc 2: The Holy Bible (US Mix)

1. ‘Yes’
2. ‘Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart’
3. ‘Of Walking Abortion’
4. ‘She Is Suffering’
5. ‘Archives Of Pain’
6. ‘Revol’
7. ‘4st 7lb‘
8. ‘Mausoleum’
9. ‘Faster’
10. ‘This Is Yesterday’
11. ‘Die In The Summertime’
12. ‘The Intense Humming Of Evil’
13. ‘P.C.P.‘
14. ‘Die In The Summertime’ – Demo
15. ‘Mausoleum’ – Demo
16. ‘Of Walking Abortion’ – Radio 1 Evening Session
17. ‘She Is Suffering’ – Radio 1 Evening Session
18. ‘Yes’ – Radio 1 Evening Session

Disc 3: The Holy Bible (Bonus DVD)

1. ‘Faster’ – Top Of The Pops
2. ‘Faster’ – Butt Naked
3. ‘P.C.P.’ – Butt Naked
4. ‘She Is Suffering’ – Butt Naked
5. ‘4st 7lb’ – MTV Most Wanted
6. ‘She Is Suffering’ - MTV Most Wanted
7. ‘Faster’ – Glastonbury ‘94
8. ’Yes’ – Glastonbury ‘94
9. ’Revol’ - Reading 94′
10. ’Faster’ – US Video
11. ’Judge Yr’self’ – Video
12. ’Yes’ – New Film
13. Band Interviews (30 mins)
14. ‘Faster’ – Hidden Extra Video
15. ’Revol’ – Hidden Extra Video
16. ’She Is Suffering’ – Hidden Extra Video

Rebel, rebel (Filed: 23/01/2005)

Telegraph | Opinion | Rebel, rebel: “

Profile: Kate Moss and Pete DohertyWhen Pete Doherty, a baby-faced Army major’s son from Nuneaton, joined a rock band, he thought he knew the ropes: take drugs, avoid sleep, date supermodels. The band prospered but poor Pete got it in the neck, and last year, shocked by his unwholesome living, the chart-topping Libertines fired him.

Having Kate Moss to keep you company is, presumably, some kind of compensation. Maybe even a reason for staying alive. A 5ft 8in one-woman walking tobacco pyre Kate might be, but in her time she has overcome sufficient demons to set even the hardest cases an example.

These two might have been made for each other. One, a survivor of the fash-and-trash era of supermodel Babylon, the other a zonked-out, self-contrived melange of Sid Vicious and Lord Byron. Last week they found each other at Kate’s 31st birthday party, and now, in the honourable tradition of celebrity lovers, are reported to be inseparable.

Don’t even ask what they talk about. Rehab? Pete can easily trump Kate’s de rigueur stretch in the Priory with an account of the three days he lasted in a remote Thai monastery, which – until his hurried departure for a Bangkok dope den – claimed to be able to clean up anybody. Lateness? “I think it’s in my blood,” says Kate. “My mum’s always late. But I’ll be, like, an hour late. Naomi [Campbell] is late, late.” Pete can top that, too. For his last few concerts he failed to turn up at all, provoking riots among his inconsolable fans.

He made it to Kate’s place in the Cotswolds in time, though, and his birthday present to her was a framed copy of one of his best songs, What Katie Did. According to the pop chatter, the number tells the story of a girl lost to drug addiction, although you might not guess so from the lyrics:

 

Shoop shoop, shoop de-lang-a-lang

(repeat eight times).

Oh whatcha gonna do, Katie?

You’re a sweet, sweet girl

But it’s a cruel, cruel world

A cruel, cruel world.

 

It’s a crazy world, too. One in which a bandy-legged girl from Croydon can amass a £14 million fortune by wearing clothes, and a rock star can be kicked out of his band by doing what most of us assume rock stars are supposed to do. Pete’s downfall came when Carl Barat, his co-star in The Libertines took him aside and said: “Don’t come to the show we’re doing in Paris, because you’re not well. You haven’t been to bed for days, and days, and days. You’ve smashed up cars, you’ve stolen loads of stuff. You’ve been doing all sorts of terrible things, and you are a danger to other people.”

 

It would be hard to argue that Carl didn’t have a point. Among the terrible things that Pete was accused of doing was trying to sell the band’s passports in order to buy new curtains for their tour bus. They sent him on his way, but imploded anyway. It was curtains, too, for The Libertines.

 

As rock epitaphs go, all this may be something short of Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie, but it has a poignancy. For in their short time together The Libertines had turned themselves from baghead geezers playing drugged-up garage rock to become potentially the most era-shaping British band since Oasis.

 

The music press raved about them, and their two albums were smashes. The ex-Clash member Mick Jones, who produced the second one, Up The Bracket, says: “They just got it. Once in a while a band comes along that’s like that, and they’re the ones, and everybody sort of knew it.” Pete was the face of the band. But it was a pallid face, drained of vigour and, sometimes, of hope. A writer with the rock magazine Rolling Stone saw him rise weakly from the interview table, and return with a can of Coke and 15 Crunchie bars. Can love put the energy back into him?

 

It isn’t so much that Kate Moss has some experience of rock star boyfriends as that her list of exes reads like the line up for Knebworth. It includes Jesse Wood (son of Ronnie), Spacehog drummer Antony Langdon, Lemonhead singer Evan Dando, and Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja. Even the father of her two-year-old daughter, Lila, the magazine publisher Jefferson Hack, was named by his hippy parents after the 1960s San Francisco band Jefferson Airplane.

 

The pair have much else in common. Both were born into lower middle class families, both entered their professions largely by accident, each has a toddler by an estranged partner, and both are exceptionally close to their mothers.

 

Kate’s even travels with her, while Pete’s mother, Jacqueline, apprehensive about what her boy might say during a recent appearance on Newsnight, wrote in advance to tell the programme: “Peter is a gifted poet, writer and thinker. Please be considerate with him. He is a sensitive soul and has many good points.” Let us hope Kate checks the points out thoroughly for she has found lasting love elusive. She fell hard and disastrously for the actor Johnny Depp, who dumped her for the sulphurous French chanteuse Vanessa Paradis, and last year she split from Hack. She says she dreams of a quieter life, but it is hard to achieve when you are out on the toot six nights a week.

 

She was spotted, at the age of 14, by a model agency scout while passing through JFK airport in New York. An appearance on the cover of The Face magazine in 1990 shot her to superwaifdom, and she has remained Britain’s foremost model, along with Naomi Campbell, ever since. This longevity is no accident, for Kate, unlike many in her trade, knows and cares about what she is wearing. “Kate loves clothes,” says fashion writer Lisa Armstrong. “Some models can take them or leave them.”

 

For a girl born in 1974 into deepest suburban anonymity, the daughter of a travel agent, she has faced some serious accusations; promoting anorexia, paedophilia and the “heroin chic” look among them. “I was getting on a plane once,” she says, “and the lady behind the desk said: `My daughter is starving herself to death because of you’. And I was like: `Hello? Do I eat?’”

 

Pete should save her a Crunchie. He is generous in that way, and those who know him portray him as weak and pseudish rather than stupid. “I miss him, ” says Barat. “I live in hope. I want him to stop embracing this death and darkness crap and start embracing life.”

 

Doherty’s upbringing was peripatetic. He remembers “moving every five minutes”, with his father’s Army postings. At 17 he went to live with his grandmother in Kilburn, where, out of boredom, he learned to play the guitar, and worked as a gravedigger at Willesden Green cemetery. He says he was offered a place to read English at the University of London, but turned it down, and instead began writing poetry and fell into a young bohemian set that revolved around Filthy McNasty’s Whiskey Cafe near King’s Cross, where he met Barat.

 

It was while he was searching for what he calls “freedom and truth” that his drug addiction began. Every attempt at a cure has failed. “It’s like you are in love with someone,” he says of the craving. “You never stop loving them.” Once, while shot full of heroin, he burgled Barat’s flat, and was jailed for two months. Last September he was given a four-month suspended sentence for possessing a flick knife.

 

Kate needs reining in, and Pete needs straightening out. Behind the artifice and the media hype there is a core of seriousness in both of them. He’s no Sid Vicious, and if you wanted to take a wild bet on his prospects, wager that he’ll be back in the band. She’s no Dorothy Stratton, and from what you can see through the tobacco fog, she looks like a woman gradually wearying of the life she leads. These two might even be good for each other, but only if they look upon their meeting as tomorrow’s beginning rather than last night’ s party.”

10th Anniversary

Fans keep hopes alive for missing Manic

Ten years on, remaining band members still pay royalties into an account for guitarist who vanished on eve of US tour

Richard Jinman
Tuesday February 1, 2005
The Guardian

There were several sightings of the Manic Street Preachers guitarist Richey Edwards yesterday, and there will probably be more as fans mark the 10th anniversary of rock’s most baffling disappearing act.”People genuinely believe they’ve seen Richard on a bus or outside a tube station,” said a spokesperson for the National Missing Persons Helpline. “We had a couple of calls today and I’m sure we’ll carry on getting sightings because of the anniversary.”

The Welsh-born Edwards was 27 when he walked out of his London hotel on the morning of February 1 1995. He and the band were due to fly to America the following day for a promotional tour.

The musician drove his silver Vauxhall Cavalier to his Cardiff flat, where he left his passport, credit card and Prozac. On February 17, the car was found at a motorway service station near the Severn Bridge. Its battery was flat and there was no trace of Edwards.

Many people assumed he had jumped to his death from the bridge. After all, the pale, waif-thin musician had battled anorexia, alcoholism and depression and was renowned for his self-destructive urges. In 1991, he used a razor blade to carve the slogan “4 Real” into his arm in front of a horrified journalist, and he gashed his chest with a knife before a 1994 gig in Thailand.

But Edwards’s body has never been found and the mystery surrounding his disappearance has deepened with the passing years.

He has become the indie rock generation’s Elvis – “sighted” in locations including Scotland, Germany, India and the Canary Islands, where a man answering his description sprinted from a bar after being accosted by a British woman who thought she recognised “Richey”.

Edwards’s family have refused to declare him legally dead. Avon and Somerset police consider the case “unsolved, but still open” and say they will consider any information that comes to light.

It is an optimism shared by the Manic Street Preachers, who continued as a trio and have become one of Britain’s most successful bands. They continue to pay royalties into a bank account for the missing guitarist and his presence has informed songs such as Cardiff Afterlife.

The band’s bass player, Nicky Wire, has ruled out any public commemoration of Edwards’s disappearance, describing the 10th anniversary as a “personal thing between the three of us and his mum, dad and sister”.

“We’ll [the band members] talk to each other on the day and we’ll remember some thing funny or stupid or sad,” Wire told the NME.

Simon Price, the author of the 1999 book Everything (A Book about Manic Street Preachers), does not believe Edwards jumped to his death. He says there is evidence suggesting the guitarist wanted to “get away”, not kill himself. It includes the substantial withdrawal Edwards made from an automatic cash machine, food wrappers that suggest he lived in his car for a while, and the individual presents he left for his bandmates at their hotel.

“I feel the facts do support the theory that he just wanted to get away,” said Price. “It wasn’t about suicide, but escape.”

Price believes it is Edwards’s poetic but frighteningly honest lyrics – used to greatest effect on the band’s third album, The Holy Bible – that justify the fans’ enduring adulation. “He was a truly remarkable lyricist,” said Price. “He was also the aesthetic driving force behind the band. He couldn’t play instruments, but in terms of the vision of the band he was increasingly taking charge.”

Is it possible that Edwards is still alive?

“The longer someone is away, the chances diminish that they will turn up,” said the spokesperson for the National Missing Persons Hotline. “But a man who went missing in 1987 at the age of 22 has just turned up recently and he’s slowly rebuilding a relationship with his family. That reminded all of us here that there is always hope.”

Depeche Mode