N.B: Clean, sober, reliable, polite, stylishly dressed, subtly scented (since the last few years) and, above all, competitively priced. But I lived a little first... Provenance I was born in Knotty Ash, Liverpool (on a Friday 13th), then grew up around Penny Lane and Mossley Hill in the pleasant green suburbs.  Working Class Hero Lennon? My arse...(tight, white and hairless, fact fans. Also my only photogenic feature.) Perhaps I can claim this album as part of Liverpool's year of culture. Perhaps not, as I was one of the many who had to leave as soon as possible, and never go back, because I had no interest in football or fighting. And what an awfully good idea to let the creator of Brookside curate an arts festival. As teenagers, guitarist Steve Topping and me both idolised Miles Davis. I never stopped loving the Dark Prince although Steve prefers worshipping himself. (He and Gary Husband once both had very short hair and Mahavishnu clothes, a very unusual look in Leeds in 1974. A barmaid said, "Who are those Kraut poofters?") I studied in Leeds then worked in Hong Kong, Munich and (mostly) London, doing a little jazz (NYJO, Dudu Pukwana, Grand Union Orchestra) and a lot more rock and blues. I toured and recorded with Tom Robinson (composing and playing the only discernible melodic content in his hit song War Baby). I had a lesser involvement with Roy Harper, Kiki Dee, Bert Jansch and Jimmy Witherspoon. We will draw a veil over accompanying a Husband and Wife novelty marimba duo, the fire-eating magician who inadvertently set his flea circus on fire and various other dreadful show business experiences. Once you've accompanied Bonnie Langford or opened for Bernard Manning at Batley Variety Club the only way is up.    Maybe bathing my teenage brain in Beatles juice (and hash and LSD) made me prefer melody, chords and grooves to cackhanded Coltrane impersonations over uneven time signatures, generally accompanied by a cacophonous brass section made up of vegetarian bores, nudists and Guardian readers. Which is proper jazz apparently. Odd there hasn't been another band like Loose Tubes. After all, the public is just gagging for it...  Still, we've got punk jazz, another great leap backwards. Trained musicians pretending to be yobs. Back of the net! Although I always looked up to America, and I hope for them to triumph over primitive ignorance in the present conflict, I was always too lazy or messed up to adequately imitate their jazz masters. However, the late, great Mike Brecker did eventually tell me I sounded good and asked to see my soprano mouthpiece. Which was like one of those strange dreams when the Queen comes round for tea. I had in fact played abysmally. Maybe that sums me up. I'm not a good musician. I just sound good... Back stage at this gig I was repeatedly insulted by the promoter, a badly-dressed four-eyed gargoyle with fierce bad breath and noxious body odour. Only in jazz could such a person be in a position of power. As one of my music school contemporaries once floored him with one punch even I can let this one go. Nice one, Dave. People outside this madhouse think that the Fast Show's jazz sketches are wild satire. They're actually social realism. Which is a long way of saying I don't think music needs a 'Made in America' label. Nor does it need to be sorted by race or gender, even if tokenism so often secures Arts Council Funding. Shall I mention the suffering of my ancestors in the cotton mills of Lancashire? Or the continuation of the slave trade in Africa or all over the Islamic world? Thought not... Loved Up Much as I loved communal bliss, after the pointless misery of alcoholism, I overdid it, like I overdo everything else. (Including these notes). I became heavily addicted to ketamine, experiencing  more than fifty near death experiences - spiritual and actual. This horse tranquiliser and battlefield surgery anaesthetic triggers euphoria, vivid psychedelic trances and the appearances of various deities and demons. It's like being a trainee angel or being inside a movie or back in your past or in a mythical future. It's acid, on acid. (The downside being that you look and act like a total mong.) My first publisher Serpent's Tail preens itself on its 'outlaw voices'. In my case this became all too true, as my addiction deepened. (I won't call it a 'habit' like prolix tit Will Self. Who has to keep mentioning it lest we suspect he's basically just an obsessive cyclist and rambler. It'll be caravanning next.) Five years on K left me a little too familiar with Casualty departments and jail. Eternal bliss is one thing but by the time your addiction has reduced you to selling lewd corrective services to men who would rather be women, as long as their wives don't find out, it's probably time to stop taking drugs.   I live quietly now on a houseboat in a pleasantly Dickensian part of Kent. Mid Life Some people's mid life crisis include a motor bike or an unsuitable haircut. Mine coincided with September 11th (which made mad people just that crucial bit crazier), losing our flat in London, and losing my publisher for flaming Jihad Asshole, a fat oaf who berates his host country in pidgin English. Often accused of Holocaust denial, this far left windbag's music sounds like a car crash in a Casbah, his snakecharming saxophone the usual worthy din affected by the professionally angry - such as Archie 'never knowingly in tune' Shepp and many other Marxists. (Marxist? Hello! You lost...) As my publisher was a rich Communist (I'm not making this up) I was not supposed to challenge someone who is happy to be allied with warmongering religious bigotry and stone age losers like the Socialist Worker's Party. Apparently top revolutionaries live in Hampstead rather than in the jihadist midden he's apparently so concerned about (that'll show his rich right wing father...). And treason is the new black. So much for politics. A game the public can't win.  Then there was anger management therapy -  which didn't work, you'll be amazed to hear. Well, would you take advice from a man who calls himself 'Windy' Dryden? For the first two sessions I was referring to the guru of Rational Emotive Behaviourial Therapy as 'Wendy', believing 'Windy' to be a misprint.  An exceptionally painful divorce followed. My sex, drug and alcohol addictions spiraled. With the handbrake removed I descended (ascended?) deeper into polyamory (which was eventually like getting divorced in triplicate). Further therapy involved countless transvestites, pre and post op transsexuals, and even some genetic girls ("Steady on!"). It proved inconclusive. I returned to being a shaven-headed geezer. Which is where we came in. Older and no wiser. Well, I talk too much. Time to stop. At least I can make people laugh. Often intentionally... Hail Boris! (You berk...) Go Team America! Freedom will prevail, if we are prepared to defend it.  Mark Ramsden May 08