From The Piling System: Stacks and Stacks and Stacks

Spent much of today data mining in my extensive "piling system" - basement stacks - turning up all kinds of gems midst the clutter of almost a third of a century of life in Manchester. Sure to be plenty of blog-ables in there.

All the planning for a Beach Boys show at the G-Mex, including an approach to Sir Bob Scott inviting him to underwrite the thing. It didn't happen. But my, my the tickets were going to be cheap. Possibly where I went wrong all along.

Extensive correspondence with Senegal's maestro Baaba Maal's people over a 10-date UK tour. Cancelled at the last minute, with the band en route. Painful stuff. Particularly with a couple of thousand pounds I could scarcely afford - going south in cash, by Red Star parcel, in a jiffy bag marked "no commercial value".

Recording and publishing contracts a-go-go. Concert contracts paraphenalia for late greats I promoted around 20 years ago ... Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, Dizzy Gillespie, Dennis Brown, The Bhundu Boys. And on the same late members theme, a terrible putative comeback tape from one Marcel King of Sweet Sensation.

Wrangles on visas, wrangles on withholding tax, on income tax, VAT, business rates. Dodgy notes from shifty business partners. Faxes from shiftier booking agents. A three page fax to a record company explaining how to correctly date and to actually sign a royalties cheque. Complete with bricollaged samples.

White label discs, hundreds of demo and sneak preview cassettes - some for eBay there I'll be bound, original artwork for fliers and posters from days of wax and scalpel.

Sedimentary deposits of technology too. No Betamax machine. But a handful of ancient computers, assorted printers, peripherals, jazz drives, zip drives, FDDs, modems, two fax machines, old school apple talk cabling.

Hundreds of back numbers of publications great and small.

And naturally box file upon box file of political papers. Pride of place going to incriminating opposition leaflets. In just one box ... a PPC whom Photoshop LD has gifted a third ear, another PPC with the LD leader before the one before before etc gurning with an apparently blank placard to which has later been photoshopped an apposite slogan, a council candidate trading on a dog collar, and so on and so forth.

So many hot items, so little time.

FOOTNOTE: Looking at my blogger dashboard there are also literally hundreds of part-prepped and seemed-too-edgy-at-the-time stories in pipeline. Perhaps I'll get some of those moving through the system these next couple of weeks? We'll have to wait and see.

There's also a "true life drama serial" script: "The No Foresight Saga". The anti-hero someone who is mightily upset that the world's opinion of him does not quite match his own high falluting appraisal. What a pompous prick! Remember mate: Pride comes before a fall.