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blood and roses

  • bob short lp"This album is dedicated to a small club: the squatters of Campbell Buildings in 1979/80. Every year our numbers get fewer but the story lives on," writes Bob Short on the LP cover.

    Yeah. Just like the 100 Club and the Sex Pistols, occupants of the Campbell Buildings in London now number in their mythological thousands.

    Yeah right. Some pasts attract wanna-be’s like flying bugs to apricot jam, others … well, let’s just say you’d give some pasts a wide berth.

  • night comes downNight Comes Down
    By Bob Short
    (Earth Island Books)

    Who could trust time when reason was lost?

    I got pretty lucky. I did all the dumb things and I'm still here.

    First, it's such a delight to read that I've snorked coffee over it several times in my usual cafe, as well as other unpleasant substances on the bus. So, if it's a horror story, it's one where you spray coffee over it, your table, pants and some lady's nice white frock. 

    Perhaps you could instead think of “Night Comes Down” as an amusing memoir with layers of horror? No, that won't work, there's just too much real horror. 

    Even the unreal can still feel like it is real. That hunk of meat in our heads is a totally unreliable narrator. We make excuses for things and pretend things never happened and yet weirdness is always nipping at our heels. Is anything true?

    Perhaps you'll read it and think it's all made up. Strangely enough, Bob Short is (as usual) one step ahead of us.