Monday 26 July 2010

Keep it Greasy

Yes things have been quiet on the Great Men front - we've even been playing some acoustic guitars! But don't worry, we'll be back on the feedback wagon very soon, with another new track on its way. In the meantime, I'm going to bring you up to speed on my travels and some great men I have encountered along the way, via the medium of photograph.


A Goddamn sexual tyrannosaur!


The King!


Dr King

but my favourite of all, playing the wonderful music of his father ...

The Dweez!

And as a special bonus, here's me keeping it greasy in Memphis:

Great Men will return!

Wednesday 7 July 2010

World Cupdate

As you're no doubt aware, over the past few decades Christianity has finally been overthrown as the primary religion of England. In fact traditional religion as our grandparents knew it has been sidelined altogether, and in its place we have an uprising of cults vying for attention. Pick up your nearest paper and you'll doubtless see evidence of the 2 largest: Pointless Celebrity and Sport. The proletariat line up and pick sides. Followers of the former are generally identified by their Heat magazine and hen night screeches, while the latter fly the flag of their favourite Roman soldier for reasons they do not understand.

And what of the non-believers? Keen to assimilate every last semblance of free thought, the cults hold regular recruitment drives. The Cult Of Pointless Celebrity attacks on 2 fronts: packing naive young women into theatres where they are brainwashed by the masterful acting talents of Sarah Jessica Parker, then picking up the stragglers in their homes via 24 hour footage of idiots in a living room, effectively creating a mirror feedback loop.

The Cult of Sport on the other hand hold regular tournaments in which their leaders demonstrate their prowess for spitting, shorts-wearing, and burning money. Every 4 years one particular such event comes along called The Soccerball World Cup. The wise retreat to their Anderson shelters and enter a 6 week long hibernation. Unfortunately being only a couple of years old, my house is not equipped with such 1940s luxuries. Instead I have been holed up in my studio. When the Footyball Game comes on I ensure it doesn't penetrate my cranium by creating a protective wall of drums, guitars and composition. I hope that, having survived so far myself, I can help the future generations avoid a Robert Neville fate by sharing these tools of defense with you.

By following this link you can hear the very latest Widdleman VS The World Cup weapons: Germany 0 1 Spain and Uruguay 2 3 Netherlands. You can also pick up the recent England 0 0 Algeria (soon to be a Great Men track called Spectators At An Execution) as well as dipping into old favourites including a Rugger World Cup track featuring Tom Hanks on guest vocals.

Essential provisions for surviving the cults.

Thursday 1 July 2010

American Dream: Springsteen VS Stallone

Great Men are great fans of America. I took a less than cannonball run speed coast to coast road trip a few years ago and C-Bomb spent some of his formative years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Presumably he was baptised and learned to swim in the warm brown waters of the Mississippi, the Old Miss, the Old Man…

The American Dream is a simple one – that anyone no matter their background can through their own ingenuity, hard work and strength of will – become somebody. This creates a dichotomy of equality and aspiration, all men might be born equal but that don’t necessarily mean that they die equal. This contradiction seems to me to inform the lurches and crises of confidence that have typified post civil rights America. 2 men also seem to illustrate the choices and dilemmas that have faced the recent generations of Americans who were the first not guaranteed to enjoy a better standard of living than their parents. 2 men whose work have scratched at the neuroses of an entire nation and illustrate that nation and its people at their best and worst. A nation that schizophrenically holds both Charlton Heston and Woody Guthrie as heroes.