i think we are here for two more weeks or so… this year in the UK we have played a few of these ‘stately homes’ gigs… these are concerts put on on the grounds of grand mansions in order to i presume supplement the income of these places now that there are no more serfs available to work for free… shows are held out of doors on the great front lawns of fantastic palatial houses, the type of joints one sees in james bond etc films… theres something actually really great about these shows, people come and set up picnic tables and get well smashed and sing along… i keep feeling like the travelling minstrel show entertaining the people who work the lands for the lord… in fact all thats missing is his lordship looking out of the illuminated upper floor windows (actually not totally absent; we did one show for lord and lady Marsh at their ‘speed festival’, racing cars, the pink ‘thunderbirds’ car on hand was amazing… anyhow the Marsh’s were particularly gracious and forthcoming, so thanx to them) the paris show was particularly fantastic, i wish we were over there more often, i was amazed at how crazy the french crowd got at the gig, really enjoyed it… barbara and akira got back to new york in one piece, we had a little 1 year birthday party for a, by now she knows everyone in the band quite well and was cutely surprised by a room full of large people singing at her… im starting to get messages about ‘fahrenheit 9-11’, i havent gotten time to see it yet but barb told me its playing at the mall(!) back home, i really have hope now that we are gonna see the end of this period of madness, anything has to be better than whats going on now, (again i have very little faith in current systems of government, i think they all need to be overhauled) keep the comments coming, a while back i’d asked you all to send me general weirdness, pics, dreams, ufo encounters etc. this has dropped off somewhat so here is the request again we will be back in the states doing shows in about 6 weeks or so, three weeks off after europe stay cheerful

day off in london there is a difficult balance struck here between days off and fatigue from playing too many in a row, clem goes on about being put off his form by days off and there is a momentum that is developed by playing a lot…anyway i was so fucking wiped out the other night, i got some kind of violent virulent baby germ and woke up sweating and miserable at two a.m. as a result i was pretty well out of it in birmingham which was very sad as it was a particularly enthusisatic group, hopefully i wasnt missed too much… thanx for all the comments we are pleased that people are picking up on the addition of various older songs etc. its hard to tell from crowd responses what people are reacting to so the e-mails help… james brown and the chili p’s in the park yesterday… i actually got this in a message from another seemingly intelligent person “as to the war and England — lets not forget that they do not have a free press — I know we make fun of ours often but at least we can criticize the govt if we want to == the British are not afforded that right.” i’m reluctant to explain my reaction to statements like this for fear of going off on a long rambling rant… i personally believe that the entire western media is so controlled and manipulated that it isnt even fucking funny anymore, the american press/media is so tainted and slanted its insane, we are subject to soap opera disguised as information, innuendo, campaigning and special interest group advertising presented as ‘news’… its unfortunate that there are so many of these capsule explanations of reality floating around, simplistic ‘one liners’ are a danger in the face of complex world conditions… i dont know maybe this guy was kidding i was really conflicted about quoting the message, i just cant believe anyone really has that kind of 1950’s kind of view of things… the “B-Girls” were a new york based all girl band from the late 80’s-90’s… (thats an answer to a query)

manchester england 9:45 am shows are big fun and the band is progressing at leaps and bounds, very tight and organized, i remember getting to this place with it on other occasions; where i think about guitar parts and elements of the songs a lot during the days, we spend more time working things out during the sound checks, we are adding new songs to the repertoire pretty rapidly, trying out ideas with greater dexterity… picture this was a fairly big hit here and is received very dramatically, Debbie delivers it with a lot of emotion and the whole thing frequently has me quite moved as we are playing it… fans have been really great, so again thank you all for your support… i dont know what to add to this its pretty simple now i was looking forward to getting here to get a different view of things, but oddly im finding that the war situation takes up little space here, much less than i’d expected… perhaps there is an element of avoidance in the media… i just read Wm. Gibsons new novel “Pattern Recognition”, i recommend it heartily, it really is one if not his best work, first one that is set in the present tense… we put up a link to his site which has a really great chat/discussion area… i’ve always been a tremendous fan of his, have been lucky enough to correspond with him over the years… some of you may recall that we collaborated with him on “Dogstar Girl”, a song from d’s solo record “Debravation”, that was one of my all time favorite musical projects (has a piano solo by Giger) though it’s very much under the radar, i don think many are familiar… i REALLY want to thank everyone involved with the “Undone” grass roots radio push back in the states… this may be setting some kind of precedent, im not sure that fans have taken direct promotion into their own manic little hands before, i dont pay attention to the ‘trade’ magazines like billboard etc but i would think that this kind of operation might get some attention, certainly deserves it… forgive me for not mentioning names, i know Charles is involved, thnx to everyone who’s helped it was hot as hell for two days here, now its back to usual euro-gray and damp, im out of stuff to write, talking about the weather… sometimes im torn between loving and hating the fucking computer, theres always some annoying new thing going on with it… again such a weird period in human history; i dont think people have ever been in a place like this in the past where we all know whats coming and are frustrated by its not being here yet… i certainly am amongst those who would plug my head in without any hesitation

sooo back briefly… as i figured various people misconstrued the ‘egypt’ stuff i was trying to put into words, i got a few messages about slavery etc… the way i understand it pyramid building and various activities in those days were in fact devotional acts undertaken voluntarily by the whole of the community… in certain esoteric psychology moses represents the ‘ur-father’ , male element that undermined the feminine nature of egyptian culture… more basically many people have bought into the hollywood view of reality and history… (for ex the ‘thumbs up/down’ audience reaction to gladatorial events is a total invention of hollywood silent films, is not based on any history or reality) i got a very thoughtful letter from Bill that includes this: “The division of Church and State (which began with Machiavelli and grew to full bloom under Voltaire) is one of the greatest advances in all of Western Civilization. It may, in fact, be the finest thing the West will ever contribute to the world.”… and this is just what im on about, how we’ve been taught this junk and dont question it… of course in a context of material finance based western religion we are probably better off having laws that keep it at bay but we have gotten everything backwards these days, so called ‘primitive society’ is, was way out ahead… what im awkwardly attempting to suggest is that the west is in desperate need of spirituality in its day to day existence, that we already have the religions of money technology etc etc deeply imbedded in our culture… anyone who wants to check out a more radical view of egyptology should try and find a book called “Serpent In The Sky” by John West which deals with the work of Schwaller de Lubicz who was a fascinating character, mystic etc over to the UK shortly i’ll keep at it here from there

this leg of the tour is winding down into a break before europe… in cincinnati… im really sorry about the detroit show being cancelled, i’m not exactly sure why, mostly cause of weak ticket sales but there may have been additional factors… im fairly certain we’ll be back after the UK and summer jaunt in europe… thanx for all the nice words about the various concerts, the A&E deal… i’ll pass along comments to D. etc so… ok jimmy is just not able to be out right now he’s got “issues”, stuff hes dealing with and i dont really know whats gonna happen with him in regards to the live situation, hopefully he’ll contribute to any upcoming blondie recordings, everyone is on good terms and thats about all i can report… again im really glad that you liked the live by request event i for one didnt have a clue as to how we came off and the next night at the boston show i noticed that some of the other guys were equally shell shocked, its kind of weirdly terrifying to see yourself on video, film etc… its like seeing some alien creature (me) surrounded by familiar people, i know plenty of actors who cant look at themselves, their recorded images laura sent a link to a pretty grimly fascinating site http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm … check this, its a personal view of i presume a russian girls bike trip thru chernobyl, site of the nuclear disaster i was encouraged to see that bush is finally facing some difficulty in “the polls” as bullshit as all of that is, apparently no incumbent pres. has made it back with the current numbers he’s got, something in the mid 40s% area… i guess i should be urging everyone to vote… i also saw/heard on the news that the republican campaign budget is over 100 million dollars while the democrats have got like two in theirs… i got this in an actually positive e-mail “Chris: I am a major fan of Blondie and of you so please don’t get political on me. Please don’t be a lefty. I and many of your fans would be crushed. If you are a lefty just keep it hush-hush. You’re better than that” is this an example of the way people are thinking in such superficial ways? one would imagine that somebody who could use a computer would have a little deeper understanding into at the very least what some of these terms are about… maybe just another side effect of all the labeling that goes on… communism for whatever its early proponents may have intended is as failed a system in todays world as is capitalism… i dont have any alignment with any existing political system… i think all the systems of government around now are antiquated, should be completely re-vamped… the ancient egyptian culture is probably a much better model, a system whereby art religion and commerce were all one and the same… i think the reason egyptian culture went on almost unchanged for three thousand years was because it was successful… the changes that undermined it in the ancient world are based partly in the ideas of separation of religion and state that we are taught are such advances… so now people are desperately seeking some kind of spiritual life which certainly doesnt come from the church and the masses are turning to rampant materialism… at the same time increased interest in the occult ufos and all manner of odd stuff is an example of peoples unfulfilled yearnings for things beyond… technology is fast becoming the new religion and ive seen it suggested that soon machines will be so complex that no single person will be able to explain their workings there by putting them even further along the path of deification what?… gotta go more soon

today in wash dc… this place says a lot about the culture what an odd state of contradictory affairs exist in amercica now… the streets here are well populated with homeless, mostly men, as we arrived from boston in the early morning many of these half dead souls were waking up and stirring in their sidewalk encampments, cardboard boxes, garbage bags etc… further on an ambulance was removing some guy who hadnt made it through the night… i recall that on past trips dc was home to vast slum areas… this condition seems to have been corrected but for whatever reason the nations capital is still filled w/homeless , maybe its partly cause of housing costs going up but whatever its just weird… we walked around georgetowns main drag which resembles a street from universal studio in florida… in the midst of this ultra straight reality is of all things a tattoo joint and i was amused to consider that some of the guys in golf shirts and women in stepford wives drag might be sporting massive tribal tats under their disguises (not) actually after seeing the tattoo place i looked but didnt see a single tattoo anywhere… the night before in boston was a very great show and i wished that it’d been the one on tv but of course part of the reason it was good was due to us being relaxed in comparison to the tv event, everyone said that they felt quite released to be back in the real world as it were…the gig itself was really an odd one as it took place in a large club that was divided up into various size rooms and at the same time we played there was a concert of local punk/thrash type bands going on right on the other side of a dividing wall, when a song would end there would be a rumble of awesome sond that would arrive from the stage rear, i dont think our audience heard it though… i heard a bit of the “Street Dogs” who i think were the headliners and were good (they gave me a t-shirt)… (on that note i should mention another band i ran into in minneapolis [i think] “All The Pretty Horses”, i really like them, have been listening to their cd, they’ve got a site up, very cool) now i also couldnt help but feel that one of the reasons the boston show was so enthusiastic was due also to the A&E show, the power of tv and celebrity myth and all… but debbie was very on, relaxed… (she said later that if the crowd hadnt been singing in hanging on the telephone she would have missed a cue, that pertaining to the state of general burnt outness that lingered from the tv show) we found dc’s china town which is tiny and didnt yield any asian films except for basic kung fu stuff… went on to see kill bill 2 which is pretty great, i liked it way more than #1,my only problem with it was that i dont really think the ‘elle’ character could have really poisoned the chinese masters fishheads, i mean she couldnt really have killed him so easily… when we got to the theater i was amazed to see a big banner for “Riddick”…none of us had heard anything about this movie being made… i was a huge fan of “Pitch Black” have seen it many times, i checked out the very elaborate ‘riddick’ site (i wish we had fifty grand to spend on the blondie site or whatever that thing costs) and i got to say im really fucking disappointed with what this thing looks like its gonna be, pitch black was a terrific sci-fi film and i had had thought that ol’ vin was gonna go on to be a really hip star, instead he has just done a load of dumbass hollywood crap and ‘riiddick’ appears to be another overblown cgi hollywood piece of un-original mass produced commercial junk with feeble stabs at ‘Dune’ references… very sad, still sticking to asian horror films for now… oh i did see that Quentin has tagged his name onto the Jet Li movie “Hero” and probably is involved with it finally getting a full blown US release… i for one never appreciated that there are some great major big budget films coming from asia that never see tha light of day in the states… ‘hero’ is maybe four years old already, is a massive epic feature, i saw it a few years ago and was surprised at it being ‘under the radar’… in our current quest i’ve come accross a current similar chinese big budget production called “Double Vision” which is in a way almost cooler than ‘hero’, its a modern genre film that is like a lot of formula hollywwod ‘occult serial killer’ except it deals with Taoist/ Chinese magic

the big A&E show was last night, i hope it was ok, it was pretty exhausting, lot of work but felt good, hopefully i didnt come off like too much of an idiot, im not sure that i really care though but all is vanity as the fella says, D got a bit strangeled by the smoke and squelched the first note of the first chorus of maria, later she growled at the director, im not sure if that got out on the air, for me that was kind of the only semi major mishap, when we do tv they frequently want to have smoke lingering in the air to enhance the mood of the lights and she really dislikes the effect it has on her throat, so they werent supposed to have it on but did… it took us a few songs to warm up and the top of the show may have been a bit stiff… all in all tho i enjoyed it, i of course would like to be on live tv more regularly… anyway i hope you who watched or will see it liked it and im grateful that we were able to do it, the A&E people were fantastic and accommodating to the max so thanx are very due to them if you liked the thing… so now earlyish morning in NYC in this crappy but expensive dump that is reminiscent of a college dorm more than an upscale hotel, the beds are more like cots and they sag big time, dirty beat up rooms etc, if it was just a little bit worse it would be cool, but its kind of in the middle… spending a lot of time in hotels is perhaps making me more critical… actually the dvd player and flat tv is cool so i shouldnt complain… speaking of, i gave you a bum steer in that two of the films id identified as chineese are actually korean, i lose face as they say, “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and “Memories” are still two of the coolest movies i’ve seen in a long time, “Mr. V” is really fucking brutal and i wouldnt reccomend it for everyone but its just weirdly beautiful at the same time (“Ichi the Killer” is released in a US package, is a great one that can be found in tower or virgin)… now another one thats just amazing is “Volcano High”, again just fantastic by any standards, if this one doesnt come out in the US i’ll be flabbergasted…. sort of like matrix set in high school, funny great, very hip… we’ve been finding these movies in various chinatown areas, have hit toronto, SF and NYC so far, all one has to do is go to an asian dvd store and look for ghost and horror films, again im so impressed by whats coming out of the east with these things, its a whole genre and its got to break in the states pretty soon so if you want to get in on something really fresh do check it out what else… Akira and Barbara have been out with us for a few weeks, the baby thing is really great, she came to the rehersal for the show and seemed to be impressed by all of the lights and monitors and stuff, so far she hasnt really been at any of the concerts cause they are loud and we dont want to blow her ears out, at least not without her permission, she gets horribly cuter all the time everyone who writes is always so polite and nice that i get a sort of kick out of messages that say how screwed up i am, that i am a communist etc. problem is i am really quite concerned about what is happening to american culture, its easy to throw the ‘un-american’ lable around, the world is just too small now, i cant believe people are still thinking like this, that we can just cut ourselves off and live in some kind of island void… so who is really surprised by prisoners being abused, i thought that this stuff was a part of what war is all about, i watched bush apologising and the caption under him was “damage control”, everyone knows whats going on, that hes more pissed off about looking bad, losing face than he is about people being killed and beaten up… the whole ‘shock and outrage’ deal is just so much bullshit its stupid that they find it necessary to even get into it… war is about horrible things, no matter how much we may enjoy blowing things up in video games the reality is grim and part of the problem is the blurring thats going on, the merging of entertainment and news for example, more and more i hear these ‘action’ movie soundtracks under news events on tv, what is this saying if not that the event is somehow entertaining, not existing in the dull world of mundane reality… the ads for the army are like video games, its a bad thing, theres not going to be an army commercial with some guy all blown up screaming… ok ive gotta go… to be continued thanx everyone

wound down enough to write… in milwaukee in the midst of a lot of large buildings, some kind of bleak financial district… shows have been improving last night was minneapolis, nice to meet the local troops… ironically from the stage i could see a large illuminated billboard advertising brittney spears and blink 182 at some larger venue… seattle was a lot of fun as well… after much effort i finally got rid (or at least got around) the effects of some miserable virus type thing that kept changing my homepage to “blank”, blank being not even very interesting just some dumbass search thing… i thought i had more to say but dont… we have been watching modern chinese horror movies on the bus, a lot of ghost related stuff, but some really amazing things, i recommend ‘haunted office’ and one called ‘memories’, i dont think these things are available like at tower or virgin etc. one has to track them down, we got a bunch in san fran’s chinatown area… tonight is at some casino situation , i much prefer clubs and bar venues but we’ll see (cynthia sent me a link which i’ll pass along http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011015&s=johnson , a slightly radical but to me very viable overview of american foreign policy stupidity… we still are rushing towards some cliff or other… being in america right now, i forget that when we are out of the country one gets a very different view of whats going on, we’ve been here for a while now, it’ll be kind of enlightening to get over to europe later this summer and get a different perspective) so its nice to see everyone at the shows, dont hesitate to try and say hello, sometimes we are rushed and cant do too much by way of relating to people after shows, this leg of the tour has some really long ass drives in the bus so there is a tendency for us to head out quickly after playing… what?… nothing… thats about it… blank ness… aroooo… etc… thanx for the mail keep it coming

tour has kicked off, LA, the first show was a bit of a struggle, the band would have been happy with some warming up in less of a high profile venue, the transition to my new cool guitar is dramatic, im still working on it… but D seemed to have a good time and we were subject to favorable reports… best part was i got to talk with Gina Gershon for quite a while after the show..! she’s a gorgeous creature, and really sweet and down to earth, somehow more beautiful in person… also in attendance at the after ritual was Lemmie, I don’t know if its public record or not but I’ve know him for slightly longer than I have known Debbie, i met him when he was still in Hawk during my second trip to the UK, we had some mutual acquaintances and i have always remembered how friendly and gracious he was in spite of my being a civilian… i met DH within a month of returning to nick, sept 73… Rodney introduced us, he’s finally a little more well known as a result of the ‘Mayor’ movie and i saw him being greeted with “hi mayor” a couple of times… Rose McGowan, another doll, we heard Will Farrell, Mickey Bourke were about but didn’t see them, Roy Thomas Baker, Nancy Sinatra, also Tom Scott was a nice surprise (horns on rapture, the sax solo on the Taxi Driver soundtrack among others)…also there was a very well known actor/comedian who will remain anonymous here cause he was so trashed and stoned it was an achievement of some kind that he was able to stand… probably others that i didn’t see… the House Of Blues on sunset is quite the irony, here we have all these well heeled individuals paying to go to this place that’s done up to look like some trashed out southern shotgun shack, the kind of place that in the reality of its real situation people only attended by default cause they couldn’t afford better so i got a new guitar from Fender, its a strat that’s covered with black leather and is an attempt to reference the one i used in the old days, Bob Wall the guy who does the leather work for Jesse James’s bike company did the cover on the guitar… we went out to Fullerton to pick it up at the Fender plant and got the tour, Paul was worried that we would be ‘demystified’ by seeing the guts of the operation but actually there was something great about the operation, it had a hands on kind of feel even though it was on a grand scale… the weirdness is stuff like the insanely exact copy of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar, we met this guy John who is doing a series of 100 of them, said it took him about a week to do one… it has every nick and scratch and bit of rust copied exactly from a large color photo of the original, its really amazing in a crazy fan obsessive way, but even John the builder said that he thought it was sad that most of these guitars would just wind up hanging on walls rather than be played cause the one we tried was really a great instrument…(now that i ponder it a bit, the SRV guitar copy (as well as the line of ‘aged’ “relic” guitars that they make are a lot like the House of Blues joint, a brand new guitars that looks like beat up old ones with a lot of personality) so tonight is this Divas event and we are here in the heart of American madness in lass Vegas… the duet with Eve is looking pretty great, that’s with the house band, Eve has written a new 16 bar rap that’s very clever, starts off with the rhythm of the basic Debbie rap and then goes off then there’s a duet with Joss Stone of one way with us, (apparently Debbie insisted that the band play,) she is very cute and her approach to melisma is more tasteful than a lot of what i hear… now honestly i have mixed feelings about this whole thing (as does DH i know) on one level its pretty straight and lame and the whole diva thing is sort of like celebrating the idea of throwing fits about your dressing room being the wrong color… on the other hand its nice to just be out there on TV… the people doing the show are very nice and as helpful as they can be, after initial tension we (the band) loosened up and the thing might actually be a fun event… i looked at a couple of ‘divas’ message threads and there’s a lot of mention of the possibility of DH and Cyndi singing together… aint going happen this time, it was never proposed to us at any rate… so yeah lass Vegas is the most forlorn awful fucking place in the universe, maybe im just projecting but everyone seems to be in a kind of half dead trance… walking around the casino downstairs, the old ladies zoned out feeding income (presumably) into the ‘loose slots’, its so sad its crazy, i keep thinking about all the images of the war that are coming back over airwaves, superimposing these explosions and burning vehicles onto the rows of cheerfully jingling machines (the proverbial ATM machine that you put your card into and get a note back that says “thank you for the money”) i keep wondering how this can be going on here at the same time as all the mayhem is happening in the rest of the world… who saw general so and so collapsing during the press briefing in Iraq the other day? im not surprised that i cant find anything about it now though I’ve done a bunch of searches… it was shown in conjunction with stories about the fatigue of the troops over there, that 20 thousand of them who are supposed to be coming back this week have been told they have to stay on for another 3-4 months… he was carried off the podium and the story was that ‘he had the flu’… was he really demonstrating his solidarity for the exhausted soldiers who’ve been there for over a year already? was he just fried in the same way? Bob Woodward’s book saying that 700 million in funds was diverted from Afghanistan to the build up for the Iraq invasion long before the official declaration of war, that bush asked the pentagon to start planning the invasion as early as nov. 2001, long before any of the info about the ‘weapons of mass etc’ was in… not much of a surprise really couldn’t the money that’s generated by the insanity of lass Vegas be put to better use? well got go to the dress rehearsal for tonight… see you all at the shows and such

im sitting here in LA watching this incredible bullshit of the war and 9-11 buck passing on CNN… things got quite hectic in NYC and i had to wait to get out of town to write… everytime things pick up i get more mail… im noticing that a lot of you are very in tune with what im thinking; sending stuff that ive noticed or been aware of in the world/media etc… for ex. the lady in mexico i think who did her own cesarian, that movie chasing buddah, many other items, however many things like the ufo sighting by the mars rover and of course the UK alien potato chips are things i missed so keep them coming… the first time around it took us two and a half albums before things broke in the US, maybe we’re gonna see a repeat of this pattern, (for those of you who dont know parallel lines was on the US charts for six months before HOG went to number one) so im cautiously optimistic at the beginning of this cycle… im told that i’ll be out of debt (oh you didnt know?) by next year at any rate (for those of you in left field who dabble in occult weirdness you might be familiar with the old magic square that goes: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS which includes the name of the idiot now testifying on tv about 9-11 who is no doubt a minion of the illuminatis anyway etc etc) so we were at the two satellite radio stations xm and sirius and im gonna try and hustle one of them into possibly giving me some airtime though im not exactly sure what for yet… i appreciate all of your efforts to get us on the air but im kind of afraid that radio as it is now is a lost cause (special thanx to scottie who says he was offering his romantic favors to dj’s in his area in exchange for playing goodboys) today we are going to go out to fender to pick up a new custom guitar they made for me… im pretty fried, woke up at like 4 am here, still on new york baby time, 6 am most days in nyc… what else… have been reading mishimas tetralogy “the sea of fertility” for the second time, i cant believe how much of it didnt sink in the first time around… its pretty dense stuff but fits in well with whats going on in the world now… whats sad is how little of his (mishimas) writing has been translated, as i understand it only a small percentage has been done… liked hellboy a lot, finally saw the last of the lord of the rings… um… about it for now im sure theres more but im only part awake