Jack Martin rides The Tumbleweed Trail

To celebrate the release of my new western, The Tumbleweed Trail - to be published this January  by Black Horse Westerns and available now, I thought I'd post a little something about the man who gave me my pen name.

And so I present the real Jack Martin

Jack Martin. The man whom I looked up to as a kid, he seemed ten feet tall, and the man whose name I use for my western fiction. 

Jack Martin was a coal miner in the South Wales coal fields - indeed it was the dust from this environment that eventually killed him - pneumoconiosis, black lung disease,was common among a certain age group in the village I was raised in and the sound of chesty coughs often accompanied the dawn chorus.

The original

 Coal mining with the then primitive conditions was a  arduous job and in those days there was only basic safety equipment. Lives were often lost in explosions and one time the level where my grandfather was working flooded and over 20 men were drowned. That was all before and I learned much of this from my grandmother and Gramps never really talked about it.

I was born in 1965 and Gramps had retired by the time I was five so I can't really remember him working. He was a tall man, always dressed immaculately, even when doing the garden he wore a shirt and tie, as people of his generation did. He grew the best tomatoes around and my first ever paid job was collecting horse manure from the mountain for his garden. I think he gave me something like 10p a bucket which was good money in those far off days when the world was black and white and the sun always shone.

My Grandmother often referred to him as Father Christmas and although they would argue as people did in those days, about anything really - leaving the door open, not wiping your feet and trampling garden over the mat, their relationship was a strong and loving one. They both spoiled me rotten and I always got the latest comics and would go on the annual British Legion day trip to Porthcawl with them. Though often only me and my nan went. Gramps stayed home and probably went for a sneaky pint down the legion. He did so like a sneaky pint or two.

Hey, sorry about the ancient history but I feel almost old enough to remember black and white radio.
Gramps loved the westerns and was always reading a western novel. When there was a western on TV I would watch it with him and he would tell me stories of when he was in the wild west (completely invented, of course. The furthest West he ever went was Tonypandy) and in these stories he would be teamed up with John Wayne or Gary Cooper but never Clint Eastwood - he never really liked him and would refer to him as an unshaven hooligan. As a young boy I believed every word of these wild stories.

Jack Martin MK 2

Gramps was a natural storyteller.

Jack Martin - it was his  love of westerns was passed onto me and apart from the fact that Eastwood is my all time fave, our tastes are very much the same - John Wayne is still the ultimate man's man, and the cowboy creed is  a design for life.

When I published my first western novel, Tarnished Star with Robert Hale LTD I was proud that it contained the byline - by Jack Martin. When trying to decide on a pen name to keep my western fiction separate from my other stuff it was only natural to use Gramp's name.

He's been gone now for close on forty years and I still miss him but I guess he's still here, inside me - his ideals, his ways, his humour and when Tarnished Star by Jack Martin finally sees print it is as much his work as mine. For without him I would never have developed my interest and love for the American West.

So saddle up and check out Jack Martin's western page HERE

Available now

Book Review: The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

I've read several Cornwell books over the years, but the historical fiction genre is something that I only dip into from time to time - in fact, I think the last book I read by this author was Stonehenge which I remember really enjoying and so looking for a change of pace I picked up The Last Kingdom from my TBR pile.

I knew nothing of the BBC TV series when I picked up the book (though I this last few weeks binged watched all three seasons) and I'm kind of glad since the story came to me fresh - or at least as fresh as a story so heavily based on actual historic events can be. After all, we learned all about Alfred the Great and the Saxons at school, so I had a basic knowledge of the period and the established facts. However after reading the book you have the sense of having been there, for whilst you travel between the covers you are indeed transported to Wessex, Mercia and beyond.

And that, I think, is  Cornwell's biggest talent - he holds an  immense skill in creating readable stories, and pushing his  research and knowledge into the background so that the action drags the reader into this world. Before  you know it you are completely enthralled in the world of the books and it's as if you are there in Wessex, experiencing the day to day life of the characters. So faithfully does the author transport you to a time and place that the reader might as well have been issued with a passport - that 9th Century England stamp will sure stand out between the stamps for two weeks in Ibiza, during which I dined that fat bird while the warm sea breeze blew through our hair three years ago,  and next year's trip to the States when I, no doubt will entertain an equally voluptuous bird or two. Hey, I'm nothing if not an optimist.

'I am Ulthred son of Ulthred.'

The book starts in the year 866 with Ulthred, then still called Osbert. He is, at this point nine-years-old and it is his older brother who took his father's name. During the day the elder brother is killed by Danes and so Osbert becomes Ulthred. The story then moves forward until almost a year later when Ulthred is almost ten years old and find himself going to war for for the first time.


'That was the year 867, and it was the first time I went to war. And I have never ceased,'

Young Ulthred expects to fight in the shield wall but he is told by his father that he will not, he is told that he will watch and he will learn, and throughout the book the shield wall becomes something of a metaphor for the journey to manhood. For although Ulthred faces and overcomes considerable dangers throughout the story it is not until he finally fights in a shield wall in the closing sections of the book that he truly considers himself a warrior. But it is during his first experience of war that his father and their fyrd are completely wiped out, and he is taken away by the Danes.

Ulthred is at first treated like just another slave but soon he gains a new father in the Dane, Ragnar who treats his well and as the years pass, the young grows towards adulthood and begins to consider himself more Dane than Saxon. However Ulthred will soon follow his destiny and end up serving King Alfred in his many battles against the Danes as the visionary Saxon King sets about the long task of achieving a unified England.

The author uses many of the events depicted in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles to give his series a sense of reality, buy he is constantly aware of the need to tell a good yarn, to keep the reader turning the pages and he does this so well - as a writer myself, I'm envious of the author's talent in delivering a house-brick of a book that doesn't outstay its welcome, and indeed leaves the reader eager for more.

Apparently this series of books has only recently been re-named the Last Kingdom series because of the success of the TV series - they were originally published under the collective: The Warrior series, and as soon as I closed the covers on The Last Kingdom, I immediately turned the first page of the second book in the series, The Pale Horseman so expect a review soon.

Heroes of Comedy: Benny Hill

Political Correctness is actually cultural oppression and I despise it and all those who spout the nonsense - Benny Hill, the British comedian who remains hugely popular across the world, was a martyr in the fight against political correctness. The Benny Hill Show was broadcast from 1955 until 1991, when he was pulled from the air following a decade in which a new wave of British comedians kicked against the working class comedy that Hill did so well. One of his best known detractors was Ben Elton who famously said Hill's comedy was responsible for rape - Elton later said his comments were misunderstood but what he should have said was that Hill was far funnier that any of Elton's so called Marxist comedians.

Hill lived for his work, and following his axing he grew depressed, became something of a hermit and was found dead in his flat in 1992. In his unopened mail was a contract for a new television show.

It's a sad end to a man who gave joy to so many with his harmless brands of saucy seaside humour and slapstick. I recently picked up an old LP record of Hill's comedy songs and I was reminded of just how good he was. Yeah, his jokes are corny but they raise a smile and some of the songs on this album are absolutely wonderful.

Armistice

Available now in both print and digital editions.


Looks at the Cardiff Pals and other local regiments who fought in the Great War and how the experience of war impacted on the area, from the initial enthusiasm for sorting out the German Kaiser in time for Christmas 1914, to the gradual realization of the enormity of human sacrifice the families of Cardiff were committed to as the war stretched out over the next four years. An important place for Coal export this book looks at how the balance between working and fighting was achieved by the Dockyard workers

The Great War affected everyone. At home there were wounded soldiers in military hospitals, refugees from Belgium and later on German prisoners of war. There were food and fuel shortages and disruption to schooling. The role of women changed dramatically and they undertook a variety of work undreamed of in peacetime. Meanwhile, men serving in the armed forces were scattered far and wide. Extracts from contemporary letters reveal their heroism and give insights into what it was like under battle conditions.



Amazon, Pen and Sword Books, Waterstones and anywhere books are sold.....

Commando Comics Commemorate Armistice

The Commando series of comic books have been going strong since 1961  - something quite unique in British comics. Sure there are some titles that have been going longer - The Beano  springs to mind, but the Commando comics are the only adventure series to enjoy such a long run. Noted for their distinctive 7 × 5½ inch, 63 page format the Commando comics  have remained more popular than many other British war comics, and some would say British comics in general, despite their simplistic stories and black and white artwork, with only the covers in colour.

The series continues to prosper and these days digital editions are released alongside the regular books, taking the series into a future un-imagined when the first title rolled off the presses all those years ago.

This month Commando are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, with four new titles in the shops now that are based around that momentous day when the guns fell silent.

Titles are War Bus by George Low with artwork by Manuel Benet

Danny's War by Iain McLaughlin with artwork by Dafeo and Morhain

Stolen Glory by C G Walker with artwork by Carmoa

Front Line Fear by Robert Smith with artwork by Janek Maysiak

All are available now priced £2.25

Danny's War, although a stand alone story, is part of a five part series with the subtitle, The Weekes War - the Weekes family are all involved in the Great War and each issue will presumably centre on on a different member of the family, with the first telling the story of Danny Weekes, a trench-hardened Captain. The second and third story featuring the Weekes family will be out November 15th 2018.

Book Review: The Return of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger

After recently reading and loving the novel, Little Big Man I had to dive straight into the sequel, which was originally published back in 1999 - It turns out that Jack Crabb faked his death at the end of the Little Big Man novel in order to get rid of that pesky journalist, and now he's back, at 112 years of age to narrate the rest of his story into one of those new tape recording machines. And the book, like its predecessor is an absolute delight.

"I had had my own grievance against Custer, whose attack on the Cheyenne camp on the Washita, years earlier, had resulted in the loss of my Indian wife and child, and thought for a while I'd kill him if I could, but I never got the chance, and now that somebody had done it with no help from me, I both lacked a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of purpose as to what I'd do with the rest of my life."

-- from the first chapter of 'The Return of Little Big Man'

Narrated of course in the first person; a chatty style as if Crabb is narrating his story onto tape for future generations, and the end of this one is absolutely excellent and both definitively finishes the story, while somehow leaving it open for yet another volume. Though with the author having died, Patrick Bergar that is not Jack Crabb at the young age of 89 back in 2014 it seems that the story is now over.

Once again Jack is as hand to witness historic events in the old West - Hickock's murder, of which Crabb sees himself as responsible, the gunfight at,, or rather close to the OK Corral and the murder of his good friend Sitting Bull by reservation police in 1890. He's also at hand when Queen Victoria comes out of a quarter of a century mourning to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Circus, of which Jack is a part. Other historical figures come in and out of the book - Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Bat Masterton and Libby Custer to name but a few.

I loved this book and found it even better than Little Big Man - this time Jack's wanderings take him over a far larger canvas and the comedy is far broader, though never slapstick and always believable. For instance once scene in which Jack buries his beloved dog, Pard is absolutely heartbreaking but suddenly becomes insanely hilarious when the dog, very much alive and having dug itself out of its early grave, comes padding up to him. I won't give away the details of this scene but I will say that it works so well that, I think I shed a tear at the death of the pouch. I know I laughed out loud when it was revealed that he hadn't been dead  but......well, I won't give it away but will say that Pard doesn't seem to harbour any ill feelings to his adopted master for having prematurely buried him.

There are so many other highlights in this superbly crafted story - I've only ever read two Bergers books, this one and the volume that came before, but he seems to me as a kind of Mark Twain for the modern age. I guess I'm going to have to check out his other books.

Vintage Western Review: The Lonely Man 1957

Directed by Henry Levin.
Paramount Pictures.
Main Cast: Jack Palance, Anthony Perkins,Neville Brand, Robert Middleton, Lee Van Cleef.
Black and white
88 minutes
Original Release Nov 10 1957

Early hours of the morning, and I'm lounging on the sofa, my pipe filled with a Virginia/Perique mixture, a glass filled with a creamy porter from Brains, and I'm just flicking through the TV channels, so many of them with nothing to watch when I stumbled on this western, which I don't think I've seen before, on Netflix.

It was odd seeing Jack Palance in a role such as this -  he was usually cast as the bad guy, playing the part in some memorable westerns including of course Shane, but here he's the leading man. Technically, he's a bad guy but he's determined to go leave his life as a gunslinger behind him at the outset of this movie and provide a life for his son, Riley (Anthony Perkins).

The plot is quite simple - Gunslinger, Jake Wade (Palance) rides into save his long abandoned son Riley (Anthony Perkins) and provide him with some kind of future after the death of the boy's mother. The son though hates his father, is totally fixated on his dead mother and acts like a petulant child - seems that even then Anthony Perkins had cornered the market on playing dead mother fixated young men. Though Perkins doesn't display this by dressing up as his late mother and running around with  a carving knife, but instead refuses to accept anything from his father. The pair end up torching the family home and moving out together - at the first town they try to settle in they are moved on because of Jake's gunslinger past, and so they go to the home of Ada (Elaine Aiken), a women who looks wonderful in a pair of blue jeans. The woman's in love with Jake but all he can think of is providing some kind of future for his son.

Jake: What do you do for a living?
Riley: Nothing...I get along.


Soon the ;past catches up with Jake, in the shape of enemies from the past and it is revealed that Jake is going blind - what good's a blind gunfighter?

I'm surprised this movie is not better known - I pretty much have a good knowledge of western movies, and I can't say I'd ever heard of this one. It doesn't follow the standard structure of such movies, and the performances are quite excellent. It was also filmed in Vistavision which gives a clarity to the black and white images, unusual in itself since most Vistavision pictures were filmed in colour. The scenes in which Palance and his small band try and round up the wild horses are breathtakingly filmed, and look quite beautiful, and the inevitable final showdown is brilliantly staged. The female lead played by Elaine Aiken in her debut performance, and I don't think I've ever seen a woman fill a pair of jeans so well, but incredibly she didn't go onto have much of an acting career though did become one of the leading acting teachers at the Strasberg Theatre Institute. She is brilliant here and pulls of the part of a women torn between father and son with gusto.


You can't beat a good western - I've always said that, it's my favourite genre, And I really enjoyed this movie. Tonally, I found it not dissimilar to the Anthony Mann westerns of the same period and Palance and Perkins are both excellent, as are the rest of the cast.

Buffalo Bill and the Myth of the Wild West

“Wild painted Red Indians from America, on their wild bare backed horses, of different tribes—cowboys, Mexicans &c., all came tearing around at full speed, shrieking and screaming, which had the weirdest effect. An attack on a coach & on a ranch, with an immense deal of firing, was most exciting, so was the buffalo hunt & the bucking ponies. . . .The cowboys are fine looking people, but the painted Indians, with their feathers and wild dress (very little of it) were rather alarming looking & they have cruel faces. . . .Col. Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill’ as he is called, from having killed 3000 buffaloes, with his own hand, is a splendid man, handsome and gentlemanlike in manner. He has had many encounters & hand to hand fights with the Red Indians. Their war dances, to a wild drum and pipe, was quite fearful, with all their contorsions [sic] and shrieks, & they come so close.”  Queen Victoria describing the thrill of seeing the Wild West show.

Queen Victoria attended twice and at the first performance, the Queen bowed when a cowboy rode into the ring holding an American flag - highly symbolic given that this was the first time since the War of Independence that a British ruler had honoured the stars and stripes.

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill

The highlight of the Wild West Show was a re-enactment of Custer's Last Stand, though some sources claim that Buffalo Bill played Custer in the show, others state that the part of Custer was played by various performers, while Cody would ride in to avenge the death of Custer - 'The first scalp for Custer.' He would yell from the back of his trademark white horse. This is partly based on truth for it was Cody who had killed and scalped the Indian, Yellow Hair and although it seems unlikely it was generally believed for many years that it had been Yellow Hair who had killed Custer at the Little Big Horn.

Though in truth no one knows who actually killed Custer, indeed the Indians would not have recognized him since he had been out of uniform, wearing buckskins at the battle and his famous flowing locks had been cropped short to hide encroaching baldness.

What is known that on 25th June 1876, General Custer led 210 men of America's elite 7th Calvary into battle near the Little Big Horn in what is present day Montana and confronted thousands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. The Calvary were wiped out, but  Custer, realizing the situation was hopeless,  may have even killed himself once he saw the battle was lost. He had suffered two bullet shots - one in the heart and one in the head.

Still, why let the truth get in the way of a good story....

Book Review: Little Big Man by Patrick Berger

I first came into contact with Little Big Man via the Arthur Penn 1970 movie - that film is something of a revisionist western and is generally considered a classic movie. I love the film myself but after finally getting around to reading the source novel, the movie has been somewhat diminished for me and I consider the novel to be vastly superior.

 I  can't understand why the movie changed the story somewhat; expanded the role of the character, Mrs Pendrake for instance. I suppose it was to give Faye Dunway more to do in the picture but it takes away from the depth of the story when later in the movie, Jack Crabb discovers her working as a prostitute, when in the novel this particular story-line was given to a character who Jack mistook for a long lost niece, and promptly spends much of his energy on earning the money to get her schooled properly, to turn her into a woman like Mrs Pendrake. This section of what is an epic story is far more powerful in the novel than in the movie, and is perhaps the biggest change from book to screen. Maybe if a lesser actress had been cast in the role then she would have been given a  smaller, though pivotal role in proceedings.

Though it is true that whilst Mrs Pendrake is far more of a secondary character in the novel,  her influence on Jack Crabb is felt throughout his life, particularly in the way he places women, or at least those who, he considers to be proper women,on a pedestal. For Jack Mrs Pendrake represents the perfect woman, and she often comes into his thoughts when he has dealings with those of the opposite sex.

The novel is famous for mixing in fact with fiction, and for the way Jack Crabb interacts with actual historical figures throughout his story, and the main ones throughout the narrative are Wild Bill Hickok and General Custer, though Jack also comes into contact with a young Wyatt Earp, though his brief interaction with Earp was for some reason not used in the movie. Still, that I can understand since Earp doesn't really have that much to do with where the narrative is heading and that's to show how Jack Crabb became the only white survivor of the Battle of the Little Big-Horn. Though western readers will know that it was Wild Bill Williams who was actually the only white survivor of the battle - check out Wild Bill Williams by Jack Martin for the lowdown on that.

The basic premise, both movie and novel, are virtually identical - the story is told by Jack Crabb, more than a hundred years old at the start of the book, and takes us through a history of the period known as the Wild West. As a young boy Jack saw most of family slaughtered by the Cheyenne Indians and he is carried away and brought up by the tribe. Later he is brought back to white civilisation and adopted by the Pendrake family, only to leave again when he discovers that the supposedly prim and proper Mrs Pendrake is actually a bit of a wild eyed slut whenever she gets the chance. From there Jack moves back and forth between Indian and white culture as an entertaining, often thrilling as well as humorous story moves towards the demise of Custer and the beginning of the end for the Indian way of life. Jack's various times with the Cheyenne throughout the story really drives the narrative and are by far the best parts of the book. The Indians call themselves the Human Beings and look down with puzzlement at the whites who they see as being vulgar and  infantile with no understanding of the centre of the world.

Larry McMurtry in his introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of the book called it, 'An American masterpiece. Up there with Twain and Hemingway'

Who am I to argue with that?

An excellent tall tale......

Was Paul McCartney Jack the Hopper? Shocking evidence reveals Paul McCartney 's past as a frog killer

It's not new , was hit upon in Many Years From Now by Barry Miles back in 1997 but a new interview in GQ Magazine has brought up Paul McCartney's dark past as a serial killer of frogs. Yes as unlikely as it seems McCartney was actually Jack the Hopper, an amphibian serial killer, responsible for mass frogicide who has never been brought to justice.

"Yeah, I remember exactly why it was and what it was. We used to live on a housing estate called Speke, in Liverpool, just millions of houses, right on the border of woods and deep countryside. So I did a lot of that, went out in all that. But I was very aware that I would soon be joining the army, because all of us were called up for National Service. I was probably about 12, I was looking at being 17, which is kind of looming—it's going to happen fast—and the one thing that I thought is: 'I can't kill anything—what am I going to do? Get a bayonet and hurt someone? I've got to kill someone? Shit, I've got to think about that. How do I do that?' So I ended up killing frogs." McCartney told GQ Magazine when prompted of his blood thirsty past.


The Frog Chorus, Macca's  1984 song found the bloodthirsty musician once again thinking about frogs but this time he didn't torture the poor creatures but instead had them singing, 'Bom Bom, Bom', which upon reflection may have even been worse.


"I do look for rational explanations—I do think, you know, kids are cruel. Kids swing cats. I was from Liverpool—you do that kind of shit. It's dumb, it's mean, it's horrible, but you do that kind of shit. What is it? You're trying to toughen yourself up? I don't know. But I did. And I used to go out in the woods, and I killed a bunch of frogs and stuck them up on a barbed-wire fence. It was like a weird sort of thing that I kind of hated doing but thought: 'I'm toughening myself up.' I remember taking my brother there, once, to my secret place. And he was just horrified. Thought he had a nutter on his hands. And probably did." McCartney went on

Newspaper report from the time of the killings

McCartney's ritualistic killings resulted in dozens of frogs being impaled on barbed-wired fences, while the soon to be Beatle danced about, chanting 'Bom, bom bom,' and absorbing the amphibian's life force.

"I wonder. I don't know. He's just my younger brother—I showed him what I was doing. I think he was horrified, but I think I was, too. It was a dark thing, but no darker than a lot of stuff that was going on on our estate. It was just my way. I remember very consciously thinking: 'You've got to learn to harm things because you're a sissy. So you'd better get in some practice.'" McCartney tries to justify his froggicide.


The documents relating to this case are now with the AID, the Met's Amphibian Investigation Department.

Fall in: New Commando titles

There are four new Commando books on sale this week - titles are The Cutting Edge, Agents at War, Sea-Strike and The Pact.

Commando is Britain’s longest serving war comic, publishing stories of action and adventure since 1961. These stories, with their mixture of excitement, danger and courage under fire, and the dynamic artwork that accompanies them, have won Commando a loyal readership over the decades.

Lately the series has been on something of a roll - I've especially enjoyed many of  the Home Front set stories. These really bringing a freshness to the long running series.

This week I especially enjoyed, The Pact by Heath Ackley, which centered on the Indian Army which during the second world war was the largest volunteer force in history. Their contribution to the war effort is often overlooked so it was especially good to see Commando focusing a story on the Indian troops.

Other titles available now:

DC Cinematic Universe lose both Superman and Batman

Reports are that the floundering, DC Cinematic Universe has lost both it's Superman and Batman with Henry Cavill confirmed as leaving the Superman role. This week, The Hollywood Reporter quoted sources saying that Cavill is done with the Man of Steel, and this was followed by the New York Post reporting that Ben Affleck is hanging up his Batman cape.

The DC cinematic universe seems to be in a right mess.


Warner Brother's released a statement that included the following:




"While no decisions have been made regarding any upcoming Superman films, we've always had great respect for and a great relationship with Henry Cavill, and that remains unchanged."

Although the Warner's statement doesn't come right out and say that Cavill is leaving the role, it doesn't deny it either. A similar situation exists with Batman at the moment with neither Warners nor Affleck confirming that he is finished with the role, however reports have surfaced that Warners have requested digital mock ups of Game of Thrones actor, Kit Harrington in the role.

'He's such a dirty old man!' Let's board Egypt Station

Many an artist I grew up with are now facing their autumn years, (shit, I can feel their icy grasp myself, telling me that the end of the end is not too far away.) and could be forgiven for taking a back seat. but for Paul McCartney it seems that senior citizenship has not only brought a bus pass, a penchant for hanging around with James Cordon and hobnobbing with royalty but also a massive boost in the needs of Little Macca. The latter ain't gonna curl up in a pair of comfortable high waisted underpants, content with the memories of early days. Hell no, Little Macca wants to party! Little Macca wants some action! This yearning, heartfelt or otherwise, is displayed in the slightly troubling Come On To Me and the hilarious, Fuh You.

These two songs, along with the lovely ballad, I Don't Know, were the first things people heard from the now released Egypt Station album and they provoked more than a few slack jaws, dozens of guffaws and tight smirks aplenty. Here was Macca, a national treasure, arguably the biggest legacy artist in the world inviting you to come on to him so that he could fuh you. Though those two tracks in all fairness, if you can separate the comedy value from the aural, rather than oral experience then they hold up as throwaway tracks. Come On To Me, Macca explained was written based around the memories of his younger self and not through the eyes of a man in his late 70's - hell, no that would be creepy. Fuh You is actually For You but it sounds like Macca is singing I just wanna Fuck You - and he knows it sounds like that, intended it to sound like that, and it is pretty Fuh'ing funny.

Fuh me, if Egypt Station is not a pretty funky album - coming across as a hybrid of his Fireman stuff and inward gazing of Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. It's a far better album that his previous two long players and represents something of a classic entry into his incredible catalog.

The album kicks off with the sound of a train chugging and then we have some choir sounds which flow seamlessly into, I don't Know and the track works really well here, far better than it did as a single. 'I've got crows at my window, dogs at my door, I don't think I can take anymore,' wails a world weary voice and it really is quite beautiful. The piano medley is classic McCartney and it weaves around a lyric that is very much anti-McCartney in its depth of despair. 'It's alright, sleep tight. I will take the strain.'

The second track rocks out - Come Onto Me, - again this seems more at home here than it did as a single. The sounds not clean, the melody not too sweet and although it's pretty much a simple song it does have that edge, that raspy quality that reminds me somewhat of McCartney's Electric Argument album.


It occurs to me after a few spins of this album that Egypt Station is a real album, rather than a collection of songs. What I mean by that is where say Memory Almost Full and New were song collections, Egypt Station seems to have a unity that has been lacking from Macca's work since maybe Chaos and Creation and Electric Argument.


The third track is a lovely acoustic ballad, a  kind of modern day take on Every Night, in which Macca informs us that he no longer has to get stoned and can, no doubt safely enter Japan without worry of customs. It's a sweet melody, quite wonderful. 'I'm Happy with you,' Macca tells us and so far I'm happy with Egypt Station.

Next up is Who Cares, which is a standout rocker - it makes you want to punch the air. It's a fine track that would again fit into the Electric Argument era. 'Who cares what the idiots say. Who cares what the idiots do.'

Then we have the already infamous Fuh You -  I just find this song hilarious and it is a ear worm. Listen to it a few times and be careful because you'll end up singing it as you walk down the streets. It'll be awkward explaining to the girl on the Tesco checkout why you just uttered, 'I just wanna fuh you.'

Confident is next, apparently a ode to Macca's guitar but it's an interesting lyric that could contain a little Beatle bashing or then again it may not. There's some startling imagery - butterfly's wearing army boots chanting long lost anthems. This is another great track.


People want Peace comes next - the opening is excellent but it ends up sounding like that song Macca did for a video game a few years back. It's not bad but not nearly as strong as the songs that preceded it. It may grow on me though and I certainly don't hate it.

The piano led Hand in Hand comes next and this one features another strained Macca vocal - a song that could have fitted on Kisses on the Bottom. It's romantic, hopeful and whimsical as well as even more optimistic than With a Little Luck. There's a lovely tune here but the song is a bit sappy. Maybe in the context of the album it works but taken from the whole it would maybe seem far too trite.

Dominoes follows and this song is, I think a late period masterpiece - an absolutely stunning song that goes all over the place. 'And like the dominoes are falling.' This is the album's top tune in my opinion.

Then we're going up tempo for a true party number with the gormless Back in Brazil but this songs has such a good vibe that it'll have you foot tapping aplenty. Musically it's a very complex piece and the lyric tells a little story. It's  a very experimental track, part lounge lizard music and part party piece. Quite brilliant.

Do It Now is another wonderful track, that echoes McCartney's best balladry. There's also some great Wings style harmonies flowing through this heavenly track. I'm loving it.

Ceaser Rock comes next and it really does rock and for this bemoaning McCartney's voice this is the perfect antidote with that voice sounding better than it has for many a year. He gets that perfect raspy vocal quality that reminds me of Rinse the Raindrops from the much maligned Driving Rain. The guitar work on this one is especially good.

Despite Repeated Warnings follows - this is the much hyped anti-Trump song but it's far more Admiral Halsey than Big Boys Bickering. It's got several inventive tempo changes and some nice Macca 'Yeah, yeah' wails. 'Well he's got his own agenda.' And at one point it goes all Live and Let Die with a crazy reggae/rock vibe. 'He'll take us with him.'  It's a great song with Macca seeming to be shouting for an uprising. 'Yes we can do it, yeah we can do it now.'

Then we arrive at Station II and it's been a breathless journey - some more heavenly choir sounds takes up into the closing medley of  Hunt you Down/Naked/ C-link. We get a hard rock riff to kick off proceedings with Macca rocking like it's 1970 all over again. This middle section is catchy in which Macca claims to have been mistaken for his little brother and confessing that he's been naked for so long. A brilliant wandering guitar solo takes us into the final movement in the medley and it's like the McCartney album meets No More Lonely Nights. A truly inventive medley then to round off a better than expected album from Macca.

In summing up then I would say that Macca's got balls on this album - to my mind it's far stronger than the safey stuff served up on the previous two albums. It was ironic that McCartney's previous album, New served up nothing even remotely new but this album certainly does. It's an album that works as an album, a unified whole and will no doubt reveal more of itself over repeated listens. I'd give this one top marks...I like dirty old man Macca.

Doctor Who moves to a Sunday night

Back in the day (and I'm old enough to remember) when the BBC first decided to kill off Doctor Who they moved it from the traditional Saturday evening slot to a Monday evening - putting it up against Coronation Street, and this was in the days before video recorders were widespread and streaming was something you hoped wouldn't happen while you were dashing to the toilet. So the recent announcement by the BBC that the new series of Doctor Who will now run on a Sunday night instead of a Saturday is troubling. Are the BBC once again fed up of the show?

Of course, given the rise of catch-up and on-demand viewing, it arguably matters less what night of the week Doctor Who airs on, with younger fans having the option of watching the show as and when they please on BBC iPlayer.

Taking a shot at kickstarting the sports comic revival

Creator Pete Nash with the support of readers via a crowdfunding project, had brought the football comic Striker to the kick off. The first match is due to kick off on September 12th as a weekly comic on sale in newsagents and by subscription.

The Archive will be buying and sends love and best wishes to Striker.