I recently saw Super Robertson perform a short accoustic set. It was well done; he’s got a handful of tunes that are both catchy and suitable for an accoustic guitar. They’re varied enough to keep the set interesting, but are all still unmistakably Robertsonian.

The problem is, he can’t seem to figure out how to end the songs. He gets into them, goes for a couple of verses/choruses, then abruptly drives them off the road. He reminds me of that episode of the Beachcombers where some gung-ho kid takes off in a float plane, only to find that he doesn’t know how to land it.

He seems to do this stuff under the stage name of ‘Folk Robertson.’ I think so, anyway. He’s got more personas than Peter Sellers in ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ For a guy who calls himself ‘Folk,’ though, he seems to mumble a bit too much.

Of course, unintelligible lyrics are all part of rock and roll. But I always see folk musicians as different. The lyrics are a key part of what they’re all about. Can you imagine Paul Robeson railing against descrimination in garbled phrases that no one could understand?

I’m not much better at anunciation, and I’ve often thought that it would be helpful to have Stoke lyrics in CDs, but Smash, the bass player for Stoke, steadfastly opposes the printing of lyrics. He says that people should discover the lyrics bit by bit, that this is part of the magic of getting to know a song.

There is some merit in this argument. I remember as a kid being into a heavy metal band from France called Trust. Unlike other European metal bands (and perhaps typical of Frenchmen), they initially refused to sing in English. By the time their second album, ‘Repression,’ came out, however, they started releasing records in both French and English. The singer, Bernie Bonvisan, would re-do the entire vocal track for each record in a painstakingly constructed English translation.

When I first listened to the ‘Repression’ album I came across a song called ‘Sects.’ It had a line that went like this:

‘Dean Jones where did you come from?
Dean Jones was it for fun?
Dean Jones, is that your name?
Dean Jones, you die for fame.’

Later in the song they alter the last line:

‘Dean Jones, is that your name?
Dean Jones, A SIGN OF DEATH!’

I figured they were talking about American actor Dean Jones, star of Disney’s ‘The Love Bug.’

‘Fuck,’ I thought to myself. ‘The French must be really pissed off about EuroDisney.’

It was only after a few months that I realized it wasn’t ‘Dean Jones,’ that Bernie Bonvisan was singing about, but ‘Jim Jones.’ When he screamed it out with his French accent it sounded like:

‘Djeeeeeeeeem Jones, eeees zat your name?
Djeeeeeeeeem Jones, A SIGN OF DEATH!’

(Jim Jones, for those who don’t know, was a cult leader in Guyana who killed his followers with poison Koolaid.)

I remember another time when a guy was going on to me about a Slow song called ‘I Have Nothing to Say.’

“That is a great line,” he told me one day. “That’s the ultimate punk statement.”

And indeed it might have been, in a Seattle grunge kind of way, except that the song was actually called “I Have Not Been the Same.” Just another (admittedly rocking) tune about losing at love. When I informed him of this he was utterly deflated.

Getting back to Mr. Robertson, one of the highlights of watching his band Roadbed perform is a rendition they do of the Jackass Has Haybreath song ‘Bengal Tiger.’ I’m intimately familiar with the lyrics to ‘Bengal Tiger,’ as I’m the one who ‘wrote’ them. And Super is singing the wrong words.

In a way, though, I like his version better, so I’ve decided to keep quiet.

I’m looking for role models. The first I’ve come across is Sir Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister from 1939-1945 and 1951-1955.

Winston Churchill was convinced of his own greatness from a young age, but the more full of himself he got, the more things went awry. A member of the British Cabinet in the First World War, he was the architect of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, a crazy idea wherein the Allies (largely Australians and New Zealanders, who remain pissed off to this day), would drive to Germany through the 'soft underbelly' of Turkey. They never got past the beach.

After the war, he switched parties, unable to decide which ‘team’ was the best vehicle for his talent. He failed to grasp the changing social fabric in Britain, belligerently endorsing the crushing of the British coal miners’ strike in 1926, earning him the hatred of the British working class. By the 1930s, he was on the outside, scorned and mistrusted by all but a few devotees.

So there he was, in the political wilderness, looking back on his own indecisiveness, fucked up opportunities, and pondering the end of his political career.

But he persevered. And his hour came round at last in 1940, when he was able to assume the Prime Ministership, partly because everone's first choice for the job (a highbrow called Lord Halifax) turned it down. He was almost seventy years old.

LESSON ONE - Hang in there.

Once leader, Churchill looked for victories, and his military leaders began creating them almost out of nothing. Squads of commandos (many Canadians among them) attacked German positions from Norway to the South of France; Air raids were launched on German targets in the face of huge Luftwaffe air superiority. Finally, in 1941, he poured troops into Egypt in order to reverse the German advance across North Africa, managing, at great cost, to stop the Afrika Korps at El Alamein. It was a long way from the action in Europe, but it was a solid victory in a large battle, and was instantly adopted as a turning point.

His greatest personal contribution was that he was positive. He never allowed himself or his people to believe that failure was a possibility.

LESSON TWO: take your victories where you can get them. No victory is too small, as each one creates momentum.

He was humble enough to recognize that he needed allies. He did what he could to get the U.S. into the war. He put aside his hatred of Communism to work with Stalin. He soothingly cultivated Charles de Gaulle as a leader of 'Free France,' in spite of the fact that everone else hated the Frenchman's guts. Churchill conceded that that De Gaulle was the best and fairest choice to symbolize France's liberation; another leader might have presented himself in that role.

The same thing applied on the home front. He brought prominent opposition politicians into his cabinet. He kept Parliament running throughout the war, and allowed criticsm of his own management of the war to be voiced. He restricted civil liberties as little as possible.

LESSON THREE: Look for your allies where you can, and don't be too much of a prick, or too much of a perfectionist. Don't be so vain as to think you're never going to have to compromise. Accept that compromise, when properly applied, can result in great victory.





With that done, the rest started to take care of itself.

Regret gets into your bloodstream like alchohol, but it doesn’t wear off. Instead it seems to grow exponentially. After a while it’s like you don’t have blood in your veins anymore, just a bitter, red bile. It makes you miserable and second guessingly-indecisive, both of which simply re-inforce its effect; the more miserable and indecisive you are, the less likely you will be able to overcome the source of your regret.