Gratitude III

Thanks to, and Thanks for Robbie Fraser: a big belly laugh of a man and a fantastic horn player.  So Long, and Thanks for all the music.  And the protracted arguments about Jeremy Clarkson.  (One of us like him, the other despised him.)

Thanks to The People’s Front Room.  For everything.

Thanks to Annie Ferguson.  She taught me to dance.  Not how to dance, mind.

Thanks to the reviewer(s) who wrote 280 words about my accent and 20 about my performance and songs, and said it wouldn’t work “outside the county.”

Thanks to the reviewer who said I was “borderline offensive to anyone with a genuine affinity with Hip hop.”  I’d always assumed my affinity was genuine.

Thanks to my brother who reviewed my first album: “The drums are too loud.”

Thanks to Universal Music Group for shutting down my myspace account because of copyright infringement – for uploading my own music. (I have never had a contract with Universal Music Group.)

Thanks to whoever set up a last.fm account in my name. 

Thanks to all the people that made my music available for free over the internet, or downloaded it for free.

Thanks to PRS for my first royalty payment: £8.50

Thanks to everyone who asked me to play covers.

Thanks to God TV.  Seriously.

Thanks to Box of Frogs for giving me my biggest ever audience, at Ashton Court Festival (as it used to be called) in 1999.  I’ve still got a photo of me and Gray Rimes on stage. 

Thanks to Jeanette Winterson, Morrissey, KRS One and Charles M. Schultz. 

If you’re looking for anyone to blame for my lyrics, that’s where to start.

Thanks to Stewart Lee for giving me the basis of my entirely derivative inter-song stand-up-style banter.  And Thanks to everyone else for not making me famous, so that he never notices.

Thanks for all the comments on internet forums, especially “Clayton Blizzard is the most talented unsuccessful person I know.”

Thanks to the person who e-mailed me before a gig to ask me not to play a certain new song of mine because it was “painfully close to the truth” and therefore “very uncomfortable”.

Thanks to the girl who didn’t stop texting, even when I sang in her ear. 

That’s commitment.

Thanks to all the people who bought an album at a gig and said it wasn’t as good as the live performance.  (A higher percentage than I expected/hoped for…)

Thanks to all my nearest/dearest.  There isn’t room here to thank you all. 

(Hopefully) it will suffice to say: You Know Who You Are.  

I’ve been writing my gratitude in instalments because I have so much to be grateful for.  I hated almost all of my schoolteachers, (and resented the few I liked), so I understand that we often get teachers we don’t welcome, who nevertheless teach us valuable lessons. 

Thanks to all my teachers.

Clayton Blizzard