Gratitude IV: FAREWELL, DR SPIN

Thanks for taking seriously my suggestion that we not get drunk before the gig at Bestival.  For about five minutes…

Thanks for playing piano while really really wasted at The Equinox party and then forgetting all about it.  You played surprisingly well, considering.

Thanks for running out of our sound check to help someone fix the generator leads out the back, Secret Garden Party.

Thanks for leaving sound check to help someone put up the lights for the gig, at Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Thanks for co-writing Analogue Is Better Than Digital.  It quite obviously couldn’t have been done without you.

Thanks for chatting shit to strangers so I didn’t have to.

Thanks for laughing it all off in Newport.  It could easily have got us both down, but you helped rescue us from that. 

Thanks for leaving the money on the stage in Sheffield.  We could really have done with it, mind.  Never mind.

Thanks for drinking the whole rider, in about an hour.  Thanks also for not letting it affect your performance.

Thanks for playing piano, mandolin, guitar and drums better than I could/can, but letting me play them anyway.

Thanks for jamming at my house, and in practice rooms, the studio, sound checks and festivals, playing Why?, The Smiths, Wu-Tang Clan and Gogol Bordello on an assortment of stringed instruments.

Thanks for driving to London, Nottingham, Sheffield, Cambridgeshire, Winchester, the Isle of Wight and everywhere else.

Thanks for your scruffy appearance.  I got a lot of banter out of it, on-stage and off-.

Thanks for having a tape player in your car.  Thanks for having Blue by Joni Mitchell as one of the three tapes.

Thanks for not cleaning out the inside of your car.  Ever.

Thanks for not holding a grudge against the person that stole your car.  It was an important lesson for me.

Thanks for writing a song with me on a long drive home to Bristol.  Maybe we’ll finish it one day.  I’ll have a look through my notebooks.

Thanks for being honest and upfront about leaving.  It took courage, and I appreciated it, even through my disappointment.

Thanks for this.

And this:

Thanks for sitting with me in a living room in Nottingham, enjoying/enduring the (sort of) good-natured abuse directed at us.  I learned how to speak without words that night.

Thanks for the hours in the studio, and knowing a lot of technical stuff I will probably never know anything about.

Thanks for walking through the East End to find an obscure pub that let us play a couple of songs for them, and helping to cheer up our stricken comrade.

Thanks for turning up on time, sometimes.

Thanks for never complaining about anything.

Thanks for listening to me complain about everything.

Thanks for never letting the bastards grind you down.

Thanks for taking my abuse with good humour.

Thanks for being my friend.

Thanks for everything.

Auf Wiedersehn, Pet.

Clayton Blizzard