So Much To Blog, So Little Time

Clem Burke, Drummer Of Blondie

Clem Burke was one of those drummers people should talk about more. That's him with the distinctly Mod Tee-shirt on the left. He's actually a Keith Moon-inspired drummer for Blondie, which explains the shirt, I guess. Anyway, more recently he's found he needs to train like an athlete to keep drumming that way.

"He loses up to two litres of fluid in a performance, which is similar to a runner going out and doing 10,000m," Dr Smith said.

Burke burned 400-600 calories an hour. His heart rate averaged 140 to 150 beats a minute, though it could rise as high as 190 beats - equalling that of Cristiano Ronaldo in a Premier League football match.

Restoring the honour of the rock drummer has been a labour of love for Dr Smith, a lifelong Blondie fan. In 1998, as he was finishing his PhD, there were rumours the band was about to reform.

He wrote to Burke that summer as a fan and as a sports scientist who had worked with professional football players and British Olympic boxers. They met at Wembley Arena, where Burke agreed to let Dr Smith follow him around on tour.

"There is a lot more to it than having a beer and walking on stage for two hours," Burke told The Times. Even if that was how he used to do business, "at this point in my career, I'm conscious of needing to be prepared".

He does not think, however, that he is the only one who requires the services of a sports scientist. "Rock and roll music is in middle age now," he added.

Burke needs to stay in peak physical condition and can sometimes suffer from joint pain. "Jacuzzis, saunas, massages, all that is incorporated into the life of the modern drummer," he said.

I'll believe that. The guy drums like a maniac!

Radovan Karadzic, Psycho-Despot, Psychiatrist, Poet, Musician
In recent days, Radovan Karadzic has been captured. He's going to be sent to the Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity. While I don't condone what he has done - he was persistently the most obstinate asshole in the whole Bosnian War and gave us the obscenely nuanced term 'Ethnic Cleansing' - it has to be said I don't know if you could punish a man enough for such crimes anyway. Quite apart from my misgivings about the International Court in Hague and the tenuous nature of the legal grounding of the such, I do think Kardzic deserved to go to that trial much more so than Slobodan Milosevic who may have been the wrong pollie in the wrong spot, who backed the wrong guy - Radovan - at the wrong time in history.

Karadzic also was a psychiatrist - as well as a poet, like his fellow 90s comrade-in-bad-dude-ness, Saddam Hussein. His works bore titles such as 'Let's Go Down To The Town And Kill Some Scum'.

Karadzic saw himself as something of an artist, a view shared by few others, performing as a troubadour, writing children's stories and folk songs. He published poetry rife with prophetic, if not apocalyptic, visions; among the charmless titles were The Morning Hand Grenade and Let's Go Down To The Town And Kill Some Scum. He was jailed for fraud but used his contacts to get his job back.

As the shadows of war loomed over the fragmenting Yugoslav Republic, Karadzic surprised everyone when he emerged as Slobodan Milosovic's proxy, using extreme nationalist rhetoric of a kind not heard in Europe since the Nazis. A new term entered the lexicon: "ethnic cleansing". Karadzic, a central figure in the destruction, conducted the siege of Sarajevo, shelling the hospital where he had worked, killing colleagues and patients.

In 1995, Karadzic was indicted by an international war crimes tribunal, making him the first doctor so indicted since the Nuremberg doctors trial in 1946. In 1993, the American Psychiatric Association passed a motion condemning Karadzic for "brutal and inhumane actions … because, by membership and training, Dr Karadzic claims membership in our profession".

What was Karadzic the psychiatrist like? His colleagues said he provoked psychotic patients and his work was ordinary. When a psychopathic patient with a knife rampaged through the ward, Karadzic retreated to his room, leaving a nurse to disarm the patient. He constantly regaled colleagues with grandiose plans; for example, he would write the definitive textbook on depression.

Radovan Karadzic (I keep mistyping it "Krazic"! That must tell you something) on the other hand was a curse-able cur, a cunt-deluxe. Turns out the guy was a musician too.

There were many stories being told yesterday about the man the locals knew as Doctor David, psychiatrist holistic health guru and mystic. But one winter's night in particular was passing speedily into folklore.

That night, there was a jamming session on the gusle, the one-string fiddle played across the Balkans to accompany epic poetry. Dabic turned up to listen and was eventually persuaded to join in. Those present that night shook their heads yesterday in disbelief at the memory. There was Radovan Karadzic, their hero and icon, playing the gusle for them under his own portrait, and no one had a clue who he was. It was the stuff of legend.

Raso Vucinic, a young Serb nationalist who had been playing the gusle that night, was burnishing a tale he would one day tell his grandchildren.

"He was wearing a black hat and a black coat and he was standing at the threshold, listening," Vucinic said.

"'You young players are the greatest treasure of the Serbian people,' he told me. 'Sing with and through the gusle. Speak about the Serb traditions. Hold the banner of our glory high.' And he would write down the lyrics of our songs about the war in Bosnia."

Then the white-haired old man was finally persuaded to pick up the gusle and play. He refused to sing, but the regulars insist he played beautifully. They held the instrument up for photographs yesterday. It was carved from elm with a large eagle at its head, and portraits of national heroes on its body, including one of Vuk Karadzic, a 19th-century champion of the Serb language and one of Radovan's forefathers. In the Madhouse bar, it was fast acquiring the attributes of a priceless relic.

And that's the weirdness of life staring right back at you right there and there.

Umm... Aliens Exist According To Apollo Astronaut

Here's something rather disturbing. I would have put it on the Space Freaks Weblog, but I think it's a little too woowoo, so I'm putting it here instead.

FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.

And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions - but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.

Dr Mitchell, 77, said during a radio interview that sources at the space agency who had had contact with aliens described the beings as 'little people who look strange to us.'

He said supposedly real-life ET's were similar to the traditional image of a small frame, large eyes and head.

Chillingly, he claimed our technology is "not nearly as sophisticated" as theirs and "had they been hostile", he warned "we would be been gone by now".

Dr Mitchell, along with with Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard, holds the record for the longest ever moon walk, at nine hours and 17 minutes following their 1971 mission.

"I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real," Dr Mitchell said.

"It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out and some of us have been privileged to have been briefed on some of it.

"I've been in military and intelligence circles, who know that beneath the surface of what has been public knowledge, yes - we have been visited. Reading the papers recently, it's been happening quite a bit."

Dr Mitchell, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics claimed Roswell was real and similar alien visits continue to be investigated.

He told the astonished Kerrang! radio host Nick Margerrison: "This is really starting to open up. I think we're headed for real disclosure and some serious organisations are moving in that direction."

Mr Margerrison said: "I thought I'd stumbled on some sort of astronaut humour but he was absolutely serious that aliens are definitely out there and there's no debating it."

Officials from NASA, however, were quick to play the comments down.

Joys of joys, somebody who might know, coming out with this stuff. I wonder if he's having a laugh before he shuffles off his mortal coil or if he genuinely believes this stuff. Curious, in any case.

Have You Bought My Album yet?

Some people have started to buy my album. 3, in fact. I need to sell 20 to break even, so... what are you waiting for? :)